German classical liberals do well

I'm told the T-Shirt slogan means “make love, not tax forms.” 

The Free Democrats, Germany's classical liberal party, has had its best election result ever, increasing its vote to 14.5%.:

Given these unsolved problems, economic reform could hardly be more urgent. This is why Sunday's election is such a significant event because the big winners of the election were the Free Democrats. In Germany's political landscape, they were the only party to resist the general shift to the Left. They stood by their earlier commitment to economic modernisation, which made them attractive to everyone who opposed the standstill of the Grand Coalition years. Their reward was the best election result in the Free Democrats' history.

Sticking to your principles and can lead to political rewards. there's a lesson there for someone.

Polanski finally arrested

Todays good news story, after 31 years child rapist Roman Polanski is finally arrested.:

FILM director Roman Polanski has been arrested in Switzerland on a 31-year-old US warrant, AP reports.

Organisers of the Zurich Film Festival said Polanski was detained by police yesterday.

Zurich police did not immediately confirm the information to AP.

It is understood he traveled to Switzerland to receive a lifetime award for his work as a director.

Polanski fled the United States for France in 1978 after pleading guilty to unlawful sex with an underage girl.

Polanski was originally indicted on six charges, including rape, for having sex with a 13-year-old girl after plying her with champagne and drugs.

He insisted the sex was consensual but pleaded guilty to a single count of having sex with a minor, punishable by up to 20 years in prison...

 Lets see how long it will take the arty farty types to come out excusing him for his actions. As far as I'm concerned he can take his Oscar and stick it.

Obama: the European view

It seems that many in Europe are increasing forming a negative view of President Obama. First their's French President who basically told him to get real:

: “President Obama dreams of a world without weapons … but right in front of us two countries are doing the exact opposite. Iran since 2005 has flouted five security council resolutions. North Korea has been defying council resolutions since 1993. I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good has proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a UN member state off the map.”

An then theres his relation ship with Russia:

His latest achievement has been to restore the former satellite states to dependency on Moscow, by wimping out of the missile defence shield plan. This follows on his surrender last July when he voluntarily sacrificed around a third of America’s nuclear capability for no perceptible benefit beyond a grim smile from Putin. If there is one thing that fans the fires of aggression it is appeasement.

Despite propaganda to the contrary, 58 per cent of Poles were in favour of the missile shield. But small nations must assess the political will of larger powers. Thanks to President Pantywaist’s supine policies, the former satellite states can see that they are fast returning to their former status. The American umbrella cannot be relied upon on a rainy day. They have been here before. Poles remember how a leftist US president sold them out to Russia at Tehran and Yalta. The former Czechoslovakia was betrayed twice: in 1938 and1945.

Its sounding more and more like a Carter re-run every day.

I'm with Barnaby

Barnaby Joyce is right, if we want high quality politicians then we should pay them high quality wages:

But Senator Joyce says politicians should be paid as much as business leaders.

"I'm just stating the commercial reality that we must make sure that the highest office holder in our land should be within sight of the sort of money that they get in the marketplace for running a comparable sized company," he said.

"If you pay people nothing you'd still fill parliament up but you'd fill it up with the sort of people that don't represent what you want."

 
Although of course, corporate executives usually have a generous share scheme to supplement their salaries. If we can create financial securities for bad air- "carbon credits" why can't we issue pollies with securities for good government?

RIP big media and RIP big Hollywood?

Well the big Hollywood star system anyway. Tim Andrews recently wrote on the slow decline of the established American media, it looks like the Hollywood star system is also falling apart:

The year 2009 has been a financial disaster for nearly every industry save one: the motion-picture business. Hollywood's box office receipts are up nearly 20 percent from 2008. The eight most successful movies over the course of the year's first eight months have collectively grossed $2.7 billion, up from $2.3 billion for the entirety of 2008. And what is most striking about these eight films is that not a single one of them, not a single one, features an unmistakable star.

Three of them are cartoons (Up, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, and Monsters vs. Aliens). Three are sequels whose top-line talents are incidental to their success (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the sixth Harry Potter, and X-Men Origins: Wolverine). Two feature relative nobodies (Star Trek and The Hangover). The first traditional star appears in the ninth-place film, which is itself a high-concept sequel in which the star mostly stands around (Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian with Ben Stiller). It's not until tenth place that a classic vehicle hits the list, Sandra Bullock's The Proposal. And after that you have to jump down to 15th place to find Tom Hanks in Angels and Demons.

Ohh, the horror! Imagine movie stars having to take pay cuts or reduced to doing voice overs. Nobody will give a stuff about their veiws on politics (I'm not sure anyone does now ) . Gossip magazines will have to find someone else to write about....  hmm...... I can't see it happening either.  I somehow think we are stuck with these "stars" for sometime yet.

An income tax holiday

The cost of Mr Rudd's stimulus package is expected to be $97 billion over four years. What could be achieved if a tax cut was offered instead. How about a one year tax holiday:

If the Rudd government had implemented a one-off income tax cut the average Australian taxpayer would have received a one-off tax cut of more than $8,200 in 2008-09, according to new research released today.

The total size of the Rudd government's fiscal policy decisions taken during 2008-09 is expected to be $97 billion over four years. If the government instead gave a one-off personal income tax cut equal in size to this, the average individual Australian taxpayer would have paid $8,228 less in tax last year.

Alternatively, for about the same total cost, the government could have cut income tax to zero for everyone, except the richest three per cent of taxpayers....

Off course there's one big problem with such a plan. The government wouldn't be able to pork barrel  marginal seats.

The IPA paper is here.

OK, where?

The Dennis Ferguson saga has been running for a few days now.  He is a  pedophile  who  kidnapped  and sexual assaulted  three children.  But he spent 14 years in gaol for his crime. The outcry against him is understandable, but I ask “if not Ryde where?”. He has to reside somewhere, and yes even pedophiles have rights, at least after being released from prison.  Parents are rightly concerned for their children and their emotional reaction is understandable but I expect a more cool headed response from politicians. They are supposed to be community leaders, and if they call for him to be removed from his current home I think they should let us know where they would place him.

Right to life - Sarah Palin

I don't want to get into any long debate over abortion. For whats it worth I believe we shouldn't make the abortion laws any easier or harder but we should support the mother. However I found the video below very moving.

62 million Australians

Thats one estimate of what Australia's population could be by the end of the century. The question then becomes were will everyone live? Demographer Bernard Salt has been looking into this issue:

Does this mean Sydney and Melbourne will account for 24 million if Australia reaches 62 million then? Is this possible?

There is always the argument that new cities will emerge during the 21st century, but in the 20th century only two big cities were created: Canberra and the Gold Coast. Both of these combined accounted for barely one-seventh of the population of Sydney and Melbourne by 2000.

New large cities might be developed in the 21st century, and I hope they are, especially in the north and northwest, but the main focus of population growth will remain the job centres of Sydney and Melbourne.

What is likely to develop during the 21st century is a loose fusing of the cities and towns of southeast Queensland and the NSW Northern Rivers region into a population mass that is never quite equal to that of Melbourne or Sydney....

Its an article well worth reading in its entirety.

NSW Gov 2.0

I finally have something nice to say about the NSW Labor government. Premier Rees has announced a $100,000 price to best application that uses government information.

Rees spoke about how government needed to use the Web 2.0 tools that the "technological revolution" had brought. "We must enlist these Web 2.0 technologies in the cause of democracy and freedom," Rees said.

He launched a competition to help the use of such technologies in government called "apps4nsw". The competition offers prizes worth $100,000 for people to create ideas and software that uses government data for applications.

The prizes will be judged by an expert panel, although there will also be a People's Choice award. Anything developed in the competition will be open source, freely available for use by both the government and the public.

Prizes are excellent ways to develop new technology, it will be interesting to see the results.

How to improve the Public Service

Prime Minister Rudd has commissioned a review into improving the quality of staff in the Public Service. A commendable goal but as a person who has had years of experience in both the public and private sector I can tell him how for free.

Its very simple. Abolish the Public Service. Most of the administrative tasks can be done by the private sector, so put it out to competitive tender. Centrelink, the ATO etc the lot. Privitize the agencies either in whole or in part. Thats what private companies do who regularly outsource share registeries, call centres etc. Lets have some real competition.

Nanny State on the rampage

Dear God, the Preventive Health Task Force wants the government to control our lives at unprecedented levels:

New tax breaks worth up to $500 for parents who enrol children in sports were also proposed, while schoolchildren should be forced to do two hours of physical activity each week at school.

The task force also proposed a series of sin taxes on alcohol, tobacco and junk food. It wants to cut the proportion of the population smoking daily to just 10 per cent, halt the rise in overweight and obesity rates and reduce binge drinking to save almost a million lives by 2020.

The task force wants tougher restrictions on the number of venues selling alcohol and their opening hours to combat binge drinking.

The price of a pack of cigarettes would rise by about $7 to $20 in a bid to slash smoking.

It wants the crackdown on junk food at school canteens extended to the work canteen and said employers should face a workplace activity levy similar to the training levy to encourage work-based fitness programs.

Restaurants would be required to list the calorie content of the foods on their menu under another task force recommendation.

I think reports like this shows we spend far too much money of tertiary education. The nation would be better served in the people on the committee did something useful, like flip burgers. Luckily its only a report which I hope will just gather dust. In the meantime I will be investigating home brewing its.