No Lockout – Just Sack ’em!

It is ridiculous that the action by a few hundred unionised clock-watching lazy slugs still has to be tolerated in one form or another by Ports of Aucklland management. If an employee refuses to work for over a month and stands outside your premises, ruining the grass and actively seeking to disrupt the operation of your business, that is completely legitimate grounds to fire that person.

The Port is completely reasonable in its offer to set up rosters, one month in advance, which ensure workers are working when there are actually ships for them to unload. What is the point of paying people money to stand around waiting for the next delivery?

Ultimately if is the trade union troglodytes who have done the real damage to the union workers. While the workers trike and make no money, the union organisers get paid. Union employees had the chance to take redundancy money but the union organisers wanted to maintain their ideological folly and ruined that opportunity for their membership as well. Now union employees will have no redundancy and no income as they are locked out by Ports of Auckland.

Due to POA’s ownership by Auckland Council, an issue that needs to be rectified, leftist council members are also getting involved. Scab Councillors Northey, Lee, Coney, Casey and Wayne Walker have issued a statement saying, “We strongly support the clear legal right of Auckland’s port workers to work on the wharf unhindered and without any pre conditions at this time.
We call on Ports of Auckland to desist immediately from their unfair lockout and also to return to negotiations genuinely in good faith to achieve a fair collective agreement as has been clearly required by the judge. No further action to advance contracting out should be permitted.” Such is the triumph of blind hatred over logic that permeates the thinking of the left. They believe that workers should be able to refuse to work and try to attack the profitability of their employer for as long as they please, then be able to return to work when they wish without consequences. That is fucking stupid.

I also recall listening to another diatribe rant by Radio Live host Willie Jackson in which he says that the Ports of Auckland management “just want more money, more money, more money, they’re greedy right wing dogs.” What is the point of running a business if it is not to make money? What is the point of working if it is not to make money? I’m a worker; not a business owner. I’ve started at the bottom and worked very hard to climb the ladder and increase my income. I’ve had a measure of success thus far but still have a long way to go. What is my motivation? Primarily, I want to make as much money as possible. I’m greedy and I want to keep the proceeds of my greed for myself. My motivation is identical to that of Ports of Auckland and the employees of the port. What the hell is wrong with that? Greed is good!

For an employee to realise the potential of their greed, it is necessary to co-operate with the employer that pays them. It is necessary to make oneself useful to the business and later on such an employer will be paid more based on the increased value they add to a business. If that doesn’t happen, I would find a new employer. The approach of the union is not to make themselves of value to their employer; rather it is to maintain an inefficient, unproductive status quo and an impediment to increased profitability.

Individuals are usually better off in employment situations if they are flexible and seek to make themselves of value to a business. Unions don’t do that. Unions put up roadblacks and regulations. They promote clock-watching and work-to-rule mindsets. They seek to protect the useless and lazy in a manner which ensures their membership will always be useless, lazy and financially worse off.

Auckland to Host V8 Supercars?

Nothing better sums up the need to remove legislation giving Council’s the power of general incompetence than the V8 Supercar races. This massive financial dog cost Hamilton City ratepayers $40 million when it was last hosted. Now, Auckland City Council is looking at holding the event and Mayor Len Brown has given his qualified support for spending ratepayer money on it. Nothing is sewn up yet, but the Council is carrying out a due diligence and cost-benefit anaysis. Anyone with the slightest interest in politics will know that any cost-benefit analysis carried out by a Government body is likely to incur expenses well into six figures. Whether Auckland holds the V8 Super cars races or not, it is costing Auckland ratepayers money.

Hopefully the resignation of Local Government Minister Nick Smith has no impact on the pace that the Government maintains on introducing legislation to wipe out the functions of local Government. The fact that Len Brown recognises what a financial failure the races have been in Hamilton, yet still is not only supportive of funding them with ratepayer money in Auckland, but appears to believe that with the right management, costs can be controlled perfectly illustrates the urgent need to get local government reform’s underway.

The function of local government needs to be completely stripped back to the point where councils only deal with city functions that would be impractical for private citizens. Stromwater and roads are the obvious areas. I’m comfortable with Council’s looking after rubbish collection, libraries and parks, though I don’t necessarily think it is essential. There is little else I think we need council for. We certainly don’t need over 150 elected bludgers  telling individuals what height and colour their buildings can be or installing drinking fountains and artwork at ratepayer expense on footpaths. We don’t need to subsidise unpopular forms of music like the Auckland Philharmonic. We don’t need to be throwing billions into an unprofitable public transport system. We certainly don’t need millions of dollars being wasted on “free” events such as those mooted for declaring Auckland to be a “city of peace.”

At central and local Government level, we need to elect politicians who appreciate that what they spend belongs to other people and must be spent in moderation on the bare essentials. This means not trying to engineer social and cultural outcomes, but simply dealing with the very minimum for city functions.We need to elect politicians who are committed to not a simple cap on annual rate increases, but who will achieve actual cuts in rates. We need to eliminate Council benches of the socialist slime that think they have the right to extort limitless funds from the productive to waste on PC pet projects for their parasitical mates and return real fiscal prudency to local level governance.

It’s Not The Drinking, It’s The Degenerates Drinking It

Failed North Shore Mayor George Wood is backing an attempt by ignorant Conifer Grove mobs to block new applications for liquor stores in their area. He is joined by local half-weight busybodies Cr Calum Penrose, Manurewa ward councillor, Angela Dalton, deputy chair of Manurewa Local Board and Brent Catchpole, deputy chair of Papakura Local Board who organised a meeting on Saturday afternoon with the objective of destroying the legitimate, legal businesses of liquor proprietors. Disturbingly, 153 people attended this meeting. A sizeable number of individuals who have the arrogant gall to think that they have the right to destroy the livelihood of other people because of their blind ignorant concern for an arbitrary communitarian area called Manurewa.

I would be foolish to debate that there are some serious social and criminal problems in that region of Auckland. I don’t debate it it. I completely agree. Unfortunately it does appear that there are numerous irrresponsible violent losers living within the area. I’m not trying to tar Manurewa with a criminal brush. I don’t think in collectivist terms. However, even the most upstanding of citizens in Manurewa would probably agree that there does appear to be a concentration of thuggish gangsters in the region. The problem is that those same upstanding citizens, rather than deal with the moral retardation of some of their neighbours, prefer to take their anger out on a scapegoat: alcohol.

I defend absolutely the right of a person to open a shop on their own property and sell a legal product in a legal manner. If they aren’t selling intoxicants to seventeen year olds I see absolutely no grounds for preventing them from running their business. Unfortunately, those who look at the world as a community and not a cohesive collection of individual people and properties disagree. What’s more they disagree to such a degree that they aren’t satisfied with using social pressure. They call upon the state to use physical force to achieve their ends. Anyone who acts in a collective manner to use coercion against another person’s property and business in this manner is a fascist. I don’t use this term emotively; I use it literally. If you want to use the  force of the state against a person who is not using force against you, then you are absolutely a fascist.

Worst of all is that not only are these people blindly seeking to destroy a peaceful businesses, but they are doing it on the same irrational grounds and ignorant thinking that has lead to the problem in the first place. They are blaming alcohol instead of holding individuals personally responsible for their actions. If a person goes to court for crashing their car or raping someone while drunk, do we arrest the owner of the shop they bought the alcohol from? Of course not! The person who commits the violent actions is the person who is held responsible, irrelevant of intoxication. The focus of the Government should not be on the availability of liquor; it should be on the braindead, morally deficient scum who get drunk and cause crime. People who get drunk and assault and rob others are the same people who would do such an activity sober.

Those who would use the force of the state to shut down liquor stores are usually the same statist drug prohibitionists who are completely ignorant of the free market. Shutting down or restricting the supply will not destroy the demand. The USA proved as much in the 1930’s when prohibition made problems associated with alcohol far worse. Governments current actions to wipe out the supply of illicit drugs now has done nothing to dent the demand; empirical worldwide evidence suggests it has had the opposite effect.

Yes, there are issues with alcohol consumption. Restriction of supply will not fix the issue – as the prohibition of drugs has proven. The solution is for the Government to return to its truly legitimate role – focus on defending the rights of free peaceful individuals to go about their lives without the threat of force from others instead of aimlessly pissing resources away initiating force itself. Hold the scumbags and losers accountable for the unacceptable behaviour; don’t violate the rights of the productive and responsible.

Cuts on the Way?

Up until lately there has been very little to feel optimistic about on the political front. An ACT party led by a social authoritarian, an Auckland Mayor who will jump into industrial disputes at the last minute in order to shore up the extreme left vote and a Prime Minister who rules out charging interest on student loans because it is “good economics but bad politics.” However there have been some changes floated by the National government that give me some cause for optimism… as cautious as that optimism may be.

Local Government Minister Nick Smith has finally come to the realisation that government and spending growth at the local level is far beyond the realm of reason. Changes are being heralded to rein in the power of general incompetence granted to local councils in legislative changes made back in 2002. As I pointed out during my submission on the Auckland Draft Plan last November, it is well beyond the role of Council to set 100% targets for NCEA pass rates and it seems that Nick Smith now agrees. Of course, how could he not? He is a bit late – in the last decade rates nationwide have increased by 6.9% and local govermment debt has increased by over $6 billion! Thanks for joining the party Nick; the keg is finished.

Plans to create a new super ministry are sending chills down the spines of public sector unions which only means good things for the poor taxpayer. When the defenders of the useless and lazy get worried about their membership income, there are good grounds for optimism. It seems that on Thursday, plans to merge the Ministry of Economic Development, the Ministry of Labour, the Ministry of Science and Innovation and Immigration New Zealand into one Ministry are due to be announced. ‘Merge’ and ‘abolish’are two very different terms and the former is nowhere near as good as the latter but surely this means some sort of improvement is on they way. In addition, there are plans afoot to reduce the number of Industry Training Organisations (ITO) from 33 to 10. Personally, I think industry training should be done by the industrial concerns involved, or through training at institutes paid for by students and not by Government’s but this certainly is an improvement.

Well, thats more positives than I’ve ever said about a National Government in one post and I hope to be able to say them again, but I’m not so sure. This Government issued plans in the 2011 budget to return our record deficit of $17 billion to a $1.5 billion surplus by 2014/15. In the last election I predicted that, because National is not willing to change the role of Government or properly slash spending, this goal would not be achieved and the Government would find a fantastic excucse for it. Two months ago, the Government’s 2014/15 surplus predictions were slashed to $300 million and the economic problems in Europe were blamed.

There is no doubt that the cuts being planned by National this time are real tangible  cuts but are they actually enough? Probably not. There may be tens of millions saved from this move but tens of millions are nothing compared to what is required. The economy is in the shit and significant tax cuts are needed to change this. Significant tax cuts cannot be afforded without much larger spending cuts. Despite the small of rays of light being generated by the latest news, we cannot get too excited until this National Government accepts that big Government is a failure and the economic and budgetary malaise will not be reversed until John Key accepts that the solution is smaller government, unregulated markets and free individuals.