The madness of pouring money into a hole in the ground

Human beings do some incredibly stupid things as we all know, and the current NZ Government is not immune to this malaise.

At present they seem obsessed with pouring money into all sorts of holes in the ground. In some instances they are doing this literally and in others figuratively. However in all cases the practice makes no sense when the longer view is taken.

Unfortunately when you have a Government that is headed up by a money trader you are going to see policies that are driven by the desire to reap short term gains and to hell with any ‘collateral damage’ that might be caused by chasing those gains.

Under this sort of management anything that doesn’t bring the cash that will enrich the drivers of those policies and their mates is expendable.

This is the philosophy that allows companies such as Anna Dark Knight to plunder the depths of our oceans in search of 20^th Century fuels for the 21^st Century.

We are told by the Government that if we allow these modern day environmental rapists to drill ginormous holes in our seabed we will all get fabulously wealthy and live happily ever after. In true Nelsonian style Jianqi has hoisted his telescope to his squinty little eyes after first sticking a large banknote over the lens which is bad enough, but he wants all of us to look through it as well without removing the distraction of the cash first so that we can see the real picture.

A conspiracy has been hatched to massage the figures so that we are not being made aware of ADK’s track record and the true number of ‘incidents’ that have occurred as a result of their drilling operations. The EPA (Environmental Prostitution Agency) has pimped us to these people based on the directives given to it by the Government. Figures with dozens of zeroes at the end of them have been bandied about in an attempt to dazzle us with their bright shiny nature and imply that we will all get a big share of the dough. This is going to happen via the trickle-down effect which is the system where the earnings all go to the rich who drink up large on their bounty and then piss on the rest of us.

Meanwhile the enormous pachyderm sits in the corner waiting for the day when he inevitably has to take a dump and we end up spending any gains we might as a nation have made trying to mop up somebody else’s shit from our ocean. However that won’t bother Jianqi and his bunch of vagabonds because they will have all made their money and buggered off somewhere else leaving us with the mess to clean up and still not a cent better off.

Some might say our Government is not putting any money into this particular hole and that it is ADK that is pouring money into it instead. But our Government has sold these resources to ADK extremely cheaply when compared with most other countries in the world and when it all goes wrong that is when they will really have to chuck a load of money down a very deep hole.

But not content with chucking millions or possibly billions down into the ocean Jianqi is also feverishly doing the same with large holes in the ground looking for another form of ‘black gold’. The only difference here is the scale f the operations and the fact that this particular product is 19^th Century fuel for the 21^st Century.

Instead of damage to the marine environment we are gearing up for damage to the land, gas explosions, collapses, and further fiascos of the Pike River variety.

Once again the usual suspects will be the only ones who will be enriched and as usual the taxpayers will pick up the tab for the damage when it inevitably occurs.

But I said earlier that money is being also chucked down what I call figurative holes and it is these holes in which you will find the key (geddit) to what is really wrong with this Government.

One of the smaller examples of this earlier this year was the $250,000 they spent on trying to get Grocer Tim a job at the WTO (World Twats Organisation). In the overall scheme of things this is a paltry sum; but try telling that to an NZ Post worker who is about to lose his $30,000 a year job because the Government is hell-bent on running the company down so it can be sold to another of their cronies.

Of much more concern is the money that is being thrown at our farcical attempts to get a spot on the UN (United Nitwits) Security Council is one such example. If ever there was a waste of public money on a grand scale, then this is it. The figure of $25M has been thrown around and although Jianqi doesn’t want to get specific (why not it’s OUR money?) it seems this is probably a bare minimum that will be spent on this programme.

So we don’t have enough money to run our health sector properly but we still have a lazy $25M to waste on trying to get a seat on the world’s most toothless organisation where any one of the permanent members can use their power of veto to stop anything we might want to bring up there. Was there ever anything more pointless upon which to spend $25M?

But this is chicken feed when compared to the costs involved in selling off our assets. $100M was apparently spent on selling 48 percent of Mighty River Power, which the Bill Nospeakada English is claiming as a victory netting 1.6B for the Government. But that is not taking account of the loss of profits from a very large company such as Mighty River. In 2012 the net profits were over $83B and 48 percent of that is nearly $40B. Of course there are other costs to come out of that, but I am sure you get my drift. More money down a very large hole that was spewing money in our direction but instead is now feeding the overfed.

Despite claims that money is tight and ‘we are not out of the woods yet’ our Government is spending truckloads of money on every magic bean it can get it’s grubby little paws on despite the fact that none of them are going to germinate and produce a plant that will nourish the nation.

Meanwhile the greater majority of us are being told to save our money (what money?) and tighten our belts – but we all had to change to braces years ago to hold our increasingly roomy trou up. But the porkers at the public trough cruise along on the largesse of the Remuneration Authority who has kindly given them another pay rise backdated to the middle of the year.

I know what I’d like to throw into a big hole.

Profiteers and wages the leeches of the ages

I must confess I kinda stole the title from Marc Bolan for this blog. I hasten to add, there are no royalties due as my title is really quite different to the Tyrannosaurus Rex album, in content and it is only the rhythm of the title that is similar.

This week I am getting stuck into those greedy bastards who prosper from the shredded remains of the rest of us.

The thing about profiteers is they aren’t really all that smart. They think they are because they make a quick buck, but in most cases they could make a lot more of their precious bucks by taking a longer term view.

A glorious example is that Vile little man who claims to be the Minister of Health. Minister is a noun and a pronoun derived from a verb which means to wait on, care for, look after, see to, accommodate, serve, supply, aid, help, assist or support – whew!

I see very little evidence that Toenail is caring for our health, or looking after our health system. Nor is he accommodating it, serving it, supplying it, aiding it, helping it, assisting it or supporting it. A cynical person (do we know any of those) might say he is certainly seeing to it..... Seeing to it that most of us never get any timely health treatment. And as for waiting on it; it is the sick that are waiting on it and for it.

The Vile one tells us his measures are to save us money and gleefully fronts up before compliant press (usually to be found in his own general geographical area) to tell us how well his waiting lists are working. Of course he deftly avoids mentioning all those who have been refused a place on the waiting list because the under-resourced system can’t handle them, and he also fails to appreciate that saving money on a $2000 operation now is only a saving if you don’t later have to perform a $10,000 one because the patient has deteriorated while awaiting surgery.

Another of the genius strokes this Minister (most) Vile has pulled is to stop the DHBs from wasting money treating foreigners who have no entitlement to our public health services. Great idea, you might say, until you realise that he has hired people in every DHB to check on this. Given there are 20 DHBs in New Zealand that would mean there are 20 ‘Eligibility Review Officers’ or possibly ‘Eligibility Co-Coordinators’ and possibly more bum-stiffs and hangers-on associated with them. I don’t know how much was being spent on ineligible people but it would seem over $100,000 p.a. is being wasted on these people.

That might sound harsh, but when you consider that to prove our eligibility, all we have to do is submit evidence of NZ citizenship or possession of the appropriate category of visa, you might wonder why it can’t simply be handled by whoever sends out the letters already.

However the Vile one is not the only poodle in the kennel shitting all over us. Muzza McGillicuddy, the Minister of FAT is doing an amazing ‘do as I say, not as I do’ turn. Mighty Muzza, the man who dropped so many passes over the World Cup that he should have made the Black Caps (cruel), is cutting the fat at MFAT. But is he? He says he is, and he is a Minister so we should believe him, right? Wrong. I don’t know where Muzza learned his maths, but it would seem to me that chucking out 300 MFAT staff (despite the fact many are probably a waste of space) is a weird immediate move when you are set to spend $900,000 on upgrading an Olympic sized swimming pool for the consular staff in Japan. Furthermore we now learn these guys already have a considerable ‘complex’ in which their pool is housed and another $93,000 was to be spent on a badminton court, a gymnasium, and hot and cold running geisha girls. (Okay I made that last one up). Muzza has since decided the expenditure is unwarranted, but only after he had been sprung and publicly shamed over it.

It seems to me that flying a bunch of MFATs back to enjoy some RWC 2011 games wasn’t the best way to save money either. Nor was taking an expensive Air Force charter plane for a one-day meeting in Vanuatu, if Philgoshisthatthetime has his facts right.

Other supersavers in this government include Paula Bumfat who has figured out that beneficiary bashing and trying to force people into non-existent jobs is a thrifty habit and Heck Yeah Pariah who is saving us money on character and reference checks for teaching staff.    

Meanwhile while all of this saving is going on it would seem the only ones not trying to save a dollar are our councils who think nothing of splashing out on quarter and half million dollar salaries for their CEOs (read Cash Eating Oafs).

Of course, I nearly forgot. Things aren’t actually all that bad. Bill (Nospeakada) English approved a whole $0.50 per hour increase for the lowest wage earners. Wow, a whole $20 per week before tax. Let me see now what can they do with all this money? That’s $20 less roughly 20 percent for PAYE which brings it down to $16. Those who don’t know about these things would say that means low wage earners could save $832 per year – and they’d be right – if you are not a person on the minimum wage. Because if you are a person on the minimum wage it is almost certain you have been running a deficit in your budget and this will probably only reduce that slightly. By the way, before anyone passes judgement on those running such a deficit, just remember they are only doing what governments all over the world have done for decades. The only difference is that if they start printing their own money or issuing notes of credit they can’t back up, they go to jail.