Fur­ther to my ear­lier post it has been revealed that the donor was a man and from over­seas and that the amount he tried to bribe the Maori Party with was $250,000.

So it seems Trevor Mal­lard was describ­ing the bag­man accu­rately it was just that he got the party wrong. Labour is now outed as the party with over­seas bagmen. 

The rot­ting stench of coru­up­tion per­vades the body politic that is Labour. Clark must resign now, she must go. A leader that pre­sides over unprece­dented lev­els of party cor­rup­tion must be forced from office.  She doesn’t deserve to be Prime Minister.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Some­one tried to buy off the Maori Party at last years election.

It looks like it was Labour and not National using Bag­men to finance or orches­trate a result in the Gen­eral Elec­tion. We know it was a Labour sup­porter, because they wanted the Maori Party to sup­port Labour.

We also know the same per­son who Tar­i­ana Turia will not name was also a large donor to the Labour Party.

So who is it?

Well a quick perusal of Labour’s pub­lished donor list show it could be one of these fellows;

• Lim Nam Chhour $10,008
• Owen Glenn $300,000
• Anony­mous $25,000
• Anony­mous $50,000
• Anony­mous $40,000
• Anony­mous $40,000
• Anony­mous $20,000
• Anony­mous $50,000
• Anony­mous $20,000
• Anony­mous $70,000

So which one of Labour’s anony­mous donors was try­ing to sub­vert the elec­tion? More cor­rup­tion insti­gated by Labour me thinks.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

And that is exactly why there should be some scrutiny.

It is sim­ply not accept­able for $38 mil­lion of pub­lic funds to be handed out willy-nilly on sus­pect studies.

Oh and while we are talk­ing about sus­pect, we can all reme­ber Helen Clark’s faux out­rage and promises to look into some­thing she didn’t know any­thing about despite the fact her dear hus­band was one of the panelists.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

It is Time to open the “Main Truck Line”

New Zealan­ders are get­ting anx­ious about the ongo­ing clo­sure of freight lines in the regions.

We shouldn’t be.

Instead we should be wel­com­ing this oppor­tu­nity to upgrade our trans­port sys­tem to make road travel eas­ier and safer for us all.

We should get the trains off these rail beds, tear up the tracks and lay down a road bed ded­i­cated to trucks – and express buses if need be.

This is such a log­i­cal and cost-effective move you would think it would have been done long ago. But the idea is always chal­lenged by those who believe our trans­port solu­tions lie with nine­teenth cen­tury tech­nol­ogy rather than the advanced tech­nol­ogy wait­ing in the wings.

Cer­tainly, the rail oper­a­tors in the UK were out­raged by the report by Paul With­ring­ton, “Reignit­ing the Rail­way Con­ver­sion Debate” pub­lished by the UK Insti­tute of Eco­nomic Affairs, in June 2004. The abstract reads:

The UK rail­road­ers should know bet­ter than to reject such find­ings out of hand – because good man­agers should be ask­ing these kinds of ques­tions, and exam­in­ing these kinds of strate­gies, all the time. Sue Ked­g­ley deplores clos­ing these rail lines because, she asks, “Hasn’t the gov­ern­ment heard of cli­mate change?” Well, the UK study finds that
the trucks use 25% per cent fuel than the trains, and this effi­ciency improves by the day. Trains are only kept on the rails by their weight – every­thing is heavy and weight needs fuel. So “steel on rail” is doomed to become less effi­cient than “rub­ber on road” with every pass­ing day.

Some tun­nels may need widen­ing and some bridges may need mod­i­fy­ing. Some tun­nels can be con­trolled by traf­fic lights. Hardly any of the actual rail cor­ri­dors will need widen­ing and the adjoin­ing land is nor­mally farm­land and hence quite cheap. Any costs can be financed out of tolls, and the sav­ings on reduced upgrad­ing of our regional high­ways will be mas­sive. The Gov­ern­ment as owner of the cor­ri­dors could actu­ally make some money instead of every­one oper­at­ing at a loss.

My analy­sis of the emerg­ing trans­port tech­nol­ogy sug­gests
“rubber-on-road” will almost cer­tainly totally dis­place “steel-on-rail” from all rail beds, just as gas tur­bines dis­placed pis­tons in aircraft.

While the effi­ciency gains would be imme­di­ate the next gen­er­a­tion of trucks will “drive by wire” on these con­verted “rail corridors”.

The driver’s hands and legs will instruct the com­puter which will instruct the drive train and the hydraulic power sys­tems. A guide-wire down the cen­tre of the newly con­structed road-bed, laid over our present rail­way lines, will allow the com­put­erised steer­ing sys­tem to keep the truck “on-line”. Truck dri­vers will drive their trucks to the shunt­ing yard where they will leave them and drive away on an incom­ing truck to deliver its local load. These trucks will be mechan­i­cally and elec­tron­i­cally con­nected into “truck-trains” dri­ven by only one “dri­ver” in the front cab, mon­i­tor­ing the per­for­mance of every truck in
the train. At the next “sta­tion”, trucks will peel off to be dri­ven away, again by local dri­vers, to their local des­ti­na­tion. The sav­ings in labour costs will be immense.

The cou­pled trucks will reduce drag. Acci­dent rates will decline.

Dri­vers will never drive far from home. Lots of short trips will replace lots of long ones.

Hardly any trucks would drive on the reg­u­lar roads which would then require much less main­te­nance and be much safer for every­one. Tourists in par­tic­u­lar will be much happier.

The AA Advo­cate (Win­ter 2006) fore­sees mas­sive on-road con­flicts between huge num­bers of log­ging trucks, milk trucks and for­eign tourists. By 2030 the AA sug­gests every other drive on the road could be a for­eign visitor.

Sadly, it appears the cur­rent oper­a­tors of the steel-on-rail trains won’t make the switch because, like the vac­uum tube man­u­fac­tur­ers of the fifties who failed to switch to tran­sis­tors, they are com­mit­ted to run­ning their hard­ware rather than pro­vid­ing a service.

So when the first “truck train” calls into your local sta­tion it will be oper­ated by a com­pany with a name like Freight­ways or DSL. And a bun­dle of com­pa­nies with names like X-track and Y-rail will dis­ap­pear from cor­po­rate memory.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The National Cau­cus has sus­pended Brian “Cell­phone in the Pocket” Con­nell because of his fail­ure to show the restraint and dis­ci­pline expected of a Cau­cus mem­ber, and it had no con­fi­dence in him.

Good job, lit­tle turd. Expect a des­e­lec­tion next.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Helen Clark has mis-caluclated the mood of the people. 

The size of the mis-calculation is Kyoto Com­mitt­ment proportions.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

My cheque arrived on the weekend.

Thanks to C&R Now for get­ting me this.

Don’t for­get to thank them by vot­ing for them (see pic­ture below) in the upcom­ing Auck­land Energy Con­sumer Trust election. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

The Her­ald has pre-released their poll for tomorrow.

Again this presents a chal­lenge for Jordan.

The poll of 500 peo­ple by the New Zealand Her­ald and DigiPoll has National ahead on 45.7 per cent with Labour lag­ging on 38 per cent.

The Green rise is also con­firmed in this poll.

More details tomorrow.

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

This is a true story, it hap­pened in Utah!

A city coun­cil­man, Mark Eas­ton, lives in this neigh­bour­hood. He had a beau­ti­ful view of the east moun­tains, until a new neigh­bour pur­chased the lot below his house and built. Appar­ently, the new home was 18 inches higher than the ordi­nances would allow, so Mark Eas­ton, mad about his lost view, went to the city to make sure they enforced the lower roof line ordi­nance. Mark and his new neigh­bor had some great argu­ments about this as you can imag­ine – not great feelings.

The new neigh­bor had to drop the roof line – no doubt at great expense.

Recently, Mark Eas­ton called the city and informed them that his new neigh­bor had installed some vents on the side of his home. Mark didn’t like the look of these vents and asked the city to inves­ti­gate. When they went to Mark’s home to see the vent view, this is what they found…

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

It exists and they have released a video.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Have you heard of the Mars­den Fund? No! Well it is a fund of about $38 Mil­lion of pub­lic funds admin­is­tered by the Royal Society.

So what, you say.

Well they have just awarded grants and  a fair chunk of the grants were awarded to mem­bers of the judg­ing panel.

Pigs, snouts, trough anyone.

For exam­ple;

One pan­elist, award-winning les­bian nov­el­ist Anna­marie Jagose, won close to $500,000 for a new cul­tural his­tory of sex that will include research into “the hus­tler, the mod­ern orgasm” and “the sex­ual cul­ture of Auckland”.

or;

The extended mind in early mod­ern Eng­land, to be stud­ied by pan­el­list Pro­fes­sor EB Trib­ble at a cost of $455,000.

Waste any­one? 

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

In an amaz­ing fit of petu­lance Labour has announced that they will review laws in revenge against the Exclu­sive Brethren.

This is an astound­ing attack against a group whose sole crime it seems is that it opposes the government.

What will it take to stop such a venal gov­ern­ment from using its power in such a shock­ing way against it citizens. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Given the stel­lar rat­ings being expe­ri­enced by National I reckon Don Brash should have a few more affairs.

Vot­ers are clearly not swayed by Labours muck­rak­ing and have given National a 3% rise to 49% in the lat­est One News Col­mar Brun­ton poll.

Labour dropped a mas­sive 5% to 38%, giv­ing National an 11 point lead.

Now I know why Labour is try­ing very, very hard to get rid of Don Brash. He is hurt­ing them in the polls. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Just for you Cactus Kate,

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]

Audrey Young has seen through Clark’s cha­rades over Mal­lard. She writes that Labour is sim­ply try­ing to dis­tract from their ebbing sup­port in par­lia­ment for ret­ro­spec­tive legislation.

Exactly, Audrey, exactly. Boy I can’t wait till the next poll comes out. 

Pop­u­lar­ity: unranked [?]