South Island Self-determination

The South Island is sick of being flogged by the North Island, essentially paying for its excesses and complete incompetence.

Here are a few lowlights in the North Island:

• There is still no Auckland harbour crossing established since the Nippon clip-ons were added to the Auckland Harbour bridge in 1969. If we compare with other harbours such as San Francisco, there is almost always more than one crossing whether underground or bridge.
• Wellington, a city which is fully funded by the taxpayer, has streets which permanently leak. Wellington isn't the windy city, it is the leaky city. They cannot even fix leaks.
• The Cook Strait ferry service from the North Island to the South Island is now in danger of failing, there have been numerous near miss events which could see serious loss of life. These incidents involve ships losing power and drifting in heavy seas, or ships actually hitting things and going aground.
• The government had a DEI Navy hire lose an expensive hydrographic survey vessel after hitting a reef. This was the worst loss of a NZ Navy vessel since the Second World War.
• There is now no rail link to Gisborne
• There is still no swift transport link from Auckland to the airport.
• Crime is out of control in the North Island and gangs effectively control some towns.
• Air NZ is a basket case and requires constant rescue.
• Ports of Auckland still operate from the middle of Auckland, instead of moving to Whangarei, and no effective rail link exists to Whangarei anyway.
• NZ's only oil refinery closed down.

Meanwhile, the South Island is a model of efficiency by contrast. I estimate that if the South Island was separate, it wouldn't even need fulltime senators to run the place. They would only need to meet for a month a year to pass legislation into law. That meeting could be moved around the Island.

Whether this entity becomes a fully independent country separate from New Zealand, is subject to agreement. I have already said I support a fully separate country in confederation with New Zealand. However, if a state alone, and subject to federal law as in Australia; then it must mean the South Island shares power. This prevents certain interests being sidelined, as with Western Australia. Power sharing could take the form of at least a minimum of one South Islander being either prime minister, deputy prime minister or minister of finance. This person could be the Premier of the state, together with any other senator. Of course, given the South Island is more competent, every top office could be held, it's just a minimum of one must be Southern. These representatives would be elected from the South Island, and the North would have no say in their election to office. The offices could be rotated; thus, the South Island appoints the prime minister from its state three years out of nine. This would prevent incompetence from becoming ingrained as it is now. 

Governance could see the state take over all territorial authorities. Local councils would become advisory bodies only, and mayors would be ceremonial. Residential property could be free of rates, with only commercial and industrial property paying rates. 

As a separate state it could remove personal and corporate income taxes. Instead, sales taxes could be used, along with royalties collected from minerals extraction, road user charges, and excise taxes on gambling, alcohol and such. There could also be bed taxes and traveller arrival charges, as well as limited property taxes (see the rates burden above). Thus, the taxation office would be small.

The main sources of export income for the South Island would include the sale of electricity to the North Island, as well as the export of agricultural and mineral products such as from the aluminium smelter at Bluff. There is far more than that to the South Island of course, but these would be the big earners.

But things wouldn't stand still; corporate investment could be encouraged by not directly taxing income, thus effecting more minerals processing, and agricultural processing becomes viable. Just think, no corporate income tax on lumber mills, milk powder production etc. The South Island could fully develop its hydroelectricity potential, and export more of it to the North Island. 

I had another idea too: how about one free acre to every Australian who moves to the South Island permanently and who starts a business. If they leave the South Island within five years, they forfeit the land.

Had an added idea, similar to the above. If you're a property developer and build a subdivision, the state will supply the land, the developer builds the houses, then when sold the value of the developed land comes back to the state. This alone would probably be one of the biggest earners. The South Island would be in charge of immigration, only skilled people need apply, and they'd be offered a new house to live in, finance guaranteed. Watch the population double in no time.

As a completely separate entity, the South Island would no longer prop up the North Island. 

Christopher Luxon - Nah

I see that National has chosen former Air New Zealand CEO, Christopher Luxon as its candidate in the electorate of Botany for the general election next year. He sounds just like John Key, call him John Key 2.0.

Problem with Luxon though, he follows some strange evangelical christian faith, which means he has a brain the size of a pea. His views seem similar to that of Norman Jones (National, Invercargill '75-87), without the charm of Norm Jones. Does New Zealand really want to go back and deal with this again? There are a raft of issues; abortion law reform, gay rights, marriage, welfare, the list is endless and Luxon would be right there putting his stick in the spokes. They're talking about him as the future leader of the National party. C'mon National, pull your act together, you're making yourselves unelectable.

Air New Zealand Cost Cutting

I was sceptical about the Air New Zealand fare revamp back in February, speculating that bad news would follow. I was right, Air New Zealand are cutting back on buying new planes, read about it here:

https://www.radionz.co.nz/news/business/385766/air-new-zealand-to-cut-costs-delay-buying-750m-of-new-aircraft

If Air New Zealand run true to form, they'll soon follow with worker layoffs.

Air New Zealand Fare Revamp

Air New Zealand has announced a fare restructuring, offering new fares up to 50% off. It's meant to revive air travel from the regions of New Zealand. The cynic in me thinks this must be the forerunner to closures of regional air services. The fare discounts are intended to distract from the bad news to follow.

But the Kapiti mayor doesn't want to see Air NZ back after they unceremoniously dumped them not so long ago. Good for him, he must smell a rat? Watch this space, first the good news, then the bad news.

Venice

In describing our trip to Italy, I'm not making these posts in chronological order. Instead I'm working my way through in order of least through to most favoured. So far I've completely dismissed Pompeii as a tourist trap and Naples as an ongoing crime scene.

Now we find ourselves at Venice, which is kind of okay as far as it goes. It would be a really inconvenient place to live, but I can begin to see the charm of the place. I totally identify with the locals who hate George Clooney for shutting down parts of the city during his nuptials there.  We arrived at Venice first, the journey we took was Air New Zealand and then Lufthansa which I've nicknamed Luftbastards. The route was Christchurch - Auckland - Singapore - Frankfurt - Venice. Singapore is a model of efficiency of course, but very humid, I don't know how people live there either. They've got flying insects the size of small birds. Anyhoo, flying Luftbastards was an eye opener, I'd never flown them before and found their in-flight entertainment dire. I imagine it was developed by some techie German working for Luftbastards. He should be sacked as the system barely functions it's that bad. Want to fast forward a movie? When you do that it is just as likely to fast reverse, and that's if the system works at all. Quite often you have to exit, go back to the start and try again. I'm not kidding, this system is the worst I've yet found. On one flight I had to have my seat rebooted twice. It's a joke.

Air New Zealand I try to avoid, but this time I found they've upped their game. Their staff weren't so arrogant and rude, and the meals were acceptable. The in-flight entertainment worked but had a very limited selection. Nothing like United from the USA, I swear they've got the Library of Congress loaded into their system. None of these even come close to the hospitality and efficiency of Thai Airways which remains to date, the best airline I've flown with.

Venice. We arrived via Frankfurt. For some odd reason only obvious to Eurocrats, we needed a stamp in our passports in Frankfurt even though we were only transiting, and then when we moved on to Venice we weren't checked at all upon arrival there. It was like a domestic flight. We didn't fill in an arrivals card anywhere.

At Frankfurt we bought a spot of breakfast after the long flight from Singapore. This is what it looked like, bought from a hotdog stand outside where our flight to Venice was leaving from:

Not so long after eating, we found ourselves on our flight over the Swiss Alps, and arriving in Venice. Once in Venice we found out what Italy's problem was, they've been invaded by Daleks, here they are:

Message to Italy, Daleks will only cause misery, you have to drop this as an option and go back to sensible government.

At our bed and breakfast we found Italians like sweet things, here is what our breakfast looked like on our first morning waking up there:

While this is basic, we found this not too dissimilar to what Italians eat every morning. Too sweet for me (more about this in later posts). But having said that, Italy doesn't appear to have an obesity epidemic. I hardly saw a fat person the whole time.

We were staying in Mestre, and took the bus and train into Venice proper, depending on how we felt that day. The bus has the advantage of going straight from the bus stop to Venice, whereas obviously you need to walk to the station to get there by train. Both methods of transfer are fast and cheap, no worries there.

I prefer the trains, and discovered that Minions are fighting back against the Daleks, here they are lined up for combat at the Venice Train Station:

The Daleks are not taking this lying down and have fifth columnists at work, trying to derail the Minions efforts. They're called Aids trains:

Venice looks like this on a good day in winter:

Like this on an average day:

And on a bad day like this:

The Bridge of Sighs er actually Bridge of Lies

You've got to hand it to the Italians, they're good at spinning a yarn full of romantic claptrap. I managed to get a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, without being jostled by the hundreds of tourists crowding to get a shot of this total lie. Here's the pic:

The bridge was for transferring prisoners from the courts on the left, to the prison on the right. Looking through those windows on the bridge is the last the prisoners will see of Venice. That's the story, and if you and your loved one take a gondola ride at exorbitant cost and kiss under the bridge as the bells of the Duomo strike 5pm (something like that), your love will last forever. Brilliant marketing guys. Actually, those prisoners were all released within a few months as they were almost always petty criminals convicted of minor crimes. The time when the prison held political prisoners being tortured and such was a hundred or more years earlier and long before the bridge was built. But, you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More about Venice tomorrow. But for now I'll leave with a pic of the post boxes we were told never to place a letter in, they'll end up with the Daleks otherwise. Instead we were told to post letters in funny little yellow boxes hiding in souvenir shops. What happened to Italy's postal service?

Told to never post a letter in one of these. Something tells me this is good advice.