Gluttony over the years

With Che setting up his website on how to be a tight-wad, I thought I’d celebrate a decade of gluttony.  A habit I’ve acquired is collecting restaurant’s and cafe’s business cards.  It can be handy when someone asks for a recommendation and the pile of cards serves as a memory prompt.   Today’s count (I was trying to tidy up but became waylaid) totalled 168 cards for Wellington alone – I’ve maybe another 80ish from elsewhere.

  

Click for fullsize.

Democrats for Social Credit List

The Democrats have released their party list. It’s surprisingly similar to the 2005 list, with twenty candidates out of thirty one standing again.

This shows they have a stable core membership but they’re not attracting new blood.  While a stable core helps long-term survival, without growing membership they can’t hope for any future success or influence.

What should really concern them is that during a global financial crisis their brand of fundamental financial reform isn’t attracting attention.  They’ve the most fertile ground for their ideas since they left the Alliance.  If they can’t become popular today they never will.

Neo-fascists on TV3

Tomorrow night’s Campbell live will feature neo-fascists at play.  The survivalist club of former National Front members leader Kyle Chapman and Anton Foljambe will be showing us all how they are preparing for the apocalypse.   The trailer for tomorrow’s show didn’t show Kyle those two but did include his their chum Jason Orme (Rangiora’s least desirable Mayoral candidate)

It’ll be interesting to see if Campbell Live quizzes them on their politics, given they’ve started a new political party, and why they’re so convinced that the end is nigh.

Edits as per comments.

Te Kaha in Wellington

It was pretty quiet at the open day on HMNZS Te Kaha today.   Even so, there was a queue by every set of stairs because the under 5s thought they were too steep to descend without considerable consideration.

An interesting comparison was how the RNZN let you wander around inside the ship, including the operations room, while the Chinese Navy barely let you look in the windows when they had an open day. 

Te Kaha yesterday.

 

Helicopters galore.

Internal schematic.

Obligatory 3/4 shot.

The Alliance and its irrelevance

Today’s press release on Cadbury’s redundancies highlights why the Alliance will never return to Parliament.  The Alliance of today offers nothing more than the two Marxist minnows, RAM and the Workers Party, demanding nothing more than economic central planning and income redistribution.  

They claim redundancies at Cadbury area trend to low wage and casualised work force.  Unfortunately for them and their openly Marxist compatriots trending upward median wages suggest the revolution’s further away than ever.    Likewise, their claim about casualisation doesn’t match the statistics on full-time vs. part-time employment.

Source: Labour Market Statistics: 2007, Statistics NZ.

Even increasing inequality isn’t a revolution inducing trend.

Olympic Haiku

Shot-put and rowing

For two weeks I care once more  

So soon, I’ll care not

Press Release (in 100 words): Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand

Creative Commons Aotearoa New Zealand has just launched a web project
that offers a new approach to copyright and allows New Zealanders to
choose “some rights reserved” for their own creative works.

Creative Commons licences encourage sharing, and are essential tools
for anyone wishing to free up their creations for online fans. CC
licences require that users credit the owner, but licensees can choose
other restrictions too.

“New Zealand licences are written in plain English, making them easier
to understand and use” says Jane Hornibrook from CCANZ.

Showcase your licensed music, creative writing, photos and movies
through the website www.creativecommons.org.nz

Velvet Verbosity’s 100 word challenge

Perhaps if I’d found this site earlier I might have had a sensible blog.

The Hapu Party

It’s somewhat unsurprising the serial controversy courter David Rankin intends to contest the coming election.  Standing against Hone Harawira is is comparatively unambitious given some of Mr Rankin’s previous activities.  Wanting to withdraw his hapu from Treaty obligations, seeking British pensions for Maori and claiming the Treaty grounds make seeking office relatively tame.  

While unlikely to make much of an impact on the election, the Hapu Party should add a bit of colour to the contest for the Te Tai Tokerau seat at least.

Kiwi Party conference

The Kiwi Party gained some decent publicity from their weekend conference; they certainly need it. 

In terms of election strategy, playing on the anti-anti-smacking petitions makes a lot of sense for them by seeking to carve out a niche largely unoccupied by incumbent parties.   Interestingly, for a Christian party, their press releases make no  mention of their faith.  Their policies on marriage, however, have conservative Christianity written all over them.   

While their other policies are generally populist it’s hard to go past replacing fuel taxes with GST as a new high point for economically illiterate populism.