Jones on asset sales
Bob Jones writes in the Herald:
Defending the contentious asset sales policy, the Prime Minister argues he was open about his party’s intentions before the last election and thus has a mandate. The openness was commendable but not so his assumption. His party would still have won if it had also proposed publicly hanging the unemployed, which, mind you, when one quietly considers it, does have some merit.
I look forward to all the outraged comments that Jones advocating hanging beneficiaries.
After all, public hangings were immensely popular entertainments in Britain, drawing enormous crowds and in the process creating much happiness and gainful work, (hangmen for example) plus considerable food and beverage, manufacturing and purveying employment. The sole shortcoming with the public hanging industry though was its brevity.
This was resolved by introducing multiple successive hangings, thereby ensuring a decent day’s family outing and a corresponding greater demand for food and drinks. Learning from this, boxing promoters of the day introduced preliminary bouts; these multiple hangings and preliminary fights initiatives marking yet another giant stride forward in the march of civilisation.
Heh.
Our existing dams are monopolies, thanks to the greenies’ wrong assertion that they always damage the environment. They certainly can do, such as the ill-considered enormous Mekong dam planned by Laos, which likely will be stopped by the other Mekong nations. But in New Zealand? I don’t think so.
Rather than wreck the environment, they’ve enhanced it. Prior to the construction (despite the then massive public protest) of the huge South Island dams, the top end of the food chain in the rivers to be dammed were brown trout, averaging in weight at maturity, rarely more than 3lb. Today, Otago newspapers regularly show photos of anglers holding 15lb and upwards trout, caught from these dam-created lakes.
Have a chat to nymphs, cockabullies and the other diverse lake life, all the way up the food chain, and they’ll tell you they’re now living the life of Riley, having escaped the arduous river existence of their ancestors.
Additionally, the lakes have created yachting, boating, lakeside residences and other pluses. Nevertheless, as the greenies are currently in the policy ascendancy and people enjoying themselves always hugely upsets them, new dams are out.
I agree a dam can have many benefits. But I don’t think dams are monopolies. They compete with other dams and other sources of power. We have a competitive market and price for electricity – 400,000 people swapped provider last year. The ultimate proof.
What puzzles me is why the Government doesn’t sell TVNZ. The rationale for owning it was to ensure quality public broadcasting. It’s hardly debatable that TVNZ’s fare is, with few exceptions, a diet of populist trash, yet inexplicably, its one attempt to create a channel providing a degree of quality broadcasting it’s now closing.
TVNZ should be sold, and the capital used to fund a public broadcaster.