Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Showing posts with label Nanny State. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nanny State. Show all posts

Friday, May 16, 2014

Friday Review: Where Does the State End? Tax Surveillance Grown in Budget … Again. Paid Parental Leave. Surveillance Down on the Farm. Failure of Prohibition.

 

Random views of the Police State from sitting in bed this Friday morning, strolling through Twitter.
 

First, the surveillance state down on the farm. Health and Safety officers are watching farmers from roads … no really. Bloody hell:
 

A Rai Valley dairy farmer says a $15,000 fine handed out to a Marlborough farmhand for not wearing a helmet while riding a quad bike is "absolutely bloody ridiculous".

 
Kerry Robbins said he felt sorry for Rangi Holmes, who had been punished for doing something all farmworkers were guilty of at some point.

 
[Snip]

 
WorkSafe New Zealand inspectors had been visiting farms in the area more often, making farmers uneasy about being seen to be doing the right thing, he said.

 
"You feel a bit like Big Brother is watching you, they sit out on the road there, you're too scared to fart in case someone hears you."

 

On news that the police have come out publicly to oppose legalisation of cannabis by dint only of the affect this may have on road safety, my response:
 




 




 

It is the role of the police to enforce the non-initiation of force and fraud principle: it is not the role of police to say what private citizens can or cannot do if they are doing no harm to others. If you include in harm to others the road statistics, then by the exact logic the police must also demand prohibition on alcohol. Yes, driving under the influence of cannabis, as with alcohol, should be a criminal offence, but that is not an argument against the legalisation of either. On the same theme, if someone wants to die stupidly by not wearing a crash helmet, that is not the business of safety officers stalking farmers on their farms.
 

In passing, now I’ve mentioned prohibition, I read another article this morning (didn’t bookmark, sorry) on how the program of legalising cannabis across many states in America is for the first time achieving what the DEA were never capable of by ruining countless many innocent lives in the infamous war on drugs: destroying the violent drug cartels in Mexico, by market forces and people going about their lives voluntarily, taking away demand for their product. Minister Dunne and all of our own MP’s, who’ve just handed the legal high addicts they created to the gangs in New Zealand, please take note.
 

Twittering on, it soon become evident some guy from our spy agency, GCSB, was being interviewed on Radio New Zealand; I didn’t listen, didn’t need to, for Twitterdom was alight with the indignant Left, who yet advocate the complete destruction of our privacy under the tax surveillance state. I’ve been blogging on this hypocrisy a lot lately.
 

And as if to prove my point, in Minister Bill English’s 2014 budget delivered yesterday, the budget spend for the GCSB was reduced, I said, reduced, by $260,000, but the surveillance state proper, the real one against which we have legislatively no privacy protection, at all, and against which even the burden of proof has been turned against the taxpayer, namely, the tax surveillance state, part of an Orwellian global surveillance state, was given a boost in funding: $132 million, that’s million, additional funding to IRD audit over next five years, on the jackboots of, and on top of, the $94 million boost given to IRD audit funding in the 2013 budget, that on the jackboots of the $90 million additional funding to IRD audit given in the 2012 budget, and so on back to the point classical liberalism was gutted in the West by the tax state, and our road to serfdom began.
 

That 2014 budget also demonstrated how National is simply Labour-Lite: included in a government annual spend of $73.1 billion, a figure that has risen for every English budget - this the political party of small government (yeah, right) - was a rise in the length of paid parental leave from fourteen to eighteen weeks, to ensure many more young woman who wish to start careers, probably won’t get given the chance. And of course eighteen weeks is not enough for the Green Party, they want twenty six.
 

Green MP Catherine Delahunty started off Friday morning pushing the slavery of equality, ending with:
 




 




 

Catherine chose not to answer that one, not silly of her at all, though she had a crack at the paid parental leave:
 




 




 




 




 




 

No answer to that one again. Other Twitterees entered the fray; the usual ad hominem Lefty brigade:
 




 




 

Although in ending my Friday morning, Tweeter LittlePakeha, who I unfairly dissed at one stage when I confused a tweet he made with someone else – it happens on Twitter, sorry about that – made a good point to which I answer as follows, to the effect policies like this, as with gender or ethnic quotas on boards, etc, hurt the groups most they’re trying to promote:
 




 




 




 




 




 

That final tweet ended with ‘other than perhaps not liking me’.


Have a good weekend; don’t forget that today is officially Sauvignon Blanc day: we’ll be sure to have a few in the Mahau.

 

 
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Monday, March 3, 2014

Question for the Film Classification Unit. And Bank Lending.


The usual apologies to Keri for appearing (below) on my blog; needless to say we don’t know each other, and my inclusion of her tweets in no way means she would agree with anything else in here, but two of the themes of this blog are protest against any type of censorship of free speech or expression, and that it is the right of parents to bring up their children, the state has no business in that.
 




 




 




 

How appropriate is it that members of a government body whose views may well be distorted by watching wholly too much porn, get to determine, over Keri, what her daughter should watch?
 

Further, with everything available on the Internet today, perhaps the film classification unit is way past its use by date anyway? Unless parents police this for their children, they’re going to see what they want, regardless.
 

Addendum: Unintended Consequences – Bank Lending:
 

Surprise. Now that banks lending to low deposit borrowers has been mandated at no more than 10% of a bank’s book, banks have found if they want to lend more to such borrowers, they only need to increase the size of total lending, so net indebtedness in New Zealand is going up. (Proof: ANZ’s latest result, as reported by RNZ this morning).
 
Of course, classical libs are not surprised.
 
We need to separate the state from economies, just as once the church was once wisely separated from the state.

 

 
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Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Of Pies, Plonkers, Wowsers and Tossers.


We libertarian types believe in something very simple: freedom. That an individual human being can do whatever they damn well like, so long as they do no harm, and bear the consequences of their actions.
 

Statists of the nanny left and authoritarian right, with as little grasp of philosophy as of language, call this selfish.
 

No.

 
As Oscar Wilde noted, selfishness is not living your life as you would want, it’s making others live their lives as you would want: the very modus operandi of wowsers and why I’ve had a gutsful of them, both in the voting booth, and the Fortress of Legislation. Wowsers are always statists, because they believe the role of state is to modify your behaviour in the state’s favour. And wowsers are always hypocrites, either incapable, or too dogmatic, to admit the generality of a principle. Case in point.

 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 



 

 

So, you can’t have your ciggie, but Duncan will have his pie and eat it too, all the while wagging his authoritarian finger at you. My pie tweet, though half in jest, committed the sin of forgetting these plain-packaged wowsers are humourless.
 

To continue how the broadcaster left off: tosser. Over and out to a once great Free West, now gone, utterly, you plonker. You bet this gets personal: what do you expect when you’re telling others how to live their lives?
 

Taxes on food and lifestyle choices are taxes on choice, period: are attaxks on freedom. Hope you enjoy your pies on the road to my serfdom, Duncan, at least, that is, until they are made contraband also. See you in the black market there'll then ludicrously be, in pies.


And while you’re angry, watch this clip from Seven Sharp last night, and ask your MP – no, really, ask your MP – why at the very least in this cruel kindy of a country, the cancer victim interviewed doesn’t have legal access to medicinal cannabis. Denial of it to her is barbaric.

  

Statement of Non-Interest:


I stopped smoking over fifteen years ago, not because of the tax, but because of the facts. Statist wowsers like Duncan, however, make me want to start again simply on the principle of it.

 
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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

Nanny State's New Wowser Blood Alcohol Limit



Simply posting my quick comment to NotPC’s thread on this. The new wowser limit affects my quality of life greatly, and for no good reason.


I've been fighting this by corresponding with the wowser MPs and blogging on it since Nanny Lees-Galloway's private members bill was drawn.

Mrs H and I love eating out. Once a week at least when we're living in the Marlborough wine district. The winery restaurants are our haven. I nearly always have the equivalent of a handle of beer, and then half a bottle of wine with an hour meal: I suspect that puts me over the new limit.

Another nail in the coffin of rural hospitality, because a meal without wine is called a takeaway: not interested. We'll just stay at home, which Nanny state is turning slowly into our prison.



Related Posts:

Political Subversion in a Wine Glass: Scarlett Johansson and the Context of Joy.
.


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Monday, September 30, 2013

Maryan Street’s Euthanasia & Iain Lees-Galloway's Drink Drive Bills' Redux. The Barbarity of Fortress Run Lives.


It was a sad day Maryan pulled the only bill in the Fortress that would’ve enacted an individual's rights, rather than the laws in the majority that destroy them; in this case the right to die in dignity, in warmth and in the company of family, not alone in a cold corrugated shed with a plastic bag over your head, reflexes fighting for a final breath. 


I almost didn’t put my previous satirical post up because, frankly, it wasn’t very good. However, I’d just completed a big post on the burden of the vicious snitch society championed by Green Leader, Russel Norman, when viewed in an appropriate literature; I’m busy and behind with the day job; and I wanted to put a protest post up in the face of my disappointment at Labour MP Maryan Street pulling her euthanasia bill from the (ridiculous) parliamentary lottery called the ballot, stating she did not want it debated in an election year. My post needed to take a dig at labour’s paternalism, and the barbarity resulting from not being able, yet again, to get a debate started on an issue that is so important to all of us, especially when considered against the tsunami of pointless laws that floods out from the sand pit of the Fortress of Legislation. Let it be understood my satire was at Maryan’s expense, but at least she had brought this basic right to die in the arms of one’s loved ones into the waiting room, albeit, withdrawn again: from National there is only the conservative silence of cowardice, or worse, the cruelty resulting from their childish mystical belief in the God-Boy myth.

But despite my post’s deficiencies, I’m pleased to say something useful did come from it. Both Maryan and Iain took the hook and bit down on it. (And to that extent, Iain, it did everything it had to, didn’t it :) )

The following twitter exchange (mainly) with Maryan brings up some interesting, wholly depressing, points about the system of our democracy. I’ll put the various parts of the exchange up, then where applicable highlight the questions left open by it. But first, importantly, as I noted to Maryan and Iain, it was satire. The first tag of the post included ‘Civilian Template’, thus I obviously was not quoting either of the MPs. From the exchange, I probably don’t have a lot of time for Iain: he went straight for the man, not the ball, plus his private member bill, the first time he has hit my consciousness, indicates merely another busy body wowser prepared to impinge on the rights of responsible drinkers, in what will be a pointless exercise to stop a minority of irresponsible drink drivers, given reducing the blood alcohol limit will do nothing to stop those already driving over the existing limit. So that’s Iain, but those who’ve read this blog will know that while much of Maryan’s statist beliefs are anathema to me, for her euthanasia bill I have a lot of respect for her. I’m glad her last tweet was still a smiley face.

So, while the blogging world seems worried only about David Cunliffe’s timesheets, moving back to what matters: policy, and please forgive the typos, it's Twitter.












Aside now to Iain’s drink-drive private member bill:











Iain didn’t contact me again, nor did he email any evidence of his claim.

Does anybody know if half a bottle of wine with a meal would put me over the 0.05 alcohol limit he wants via his new bill? (A 40% reduction from the current limit of 0.08).


The Euthanasia Debate Continued:







Here’s the first interesting bit, Maryan referring to her End of Life Choice (EOLC) bill:






And my reaction is still the same. A senior member of our Parliament will not have a bill dear to her debated in election year because she cannot trust MPs to work honourably, or think dispassionately and non-partisanly, given the exigencies of getting themselves elected.

Questions:

Can a representative democratic system work with such apparent low quality representatives? My sand pit admonition when writing on the Fortress seems well placed.

If MPs can only be expected to work conscientiously two years out of three, shouldn’t their salaries be docked by a third? My tax money is not taken from me for their private electioneering one year in three surely?

If our MPs are so witless that principles and manners are sacrificed to power lust every third election year, then is this an argument for a five year term? (With the rejoinder that other than for this bill, I’m quite happy for MPs doing nothing, rather than spewing out law after law after law restricting my liberty, and taxing me for the privilege).

Or, is this Martyr Maryan falling on her sword after being pushed by new Leader David Cunliffe, as I implied in my original blog piece?

Anyway, onward …









Maryan’s first sentence here is a valid point under our system, although I disagree with it entirely. So long as there are doctors, and there are, willing to operate a euthanasia service, then because the way I choose to die is nothing to do with the state, this is no part of a state debate. For that matter, nor does the Medical Association have a moral mandate to speak for all doctors on such a matter of conscience.






And so to the David Cunliffe issue:




.

The fact that David Cunliffe may have put pressure on bills such as this to be withdrawn so as not to scare voters in 2014 was mentioned in my original piece: Maryan never commented on that. In face of my last post above, Maryan did not answer to that, either, or David Cunliffe. The final tweet was:



And so my question remains unanswered:




It was a sad day Maryan pulled the only bill in the Fortress that would’ve enacted an individual's rights, rather than the laws in the majority that destroy them; in this case the right to die in dignity, in warmth and in the company of family, not alone in a cold corrugated shed with a plastic bag over your head, reflexes fighting for a final breath.

Imagine yourself, or your loved other, in that damn shed. Wonder why an election year should make any difference.

I’m mad as hell at Maryan for doing it, but as the only MP with such a bill in the offing, am at the same time glad she is there, if we must have this tyrannical form of governance. Though if this was her Party Leader’s doing, then there’s not enough letters in my scrabble set to say what I would wish to him and this trading away of our very humanity for votes.


That other question.

Given my earlier posts I had to get this one in:




No answer.


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