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Sunday, October 31, 2010
Yes Minister, Down Under
It appears the ALP has unorthodox ways of providing career guidance for its senior politicians.
Mind you, from the comments threads on one or two blogs, I'd be not too surprised if a sanctimonious youngish blond headed fellow with a large ego and married to a horse was trying to get his leg over.
The most amusing aspect of this whole affair is that the Libs are standing on the sidelines, watching the show. They didn't have to do a thing.
Sobering news for "The Clown"
Williams, whose term as Mayor expires today as the new Auckland Council comes into being tomorrow, was allegedly picked up for drinking and driving this past Friday.
Whaleoil has consistently made the point that Williams was a bully, self-indulgent, a drunk and more. He slapped the title of "Clown of Campbell's Bay" on Williams and campaigned both online and on the streets to get rid of Williams.
The DIC charge, if it indeed proves true, is a fitting epitaph for a failed political career of anger, abuse and alcohol allegations.
Will She Still Need Me?
When I'm sixty four?
It would seem so. Being Halloween Day it is Adolf's birthday.
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy Biiiiirthday to me ee,
Haaaappy birthday to me!
Hip ray, hip ray, hip ray.
A quiet day - kirk this morning and then an afternoon of back breaking, shoulder wrenching ceiling painting.
Saturday, October 30, 2010
A plan so cunning you could put a tail on it and call it a weasel
Now that the media feeding frenzy has died down and it's only Dr Smith's party that stands to get dipped in shit for extravagant spending over the next few years, he suddenly finds "transparency" has become a less desirable property, and MPs' privacy has become very, very important:
Yesterday he reversed that decision because he said he was "troubled" by a "lack of integrity" in what was being made public.
Oh, there's a "lack of integrity" here alright, a big, fat lack of integrity. There's also a weasel sitting in the Speaker's chair.
UPDATE: Graeme Edgeler pointed out on another thread that the Labour ex-Ministers' spending wasn't opened up by Smith's transparency push, and such spending remains transparent. It was ACT MPs who got hammered for private travel spending.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Media Aids Saboteurs
It seems the desperate print media are intent on drumming up some controversy where none exists. None of the chest thumping pen pushers seem to realise there was no problem until a foreign union pushed its way into NZ and blackmailed Peter Jackson without realising that it was in fact needling the powerful studios themselves. Of course the studios treated the union like the cockroach it is and crushed it under its heel. Well done.
None of these three pieces even mentions the despicable role of the NZ unions in this disaster.
Not one of these armchair pontificators has enough brains to realise that even double what has been paid thus far would have been a bargain. A small price to pay for some $2 billion dollars worth of economic activity from two films- PLUS the literally billions of dollars worth of activity derived from the future movies which we would have lost if Mr Key and Co had not intervened.
Nobody from Dead Tree Media bothered to calculate how much GST and PAYE revenue the government would have lost if the Hobbit had gone offshore. No, they just bloviate their verbal excrement all over my breakfast table.
Now, dear readers, just ask yourselves who stood to benefit most from a major blow to this country's fragile economic recovery just twelve months out from an election? Then ask yourself which political party is inextricably linked to the perpetrators of this failed piece of economic sabotage?
Ask yourself that question again when you go to vote in Mana and at next year's general election.
One of the greatest honours ever paid me was to have him describe me in his book 'A Bridge Over' as his friend. He was much more than that. For many of us he was a living legend; a humble man who lived to serve and in doing so inspired so many. There was no better choice when last year he was the inaugural recipient of the 'ANZAC of the Year Award'.
I first met John when I was a young soldier in Bob Gurr's Battalion back in 1963. He was the 2ic of the Company I was posted to. A short time later I went to Australia for officer training and although our Army is very small our paths didn't really cross until after we had both left the service when he and I teamed up to fight Government over the Agent Orange issue.
That was when I really got to know John. He was masterful in knowing just how far to push and when it was time to pull back a tad. When he and I designed what became known as 'The Open Letter' it was through his wise counsel that we crafted a document that lived to underpin the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated between Government, the Royal New Zealand Returned & Services Association and the Ex-Vietnam Services Association.
Early this year I was involved in the filming of the TV documentary 'A Bridge Over' which covered the life and times of John Masters. As part of that we flew the Ghurka soldier whose life he saved in Borneo out from Nepal for a hugely emotional reunion. But all through the filming John wanted to talk, not about himself but of the soldiers he was privileged to command. That was/is the measure of the man.
To Alisoun and the children my thoughts and prayers. I will try to make it to Christchurch for the funeral but my Massey job may prevent that. But whatever, I will be there in spirit and will share a few more tears for a great friend and greater New Zealander.
Thursday, October 28, 2010
The Yes But No Parties
I was reminded of a rep who once worked for me in Southland. He was a retired cocky who thought that in a sales interview you must never disagree with a prospect. So, when he was presented with an objection to his proposition, he would preface his reply with these wonderful words:-
"Yes but no blah blah blah."
Needless to say, he was ineffective and was fired.
So too will be the Dikshits of Labour and the Greens who prefaced their remarks with the words "We are glad the Hobbitt will be filmed in New Zealand but we think the National Party and Peter Jackson and everyone else was wrong."
What a bunch of pathetic losers.
This episode will haunt them in 2011, 2014 and likely even 2017.
I'm off to see my doctor. I fear I'm going to die laughing.
God Help Auckland
The team comprises a coronary disease patient and a sufferer of advanced Parkinson's Disease.
Good bye Auckland.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Union doh
Getting involved was her first mistake and I cannot possibly imagine how they are going to spin the fix.
Not only did they not get what they wanted but they opened the door for a wildly popular prime Minister to make employment law less worker friendly for the very people who were agitating in the first place.
Lying, getting caught in the lie and then insulting a national living treasure probably didn't help either.
One positive will come out of this though. Robyn Malcolm may stick to acting and leave the childlike political campaigning to others.
Terminally Ill or Terminally Stupid?
Yes, I know you're not supposed to speak ill of the soon to be dead and if I'm wrong then I will apologize but in the meantime, isn't this just a further manifestation of an arrogant attitude which treats politics as some kind or sport? An activity for the personal gratification of the participants?
Herald Panders
Pander to wankers.
First, it gives headlines to some petrol head wanker called 'Chudleigh' (I say, Chudleigh old chap) who was nabbed doing 75 k in a 50k zone. He's whinging about the cop not letting him know he was there, for God's sake. (Dumb bloody editor doesn't even know 'power pole' is two words.)
Chudleigh Haggett, of Tauranga, was driving to Taupo for the long weekend with his family when he was stopped by the officer, who appeared on the street from behind a powerpole, he said.
The family were travelling to a motor racing event and were going through the small town of Reporoa - just south of Rotorua - at around 9am on Saturday.
Mr Haggett said he had gone through a 50km/h sign and immediately adjusted his speed as he approached a group of shops.Why don't you face facts, Herald? The prick was caught speeding through a small country town.
Second we have the childish headline "Goff Clinches Gillard Talks Before Key" as though this is some major victory.
Yesterday Mr Key said he was not concerned about Mr Goff's visit. But he indicated Mr Goff broke with protocol by keeping it under wraps until the last minute.
He said that when he was Leader of the Opposition he had always advised the Prime Minister in advance in writing when he was meeting other leaders. Mr Goff had notified him only on Sunday, by phone.
This is the guy who wants New Zealanders to trust him with the country's economic levers yet he can't be trusted even to display normal courtesy and good manners. Can you imagine the screeching from the Bilious Bitch if Dr Brash had done such a thing?
Anyway, what the hell did they talk about? Will she be giving Goff lessons in wasting vast amounts of taxpayer's money on shonky building contracts and death inducing insulation schemes? Will Goff be extolling the virtues of being the longest serving 'political unknown' in the nation's history?
When Mr Key sees her in a few days time, no doubt he will let her know in clear language what New Zealanders think of invading Australian unionists.
I wonder how The Herald will spin that?
And then there is the gratuitous and false story about Fonterra CEO's pay package. The slack arsed propagandists at The herald would have you think Mr Ferrier will be paid $5.1 million but what they don't tell you is that will ONLY happen if he meets ALL his financial and operational targets for the year. Note the carefully misleading wording 'in a range'.
The dairy farmer co-operative's 2010 annual report yesterday showed Ferrier's pay for the year ended July 31 was in a range with an upper limit of $5.11 million, compared to $3.63 million the previous year.
One thing you can rely on these days. The herald will deliver populist, unbalanced, selective coverage. Guaranteed
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Be Still My Heart
And the best the Labour Party can do is to have Goff run off at the mouth in Australia about how great they wert to waste billions on insulating houses (killing only four people in the process) and paying five times the going rate for school halls.
My bet is the price that will be paid for the return of The Hobbit to New Zealand will be the complete and total emasculation of Labour's 'military wing' the trade unions. Look for legislation preventing union involvement in 'strategic' industries. When Mallard and Co start squealing, all John Key has to do is remind them how they imperiously declared Auckland Airport to be a strategic asset when a benign Canadian pension fund wanted to buy in.
I'm laying in large stocks of pop corn and cognac for the ensuing jousts of the next few days.
Just watch the currency trader fuck over the dim witted loons of the left.
Not Before Time
Adolf has noticed for some years a disproportionate number of these machines involved in fatalities but not until today did he know the actual numbers. This machine is a greater danger to civil aviation than a few jibbering muslims.
A widow wants pilots to stay away from a helicopter involved in 30 crashes in six years in which nine people have died, including a double fatality this month.You need to know what they look like pre-crash, so as to avoid ever boarding. The giveaway is the tall spiky rotor support.
The fools at The Herald would save many more lives by calling for the immediate and permanent grounding of the whole Robinson fleet than they will buggering around with booze laws.
Monday, October 25, 2010
More Paper Than The Japs.......
Yep, Adolf finally is going through twenty eight years of junk and retained files in preparation for moving house. I reckon I've burnt more paper than the Japs did on the morning of December 7th, 1941. Most of it to do with the life insurance industry and the Presbyterian Church. It's quite a strange feeling to put part of one's history to the torch.
There are two worthwhile observations.
- It is impossible to find even one policy holder who actually derived some benefit from the many mergers and take overs within the life industry during the 90s. Many executives were enriched but not so policy holders.
- I'm privileged to have spent some twenty five years involved in the regional administration of the Presbyterian Church and I look back with pleasure that amongst all the ratbag ministers with whom I have dealt, there was no hint of child abuse.
If Unions are the answer... then we really are stuffed
Poor old Matt really does struggle with reality. In a world where a paid job is a privilege not a right, he bravely battles on under the delusion that Unions will be the saviour of the world.
Like sailing ships, Unions have their place in history, but the world has moved on.
They are now nothing more than an obsolete insult to workers' intelligence.
After a century of the best standard of living the world has ever seen, do people still really need the "helping hand" of a bunch of fee extorting, parasitic shit stirrers.
Jobs in Western countries are becoming scarcer by the day. That is a sad but inevitable fact of life.
If teachers, actors and any other worker wants to stir up trouble, then when it all turns to custard I hope they realise that they have been well and truly stitched up by the likes of McCarten, Kelly, Gainsford and Malcolm.
The Left had 9 easy years to set us on a path of economic prosperity.
But what did they deliver?
Debt, job destruction, recession and welfare dependency.
Scapegoating and celebrity campaigns
Malcolm has been one of the main identities associated with attempts to extract greater union concessions from Warner Bros and Sir Peter Jackson, and therefore, one of the main identities for the backlash that has followed the panic over whether NZ will lose the filming.
There are two thoughts I've had on this.
Firstly, it serves Robyn Malcolm and Jennifer Ward-Lealand right. If they want to wade into politics, using their celebrity status to advocate on issues like climate change and other left-wing issues du jour, then they need to face the consequences of their advocacy which is a political reaction. They can't, nor should they expect that life would be like a movie script with a pre-determined happy and simplistic ending where they, the good guys (them and the Green Party) win, and the bad guys (centre-right authority and faceless corporations) lose.
If they really care about politics, they should stop the acting lark and become politicians. Malcolm in particular has been exercising her freedom of speech for some time in the political arena, and as we know, this freedom goes both ways, with listeners now reacting against her comments in a determinedly hostile way.
But this brings me to my second thought on the matter. I'm tempering my schadenfreude because it's all too easy to believe that Malcolm and Ward-Lealand are the nice pliant saps that the unions and political left wheel out for celebrity campaigns. It may well be that these and other celebrities now realise they are marketing pawns in the wider political and economic games of our nation. It's all very easy to mock Gerry Brownlee over "sexy coal", but intervening on behalf of a union has yielded disastrously bad results.
The unions are not political fools. They're happy to spread the blame around if the Hobbit goes offshore. They NEED to spread the blame around, and who better than the telegenic fools they roped in for their issue du jour. With the possibility of two thousand New Zealanders being deprived of work, it's a lot easier to blame "that loudmouth b*tch from West Auckland" than the odious Mr Whipp and Ms Kelly.
A warning to all celebrities - freedom of speech is its own b*tch. Feel free to get involved in any campaign you like, but don't be surprised if you get treated like a politician when you act political.
We really need to implement degrees of murder
The Deerstalkers' Association president Alec McIver said the hunter who shot Ms Ives was "spotlighting" and shooting on public land.
The "terrible accident" tarnished the reputation of all hunters.
Oh yeah, an "accident." Could happen to anyone, right? I remember years back there was a petrolhead loser racing at night in Christchurch, mowed down a woman on a pedestrian crossing, then bleated to the media how he didn't think he should be charged with manslaughter because it was "just an accident." I agreed with him to the extent that it would have been nice if he didn't have to be charged with manslaughter - a degree of murder charge would have been way more appropriate. This is another case like that one - if you're doing something really obviously stupid and dangerous that's quite likely to kill someone, and you kill someone, let's not use the wildly inappropriate word "accident" for it.
I lived on the West Coast when I was younger, and got well acquainted with the kind of people who have these "terrible accidents" with guns. They are, universally, people who love guns, act like morons when they've got hold of one, end up killing someone, and if the someone isn't themselves they try and call it an "accident." Just as though everybody has play fights with a loaded gun, climbs fences with one, fires off into the distance on flat, open ground for entertainment (one of our near-neighbours in Harihari was shot dead by someone firing at random on a farm a good kilometer away), or just bangs away at anything that moves because that's what they call "hunting." Call it what it is, a form of murder through criminal negligence.
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Why to the great relief of Redbaiter? Two reasons ....
#1 Jousting with RB whose solution to all our problems is 'bomb them back to the stone age' is a bit like shooting ducks in a barrel. Dead boring.
#2 The fact that I work off and on for a university will be proof positive to RB that I am a left wing academic wanker. He will add that to my list of real and imagined sins.
Reactionaries of the world unite. You have nothing to gain but your brains.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
There's Another Way
Having singlehandedly sabotaged some $2 billion dollars worth of the nation's export income they now beseech the populace to cease pointing fingers.
In a statement, the union says everyone wants the same thing, to have The Hobbit made in New Zealand, and it's time to put emotion aside and move forward.
An ANZ economist has estimated the cost of losing The Hobbit at $2 billion.
Maybe they could consider taking positive and corrective action.
They might prevail upon Graceless Kelly at the CTU to issue Sir Peter Jackson with a written indemnity against all industrial action in the film industry for a period of five years. That's about what it will take to get the business back where it belongs - not some damn fool penny ante increase in tax write offs.
Warners will simply calculate the value of an extra $60 million tax benefit against the cost of potential union damage at close to or more than $600 million. They will go where they can get stability even if it costs a bit more.
When you think about it, that's the same thought process that makes a typical Kiwi home buyer take a three year fixed mortgage rate of 6% when he could have had a floating rate of 5%. He is paying a premium for stability and certainty.
But that simplicity is beyond the socialists dreamers of Unionland and Greenland who are united in their envy and hatred of commercial success.
In one respect, Adolf actually hopes the movie is taken away from NZ. Such a calamity might give NZers the backbone to support government moves to strip the unions and their craven Labour Party political wing of their unbridled power to damage the nation.
It's time for John Key to do a Thatcher.
Just Looking
A couple of old lags will 'look at' all aspects of the game?
New Zealand Cricket chairman Chris Moller told reporters on Friday the high-level committee will be set up to examine all aspects of cricket, from grassroots to international level.....
......There will be no changes in the Black Caps' management structure for the India tour.
But don't worry chaps, we are not making any changes. It's business as usual as we go on our merry losing ways and if we find ODIs are too difficult for our chaps we'll set up a world cup for beach cricket and hold the event in Tonga.
The Slack Caps would have been better served if all the fools who consistently threw away their wickets against the Bangers were dropped from the team and a whole new bunch of youngsters with the RIGHT ATTITUDE toured India.
Friday, October 22, 2010
No wonder that Phil Goff was running a mile last night to distance himself from the story ... no backing ... you need to talk to them.
And so they did. Chauvel "I was only doing it at the behest of two of my colleague MPs". Mahuta "mumble, mumble, mumble" ... let me out of here please.
Best advice. When you're caught with your fingers in the Cookie jar ... fess up. What they should have said was ....
'Labour has a history of helping the underprivileged. Look at Philip Field. These people have the same rights as all others faced with this situation. So what if their neighbours feel threatened by them ... threatened doesn't equal actual danger in our books and what's a bit of damage and mayhem between friends. This is a prime example of a National Party putting the boot into people they know will never support them. Well, we in Labour do.'
Another Labour f**k up.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Why Am I Not Surprised?
These are the people who allegedly want to invest over $200 million in dairy farms and dairy product production facilities in this country.
You think I'm xenophobic? You bethcha I am when it comes to the pricks who think it's OK to let a few babies die rather than jeopardize their glitzy games opening; the pricks who steal other people's intellectual property without a second thought; these pricks who blame 'whitey' when they fuck up their own businesses; these pricks who just simply cannot be trusted EVER to do the right thing.
By all means trade with them, sell them foodstuffs and buy their cheap crap but don't ever let the smiling, mendacious, sly, duplicitous little bastards within a thousand miles of the NZ dairy industry or any other national asset whose value and brand can be destroyed just as quickly as our film industry has been destroyed by Robyn Malcolm and Graceless Kelly.
Economic Sabotage
How much lost GDP does that represent? A billion each year? For maybe three years or so, just when the recovery desperately needs a boost.
How many lost jobs does that represent? Two or three thousand? Counting all the down steam jobs.
Where are the howls of outrage from the antique media? From the gutless leader of the opposition? So far, not a whisper. All they seem interested in is sand castles and fostering the Maori language.
This looks very much to Adolf like economic sabotage, carefully orchestrated by the trade unions' leader Andrew Little who is carefully positioning himself for a political career and desperately needs to stifle any chance of an economic recovery.
Never underestimate the disloyalty and treachery of the left.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Totally Lacking Merritt
You think that's funny? No?
Wait til you get to his excuse!!!!
Only in America.
Merritt had said back in April, when it was first revealed he had failed the tests, how embarrassed he was.
"To know that I've tested positive as a result of a product that I used for personal reasons is extremely difficult to wrap my hands around.
Laughing Stock Releases Report
Adolf wonders what the hell they think the Gummint should do about a problem which is brought about by nothing less than neglect on the part of Maori themselves. If they want to save their language then let them do something about it themselves.
Adolf would like to hear from the Waitangi Tribunal a recitation of all the measures which have been taken by such wealthy outfits as Ngai Tahu, Taunui, Te Arawa, Ngati Porou, Nga Puhi, Muri Whenua, Tuwharetoa and others such as Sealord Ltd to rectify what is their problem, not the gummint's problem.
Of one thing New Zealanders can be sure. If you gave the whole bloody country back to the Maoris, lock stock and barrel, they'd still have these fools issuing their reports demanding someone else step up to the plate with yet more money for the Bros.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
There will be those who say that we should respect legal process and yes we should but to my mind the greater question is whether the charges should have been bought in the first place by a uniformed civilian with no understanding of the realities of combat. Charlie Lynn, Member of the NSW Legislative Council, speaks for many in his article on the subject here
Look, war is shitty. Night action particularly so and in a war where the other mob don't wear uniforms there will always be an enhanced chance of civilian causalities.
I think the decision to prosecute was wrong. This was no My Lai massacre. Brigadier McDade would learn much from going to Afghanistan and going out on a night patrol that comes under enemy fire. Then perhaps, and only then, can she make the call she did.
Others may disagree. That's your privilege.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Has labour really changed it's spots
So says Labour.
Except that they will only ever offer up more of the same.
More government.
More tax.
More control.
More spending.
The world has changed but only a fool would believe that Labour has changed it's spots.
There is unease in the land but expecting Labour's failed policies and faces to save the day is
just plain stupid.
The problems now facing New Zealand can't be solved by a party that will rely on last century's thinking.
The Chilean miners and capitalism
Some, like the Wall Street Journal, have argued that the way in which private companies designed the method and technology that saved the 33 miners trapped at the San Juan mine in Chile, is a symbol of how capitalism, and man's ability to innovate, has triumphed over mother nature's cruelty.
Others, like the HuffPo argue that the lax safety standards at the mine were caused by a desire to profit at the expense of the miners, and thus represents a flaw in capitalism.
There may be a grain of truth in the latter, but certainly plenty of truth in the former - that the triumph of man in rescuing their fellow man through science and innovation is a wonder to behold, and that this represents more of the capitalist ethos than socialism. Expect lots of iridium Oakley sunglasses to be sold over the next year!
Ultimately though, this is not an argument about left vs right, or socialism vs capitalism. It's actually about freedom versus despotism.
Chile is (now) a free and transparent society. It has has mostly social-democrat rule over the last two decades, but is currently run by a capitalist centre-right president. It's stable and prosperous. Regardless of the side of the spectrum you sit on, no one would argue against the present Chile as a transparent democracy. 33 miners were trapped, and at great expense and under the full glare of the world's attention, they conceived a plan, sought external help from those with expertise like NASA, and got to work. The Chilean government did this because it was in their interests to save their boys - they would have lost their mandate from the people had they not tried.
I just wonder, would China, North Korea, Libya, Myanmar or any other despotic nation have given two figs for 33 miners trapped in a hole? Would they have simply ignored the chance of a rescue, and move to reopen the mine to full production? It's hard to imagine anything other than a free and transparent society giving it's full endorsement to the rescue of its men in a deep dark hole.
Contrast that with the despotic nations. There are a number of major industrial accidents in China that cause loss of life or huge environmental pollution. One of the worst environmental disasters of all time, Chernobyl, was famously covered up by the former Soviet Union until Swedish nuclear reactor workers 1000km away had their geiger alarms go off, caused by the drifting radiation from the Ukraine. The USSR typified how despotic nations would rather hide their problems than move to save their people.
Chile, as a prosperous and free nation is able to tolerate the criticisms of mining safety that have come and will continue to come. They will improve the safety of their mines, because their people will demand it. But the democratically elected Pinera government will remain the legitimate voice of the Chilean people, because they rescued their men, and in doing so, showcased the very best of their national soul to the world. Freedom has prospered as a result, and ultimately, that's good for capitalism too.
Update: Pablo at Kiwipolitico has given his thoughts on the Chilean mining rescue. Worth a look.
In-built Sarcastic Comment Generator instantly kicks into overdrive:
"Yes, in this great country of ours, even a lowly multi-millionaire from the finance industry can rise to become Prime Minister!"
"What an inspiration he must be to other wealthy men considering a career in politics!"
And so on. But then the in-built Reasoning Module catches up:
"Hang on, Key's a professional politician - surely he didn't say anything that stupid."
Read the article, and sure enough, he didn't say anything that stupid. The journo or sub-editor is contributing the stupid on his behalf. Funny how they always manage to do that - must have an in-built facility for it...
Saturday, October 16, 2010
If It's Successful, Attack It.
In recent days they have been attacking our highly successful dairy industry with a mendacious and spurious campaign over the use of a by-product as an emergency feed source for starving cows.
Now it's their turn to give the fishing industry a serve. This time with equally spurious propaganda aimed at closing down our most profitable fisheries.
Both species feature in environmental groups' "fish to avoid" guides - orange roughy is at No. 1 and hoki at No. 5 on Greenpeace's NZ Red Fish list. Influential newspapers The Guardian and The New York Times have cited New Zealand in critical stories and columns about "unsustainable" trawling and the impacts of bottom trawling.
Influential? Both with declining readership as the public wakes up to their abjectly partisan treatment of political and environmental issues.
Adolf cannot remember anywhere hearing these people use the following argument when discussing their now fading cause du jour - global warming, no that's now climate change, no that's now climate disruption.
The ministry (and fishing industry) says the QMS is grounded in science; environmentalists say the science remains as uncertain as picking Lotto numbers.
Like the Lotto numbers used by the climate science scammers, eh chaps?
One Liner of The Weak
"I fear that Chris Carter's illness is worse than we expected."
Absolutely priceless
How Would S & P Rate Cunliffe?
Adolf watched Cunliffe's amateur theatrics in the house last week as he brandished what purported to be a copy of a proposal for the Gummint to accept a buy out plan for South Canterbury Finance.
The carefully coiffed kook boomed monotonously on about the wonderful deal which Blenglsh had deigned to reject. What a fool was English and what a genius is Cunliffe - ran the line of his argument. Well, Adolf sincerely hopes some journalist has the brains to confront Labour's latest spend and tax expert the hard but obvious question.
"Mr Cunliffe, would you have directed Treasury to accept the deal you were touting last week?"
"SCF have two main pillars to their recapitalisation plan. The first involves intra-group transactions moving Helicopters New Zealand and Scales Corporation into SCF from Southbury Group ... The second pillar involves a transaction with [blanked out] - a finance company currently in moratorium. This transaction would be similar in substance to the transaction involving [blanked out]. In this case it would involved debenture holders in the [blanked out] receiving an equity stake in SCF in lieu of their claim in the moratorium of [blanked out]."
This was a deal which would have made the legendary Blue Sky Mines look like Cortez's El Dorado and Bill English rightly rejected it as too risky. Cunliffe has no better head for business than did Cullen. He would accept a risk of $500 million based on the security of two flat broke incompetent finance companies. I guess that's what you'd expect from an incompetent flat broke Labour Party.
Long may this swivel-necked sideshow clown with a permanently open mouth grace the opposition benches where he can be relied upon to do little real damage apart from exacerbating the Speaker's hearing difficulties.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Answer ... YES.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Many would contend that on politics there is absolutely no difference between the extreme Right and the extreme Left. That the Kim Jong il's of this world can cohabit quite easily the Hitlers. The mantra of both is 'my way or the highway' and for highway read bullet between the eyes.
And so it is with religious zealots in both Christendom and Islam. Is there any difference at all between say those nutter followers of the schematic Westboro Baptist Church who protest at Military Funerals because the US Military now allows 'Gays' to serve and radical Islam which advocates jihad against non believers with the sweetener of the 77 virgins bit.
There is no difference at all. All are dangerous. But I guess that's the price we pay for living in a free society. Redbaiter would like to put me to the torch. I just feel sorry for him.
Cop Lost His Head
And in other news it appears the Democratic Party is commencing the political assassination of its black assed jackass in the White House.
Adolf has been wondering for sometime what it would take for Obama to be tipped out before 2012 but he never dreamed the push would come from his own party. Apparently the normally Democrat friendly ABC news channel's Jake Tapper has been asking all sorts or embarrassing questions about the absence of his 'long form' birth certificate (the only reliable form of birth certificate.)
Perhaps the dopey donks have realised their melon disguised as an aubergine in fact is a lemon and are moving to elevate Miss Hillary into VP position to take over when Obamby falls over his teleprompter in a couple of weeks time.
Aaaaah, Missa Ludman!
Read the whole thing. It's hilarious.
Is this man the last of the Ruddites?
Idle Speculation
I think he is wrong. First, the latest polls don't bear out his theory and second, he underestimates the support for Hone Harawira.
Have a look at Roy Morgan's results from yesterday's release.
The latest New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows support for John Key's National-led Government has weakened slightly to 52.5% (down 0.5%), comprising National Party 49.5% (up 1%), Maori Party 2.5% (up 1%), ACT NZ 0.5% (down 1.5%) and United Future 0% (down 1%).
Support for Opposition Parties has risen to 47.5% (up 0.5%); Labour Party 36.5% (up 2.5%), Greens 8% (unchanged), New Zealand First 2.5% (down 2%), Progressive Party 0% (down 0.5%) and Others 0.5% (up 0.5%).
If a National Election were held today the National Party would be returned to Government.
National up by 1% on 49.4%
Maori Party up by 1% on 2.5%
ACT down by 1.5% on 0.5% (That's actually a loss of 75% from last month's 2.0% result.)
It is difficult to see from these figures how Hone Harawira can magically produce a victory for the left or for that matter how Rodney Hide can resurrect his own party.
One is left wondering where the other 0.5% of last month's ACT supporters went. Could it be they went to Labour, along with the other wallies from Winston First?
Who'd want to be in politics?
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
That Didn't Last Long
His new found friend ain't gonna pay for his political grandstanding.
Here's the 'money' quote. One of the best ever seen.
The PM said the Government shared the goal of an efficient transport system for Auckland, but "not all roads, or all rail tracks, can lead to the Government".Great stuff.
Maybe Lyen B needs to organize a force 7 earthquake for the City of Sails.
Meanwhile, Labor has cleansed itself of its latter day Brutus.
Fraudsters flock to Chilean mine rescue
My favourite spiel:
"God has spoken to me clearly and guided my hand each step of the rescue," said Carlos Parra Diaz, a Seventh-day Adventist pastor at the San Jose mine. "He wanted the miners to be rescued and I am His instrument."
Such an unsung hero, and so modest with it. I really do hope he gets the reward he deserves for this...
Monday, October 11, 2010
Barking Mad
Perhaps it has escaped the attention of the Gnats' nawobs that Mr Banks now has the distinction of being one of the party's most distinguished losers ever - by a margin of over 60,000 votes.
Come on fellers, use your brains.
He's Governor General material.
Faking science and professors with integrity
Newton: "Fie on you, Hansen, Mann, Jones et al! You are not worthy of
the name scientists! May the pox consume your shrivelled peterkins!"
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of
California, Santa Barbara. Here is his letter of resignation to Curtis
G. Callan Jr, Princeton University, President of the American Physical
Anthony Watts describes it thus:
This is an important moment in science history. I would describe it as
a letter on the scale of Martin Luther, nailing his 95 theses to the
Wittenburg church door. It is worthy of repeating this letter in
entirety on every blog that discusses science.
It's so utterly damning that I'm going to run it in full without
further comment. (H/T GWPF, Richard Brearley).
Dear Curt:
When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years
ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the
money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a
half-century ago). Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was
then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War
II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few
physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the
first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor
Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there
was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were
therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest
appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by
the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky,
Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond
reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the
end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted
the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that
the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute
could there be?
How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the
money flood has become the raison d'être of much physics research, the
vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold
numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear
my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned
into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my
resignation from the Society.
It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally)
trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many
scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the
greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my
long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this
is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which
lay it bare. (Montford's book organizes the facts very well.) I don't
believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff
without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of
the word scientist.
So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this
challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along
with it. For example:
1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a
fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then
President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got
the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage
discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that
as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in
the last year has been designed to silence debate
2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was
apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is
certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have
long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider
it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement
was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in
physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret
committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet
endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone
was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible
to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end,
the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a
far longer "explanatory" screed, admitting that there were
uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the
original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS
position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to
all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It
is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is.
This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast
fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society
as a scientific society is at stake.
3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the
machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It
was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to
describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all.
This is not science; other forces are at work.
4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after
all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the
necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a
Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the
scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be
beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note
that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us
the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the
requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail
what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.<
5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept
our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to
run a poll on the members' interest in a TG on Climate and the
Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to
form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition,
and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you
would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course
no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment
part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you
cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in
whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid
your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the
6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked
committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful
APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress
serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do
you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?
I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it
is always risky to discuss other people's motives. This scheming at
APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it.
Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they
used to be, but I don't think that is an issue. I think it is the
money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There
are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame
and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a
member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are
chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble
burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the
University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot
have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the
old saying goes, you don't have to be a weatherman to know which way
the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I'm not going to
explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line
into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases
makes it clear that this is not an academic question.
I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer
represents me, but I hope we are still friends.
Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of
California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense
Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear
Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former
member, President's Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS
study on Nuclear Reactor Safety
Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman
of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US
Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise,
technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)
Sunday, October 10, 2010
Seriously, diplomatic complaints because some tool has a brain fart on the telly!
FFS, Indians should be more concerned with the half a billion people in their own country living in poverty. You know, real poverty. Not the "I have only one flat screen telly and cannot get a new car" poverty that we seem to benchmark against in this land of wimpy white men and their pear shaped women.
I cannot believe the fuss the left and their permanently offended client groups have managed to whip up over Paul Henry.
Not much mention of death squads in Kashmir or a complete balls up in Delhi or some Labour member since May turban wearing scumbag who tries to cheat in our local body election. No lets concentrate on a stupid throw away comment made by a white man.
It is okay when Hone sprays, or Clarkula mocks religious groups, or Willy Jackson nuts off.
But if you are white and not a lesbian it is not okay?
Personally, I hate everybody.
The corrupt Indians, the spitting chinese, the eat the rich lefties, the born to rule tories, the butch dykes, the 30 week a year, 6 hour a day, highest paid in the OECD teachers, the lazy grasping Maori and most of all. The group I despise the most is the scared of their own shadow middle aged white male who has let himself become the fucking blame hound for everything that is wrong with the world.
So where are we now that Paul Henry has fallen victim to the shriekers?
Paul Holmes? FFS.
And ask yourself this. Did you wonder who the hell the GG was when the beast announced him?
I know I did.
But should we expect anything different. A silver spoon fed, Wanganui Collegiate educated, bright, self opinionated, arrogant, completely up himself twit.
Totally disliked by his peers in the National Party Research Unit; failed MP for National; failed MP for Winston First; forced to resign after being caught out manufacturing polls; failed husband and now shacked up with a (former) prostitute and pissed off that his hand picked successor failed to win the W(h)anganui Mayoralty.
And those are his good points.
Desperate for a headline and is succeeding for all the wrong reasons.
But have no doubt that Redbaiter (our resident 'Leftie' posing as one of the Good Guys) will spring to his defence.
Saturday, October 9, 2010
200 troops is a HUGE commitment by Tonga. So too is sending them to Helman Province where the bulk of the fighting is.
And nary a squeak in the New Zealand media about this.
Thoughts on the Paul Henry furore
The first matter is that of the comments relating to Sheila Dikshit, the Indian Minister.
Humour involving rude sounding surnames has been around forever and a day, and while it elicits a giggle from schoolboys to hear people called "Eric Shin", most people would roll their eyes.
Paul Henry's labouring of the Dikshit joke was equally a matter for rolling of eyes for most New Zealanders. A small joke, not a very good one. No real harm done.
India's angry behaviour in sending diplomatic notes is probably more a convenient response to their own humiliation over the Commonwealth Games village mess, when NZ Chef De Mission Dave Curry described the conditions as filthy to the world.
It's also convenient to make a victim of Dikshit over cheeky comments half a world away, instead of holding her (and her government) over India's lack of preparedness for the Commonwealth Games.
The subsequent international exposure of comments and photos about the disgraceful state of some of the village accommodation will have shamed India, and remember, it did briefly threaten to derail their games. NZers have been the forefront of that criticism.
As it happened, the village was cleaned up, made hospitable, and major nations in the Commonwealth confirmed their participation. A major national PR catastrophe was avoided, but the humiliation of India on the eve of their games could not go unpunished.
Paul Henry's comments about Minister Dikshit are therefore a convenient opportunity for India to lash back. New Zealand issues a note of apology, India gets to send a message "don't mess with us", and Henry is scapegoated for his previous sins and the feeling about the athlete's village in late September.
The talk about New Zealand losing education business from Indian students is a bit hollow, and I predict that Indian students will continue to come to New Zealand, because they know there is a strong Indian diaspora, they can get a regarded qualification and we are a safe and advanced country which on the whole, has good race relations.
If this was the only scandal involving comments of Paul Henry, I suspect he would still be on air, chastened a little but no harm done to him.
However, the Satyanand comments are a different kettle of fish.
Here, something dark was exposed in Henry's soul – a comment that showed an almost casual lack of regard towards someone whose qualifications to be Governor-General are almost unimpeachable. The Auckland born highly educated and respected Anand Satyanand was by inference described as not being kiwi enough by someone who subsequently admitted to Gyspy heritage.
What I can't understand is how someone like Henry, who I don't believe to be a racist, made such a comment.
I wonder whether it's possible Henry was egged on to be controversial by someone whispering in that earpiece of his – to see if he could say something shocking to the Prime Minister, who might be caught unguarded and then say something as equally as controversial?
It's TV after all - ratings are everything.
Henry's done us a favour
People around the world tend to leap to the false conclusion that NZers are great blokes from a wonderful country, rather than people much like themselves from a perfectly ordinary country. They shouldn't do that, because it will only lead to disappointment.
Consider this story:
Mr Mehta said widespread publicity of Henry working himself into fits of laughter over the name of Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit could deter fee-paying students from coming to New Zealand, which was usually regarded as racially tolerant.
Or this one:
To drum up support for their rally, they set up a Facebook page publicising the event – which has since been bombarded with abusive messages.
"There have been times when me and my colleague have sat down and burst into tears. People have said: `You should just go back to your country, Paul Henry is good'," Ms Chandra said.
"It's just been like `wow, I didn't think this was New Zealanders and this was their view'."
You see? It really is high time people from other ethnic groups realised that the shrieking simian retard they saw pissing himself over a funny foreign name actually is a lot of white New Zealanders and is their view. White New Zealand's pretence that this is actually a friendly, tolerant, welcoming country has been exposed as a pretence, and that can only be a good thing. Now foreigners considering studying here can make a more realistic assessment of what their actual NZ experience would be like.
Friday, October 8, 2010
On Dickshit Leftists
However, it is fascinating to see the lengths to which the Left will go, in their attempts to have him sacked. It seems they regard him as a cockroach to be squashed. A right winger nestling in their private little coven of leftist seat warmers at TVNZ. A veritable interloper.
Well, Adolf hopes the shouters actually do persuade TVNZ to fire Henry. I reckon he'll make close to $20 million out of it if Hawkesby's case is any guide.
You see, he'll simply go to the Employment Court and wave his contract in which there will be various clauses which will allow him to say:-
"I was simply complying with my employer's instructions. They required me to be controversial and to go right over the top because they desperately needed an improvement in their ratings."
That's the real reason for TVNZ's foolishly bland initial reaction to the fuss. It was all part of a ratings strategy.
Now we might see who the real Dickshits are.
We had been spat at by the likes of Clark and Goff; certain RSA's made it very clear we weren't welcome; you said you had served and the response was 'Baby Killer'.
Some just couldn't handle that and I know of one case where a soldier I was privileged to command went and lived under a bridge just out of Darfield for six months as his way of getting away from it all.
And now 40 years on from the end of that war all kinds of persons come out of the woodwork claiming that they served. A common theme with these 'wannabees' is that their 'service' was with the SAS and all records have been destroyed because of the nature of that service. These clowns steal the honour of those who went and did their duty. Just as sad are those who embellish their genuine service with tales of action seen that put Audie Murphy to shame.
There is a website dedicated to unmasking these make believe ANZACs. If you want a bit of a laugh or cry have a look at some of these clowns.
See here the story of 'Archbishop' Peter McInness; self appointed Primate of a schematic branch of the Anglican Church and make believe Naval Chaplain who conducts weddings of self appointed Admirals complete with 'purchased' knighthoods.
And here for New Zealand Mayoral Candidate in Saturdays election. Six years after his initial exposure here he is again offering himself as Mayor of the Far North District Council.
And real stitch up here 'Sir' Brian Dudley. A genuine Kiwi veteran who gets himself appointed as patron of an ESO (Ex-Serviceman's Organisation) on the basis of a shonky knighthood.
And finally here a 'sailor' who was booted out of the RNZN and who stole the identy of his uncle to wear his and many other medals none of which he was entitled to.
All sad and pathetic people and feeding on the honour of others.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
Off To The UN ? ?
No doubt he'll be off to cry on Mummy's shoulder as she jacks him up a cushy tax free number in New York. Meanwhile good riddance to another most appalling product of the NZ Labour Party.
Adolf is picking Clark and her hideous henchmen and women will come roaring back to take retake 'their' party in about 2012.
You Know You're ****** When.....
Adolf can't avoid the notion that this so called oratorical genius seems to need a hell of a lot of help.
Would Churchill have relied on a teleprompter at every turn?
Roll on November the 2nd.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
But Phil, as a lawyer of very little experience, could hardly be expected to know that ... and pigs fly high.
Contrast this with Phil's deafening silence over the revelation that a Labour Party member(s) standing on the Labour Party ticket in the Auckland Local Body elections is now before the Courts facing multiple charges of electoral fraud.
True leadership would have seen Phil put out a Press Release along these lines ......
"As leader of the Labour Party I am saddened that members of my Party are now facing charges of electoral fraud. I place the highest store on the integrity of the electoral process and any abuse of that will not be tolerated. I am particularly concerned that this action could lead to the results being challenged in the Courts.
I acknowledge that our selection process might be seen as found wanting and I expect the president of the Labour Party will take action to correct this. In the meantime I confirm it is my view that if those persons now before the Courts are found guilty of electoral fraud then they should be expelled from the Labour Party".
But he won't because ...................................
Tuesday, October 5, 2010
He said "Labour has always been in favour of this."
What the f**k. Nine years in power and they did nothing. And who was the Attorney General for part of the time?
Goff ... a headline looking for an issue and if I have to rewrite history ... well, never mind the quality, feel the width.
Voting fraud in South Auckland
TVNZ's Kim Vinnell has covered the story. Click here for the article.
TV3's Duncan Garner has also covered the story. He has confirmed that one of the arrested people has links to Labour Mayoral candidate Len Brown.
I also heard on Newstalk ZB tonight that Labour Party President Andrew Little confirmed that one of the arrested people has links to the Labour Party.
(Update: Here's a screengrab of the photo that 3News' Duncan Garner had of Len Brown and the Labour linked alleged forger)
(update2: TVNZ related photo removed as it might be misinterpreted by some)
Dead man walking
Dutch Christian Democrats held their noses and committed to a new minority government with the rightwing liberal VVD party, which will depend on the backing of Wilders's 24 seats in the Dutch parliament.
In return for his support, Wilders has gained a binding agreement to ban the burqa, crack down on immigration, and pursue more Eurosceptic policies.
I'd say he's marked for death and the only outstanding issue regarding the timing of it is how good his security guards are.
I've some sympathy for Wilders - Islam is pretty much as he describes it, ie not something we ought to encourage in Western countries, and I can't for the life of me understand why European countries with population densities in the hundreds per sq k would want immigration from anywhere, let alone Muslim countries. The Dutch, with typical Continental respect for freedom of speech, have charged him with hate speech and put him in the dock (same article above) - if convicted, he gets a fat fine or a year in jail. The Muslims of course will have something a little more permanent in mind for him.
Monday, October 4, 2010
Why I hate nutritionists
Apparently, if you're cooking for a diabetic, no foods are to be avoided and you should give them plenty of starchy carbohydrates (potatoes, pasta etc) and vegetables. This according to Diabetes UK (article was presumably reprinted from a British paper).
I had hoped that nutritionists would have come to their senses about diabetes in the 10 years since I started ignoring them, but it seems dogma still holds sway. I went and had a look at Diabetes UK and their food recommendations for diabetics are horrifying. Double-checked by having a look a the Diabetes NZ site, and yes it's the same shit: a food pyramid recommending you eat mostly the stuff that will make your diabetes worse, and cut down on the stuff that won't.
Diabetes, whether type 1 or type 2, essentially means the body is no longer able to handle glucose in the blood properly. In type 1 it's because you've stopped producing insulin, and in type 2 it's because you've become insulin-resistant and it takes prodigious amounts of insulin to overcome that resistance. If your blood has high glucose levels over the long term, you can look forward to blindness, impotence, kidney failure, amputated limbs and an early death, so the diabetic's task is to keep those blood glucose levels down as close to normal as possible.
The body gets glucose from food, and some foods are turned into glucose by the digestive system much more rapidly than others. So it seems clear that nutritionists will be a big help to diabetics, because they can tell diabetics which kinds of foods will guickly raise blood glucose and should be avoided, right? Well, you'd think.
As a quick rule of thumb, here's what raises blood glucose levels rapidly: starches and sugars (ie, carbohydrates: bread, potatoes, pasta, beans and pulses, rice, fruit, non-leafy vegetables, milk etc).
Here's what doesn't: fats, proteins and cellulose (meat, fish, nuts, cheese, eggs, butter, leafy vegetables etc).
You'd think, based on the above, that the diabetic who isn't keen on a future involving blindness, impotence etc would be following a pretty Atkins-y sort of diet. Well, not if that diabetic is listening to professional nutritional advice, which actively warns them off the foods that won't raise blood glucose rapidly and actively encourages them to scoff down the foods that will. It burns me up that these imbeciles are encouraging people to sabotage their chances of surviving diabetes.
Here's the kicker. Why? Why would professional nutritionists instruct diabetics to eat mostly foods that are going to turn them into broken-down pieces of shit? The answer is dogma. Nutritional orthodoxy is that fat is bad and fruit&veg is good. I have in all seriousness been given medical advice that I should eat a high-carb diet that will wreck my blood sugar control because low-carb diets involve lots of fat, and diabetics have an increased risk of heart attack. Why, it could add as much as 5% onto that risk! Uh, right. You know, I don't think a slightly-elevated risk of heart attack is really my biggest health concern for... let's see... oh, yes - the rest of my fucking life.
Yeah, I really hate nutritionists.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
#2 They don't like 'your' favourite meal.
#3 They think watching Rider Cup Golf ain't fun.
#4 They tend to loose their sox.
#5 The fact that we live 17k from civilisation (Kaitaia!!!!!!!) makes them nervous.
#6 Their dog (Buster) takes over the house.
#7 Disney Channel 1 vs NPC Rugby nil.
#8 "Granddad, where's your Wii" ... "if you want to use the toilet Liam it's just off the hall" ... 'penetrating look.
#9 Memsahib staggered by nine pairs of underpants in 48 hours.
#10 Being made to feel a dork by being trashed in computer games by a 7 YO.
#11 Apparently walking in the fields isn't cool nor is grubbing thistles.
#12 Throwing up in the car while going over the Mamamukas ain't cool either.
But we could be just booring old farts.
But we luv them.
Friday, October 1, 2010
Pure Labour Horseshit
This was a genuine mistake. I am now aware of the rules and I won't be making this mistake again.
"It wasn't my intention to break the rules and I apologise."
Somebody had better tell him to stop collecting all those 'spare' voting papers from South Auckland. There are some rules about that sort of thing.
"deadf*ckers" and James Bond
You need to read it all to find the humour in the tail.
Adolf wonders whether there has been a big bang yet, somewhere in Iran.
Cyber security giant Symantec warned:
Stuxnet can potentially control or alter how [an industrial] system operates. A previous historic example includes a reported case of stolen code that impacted a pipeline. Code was secretly "Trojanized'" to function properly and only some time after installation instruct the host system to increase the pipeline's pressure beyond its capacity. This resulted in a three kiloton explosion, about 1/5 the size of the Hiroshima bomb.
A three kiloton explosion in a pipeline somewhere in the world at some time or other would have rated a mention, even in the Antique Media. Three thousand tonnes of TNT going off in one place is a bit more than a flash bang.
Funny thing is, I can't remember hearing about any such incident. Ever.
Can readers enlighten?
Ahahhh! Here it is. Them good ole boys from the CIA way back in 1982.


text:
Colorado Blue Spruce Tree for Sympathy
One of the most popular evergreen varieties, the stunning Colorado Blue Spruce brings lasting beauty to any celebration. Whether given for housewarmings, birthdays, anniversaries, or for sprucing up your own yard, its fragrant, silvery-blue needles send thoughts of winter's natural beauty all year round. Add on a personalized plaque to commemorate the celebration or as a touching memorial for a loved one.
Add to their gift:

subset: commoncrawl


text:
Check out the activities and local attractions! Take a hike, walk, bike or run. Historic Venice canals are within walking distance, as are many attractions.
Go windsurfing, kayaking, sailing, swimming, or paddle-boarding. Play volleyball or tennis & other sports. Boat docking areas available
Other Attractions:
The list is endless. There are miles of beaches to explore, pier fishing, shopping, all close to the Foghorn Harbor Inn. Come stay and play or just relax.


text:
Application of the Month: amaroK
The latest application of the month is KDE's most feature-packed media player amaroK. The overview takes a look at functionality including Audioscrobbler, cover management and scripting. We also have an interview with amaroK's team of developers covering their development process, usability and accusations of being hopeless IRC junkies. Enjoy application of the month in Dutch, English, French, German and for the first time in Turkish.
Great app
amaroK is an amazing app, my friend has a play list with at least 10,000 mp3s (he has a total of over 47,000, I know its disturbing) and there isn't any lag in the user interface.
By Corbin at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Great app
Well, the handling of music is great, but there seems to be a general lag in all passive popups when it comes to UTF-8 encoded Japanese (probably other large character sets as well). Unfortunatly, this is mostly only noticable to me in amaroK and juK. It's been kinda bugging me for a while, I guess you can take this as my bug report....
By Levi Durham at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Great app
Qt's unicode support is not that impressive when it comes to speed, Qt4 should be better in that respect.
By cartman at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Great app
I think this is a general issue with FreeType -- it tends to be a little slow when loading large character sets. I see the same lag when doing (say) ls on a directory containing filenames with Japanese characters.
I did an informal test of this - some results, if you're interested:
By trythil at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Great app
I guess I should say that the ls behavior I described occurs both in konsole and in a stock xterm, otherwise the freetype - ls association makes no sense :)
By trythil at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Works for me
amaroK has worked very well for me as it has progressed from the first version I used-1.0 (a touch buggy at times, liked to hate arts) to the very stable, usable, and thankfully ad-free player it is now. It is impressive that it can play virtually every kind of audio file out there without much ado at all.
By SuSE_User at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
This application is my favorite. It's simple to use and handles a large music collection with ease. Thanks to all the developers who worked many hours to help make other's lives more enjoyable. I am grateful to each of you who work on this project. You have provided me with a music experience which brings me peace in my life.
Thank You.
By Mark K at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Graet ipod mini support ...
and would be much greater if the polaylist stuff would work.
By Joerg Mertin at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Another satisfied amaroK user here. I had been using XMMS for a very long time, and hadn't really found anything I liked enough to replace it, until I finally tried amaroK two weeks ago that is.
Some of the features I like the most:
Great work, thanks!
By Paul Eggleton at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
AmaroK is in a league of it's own
AmaroK was the final nail in the coffin for Windows XP for me. I'm now totally Linux. Well done guys!
By Andy at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
much better than command-line mplayer
Before picking up amaroK I thought command-line mplayer was as good as linux media got :)
amaroK is *brilliant*. I reccommend anyone who likes to listen to music whilst working to check it out.
By David House at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
It beats all out there
I think it beats the hell out of other player, you have to use to see it.
By Hugo Costelha at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Some "clean-up"
What about some clean up? I mean, turning the "play" button to "pause" when in the "playing" mode and vice-vera. This space can then be used for a "record" button to record audio streams. When you return from work, you can then play the stream.
By charles at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
a) You can already have a button which is a Play/Pause toggle. You need to alter your toolbar settings. (Right Click > Configure Toolbars)
b) There has been a lot of talk and many requests about stream recording, but we don't see this happening soon - sorry, there are too many issues to deal with.
By Seb Ruiz at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
PLAY/PAUSE is GREAT!!
By Veton at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
MediaControl works this way now. I assume you mean the system tray icon but this is a kicker applet.
By Anthony Moulen at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
Click with the middle mouse button to play/pause from the system tray :)
By Seb Ruiz at Sat, 2005/06/04 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
Seems to be a good "Google Summer Code" project, isn't it?
By Sebien at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: Some "clean-up"
Are we talking about the same version? I have ver 1.2 but cannot see what you say! Thanx.
By charles at Sun, 2005/06/05 - 5:00am
great job
... and another person who loves amarok. its really an amazing player. i use the SVN at the moment, and it's lovely. nice work on the wiki, works very well. same with the sidebar, much better. and some other stuff that has been improved, keep up the good work!
By superstoned at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
/me kneels before the Wise amaroK Bot Overlord :p
By Joergen Ramskov at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
amarok and tenor
what will happened when kde4 comes out with tenor? will amarok switch to tenor and drop the sqlite backend?
By Pat at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: amarok and tenor
I hope so. It depends on whether Tenor is something every KDE program can rely on being configured or not.
By Ian Monroe at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Re: amarok and tenor
As an aside, I use amaroK on my laptop and switched to MySQL to try to solve an annoying problem (it wound up relating to certain ID3 tags and a setting in amaroK... the solution is on the amaroK wiki). It didn't solve my problem, but it did substantially speed up amaroK searches and playlist creation by a factor of "waiting... okay" to instantaneous action. Very impressive, but it highlights that SQLite, while convenient, is not an ideal solution.
In short: Got a large collection? Switch to MySQL.
By Evan "JabberWok... at Fri, 2005/06/03 - 5:00am
Great _player_
AmaroK is the best player that I've tried until now. It can do about everything I want to do with my music, except for these two things:
* Order chronologically by album. I mean, group music by album, order albums by year, order music inside the album by number (for most bands I can just order by track number, then year, but I couldn't find out how to do it if you have more than one album in the same year. I hear this is somehow better in SVN
* Mass renaming/tagging. This is the one thing for which I open JuK nowadays. I get a lot of albums in different naming/tagging schemes, and it is a matter of five minutes to rename and tag them in a consistent manner in JuK. AmaroK is good for manual tagging, but lags behind in Tag Guessing/File Renaming
But still, my favorite player, and I really wish it was in kdemm (so it could get the deserved visibility).
By Renato Sousa at Sat, 2005/06/04 - 5:00am
ID tags
I have found that after spending hours fixing ID tags... Amarok just turns around and cuts them short. Is it so odd that a song title has a HUGE name (about 100+ chars plus)?
Probably the most annoying bug of amarok but otherwise the apps treats my 10,000+ collection of mp3/ogg perfect. No lag.
By Juan at Wed, 2005/06/15 - 5:00am
Re: ID tags
> Is it so odd that a song title has a HUGE name (about 100+ chars plus)?
Besides what ID3 tag version did you use? Maybe Amarok is just displaying the ID3v1 version to you. That version only supports a song title of 30 characters.
By ac at Wed, 2005/06/15 - 5:00am
Re: ID tags
100 characters is not "weird." id3v1 is horrendously useless and amarok should most certainly not be writing them to a file. It should have an option at least, to ignore id3v1. It's the only thing that really annoys me about amarok.
By Tim at Tue, 2006/09/12 - 5:00am
Hey! wtf with amarok.kde.org site ?
and what the current version of amarok ?
By vorph at Thu, 2005/06/16 - 5:00am


text:
Performance artist Kalup Linzy and "surprise guest" were the headliners celebrating Campari's 150th anniversary Sunday night in New York City. The "surprise" was actor James Franco who made quite the scene, reports NYMag.
"[D]rag-ish performance artist and Guggenheim fellow Kalup Linzy, came out onto the makeshift stage in what appeared to be a studded gold lamé wetsuit — bare-armed, barefoot, with a flower in his hair, singing gorgeously before a six-piece band. A couple of songs in, after the Voguers did their mirroring strut, Franco got up in a tuxedo, his hair slicked back, looking a little like Christian Bale in American Psycho: assessing, aloof, addled. Plopped onto a red velour wing chair in the middle of the small stage, clutching a microphone, his role in the performance was to stare with arrogant fascination at Linzy's ample ass, as the singer performed torch songs about bad men. Franco looked sleek, game, and sincerely confused, and sang badly on their duet, which was Nicolette Larson's "Lotta Love." Much of the crowd didn't seem to know who he was."
Nothing on the YouTubes—yet!—but more photos at ARTInfo.


text:
I saw this exhibit of PBA retro jerseys that will be launched today around 4pm at the Robinson's Galleria. It's about time. The jerseys I want to get are that of Francis Arnaiz (top Toyota #8) and Robert Jaworski (#7). The #22 belongs to Danny Florencio. Cool, ain't they?
There were about 20 jerseys. Saw the following: Hec Calma, Jerry Codinera, Philip Cezar, Johnny Abarrientos, Jojo Lastimosa, Manny Paner, Alvin Patrimonio, and Abet Guidaben among others. A must for die hard PBA fans.
I also want a Caidic and a Benjie Paras! I am not sure though if there is a Paras though.


text:
Topic: star wars galaxies?
hey all, anyone here play star wars galaxies?
Message Boards - Boba Fett Fan Club → General → star wars galaxies?
hey all, anyone here play star wars galaxies?
no do you, im intrested in playing it
I want to know if you have to play it online or if you can play it as a game on your own computer at least in part?
yeah you can, you can also watch trailers and stuff also
I play Galaxies and I have not seen anywhere you can play offline, you have to join a server, there is a cost, it's around $14 / month $40 / 3 months $140 / 1 year but don't quote me on that.
you can play a trial for 14 days though.
There is a free 14 day trial if u really are serious about playing. But i'm never goin back because they ruined the game a couple years back, now barely anybody plays. But its a fun game still i guess, I'm just completely biased against it now. They should have never done the combat "upgrade"
yea i agree once they made it so any one could be a jedi from the start ruined it, i liked the fact u hadda do certain things tho i love the trial for the new version because if you choose bounty hunter u take your bounties from boba!
yes i play on Europe-Infinity server im in USA but that was one it suggested and i took it hehe.i been playin a little over 2 years and i still find alot to do and theres new content and expansions added some. and no u cant play offline, and yes its $14.99 a month to play. ma character is ma avatar here in the brown and silver mando armour, his name is Jot and a bounty hunter. yes a lot of people left the game a couple years ago, however now the game has been through alot of changes and has been changed back to almost the same as it was b4. there are a whole lot of new players as well as a lot of vets that have returned. i think alot of u guys here would like the game as u can play as a bounty hunter and wear mando armour but its really hard to get hehe. u can hunt other players by takin bounties form a bounty hunter terminal(alot of jedis to hunt too hehe). also u can fly a KSE firespay as an ace pilot for IMperials or Rebels or Neutral......Edit: o eyea almost forgot there is a 14-day free trail goin on now too.
Ya, but they made it into the typical MMO by making it level based and taking away the originality of the whole system. You used to be able to use certain weapons to raise xp in that weapon so you could get the next box in the skill tree. Then you could decided whether to use pistols and become a pistoleer or mix classes like marksman and scout to be a bounty hunter. They also took out my favorite class, Creature Handler, and also made it 100% easier to do everything in the game. It used to take time and effort to become a jedi or a great Bounty Hunter, but now you can get everything quick. They ruined the game thanks to the minorities complaining, and lost the majority of their players.
eyea i used to be master bounty hunter/master carbineer and there was a lot of cool stuff then.but its a new game now and myself and alot of others are coping and actually creature handler is comin back now and craftin system is back the way it was with alot of new stuff added which has brought alot of those players that left back. and eyea i used to like just huntin jedi when it was hard to unlock a jedi character but its kinda cool now that u can hunt jedi, officers, smugglers, medics and all the other proffesions. also there is a smuggling system that finally has been added and is pretty cool, plus smugglers can be hunted while there on smugglin missions i likes that hehe.
during my time playing swg i had mastered: entertainer, dancer, musician, image designer, chef, artisan, merchant, doctor, medic, marksman, rifleman, and bounty hunter. i was well on my way to getting jedi. then came the nerf bat of nge. i quit november 16th 2005. give me back a system where I get to chose how I develop MY character, and i'll come back to play.
What was the upgrade that everyone hates so much?
I completely agree saint_nasty. They know they made a mistake or they wouldn't be fixing it, so why not just revamp backwards?
And Draco the "Upgrade" that everyone hates was called the "combat upgrade". It started a chain reaction that changed the usual system to a level based one that had people scrambling to raise their level instead of trying to advance in their profession. This all lead to an even bigger revamp which made it so that you lvl through a class you choose at the beginning of your creation, instead of a dynamic skills and attribute tree you fill gradually. And so in the end everybody left... then they realized their idiotic mistakes and tried their hardest to bring the old game back, but it was too late. THE END.
Thank you for clearing that up for me.
although i wasn't the biggest fan of the level system in CU (combat upgrade), i was still able to mix and match skills/professions and make the character i wanted to play. my plan was to grind myself into a gimped out jedi/dancer cuz that sounded like fun to me (eventually i would have ground out a full template jedi).
then NGE (new game enhancement) happened,it was the second time the core of the game was completely gutted and replaced in 6 months. this time, however, they took away my choice to customize the abilities of my character. the game went from 30+ professions that i could more or less mix and match as i pleased (and if i wanted to change at any time if i put in the effort to drop skills and learn new ones) to 9 cookie cutter "iconic" classes. before, i could have played a character that was a bounty hunter and a chef. they took that away from me and said i could only be one or the other, and that i'd be identical to every one else of the same class i was forced to decide between.
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text:
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — Natural gas leaked Tuesday from an old, non-producing well at an oil and gas platform in the Gulf of Mexico about 75 miles off the Louisiana coast after a crew working to plug the well lost control of it, the Coast Guard said.
A crew of five was working to plug the old well permanently when saltwater and a small amount of natural gas and the light oil and water mixture called condensate began escaping Monday, according to a statement from Talos Energy LLC President Timothy S. Duncan.
"In an abundance of caution, we decided to evacuate the platform and mobilize our spill response team," the statement from the Houston-based company said. The crew got off safely.
Duncan said a crew from Wild Well Control Inc. was working Tuesday to get the well under control, and expected to do so Wednesday.
The well did not blow out and there was no explosion or fire on the platform, Coast Guard Lt. Lily Zepeda said.
She said a mixture of water and gas was leaking from the well, which is in water 144 feet deep. An aerial survey on Tuesday revealed a rainbow sheen four miles wide and three-quarters of a mile long on the Gulf surface, she said.
Based on the size of the sheen, Duncan said, about six barrels of light condensate had been released. It was all expected to evaporate, he said.
There is no indication the leak will take on the scale of the 2010 blowout of BP's Macondo well about 100 miles to the east, Zepeda said. The BP blowout resulted in more than 200 million gallons of oil escaping from the well, a mile deep in the Gulf.
The well had been developed in the 1970s. It was being plugged because it needed "artificial lift" to get anything out, and then what emerged at low pressure was mostly water — 1,150 barrels of water, nine barrels of condensate and 65,000 cubic feet of gas per day, Duncan said.
"We believe that the age of the tubing may have contributed to the incident," the statement said.
Two other wells that were producing on the platform were closed off.
The company bought the well's owner, Energy Resources Technology GOM Inc., also of Houston, in February.
Talos: http://www.talosenergyllc.com/
Wild Well Control Inc.: http://wildwell.com/
U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement: http://www.bsee.gov/
Coast Guard: http://www.uscg.mil/


text:
The days of $1,500 errors and omissions insurance with a $5,000 deductible are quickly coming to an end.
Today, it's more typical to see annual policy costs in the $3,000-$4,000 range, with deductibles running as high as $350,000. Reasons for the increases vary, as Jim Eccleston, president of Eccleston Law Offices, explains.
"Regulatory actions and arbitration claim filings are increasing," Eccleston argues. "Arbitrations claims may be 'group' type claims involving multiple investors and may involve products sold to numerous investors. And product-based class-action filings alleging lack of due diligence are increasing as well."
Jodee Rager, chief compliance officer at Geneos Wealth Management, believes that securities attorneys are a primary cause of the current E&O insurance dilemma.
"Attorneys are making a lot of money with their boilerplate statement of claims and in my opinion, are a major factor in the number of claims that result in the E&O increases," according to Rager. "These law firms are going after insurance money and perhaps don't realize that insurance coverage is dwindling thanks in part to the investors they've convinced to file a claim. It's true that not all attorneys are banking on insurance money, but we do know that one of the selling points in getting investors to sue is that it won't cost the advisor any money."
Rager adds that clients who are still doing business with their advisor are filing arbitrations through these law firms who solicit complaints because they are led to believe there will be no splashback to the advisor as they won't be named in the complaint, which is simply not true — the advisor doesn't need to be a named party for the complaint to be reportable.
Another development in this Dodd-Frank era of reform is how E&O deductibles are being determined — based on product, compliance history and outside business activities.
Alternative investments: It's getting tougher to find coverage
If you have alternative investments as part of your product mix, you may see your deductible at a much higher threshold and/or a higher premium. As deductibles go up, you may also see coverage being cut back to levels as low as $50,000, while other product coverage remains at normal levels of $1 million to $2 million per incident. We are hearing from many firms how difficult it is becoming to get coverage for alternative investments, especially for direct participation programs and hedge funds.
Dodd-Frank suitability rules have made oftentimes frivolous claims proliferate over liquidity and risk level issues, especially when senior citizens are involved in a claim. Broker-dealers have been quick to settle such claims through their E&O insurance, resulting in more carriers less willing to offer coverage and much higher rates for those that do. Fraudulent alternative investment products such as Provident Royalties, Medical Capital and DBSI originally drove the rate increases. Now, suitability litigation from securities attorneys capitalizing on products they perceive as an easy target is exacerbating the problem.
Fixed insurance: It may cost you to go outside the BD network
If you do fixed insurance through an outside insurance marketing organization rather than an IMO networked through your broker-dealer, you may incur a higher deductible. The reasoning is this: doing fixed insurance as an outside business activity is harder to supervise and exposes the firm to more liability, hence the higher deductible. Broker-dealers make 30 to 50 basis points on the fixed insurance business you run through their networked IMOs — and that's in addition to any payout grid that may be applied to fixed production. Reps going outside the insurance network cut into the broker-dealer's profitability and raise potential liability. A growing number of firms are removing coverage from their fixed insurance policies if advisors handle it outside of the broker dealer, and only maintaining this coverage when purchased through their network.
"Why should we offer freebie insurance on something that is outside of our supervision and profit center?" commented one compliance staffer.
Compliance: One mark can drive rates up
Having only one mark on your compliance history, or being terminated for cause, could result in you paying a substantially higher deductible. Another deductible variant we've seen is to have, as an example, a $25,000 deductible on your first claim and then increasingly higher deductibles for each additional claim. If you are the victim of a mass mediation from an aggressive securities attorney, you can quickly find yourself bankrupt.
Adding to the variables on deductibles, some firms are now implementing a policy where if the rep is the only one named in a claim, the deductible will be the base deductible. However, if the rep and the broker dealer are both named, the rep will be liable for a substantially higher deductible, typically $50,000 or more. The problem with this reasoning is that when a claim is submitted, both parties (rep and broker-dealer) are nearly always named — it's misleading. Why not just say, "if you have a claim, we have a higher deductible"?
Your own RIA: Going outside your BD's RIA may get you penalized
If you have your own registered investment advisory, you may find your deductible higher than if you were under your broker-dealer's corporate RIA, or needing to purchase separate insurance to cover your RIA. As with fixed insurance done as an OBA, your RIA is perceived as harder to supervise and less profitable for the broker-dealer, so you are penalized with a higher deductible than if you were under the broker dealer's corporate RIA or if you needed to buy your own coverage for your RIA business.
Broker-dealer recruitment quality: Increasingly E&O insurance-driven
Broker-dealer management is becoming very sensitive to how their E&O carrier perceives their reps. One broker-dealer president commented to me recently, "We have to be careful who we bring on because our E&O carrier is keeping a checklist on our reps." Poor credit histories, tax liens, recent bankruptcies or having numerous reps under heightened supervision are fair game for E&O carriers to raise rates on coverage.
Insurance policies commonly exclude coverage altogether for reps with three or more complaints in three years. Broker-dealers need to carefully read and understand the coverage and exclusions so they can operate accordingly to mitigate risk that could arise from activity that has specifically been excluded from coverage.
Paying $3,000 to $4,000 for coverage doesn't sound like much when compared to malpractice insurance for an OB/GYN that can run as high as $300,000 annually for those that have had numerous lawsuits and $50,000 for those with a clean record. However, being saddled with a $100,000 deductible will push many advisors into bankruptcy.
We are at the tipping point. We now have reps changing broker-dealers over E&O insurance coverage, seeking out lower rates and deductibles. And reps are seeking firms with fewer compliance issues in order to not only have more reasonable E&O rates and deductibles but more importantly, fewer restrictive policies and compliance bureaucracy hassles that have resulted from large fines paid in arbitrations. This tipping point is also evident in the growing number of firms curtailing their alternative investment offerings as part of their risk management to survive the onslaught of litigation.
Returning to securities authority Eccelston, he brings to light the myriad of factors perpetuating our litigation problem, noting that state and federal regulators are focusing on the problems of alternative investments, hedge funds and the like, such as nontraded REITs, private placements and complex derivative products. State and federal regulators, as well as FINRA, are becoming more aggressive as they bring well-publicized complaints and are reaching well publicized settlements with significant fines. Those activities prompt additional civil litigation and arbitration filings, and give investors' counsel a roadmap to success.
Again, according to Eccelston, FINRA continues to reiterate in its notices to members that two often-employed defenses won't prevail as a suitability defense. First, with complex products, wealth and sophistication of a customer won't matter given the complicated nature of the product (and often misunderstood by the reps selling them). Second, and more importantly, risk disclosure contained in a prospectus won't be a defense against a suitability claim by a customer.
Writer and theologian C.S. Lewis made the point that well-meaning tyrants are much more dangerous than purely selfish ones. "Those who torment us for our good will torment us without end," Lewis wrote. The tyrants he describes and our regulatory community have much in common. Under the guise of Wall Street reform and consumer protection, fines are being assessed left and right. FINRA defines its mode of operation as one of sticks and carrots, though we're hard pressed to find the carrots. State regulators are increasingly getting into the act so as not to seem heedless or risk "having one pulled over on them."
Between state and federal regulators, FINRA and securities attorneys, the torment continues.