Power to the people

Congratulations to the Green Party on their excellent proposal to give loans to homeowners to put solar power into their homes. This is an initiative I have personally been advocating for years. Hopefully David Cunliffe and his rather slow moving crowd will jump on board with this as well.

I am not surprised that Jianqi’s government has seen fit to ridicule the whole idea on (FFS) the grounds of expense! For a bloke who is supposed to know about money Jianqi is surprisingly dim when it suits him. Of course he is being ably aided and abetted by Simon the Pixie in his role as Energy Bunny – er I mean Minister.

Russel Norman’s policy involves the government loaning homeowners up to $15,000 to install photovoltaic panels on their houses. I gather that an average house can be set up with an adequate system for about $10,000 so this is a potentially good scheme. The loans would be repayable at the rate of around $900.00 per year via local body rates payments.

The interest rate of 4.1 percent that Russel Norman is proposing is the same as that at which the Government currently borrows money to fund all kinds of wasteful endeavours. The major difference here is that the money would actually be used for something that would bring tangible and worthwhile returns for both the voters and the Government.

Simon the Pixie has argued that the scheme would effectively be a Government subsidy because it involves a lower rate of interest. So what? At least it would be a subsidy which would save the entire country money in the long term.

The Government tells us that solar power is “more expensive than buying power off the grid”. Duhh! Maybe it might be until you have paid for your system, but how about taking a longer term view eh? I would be intrigued to see an argument that showed that over 10 years it did not work out cheaper for a homeowner and then get progressively cheaper to the point where it cost virtually nothing once the loan was paid off.

Simon The Pixie has also said that solar is “not a priority because of the abundance of cheaper renewable energy such as hydro, geothermal and wind”, which is a statement so extraordinary in its stupidity that I can’t believe even he said that.

In the first place hydro involves a lot of messing about with waterways and that can often involve unacceptable disruption to both the land and its natural inhabitants including plants and animals.

Geothermal is fine, but it is not readily available all over the country which means the construction of distribution systems which once again are likely to involve further disruptions to the environment.

Wind is good and even more renewable that the other two, but once again you are dealing with a system that requires distribution on a large scale whereas the very localised nature of solar power makes it much more practical and it poses no major disruption to the environment. Whether your house has an iron roof or a whole lot of solar panels really doesn’t make a lot of difference to the surrounding landscape.

The savings from the scheme the Greens are proposing would begin in the very first year and within a short time they would be providing most of those who took up the offer with free power for most if not all of their needs forever more. So what could possibly be wrong with that?

Well, I think I know ‘what is wrong with that”. It would mean smaller profits for the major energy companies and the industries that support them and ..... oh yes... the shareholders. But not the Mum and Dad investors that Jianqi and his merry men and women told us would buy these power shares, but the people who actually did buy them – those whose annual earnings sit in the top 1 percent of the population, along with major corporations and overseas investors. Boo- bloody hoo. In any case these people are in a position to cope with any loss of expectations they might suffer because of this and instead buy shares in solar technology companies.

There is also a prediction that this could result in 1000 new jobs although I am a bit more wary about that aspect as in my experience whenever politicians predict more jobs they tend to over-inflate the figures for effect. However it is quite clear from the comments made by those whose business it is to analyse these issues for a living that the basic figures regarding savings do stack up, and if you add in the lack of any environmental impact, then it is easy to see that we must go down this path. We should have started it decades ago, and there is certainly no sensible reason not to do it now.

I see the proposed scheme also involves setting up a system where homeowners would be able to sell their excess power to the grid for a reasonable price. But without legislation to compel the energy companies to honour that I suspect you would see very little movement there. However it would be an opportunity for enterprising folk to set up small scale power companies in various locations around the country to buy up and store that excess power to sell back to local bodies for their infrastructural needs such as street lighting and traffic lights.

I say let's power up. Power to the people and let’s see how many of us can short-circuit the power companies.

Click go the shears (hopefully)

The Laboured Party is about to implode again. It looks like after this weekend the Shearer will have been shorn of his leadership and the party’s search will continue anew for the Golden Fleece.

I feel the ovine analogy is appropriate given the brainless ‘follow-the-leader” down the road of already failed policies behaviour of the current incumbents.

While I feel the Natzis will struggle to hold on for a third term, I think it is important for the opposition parties that the Laboured ones raise the level of their game and also their leadership. Party leaders need to have some ‘nads’. They need to be in control and appear to be so. They need to be able to deliver a crushing blow to the other side in the house on a regular basis without sacrificing credibility to do so.

The Shearer is a career diplomat; a man whose job is to keep everyone sweet and not rock the boat too much. His training is all about finding ‘nice’ and ‘non-confrontational’ ways to put his point across or to challenge those being made by others. I have always believed this method to be ineffective when applied to things that REALLY matter. As the old saying goes; You have to stand for something or you will fall for everything. Although perhaps in this case it might be Leaders have to stand for something or they will soon fall from favour.

I always felt the Shearer was the wrong sheep (er man) for the job and all the more so when facing that smarmy little twat that goes by the title of Prime Minister. Jianqi is such a superficial little gnome that it needs a REAL person to counter him. Unfortunately the Shearer is cut from the same bolt of superficiality as Jianqi with the only difference being that he is probably a somewhat nicer fellow.

What is needed is somebody who is bright, quick, and when it comes to showing that the bright new future is really just a nasty little laser that will burn your eyes out. For that reason the Shearer must be shorn at the very least and probably sent to the works. Under his leadership the Laboured profile has not been that sharp. Instead of being the lead opposition party as they should have been given they had the second highest number of seats, we have seen them reduced to third rank at best. Russel Norman is the opposition party leader who has most looked like a leader. He has been leading the charge ever since the election in no minor way. Laboured have looked like also-rans when you compare their performance with that of the Greens and New Zealand First, neither of whom have allowed the Natzis any wriggle room.

So what will the Laboured supporters do this weekend? Anybody’s guess, really as that party, like the Natzis is controlled by other interests (different to those of the Natzis – but vested interests nonetheless). The rank and file (or the smelly and abrasive if you like) are liable to do as they are told by the all-knowing all seeing ones and will shuffle into whichever pen their shepherds drive them into, but hopefully they will eventually elect somebody who can actually do the job that needs to be done.

For my money they should choose current deputy leader Grant Robertson. In fact they should have anointed him in the first place instead of messing about with the so-called Shearer experiment. That was merely an attempt to do what the Natzis did when they elevated Jianqi to the throne with indecent haste in order to have a smiling baby-kisser up-front who won’t scare off the voters by being coarse or outspoken.

Well bollocks to that. If they want to win the next election (with considerable help from the other oppos) they need a guy like Robertson who isn’t afraid to upset people to get an important job done. Hopefully for the sake of both Laboured and the other opposition parties they will see sense and elevate the only one they appear to have who could do the job.

But then this is politics in which it has been said a week is a long time. I think I have just fully comprehended that saying now. I think it means no bugger (especially among the voters) remembers anything a week hence!

Saving money or reputations?

What’s a good investment? It seems a simple enough question, really. But quite apart from the financial uncertainties associated with investments these days; there are a couple of other issues that need careful consideration before handing over your dough.

The recent avalanche of finance company and bank crashes reminds us of another consideration which in simpler times never crossed our minds; the possibility that a bank can go belly-up.

Add to that the increasing numbers of that (now) none too exclusive club who have been dipping their little pinkies into the piggy banks that held our money, and you have enough worries to consider slitting open the old Sealy Posturepedic. It’s times like this I don’t feel so bothered about not having anything to invest.

But this week my attention has been drawn to yet another hazard of investing thanks to the vigilance of Greens co-leader Russel Norman. I guess I always knew there was a chance the company you entrusted your investments to might invest those funds in something you didn’t approve of. It stands to reason that if you invest with a bank or finance company you are hardly likely to know about every investment they make. Hopefully they disclose to you where they have stashed your cash, but they are unlikely to divulge every investment they make in the normal course of events.

But what Russel has discovered is very unsettling. He has found the New Zealand Superannuation Fund (I thought the cupboard was bare) has purchased shares in a company based in Mumbai called Larsen & Toubro. That in itself might not sound too worrying, but L&T is a multi-billion dollar company which according to its website “is a technology, engineering, construction and manufacturing company. It is one of the largest and most respected companies in India's private sector.”

Now that sounds quite promising, but of course a closer inspection of what this PR means reveals they construct equipment for use in the petro-chemical industry, ammonia based fertilisers, nuclear power plants, and most important of all, they are involved in the death trade. That is to say they also manufacture weapons systems and are apparently currently working on a contract to supply nuclear submarines to the Indian Government.

Now call me a sandal wearing old hippie if you like, but I would just be appalled to think any of my money was helping to bolster the petro-chemical industry or the chemical fertiliser industry, and I’d really lose the plot if I found my money was being directly used to kill people or at least develop the means for doing so.

I realise that as a mug taxpayer (or constitutional hold-up victim, if you like Graham), that some of my tax money is already going towards such causes albeit not nuclear ones. However, for the time being, I am neither able to definitely confirm or deny this nor prevent my money being taken in the first place.

However with an investment that would normally be a different situation. I could choose to not invest with companies that do that sort of thing, always providing I can trust their disclosure information. The situation with the New Zealand Super Fund, is a hybrid of the two; I can’t stop the bastards taking my money, but I am now acutely aware of how they are investing it and I don’t like it one little bit.

Hopefully the Greens will be able to shame the NZSF and JiangQi’s ragtag mob into pulling out all funds invested with Larsen & Toubro. They could start with pointing out the inconsistency between the NZSF’s obligations as laid out in S58 (2)(c) of The New Zealand Superannuation and Retirement Act 2001 and repeated in 1.1(c) of their Statement of Responsible Investment Policies, Standards and Procedures dated 19 October 2009.

The Act states: The Guardians must invest the Fund on a prudent, commercial basis and, in doing so, must manage and administer the Fund in a manner consistent with - avoiding prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community.

Now given our nuke free status and the fact we have made much of our opposition to nuclear power and especially nuclear weaponry, I’d say providing financial investment to a company who is making nuclear subs is definitely prejudicial to our reputation as a responsible member of the world community. (Are there any of those left?)

So we need to see the heat go on the NZSF to do the right thing and after that the Government can do the right thing by firing the idiot directors who obviously thought this was a good idea.