Written By: - Date published: 3:02 pm, July 3rd, 2008 - 100 comments
Categories: same old national, slippery, transport -
Tags: hollow men
So, let’s get this straight the Government has increased road user charges for diesel vehicles by half the amount recommended by the Ministry of Transport to cover the roading costs of those vehicles. The increase is 7-8%. Road user chargers account for 10% of trucking costs. So, we’re talking a less than 1% increase in trucking costs, about $198 a year for a 23-tonne truck, every cent of which will be used for building our transport infrastructure.
Crude oil prices mean diesel has doubled in price in the last year but this 1% is the end of the world? For $198 a truck a year, they’re going to blockade our motorways during rush-hour? Hell, half a day wasted blocking the motorway would be worth more than $198 a truck, let alone the cost to the rest of the economy.
Give me a break. The road user charges are just the excuse; the protest is the objective. Tony Friedlander, head of the Road Transport Forum, former National Minister, secret major National donor, and star of the Hollow Men is behind the protest. He told Transport Minister Annette King the protest would be happening weeks ago, before the road user charge changes were announced.
This has nothing to with with a 1% increase in trucking costs, it is simply an attempt to make the Government look bad - a long-planned hollow attack from a core National backer.
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Iprent,
I found that after I had posted this comment. Have pity, I’m only a one woman band and only a two and half years into the politics of this country. I do my best but I don’t have the history you guys have, OK?
I also looked him up on Wiki but found only a stub.
Captcha: system quake LOL
[lprent: I wasn't getting at you Eve. It just happened that I was listening to him at the same time as I was reading your comment. I didn't catch the first bit of the interview though, so was unsure if it was the same ex-minister or not]
That’s how insurance works – it spreads the risk across multiple people so that each can pay less than they would if they were to pay for the full amount if the worst happened. If everyone were to pay their full costs in such a situation then there would be no need of insurance.
We’re not talking of insurance here though and nebulous risk (ie some people will have accidents, most won’t). We’re talking about well defined costs that will need to be paid and the people who need to pay them are the people who cause them. In this case, the truckers.
Iprent,
no worries no offence taken
So let me see if I got this straight.
Tony Friedlander, head of the Road Transport Forum, former National Minister, secret major National donor promises to make life hell for the minister of transport and has announced weeks in advance that there is going to be a truckers strike.
Why? Could it be that they are scared that the train owned by the state that is us last time I looked is going to compete with their businesses. Oil will be expensive and more and more people will send their goods by rail. So they promise mayhem if NZ buys back the rail system.
But something happens: John Key is caught with his pants down about C/T, how am I doing so far? So National desperately needs a diversion and when Anette King announces a fairly minute increase in road tax they’ve got what they want.
The news papers call it a truckie strike which is somewhat misguiding because most truck drivers work for bosses but it sure fit with the National attack “defending” those poor truckies, the working man while it is not at all the case.
And people doubt that these people do not call each other to see how they can manipulate the situation to get out of a tight spot? Why not wouldn’t you?
Conspiring is what people do. Especially rich people who want more and want more power, it’s what got them there in the first place.
It would be a conspiracy under the next definitions.
Yes, a couple of phone calls to pull of something like the above is a conspiracy and I have no problem calling it subversive and disingenuous.
1. An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act.
2. A group of conspirators.
3. Law. An agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime or accomplish a legal purpose through illegal action.
4. A joining or acting together, as if by sinister design: a conspiracy of wind and tide that devastated coastal areas.
Eve
Do you seriously believe that this is a conspiracy ?
Are suggesting the Nat’s are cunning enough to get an MP to leave parliament spend the next two decades infiltrating an industry group. Wait until they have an almost unassailable lead in the polls, and the government shoots itself in the foot on a daily basis. Then contact Double Agent Friedlander and have him let slip the Trucks of War on the unsuspecting highways of New Zealand. Using, no doubt, his super-secret hypnotic programming device to convince thousands of small business owners to miss a days work and risk annoying the hell out of their customers.
Isn’t more likely that it’s simply a group that’s giving a two fingered salute to the government because they’re overly peeved, judging by the support they seem to have got from the people in the street they don’t seem to be the only ones.
Steve, The increase is 7-8%. Really? Which deceiver told you that. It took a bit of time but when I checked the figures they turn out to be 10% to 15%.
$198 a year for a 23 tonne truck? 10,000km a year. Be honest, add a zero on the end.
Have you got a link for the MoT study or the minister’s briefing. I’ll believe it when I see it.
If he is a secret donor, how do we know? Careful about assuming innuendo as fact. But wouldn’t you expect former politicians to be donors to the party they represented? It would be more of a scandal if they didn’t.
Just don’t mention the Law Commission if thinking about donations and former politicians in influential roles.
Do some better research.
The number you are quoting must be the annual registration fee.
Road user charges are based on weight and distance… nothing at all to do with time.
The average 40 tonne truck (15 tonne 3 axle truck and 25 tonne 3 axle trailer) that takes the food to your local supermarket (try getting a train to do that) is charged $152.08 for the truck PLUS $472.15 for the trailer FOR EVERY 1000km travelled.
Try http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/publications/docs/road-user-charges.pdf for the right numbers.
In a couple of months time when the owner drivers are finally able to pass on this surprise increase in costs to the supermarket (or whoever they are contracted for) then YOU will see an increase in food prices. This is assuming that the truckie hasn’t gone broke in the mean time and ended up on the dole.
In a couple of months time when the owner drivers are finally able to pass on this surprise increase in costs to the supermarket (or whoever they are contracted for) then YOU will see an increase in food prices.
Better than eveyone funding roads from taxes.
Matthew Pilott
All local roads are funded entirely from rates. This is the system that Labour believes in. Only the National Party has proposed user charging for local roads.
The billion dollar question that never gets asked is whether this huge spending of money on transport infrastructure is actually necessary.
After all, practically all of this money is being spent by the Government, which tells us it is necessary like they tell us everything they do is necessary (cue Tui billboard).
And the only reason that there is any private corporate benefit from this programme is that the wise National Party sold the Ministry of Works a decade and a half back.
Most of the problems on the roads are down to volumes of private cars. The construction of new roads is one of the highest costs of all.
The real reason I believe that the government is spending (wasting) so much money on roads is primarily for political purposes, to pump up the economy, and as such it is just another form of income redistribution and is just as wasteful and inefficient as all the other forms.
Swampy, According to section 9 of the land transport management act most of the money being spent on land transport has nothing to with the the government except in so far as Mr Cullen has to do what the law tells him to or get Parliament to change it.
The best place to get informed about where land transport funds actually come from and where they go is from the independent Land Transport NZ website.
http://www.landtransport.govt.nz/funding/nltp/
It wont definitively answer the questions of whether it is necessary to spend billions of dollars, or whether the billions are being spent on really important things like saving lives instead of saving time, or likely to actually acheive anything worthwhile. But at least you’ll be extremely well informed, which is what all voters should be.
Hey Kev – I see you’ve turned up on the blogs for just this issue and decided to run an information campaign. Quite late too – is the P keeping you up?
Come to think of it Kev mate – as an insider in the industry perhaps you could tell me who’s run this campaign. Oh and what’s your stake in the argument, bro? I mean you must have one to be all over the blogs on this issue so suddenly…
Oh and bro? If you’re getting paid by the line timerlands-style you might want to put a word or two on my wee blog about this – http://www.robinsod.wordpress.com
HS,
Do I believe that people with the same interests get in touch with each other and keep in touch with each other to protect their interests?
Hmmm.
Dickhead
Eve
Unless your milking the cows at 4.21 am it appears you’re up very early ?
How are the rest of those conspiracy theories going ?
Moderators,
Any chance of you telling HS to back off in a kindly fashion?
I’m happy to discuss the 911 subject on my blog or our forum but that never happens, the T-rex’s and HS’s don’t seem to want to go there.
I really want to contribute to this blog in a constructive and intelligent fashion and HS makes that difficult with his patronising, suggestive and stigmatising comments.
t: We really don’t moderate at that level. The comments you are referring to are within our rather loose guidelines (what we have of them). I’m afraid that you have to take your chances.
Of course if it descended into personal attack rather than an attack on opinions we would do something. But neither have gotten to that level. They are expressing their opinion in the same way that you do with yours.
We tolerate a range of wide opinions on this site provided they’re written well and have a discussion point. We don’t tolerate trolls, attacks on the site itself, and outright personal attacks.
Oh come on Matthew, you know Cullen only collects that money so he can swim in it in his secret money vault under the Beehive.
Iprent,
I hear you.
Are you ok with this going to the 911 thing if it’s on facts and links?
You’re welcome to write comment. Other people are welcome to respond. The probability of you convincing each other is probably minimal.
We’d prefer if you at least keep it within the posts topic at least vaguely. Apart from anything else you won’t get quite as much of a irritated response.
Just don’t trigger my anti-trolling instincts
Iprent
I hope to meet you lot in person one time. I do not troll period.
respect to all of you.
I have on a number of occasions expressed my broad support for the idea that we have NOT been told the truth about the events of 911, and much more. It is a difficult thing to talk about. In the absence of verifiable truth there is speculation. There are at least four types of speculation:
1. Honest attempts to link all known public domain facts together, prudently using Occams Razor and an wise understanding of human nature.
2. Honest attempts that fail because they are selective with facts, ignore the need for simplicity and overreach their conclusions as a result.
3. Dishonest attempts that are driven by ego and ambition down blind paths and dead-ends.
4. Dishonest attempts that have a hidden purpose to mislead or discredit.
For us ordinary people, so far removed from the real centers of power it is very hard to know what we are reading, whether it is valid, invalid or downright disinformation. But just because there are some demonstrably idiotic 911 conspiracy theories, does not mean that all discussion about 911 is therefore necessarily idiotic.
The possibility that the official 911 story is a lie, is a very uncomfortable one for many. It challenges and demolishes the idea that for all our faults and failings, that fundamentally us Anglo/Americans are at heart the good guys of modern history. Most of us do not want to face the possibility that not only were they lied to about 911, but that we also willingly believed the lie.
This is the reason travelleve gets such a demeaning, dissmissive and nasty reception. It makes it very hard for her and I for one admire her courage and persistence. In the long run it may be shown that not everything she is saying is the truth… but she will nonetheless be a whole lot closer to it than her mean-minded, gutless detractors
HS,
Why don’t you google CPTSD, or complex post traumatic stress disorder. 5 years of terror will do that to you.
Thank you redlogic for you willingness to stick your neck out for me.
The problem lies in the word “theory” and the derogatory way HS and other deniers use it.
The issue is as to whether people like us theorise or whether we try to find out what actually happened.
We are more accurately 911 researchers. In other words we don’t “theorise”
We don’t sit around saying, “what will we theorise about today.”
It is therefore disingenuous and malicious to keep putting that label on people like me.
The only “Conspiracy theory” around is the official myth foisted upon us in the first hour of the attack. There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support it. No Arab names on the flight list, no connection to Osama bin Laden. Osama bin Laden was financed by the CIA and a CIA asset.
He is not even on the FBI most wanted list for 911. Why? Because according to Rex Tomb, a FBI official they have no proof of his involvement.
A passport that allegedly flew through the fire of the plane and landed unscathed on top of the pile? Are you kidding me? A rental car with Flight instruction books and a testament in bad Arab using words no Arab would use in a testament? Testimony about un Muslim behaviour like boozing, Coke and sex with pole dancers by the alleged hijackers?
In fact Mohamed Atta was cohabiting with a Nun Moslim American pole dancer while “learning how to fly” in Venice Florida. LOL
So on with what we did find.
It is now confirmed that the Twin tower dust contains a huge amount of iron microspheres together with sulphur and other chemical compounds. This is the chemical profile of Thermate. This indicates that a form of thermate was used to blow up the towers in fact a military grade called thermite was used as particles of this explosive were found back in the same dust.
Iron microspheres not steel microspheres.
If the tower dust contains microspheres of molten iron the temperature must have been much higher that can be caused by carbon fuel fires.
This is dust has a proper chain of evidence and was collected in an apartment away from possible contamination due to welders uses to cut the steel beams.
If there is thermite in the dust it fairly reasonable to assume that it was used to pulverise the towers.
If a tower collapses into a pyroclastic flow in the freefall speed of 10- 11 seconds it is also fairly reasonable to conclude that there was something more happening than a low grade Kerosene fire. Especially if people were seen in the hole made by the plane, able to hold on to the “melting” steel and suffering no burns.
If a 47 story steel framed building(WTC 7 the third building that collapsed 6 hours after the Twin towers) was able to collapse into its own footprint in 6.5 seconds then why bother to hire specialists who plant explosives into the buildings. All we’d have to do is set it on fire let it burn six hours and voila another perfectly demolished building. it has taken NIST 6 years and many man hours to come up with a working theory of the collapse of one beam pulling down the entire structure in on it’s self, it is to ridiculous to even go there.
Hundreds of recorded witness statements about explosions in the basements and the lobbies “before” the planes actually hit the buildings were locked away until after 5 years the NY times finally gained access to them after lengthy court cases.
I put it to you that for most people it is easier to think that those evil nasty Islamic crazies could fly four air planes for more then two hours through the most protected airspace on the face of this planet to do this dastardly deed then to face up to a really evil idea: That our leaders could conspire against us and perpetrate something as hideous as 911 on it’s own people and on citizens of many Nations working in the Twin towers to get us to were we are today. At war with two countries killing millions of people that had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with 911.
Hell, that’s how our European masters played it against the Jews before and it worked a treat. When ever they wanted to get rid of some Jews for whatever reason or if they wanted to blame whatever mischief they had been up to on the Jews all they had to conjure up an evil Semitic conspiracy and bingo the people always bought it and killed off the lot of them.
Blaming Arabs for 911 is just using peoples tendency for Anti Semitism. In fact these wars are the biggest Anti Semitic holocaust since the second World War. The Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Jordanians and the Lebanese are all Semites. Their languages members of the same Semitic Language family as Hebrew, which is why the Jews were called Semites.
Dirty rag heads, Sand niggers, baby killers, evil conspirators, kill the lot of them. Catch my drift?
In western anti Muslim cartoons Arabs are even depicted like the Germans depicted Jews in the run up to the war and the Jewish Holocaust. Either skinny with a huge nose looking mean or fat and sleazy.
I leave with a question: If it is proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Bush et al blatantly lied about every single one of their reasons of wanting to invade Iraq and in fact have a long history of lying about just about everything else then why do you expect them to tell the truth only once: about the events of 911 that got them exactly what they wanted. A new “Pearl harbour” and war in Afghanistan, Iraq and next in Iran.
This a link to the PDF called: Rebuilding America’s defences from PNAC calling for just such an event.
http://www.pdfdownload.org/pdf2html/pdf2html.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.informationclearinghouse.info%2Fpdf%2FRebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf&images=yes
What is the truck strike really about? As you point out, RUCs are not a significant part of a trucking firm’s costs.
Quite simply, I think:
1. Trucking companies are suspicious that the government is spending RUCs on things other than roads.
2. The announcement was obviously linked to the Toll buyback of rail. To say otherwise is to suggest that the government are incompetent political managers. This then creates the clear perception that RUCs are increasing to pay for the oodles of money that the government fell over themselves to fork out to Toll to buy the rail operations.
3. People see that the government has decided to go back in to business for itself in another sector where the government has a trend of squeezing the private sector out by using its dominant powers. Think the health sector, education sector and ACC as examples.
4. The government obviously despises Toll and has strong motives to want to put them out of the rail business. Whatever may be said the government negotiated from a position of strength and held all the cards. You don’t have to dig very deep to discover that the rail union is affiliated to Labour, has been the backroom power behind this deal, and is innately very hostile to Toll and the whole privatisation thing.
“I hope to meet you lot in person one time. I do not troll period.”
Put a finger in the dyke you stupid tulip.
[lprent: Dad! Too far]
Kevyn,
Saying that LTNZ is arms length from the goverment and that Cullen doesn’t really have any control over what LTNZ does really does not wash with me. People claim the same about SOEs and then look the other way when Meridian decides to hand over a few hundred million of its capital, in an election year, to be spent on roads (2005, $800m) or rail (2008, $170m)… (Cue Tui ad)
As far as LTNZ goes, the government decides all the rates of their income and it appoints the board that decides what to spend it on. There are several overtly or closet Labour-left people on the current board of LTNZ.
By God Eve you’re right proof positive at last !
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Bushtourist.jpg
Sorry but I find the official explanation more compelling than the US flying planes into their own buildings.
If forgot to add that you are, however, more than welcome to your own opinion on what did or didn’t happen.
travellerv, have you forgotten your medication? Isn’t it time you get more of those magic drops?
Remember, always wear your tin-foil hat when leaving home in the best Dutch tradition.
santi: You aren’t getting yourself angry again are you?
You remember what happened last time here? You got banned from civilized society. Maybe you should take some prozac now rather than later.
Actually I can’t be bothered looking up what happened last time. But I do want to remind you about my little obsessional habits on this blog and the blatant over-reactions I like to display.