Listening to talkback radio this morning as my alarm clock attempted to coerce me out of bed - I couldn't help but notice the type of PC greed that this Socialist Government is instilling in our country.
The topic of discussion was Rodney Hide's bill to cap the local rate rises (with which I agree). The strange thing was how almost every caller agreed with the bill - and then managed to finish with "especially for" <me>. Where <me> equals elderly / poor / beneficiary / etc - but always a group to which the caller belonged. Of course the whole point of the bill is to make the increases in the costs of these services fair - and not pander to the cross-subsidisation of the socialist thinking - and yet people could not see the irony in their own statement of: the rates shouldn't be increased for me because I'm hard done by, if it doesn't get increased for others then I suppose that's good too.
Of course the fact that the only opposition raised was that this would prevent proper investment in infrastructure also shows the intellectually bereft opposition. This bill doesn't stop that at all - it just means that either the local body will need to look to public / private partnerships to achieve it, or it will need to specifically ask its employers (the ratepayers) for permission for a specific increase. I see this as a good thing - especially as the scope of local body decisions are actually still within the realm of what most people can comprehend. To steal Scott Adam's analogy - people can generally decide between whether a turkey or a bald eagle is a good mascot; deciding the macro-economic impact of interest rate differentials is a little more specialist...
Tags: NZ, politics, tax
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