Kia-ora
We are in the fortunate position that we do not need nuclear power. The amount of renewable energy from low impact hydro, wind, solar, biomass (Eg forestry waste) and wave available in NZ can more than meet all our predictable energy needs now and in future. There should be a total ban in NZ of any new non-renewable power generation including nuclear and coal. Nuclear energy is not renewable and the long term storage problem has not been solved.
On the other hand A lower energy world is not going to happen as 9 billion people need energy to survive. While using local resources only and returning to a sort of pre-19th Century utopia sounds good it would mean we could feed only a fraction of the world. Investment in lower emitting, lower energy technology is needed for both economic and environmental reasons. This is where a carbon tax used for developing green tech would have been a much better option for our future than the present joke of an ETS. (Allows pollution so long as you pass the costs onto customers and taxpayers.)
Thursday, June 24, 2010
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
World's rich got richer amid recession | Stuff.co.nz
World's rich got richer amid recession | Stuff.co.nz
Kia-ora
If you are wondering where all the money went?
Wage and salary earners share of GDP in NZ is below 44% and still dropping rapidly.
Kia-ora
If you are wondering where all the money went?
Wage and salary earners share of GDP in NZ is below 44% and still dropping rapidly.
Operation Mincemeat and spycraft in World War Two : The New Yorker
Operation Mincemeat and spycraft in World War Two : The New Yorker
Kia-ora
Operation mincemeat is a good amusing story, but in the light of current revelations about SIS it is a salutary reminder about the nuttiness of the spy and counter spy silliness of so called intelligence agencies.
Kia-ora
Operation mincemeat is a good amusing story, but in the light of current revelations about SIS it is a salutary reminder about the nuttiness of the spy and counter spy silliness of so called intelligence agencies.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Kia-ora
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/02/08/plug-in-hybrids-renewable-energy-solution-of-the-month/
How the solution may look?
http://climatecrocks.com/2010/02/08/plug-in-hybrids-renewable-energy-solution-of-the-month/
How the solution may look?
Friday, June 18, 2010
Democracy
Kia-ora
"Democracy is the worst political system, except for all the others." Winston Churchill et al.
John Adams, letter to John Taylor (15 April 1814)
"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both"
George F. Kennan, in American Diplomacy (1951)
"You may fool all the people some of the time; ... some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time".
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln by Alexander K. McClure (1904) "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories.
"If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It."
Greens talk about consensus decision making as the ideal and it is good when it happens, but who is the final arbiter of consensus?
"Democracy is the worst political system, except for all the others." Winston Churchill et al.
John Adams, letter to John Taylor (15 April 1814)
"We may have democracy, or we may have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both"
George F. Kennan, in American Diplomacy (1951)
"You may fool all the people some of the time; ... some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time".
Attributed to Abraham Lincoln by Alexander K. McClure (1904) "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories.
"If Voting Changed Anything They'd Abolish It."
Greens talk about consensus decision making as the ideal and it is good when it happens, but who is the final arbiter of consensus?
Who decides when consensus is reached? What is the final arbiter! Democracy means decisions taken by all. Consensus is one method but when consensus fails do we abide by the decisions of all taken by such methods as BCIR or do we abide by decisions of politicians who seem to get it spectacularly wrong most of the time.
At the moment we have so called representative democracy which simply means we have a choice of dictatorship every three years. If most people do not like what they are doing you have little choice but to elect the opposite party who may or may not reverse what has been done.
Just because you may or may not like the results of a recent BCIR is no reason to say that is the wrong way to run a democratic system. The majority are more likely to get it right than a minority of power hungry self centred idealoges in Parliament. How many of the things imposed on us by Labour and National have been in the best interests of more than a few narrow groups in NZ. The sheer arrogance of politicians and journalists contempt for the "great unwashed" and the inability to give up power to the governed is behind most of the objections to citizens having a say in Government.
The Swiss system on the whole runs very well. Including protecting minorities. There has been hiccups with BCIR in California, but not in many other places where it is used. The Icelanders telling the banks to get s-fed was great.
We need more power devolved to the voters..
People who have voting power will also demand better information from politicians and journalists.
" In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".
Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man, 1949.
But which one would you rather live in?
At the moment we have so called representative democracy which simply means we have a choice of dictatorship every three years. If most people do not like what they are doing you have little choice but to elect the opposite party who may or may not reverse what has been done.
Just because you may or may not like the results of a recent BCIR is no reason to say that is the wrong way to run a democratic system. The majority are more likely to get it right than a minority of power hungry self centred idealoges in Parliament. How many of the things imposed on us by Labour and National have been in the best interests of more than a few narrow groups in NZ. The sheer arrogance of politicians and journalists contempt for the "great unwashed" and the inability to give up power to the governed is behind most of the objections to citizens having a say in Government.
The Swiss system on the whole runs very well. Including protecting minorities. There has been hiccups with BCIR in California, but not in many other places where it is used. The Icelanders telling the banks to get s-fed was great.
We need more power devolved to the voters..
People who have voting power will also demand better information from politicians and journalists.
" In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love; they had 500 years of democracy and peace -- and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock".
Orson Welles as Harry Lime in The Third Man, 1949.
But which one would you rather live in?
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Kia-ora
I wonder if the Green party is shooting itself in the foot by constantly referring to the rich as those in the 70k plus bracket.
Many Green party members must fit my profile.
We the earners in the 70 to 150k bracket are working class/middle class. We have had a drop in incomes and availability of jobs with Government policies also. Immigration is deliberately used to keep our earnings down while we are told an executive earning 100 times our salaries is necessary to attract "talent" (It takes a lot of talent, it seems, to cut costs by cutting wages and shifting jobs to lower paid workers offshore).
We are Teachers, small business people, General Practitioners, successful trades people, mechanics, electricians, hairdressers, shopkeepers, farmers (the family ones who pay taxes), engineers, architects, draftsmen, supervisors. The people who have spent time getting an education or learning a trade. We are the people who along with Labourers, cleaners, rubbish men and road menders keep everything working.
A lot of us have been on minimum wages, student allowances, sickness benefits or unemployment during our lives and know how miserable they are.
Most of us are happy to pay our share taxes for a fair society, but we are not happy to see the truly wealthy avoid their share. Much of our taxes are wasted through corporate welfare, bureaucratic and Government mis management rather than going to the people who need it. Not to say that private sector management is any better, but managing our state services should be to best practice, not a refuge for time servers. Most of the tax burden does fall on higher wage and salary earners who work for their money. Those who get it through capital gains and money earning money are largely untaxed.
We want to see poorer people have the educational opportunities we had, the jobs and aspirations to become constructive and contributing members of society. So they can afford to pay our super :-) .We get annoyed when our young people have no jobs, apprenticeships or higher education to go to because of mean spirited and failed neo-liberal policies.
We are mostly boomers, but do not think there will be enough money to pay pensions soon. We would like to invest in something to offset the burden on, or pass on, to our kids, but housing is the only one not subject to fraud by unregulated financial traders.
We voted against Muldoons election bribery, Douglas's destruction, Richardsons meanness and Keys smiling deconstruction of welfare by stealth.
We support acknowledgment of disadvantages to Maori, but wonder why it also seems to be enriching a few rather than helping the kids we see in our schools and surgeries. The foreshore and seabed row seems more about making money from aquaculture than guardianship.
We join the Greens, not because we agree with everything they do, but because they are the only party remaining in NZ that does not see the pursuit of ever greater wealth as the overriding goal of society. The test of a society is how they treat their most disadvantaged and what they pass on to their children. as someone said the " Greens have their heart in the right place".
I wonder if the Green party is shooting itself in the foot by constantly referring to the rich as those in the 70k plus bracket.
Many Green party members must fit my profile.
We the earners in the 70 to 150k bracket are working class/middle class. We have had a drop in incomes and availability of jobs with Government policies also. Immigration is deliberately used to keep our earnings down while we are told an executive earning 100 times our salaries is necessary to attract "talent" (It takes a lot of talent, it seems, to cut costs by cutting wages and shifting jobs to lower paid workers offshore).
We are Teachers, small business people, General Practitioners, successful trades people, mechanics, electricians, hairdressers, shopkeepers, farmers (the family ones who pay taxes), engineers, architects, draftsmen, supervisors. The people who have spent time getting an education or learning a trade. We are the people who along with Labourers, cleaners, rubbish men and road menders keep everything working.
A lot of us have been on minimum wages, student allowances, sickness benefits or unemployment during our lives and know how miserable they are.
Most of us are happy to pay our share taxes for a fair society, but we are not happy to see the truly wealthy avoid their share. Much of our taxes are wasted through corporate welfare, bureaucratic and Government mis management rather than going to the people who need it. Not to say that private sector management is any better, but managing our state services should be to best practice, not a refuge for time servers. Most of the tax burden does fall on higher wage and salary earners who work for their money. Those who get it through capital gains and money earning money are largely untaxed.
We want to see poorer people have the educational opportunities we had, the jobs and aspirations to become constructive and contributing members of society. So they can afford to pay our super :-) .We get annoyed when our young people have no jobs, apprenticeships or higher education to go to because of mean spirited and failed neo-liberal policies.
We are mostly boomers, but do not think there will be enough money to pay pensions soon. We would like to invest in something to offset the burden on, or pass on, to our kids, but housing is the only one not subject to fraud by unregulated financial traders.
We voted against Muldoons election bribery, Douglas's destruction, Richardsons meanness and Keys smiling deconstruction of welfare by stealth.
We support acknowledgment of disadvantages to Maori, but wonder why it also seems to be enriching a few rather than helping the kids we see in our schools and surgeries. The foreshore and seabed row seems more about making money from aquaculture than guardianship.
We join the Greens, not because we agree with everything they do, but because they are the only party remaining in NZ that does not see the pursuit of ever greater wealth as the overriding goal of society. The test of a society is how they treat their most disadvantaged and what they pass on to their children. as someone said the " Greens have their heart in the right place".
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
The Burning Platform, financial collapse, depression, war
The Burning Platform, financial collapse, depression, war
Kia-ora
"The “creativity” of Wall Street was complimented by corporate America instituting “free trade” and “globalization” policies (NAFTA) supported by politicians in Washington DC. The terms free trade and globalization were code for corporate CEOs shipping US manufacturing jobs to China, India, and Vietnam, while expanding their corporate earnings per share 3 cents above analyst expectations per quarter. As reward for gutting American industry, the CEOs demanded their Board of Director toadies give them stock options for 1 million shares and $10 million raises. Does it require a Harvard degree and ingenious brilliance to fire 100,000 American workers making $20 per hour and build a plant in China paying peasants $1 per hour and depending on cheap oil to inexpensively ship the goods back to America? Only one problem, people without jobs have trouble buying stuff. Without middle class jobs, corporate CEOs turned to their Harvard buddies on Wall Street to create $1.2 quadrillion of financial derivatives to convince the middle class they really had wealth to spend on cheap Chinese goods. This corporate/banking collusion was fully supported by their paid for representatives in Washington DC. This unholy alliance between big business and big government enriched the ruling elite, while impoverishing the middle class."
Kia-ora
"The “creativity” of Wall Street was complimented by corporate America instituting “free trade” and “globalization” policies (NAFTA) supported by politicians in Washington DC. The terms free trade and globalization were code for corporate CEOs shipping US manufacturing jobs to China, India, and Vietnam, while expanding their corporate earnings per share 3 cents above analyst expectations per quarter. As reward for gutting American industry, the CEOs demanded their Board of Director toadies give them stock options for 1 million shares and $10 million raises. Does it require a Harvard degree and ingenious brilliance to fire 100,000 American workers making $20 per hour and build a plant in China paying peasants $1 per hour and depending on cheap oil to inexpensively ship the goods back to America? Only one problem, people without jobs have trouble buying stuff. Without middle class jobs, corporate CEOs turned to their Harvard buddies on Wall Street to create $1.2 quadrillion of financial derivatives to convince the middle class they really had wealth to spend on cheap Chinese goods. This corporate/banking collusion was fully supported by their paid for representatives in Washington DC. This unholy alliance between big business and big government enriched the ruling elite, while impoverishing the middle class."
Monday, June 14, 2010
Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
Industry Ignored Its Scientists on Climate - NYTimes.com
Kia-ora
More on the denial industry. Why does this not get wide publicity?
Kia-ora
More on the denial industry. Why does this not get wide publicity?
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