The Division Bell

Put a Kiwi head of State on hold for the moment. Let cannabis prohibition continue to burn a hole in the soul of these islands. If there's one thing that urgently needs reforming, it is Parliament's bloody division bell.

The division bell is a hellish klaxon which announces to all the Parliamentarians whipped by their parties that their presence is required in the House. Befitting a house of smoke and mirrors, it is pitched like a low frequency smoke alarm. One that no-one can work out how to switch off in no less than five minutes.

It is a sound that cannot be ignored. Part chainsaw, part crying baby, it has all the qualities found in the really great torture classics. It wouldn't sound out of place on the CIA's 20 Solid Gold Hits Rendition Soundtrack.

The division bell also never fails to set off my tinnitus. Dagg knows what it must do to the willingly-incarcerated inmates of that institution. How can anyone be expected to think with a clear head after that racket?

Please, for the love of Dagg, can't they just switch the building lights on and off instead? At a reasonable frequency so as not to set off epileptic attacks, of course.

Charter House Rules

David Farrar has joined the fray in defending the decision to bail-out Wanganui Collegiate after a scathing Dom Post editorial today. He uses the specious argument that to allow the private Anglican school to close would just burst rolls elsewhere:

If Wanganui Collegiate closes, then their pupils will all enrol in other schools, which will also cost the taxpayer $3 million. Trying to say that you would save this money if the school closed is absolutely misleading.

Farrar's conjoined twin Cameron Slater has used the same narrow defence earlier:

Clearly hoping for a greater tragedy than the school being supported by government Goulter complains about the $3.8 million spent to save the school and the $1200 per student subsidy private schools receive.

Either the maths is beyond Mr Goulter (incompetence) or he is dishonest. Some simple and conservative calculations show that Wanganui Collegiate School existing for even the last twenty years has saved the taxpayer in excess of $65 million. That is based on 450 students multiplied by $7500 (the difference between full funding and paying the private school subsidy) times 20 years minus the $3.8 million. Over the full life of the school it is many times that but the picture is already clear.

The defence is so thin, people are blowing holes in it with pea shooters over at Kiwiblog.

There's a lot more fun yet to be had with the newly-nationalised Anglican school. For example, take the school's pig Latin motto, Vestigia nulla Retrorsum. It is a Magic Motto previously used by Moina Bergson Mathers, a mystic of the Golden Dawn (Crowley and his Shit Poets' Society).

Pongonui

There's a big stink brewing in Whanganui, and it's not coming from the sewerage plant. Wanganui Collegiate opens its doors to students this week as a state school, after the government nationalised it last year.

While Parata has been red stickering schools in Christchurch, and merging them into unfathomable (and sometimes illegal) clusters, she has bailed out a failing private school in a region with 1407 empty student seats. The government has already thrown millions of dollars at the formerly private high school. News today shows that the decision to bail out the school went against Treasury and Ministry of Education advice. It's not often these people agree with John Minto.

The gross oversupply of high schools places in Whanganui is only getting larger, implying that some other state schools in the area will be liable for the chop. Nor is the buy-out of Collegiate addressing that fat tail of under-achievement that National Standards was brought in to allegedly address.

There's no logic to it. The decision is 100% political, and therefore 100% vulnerable. Good hunting.

What a day that was

Speech from the throne, in the 150 most-used words

Rather than listen to the prime minister attempt to murder the English language today, I read his speech from the throne instead, then fed it into the Mangle-wurzelator. As you can see, the key to a brighter 2013 will consist of "New Zealand Government's progress, continue also better public services, new support Christchurch Government, reduce people next".


I'll be following the roll-out of work in prisons to other incarceration sites. It's good that the inmates are getting more active, rather than seeking apparent redemption in boredom. One large concern bothers me, in that this shouldn't be some cheap-ass scheme to be exploited for slave labour like the US Prison Industrial Complex.

It would be good to think that at least some of their earnings were put aside as savings for their inevitable release from prison. Instead of dumping them on the street and hoping they won't fall back to old ways, perhaps they might just bootstrap themselves to a better life.

I didn't bother reading David Shearer's speech. The reflections of others are dire enough. The auto-cue at Labour's Summer Camp was delving into lampoon-proof self-saucing satire as it was.

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Lockwood Smith is getting kicked upstairs to the Brits, following his stint as the best Speaker the House has seen in living memory. Although communications to his office still didn't handle metaphors well. i.e. the small burning effigies of Richard Nixon were never going to incite a riot, Mr Smith. No more than lighting a cigarette would, at least.

It's all downhill from here as the Nat talent tank runs dry and David Carter proves not just reluctant, but outright hostile to the idea of being the big wig and woolly throne Speaker.

Can't say the Greens or Labour are thrilled with the set-up either. The Speaker's choice is a consensus of Parliament by means of a convention that Key has ignored this time. Winter is coming.

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The Herald gives a bible basher a pulpit, where she goes on to explain how her Missionary position stopped cannibalism in Papua New Guinea. One antidote to this sermon is the simplistic but nonetheless gripping tale of how Christianity brought guilt and other plagues to Tahiti, in Paradise Lost.

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Has Israel jumped the gulag? Evidence that Israel has broken the Nuremburg Laws on forced medication, whilst simultaneously implying a white supremacy eugenic charter. HT Tyler Cowen.

Time to Byrne one down:

This Year's Model

What does Kim Dotcom have in common with Gareth Morgan, apart from wealth and the tendency to over-stretch their public personas? Today, it would happen to be Oatmeal and Dinosaurs.

While fundraising for a Tesla Museum last year, indie webcomic Matthew "Oatmeal" Inman offered to prostitute his blog if anyone donated over 33K. Putting his faith and charity into the wisdom of crowds, he ended up plugging a Dinosaur Museum run by people who wouldn't look out of place in a live-action South Park episode.

Native dinosaur lobbyist Gareth Morgan could learn a thing or two about trusting the people instead of whacking them on the head with hyperbole. Kim Dotcom's latest business model is shown up in stark contrast as merely a dark mirror to Big Media's IP-ploitation model, as Russell Brown has pointed out.

Oatmeal provides a fairer business model than either of these larger than life characters. The future lies in Trust, Tolerance and Toons. And not a corporate pimp in sight.

Feared and loved by the right people

Today's DomPost editorial looks at the Completely Independent Police Conduct Authority, the little black box that watches the watchmen. It highlights the abyss between David Carruthers' tilt for transparency and the reality that no-one actually knows what goes on in IPCA deliberations.

The curious case of a murder/suicide is held up as an example. The police were allegedly told the plot, yet neglected to do anything about it. Plot aspects differ in the case of Stephen McIntyre, although the ending remains the same. McIntyre's crime was not bloody murder, mere alleged medical cannabis supply.

I'm not even certain whether an IPCA complaint has been launched on that injustice. I'm not sure doing so would make a difference, or worse, earn the complainant a nemesis in a blue uniform.

Police mouth Greg O'Connor still quacks louder than this watchdog can bark in the public realm, and that's skew whiff. The cops plainly do not fear the IPCA enough. Perhaps it needs the gravitas of complete independence as an office of Parliament, like the Ombudsman's Office.


...............

Marie Schroff's Privacy Office could do with a similar boost in prestige, power and jaws. Paula Bennett's big backdoor kiosks may just the the tip of an Identity & Privacy Rape iceberg. Note Bernard Hickey's Poli worry, a service used by many government departments.

There is little sign of National wishing to increase funding for Beverley Wakem and her Om Buddies, regardless of how many more complaints against governmental bias are appearing in the Inbox.

Sure as eggs is eggs the Nats don't want more scrutiny on their rickety blueprints, let alone splash cash on self-criticism. Key's government is so thin-skinned to scrutiny, they still won't fund political satire on NZ screens. Even Muldoon put up with Fred Dagg and A Week of It. Every government from there to here has been heckled on screen. Every one until the Intolerable Mr Key.

Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi Boy

Well life in New Zealand is kinda laid back
Ain't much a New Zealand boy like me can't hack
It's sure to rise, let's give it a crack
I thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Well I got me a fine pipe, I got me ol' kitty
When the sun's comin' up things ain't so shitty
And life ain't nothin' but a funny funny ditty
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Well a Kiwi kinda life is better than some
Never bumped off a plane for a fashion pun
I mean seriously Qantas, was it hurting anyone?
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Mind you, isn't this the same bunch of Ozzies
Who didn't want men sitting next to kiddies?
And sold Fred Dagg out with boxed sheep prezzies?
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

The cops won't arrest you for swearing in public
Or calling for reform or wanting a Republic
But not so all-out nutty as that Yankee Doodle rubric
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

The judges here won't sentence you to death
For any crime, by public or private request
Let alone for muling coke or dealing meth
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Here we strive to treat women the same
Gave them the vote, gave them dignity not shame
We don't gang rape them on buses or arrest driving dames
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

There's no snakes here at all, and the spiders mostly harmless
The scenery is chewable, although some towns remain charmless
The cost of living also might leave you leg and armless
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

When the work's all done and the sun's settlin' low
I pull out the pipe and I goin' with the flow
The cat's asleep and everything's, like, mellow.
Thank Dagg I'm a Kiwi boy

Our House

Housing is shaping up to be one of this year's main political themes, with all parties announcing their reaction to focus group pressure. Labour and Greens have announced complementary policies that would give a certain amount of golden tickets to a few lucky families, possibly in marginal constituencies.

National has bowled Tremain Heatley and in goes Smith, in the nick of time. Bill English has shown his Grave Concern eyebrows on the matter, looking perturbed at zoning regulations and local Councils.

And, like army maneuvers, where there's smoke, there's fire. The cost of housing has reached stupid levels, with no signs of stopping. Regional development has all but given up the ghost as Auckland boils over. Increasingly, households are dividing into those who have family help them into a house, and those who forever rent.

This isn't so bad in some respects. NZ is a new country, and its townships were founded for various reasons, some of which have not stood the test of time. For example, the only reason New Plymouth exists is because a ship load of settlers heading north out of Wellington trying to find a place to set up shop were told by all the Maori from Poneke to Whanganui to piss off. The oil and gas came later. Let those who have their family silver tied up in bricks and mortar, let Otautahi be a lesson to you.

But by and large the outlook is ridiculously bad if you're one of the population who really insists on having a roof over your head to sleep under. Even in some of the provinces, rents are steep for even a house of sticks.

My neighbours invited me over for Xmas drinkies, wherein they explained the history of Pook Farm, its former tenants, former owners. I was stunned at the price tag for the bach, and no longer feel any guilt for the government accommodation supplement. In truth, it's more of a house-sitting fee for someone else's tax free capital gain. I'm just the janitor, keeping it tidy and squatter-free until the real estate market recovers.

And land? How did land inflation go from beads and nails for acres in 1840 to hundreds and thousands for feet a bare 160 years later? It's not as if it's Singapore or Hong Kong.

Among all the bright ideas out there on housing, none is more overlooked than the punk angle. I wish I had had one of these 3D glass printers at the beginning of my drinking career. I could have recycled enough bottles to build a bloody mansion and matching glass house by now. Or how about this Adobe Brick Maker? Some assembly required, but at $US4000 for the parts, who wouldn't chip in for an infinite House of Lego machine?

We've got to look outside the box, and make it for ourselves.

UPDATE: This just in. HT Nandor.

Bye bye buckyballs

It looks like I'll never get the tactile pleasure of playing with buckyballs. NZ has banned the import and sale of the rare earth magnet adult toy after too many orally-fixated hormunculi have mistaken them for M&Ms and gobbled them.

The ban follows a similar one in the vexatiously litigious USA last year, which compelled geeks to wonder what would be banned next. Geeks here are not amused either.

One wonders how we are to snap out of this economic rut when anything novel or slightly risky is banned if it's shown to be unsafe in kindergartens. The idea of progress and the reality seem poles apart.

Good graph, bad graph

Bloomberg has an elegant and thorough interactive graphic looking at the world's top 100 billionaires. You can slice and dice them by nationality, gender, whether the fortunes were self-made or born to silver spoons. You can dig onto detail and rummage through their public personas.

The DomPost has a dismal attempt at information meshing with this stunningly complicated graphic, with a shallow information pool to splash around in. It's as if someone took a perfectly serviceable article, glued it to some cardboard and cut it into 20 jigsaw pieces. Not worth the effort.

Giving the new leaf at Treasury the flick

The jury's still out on the newish head wonk at Treasury, but the evidence is not looking good. In fact, the only leaf of Treasury statements I'll be turning with anticipation will be the ones written on toilet-grade paper. And it's big thanks to selective Welfare Hawk Lindsay Mitchell for pointing it out to me.

Lindsay is upset, as usual, at how much is spent on solo Mums, etc. She has the latest Treasury paper to prove it too. The report is all fire and brimstone for the slackers, even when the figures show that there's not much of a problem. As a percentage of GDP, "Working Age Welfare" is lower now than it was in the 1990's after Shipley's benefit cuts. By all measures, it has never been less attractive to be on welfare.

What about the great grey gorilla in the room though? What about that colossus of welfare that dwarves these Liliputian expenses? What about Superannuation?

Well, it's all peaches and cream for the subjects in the corresponding report, titled The Future Costs of Retirement Income Policy, and Ways of Addressing Them. No moralising or sneering at these welfare recipients. There's lots of furrow-browing over poverty levels in the elderly, manifesting in colourful decoy patterns such as (I kid you not) the Living Standards Framework Pentagon (pg. 9).

The "Working Age Welfare" report didn't waste time discussing any of their subject's poverty levels, polygonal or otherwise.  It's conclusions were all based on historical figures, with few projections. The Super report was the antithesis, all fluffy futures and sweet FA historical context.

The most amazing thing about this panglossian brighter future was that, unlike Lindsay's Bennie Bash, nowhere in this report does it state how much Superannuation costs. It's mentioned obliquely as a percentage of GDP well down in the volume, and that's the last they'll look at that. I thought I must just have been high, so I searched the document for "$" and then "dollars". Apart from mention of the cryogenically-frozen Cullen Fund, no mention of actual dollars.


You have to go to Treasury's Budget page to get a straight answer to compare Lindsay's bad apples to the honest, salt-of-the-earth good old apples. Lindsay's horrified by the $13 billion a year "Working Age Welfare" quoted. For the 2010/11 year, the Superannuation was $8,822 million (not including SuperGold scard spending). The same sworn document says the "Working Age Welfare" budget was $4,878 million.

Even with the Working For Families bloat (which is welfare for the kids, not the working age), these costs are capped. All the indicators on the affordability of Superannuation point the wrong way. Yet it has never been a better time to retire, and that's not counting the other perks like the Gold Card millions or the ginormous chunks of Health dollar.

The game is rigged and the boomers got away with it. And no amount of sophistry and ignorance out of Treasury will change that.

The Continuing Adventures of Harry the Bastard

Harry the Bastard must be proving a boon to the Republican movement, repelling people away from the Windsor brainwash. Harry Windsor's latest blurt, where he brags of killing people from the Xbox console of an Apache helicopter, has the establishment so worried, the Torygraph is calling for the young prince to be gagged. And not in the Porterhouse faggot initiation way either.

Little wonder. There's not a mad leap of the imagination to having Harry behind the guns of an Apache gung-ho Collateral Murder expose that would show the little psycho up, upgrading his notoriety to Harry the Fucking Bastard. That's the problem with really good soldiers. They love to kill. The reason no longer matters.

Friendly Fire

It's not arson if you intentionally set off incendiaries during a fire ban. At least, not if you're in the "Defence" Forces. High temperatures and strong winds failed to deter military brass from playing with fire. Dagg knows why. Maybe their interoperability timetable clashed with common sense.

That's now two incidents this summer where unarmed firefighters have cleaned up after stupid uniforms with weapons. It's becoming easier to separate the heroes from the cowards.

Economists Gone Wild

Back in the day, I enjoyed the talking heads orchestra known as The Ralston Group, not least because I could spend some quality time with my father who was an irregular guest on a show full of them. That's how I was introduced to Gareth Morgan, a fellow seat jockey for the show.

Over the years, Gareth Morgan has impressed with his insight and work. The triumphs and his tragedies of policy and sheer bloody-minded kite-flying in the face of a lightning storm of public opinion are part of the package. For every Big Kahuna, there's bound to be a few missable tiddler waves.

Every man and their cat has taken umbrage with Gareth Morgan's latest idea to exterminate all the cats in New Zealand. Not surprising really, seeing how NZ has one of the highest cats per capita rates in the world. Many people prefer cats to people, for example the mad old cat ladies with toxoplasmosis.

At the very least, I expect a Cats that Look like Gareth Morgan meme or something to pop out of the affair. At the most, someone with a lot of petty cash might want to fund a few free cat speyings at the SPCA. It's the single, most direct ways to root out Morgan's alleged problem; lower the cost barriers to kitteh castration.

But that's it. I was going to raise a personal defence for my own cat, Professor Hunter Gonzales. He's an SPCA eunuch, and a feline physicist specialising in the momentum of tossing dead animals and the thermodynamics of dripping taps. And he's taught me a thing or two. For example, no-one else but him has taught me that rats can scream.

There were other defence prongs; the lack of snakes here, the pet snobbery, the ecological Reductio ad Absurdum of Bender's Law (Kill All the Humans). But an economic parable might be the best medicine.

My old man also hated cats. He once swore blind that there was a nest of feral cats living under our house in central Palmy, and set about shooting any cat that trespassed onto the property from his bedroom window with a .22 rifle. All part of his bulleted menu of imported fair game; possum, rabbit, duck, quail, deer. All these pests gave him an alibi to kill.

The circular logic of colonial sporting habits that this presents is not the point. The point is that my old man was responsible for releasing Dagg knows how many kilograms of lead into the NZ bush. In and of itself that mightn't be a problem, but the sheer number of NZers who love shooting things shares the same ground as any other tragedy of the very finite Commons.

Sometimes, it just depends on what you classify as an externality. I attempt to minimise my carbon footprint as much as reasonable. I haven't bred, I don't have a substitute penis and abide the preservation of penguins by vowing never to hoon past them on a custom-made motorbike. Each to their own.

Give Seven Sharp a Chance

I may live to regret it, but I'm trying real hard not to pre-loathe Seven Sharp too much. Sure, the promo is try-hard, contrived and ill-timed, but I'm glad this level of scrutiny wasn't applied to Back Benchers, Media 7/3, or the Court Report when they went through the usual birth pangs of a new format. It's either this or more bloody repeats or reality TV for the Free to Air set, so fair go or else, eh.

My curiosity is piqued with the prospective Espiner/Garner/Watkins bake-off on TV3, the Vote. I'm hoping that drug law reform will be one of the needful issues that the show addresses. If so, I'd be mortally offended if I wasn't invited along to bear witness in person (unsubtle hint).

And then there's the beloved Back Benches, with Sky/Prime holding the purse strings as well as the premier date close to its chest. I'll be there with bells on, guys.