Monthly Archives: January 2011

Len Brown Takes the Train – Or Not

Posted on January 30, 2011 by Mark

I guess this answers the question I posed earlier about whether Len Brown would take the train to work if he didn’t have a political motivation to do so: Even with a political motivation he doesn’t take the train. The … Continue reading →

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Six and Counting…

Posted on January 26, 2011 by Mark

Jan. 25: Qantas flight QF2 from Bangkok to Sydney with 352 passengers on board was forced to turn back to Bangkok due to engine problems. Qantas “denied the airline is experiencing systemic maintenance problems.”

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So Far in January…

Posted on January 25, 2011 by Mark

Jan. 1: Qantas flight QF41 from Sydney to Jakarta returned to Sydney half an hour after take-off after the crew received a cockpit message alert. Jan. 6: Qantas flight QF430 from Melbourne to Sydney with 214 passengers on board turned … Continue reading →

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Socialized Swimming

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Mark

The NZ Herald reports that Auckland Mayor Len Brown wants to make entry to all City swimming pools free. Taxpayers (nationwide) are going into debt at a rate of NZ$300 million per week, city rates (property taxes) are projected to … Continue reading →

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Len Brown Takes the Train

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Mark

TVNZ reports: Auckland Mayor Len Brown says he will start to take the train to work on a regular basis to show his commitment to public transport. Does that mean that if he didn’t have a political motivation for taking … Continue reading →

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Cato on Farm Subsidies

Posted on January 14, 2011 by Mark

I was interested to read the following in this June 2009 article from the Cato Institute (via this recent blog article): An interesting example of farmers prospering without subsidies is in New Zealand. That nation ended its farm subsidies in … Continue reading →

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Bob Herbert on Poverty

Posted on January 10, 2011 by Mark

Bob Herbert had an opinion piece in the New York Times last Friday lamenting the Obama administration’s lack of interest in the poor: President Obama is redesigning his administration to make it even friendlier toward big business and the megabanks, … Continue reading →

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Protectionism

Posted on January 5, 2011 by Mark

I’m still very absorbed in studying the Rails codebase, and that has been limiting the amount of time I’ve been able to spend in the past week thinking about blogging. However… TVNZ ran an item a few days ago about … Continue reading →

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