Prediction

Following my discovery that other people are allowed to vote in this election thing that is going on - and here I was thinking all the fuss was about me and my vote and nothing else - I have decided the rest of you should vote in the following way:

• Nat 43%
• Labour 27.5%
• Greens 13%
• NZF 7% 
• Con 4%
• IMP 2% and holding Te Tai Tokerau
• Maori 1.5% but holding two Maori seats 
• ACT, UF <1 but="" each="" electorates="" holding="" li="">

Which, if it comes to pass, will give us:

• National 54
• Labour 34
• Greens 16
• NZ First 9
• Mana 3
• Maori 2
• ACT 1
• UF 1

Which gives the Labour Green bloc 50 MPs, and the National-ACT bloc 55.

So it comes down, preditably, to Which way NZ First will jump.  I would assume he would go with National as the largest party - but Winston has been making sufficient noises to make me wonder if he would sooner play the role of constructive opposition, allowing him to make a lot of noise and exert influence while not being embroiled in what I suspect will be a massively unpopular government.

Obviously, the exclusion of the Conservative Party will be significant.  If they do manage to scrape in at 5%, that changes everything, utterly.  Even though I dislike everything about them, from Colin Craig' silly alliterative name to their policies, I would actually prefer them to do that - I don't like wasted votes.  Ideally, the 5% threshold should go.  If New Zealanders want to vote for silly parties, then they can have a silly parliament.  In the meantime, I don't like the idea of people's views being excluded, even if I disagree with them, because of a stupid rule.

UF and Maori Party are also up for grabs, I think - they might tend to National but I think they could support a Labour lead goverment.  And if Mana can't be partof a Labour lead government - a very short sighted decision by Cunliffe - they can perhaps still play a positive role through confidence and supply arrangements - a position they might enjoy as much as Peters would.

You notice I don't mention the Internet Party.  If Harre makes it into parliament, I wouldn't be surprised if the Internet Party simple dissolves itself into Mana.  Dotcom will not find it useful for his continued efforts to avoid justice.

So, sadly, it looks like tomorrow will result in a period of anarchy, possibly leading to the Zombie Apocalypse.

Decision

I am pleased to announce that, after much consideration, I will be casting my electorate vote in Palmerston North for Mr Iain Lees-Galloway.

Deciding on my party vote proved much harder.

In 2002 and 2005, I voted for the Alliance - the first time in the hope of putting a couple of left wing MPs into parliament if Harre won Waitakere electorate (she didn't), and the second time out of sheer perversity, as I abhorred the direction the Labour Party was taking.

In 2008, I refused to cast a meaningful vote at all, defacing my ballot paper.  At the time, Labour's Free trade Agreement with China was enraging me; and no party that would support a government that endorsed it would receive my vote.

In 2011, I voted Mana, as I agreed with Harawira's relentless focus on child poverty.  I hope the new party might muster enough support to put two MPs into parliament and I wanted to signal my dis-satisfaction with the continued vacillations of the main leftwing parties.

This year, the situation was complicated by the Mana-Internet Party link up.  Put bluntly, Kim Dotcom is not one of us.  He is not on our side.  Everything about him - the flamboyant lifestyle, the massive mansion, the transparent attempts to buy influence, jars hideously with the core Mana message of eradicating child poverty.  This man has no interest in that.  He is interested only in himself, and everything he touches is tainted by the contact.  I tried to ignore all this and focus on the positives - Harawira, Sykes, Minto, Harre ... but it wasn't enough.  Sorry guys.  I told you at the time it was a bad idea.

Labour appealed, largely out of a sense of pity and a defiant urge to do the opposite of whatever Key, Ede, Slater and the rest of the corrupt Dirty Politics scum-bags wanted me to do.  They didn't want me to vote Labour, so it seemed like a good idea to do that.  Also, I felt that they deserved every iota of support going after the Dirty Politics revelations.  What better way to signal opposition for everything John Key has come to represent, the corruption, the venality, the gross indecency masquerading as honest comment, the glib, superficial and deeply cynical and nasty attitude, than by voting for the party most likely to replace him?  But Labour proved impossible to love.  They are far better at mutilating their chances of victory than National.  From Cunliffe's performances in the debates, which consisted of waving his hands about weirdly and trying to talk over Key (when the sensible strategy would have been to stand back, shake his head and look prime ministerial) to the hopelessly clueless decision to announce the promising New Zealand Inc policy on the same fucking day as Dotcom's big reveal, everything they have done has been clueless.  Hell, given three years notice of how Key would attack the (sane and sensible) Capital gains Tax policy, they were still flat-footed.  So a vote for Labour would be endorsing that inebriated stumbling performance.  ANd I couldn't do that.

Which left me with the Greens.  Who I have never voted for before, here or in Britain - largely because I do prioritise social issues over environmental ones (thought they are all social issues in the end).  But this year they offered the sanest policy I have ever heard in New Zealand politics - a new top rate of tax targeting income over $140,000.  And they wanted to use the money from it to tackle child poverty.  And on top of that, they have run the most sure-footed campaign of any of the left-wing parties.

So in 2014 I'll be giving my party vote to the Greens.

So that's that.  Russel and Meteria for joint PMs.  You can all calm down, I have decided ... What, you mean the rest of you lot get a vote as well?  What sort of fool system is this?

The Mail - merely mad, or essentially evil?

I think the Mail has actually gone clinically insane over Independence.

It's running a story titled "Salmond's bullies hit a blind man in the face - just for saying NO!" and referring to yes voters as 'separatists' who are likely to use 'menacing tactics' to intimidate and bully loyal unionists.

What a heap of shit it is. I wish I was in Scotland so I could vote Yes just to spite it.

And this visceral reaction makes me suspect think the Mail's relentless negative, personal and disgusting raving is a deliberate tactic to motivate people to vote YES, out of anger and contempt for its poison. After all, the Mail's owners' interests aren't served by having 45 extra Labour MPs in Westminster.

David Cameron - Worst PM ever?

That is the question being asked at the top of the Independent's web site.  It links to a sterling blog post by Jean Paul Fauget, which is worth a read.  Fauget does, however, make one mistake in his ruminations.  He contends:

The colossal mistake, rather, was to not fight that contest himself – to fail to commit his government and the nation to its own self-preservation. By handing the campaign over to his political opponents on the assumption that he could never speak to the Scottish heart, it appeared – and he allowed us all to infer – that he did not care. He was too busy to keep the country together. He had more important things to do.

I think he's wrong there.

Cameron's mistake wasn't keeping out of the argument. That was probably his only smart move, because, well, you can't help but vote against Cameron, can you. Most of the Britons voting in 2010 voted against him, after all, and the Scots would naturally have done the same, because the man simply cries out to be voted against.

His mistake was telling the Scots it had to be a YES / NO referendum, with no option for enhanced devolution. That, understandably, got a lot of people's backs up and as a result is prompting them to vote yes to independence.

After all, who (to use Cameron's favoured marriage metaphor) who would want to stay in a relation with such an arrogant, high handed buffoon?

And while on the topic of marriage, it's very weird that Cameron is tearfully threatening Scotland with a permanent divorce if they vote for independence now.

Why should that be? What's to stop the separate nations reunifying in the future, if both parties are willing? It happened before, after all.

He really is a dick.

Britain - doomed?

No, not because the unruly Scots won't learn to behave, but because useless Tories are in charge. Trade deficits are running at near record levels and this is not a good thing.

With the trade deficit widening, growth slowing, and unemployment still high, house prices still rising (but more slowly - which in itself is another worrying sign), we're doomed, frankly, and we might as well face up to it.

The trade in goods deficit – exports minus imports – widened to £10.2bn from £9.4bn in June, disappointing City expectations that the deficit would narrow to £9.1bn. 

It was almost matched the largest monthly deficit on record, which was £10.3bn in April 2012. 

The broader trade in goods and services deficit also widened in July, to £3.3bn from £2.5bn in June. The Office for National Statistics data showed a larger goods deficit in July driven by a £1.3bn rise in imports to £34.2bn, outpacing a £500m increase in exports to £24bn. 

Rising imports of fuel, chemicals and aircraft drove the deficit higher, while the rise in exports was driven by oil trade with non-EU countries and pharmaceutical exports. 

The National Institute of Economic and Social Research thinktank estimated separately that the UK economy grew by 0.6% in the three months to the end of August, suggesting the rate of growth is starting to slow.

Britain has been running a trade deficit for decades, of course, but the scale of it is the concern here.  It is simply too much, sustained for too great a period.  And Tories are in charge.  Which means it is time to buy beans and head for the hills.

(It's worth noting that the rise in exports was partly driven by oil sales - which belong to Scotland, of course.  Which might explain why the establishment is so fervently opposed to independence.  The Tories would rather have oil + 40 odd Scottish Labour MPs, than a Conservative hegemony over an utterly ruined, bankrupt country called England.  At least with oil, they can carry on keeping up appearances a little while longer. )

It's almost like exporting 90% of the manufacturing sector, closing don traditional heavy industries and failing to invest in modern light alternatives, neglecting potential growth markets in renewable energy tech and so on wasn't such a smart idea.  It is hard to run an economy based on serving coffee with flair and answering telephones.  Especially as it is cheaper to do the latter from India.

Still, it isn't all bad. Economists are still getting things wrong, so at least some of the Eternal Verities are intact.

And, yes, I know, I am relying on these same economists for the forecast of slowing growth.  Which makes me a hypocrite and a Bad Man.

Am I turning Tory?

Either I'm becoming old and conservative, or Peter Hitchens is starting to become less deranged, or something like that.

No matter.  In a shocking development, the Mail has actually printed a referendum story that isn't actually anti-independence. Further portents of the apocalypse are imminently expected.

Okay, it is only a opinion column, and it is more about how shoddy the 'No' campaign has been and about how Europe = evil, but it is a start. After running about a dozen anti-independence stories every day, we should be grateful for this limited acknowledgement that other opinions exist.

There must be some rule somewhere that at least 1% of the stories must cover an alternate viewpoint ...

I was, of course, completely right

According to a new book by Naomi Klein, described in the Guardian, it turns out that Richard Branson's much publicised attempts to green his humungeous planet wrecking fleet of aircraft was just hot air.

(See what I did there?)

I, of course, predicted just such a possibility back in 2008 when Branson announced his conversion to unrelenting self publicity saving the planet.

The British entrepreneur famously promised to divert a share of the profits from his Virgin airlines empire to find a cleaner fuel, after a 2006 private meeting with Al Gore. 

Branson went on to found a $25m Earth prize for a technology that could safely suck 1bn tons of carbon a year from the atmosphere. In 2009, he set up the Carbon War Room, an NGO which works on business solutions for climate change. 

But by Klein’s estimate, Branson’s “firm commitment” of $3bn failed to materialise. 

“So the sceptics might be right: Branson’s various climate adventures may indeed prove to have all been a spectacle, a Virgin production, with everyone’s favourite bearded billionaire playing the part of planetary saviour to build his brand, land on late night TV, fend off regulators, and feel good about doing bad,” Klein writes in This Changes Everything, Capitalism vs The Climate.