Civil Aviation Authority

So let me get this straight. Annette King when she agreed to force bakers to add folate to bread thinks that it is ok to mass medicate the enttre population with folate even when more than 50% of the population has no need for said mass medication. Further the costs simply don’t stack up.

The cost isn’t justified. The rate of spina bifida in New Zealand is 0.94/1000 total births. There were 64,000 live births in New Zealand in 2008. So we are going to medicate the entire population to save 60 babies from Spina Bifida and 50 babies from anencephalus.

That is just fucking ridiculous. We are forcing the enitre population to eat bread that has been mass medicated with folate in order to save 60 babies from spina bifida.

We murder more than that each year in our abortion clinics. We kill 32 babies a day with abortion! Let’s get our priorities right FFS.

Finally we may be getting some sense on the bizarre mass medication of our bread that Annette King signed us up to.

The Minister of Food Safety has spoken out strongly against the imminent compulsory addition of folic acid to most bread.

“I’m not a fan,” Kate Wilkinson said yesterday of the transtasman food standard that requires the synthetic vitamin be added to virtually all bread from September. “I sympathise with the bakers’ frustration.”

But wait, the cardy wearing officials have advised that trans-Tasman relations could be adversely affected.

The Minister should just scoff at such a ridiculous suggestion that pulling out of unnecessary forced mass medication would harm trans-Tasman relations forged on many a battlefield.

As a 40 year old male I object to being medicated for something I don’t need or want.

The other day the Labour Party decided to relaunch in the Hawkes Bay.

How many people in total turned out for the Goff and co meeting in Napier last Tuesday morning?

Was it more than in Rotorua?

Well yes it was but only because, Annette King, Maryan Street, Stuart Nash and Dazza Hughes, plus staff and driver were in attendance.

The grand total?

15 including someone purported to be the Leader of the Labour Party.

Of the 15 more than half were hangers on. Only 7 were members of the public and even then they were probably the Chair, Secretary and committee of the LEC.

Since Labour are all a twitter about helicopters, I thought I would do a bit of checking.

Helen Clark (left) exiting a Helicopter that took her to Motutapu Island

Helen Clark in a helicopter

Helen Clark and Phil Goff (Orange cap) in an Iroquois

I am also very reliable informed that the cackling cow beside Phil Goff yesterday in the house, Annette King, has availed herself of helicopter jaunts across Auckland several times in her role as Transport Minister. All those flights were paid for by private enterprise.

Annette King got spanked in the house today and even worse spanked by Bill English. She took Mr invisible’s question and then soudly cocked it up right till her final supplementary;

Hon Annette King: Who was the Prime Minister referring to when he said there was no room for phone-throwers or temper tantrums at the top; and can he confirm his colleagues’ belief that in fact he was talking about Nick Smith?

Hon BILL ENGLISH: No, he was talking about the previous occupants of the ninth floor of the Beehive, and not only has he decided there is no room for them; the New Zealand public has decided there is no room for them.

After I blogged yesterday about the towie’s absolute belief in the impact of the full moon several people have sent in anecdotal evidence that Annette King may well have been onto something.

One MP (the party and electorate shall remain nameless) has emailed me to say his electorate office is frantically busy around the full moon. They have a dramatic increase in mental health issues and more people through the door. Friday after 3.30 around a full moon is such a nightmare that it has been suggested that the MP shut up shop for the afternoon.

It was a full moon last night and it is also election time. that means that politicians do stupid things. One can only imagine what is happening in this photo though. I wonder if it is like the old Japanee kamikaze pilot shots, if so then Charles Chauvel and Annette King should be arriving on the burning deck of a National battleship anytime soon.

Here are some more thoughts about today’s Truckie Protest and how it related to FailRail and Government hypocrisy over notification.

Eliminating FailRail’s competition

It’s interesting to note that the tax hike came on the same day the Government launched FailRail, taking ownership of the competing mode of land transport.

It’s a bit of a conflict of interest for the Government to be taxing a competitor to a hilt to make it’s dud investment more attractive. As the old saying goes, if it moves tax it, if it keeps moving, tax it, if it stops moving, buy it for $200m over the odds and get Mr Potato Head to Chair it.

–

Hypocrisy watch

Last year Annette King promised to give truckies a one month notice in future before raising RUCs. She didn’t. Why? King claims that truckers were able to buy up large on RUC licences with three days before and would do so again – even though she promised to put in safeguards to prevent this.

At the same time, Labour has launched an inquiry in to petrol prices with an eye to introducing an Australian style ‘Fuelwatch’ scheme that would force petrol companies to declare prices 24 hours in advance. Using King’s logic, such a scheme would allow ‘greedy’ drivers to create ‘bulk buying rorts’ that would ‘deprive’ petrol companies of revenue. Why is it that Big Government won’t live up to the standards it tries to impose on ‘Big Oil’?

Truckies plan downtown gridlock – Angry truckies are planning to choke Auckland and other city centres with their trucks tomorrow morning in protest against a sudden increase in road-user charges on diesel vehicles.
The Auckland City Council says it is powerless… [Auckland News]

The Truckers protest is on and Annette King is furious. Here is an email being sent to customers of one trucking firm and I am sure it echos the sentiments of every other trucking firm participating.

Hi Folks,

You may have seen some of the comments in the media about the RUC increase.

As an Industry Group we decided that we should fight the increase, and protest about it on Friday morning.

There has never, to my knowledge, been such a depth of feeling within the transport industry. The industry is deeply concerned that any government would do what they have done, at time in our economy when we are clearly headed for difficulties.

We have decided to drive our trucks into the Town Hall in Auckland, and put our case to the media.

This will happen on Friday morning, starting at 0730.

The catch with this for you, our valued clients, is that “we” now seems to be more than a 1000 trucks, and that this volume of traffic is likely to cause some serious congestion. There is the real possibility that traffic might be brought to a standstill, and this may take some time to clear.

Regrettably this will mean that our service levels on Friday will be poor, and we will be attempting to do as much of Friday’s work on Thursday as we can.

This action could be seen as irresponsible, and certainly has been by the Minister of Transport, who has said “If trucking companies disrupt the travel plans of motorists and other commuters on Friday morning, as they threaten to, then the only people who suffer will be all those New Zealanders who pay their fare share of roading costs through petrol excise duty”

I am not sure what she means exactly, as she implies that there will be no suffering by the people who use diesel vehicles, and that is wrong. They will suffer too.

I am not sure if she means to imply that we diesel users do not pay our way, as we have always paid our RUC, in advance, as we are obligated to do.

What I think she means is that she never expected us to protest in this way, and the only way that she can deal with it is to try and turn in back on us, and it represents a pretty poor effort, and she may need to look at her spin doctor.

We do acknowledge that there will be a fair degree of inconvenience, and we apologise for that, but we do not apologise for standing up for what we think is the right thing, and protesting against a poorly judged government tax increase.

Please advise your staff to be prepared for a messy day on Friday, and to get to work early, or be late as appropriate.

Personally I have never been in a situation where I could consider justifying such action ever before, and Carr & Haslam has never considered it in 146 years of trading.

On your behalf I have judged this as one step too far, and we will go to battle on your behalf.

I hope you can both understand and support us.

Thanks

regards

Chris

WOBH supports the Truckers, and will be there to cover the action.

War against billion-dollar P trade being lost – King – 01 May 2008 – NZ Herald: New Zealand National news

Annette King has raised the white flag and started a retreat reminiscent of French Armies over methamphetamine.

Her concession that the authorities are struggling to win the war against P comes in a new Cabinet paper setting out Government policies to target organised crime.

The Government set up a joint agency approach to tackling P in 2003.

Measures included reclassifying it as a Class A drug and creating a Methamphetamine Action Group.

But , methamphetamine-related cases as a percentage of all cases sent to the High Court have risen from 41 per cent in 2004 to 54 per cent in 2006.

If the senior cabinet minister responsible for law and order puts her hands up and and essentially concedes that they have lost the war on meth then if she had any decency she would resign forthwith. She won’t of course because decency and honour are two words that labour ministers are unfamilair with.

We need a government that will stand up to drug dealers, if necessary with force. We need a corrections policy of time sentenced=time served and we need to sever the heads of the hydra of the gangs immediately and with lethal force.

The gang and drug problem could be solved overnight if the government really was committed to ridding this country of the scourge of meth. I hear the going rate for Serb assassins is only a measly $50k. Hire a 1000 of them and task them to co-ordinate an single night attack on all the gangs simultaneously starting at the top and kill all the leaders, round up the rest and chuck them in the Auckland Islands to survive on their wits, for, oh, 50 years. Problem solved overnight.

You see the problem is a strech of 10 years and getting out after only one third of your sentence is a lark for these guys. Certain death or life on a desolate island isn’t a prospect many would want.

I reckon we need a tiered approach. Something like possession gets 5 years, no parole, dealing gets 50 years, manufacture gets death and organising distribution and money laundering death as well. That’ll sort it. After two years there’d be fuck all drug dealers on the streets, they’d either be in a box or in the slammer.