0 A tax by any other name...

It was the Bard, William Shakespeare who wrote in Romeo and Juliet:

What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Now it's not often that you'll catch us quoting Shakespeare, but those verses seem apt today as we reflect on the Green Party's measures announced yesterday; a Carbon Tax. Stuff reports:

The Greens have launched a controversial new climate change policy - a carbon tax.
In the audience for the announcement was Hollywood actress and environmental activist Lucy Lawless.
Co-leader Russel Norman wants to scrap the current carbon pricing system - the Emissions Trading Scheme.
In its place would be a tax of $25 per tonne of carbon on industry polluters.
Norman told around 200 delegates at the party's Upper Hutt conference that in Government, the Greens would aim for carbon neutrality by 2050.
The Greens are also proposing a Climate Change Commissioner, costing about $2 million. This will be funded by administration savings from scrapping the ETS.
New Zealand, once a world leader in climate change reduction, is now on track to be ''the worst performing developing country,'' he said.
''The Government's current response is indistinguishable from business as usual... as lines go it is flawed and dangerous.''
Critics of the tax claim the tax is a burden on households, who pay higher electricity and fuel costs.
However, the Greens say their levy would be offset by a ''climate tax cut'' on the first $2000 of income. 
''We can reduce our emissions without hurting household budgets,'' he said. ''Households will be on average $319 better off every year under the Green party policy.'' 

We reckon that the average New Zealander's appetite for more taxes is pretty low. And when it's on something as nebulous as carbon, that appetite is likely to be lower still. That seems to be bourne out by the first poll we've seen on the new tax.

Oddly, airlines won't have to shell out this tax, despite being amongst the biggest polluters and users of fossil fuels. We know that the Greens are very attached to their Koru Club cards and love flying up and down the country for the opening of a paper bag (recycled paper, of course!), but why cut the airlines some slack and tax the cow cockies who are producing a huge proportion of our export earnings?

We'll tell you for why, as our Dear Departed Dad used to say. Taxes only work when they are fair, and without exemptions. What the Greens are proposing is a bit like Labour's plan in 2011 to exempt fresh fruit and veges from GST. The cost of administering the nightmare that the Greens are proposing will take care of any revenue generated. And either everybody has to be taxed, or nobody does.

We weren't fans of National's Emissions Trading Scheme. But replacing the ETS with a carbon tax will cost households as businesses put up their prices to compensate. Already BusinessNZ has said that it will ultimately result in job losses, and Federated Farmers claim it will make New Zealand dairy farmers less competitive in key export markets.

New Zealand does not need to be a world leader in climate change. We are a small country at the bottom of the world, and a reduction in emissions here will have barely a ripple around the globe.

The Greens can dress this up any way they like. But a tax by any other name is still a tax, and there is nothing remotely sweet about its odour.

0 Yet another record month

We were a little bit gutted when our Sitemeter counter spat the dummy last week. That's because we knew that another record was within reach. Sitemeter still hasn't found our missing visitors, and in fact is more than 100 hours behind now:

Fortunately, we also installed Statcounter a few years ago, and given that Ken Perrott at Open Parachute also includes Statcounter in his Blog Rankings, that will now be our counter of choice. But Statcounter too confirmed our best moth ever:

And to round things off, we've achieved our best-ever ranking on the Open Parachute rankings; check this out:

 

We're never likely to threaten Kiwiblog or Whaleoil, or any of the top five. But we've got our eyes on Sciblogs, and as the election draws nearer, even Danyl's Dim-Post numbers may be attainable. But we also work full-time, and we have to balance our priorities!

Rex asked yesterday "You do this why?". That's a very good question, as we approach our seventh birthday. We "do this" because we can, because we enjoy it, and in view of the increasing visitor numbers, clearly other people enjoy what we produce as well. We're never going to be mass-market in the same way as the leading blogs on Ken's rankings, but we're up there with the most-visited "boutique" blogs. Clearly, there's an audience.

And we'll continue to "do this" as long as we enjoy it. When the enjoyment factor drops away, it'll be time to retire from blogging. In the meantime you're stuck with us!

Thanks to everyone who visits, and an even bigger thanks to those who take the time to comment; we sincerely appreciate your opinions (even yours Rex), even if we don't share them. It would be a boring place if everyone agreed all the time. So it's onwards and upwards!

0 Quote of the Day - 2 June 2014

Karl du Fresne is one of a dwindling band of old-school journalists; the kind who don't simply recycle the many press releases that cross their desks each day. And his comments on MegaMana are interesting; under the headline Mana ties knot with eye on cash du Fresne opines:

Whatever else you might think of Sue Bradford, she sticks to her principles. You have to respect her for walking away in disgust from the Internet-Mana pantomime.
Who, other than the most gullible, is going to believe these two parties have genuine shared concerns? They are united only by rank opportunism.
Hone Harawira needs access to Kim Dotcom's bank account, while Dotcom seems driven by a personal grudge against Prime Minister John Key and a need for political friends who might help him avoid extradition. These are hardly a sound basis for a credible political party.
In his desperation to make the merger look honourable, Harawira argues that internet access is a pressing issue for young Maori.
This is a convenient but very recent conversion. When I last looked, digital access wasn't even mentioned on the Mana website.
The $200,000 that Dotcom reportedly put into the Internet Party is a far more likely explanation for Harawira's enthusiasm. But at least he had the decency to grin cheekily when he admitting coveting his new ally's resources. Like Winston Peters, he often gives the game away by grinning when he knows no-one is fooled.
Unfortunately, a mischievous grin can't disguise the notion that this alliance is a cynical exploitation of a flawed electoral system. Theoretically at least, there is a possibility that Internet-Mana will end up in a position of power that bears no relationship to its voter support.
What's more, the two parties have undertaken to review their relationship six weeks after the election. So if they get into Parliament, all bets will be off. Take that, suckers.
The best we can hope for is some entertainment as the inherent tensions boil to the surface and Internet-Mana blows up like Krakatoa. How long, for example, before Mana office-holder John Minto – a conviction politician in the Bradford mould – spits the dummy? He can only fool himself for so long that the merger is in the best interests of the proletariat.
Even on their own, Far-Left parties such as Mana have a glorious history of disembowelling themselves. Who knows what bloody mayhem could result when the hard-core Left hitches itself to a wholly incompatible ally like the Dotcom party? 

Of course, since du Fresne penned his column we have discovered that Herr Dotcom has put a lot more than $200k into the Internet Party. The generally accepted figure now is $4 million, with $500,000 of that being paid to Hone Harawira's cult party as a dowry.

Karl du Fresne is dead right (sorry Rex/Edward/Judge); this is indeed a "cynical exploitation" of MMP. And if Labour overtly or covertly instructs Kelvin Davis to not try too hard in Te Tai Tokerau, it too will be a party to this dirtiest of dirty deals.

 The Left has lost the right now to criticise electorate deals done by any other parties. Having so staunchly defended MMP when New Zealand last voted on its system of democracy, who would have ever expected it would have been the parties of the political Left who exposed just how flawed MMP is, and gave us convincing reasons to demand change?

In the meantime, let's just stand back and wait for the ritual disembowelling to begin!

0 Bromhead on the MegaMana Marriage

Herald cartoonist Peter Bromhead calls the MegaMana marriage for what it is:

This is a marriage which already has an end date set; so much for "'til death do us part". We still reckon though that it will end in tears.