Born in the NZ, eh

If one wished to sum up how the Labour government have treated single blue collar males, this is it (click on the image and wait a bit):

If one prefers more words, give this excellent episode of Eye to Eye a squizz. The next election will be won or lost, through act or omission, on this group. Piss us off at your peril.

Movember is coming...

The People's Front of Judea

This just in, bail has been revoked for New Zealand's terrorist mastermind, Vicious Dangerous Commando Guy:

"In an unusual move, the Crown lodged an appeal at the High Court in Auckland after the district court this morning granted Jamie Beattie Lockett, 46, of Takanini, in Manukau City, bail."

This whole business seems increasingly unusual. Smells rum, by gum. Molotov cocktails are a good, scary name for bottled petrol. Tell me more about this 'napalm bomb'. Entry-level napalm can be made from polystyrene and petrol. A beanbag on a bonfire is technically a napalm bomb. We're not talking Dr Evil scale terrorism here so far. What with the international attention that is causing untold harm to our country's reputation from all this, the police had better start coughing up some real evidence pronto.

On a completely different subject, here's the People's Front of Judea:

The Day After Tomorrow Will Be a Lovely Day For Sleeping Dogs

I have seen enough guns to last me a lifetime, several in fact. I sometimes wonder if going dawn shooting with the old man before primary school contributed to my deafness, or whether the guns in the house was the source of my life of anxiety. I have see what damage rifles can do. Guns are a coward's weapon. I fail to see the sport in shooting animals with them. There is not an animal alive that can outrun a bullet. Anyone who has to resort to a gun to win an argument doesn't have God or right on their side. All they have is a gun.

Jemima protects the babies from BZP

Jacqui "Ban Dihydrogen Mono-oxide" Dean is determined to go for a trifecta of fuck-ups over the BZP ban. Today, she's Jacqui "Won't someone think of the children" Dean. Toddlers have accidentally swallowed BZP. Therefore if BZP is banned, toddlers will no longer put dubious things into their mouths. Simply brilliant logic. Of course, none of the toddlers who ingested BZP pills died or anything. But they MIGHT have.

Boo Hoo

Cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys 20 - All Blacks 18. Get over it.

Graphic distortion

A few in the Blue spectrum are taking this graph from Rod Deane's site seriously:

While the figures are no doubt entirely correct in the literal sense, the context in which they are used is laughingly misleading.

Remember New Zealand in 1820? Neither do I. Thankfully, Harrison M Wright's "New Zealand 1769-1840: Early Years of Western Contact" is at hand. Pages 23 and 24 enlighten us as to the source of New Zealand's Gross Domestic Product in 1820:

"Kororareka was a Maori settlement in the Bay which was later to become the
source of much contention as the principal rendezvous of visiting whalers and
the whipping boy of missionaries and their supporters...

"Whalers that visited the Bay of Islands anchored at Kororareka, since it was
the most convenient spot, and the number of vessels which did so increased
markedly about 1820...

"The white population at Kororareka apparently fluctuated around one or two
dozen for several years."

The next OECD ranking appears 50 years later, in 1870. By sheer coincidence, 1870 is also when the Otago gold rush had hit its peak.

Next stop is 1913, a quantum leap of 43 years. Refrigerated shipping had been bringing home the bacon for New Zealand around thirty years. From Michael King's History of NZ (pg 279):

"[I]n 1911 the urban population of New Zealand exceeded the rural for the first time... The population of Auckland alone jumped from 51,000 in 1896 to 103,000 by 1911."

The GDP pump of farming provides much the same reason as the next time jump, 37 years later in 1950. The post-war economy is pumping due to NZ farmers being the Allied's market garden during WWII.

The next randomly chosen year is 1973, the year the UK joined the European Union and we lost our beef and lamb buying power. It is the beginning of the end.

27 years later, in 1990, New Zealand has just been restructured to death. SMPs are gone, as are a range of tariffs that hid the true cost of things. Our comparative worth with the rest of the world is back to where it was when we once were whalers.

Apart from that, I pretty much agree with what Dr Deane was on about.

Three STV's and an FPP

Early indications show that if anybody is the winner in this year's local body elections, it's the Apathy Party by a landslide. Mike Moreu nicely sums up the dilemma confronting voters. My voting forms arrived some few weeks ago, as well as a 43-page booklet crammed with candidate profiles of no more than 150 words each. I finally posted it a coupla days ago. As DPF has posted up his preferences, here's who I chose and why:

Mayor

Nick Kelly (complete tosser) - 11
Helene Ritchie (loon) - 10
Bryan Pepperell (undeserved egotist) - 9
Carl Gifford (who?) - 8
John McGrath (twat) - 7
Jack Ruben (loon) - 6
Paul Bailey (who?) - 5
Rob Goulden (reminds me of Jason Hoyte in Gormsby and Outrageous Fortune) - 4
Nick Wang (he's got balls) - 3
Kerry Prendergast (married to Rex) - 2
Ray Ahipene-Mercer (competent) - 1

Western Ward

Fuck all choice here. Maybe I should have had a go after all.

Jack Ruben (loon) -5
Pauline Scott (generic Labour) - 4
John Morrison (poseur) - 3
Jo Coughlan (wild card) - 2
Andy Foster (sane) - 1

Capital and Coast District Health Board

This is the real spanner in the works. Note the numbering below. Even with a BA in politics, I screw up the vote. Utterly pointless exercise. Best tool here is a Dungeons and Dragons dice.

Helene Ritchie (loon) - 21
Coltyn Shaw (OK, you're Maori. Now what?) - 20
Jim Delahunty (no photo) - 19
Trisha Inglis (Kapiti) - 19
Karen Coutts (Labour ticket) - 18
John Cook (Waikanae not Wellington) - 17
Kent Clark (hippy) - 16
Adrian Webster (used the term 'social justice') - 15
Gordon Strachan (Kapiti) - 13
Hayley Wain (I hate Hayley Westernra) - 12
David Chamberlain (can balance a cheque book) - 11
Virginia Hope (Aucklander) - 10
Petra van den Munckhof (cool name) - 9
Felicity McLennan (nurse) - 8
Michael Appleby (I had to) - 7
Judith Aitken (incumbent) - 6
Sandra Patton (seemed clued up) - 5
Peter Roberts (doctor) - 4
Margaret Faulkner (nurse) - 3
Ruth Gottlieb (she's a yoda) - 2
Donald Urquhart-Hay (so dedicated, he worked in Palmy for 5 years) - 1

Wellington Regional Council

Woohoo! Onto the final leg here. No numbers, just five ticks. I hope there's a chocolate fish in it for me after all this work.

Judith Aitken (incumbent)
Bernard Darnton (token Libz vote)
Michael Gibson (it seemed a good idea at the time)
John Gilberthorpe (smart and networked like Neo)
Fran Wilde (the Cake Tin)

Remain In Tense

Went for a squizz at the aBc competitors in the State Insurance lobby before work today. Very impressed with the amount of entries that wished to turn Government House grounds into a public domain. The kids' 3D models were quite cool too. Go see it.