More policy wonking

Over at No Right Turn a progressive think tank has been set up, soliciting suggestions and ideas for new legislation that can be framed in a Private Member's Bill in Parliament. Go on, get yours in.
I submitted:
1. Amend MMP to 125 list seats only (no separate Maori seats)
2. Abolish local government above community board level, transfer competencies to national ministries (roading to Transit NZ, public transport to Transport, parks and reserves to DOC, water/sewage to Environment, planning to community boards, etc) - replace rates with local income tax/GST transfer from central Govt to local board - see my previous policy wonking on that subject.
3. Join the EU and euro: joining the euro would mean lower interest rates and a hedge against the US$ fall when commodity trading switches to Euros; EU membership would mean we can have a say in their development rather than being on the receiving end of it all the time, plus free access to all markets for labour, goods and capital. NZ has an associate membership invitation since 1973 when the UK joined but it was never taken up.
4. Lower the drinking age to 16 (with access to safe and supervised drinking areas such as pubs and youth clubs): most of Europe has this, if you're old enough to have sex you should be able to have a beer too.
5. Increase the driving age to 18: it would do wonders to adolescent obesity rates if they went on a bike rather than by car to school. It would solve Auckland's traffic problem (there is no gridlock in school holidays) and boost patronage for public transport. Again, most of Europe has this.
6. Compulsory third party driving insurance: a no-brainer and would elevate driving to a privilege rather than a right. The free market (insurance companies) would price bad drivers off the road
7. 10 yearly re-sitting of driving tests: again, driving rules change, motorways get built, eyesight deteriorates, brains fail. Why does your car need a WOF but you don't? (While we're at it, we could follow Singapore and ban all cars older than 10 years to ensure better technology, fuel consumption and less emission)
(4 to 7 should be in one bill ideally)
8. Lower the voting age to 16: if you work and have pay tax, you should have a say over how that tax is spent
9. Reform the lifestyle drug laws so there is appropriate and safe access to all of them: the main aim is to cut the criminal gangs' extreme profits and to be able to sue your dealer under the Consumer Guarantees Act if he sells you dodgy gear. Black markets should be brought into the bright sunlight of a modern, regulated economy.

Cadbury Island

A local city magazine with the aspirations of the likes of the New Yorker this month published (not online) a feature on my island. Thank you, Peter, for the alert. I don't usually read that magazine until it's a few months old and lingers in the dentist waiting room, it's not that compulsory a read.
Anyway, the article was about Waiheke Island's tribulations about the opening of a long-planned and long-awaited sex shop. The proposed siting of the shop in an industrial area of the island, and tucked behind the butcher shop, was still too close for some blue stockings who vocally opposed the establishment plans. The Council, with its ridiculous, and now invalided, by-law on sex businesses and brothels, is now cast adrift and the shop - called "Bedrock" - is expected to go ahead soon.
The business case for the shop is made by the owner who sees a large number of cross-dressing lifestylers, people who want risque presents and cards, and, of course, the gay boys shopping for butt plugs. He dubbed Waiheke Cadbury Island for all the fruits and nuts who live here. He forgot to add we have them with a nice drop of syrah or merlot and call it a food group.

It may be difficult to comprehend but sometimes the Dutch really do get it right

They recently introduced one of the toughest and challenging citizenship application tests to make sure only people who really, really, really want to come to the Netherlands to live know what the Dutch are like, what they are into and what newcomers are expected to put up with once they have arrived.
The test, according to the Dutch Justice Ministry, requires about 250-300 hours of study - this presuming you actually and actively can speak and understand Dutch to sit the test in the first place. The first part of a test is here if you feel ready to take it now.
I scored 67%, which is actually in line with what a group of Dutch citizens got when they sat the test at a Festival. Those that failed the test were counselled by foreign embassy representatives willing to assist them as asylum seekers. All in good fun, of course.
Some have seized on the content of the accompanying DVD that embassies distribute to new migrants, showing a general and specific introduction to the Netherlands and its lifestyle. Since it contains footage of day-to-day occurences, such as topless sun bathing and male-on-male kissing, it is alleged this is to frighten off any religious fundamentalists from going there. Since a number of countries (including the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) are exempt from the test it's fair to think the DVD will do its work on people coming from less enlightened, non-western societies. But it would be a good idea to run it past any US red state citizens and Lebanese Australians who not long ago rioted against topless sunbathing on Cronulla beach.
It would be a good idea for New Zealand to adopt a similar get-to-know-us DVD for potential migrants, featuring Hero parade floats, Waiheke Island's Nudie Bay and yodelling lesbian twin sisters.
Perhaps that would have scared off such creepy undesirables as Brian Tamaki and Ian Wishart, and made them seek asylum in Howard Land.

So to be absolutely clear why we are fighting in Afghanistan

Islam seems to be in that blissfull 15th century of its existence where it claims that arrogance that comes with absolute power over its adherents: death to runaways and apostates. The Medieval Catholic Church had a similar policy and has rued the day ever since it lost the power to be able to burn at will "heretics" and assorted free thinkers, who wished to escape the yoke of the Church.
Now a court in Afghanistan, aiming to uphold Sharia law, is deliberating a death sentence on a Muslim who converted to Christianity.
I guess the difference between religion and a cult lies in its handling of apostates. Cults demand total submission and want complete control, while religion is more of a private affair between you and your chosen deity. Islam thus is an example of the former, while, say, Quakerism, is an example of the latter.
I can but imagine what the convert guy would have gotten as punishment had he actually gone atheist. But since New Zealand has SAS troops in Afghanistan I think they should be withdrawn because of this issue. I can't think why the Helen Clark Labour Government would want to support this medieval system of thought control and swift summary executions for wanting to get rid of that very system.

Of course, it doesn't only apply to individuals wishing to leave an oppressive cult behind, it also applies to secessionist movements everywhere: try being a Taiwanese independence supporter, or secede from the United States. Europe, as usual, does it better: the Basq Country creeps ever so slowly towards independence with the ceasefire declaration from ETA.

Bringing liberation to European people, one Eurovision Song Contest at the time

Serbia and Montenegro are at serious loggerheads and in danger of splitting apart after a contested vote over who should represent their federation at this year's every gay boy's cultural calendar highlight, the Eurovision Song Contest in Athens in May.
A Montenegrin boy band, called No Name, won the contest but Serbian voters booed them off claiming the vote was rigged. Now Serbia has withdrawn from the Athens contest altogether, the BBC reports.
Montenegro is due to hold a referendum on independence on May 21st, the day after the final, so boybands of the world unite and fight for your freedom!

Another weekend of high and low culture

Harvie Krumpet: The Arts Channel put this claymation gem that won the 2003 Oscar on after their fascinating series on the painter Raphael.
Harvie Krumpet is the life story of a Polish immigrant to Australia, and a very sad but horrifically funny tale it is.
But that doesn't prohibit anyone from laughing with the really black humour involving personal misfortune, accidents of history and of your own making, grandparental home schooling, depression and its cures, Alzheimer's and its mercies, magnetic skull plates and nudism (don't ask).
It was great fun and highly recommended if you can find it in the DVD shop!
The 2003 Oscar was absolutely well-deserved.

Favourite "Fakt": In nude dancing, after the music stops, not everything does.

City of God: Altogether not much of a laughing matter there, but nonetheless riveting stuff.
It was amazing that I didn't really notice I was watching a film instead of a documentary about the Rio slum city of that name.
At times it was extremely painful to watch, as in the scene where one of the gang members is forced to choose which of the two captured children-gangsters he has to shoot dead. Sophie's Choice was almost pathetic in comparison. But glamour was far from it all.
Terrific acting by several dozen of assorted hoodlums, and you can't but think that legalising trade and sale of all drugs, plus encouraging gang members to get a proper girlfriend instead of hanging out in single gender gangs, would do something to that depressing situation they are stuck in.

Hot Nurses 2: I'm beginning to appreciate straight porn, even if it is largely from an anthropological perspective (I like to read the articles about it!) than for sexual arousal, or, godess forbid, sexual satisfaction. But during research for an update of my Auckland guide for sexually active guys, this particular video was playing for the punters' delectation. It's produced by Larry Flint of the Hustler empire. I haven't seen episode 1, nor the other 6, but I couldn't help notice that the actresses were quite well groomed and presentable if you were to introduce them in polite company. This compared to older porn material where most actresses looked like they had just finished a stint at the local brothel before getting on the set. Maybe Mr Flint specialises in slightly more upmarket production, who knows.
I was most pleasantly surprised by the calibre of the male actors, who usually play second fiddle in str8 porn scenarios. The guys were quite sexy (Alex was my favourite, great bod, big shoulder tattoo) and were not just there to provide a massive erect member for the girls to feast on. Is this to make porn more watchable for women and thus instantly double your potential market?
Unfortunately, still no male-male touching - there was enough of that between women - or almost acknowledging each other they were even there at separate ends of the women. Some frontiers evidently still exist.

Haka for Burmester

The only good thing about New Zealand sport - apart from the occasional spunky bloke partaking - is the "spontaneous" haka that team mates perform, either to fire themselves up before the match, or afterwards, when one of their own has won.
So it was when Moss Burmester won a gold medal at the Commonwealth Games swimming.
It's a nice tradition where the boys get to strip off and slap their thighs and chests and can act the fool as much as they like.
When you see groups of young New Zealanders abroad, ask them to do a haka, but insist on them stripping off for authenticity. Chests will swell with pride.
(Picture from APN)

Queerclick has a good photoshoot of the NZ Water Polo team doing a haka (worksafe!)

That paragon of wickedness

The Washington Times, affectionately known as The Moonie Times, never attracted any great intellectual contributions, but a recent column was worth reading. (Re-published by The Brussels Journal) It compared the history of Amsterdam with that of New Orleans in geographical and economic terms and the lessons New Orleans could learn from the Dutch in dealing with storm floods and dike breaks.
All very earnest and serious stuff, while we all know why we really love Amsterdam and New Orleans.
This was expertly brought out by a commentator on the piece and worth quoting:

"The thought that anything of modern Dutch conception should be emulated is bizarre wickedness. Amsterdam, that paragon of wickedness in which women are displayed by the numbers for the sexual gratification of passers-by, while euthanasia grows as a cancer within it and the whole city a drug Mecca for the worst of the earth should be a role model for New Orleans, itself a mere child of below sea level wickedness in comparison is the classic lie of free willers everywhere: "Look what we did. You Too can 'do it' if you try."

If you want heaven on earth or be raptured out of your brain, Amsterdam - and hopefully soon again New Orleans too - is the place to be.

Policy wonking

There is some furore on our island after the City Council, which rules over us, issued new valuations on island properties. Quite a few were saddled with increases way beyond their perceived value. (Disclosure: ours was not) On average the island property valuation over the last three years has gone up by about 97%, compared to about 42% in the whole of the city council area.
At the last local election, our member on the City Council ran on a claim that independence would be too expensive, that the City "gave" us islanders a lot of subsidies, and that rates would have to go up under an (independent, de-amalgamated) Island council. All baloney of course, as it transpired, with us islanders paying far more in rates to the city than we get back from it and in effect subsidising city dwellers' lifestyles and public transport. And rates will no doubt go up, independence or not. (The Council has yet to strike a rate for this year)
So it was time to put my thinking cap on and write to the local island newspaper about the issues:

Dear Mr Editor,

Since the debates regarding the new property valuations do not show any sign of abating – and one would be justified to dread the coming uproar when the council finally strikes a rate that will make the valuation and current increases look like very small change – I think it a good idea to look at alternatives to property taxes, because they are generally perceived to be inequitable, inefficient and unfair to large groups of residents.
It should concern all of us that many of us islanders perceive the local council as a money-grabbing entity which milks us to finance the lifestyle of city dwellers, resulting in a probable fundamental change of the island population’s sociological composition as the less-wealthy and those on fixed incomes are being rated off the island.
If that is council policy we should at least be told so at the next election so we can make an informed choice as to whether we want to continue to be part of that, or finally decide that we are a viable and vibrant enough community to go it alone and with a welcome mat for all.
So here are A few short Proposals to change the rating system for local government financing.

1. Base the rate on the property’s real value
Since the Council’s property valuation for rating purposes is at best guess work and at worst wishful thinking, the only real world-based value of a property is the last price it sold at (or was built for, or improved with after purchase). All the rest is conjecture and real estate agent hype. So the base of the rating should be the last sale price and remain so until it gets sold again. Inflation could top it up but I see no good reason why that should be so: a house needs maintenance and gets improvements over the years which would be added to the original price and this would increase the ratings value sufficiently by itself. GST, of course, should be abolished on rates since you pay that already when you build your house.
Instead it should be added to house sales, as it is with all other sale goods and services. It would enable central Government to make simple population and needs based remittances to local councils of locally generated GST portions.

2. Base the rate on the property owner’s real stake in the property
If the rating system is based on taxing people’s property wealth, it should at least be based on their real stake in their property. Many properties are not wholly owned by their owners but have a mortgage attached to them. So the owner should only pay rates on the percentage that is freehold, the rest should be charged to the other owner, i.e. the bank or mortgage company. They may in turn have to charge the mortgage holder higher interest rates, but that is in essence no different from including the rate costs in the rent charged by a landlord to his tenants. All landlords should pay normal business taxes, capital gains tax upon sale and GST on rental incomes. GST remittances to local authorities also should take place as under point 1.
The main drawback would be for people owning their property freehold having to pay more than those on 100% mortgages. But then currently there is no link between income and rates, with cash-poor pensioners in expensive homes paying far more than they should anyway.

3. Change the rating system to a local income tax remittance
Abolish the feudal relic of property tax and shift the financing of local services to income generated in the local area. Businesses, landlords and property owners pay normal income tax and GST and Government should allocate a percentage of that tax take to the local area, i.e. 2% of income tax and 1% of GST generated locally, to finance local government activities. Administratively, this is a straightforward procedure. General election campaigns could then focus on this aspect of our lives too rather than leave it to the almost irrelevant and pathetic local election campaigns. This would strengthen two current weak points: fiscal responsibility of local government, and the link between local wealth creation and local spending.
The fiscal responsibility of local government would be jolted as it would need to live within its means replacing current continuous over the top rate increases. Central Government is far more sensitive to public opinion on income tax than local government is on rates (when was the last time any council decreased rates?).

4. Abolish local government and expand local island control over planning
In order to limit spending it will also have to look at what services Central Government has been devolving compulsorily to local government, but which are currently un-budgeted by Government - because they are shifted out of its ambit - and left up to Councils to gouge local ratepayers to fund them. Why do we have local road financing and why isn’t all roading taken care of by Transit New Zealand instead? Why aren’t all libraries branches of the National Library and funded from its national budget? Why aren’t all parks and reserves part of the Department of Conservation? Why aren’t all drains and sewage services built, maintained and run nationally as part of a Department of the Environment? Why isn’t public and private transport a national priority and policy?
Localising all these services is wasteful and inefficient since they require enormous local bureaucracies on different and often conflicting levels, who are not always up to the job, especially when they need to tax a small-ish base.
For Waiheke Island, the community board should get control over local planning and other activities should be handled by central government. The local board should deal direct with Government on tax remittances for the financing of its activities. All this can be done with full transparency and accountability and with sufficient local input into all its plans and proposals.
A 10,000 population base is large enough to warrant this degree of independence.

Yours sincerely,
Grumpy of Surfdale

Nude bike riding

Not the most comfortable of hobbies, I would have thought, but it's part of a traditional protest action here in New Zealand with cyclists taking to the road sans clothes to protest against their vulnerability to traffic and fumes.
Now in the Tasman District (on the northern tip of the South Island) the mayor is objecting to the nude ride and want the cops to arrest the cheeky chappies.
It's not the first time the police have been asked to intervene and arrest nude bike riders. Last year Simon Oosterman arrived at court naked (but got dressed when entering) after his arrest at the nude bike ride here in Auckland.
I prefer my cyclists to leave something to the imagination - all that lycra does wonders to a boy's physique, no? - but if they insist on parking their bare butts on hard saddles and ride the potholed roads here, who am I to object?

Fucking for peace

In an essay in The Guardian, Ian Buruma discusses the link between sexual deprivation, frustration and suppression with extreme violence and a better performance on the sports and battle fields.
Based on that theory, the only way forward to a peaceful world is to bring sexual liberation to the men who are stewing - one of the pillars of my faith (!)
But what bugs me in the essay is that he seems to say that sex will drain the aggression out of a straight guy/soldier/suicide bomber, but that isn't the case of gay guys, as in the Spartan and Theban soldier lovers cases.
And is this an argument for having gay soldiers, footballers and extremists only, who won't be swayed by promises of heavenly sex with virgins, down-to-earth rape in conquered territory or sex with the missus after winning the cup? I would rather see a battle field strewn with spent and satisfied male bodies instead of the bloody mess we usually get.

Freedom of speech needs protecting from Christians too

Catholic Action, a fundamentalist group - surely a contradiction in Catholic terms - is applying to the Solicitor General for permission to start legal proceedings for "blasphemy" against TV channel C4 for showing the bleeding statue episode of South Park. It is a good move that will hasten the campaign to rid our statute books of that ancient relic of the un-enlightenment.

Sex in the news

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Gay for pay?

A new craze is sweeping the gay internets: the insatiable demand for watching "straight guys" take it up the ass and getting paid for it. Getting paid for it by gay guys looking at it on their 'puters at home, or something. It has to be financed somehow. Fools and their cash need parting presto.
What I can't get my tiny brain around is the obvious fact that anyone shelling out good loot to see some hapless twink allegedly watching his alleged girlfriend on video, while being penetrated himself, is being portrayed and marketed by the pornographers as "straight".
Have you ever believed or taken anything a pornographer has filmed or written for real?
These guys deal in fantasies and I see no good reason to believe all they peddle is anything else but another fantasy. And please spare me those corny biographies accompanying the photo shoot. It makes for passable fiction but little else.
HomoMojo has a good take on it but Shimmy is confused by the whole issue.

Bisexual, bi-curious or bifurcated bollocks?

Mark Simpson wrote a lengthy commentary on American "research" that found males are 27 times less likely than women to be attracted to the same sex. He rightly skewered the report as an outcome of social attitudes rather than actual sexual behaviour, and then goes on to "salvage" male bisexuality from the current trends to make it (males who are attracted to both sexes) disappear into a puff of what is tendentiously called "bi-curiousness" (straight males trying to find out what all the fuss is about they heard of).
As any male knows, only your mates assign you a sexual orientation, based on their perception, your alleged behaviour and, occasionally, your protestations. Women, in contrast, will always be women but men are only socially labelled "real men" after a passing muster with other men. Professing an interest in other males or any kind of "deviant" (i.e. all non-hetero) sexuality will guarantee you the label queer, no matter how many women you sleep with or insist your "deviancy" is out of curiosity rather than taste, or, worse, orientation.
This is a longstanding given in male social history. The ancient Greeks were not "bisexual" but actively interested in fucking epheboi, adolescents in the first bloom of adulthood. They would have scoffed at the notions of our modern gay sexual orientation definitions. Even the label bisexual would have been laughed at as dishonourable for men - if it meant taking the passive female position in sexual intercourse.
This is why in the current fashionable vogue of "bi-curiousness" or bisexual claims by many a straight man isn't really all what it seems. When I meet those guys in a sex club, they are there - dusty boots and check shirts included, straight from the building site - not to get some sweet loving from a male because the girlfriend is unavailable, nor to try out being anally penetrated - you'll get a slap if you suggested it to them - but to get a good blowjob, because they have heard we give them better than their girlfriends.
So I think labelling males who seek out other males to perform sexual services on them they normally expect and get from their girlfriends as bisexual a tad misleading. And they wouldn't describe themselves as such either: recall the many interviews with male hustlers who only take an active role - they never regard themselves as gay.
Top and bottom roles, as this is familiarly known in the gayworld, matter more to the sexual self-definition of the exploring straight male, than labels such as gay, bisexual or queer.
Mark relates an episode from his own sex life - something he does not do enough of, it's all theoretical bones without some hot muscle!:

A separated ‘bi-curious’ fireman in rural England I met a few times before he went back to his wife recently contacted me to tell me something rather alarming. ‘She found out about you,’ he said. ‘She hacked into my Hotmail account.’ ‘Oh, shit,’ I said. ‘What did she do? Did she throw you out?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘She got turned on! She wants to watch.’ The poor guy had to tell her that that this really was a kinky bridge too far for him. That he was too much a traditionalist to go down that path...

But Mark leaves out the most crucial bit of information that would support my argument (or not): did he top or bottom before he went back to his wife? We should be informed! Real bisexuals take it up the arse like a man before they go back to their girlfriend. All the rest is "bi-curious" cant.