Damn Shame

There's plenty of others talking about Aaron Gilmore and I'm going to add my bit.

A true gentleman is one who is never unintentionally rude - Oscar Wilde

Being rude to bar staff, waiters and shop assistants is not OK.  Aaron Gilmore, who has never been in the limelight for good reasons, has destroyed his career as an MP.  This would be a reason for celebrating if I was sure that there were not a hundred others waiting to replace him.

I'd like to see him stay in parliament, as a National MP, until the next election.  The more damaged goods, like John Banks, that the government collects on the way to the next election, the better.

At a fundamental level it is clear enough what he has done wrong.  But there are other things.  He has shown the born-to-rule tory attitude that pervades National at present.  The PM and his senior ministers have done an excellent job of hiding it (as opposed to destroying it) and they will be mightily upset that the most junior of their team, their most marginal MP, has undone their work.

Verlaines - Some Disenchanted Evening, 1990

Milkshake

Recently it occurred to me that dumb advertising bugs me.
I bought my first bottle of milk in Fonterra, the dairy farmers' collective, have been plugging recently. It was more expensive than before; I should have expected that.
The advertisement is dumb. Transparent cows, hollow and half filled with milk, tryind desparately to avoid sunlight. For goodness sake, there is so much wrong with this.
Cows are made of meat and bone and sinew and skin. They are not hollow.  Anthropomorphising them dissociates the link between cows and cheap beef mince.
Cows hold about twenty litres of milk in their udders before it becomes very painful. They do not hold the hundred or more  litres and it does not slosh around theiir bodies
Cows seek shade for their own comfort, even though we breed them with black hides and cut down trees to make the grass grow better. They don't seek shade so their milk tastes better to us.
Cows lactate for the benefit of their offspring, not for humans. It is a curiosity of nature that we drink the milk of other species.
Once it gets to our houses, milk spends most of its time in the fridge. Once the door of the fridge is shut it is totally dark on the inside. Whether the milk bottle is opaque or not becomes irrelevant.

Triple layer light-proof milk bottles. Pointless technology introduced solely for the purpose of justifying price increases.


Kelis - Tasty, 2003

There is a Light that Never Goes Out

Labour and the Greens announced today their plans to reform the electricity sector.

It's not a bad start, and the message that power bills will drop by more than $20 per month is simple and powerful, especially when compared to the likely retorts from National, which will be "bad economics/stalinism".

I read some commentary that this will leave a hole in the government's accounts.  The other side of that coin is that it will leave money in people's pockets; it's kind of like a tax cut.  So National can't really use that line of argument, because they say they like tax cuts, though their actions say the opposite.

In my opinion it is just a start.  Labour and the Greens still appear to believe that electricity is a commodity, whereas it is in my opinion an essential service.  As a commodity the system is run to maximise return on investment, or in simplified terms, profit.

There's a school of thought that says by maximising the profit the system becomes efficient, through competition.  It's a reasonable theory, the practice is somewhat different (the same applies to communism - good as a theory, doesn't work in the real world).

So even with Labour and the Greens plan implemented (and the latest Roy Morgan poll tells us they will get the chance, because National are festering in their own muck), we still have competing electricity generators supplying a single buyer of electricity.

The change of mindset I think is necessary follows on from treating electricity as an essential service is this:
the system should be run to provide electricity at a minimum cost.
The way to achieve this is not by "hoping it will be achieved as a by-product of competition between companies trying to maximise their profit".
It is quite possible to work out, every year, month, week, day, hour and minute, how to run the generation, transmission and distribution system as components of a single system to produce electricity for the lowest possible cost.  It is a complex task and requires clever people, however, the techniques are well known and the data are available.  The obvious question is - "if it's that easy, why hasn't it been done?" and the obvious answer is "electricity is sold on a market, there's no money to be made from changing how we produce and sell it".
Disappointing, really, the money saved could surely be put to better use.

The Smiths - The Queen Is Dead, 1986

Essential Services

Parliament was a total farce again today.
The Speaker seems to have levelled off at a fairly consistent level of bias toward the government, inability to control the house and general poor process.  He's better than his worst, but still not very good.
The star today was the PM, with personal explanations required before and after question time, and this really surreal bit in the middle where it looks remarkably like he forgot to remember to forget.  All I can be thankful for is that he's amusing, because it seems he's not much of anything else useful, like competent, or attentive, or diligent.

Herco Pilots - Essential Services EP, 1981

The Morning

In Hallswell.

Jospeh Haydn - Symphony No. 6, 1761

Blind Eye

There' some mighty funny stuff going on as part of the Christchurch rebuild.  The whole EQC, insurance company, insurance broker, contractor, subcontractor loop seems to be being exploited; the longer the chain the less accountability there is and the greater scope there is for underhand practices.
Some people are making a fortune on the difference between what is quoted to property owners and what is quoted by the subcontractors who are doing the work, and were all paying for it.
I'd wondered what Winston was on about, however the money trail is becoming easier to follow.

Hunters & Collectors - Ghost Nation, 1989

Of Course

Rather than trying to find out why the GCSB spied on people illegally, the government will change the law so the GCSB's activities are no longer illegal.

Evidently there's something unclear about:

Restrictions imposed on interceptions

14Interceptions not to target domestic communications

• Neither the Director, nor an employee of the Bureau, nor a person acting on behalf of the Bureau may authorise or take any action for the purpose of intercepting the communications of a person (not being a foreign organisation or a foreign person) who is a New Zealand citizen or a permanent resident.

But is it necessary to allow the GCSB the power to intercept and read our various communications?  Yes, of course it is.  Otherwise, how will Judith Collins know which of our children's cellphones to confiscate?

Jane's Addiction - Ritual De Lo Habitual, 1990