The buck stops where exactly?

The relentless push for value deducted continues unabated in Godzone. We shouldn’t be surprised as we have elected a Government that cares only about feathering its own nest and despises everything that is good about this country.

Sooner or later their arrogance is going to result in some much more serious social consequences than we have seen hitherto.

As a New Zealander you would not be alone feeling you were under attack (or at least your way of life was) from all sides. It is quite exhausting trying to keep up with all the mayhem these jerks are causing. Let’s take a look at what is under threat.

The Economy:

 I find it rather ironic how a Government that focuses so much on the financial bottom line makes so many brain-dead short term decisions that don’t stack up economically. The most glaring example of this of course is the asset sales circus.

I don’t think I have seen a single commentator regardless of their political persuasion that has said selling these assets is a sound decision for the economy. Even the government hasn’t said that. If you look at what they have said I think you will find they have actually avoided that question instead relying on the ever-present TINA for an explanation. But of course there is ALWAYS an alternative.

If it wasn’t so tragic I would find it funny how they like to tell us they have no other way of getting out of debt than to sell the family home. As any fool knows when you sell a major asset; unless you have a cunning and foolproof plan to earn far more than you have been earning up to the point when you sold it, that asset will never be yours again. If the asset is merely a trinket, that is of no importance. However if that asset is a business in a market that provides an essential product or service, you will miss out on all those earnings for evermore.

It is also an extremely unwise move to allow strategic industries to fall into the hands of foreign powers. There are fewer industries more strategic to a country than the energy industry and the potential exists for us to be held to ransom over products that have been made with our resources in our country.

In a move that typifies the arrogance of this Government, Jianqi has announced a measure he calls a guarantee and which he would like us to think precludes that happening. Unfortunately our too often too compliant media have helped him in this regard by not exposing the package for the cynical sop it is.

His idea is to offer an incentive to Kiwi buyers. (That’s the millions of Mum and Dad buyers we are always hearing about who are champing at the bit to buy up huge chunks of companies they already own). His shonky smoke and mirrors deal is that those among the Kiwis who buy shares in these power companies will be up for an incentive bonus of extra shares if they hold onto them for (possibly) three years. As this is an incentive it means there is no compulsion involved and therefore no guarantee. Furthermore you and I will finance the cost of these extra shares and after the three years has passed and the punters have received their bonus shares they will have much more financial incentive to quit them to the highest bidder. But the media are all t5o busy breathlessly announcing a ‘guarantee’ from the Prime Manipulator to either notice or bother to tell their readers that this is all simply an elaborate illusion that belongs on stage with Paul Daniels or Derren Brown rather than masquerading as news in the nation’s papers.

The Environment:

Rapacious money men are attacking our land on almost every imaginable side. Jianqi and Aimless Adams are collaborating to allow almost every variety of planetary parasite access to our waters, mountains, farmlands and scenic delights to do with them what they will. Aimless seems to have dropped the second ‘d’ from her surname but the horrors she is contemplating would make even Morticia squirm. Make no mistake none of these projects they are contemplating ‘green-lighting’ are going to make any meaningful difference to our economy in a positive sense.

As always it will be the wealthy foreign companies and a few privileged and already very wealthy Kiwis that will benefit. No doubt our useless Government will limit the liabilities of these outsiders so they can walk away with very little responsibility for any damage they might cause much as those responsible for the Rena disaster have.

Give these guys another three years and we will have oil wells off the Taranaki, Bay of Plenty and Hawke’s Bay coastlines. Huntly, the Coromandel and the West Coast will be turned into giant honeycombs and Fiordland will be owned by Disney.

The Press/Media

As witnessed during the 2011 election, this Government is not fond of anyone who might wish to tell it how it is rather than how they would like to spin it.

We saw bizarre Government favouring decisions from Ombudsmen, High Court Judges and newspaper editors. Wasn’t that lucky for a government who didn’t want the truth to get out?

And just to make absolutely sure no truth seeps out into the awareness of the public they made good and sure by closing down TVNZ7, the only television channel that dared to question what they were up to and had the audacity to run programmes that didn’t always show the Government as an infallible and beneficent force.

Radio NZ will probably be next because the Natzis all avoid going on there as much as possible while meantime basking in a confrontation-free zone on commercial radio stations such as Newstalk ZB.

Some breaking news today is further proof they don’t want us to have access to any news programmes that actually attempt to find the truth. I read this morning that TVOne ‘s documentary programme Sunday, is to be cut back to a 30-minuyte format so we can all ‘enjoy’ the latest incarnation of New Zealand’s Got Talent. Apart from Q & A which is on during daytime, Sunday is about the only remotely serious news programme on the Channel and they want to cut it down so we can see more formulaic enfranchised crap instead. Marshmallow TV for marshmallow brains. Fortunately not every person in New Zealand has a brain that would be better used by being stuck on a fork and held over a flame. A great and encouraging example is Wellington alt-country outfit The Beens who sum up the Government we currently have in a great song called Not My Problem which you can find at http://thebeens.bandcamp.com/track/not-my-problem. I shouldn’t think it will get any airtime on any of the radio stations the Government approve of, but it deserves to go to number one for the sentiments it expresses. It’s also a good piece musically and the vocalist reminds me of Graham Parker.

I could go on about the numbers of Kiwis chasing greener pastures across the ditch, the underfunding of the health system, the rising unemployment figures and the widening gap between rich and poor.

It certainly ain’t Jianqi’s problem; but it’s all building up to a big one for us.

We might as well just start digging

Well the Ministry of Transport has come up with some figures that show Auckland’s urban roads are the most dangerous places to drive in New Zealand. To those of us who have driven on Auckland’s urban roads this comes as no surprise. In fact, given New Zealand’s poor standards of driving and Auckland’s population it would be odd if it were otherwise.

However some of the other figures released are a little harder to explain.

For example when we look at all roads in each area and not just the urban ones, we find that Auckland is not the riskiest place in the country to be driving. That honour goes instead to Waikato. Now there ain’t much in it; just about 50 deaths over a period of 10 years that makes them worse than Jaffaland, but considering how many fewer people there are in the Waikato area you would have to wonder why this is.

I realise Waikato is a major transit point for vehicles travelling between Auckland and points south, but this does not explain why Waikato road deaths are more than twice those of their near neighbour Bay of Plenty. Granted the Waikato region has a larger population, but it isn’t twice that of BOP. In fact according to the 2006 census it is only about 45 percent larger which should mean that road toll ought to have been more like 450 for the ten years rather than the 677 that it was. Considering population estimates for the BOP region have predicted it would virtually catch the Waikato region in 2009 this suggests their road crash statistics really are out of control.

The implication is that either the roads in the Waikato region or the driving skills of its residents are much worse than anywhere else in New Zealand. I have done a lot of driving on Waikato roads, especially over the last four years and I would say they are pretty good by NZ standards. That is to say they are no worse than many other locations and actually much better than many. So that only leaves the driving skills, unless there is some kind of mysterious Taniwha hiding in the Waikato river that leaps out and grabs cars, pulling them into the paths of others.

My first instinct is that this mysterious Taniwha comes in a brown bottle and isn’t L&P. However on browsing the stats for myself I found there was no significant difference between the percentage of Waikato drunk drivers and those from Bay of Plenty. In fact the more I look at the figures the less I can see any explanation for the difference. Drivers in Waikato don’t seem to be especially worse at any of the usual things like poor observation and poor handling than their counterparts in the Bay. I can only assume those East of the Kaimais are better at turning a potential crash into a lucky escape, so in that respect maybe Bay of Plenty drivers are slightly more skilled.

However if we are to improve our road safety or more accurately, reduce our road carnage, then it is going to take more than some nob in a blue uniform with a radar detector writing out tickets for people exceeding the speed limit by less than the normal tolerated variation in their speedometer.

Accidents seldom happen on roads. Let’s start calling them what they are; fuck-ups, brain explosions, or for the more sensitive – crashes or smashes. That is step one. People need to realise that making a mistake when driving is not a goofy moment you can gloss over because it didn’t end in a crash. The more appropriate reaction when one screws up on the road is to accept responsibility for it and make sure you don’t do it again. A mistake while driving should send a shiver down your spine cold enough to wake your ideas up and realise that you and others have had a lucky escape and you might not be so fortunate next time. And if someone hoots at you for some dumb-arsed act on the roads, adopt a ‘mea culpa’ stance and bloody learn from it. REMEMBER what a dork you felt and don’t go there again.

Unfortunately Kiwis don’t use their horns to deride cretinous driving and so those few who do usually get a myriad of hand and other signals in return. Sometimes they will even get a punch in the gob from some knuckle-dragger whose fragile pride is hurt by them drawing attention to his feeble attempts to drive. If it became the norm to be hooted at by 20 other motorists every time you did something dumb and dangerous, there would be more hooters than nitwits and it just might begin to turn attitudes around. That and some meaningful responses by the judiciary for reckless and stupid acts on the road.

Yeah right, that’ll happen.  No point in wasting our time waiting for that to happen. We may as well just start building another couple more cemeteries in the Waikato region.