National's wheel of fortune II

Via Dim-Post, another version:

(Image by Joe Wylie)

National's wheel of fortune

How National generates policy (inspiration from this and this; artwork by Tim Denee):

Live by the market, be buried by the market

Margaret Thatcher is one of Britain's greatest criminals, whose disbelief in society caused her to destroy it. As a former Prime Minister, she is in line for a state funeral when she dies (which will provide a focus for protest over her toxic legacy). Which is rather ironic, given her beliefs about the role of the state. And so someone has started an e-petition (a formal UK government consultation exercise which can trigger Parliamentary debates) demanding that her funeral be privatised:

In keeping with the great lady's legacy, Margaret Thatcher's state funeral should be funded and managed by the private sector to offer the best value and choice for end users and other stakeholders. The undersigned believe that the legacy of the former PM deserves nothing less and that offering this unique opportunity is an ideal way to cut government expense and further prove the merits of liberalised economics Baroness Thatcher spearheaded.

And they're right. Thatcher was an anti-statist. Surely she should live - and be buried - by those ideals, rather than leeching a final fling at the expense of hard-working taxpayers. Anything less would be hypocritical.

Meanwhile, on the Guardian, Sunny Hundal has some ideas on what Thatcher's privatised funeral could look like:

Consider the endless possibilities, for die-hard Thatcherites, of privatising the event. I think we can agree it should be ticketed so it can turn a profit. Perhaps an IT company (let's call them Crapita for example), could sell tickets via the internet. You may have to wait a couple of months to get the system off the ground but at least it'll work … eventually. If it's anything like the privatisation of the railways, none of the funeral services would run on time and you'd end up with 500 people in a church meant for 200.

But there could be optional extras otherwise denied by the state. You could pay to have an opportunity to wail, as North Koreans seem to have perfected. Wailing while stabbing a picture of Arthur Scargill should obviously cost much more. Opportunities to sell Thatcher memorabilia (a picture of her with Pinochet, sir?) would be endless. It could even boost our sagging economy.

The television rights to the event should be auctioned off, perhaps for a private library dedicated to Thatcher (with John Maynard Keynes banned from the economics section of course).

Unmentioned: selling the right to spit on the corpse or piss on her grave (because its going to happen, so they might as well get money for it). Hell, they could even provide the service, so that those unable to attend in person could have someone do it for them.

Morality? Taste? The market does not know of such things. And if you're happy with the mass unemployment, poverty and degradation which were the inevitable result of Thatcher's policies, you can hardly get prissy about a little matter of degrading a corpse. But if you want to be hypocritical about that too, you can always pay for it not to happen. That's what the free market would want.

In case you hadn't already seen it

Last week, Russell Brown did a great post on the politics of absence, about National's strategy of burying serious political news under a tide of trivial pap and feel-good stories about John Key. Today, we have the Dim-Post's response:

(Click for a larger version).

Sums it all up pretty well, doesn't it?

A modest proposal

The government is currently engaged in a slash and burn cost-cutting exercise, cutting things which it considers "nice to have" (education, health, welfare benefits) while it retains "necessities" (tax cuts for the rich, tax cuts for foreign corporations, uneconomic roads). While its at it, it might want to consider this idea: disestablishing Treasury.

I'm serious. All Treasury ever does is tell us to cut taxes and lower spending, a message that does not change regardless of economic circumstances. Currently we pay $44 million a year for this "advice". A phone-accessible recorded message or even a trained parrot would be a much cheaper solution.

Irony

Last night, Parliament passed wide-ranging emergency legislation vesting near-absolute power in Gerry Brownlee. Today, its website is celebrating the International Day of Democracy.

A Tui

Humour: Frank Bainimarama approached to head interim ECan regime

From Rapid Fire:

FOREIGN Minister Murray McCully has allegedly approached Fijian strong man Commodore Frank Bainimarama to head up the sacked Ecan regional council in Canterbury, much to the military dictator's bemusement.

An undercover Rabid Fire reporter definitely not rorting Rabid Fire expenses for a tropical holiday followed McCully to Fiji and somewhat unconvincingly disguised as a member of the Fijian military with a boom mike extending suspiciously from his trousers, recorded the following conversation...

Read the rest here.

It's an apt comparison. The government has just taken away Cantabrians' right to vote because they did not trust the democratic process to deliver the "right" outcome. And they're not going to give it back until 2013, by which time they aim to have given away all the water irreversibly to their cronies. They may not have used guns, but its a coup just the same - and we should not accept it.

A useful addition to the political vocabulary

Courtesy of Public Address' David Haywood: Gluesniffer: an advocate of ACT-style free-market policies:

Hide's forehead gleams with enthusiasm as he explains to me how the experience led to his political enlightenment. "Prior to regular sniffing, I'd thought that ACT's policies were crazy. They seemed to be the very opposite of what was needed to fix this country. But as soon as I started to sniff then it all began to make perfect sense. And the more I sniffed, the more sense it made."

Fired-up on solvents, Hide introduced himself to ACT leader, Sir Roger Douglas. "It turned out that Roger was a sniffer from way back," recalls Hide. "So, of course, he invited me to be president of the ACT party. Those were great days. Roger and I used to pass around a tube of Ados S4, and churn out policy as fast as we could type."

Read the rest here. It's the best sort of satire - absolutely ludicrous, yet scarily believable at the same time.

Meanwhile, now I'm wondering what the Commerce Commission has been sniffing...

Hurricanes are like buses

You wait ages and ages for one, then three come along at once:

(Image stolen from the current map on the NHC; Ana has weakened since last night)

A real threat to our security

In my last post, I asked the question of what threat the Americans would be defnding us against in exchange for us sending people to die for them in Afghanistan. I'd been thinking of something external - penguins, alien invasion, Aussie bankers - but in fact the real threat to New Zealand's national security is internal: cows with guns:

Climate change: Our policy is a joke

Scoop's Lyndon Hood on the government's inaction on climate change:

Climate Change: New Zealand To Stand On Proud Record Of Doing Nothing

In the face of mounting international consensus on the need for action on climate change, New Zealand intends to rely on its reputation for vague intentions backed by no action.

After the results of widespread public consultation favour strong action, Climate Change Minister Nick Smith has explained that New Zealand's emissions target should take into account the way "we haven't done anything towards it in the past and don't want to do anything in the future."

Since human-induced climate change was recognised as a problem, New Zealand has failed to introduce a carbon tax, then briefly introduced an emissions trading scheme, until we realised it wasn't watered-down enough.

"This Government has delayed the ETS and taken a range of other policy decisions such as cutting funding for public transport," said Smith, "So really, we're starting at a disadvantage. Is that fair?"

"Let me be clear: Doing nothing is no longer an option," he said.

"The time has come to do as little as possible."

I guess National are hoping that overseas governments planning border carbon taxes will also see the funny side.

Write your own referendum question

I know, it's the same as The Standard's. But it really gets to the heart of what this referendum is about: whether parents should be allowed to punch their children in the face, or shove them to the ground repeatedly, or beat them with soup ladles, or string them up as part of some twisted and sadistic ideal of "good parenting"?

The child-beaters say "yes". I say "no". If it would be criminal to do it to an adult, it can be no less criminal to do it to a child. If the law fails to protect the most vulnerable among us, and specifically allows them to be victimised and abused by sadists, then it is worthless.

(Oh, and you can write your own question here)

How to vote in the referendum

Courtesy of Scoop's Lyndon Hood:

Unfortunately, it did miss a perfectly good opportunity to ask whether the present King of France is bald. OTOH, the answer to that should probably be which bloody one?

Non-Euclidean horrors

I'm not sure how they've done it, but this photo (stolen from Stuff) manages to give Tony Ryall a decidedly non-Euclidean slant. It's so strong that its actually queeze-inducing and makes my eyes hurt when I look at it.

So, is it just the way he's standing, is it a side-effect of swine flu, or is Ryall really Nyarlathotep?

Either way, a message to "stay calm" accompanied by that photo should have exactly the opposite effect.

Truth through humour

(Stolen from the Hand Mirror)

Anything but Sweden!

The Standard highlights the first part of the Daily Show's trip to Sweden to uncover the horrors of a socialist society. Part two screened last night. In case you missed it:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Stockholm Syndrome Pt. 2
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Free education, free healthcare, well-paid and well-treated workers - I can see what American elites have to be afraid of. As for the rest of us...

Scandanavian socialism seems to be a theme on US television at the moment - just before I saw that, I'd caught the tail end of 20/20 boggling at Denmark, where a strong social safety net and a high level of equality had led to the country being the happiest place on Earth. Cthulhu forfend that Americans - or kiwis - end up like that!

A giant gay storm

US conservatives have been doing their nut recently about the "threat" of gay marriage (because obviously, gays being treated just like everybody else is a threat, rather than basic human decency), and have recently released an internet ad called "the gathering storm" in an effort to organise opposition against it (into a "rainbow coalition" of bigots, no less). The ad is hilarious, and cries out for parody. Fortunately, Stephen Colbert has risen to the occasion...

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Colbert Coalition's Anti-Gay Marriage Ad
colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Roll out the knightcart

The other day, in a discussion about the re-introduction of knighthoods, Jim Anderton sought leave to table "a copy of the A R D Fairburn poem “On the Awarding of Knighthoods”, to be sung to the tune of “Waltzing Matilda”." This intrigued me, and I spent some time unsuccessfully googling to find it. I was unsuccessful - but fortunately Scoop has found a copy. It's not very good, but it is delightfully cynical:

Jack up! Jack up! Jack up the knightcart!
Who’ll come a-hunting a knighthood with me?
For I’ve always backed the Party up, it’s time I got a bloody gong —
Who’ll come a-hunting a knighthood with me?

[...]

Roll out the knightcart! Roll out the knightcart!
Who’ll come a-hunting a knighthood with me?
For we’ll get our bloody gongs now they’ve changed the bloody Government —
WHO’LL COME A-HUNTING A KNIGHTHOOD WITH ME?

Looks like some things never change.

Just what we all want to do

You too can now throw a shoe at George Bush.

(Unfortunately, its in Norwegian. But you drag the sliders on the power and angle, then tell it to "kast skoen").