Another reason Labour should be arseholed!

[vifferman]

With the cost of fuel rising, and the cost of maintaining superhighways as well, maybe rail and buses will come back into their own. Probably in much newer efficent forms.

Nah, feck that. I want to see steam cars back on the road.
I'm sure with 21st Century technology, we could make some really good ones, that will burn any sort of fuel from used oil to carbon credits to politicians to rendered down baby fur seal whale penguins.

[MisterD]

Bring back Steam Trains - plenty of coal to burn round here

Plus they go TOOOoooooooOOOOOOOT

That's actually a sensible suggestion. The best way to make money with our trainset is the scenic trainride tourist thing, and those anoraks luurve steam.

[Flatcap]

That's actually a sensible suggestion. The best way to make money with our trainset is the scenic trainride tourist thing, and those anoraks luurve steam.

Anoraks, MisterD, and MasterD

[ambler]

Libertarianz - less government in our lives.....sounds good - pay bugger all tax, look after yourself - so, logically no money, no healthcare, no assistance when you need it, pay for your own schooling or no schools.......

Remember that this money and assistance only comes from your taxes anyway. Wouldn't you rather have the extra 33% of your income to arrange as you decide? Healthcare by insurance, schools paid for directly etc would also encourage a better product.

Perhaps another way of putting it is: would you rather pay more tax than you do now, for more assistance?

On a side note, did you know that around 7.5% of your income taxes for 2009 will be spent purely on running the IRD itself? When did you agree to that?
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?k...JJ4KBYNPTHWUDg
So a full 2.5% of your income for next year will be taken from you in order to facilitate the taking of another 30%.... great system huh.

[Ocean1]

Apart from Australia and the USA, many nations use rail and public transport as their main movers. With the cost of fuel rising, and the cost of maintaining superhighways as well, maybe rail and buses will come back into their own. Probably in much newer efficent forms.

Rail's inefficiencies are only partly geographically or technologically related. The main reason it's a huge looser is the institutional culture, it's utterly dysfunctional. The fact that the rolling stock and other assets are so run down as to be worth literally nothing is a factor, but you can throw money at that to fix it. You can't fix a century old embedded culture of failure.

If they arent economic why should I be taxed so they can be kept ?

Devil's advocate here: Because if the assets associated with an industry relying totally on high value tech investment fall below a certain level then a nationwide business otherwise potentially capable of supplying a genuinely commercially valuable service will fail. Economies of scale matter, and in the case of any viable rail system in NZ it’s got to be managed nationally. Trouble is that means a monopoly, which means the sort of bullshit we’ve had to put up with from both NZR and Toll.

You’ll notice Toll are now in the position of owning the only possible Tech support capabilities for our re-nationalised railway. They also have at least a heads of agreement with the government to supply those services to a rail system needing a multi-billion dollar upgrade…

[Winston001]

Devil's advocate here: Because if the assets associated with an industry relying totally on high value tech investment fall below a certain level then a nationwide business otherwise potentially capable of supplying a genuinely commercially valuable service will fail. Economies of scale matter, and in the case of any viable rail system in NZ it’s got to be managed nationally......

Good thing the Government owns the nations electricity generation and supply - no, wait....dang!!

[Slyer]

Man... libertarianz kicks ass.
I'm so voting for them now.

[Steam]

Bring back Steam Trains - plenty of coal to burn round here
Plus they go TOOOoooooooOOOOOOOT

I completely agree! Apparently Hillside Workshops in Dunedin still have the tooling to make them packed away in a museum shed somewhere.

Nah, feck that. I want to see steam cars back on the road.
I'm sure with 21st Century technology, we could make some really good ones, that will burn any sort of fuel from used oil to carbon credits to politicians to rendered down baby fur seal whale penguins.

Gasifier cars, also known as Woodgas cars. You put in any kind of burnable stuff, including wood, leaves or sawdust or compost or roadkill or anything.
It heats it with a controlled amount of oxygen or steam, and you get gas plus charcoal. Then you just pipe it into your car. You run the same engine settings as for LPG.
In Europe during World War II, over a million vehicles ran using wood-burning gasifiers when gasoline and diesel were unavailable.


Gainesville, Florida, 1981. The tiny generator that powers this wood-burning motor­cycle was constructed at the University of Florida out of a fire-extinguisher casing. The vehicle gets 70 km per kg of wood Photo by Barbara Hansen.

And here's a car with one on the front.


Burt Munro used one during WW2 when petrol was scarce.

Man... libertarianz kicks ass.
I'm so voting for them now.

aaaaaahahaha! Talk about a wasted vote!

[Shadows]

Nope, nobody voted for them last election - ask around.

So you don't know many South Auckland coconuts then?

[The Pastor]

you know what, im not actually too woried about this one.

Its really going to make it alot harder for gangs to operate. at least I hope it will.

Its never going to effect me personally either.

But There will be some innocent people who will have there lives destroyed by it, just a matter of time.

The question is, are the pros worth the potential cons?

I think it might just be.

Then again im always wrong about everything.

[slowpoke]

The problem is people are quick to complain but take no responsibility for actually following the process and applying their learnings constructively. More people can tell you who was on the wing in the last AB's game than who their local politician is. Most of us read the front pages of the paper last (if at all), as we are more concerned with the sports or gossip pages than issues that have a direct bearing on our lives.

Ashamed of our politician's? Hmph, we should be ashamed of ourselves.

I don't see the drama with the Government buying back the Railways. Governments should be about providing services for it's populace not generating profits. As such the Health, Education, Utilities, Transport, Justice systems etc etc should be measured by the quality of service they provide rather than how much money they make.

This "private enterprise does it better" line is just an absolute crock. It's like Hyosung saying to investors "look our GT650 is cheaper and more profitable than Suzuki's SV650 so it's obviously a better bike" whilst the actual end user ends up with a bike that has a noticeable performance deficit. If you don't mind something that doesn't operate quite as well then fine but I don't think it's acceptable with our important services.

Then there is the obvious question of if it costs X dollars to generate electricity or run a railway or Telecom system, why would you pay X dollars plus substantial profit to a private company to do the same thing to a reduced standard? It just seems non-sensical.

I could go on but I think it's time the Reverend Rantalot had a wee lie down.....

[ambler]

Steam, the only truly wasted vote is where you don't cast it at all. Coming a close second is the vote which is cast for a candidate you don't really support.

When you vote, you are giving your answer to the question "What do you want?". If you use your vote to answer some other question, such as "Which is the lesser of these two evils?", then you can't complain about not getting what you want.

[SPman]

And of course, you get 2 votes and they don't have to be for the same party. I've found my electorate vote has often been different to my party vote...........

[SPman]

Only poor people and the mentally impaired ride on trains

Yep - I ride 100km each way each day to work - comfortable, airconditioned, cheaper than the cost of fuel for the bike, I read, play computer games etc and can just relax on the way to work, and home.
Oops - I'm in West Australia. - whilst not perfect, at least they are trying.
Guess I'm mentally impaired.........

[oldrider]

Good thing the Government owns the nations electricity generation and supply - no, wait....dang!!

The government own a whole lot more of it now than they did before "deregulation".

Not privatisation as most think it was.

It is the government that is screwing electricity consumers in NZ! John.