This blog is a general dump for all the writing I do, mostly about politics for Canta, the University of Canterbury student magazine. I’m a second year political science student, and hope to do a post graduate course in Journalism. I hope you enjoy the blog. And comment, a lot.
Still liking your articles Hayden.
Regarding your John Key interview and your latest article in CANTA. I like your point regarding that their will be little money for spending but I know where they will get it and that is from cutting public financing for more essential services. Their first act is to cut public financing by investing 1.5 billion in broadband – after all if they finance it by debt other public financing will have to pay for it. Where is this money coming from? (most likely those public spending areas that don’t fit with National’s ideas but hey! what ever works for them). Who is going to reap the profits and how will this aid true market competition? Very few details there and I bet the answers won’t be good for the tax payer. I am getting the feeling this is like all those Think Big hydro electric projects that were suddenly privatised or SOE’d to the point where they are kicking the tax paying consumers who paid for the lot not once but twice!!
So far Labour has already made the investment in broadband in effect by forcing Telecom (which they allowed to continue as a monopoly more or less but lost patience with them) to break up and start investing in broadband as they were supposed to do but never did (but being a private market loving company that they are they sure reaped a lot of profits!!); hence, the side lesson here is where there is no real competition you must regulate!!
I also don’t believe John when he says he is not idealogical and goes with what works (re comparison to Cameron). What a load of tosh. He made his money in an industry that follows one ideal and one ideal only, that of Milton Friedman (the market is everything and there should be no government regulation or interference) and certainly not Keynes!! Those unregulated financial markets’ insatiable greed has nearly brought the world to another economic collapse again that would hurt everyone, but particularly the world’s bottom 99%!
He further says he will not go with ACT if they continue their right wing agenda. This is good for National to have right wing extremists so they can deflect attention away from their own right wing tendencies (referring to some of Key’s insightful past ‘mis-speaks’). As I have stated before Key and National are all about transferring more to the top 1% and that is the main reason why they will not reveal their true plans. I will make a prediction right now and this is as follows – In their first term they will do nothing drastic and will seem to be even good but the second term whoa boy!! Will they pull some fast ones because they will get in with a landslide and then we will see how close to ACT they really are (just like Thatcher in the UK and Mulroney in Canada – just give them an inch…!!!). The only thing is, since the first time of Roger Douglas all the major damage has been done so they will do more subtle forms of damage such as slowly privatising primary education (they already said more funding for private schools! – I have to ask why? They’re private!!! – particularly when too many public schools are struggling financially and parents have to pay fees!), hospitals, most likely the police as well, etc. There is still a lot they can do!
As an aside, about a month ago Harry Duynhoven proposed that they will institute mandatory car insurance to stop boy racers. This is utterly a very bad idea for everyone!!! This will penalize everyone but the people its aimed at and make private industry a lot of money at our expense!! Right now I pay $187.00 for the vehicle (not the individual drivers) a year and it has stayed the same for the last 3 years.
The following is why this is bad and why everyone has to be made aware of it and do everything to oppose this. This exact thing happening in Canada and now the minimum rate that people pay (in Ontario where the car insurers are private companies) is $1400 per year per driver and that is for the minimum insurance coverage. Over the your driving lifetime you will more than likely pay more in insurance (~ 10 times more) then any and all accident claims you will have. There are many who pay more in insurance than their car is worth. It started reasonably in the mid 1960’s but then went crazy because insurance had a captive market and they are in it for the profits. What did they do – they started manipulating the statics to show how they were losing money and therefore came up with a way annually to raise the insurance rates exponentially. They are essentially unregulated in their pricing and there is no competition (they are like petrol stations here – ‘price fixing’, etc) and you have to have insurance to get your annual car registration. If you go to downtown Toronto you will see a lot of the buildings and real-estate are all owned by insurance companies (value in the high billions to low trillions). These co’s are not nor were they every losing money and now (for a long time actually) they have had the politicians in their pockets.
It also costs the taxpayers a ton in government regulation (in Ontario there is an entire government dept dedicated to car insurance)
There are better ways to deal with boy racers and that is if convicted of a ‘boy racer’ offence destroy their car. This way they can’t ‘churn’ the car, going back to the dealer to trade for ‘better’ model and make the min payment on the loan, and the people who provide the loans (sharks) will probably get stiffed as these racers will not have the will to continue to pay for something they no longer have. Essentially all the slimy people and only the slimy people get nailed.
I hope you investigate this and if you have any questions about my car insurance experiences in Canada just send me an email