Hyperbole Much?

Richard Long of the Long View on changing the name of New Zealand to Aotearoa:

"Changing the country’s name would invite comparisons with the lunatic Pol Potists, who turned Cambodia into the killing fields of Kampuchea, and with the equally unlikeable Burmese junta, who renamed the country Myanmar."

And without irony in a column a few weeks later......

Housing rant: "cheap land"

I have so much to say on this subject, but just to start, I hate how every developer who only builds homes for the wealthy, and every politican they have in their pocket, jump and shout at each housing affordability study released. NOT to rally us all to the plight of those priced out of the market. Oh no, they use it as an excuse to whinge about land not being available to them for cheap. And why do they want cheap land? NOT so they can provide the 50,000 units of Affordable Housing needed*, but so they can continue to build big, flash houses to sell to the wealthy for a bigger profit margin than building affordable housing allows.

Hey, I'm not against builders making a profit (I worked for a builder and profits were really important for our growth and opportunities), but for these guys to use the AFFORDABLE HOUSING issue to try to get legislation through that allows the sell off of government land for cheap with no restrictions on what they build on that land, makes me fume. Along with cheap land, they howl for less gov't regulation, yet of course with the gov't avaiblable to pick up all infastruction costs from the urban sprawl they are creating. There is so little regulation here, new houses can still be built with single pane glass! Just a few years ago, builders didn't need to provide insulation!

The housing affordability issue is a big complex issue, made more so because NZ gov'ts of the past 16 years have ignored it - letting the "free market" be in charge of meeting its citizen housing needs. Didn't work. Don't try to tell me that "freeing up more land" and "reducing legislation" is the answer. It's only the answer to you fancy developers doing business as usual. Time to get creative and meet the needs of your fellow citizens with good, energy-efficient affordable houses.

* Rebuilding the Kiwi Dream: A proposal for affordable housing in New Zealand. The Salvation Army Social Policy and Parliamentary Unit.

The Invisible Hand Needs a Handout?

Linkies from one day of Eschaton:

Here, here, here, and here.

Remember Randies, no cuts in the soup line!

The Road Code

New Zealand drivers have to be amongst the rudest in the world. As a pedestrian I've had two "incidents" where the person that nearly hit me (or in one case actually did give me a love tap) suggested very politely that I read the Road Code.

• Incident 1 - I was crossing Cuba Street at Abel Tasman Street in Wellington- this is a four way stop. The driver turned into me as I was 3/4 of the way across the street. Words were exchanged.
  
• Incident 2 - Friends and I were crossing a parking lot at a curb cut (that's kerb for you Kiwis) on the sidewalk (that's pathway for the Kiwis) behind the I-Site in Rotorua. Mr. Jaguar pants decided he was so disadvantaged by his 2 second delay that he needed to give us a cute little honk. I of course stopped in puzzlement at this behaviour. He took further offense and decided to run into me with his car. There was a little car door kicking action and he decided to get of his car but quickly took account of his odds and got back in - safe from us and from any moral considerations in his plastic and metal cocoon. The parking police intervened.
  

So here, by popular demand, are the relevant sections of the Road Code:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Important
Giving way means that the road user you're giving way to (whether they are a driver, cyclist, pedestrian or any other kind of road user) doesn't need to stop, brake or slow down, swerve or take any other evasive action to avoid you.

Stop sign
At an intersection controlled by a Stop sign you must:

• come to a complete stop, not just slow down
• stop where you can see vehicles coming from all directions
• stay stopped and give way to all other vehicles (including bicycles, motorcycles etc)
• use the give way rules if you and another vehicle are coming towards each other and you are both at Stop signs
• not go until it is safe for you and all other traffic.
  

When leaving and entering driveways
When you are entering or leaving a driveway that crosses a footpath, you must give way to people using the footpath.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
So there you go, I read the Road Code and it of course states that we were within our rights as pedestrians. But what is it about people in their cars that makes them think that they can abuse or threaten someone? You wouldn't have the guts to do that to me outside of your car so what is it about the car that makes you feel so safe? So unbound by human decency?

MEGA UPDATE!!!
Lo and behold! The Dominion Post comes through with a column that proves their wankery and further establishes the apparently widely held Kiwi belief that pedestrians are at best a nuisance.

New Zealand Newspaper Bias Redux

A perfect example of typical newspaper bias here in NZ. An editorial passed off as "news." A few minutes of internet research indicates that the report authors are essentially right-wing shills.

Look NZ housing prices are outrageous. No doubt some very very small part of the price increase over the past decade or so is attributable to government regulation and restricted land availability. But let's face it the main reason that prices have risen so drastically is speculation and greed. It's the irrationality of the "free market" that has caused this rise. The invisible hand has been busy causing people to do things that they shouldn't. It has been touching us in our swimsuit areas for years now and we're just beginning to deal with the consequences of our sad molestation.

Prices will fall here as they have, and will continue to do in the US. Why? Not because of a sudden increase in land availability or less regulation but because the market was irrational - driven by speculation and greed. Don't be fooled by the mislabeling of the crisis in the US as a "subprime" lending problem. It's a market correction. People across the board are feeling the pain in the US as they will here. It's really time to tell the Randian jackasses where they can stick their hand.

The Political Press in New Zealand

One of the big differences between the US and New Zealand is that New Zealand has an overtly political press. In US lefty blogging circles it's quite popular to call for the media to drop its "non partisan" and "balanced" pretension and acknowledge its biases.

While I agree with these calls in principle, in practice, at least in New Zealand, it's not very satisfying as the newspapers here are abysmally and uniformly conservative. For a country of four million people I would hope there would be at least one major paper that represented left-of-center views but I have yet to find it. I would also hope to find "alternative" weekly papers that provide some sort of balance to the mainstream media. These too are sadly lacking.

So what I'm left with is reading the Dominion Post and having my blood boil. The DP has been on a particularly irksome climate-change-denialist rampage of late. Blatantly biased climate change-ain't-real "news" articles mix freely with other more benign articles on the paper's pages. Even more demoralizing is reading the letters to the editor. While I suspect that letters are selected primarily based on their agreement with the DP's editorial bias it's still disheartening to read how many people buy into the DP's view.

I do admit some deriving some sick pleasure from the Junior Scientists that write letters to the editor. A recent classic was the crank that claimed that he had googled the volume of the world's oceans and the volume of the Greenland ice sheet, and that his maths proves the ratio of the ice sheet to ocean volume is tiny so dipso facto there is no way we could see the type of sea level rises predicted. I really wish I could help him understand the surface area/volume relationship and help him work through the maths so that he could understand that BP/Shell/Chevron/DP aren't really on his side. But that's not going to happen. Nana only had to turn her electric blanket to 6 this year - climate change can't be real!!!111!!!!

I understand that National Radio and TV actually does a reasonable job of reporting the news. Not being a big consumer of radio or TV I can only hope for the sake of NZ that this is true.

Heh Indeed!

Cullen calls John Key a "rich prick" and a "scumbag."

It had to be said.