Institutionalized Plonkerism
and if bullshit was bitumen...

Unbelievably following the virtual destruction of New Orleans and surrounding towns people still don't get it. Whining like a fucked diff, the combustion engine lobby are all collectively screaming for fiscal relief at the petrol pump, the lastest joke is the email going round asking drivers to boycott service stations today. As if that is going to make a jot of difference. If you don't buy your petrol today, you're just gonna buy it tomorrow. I guess the project of dumbing down of the general populus is still on track.

Don Brash, should he seize power in 11 days time, intends giving back New Zealander's billions of dollars in tax cuts (so they can all go out and buy new Ford Explorers and plasma TVs) meanwhile borrowing billions more to build a ridiculous and (by the time it's complete) largely pointless maze of roads in Auckland. Ironically arguing by creating wider more complex set of traffic problems - this will increase ecnomic growth.

What Brash is utterly and contemptously ignorant of is the fact that the days of the daily drive from your cosy suburb 40 kilometres from Queen Street is all but over for people on less than 80k a year.

Cheap oil is finished, and in the face of blindingly obvious warnings (Katrina, Gulf of Mexico - taking out 20 odd offshore oil rigs, petrol $1.55 a litre, oil - increase in price 500% since 1998, peak oil predicted by 2007) people STILL DON'T GET IT.

The rapid (within 48 hrs) descent into a contemporary state of nature in New Orleans would no doubt have Hobbes turning in his grave. It serves as a sober reminder that we are at any point in time 2 to 3 days away from utter distruction and despair.

You can bet the next argument for a rise in the oil price per barrel will be the shortage now emerging in the US strategic reserve as it taps into that stockpile (reckoned to be close to 800 million barrels) to bail out whinging motorists having to pay 3 bucks a gallon.

Even Mallard is on the bandwagon, arguing we here in NZ should conserve gas to help our good friends in the States. Anyone that seriously believes this will make a difference is delusional.

New Zealand uses much less than 1% of the entire petroleum usage world wide, any saving we make will be counted as a miniscule fraction - a real number preceded by several zeros. You wanna feel good. Take the bus to work one day this week, call up the Red Cross and donate 10 bucks. Then thank your arse you live in New Zealand.