Local voting

People have now got their council voting papers, and people around the place are telling everyone which way and for whom they're voting.

Here's what I did with mine when I got them: I binned them.

I binned them for the same reason I think it's pointless having libertarians standing for council: because (putting it simply) the Resource Management Act and the Local Government Act have between them unleashed councils to to become the bloated out-of-control rates monsters they've become, and because between them they make it impossible to slay the bloated monsters they've created -- and because any decent person who does try is embarking on a misbegotten quixotic quest on which their energies are all too quickly sapped.

Sandra Lee's Local Government Act handed power on a plate to councils, giving them complete freedom to charge around like a spotty boy in a sweet shop and to give you the bill for their profligacy, but that particular dragon has to be slayed all at once in Helengrad, not piecemeal around the provinces.

The Resource Management Act imposes duties on councils and community boards that will have even the most rational liberty-minded councillor or community board member tearing out their remaining hair within weeks, and that dragon too needs to be slayed in its place of birth.

The best you can hope for in your area are bumbling time-servers who aren't as psychopathically incompetent as the average -- and there are few ways of knowing that in advance.

So, don't vote. It only encourages them.

I salute the emotions behind good people who do want to 'think globally and slay the beast locally,' people such as Blair, who says in response to this post at IP's, "It seems like every damned decision and bureaucratic Gordian knot devised is for the sole benefit of those who like a decent view while drinking their coffee. Meanwhile, lives are ruined and carefully made investments are flushed down the toilet on account of ... latte-sipping chardonnay socialists and their NIMBY supporters."

Sound sentiments, but the dragon needs slaying wholesale, not retail. Taking on the local government dragon at local level is not a labour for Hercules; it's a labour for Sispyphus.