Public ownership under labour was touted as New Zealands saviour! Lets by back the rail, lets make a bank etc etc etc. I am sick of the lies that have been spread and the annoyance that state ownership has in our lives.

Kiwibank is sold as an ‘alternative’ to the ‘aussie’ banks. Lets look into this further, the selling point is that money invested in Kiwibank stays in New Zealand. So where do the profits go for the other banks and Kiwibank for that matter?

Money from the proper banks stay in New Zealand, lets face it! People are employed by the banks, who pay them… wait for it… MONEY! That is where their money goes, now then for the issue of profits. These big banks are owned by shareholders, not by the Australian Government or one Australian, or a collection of Australian companies. But individual people, anyone can be a shareholder.

So where do the profits for Kiwibank go? Who knows, back in to the Governments coffers? Certainly not to shareholders who c0uld benefit from money, hell if you wanted to do a good thing sell it to people who are with Kiwibank and let them do something with the money.

Right glad we have cleared that one up then!

Now on to Kiwirail. Yesterday in Wellington was a PRIME example of Government interference. Government owns trains, trains get turned off with no warning – sure ok, big mistake, but the worst of it was that commuters were not told about it!

SELL IT!!!!!

Oh just one more gripe RE Kiwibank… Man its annoying, firstly their ads are awful!!!!!! But secondly all it does is clutter up the post shop. I am one of those in and out of a shop as fast as possible! I hate queing, I get grumpy and agitated, its made ten times worse when I am forced to stand in a queue while Nana has a conversation with the grumpy and unhelpful lady behind the counter about the price of knitting needles or something much less interesting and all I want to do is post my mums birthday present three weeks late!

So I haven’t been on to this blog whatsit in almost three years. Not much has changed accept for the fact that well I’m an adult, grown up, out buying vacuum cleaners!

I find myself reflecting on life a lot more these days and wondering what happened. One minute I was concerned about drinking copious volumes of alcohol every night and now I’m concerned about getting enough sleep so I won’t be tired and grumpy at work tomorrow. Its odd how ones life can change so suddenly. However ones outlook on life and the way the world ought to be never changes I’m sure. Certainly people change the way in which they think but everyone seems to still have a fundamental view on how the world should be. So avid readers (I think there may be one of you still) do not fear my usual array of rants and raves will be back very soon, ranting about the automotive and political world.

Look forward to it! Or don’t but be polite and read it anyway. It makes me feel good.

The Sudnay Times of London have released a new study about crash safety in vehicles. *YAWN* But i checked to see if it mentions my car, it doesn’t, go figure old Japanese imports aren’t really looked into in British crash tests. However two interesting things appeared. One my mum has a really safe car and two they are very PC.

The times spends a good page talking about how much better off you are in 4×4s and MPVs in a crash. Because bigger vehicles are safer. And that you are more likely to die in a small car. Now the nice PC part is at the end of the article it says that everyone would be better off crash wise if noone drove 4×4s and MPVs, if everyone drove small and medium sized cars, why? Because they weren’t sure how many deaths were caused by 4×4 and MPVs. So to be on the safe side everyone should drive unsafe cars to protect them from being hit by bigger safer cars… Isn’t that silly. They should have said that everyone should give up their little cars and buy big ones. But of course they can’t because its politically incorrect to drive 4×4s.

The safest cars in Britain for the occupants are 4×4s. It says they don’t fear so well when it comes to pedestrian and cyclist safety. My question is, what the hell are pedestrians doing on the road in the first place. If you are stupid enough to run out in front of a two tonne off roader then perhaps you shouldn’t be allowed in society in the first place. As for cyclists, unless you are under the age 15.5 buy a car and stop being so tight. Either that or use the cycle lanes, yes you know those specially reserved places for you. Not the middle of the friggin road!

I have always defended 4×4s saying they are safe and practical and that study proves my point. And if you are worried about the environment, Lexus now has a hybrid SUV. Either that or ride a horse.

Well I didn’t end up going. For three reasons. Firstly the very thought of sharing a vehicle with complete strangers some of whom may be diseased, scares me. Secondly it was raining and I didn’t really want to have to walk in the rain, which is the main problem with public transport, it doesn’t take you where you want to go. And thirdly they don’t do test-drives on fridays. So I thought I would go today, but didn’t as I ended up going to town.

However I shall have another attempt at the whole communal vehicle thing another time…

Right, I have nothing to do tomorrow afternoon, so I am thinking that I shall go out to Lower Hutt to look at a car I found on the Turners website. The sweet irony here is that I need to use public transport to get there. I got awfully sick at the end of the holidays, so was unable to drive back from Whangarei so instead flew, which was dissapointing as I had been missing having a car all year, and thus was stuck without one for a further nine weeks. But that’s ok as I never leave the city and everything I need is within twenty minutes walking distance from where I live.

However, the car I wish to look at is the exact one I would like to buy, if I can sell mine over the holidays, so I feel that I should really have a good look at one in the flesh. To get to Lower Hutt I have two options, I can use a combination of bus and train or just a bus. So to plan my route I
decided to use the handy dandy route planner on the metlink website. First of all it is incomptent. Just like the bus service, you punch in your depart time and about five times it came back saying that “2:00″ is an incorrect time. How? I mean how the hell can 2:00 not be a time. Then I finally got a result and realised that it was set up in 24 hour time not 12. Feeling a tad embarrased I punched in 14:00. Again, this is not a valid time! Why not? After two goes this time it worked.

It gave me a nice list of where to catch the bus, which one to catch, how long it will take. But the thing that pissed me off the most was that it told me to walk! I can accept that it is unreasonable to expect to be picked up and dropped off by a bus at your exact destination. But being told to walk, by the public transport website just infuriated me. How dare it tell me what time to walk! At 1.03 walk to bus station, at 1.04 get on bus (I said I wanted to leave from the bus station). How dumb can the person who designed the website be? I mean if people are too stupid to figure out they have to get onto a bus they clearly can’t use the internet.

Once I got to Lower Hutt it told me to get off the bus and catch another one back in the direction I came from, and the bus ride only lasts one minute. Wouldn’t it be logical to get off at the stop before I change buses. In fact if its telling me to walk, why not let it tell me to walk from where I changed buses, by looking at the map it’s hardly far. This in effect proves that public transport is incompetent. I shall find out tomorrow if it is useless.

Now you may say that I am a typical National voter etc blah blah, doesn’t care about the environment etc etc. Well I shall have you know, the car that I am going to look at has a smaller engine than my Toyota, therefore is cheaper to run, the engine is newer and hopefully better maintained therefore less emissions. See I am looking at  a BMW for entirely environmental reasons. And you thought I didn’t care.

Chris Trotter is an unbelievably arrogant ugly little worm! He is a hypocritical little fucking wanker! He writes today in the Dominion Post, who has just gone and lost themselves a customer. He attacked right-wing blogs, in a typical leftist fashion, denying the right to freedom of speech. Mr Trotter devotes an entire column to saying that people should not be able to voice their opinions. He says “There is a style of political expression which delights in extremity and feeds on its elaboration. In the past the rhetoric it produced was restricted to the dinner tables of capitalisms most vociferous defenders, and the bars of its most ignorant workers. It was pernicious but it was also confined – like a dangerous pit bull – to the practioners immediate circle of family, friends, workmates and acquaintances.” He compares the freedom of speech in the political right, to that of a dangerous pit bull. Well I got news for you, you hypocritical little bastard. Name one right wing dictator who murdered millions of people in the last fifty years. Oh look you can’t. Ha funny that, they were all fucking communists. What this short fat ugly moustached fuck face doesn’t realise is that without the political right he would have no free speech at all. He is typical of the lefties, he doesn’t like freedom of speech because it attacks what he believes in. And you know what mate, go and live in North Korea if you want to stop right thinkers speaking their mind! This wanker is someone who said that the Labour party should not be made to pay back tax payers money for their pledge card because it stopped the evil National party from getting into government. You wanker. That’s what you are. You are an awful person. You like to exploit the tax payer do you? For personal gain huh? You think capitalism is so bad. Look what you are doing. You fucktard. This is a man ladies and gentleman who is supposed to be a political commentator, they are meant to be neutral. He is entitled to his opinion of course, I have nothing against that. But he should not be able to think that it is ok to attack the fundamental reasons that found democracy. Everyone has the right to speak their mind mate. You have no right to tell us not to. I hope your bicycle gets run over by a steam roller, preferably when you are on it!

A young woman was finishing her first year of college.
Like so many others her age, she considered herself to be a liberal Democrat and was for the fair redistribution of wealth.
She felt deeply embarrassed that her father was a life-long Republican, which she opposed openly.
One day she was challenging her father on his beliefs, particularly his opposition to higher taxes and more entitlement programs.
In the middle of her heartfelt diatribe, based upon lectures she had from her left-wing professors at school, he stopped and asked her, point blank, how she was doing in school.
She answered rather haughtily that she had a 4.0 GPA, and let him know that it was tough to maintain.
She had to study all the time, and rarely had time to go out and party.
She barely had time for a boyfriend, and didn’t really enjoy many college activities because of spending so much time studying.
In addition, she continued, she was taking a very difficult curriculum.
Her father listened and then asked, “How is your friend Mary?”
She replied, “Mary is just getting by.”
She continued, “She barely has a 2.0 GPA,” adding, “and all she takes are very easy classes and she never studies.”
Explaining further, she continued emotionally, “But Mary is so very popular on campus, college for her is a blast.
She goes to all the parties, and very often doesn’t even show up for classes because she is hung over.”
Her father then asked his daughter, “Why don’t you go down to the Dean’s office and ask him to deduct a 1.0 off your 4.0 GPA and give it to your friend who only has a 2.0.”
He continued, “That way you will both have a 3.0 GPA and certainly that would be a fair, equal distribution of GPA.”
The daughter, visibly shocked by her father’s suggestion, angrily fired back, “That wouldn’t be fair! I worked really hard for my grades.
I did without, and Mary has done little or nothing. She played while I worked real hard!”
“Welcome to the Republican Party,” her father said smiling.”

While this was stolen from the Act on Campus blog, well initially, I stole it further on down the line. Now I urge you all to follow that Republicans example and say that next time someone is berating you about how evil your party is. Works for both Act and National, perhaps United Future… but I don’t know anything about them and nor do I care to. I’m that arrogant.

I was just thinking about our depleting oil supply… rather randomnly… and I came up with the realisation that Hybrid cars are a really dumb idea. All they do is slow down the rate of our fuel consumption, they don’t solve the problem. Their emmisions are yes brilliant, but only slightly more brilliant than a Volkswagen Golf diesel, which is soooo much better than a Toyota Prius or Honda Civic Hybrid. And even if we take into account their emmisions, they still pollute something awful. They still use tyres, oil in their engines and one day will turn into a rusting pile of crap. Their batteries run out after ten years, so they have to be disposed of before the car. Which really makes little sense, as literally thousands of them will end up in NZ after about eight years from Japan, leaving us with the problem of getting rid of them.
We are going to have rotting Toyota Prius’s littering our country. The poor unsuspectin NZ buyer will (in lets say five years) buy a 2003 Toyota Prius with two years of battery life left in it. They wont be able to afford a new battery as they are hidieously expensive. Also fixing the electrics in a car like that is going to cost thousands. If lets say you do buy a 2003 Prius, and some how it lasts till 2015, it WILL break down at some point. Its not perfect, even being a Toyota.
So just a warning to anyone considering buying a late ’90s Prius. DONT. Its a rubbish car anyway.

So the Green party thinks that the government are using cars that are too inneficient. They currently have a fleet of Ford Fairlane 6 cylinders, Ford LTD V8s and a couple of Holden Statesman V6s.
The Ford LTD is listed as one of the most inneficient cars in our market. Yes, its a a 5.4 litre Ford V8, RWD Australian built limo. The Fairlanes, the cars most politicians get are also big huge limos. The main reason for using Fords, is that it supports the Australian motor industry. Fair enough, they are our neighbours, after all Holden Commodores and Ford Falcons are the second and third biggest selling cars in New Zealand.
Now the Greens say they should be scrapped in favour of more fuel efficient cars… Like what? Toyota Prius’? We would be laughed at if those were our ministerial cars, plus they are minutely small. A more sensible option would be a Lexus GS450h. It, is also a hybrid like the Toyota Prius. But the reason for its electric engine is not to be more fuel efficient, its to give more power, without using more fuel. It gives it the power of a V8, but for V6 running costs. However its smaller than a Ford Fairlane, and it costs more, so that wont work.
Now Michael Cullen thinks that 2 litre Japanese cars are more comfortable than the big Aussies. What is wrong with him? He clearly doesn’t have a clue about cars. He probably thinks that Daewoos are nice cars. I can’t think of one Japanese car that is nicer to travel in than a Ford Falcon/Fairlane size car.
The answer to fuel efficiency is simple. Use diesels, they do in the UK and Europe, the government should be promoting diesel cars, encouraging manufacturers to start selling more of them here. The best car as far as price wise goes should be the new Chrysler 300c diesel. The problem with this is that they look like a pimp is driving them, then of course you hear the diesely rattle and it looks like a VERY uncool pimp is driving. They are also American, and the Greens don’t like them, nor do most Lefties to be honest… In fact many Right thinking people seem not to like them either… So thats out. Plus being American… it won’t like our corners so much.
So staying with the diesel thing, a European car looks like the best bet… But which one. The cheapest would be a Peugeot, but alas, no diesel option on the big 607. But thats ok because its terrible. The next would be a Jag. As the car has to be a limo size, the Jaguar XJ would be the most sensible option, first its British, so no problems with where it comes from, second, its a bloody excellent car, third we already have a couple in the fleet, the Govenor-General gets em. But the downside is, that the cheapest one is $139,000. And there is no Diesel option available in NZ. In fact the only three options we have are German, the Mercedes-Benz S-Class, the Volkswagen Phaeton and the Audi A8. They are all hideously expensive, the Merc (3.2 V6 diesel), being the cheapest at $189,000 for the regular, and $199,000 for the Long-wheel base. The Phaeton, the one with the coolest engine a 5.0 litre V10 diesel and the most expensive being the Audi at $214,000 with a 4.2V8 diesel. Its the most efficient however, Jeremy Clarkson drove one from London to Edinburgh and back on one tank, thats like Aucland to Wellington and back (almost) on one tank.
Now of course the government is NEVER going to spend two-hundred grand a piece on staff cars. So they are stuck with the big bad inneficient aussie limos. What a pity. The only option they have to cut down on fuel is get the new Holden Statesman’s that are about to be released… but why bother, for all the fuel it will save. The Aussie limos have virtually the same size engine as the police cars here, to use the Greens logic, we must have more efficient cop cars.
So lets get Holden Vectras!!! They will never catch anyone!!! The little Boy Racers in their little Japanese shit-boxes will be able to outrun them. I’m in favour of getting bigger faster V8 cop cars… not downsizing everything.
We need to set examples, the goverment needs to say its ok to burn fuel. The faster we burn it the quicker a geek will work out a better method.

This country is slowly going downhill… Moral standards are slipping, personal standards are slipping, in fact personal hygeine is slipping! (WOW EARTHQUAKE!!!!!! That was a bit of excitement) I guess one doesn’t notice these falling standards until one matures somewhat. However upon going for a walk today I noticed that Wellington City is becoming a larger congregation area for bums. Today at the end of Courtenay place there were seven of them hanging out drinking what I guess was methelated spirits. It makes me rather angry to be honest. Why are they allowed to drink in the streets? I am sure that there is liquor ban… The other thing that really bugs me is that they are there.

This is New Zealand, we have one of the best social welfare schemes in the world! There is no excuse to be on the streets in this country. What is so bad about your life that you have to be on the streets? I have been told that a lot of them leave half-way houses for people with mental illness and start living on the streets. Well why are they leaving? Why are they being let go? I guess one argument is that they can’t stay there for ever. Yes, but they can’t go and live in the streets! Imagine how awful it would be, people looking down on you all the time, people treating you like animals. Walking along and picking up cigarette butts to smoke. Why would anyone want to do this. A lot of the time the homeless are addicted to drugs and alcohol. Why can’t they be treated, why can’t someone with a conscience open a home for these people, to get them off the streets? I guess they have and failed because of lack of funding.

This is where the government should come in and spend a bit of money. It really wouldn’t have to be that much either. But of course it would cost $60 million to plan and get the “report” done. And once the appropriate minister had taken his cut the cost would have already run way over budget, then there is Maori consultation and what aspects of the treaty need to be taken into account. Then they have to build it. Which wouldn’t cost THAT much. The ongoing costs I believe would be rather minimal. But no the government wouldn’t want to pay the wages of fifty or so people to run the place.

This is applicable all over the place, wherever the government puts its foot. You know why? Its PC gone totally mad! For example, my old High School is having a Marae built by the entrance to the school, god knows why, apparently the original maori languages block wasn’t good enough and wasn’t prominent enough (a school that was one teacher who teaches maori). But anyway, to stay PC its being built. BUT the ridiculous thing is that the building plans were in Maori!!!!!!!! Noone can read the bloody language! So it cost another couple of grand to get them translated back into english, thus delaying the project further. Now what the bloody hell is the point in all this? To stay PC, to stay cultural??? WHY!!!????!!!!!!!???!!!! Its pure and utter madness!

And we have a spokesman, from the oppostition for the erradication of PC, who nine months ago was constantly ridiculed! Why? Because he was a threat to labours namby pamby minorities are more important the majorities. Last time I checked we lived in a democracy! And to win in a democracy you need the backing of the Majority. The whole might makes right concept! As far as I’m concerned if you don’t like the majority, too bad! And for some dumb reason the majority chose the wrong party when they went to polls a year ago, thus creating a larger downhill slope!

The soloution to all the problems we have here is not to consult with Maori everytime we need to build a house, its not to discuss how this project will work with the treaty. The solution is just to do it! Don’t fart arse around talking about it, don’t fart arse around drawing up every possible thing that will happend. Just do it. And don’t spend money where it doesn’t need to be spent.