Voting by numbers – a guide for the terminally stupid

For a very long time it has been apparent that a concerted effort has been made to dumb down the population. This is a practice that is not limited to New Zealand; it is alive and thriving pretty much worldwide.

Not mentioning any names, but some countries need less of an effort in this regard to achieve the necessary level of stupidity for their people to become fully compliant with their ruling regime (be it political or religious).

But my point is that for at least the last 30 years there has been a conscious movement to for example, replace commonsense with simplified instructions that appear to have been designed for mentally challenged people.

The more obvious examples would be warnings on electrical appliances to not use them underwater or to try and snip through their power cords while you are using them. Knives often carry the warning that they are sharp and we are also warned that if we allow our children to shove plastic bags over their heads they will face the danger of suffocation.

I am sure there are people out there for whom these warnings would not have been self-evident. However few of them would or should be walking around ‘at large’ rather than securely held in captivity.

But the safety police are not the only ones pandering to our shrivelling grey matter. The catalogue advertisers are coming out with loads of new and useful devices to make our lives easier such as handle tie bags for your kitchen bin. These are in reality simply supermarket bags that some sharp operator has conned people into forking out money for. Another I saw was a memory foam leg pillow, but I am sure you will be able to recall many more of these pointless items that have been designed to solve a problem that doesn’t exist other than in the mind of telemarketers.

Governments in collusion with the media have done their bit by providing us with sound bites and slogans. These have gradually eroded our brain cells so that few can see that they are like pixie dust and contain absolutely nothing of any substance or have any relationship to reality. We have now reached the point where people are completely ignorant of how our laws have been framed or how our justice system works (or doesn’t as is often the case).

Political parties have replaced properly conducted public meetings where they laid out policies and voters were able to ask questions about the implications of those. Admittedly not all people did this and many simply voted what the husband told them to for fear of getting the bash, or what their parents had always voted for fear of being disinherited. But beyond that group there were a reasonable number of people who made their own minds up based upon their assessment of the policies laid out before them.

Today we seem to have reached the point where policies have been shunted aside and replaced by slogans and for the most part, pretty meaningless ones at that.   

A sample I saw while trawling the party sites were:

National - Working for New Zealand. I had to wonder exactly what and who in that party is working for New Zealand as it seems they are pretty keen to work for both China and the USA and don’t give a monkey’s for Kiwis.

Labour - Vote Positive. This isn’t even grammatically correct unless they are telling us to vote for a party I didn’t even realise was standing.

New Zealand First - It’s common sense. What is common sense these days and where do we find any? Certainly not in our Parliament.

The Maori Party -Tu Maori mai (That’s us). Yes; I get that is you, but so what?

The Mana Party - Movement of the people. What movement would that be, then? A bowel movement perhaps?

All these sorts of dumb slogans do is reduce politics to the level of the sound bite and people not knowing what these parties stand for.

So just when you thought it was safe to go back into the polling booth, along comes Vote Compass. This has been heavily promoted by the nice young folks at TV One as the answer to all our problems; apart from confusing a few people by having them think Compass is a new party seeking their vote, that is.

Vote Compass is an app that has been set up on TVNZ’s website to help people reach a decision on who to vote for! It is a sort of vote by numbers set up where you answer a few rather non-specific survey type multiple choice questions and at the end it tells you whose policies align best with your answers.

Now you can call me paranoid – and many will; but if you take the subjective analysis by the individual out of this particular equation how do you know you aren’t being manipulated to vote the way the designers of the app want you to? Nobody knows what agenda these people might be trying to push.

I see that 176,000 odd (some very odd) people have used this app and I can only hope that most of them did it for a laugh rather than out of any real desire to make a decision on who to vote for. However the cynic in me says that most of them probably did take the survey to help them reach a decision on who to vote for.

Is it any wonder the country is going to the dogs? I expect the next election will bring a board game which is a variation on snakes and ladders (called snakes and snakes) where you throw the dice and vote for the party whose square you land on. 

NZ Idle – the new series

In the year 2014 our television screens are going to be dominated with much fuss and bother and spin leading up to our biggest ‘reality series’ of the year. This series differs somewhat from the plethora of programmes that fall under that description.

As an aside I find it interesting that the word ‘plethora’ was once used to describe an unhealthy excess and that these days it is often used to denote abundance. I feel that in this context the word should be taken to mean an unhealthy excess especially as i learn that it had a medical connection and was used to describe a condition caused by dilation of superficial blood vessels which was characterised by a reddish face.

However, I digress....

The ‘reality’ series of which I speak differs in that it is a recurring series which takes over our media every three years. Yes; you’ve guessed it. I am speaking of that rag tag bunch of idle self-serving gits who come seeking our approval to keep sucking at the nation’s tit for another three years.

Battle has already commenced with Little Bo Tox and Anne Offhertrolley trying to blow the Greens’ co-leaders house up into a mansion the size of their own dunnies and bitching about how much better she can look in expensive clothes than they both do.

Meanwhile Jianqi is rushing about turning over one stone after another trying to find enough slimy invertebrates to potentially form a coalition with. You’d have to wonder if there are any more possibles left now. Let’s consider those possibilities.  

·         The Acting Party have been pretty much squished out of contention following the demise of their only MP in this current Parliament and it is hard to see how their latest oddball will gain any traction over the next few months. The tea has been chucked out and I suspect that even a case of Red Bull won’t put any wings on that particular slug before November. He isn’t even the party leader so he will have to be operated by remote control from Acting Party headquarters. Mind you that would be less humiliating for him than being operated via Jianqi’s arm up his bum like his predecessor was. Should The Natsis choose to ‘gift’ the Epsom seat to these wallies again, it just might turn out to be the gift that doesn’t even give once never mind the one that keeps on giving.

·         Just what Peter Dung, the man with no real party has in mind this year, I have not heard. I seem to recall he was considering retiring a few months back. Mind you that was when he was still sitting on the naughty step and now that he is being welcomed back into the bosom (can I say that in this column?) of the Natsi Party he might reconsider that. However even if he does, and if the people of Johnsonville and Newlands are still in a coma and he wins; he will be there on his Todd Malone again. Neither of the other party members is likely to get elected and his voter will not be able to vote enough times to get them in on the party vote either.

·         What’s left of the Maori Parting is Te Ururoa Flavell and a couple of spaces where the other two sat. It is more of a comb-over than a parting now. In any case there is no guarantee they would wish to coalesce with the Natsis this time as they have suffered some pretty serious damage through their association with them over the last six years They could only manage to grab three seats after their first term supporting Jianqi and this time they will be starting all over again with a whole new set of candidates to try and support their only leftover from the previous hangi.

·         There has been a lot of talk about the Conservatively Dressed Party and I think that might well be all it turns out to be. These slightly manic types managed to pick up 2.65 percent of the party vote last time, which isn’t all that surprising really when you think about it. There must be at least that percentage of the population with undiagnosed stupidity. Ironically that meagre share of the party vote was still only 0.15 percent short of the combined party vote won by the current three coalition partners. However we must remember that it is still only slightly more than half of what they would need to get a seat unless they could manage to win an electorate seat. As we don’t have any electorates that are comprised of nothing but wacko people I would suggest the chances of that are not terrific. Leader Column Craig is certainly an odd individual and not really the sort who would inspire confidence in most sane people. He has a little of the aura that surrounds that new Acting Party twit. He seems the sort of bloke that might cause babies to cry as soon as they see him and the rest of us panic if we are left alone in a room with him.

·         This then (unless some amazing new party arises and sweeps the political right wingers off their feet) leaves the question of what will Winnie do? Winnie is always a dark horse or a dirty dog depending on how you see him. He plays his cards close to his chest at times like this until he can be absolutely sure which way the wind is going to blow. This way he keeps the door open for a ministerial warrant no matter who is behind that door. If he stays true to his party’s policies he would not be able to form a government with the Natsis without making some demand that would stick in their collective craw. However with the chains of office glinting in the sunlight Winnie could be swayed enough to jump into that big blue waka.

      
      So what of the opposition? It is abundantly clear the Laboured Party will not be able to do it alone. Although many think that is exactly what they have been doing for some time.

      But I digress again. Or is that regress when you do it for a second time?

     

      The point is that Laboured will need some friends in the house if they are to warm the treasury benches again as they have again chosen a useless leader who unfortunately will probably make an even more useless Prime Minotaur should they pull this feat off. He has shown an ability of late to launch himself out of the starting gates with a policy headline before his minders have had a chance to teach him his lines.  

      So who are the friends of the Laboured Party?

      

      I guess the most obvious one is the Greens who have been growing faster than my tomatoes in this climate. They would be the next largest polling party after the Nats and the Labs and a long way ahead of any of the others. Their participation in a Labour led Government goes without saying. The only unknown around them is how many players they would bring to the game.

      

      However this is where it gets interesting. Outside of the Greens; who would Labour be able to form a coalition with? 

      

      Unless Winnie goes with them they would probably not have enough seats to be able to do it. They might of course win the support of the Maori Party this time, but how much use that would be given the current state of that party is another matter. It could conceivably add only one seat to the mix.

      

      There is of course the matter of Hone and his little one-man band. He would never be courted by National and so the possibility exists for him to be asked to be part of a Labour led coalition. However I think he would be the last one picked for the game if he was and I think they would do well to consider what problems he could cause if he became disenchanted or had another of his famous brain explosions.    

     

      To sum up, I think the Laboured lot need to devise a decent strategy now. If I was in charge of that strategy I would be building a bloody great big bridge with the Maori Party and suggesting to them that a widely advertised intention to form a coalition with Labour would give them a better chance of getting more seats in the upcoming viewers’ vote and I would be offering Winnie some very cool robes of office and advising him to follow the same course of action that I had suggested to the Maori Party.

      

      It will be interesting (in an academic sort of way). But jeez it will be sickening for the most part. Stock up on bicarb I say.

The last chance cafe or the last straw?

The Laboured Party has elected their fourth leader since they were last in power. As that was only five years ago, this is not a good look. But have they got it right this time? Somehow I doubt it. Helen Clark was the last good leader they had. Of course she lost her head because she lost the election and that is a pretty common outcome for leaders who lose an election.

She was then replaced by Phil Goffisthatthetime who, nice guy though he is, was not made of sufficiently stern stuff and who surprised nobody (probably including himself) when he lost the next election.

Next up was an equally inappropriate contender in the form of The Shearer; a diplomat cut from a similarly limp bolt of cloth as his predecessor. I have always believed he was the compromise candidate when the party was at loggerheads over whether to elect Cunliffe (without the “t”) or (Nosy) Parker. As with many compromises in life he ended up pleasing nobody except perhaps those warming the treasury benches.

So now we have the recycled version of Cunliffe which to my eye looks very little different to the rather smug and abrasive version that surfaced at the last leadership stoush.

For those who watch NZ politics fairly closely it is no secret that we have a dearth of good leaders among the parties in our parliament. In fact dearth doesn’t really do justice to the situation. An almost complete absence of good leaders would seem to sum it up better.

This might not matter so much were it not for the fact that the party in power at the moment is laying waste to almost everything Kiwis have held dear and a change of government is urgently needed. In order to bring that about one would expect some good leadership would be a pre-requisite for any of the pretenders.

Of course we could all just bumble along and hope that Jianqi accidentally shoots himself in the foot and the Natsis self-destruct. You might think this could happen with their coalition partners are doing their darndest to emulate the leadership cock-ups of the Laboured Party. 

The Maori Party weren’t able to make up their minds how many leaders they needed until someone kicked Sharples in the goolies and he got the point and stepped aside. The Actors went through two leaders until their cunning election plan in 2011 misfired and their leader didn’t get elected and they had to elect a very short man with a very small brain because he was the only one they managed to get into parliament. And of course the No Future Party managed to retain the same leader but lost the entire party for a while.

However through all of this and despite the squinty-eyed little money-man dropping more than his share of passes the Natsis have stayed true to the one leader since 2006. Prior to that they had three leaders within the space of five years and they paid for that by remaining on the opposition benches.

Significantly the current ‘opposition’ parties have managed pretty much to remain stable. Winston First is still all about Winston, Mana is always going to be Hone’s party – he would leave and start another were it to be otherwise – and the Greens have been stable, only changing their leadership due to a death and a retirement.

But these three parties cannot muster enough support to govern without a coalition partner such as the Laboured Party and that is where the plan all turns to shit.

Love ‘em or hate ‘em, the Laboured Party are a necessary part of any alternative to the NWO/Money worshipping/CIA lapdogs that run this show for now. This presents a big problem for New Zealand. I hate to think what this country will look like if they get a third term.

Unfortunately I can’t see Cunliffe being the one to galvanise the opposition and convince the electorate. He certainly doesn’t convince me. But then I am a picky bugger.

In my opinion Grant Robertson was the obvious choice. He is smart, charismatic and funny. He reminds me of David Lange before he got Rogered by Douglas. Maybe that was what the wider party was worried about. By all accounts the parliamentary party wanted him to lead them and it is that which worries me most about the chances of Cunliffe being able to get them onto the government side of the house.

Of course the unspoken notion is that the wider party was afraid NZ wasn’t ready for their first openly gay PM. I hope that wasn’t their reasoning because I personally believe they were grossly underestimating the electorate if it was. After all this is the country that was among the first to legalise homosexual practices nearly thirty years ago and has recently been one of the first countries in the world to legalise same sex marriage and who was one of the first countries in the world to elect a trans-sexual MP. I think that track record would indicate that the although the average Kiwi bloke or blokes might make jokes about people with different sexual orientation to themselves, they really couldn’t care less what people do in the privacy of their own homes.

It remains to be seen whether Cunliffe remains to be seen still at the helm in October next year. I hope that he does, despite my reservations about him, because a fifth leader in six years would almost certainly be the kiss of death for the Laboured Party and unfortunately for any hope of a coalition to replace the current unholy alliance that is in power now.

Still hope springs eternal, eh and spring is here now so who knows?

What am I bid for this life? (Going once, going tw.....)

So how much is a human life worth in New Zealand? It might sound a silly. It all depends on the context as to the value placed on each life.

Some might wonder why I am even asking the question, but it is something we need to get our heads around because like it or not a human life is frequently assessed as having some kind of monetary value for a host of different reasons. I think we need to know the whys and wherefores of these processes because sometimes they defy any logical explanation.

For example when a life is lost through natural causes insurance companies make a payout (if you are lucky) and that amount could be considered as the value that has been placed upon that particular life. But here it is not so much the insurance company that is setting that ‘value’ rather it is the person taking out the insurance policy. However it is still a value and in most cases this will start at around $100,000 and go up from there according to the premium paid and the policy chosen.

ACC is also in the business of assessing the value of human life and their figures are a little less straightforward (as you might expect). Their calculation can involve a funeral grant of up to $4500.00 and a survivor’s grant of $4702.79, plus weekly compensation equivalent to 60% of the deceased’s earnings (roughly). There are some finer points to that, such as additional allowances for dependants other than the spouse, but the total possible amount payable is 80% of earnings. This can be paid as weekly compo or in a lump sum. Obviously the total amount depends on how much you were earning, so of course the very well paid families fare best in this situation as with life insurance. The weekly payments if you choose those, last for a maximum of five years and this is how the lump sum is also calculated. Thus if your nearest and dearest was on the minimum wage their life will be valued at about $93,000.

Accidents in the workplace are another of the areas where determinations as to the monetary worth of human life is regularly determined. In this respect the courts and the Department of Labour are involved. The courts have the power to fine an employer (although not if they are a Government Department apparently) and award compensation. Two recent cases that give an idea of how this works are the case of the worker at Safe Air Ltd (they should change the name) who was sucked into a jet engine he was doing a maintenance check on it. The company was fined $56,000 and ordered to pay his family $22,500 in compo. Thus his life was valued at less than $80K.  

DOC on the other hand couldn’t be fined when their volunteer worker was apparently swept out to sea at Raoul Island and thus they escaped at just $60K which was the payout they made voluntarily to the guy’s family.

Similarly the courts regularly assess the value of a human life when they direct careless drivers to make payments to the relatives of those they have killed through their careless or reckless driving. Currently the most you can be fined for this sort of thing is $20,000 and then only if you can be proven to have been drunk or stoned at the time. Payments for emotional harm can also be levied, but these seldom reach five figures, so the courts are less generous than the insurance companies with a human life worth basically less than $30,000 in total. It would appear they don’t believe the loss to the family is even equivalent to the minimum wage for one year (before tax).  

However it is now official that New Zealand’s lousiest bastards are the Royal New Zealand Air Force who apparently value human lives at a great deal less than any of the above examples.

You will all no doubt remember the tragic helicopter crash on Anzac Day 2010 that resulted in the deaths of three Air Force personnel and serious injuries to another. We now discover after months of red herrings about how the crash came about because of dangerous practices by a pilot who wasn’t properly trained to fly at dusk that he only did it because the Air Force top brass had been moaning about how much it would cost for the guys to stay overnight. It has taken until this week for that admission to be dragged out of the Defence Monster Jonathan Coleface. Then the prick had the audacity to try and blame the Labour Government which hasn’t been in power since 2008!

So how many much was it actually going to cost to put up four men at the Amora Hotel in Wellington which the Air Force were in the habit of using? How close were we to blowing the entire Defence budget had we accommodated these guys instead of making them fly out in dangerous circumstances they had not been trained for? Surely it can’t have been very much?

Well we now learn that the amount at stake was $149.00 per room. I have been unable to ascertain how many the rooms at that price can sleep, but it is probably two and even if it is only one, then we lost three lives and made a mess of another for the sake of less than $600.00.  I think that speaks volumes about how much the Air Force cares about the welfare of its personnel.

And by the way; if you are thinking of making a firm appointment with the reaper any time soon, for goodness sake take out a large insurance policy or find yourself a dodgy accountant to fudge your income figures – there are tons of them about at the moment – just pick a name from the court reports.

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!