Hard News: National Exuberance
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That "dreadful distortion" is what really threw me out of that whole thing - the point of road tolls (if you are committed to ensuring a free alternative) is distortion!
And the editorial struck me in exactly the same way - why didn't they pick that up? -
Some of these questions, of course, would be just as tricky for Labour to answer -- which makes them all the more important to ask.
And if you're of a suitably masochistic bent, you can listen to Bill English and Michael Cullen making a damn good case for rhetorical dodgeball becoming an Olympic sport.
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The NRT and Chris Trotter spat is interesting
Idiot/Savant blog has not allowed comment for a long time so consquently I only read it every couple of days
Despite a strong left wing tendency he is prepared to call things as he sees them and he would go to the top of my list if he allowed comment
His calling of Chris while slightly over the top seems soundly based so it will be interesting to see how CT, who has been sheltered from criticsm before he came ablogging will react
Great stuff! -
By the way, can I be an even bigger Greenie than Maurice Williamson. If anyone is actually serious about clearing up congestion, then we should be saying a $5 toll isn't high enough. I'd go further and say introduce congestion charging in the CBD (including Parnell, Newmarket and Ponsonby) and put the toll gates back on the Harbour Bridge.
Or is it the same old story where everyone wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die first -- it's damn easy being green, as long I don't have to make any sacrifices, or be inconvenienced, or pay the cost.
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Can National categorically promise that it will not sign a deal whereby the government has to pay out any part of the road building costs in the event that the project goes bankrupt?
Even if they didn't sign a deal, would a government really leave a road in a semi-built condition? I don't believe so - they'd have to step in and finish it whatever the contract said.
The only way round this would be to require a performance bond in advance, but I don't see that happening.
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it's damn easy being green, as long I don't have to make any sacrifices, or be inconvenienced, or pay the cost.
so true. it will be interesting to see, as fuel prices start to drop again, whether those who 'fled' to public/alternative transport will stay there.
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Despite a strong left wing tendency he is prepared to call things as he sees them and he would go to the top of my list if he allowed comment
I think s/he'd end up spending half his day answering sensible comments, and the other half deleting offensive ones. Seeing as it's probably not I/S's only occupation, I can see how it might be a wise course of action. Besides, NRT is part of a greater national conversation without having to be a place for conversation in its own right.
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Completely off topic, but RB I was wondering if you'd read/heard of Whaleoil's latest rant? Seems his knickers are in quite the twist...who'd have though he listens to the b?
I've got your back, I say we roll with a PA posse, wild west style!
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I'd go further and say introduce congestion charging in the CBD (including Parnell, Newmarket and Ponsonby) and put the toll gates back on the Harbour Bridge.
With a well-funded and effective public transport system in place I presume? I would agree at that point.
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His calling of Chris while slightly over the top seems soundly based so it will be interesting to see how CT, who has been sheltered from criticsm before he came ablogging will react
Well, to be honest, any pundit with a grain of self-awareness or intellectual honesty has written things they'd rather stuff down the memory hole and forget. Trotter's 'courageous corruption' column in the Sunday Star-Times certainly wasn't something I'd die a ditch defending, but I guess it's Trotter's call. Yes, I can find Idiot/Savant shrill and rather pompous, but I don't really find Trotter any more attractive when he's got his "pragmatic" machismo on.
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Even if they didn't sign a deal, would a government really leave a road in a semi-built condition? I don't believe so - they'd have to step in and finish it whatever the contract said.
I think if the contract doesn't state that the government will pick it up, there is more onus on the private side. If you took a big national or international company, they're unlikely to shut down their whole business because one project ran over. They'd wear the cost and possibly negotiate with government to split it.
If the contract said "government will wear the cost", it's a free ticket for private business to put in a stupid tender, overrun the costs, and then the government to pick up the tab.
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A trite comment, but it amuses me that Chris Trotter is using LOL now he is a blogger. Perhaps he needs and introductory course on L337
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Completely off topic, but RB I was wondering if you'd read/heard of Whaleoil's latest rant? Seems his knickers are in quite the twist...who'd have though he listens to the b?
I've got your back, I say we roll with a PA posse, wild west style!
Whaleoil playing victim again? Surely not.
I think I might have said to Mikey that Slater's father was embarrassed by his weird behaviour. Which is what I've been told is the case.
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Sorry, AN introductory course...
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Where is does the payoff sit in terms of cost in toll collection versus revenue? Is $2 a pop actually worth it?
Certainly there is a rumour that tickets for some bus systems barely cover the cost of ticketing (especially in lost time with people faffing round for change).
And as for the Greens' notion that there should be a free alternative, I remember being amused/confused in Bangkok. The free road was total gridlock, and the tolled equivalent was one of the emptiest 6 lane roads I've ever seen. I guess they got the price very wrong, and it was only used by wealthy and/or tourists.
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the point of road tolls (if you are committed to ensuring a free alternative) is distortion!
On the contrary, toll roads are user-pays. Abstracting away the cost of road use via borrowing (especially pernicious), taxes and rates creates a distortion. Now, you might argue it's a good distortion, but it's still a distortion.
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Frankly, National would be well advised to sort out what its own policy on the issue is before it goes writing Labour's.
Yet another example of National's policy being significantly under-developed. I'm prepared to accept that they'll develop it further but this is precisely this kind situation, and I'm assuming toll means some form of PPP, where the potential benefits are realised only if all the details are transparent and known in advance. The Cross City Tunnel in Sydney provides the perfect example of what can go wrong as I've previously commented.
IMHO, the key matters to be determined include:
1. All the contractual terms should be on public record.
2. PPPs/toll roads should not reduce competition i.e. by changing existing roading and/or public transport to "encourage" drivers to use the new infrastructure.
3. The has to be clarity about the risk. In his earlier piece on this, Russell noted that National's plan "offer a guaranteed return from the projects they fund", if this remains the case, then the public is underwriting the risk - and you have to ask what the point is then (incidentally, the NSW State Government didn't with at least the Cross City Tunnel if not other toll roads).
I should just add, for the sake of anyone who's interested, the CCT and other toll roads in Sydney make life one hell of a lot easier for commuters though I'd not like to be using them every day.
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Everything is a distortion. Only believers in the doctrine of the Perfect Market think otherwise.
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yet again, the public is left with the impression that National's actual policies are a mystery to its own spokespeople
Yet again, I'm left with the impression that National's actual policies are quite well known to its own spokespeople.
Either they have no idea what their policies are (which I find highly unlikely - what have they been doing for 9 years then?), or they are unwilling to put them under public scrutiny. Either is a bad look, but the latter is a worse one. English and Key would rather National looks confused than deceptive.
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Workers of the world unite - Support comrade tan!
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Cameron Slater's rant is completely hilarious:
. . . I’ll just do what I hould have done long ago and remove any links to Russell Brown from my site and never post a link to any more of his drivellings ever again. I will now also place you and you fat fuck mate in the firing line. In fact here is a challenge for you, i know Russell won’t take it up because he is a blouse but Mikey might, in 12 weeks I get in the ring, it’ll be after the election so how about huh? you big fat fuck, it’d do you good, the training and the discipline.
Take that, Mr Brown!
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Workers of the world unite - Support comrade tan!
You're enjoying this, aren't you?
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Oh, with the Tan ACT conversion, I've talked to him and can assure readers here that his sentiments are sincere. He genuinely believes that ACT will protect workers rights, the environment, ethical foreign policy, and reduce crime.
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Cameron Slater's rant is completely hilarious:
I'm devastated.
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English and Key would rather National looks confused than deceptive.
Hard to say. I have good reason to believe that the broadband policy was pulled out of their asses: they announced it and tried to make the numbers work afterwards.
Which isn't to say Labour hasn't done the same thing in government (eg: buying back the rail) but it doesn't suggest that National has made the most of its years in the wilderness.
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