Thieving scum

 

Twenty-three parasites. (Back pockets not pictured.) [PIC: Dom Post]

Go on, when you read the headline you already had a fair idea about whom this would be.

Yes, readers: politicians.

A person with a smile painted on at the front and a bulging back pocket in behind.

Thieving scum.

A fair proportion of whom are taking your money to stay in their own Wellington home:

DOM POST: Twenty-three MPs are claiming an allowance [sic] of between $34,000 and $52,000 [per annum] to stay in their own Wellington homes, a perk that sees the taxpayer help politicians pay off their mortgages.

Nice. I'm sure to most of these entities that kind of money is the sort of chump change that fills up the back of the couch; but there's many a taxpayer who would that like that kind of money back to pay their own goddamned mortgage. 

Dom Post reports the scum includes "six National Party ministers, the Speaker Gerry Brownlee and deputy speaker Barbara Kuriger [who] claim the capped allowance to [supposedly] cover living costs in the city," poor lambs. "They then use it," says the Dom Post, "to pay rent on property they already own. Seven Labour MPs and two from ACT are also receiving up to $34,000 a year, the maximum paid to backbenchers." 

Yes folks, the entitle-itis is parliament-wide. The Dom Post names the roll call of thieving scum to be these:

ACT

Simon Court

Todd Stephenson

NATIONAL

Mark Mitchell

Melissa Lee

Louise Upston

Stuart Smith

Barbara Kuriger

David MacLeod

Tim Costley

Paul Goldsmith

Judith Collins

Catherine Wedd

Andrew Bayley

Vanessa Weenink

Paul Garcia

Gerry Brownlee

LABOUR

Keiran McAnulty

Willie Jackson

Duncan Webb

Arena Williams

Jan Tinetti

Jenny Salesa

Deborah Russell

As the Post wryly notes, "Many of these MPs have extensive property portfolios."

Some of these parasites have form already, claiming large "expenses" and the accommodation allowance, including ACT's big-spending Todd Stephenson and National's Judith Collins and Louise Upston; and Labour's Willy Jackson, Jan Tinetti, Deborah Russell, Jenny Salesa, Arena Williams and Duncan Webb are all there again, treating the taxpayer as an ATM machine. (This attitude is truly everywhere, isn't it.)

Scum. 

Every.Single.One.Of.Them.

So much for honest government

Was the government changed at all at the last election?

You wouldn’t think so.

• Nanny is still with us.
• Her anti-smacking law is still with us.
• Aside from making it easier for the govt to bulldoze houses and factories, the Resource Management Act is fundamentally unchanged.
• Council rate rises continue to rise, even as their borrowings to fund their spending increases accelerate.
• The global warming/emissions trading scam continues.
• Our substance is still eaten out by KiwiRail and KiwiBank, KiwiSaver and Welfare for Working Families, by bureaucrats and central bankers, by the IRD and ACC -- and by politicians whose snouts are in the trough with an arrogance and sense of “entitlement” that normally takes three terms to develop, not just one.
• And in the face of the biggest economic crisis in seventy years we have a Finance Minister who can talk only about “sharp edges” and “green shoots” “rebalancing,” and between times acts in a manner that makes a deer in the headlights look purposeful.

So it’s all not good. Not good at all. 

And then yesterday it was reconfirmed, as it was was in September last year, and then again back in April this year, that the Electoral Finance Abomination is on its way back again, with just a few tweaks from Simon Power-Lust to pretend that all the campaigning and protesting and marching in the streets to oust Helen’s Electoral Finance Act really  meant something.

But it didn’t.

We marched to tear down Helen’s anti-democratic attack on free speech, only for you lot to vote in this lot to do the same themselves. To replace her Electoral Finance Abomination with their Electoral Finance Abomination-Lite. It includes:

• a $300,000 spending limit on non-political parties running protest campaigns in the three “official” months of the election.
• These “third party” protestors must register with the grey ones if they want to spend anything more than buying a classified ad in the Herald;
• and include their names (and addreses?) on their ads and billboards.
• "Anti-collusion" measures to really crack down on these jumped-up ne’er-do-wells with the temerity to criticise their betters.
• More taxpayers’ money gifted to the big two parties to advertise themselves on television and radio to the effective exclusion of the smaller parties.

And of course Labour will support it all because it, too, wants to limit the political competition—any competition at all—from anyone outside the Tweedledum and Tweedledumber of The Big Two parties.

What a crock.

So much for all the pontificating blowhard National Socialist MPS who blew hard and long at rallies around the country about the iniquity of Helen’s Electoral Finance Abomination, only to introduce their own.

Just as they marched and blew hard and long at rallies around the country about the iniquity of Helen’s  ant-smacking law, only to support it themselves.

They are scum, scum, scum, from their back teeth to their bum.

Bernard Darnton said two-and-a-half years ago that he looked forward to seeing the back of Helen Clark, but did not look forward to seeing the front of John Key.

Two-and-a-half years on from exchanging one from another, the only visible difference is a smile and a wave and the endless repetition of the word “relaxed” while things fall to pieces around him.

But of any fundamental change, there is none. None at all.

Here’s a poster produced by Whale Oil based on those produced for the last free speech campaign. All it needs is some funding and a corner site somewhere.

#TopTen | No. 7: Time for SOLO to change its name [updated]

 

Last year I wrote and posted 801 posts. (So readers, I guess “we are the 801s”).
    Of all those posts, this from 31 August was the seventh most popular, a reluctantly-written report that became sadly necessary to write about an Objectivist website gone bad. Sad, because I was once associated with a site that’s now a cesspool. Necessary if only to say “it’s not what it says on the label.”
    And for reasons that should become obvious, I start with some joyous words of wisdom and conclude with a picture of a Muslim smiling …

---

Time for SOLO to change its name

Why have I posted so many recent posts exposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  “SOLO” stands for sense-of-life Objectivism, as the site itself once did. It would be abundantly evident now however to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither – and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either Objectivism or a healthy sense of life.

Like me, many of you will know and will once have admired Lindsay. What he and his site have become, however, are no longer worthy of any admiration. It’s necessary to say this now publicly because Lindsay and I have shared stages together and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years – and because some of my writing is still archived there on his site – and due to all this any reasonable person may assume I share all his odious views of today. I don’t. I very definitely don’t.

Mr Perigo’s once admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Islamist to anti-Muslim to now being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having visited his site for some time I was dismayed to see what he had allowed his writing to become. Here are some few examples of how odious it’s gotten, discovered without even digging too deep after:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

   "Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
    http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

These were not isolated views or from posts by rogue commenters, but a representative selection written and posted by the site’s host himself – who now quite routinely and without objection from the site’s regulars pronounces that Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human.” This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

The diminishers have now been embraced. “Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” says Perigo as regularly as breathing and without any apparent irony on a site labelling itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

So blind has he become to what he’s embracing he can even suggest “OrthOists” (his latest neologism) will hate the phrase “humanity as whole” while failing to see that they may have an even greater problem with their condemnation as sub-human scum to be wiped out.

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? It seems clear it’s now anyone who disagrees with him. Including me, I guess, who was so labelled after suggesting earlier in the year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music for my blog not from the many more dramatic moments of romantic music he could have but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – his indirect response to my riposte arrived that very week; an answer, said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." That was me being pig ignorant, by the way, except it wasn’t – accuracy too being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus. [File it next to the amount of money he pathetically claims George Soros is handing out to Yaron Brook, who is apparently handing it all on to me. - Ed.]

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, none of it emanating from either a healthy sense of life or the Objectivism he boasts as the site’s reason for being, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers – many of whom are now explicitly white nationalists and “self-described “race realists” under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

    …leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

    …denying individual rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

    …expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

    …and for political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by [a mass-murderer like a recent Islamist assassin], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t. I wish it were – but that too seems another casualty of this new turn

As for reason (what Rand called “the only objective means of communication and of understanding among men”; “the supremacy of reason” being, she said, “the primary concern of [her] work”) in the view of Mr Perigo today that pours out of his site like a torrent, reason is now such an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move the world’s minds, that we must all lock ourselves up behind walls while embracing those like Hanson who repudiate it.

Reason is impotent at SOLO, it appears, and evil an actual force in the world – an explicit repudiation of the Objectivist position and an object lesson in how a single obsession held beyond reason has morphed into a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

The single obsession was Islamist thuggery. Or so it began. And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about this, a decade-long singular obsession, while the targets have morphed his thinking about it has never matured beyond saying “Death to Islam” in several dozen different ways. No solutions at all, zero; his only attempt at a policy being “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp of his SOLO site. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

So much for sense of life and reason.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has not just repuidated several of Objectivism’s tenets, but explicitly repudiated Objectivism itself, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware young readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail not from Objectivism at all but from the explicit alt-right of his commenters, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) an entity whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., Milo for President! enthuses Perigo, echoed by those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the Objectivist philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. And you, dear reader, are quite free to join him in the fraud. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

---

Tomorrow I post last year’s sixth-most popular post here at NOT PC, which as it happens is an exposé of one of Mr Perigo’s retarded new heroes. Stay tuned …

.

UPDATE:  A comment on this post is too good to leave lying fallow in the comments section, alerting me that just when you think it couldn’t get any worse, it actually just becomes more explicit …

Perigo waxing statist upon the "problem" of being outbred by Muslims:

"Licence to breed and licence to vote. Not One Muslim immigrant. Nothing uncivilised or unlibertarian
about any of that. Quite the contrary."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10371#comment-127052

As more simultaneously asinine and chilling statement you'd be hard pressed to find. It is now NOT uncivilised or unlibertarian to have the state examine your suitability for reproduction. Yet the state should not dictate our social or sexual choices. Or how much we drink. Or smoke. Or what we eat. Yet a huge bureaucratic apparatus vetting would-be parents is perfectly acceptable.
    This is an example of jumping the shark and advocating for the shark all at once.

.

Scum on Anzac Day

Phil at Pacific Empire explains why the scum who were burning flags at yesterday morning's Wellington's Anzac commemoration were short-sighted, ignorant and arrested -- and deserved to be arrested. Says Phil:

Both my grandfathers and one great-grandfather served in the World Wars, and I place the highest value on the freedoms that they fought for. The protesters were:

• Denigrating the fight against fascism and militarism, and introducing a sick kind of moral equivalence. Forget Bush = Hitler, they were implying that Churchill = Hitler.
• Metaphorically pissing on the graves of over 30,000 New Zealanders. Comparable to what the Westboro Baptist Church does at funerals in the US.
• Disturbing the peace. We were all engaged in silent, personal reflection and the interruption was an unwelcome violation of the ceremony.
• Resisting arrest. (A 29-year old man (pictured) and a 35 year-old woman were arrested, the man shouting in a cowardly and undignified way as he was hauled off)
• Accusing all New Zealand soldiers - ever - of being mercenary tools of the evil state.
• Finally, they devalued freedom itself by using their freedom of speech to attack those who made it possible for them to have freedom of speech. And that freedom was not violated. Loudly disrupting the speeches and lighting a fire in a public place does not constitute free speech.

... Some people in defense of these protesters have claimed that they are actually honouring the soldiers who were killed in war, by calling for peace. This claim is false. The protesters, as is shown by blog posts and website comments they have authored [which Phil cites], accuse New Zealand soldiers of various crimes, even murder and contributing to terrorism. How can you honour soldiers killed in war by calling them murderers?

Read on here to see who these scum were, and who's paying their wages.

Scum

Christian Enzensberger started his 'classic' book Smut by declaring ""There are twenty-five forms of excretion known to man." He should have added, "Man's twenty-sixth excretion is politicians."  After all, he likes filth.

In this vein,you might be interested to know what Labour brains thinks of labour hire companies -- those people who help businesses to smooth out the demand and supply of labour to ensure productivity when it's needed.  Says Labour's client blog, 'The Standard': "labour hire companies are scum."

"Scum"!  Revealing, don't you think?

This of course is just a specific view of which Labour's Hunua candidate has the general statement: "I wouldn’t go into business if my life depended on it.  I find trade immoral."

This is the ilk that's considered the future of the Labour Party.  As Cicero used to say, "politicians aren't born, they are excreted."  

Gekko drives by

At the end of last week an Aston Martin DB9, a Bentley Continental and a late model Mercedes owned by former Blue Chip magnate Mark Byers were put up for auction. Bryers himself didn't show up to see his cars auctioned off; he was out playing golf. In Scotland.

Corporate trustees joke that "the acquisition of a status symbol like a jet, a Rolls-Royce or Ferrari by a company's top executive is one of the early warning signs of impending insolvency." Big swinging dicks who've built empires based on borrowed money consume other people's capital on toys, hookers and fine living, and then, once the credit on which they've splurged has disappeared, they head off to pastures (and creditors) anew -- leaving behind them a trail of creditors to pick up the pieces that still have to be paid for. Paid for with real money.

Not just the money of hurting creditors -- your money, as we'll see.

Blue Chip's modus operandi was simple, as former Blue Chip flunkie Stewart Goldstone explained in The Herald: "Bryers' answer to keep ahead [of the game] was "to go faster and faster", to sell more while "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul"."

It sounds just like a pyramid scheme, doesn't it -- and it was: A whole pyramid based on lies and phony credit that destroyed the real capital of real people.

Bryers appears to subscribe to the child's view of economics personified by Gordon Gekko in Oliver Stone's ignorant snorefest, Wall Street. Says Gekko in a speech written by an economic illiterate:

"It's not a question of enough, pal. It's a zero sum game, somebody wins, somebody loses. Money itself isn't lost or made, it's simply transferred from one perception to another... We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, the price of a paper clip. We pick that rabbit out of a hat while everybody sits around wondering how the hell we did it. Now you’re not naïve enough to think that we’re living in a democracy, are you, Buddy? It’s the free market, and you’re part of it."

Actually, that's not the free market at all that Stone is describing, and this isn't the way the free market works. Stone has an excuse for peddling this crap -- he's an ignorant Marxist -- but those who worship Gekko as the personification of capitalism need a lesson:

Gekko is not your God.

Capitalism is not a zero sum game.

At least learn that much. Economics is the science of wealth creation -- do you hear me, of the creation of genuine wealth -- which in its most basic free market form is the production of actual goods that stand in a direct causal relationship to the satisfaction of our needs and wants.

In short, it's wealth creation, not the destruction of other people's capital. It's production, not passing around money from "one perception" -- or one con man -- to another.

And deals aren't a matter or one person stealing from another -- somebody winning and somebody losing. In every deal done without fraud (something the likes of Mark Bryers knows little about), we both receive something we want more in exchange for something we want less. For example, when I buy a bottle of milk for four dollars from my local dairy, it's because I want the bottle of milk more than I want the three dollars, and the shop owner wants the four dollars more than she wants the bottle of milk. We both win, just as we do in every honest deal, which is why rational economists call trades like this the "double thank you moment." The principle is the same whether it's a bottle of milk we're talking about, or a whole shipload of refrigerated dairy products, and it's deals such as this one on which world trade is based.

It's deals such as this that Gekko is not talking about.

Oliver Stone is not talking about a free market -- he's talking about the mixed economy created by the politicians in which there are crevices for cockroaches like Gekko to flourish. As far as Stone is concerned, it's these crevices that define capitalism, but there's no reason to make Stone's vapid view your own. If you're angry at vermin like Mark Byers and Rod Petricevic and their ilk, then get angry where it matters. Get angry that cockroaches like this are only able to exist because we don't have a free market where it really matters: in money. In the words of George Reisman, "Get angry

not at the existence of a market economy and the way the market economy works but at the presence in the market of a vast gang of dishonest bidders and dishonest buyers, a gang that bids and spends dollars created out of thin air in competition with their earned dollars." [Emphasis in the original.]

Despite all the securities law and regulations on financial markets, there's a fraud right at the centre of it all that makes a mockery of all the regulators. These dishonest bidders aren't using earned dollars to blow up their bubbles -- they're overwhelmingly using this credit created out of thin air.

What allows this destruction of your capital and the presence of these dishonest bidders is very simple: there is not a free market in money. In the present setup, governments and their central banks create counterfeit capital that eventually destroys real capital. Various explanations are given for this creation, the most idiotic being the preservation of price stability -- but it's an idiotic claim, since it's the creation of all this bogus credit that creates all the inflation that central banks are supposed to be fighting.

It's important to understand that inflation is not rising prices. It's so important that I'll say it again: inflation is not rising prices. In the normal course of events, prices rise and fall according to supply and demand, and it is important for the smooth functioning of the economy that these price signals are left unmolested.
Rising prices right across the board however are more accurately the symptom of inflation. Inflation itself is the injection of currency or credit into an economy by government, ahead of productivity and production. It is the inflation of the money supply. On the back of this injection of paper into the purchase of production, producers charge higher prices for their products in response to the extra “demand,” other producers raise their prices to compensate, the labour force seeks to do likewise, and the spiral has begun. Those who raise their prices at the beginning of the spiral come out ahead (as do those who get first use of each new tranche of paper), but when the spiral is really underway one raises prices simply to keep up, and those on fixed incomes are left behind.

The direct relevance of that quote to the likes of Mr Petricevic and Mr Byers (and Mr Gekko) is that each new tranche of paper pumped out by the central banks is injected into the economy by the likes of Mr Petricevic and Mr Byers (and Mr Gekko). It's them who gets first use of each tranche of paper, before prices have risen -- going "faster and faster", to sell more and more while "borrowing from Peter to pay Paul".

In fact, it's overwhelmingly their spending of credit created out of thin air that is the direct driver of inflation -- -- and in the case of Mr Byers where it inflates first is in the markets for fast cars and faster women -- and of the destruction of real capital that is the result.

Now I hasten to point out that not everyone who borrows money is a parasite - far from it. And not every corporate raider using borrowed money is dishonest -- most of them take honest advantage of companies that are under-using their assets, and they use these resources in new ways to create new wealth. That's a good thing. No, what I'm talking about is the scum who use the opportunity of all the counterfeit capital washing around to consume the real capital of others in frauds and malinvestments like those of Mr Byers, Mr Petricevic and (in an earlier decade) Mr Hawkins. Scum like these exist in every culture, but in the present mixed economy in which the use of credit created out of thin air is encouraged, the scum rise to the top on a wave of phoney money -- their smoke and mirrors concealed by the fraud at the heart of central banks and their monetary inflation. Their bad money drives out the good, and is eventually paid for out of the genuine savings created by hard work.

If you want to get angry at these dishonest scum, get angry at those who are responsible for the scam: the politicians and the central bankers who've made fraud a central feature of the banking system.

The weasel words of “planning” power-lust

What do town planners mean when they talk about things like “affordable housing” and “community”? 

What they don’t mean is making houses affordable, or about anyone other than themselves.

The terms that planners use, and the way that planners use them, are nothing more than euphemisms for control. What they mean is nothing more than fog used to “transfer many of the most important decisions about the use of private property from the rightful owners to the political process, dominated by planners and the … most powerful and vocal special-interest groups.”

Michael Sanera of North Carolina’s John Locke Foundation has done us a favour by translating a few of the more arcane terms used by planners, all of which are used “to cover the reality that their recommendations reduce basic individual freedom.” Some of my favourites:

• affordable housing: An extortion scheme to force homebuilders to sell their houses at below market prices.
  The political demand for affordable housing is created by restrictive land-use policies, such
  as those recommended by town planners.
• auto-dependent: People who prefer to drive automobiles, and communities that fit their preferences.
• best practice: Whatever are the latest planning fads.
• compact development: Congested, crowed housing conditions.
• growth: City development the satifies to the whims of planners and special interests.
• incentives: Legal extortion systems operated by the city.
• mixed use: A combination of commercial, residential and other uses in the same area.
  An example of mixed use would be retail shops on ground floor and apartments or condos
  on upper floors. For most of the last century, this practice was prohibited by zoning “best
  practices”…
• open space: A requirement that homebuilders provide more land than homebuyers desire.
• public realm: Anything that can be seen from a street.
• stakeholders:  Special-interest groups consulted in the development of land-use plans and
  regulations.
• subdivisions: The revealed consumer preferences in neighbourhoods, which planners therefore dislike intensely.
• sustainability: Absurd idea that without government planning, builders would create developments that fail to meet people’s needs.
• trees: A valuable natural resource that planners (1) assume benefits everyone, (2)
  want planted and protected for everyone’s benefit, and (3) want the costs of
  the forced planting and protecting borne solely by the affected landowners.
• walkability: Designed to discourage driving.

Read them all here: A Planners' Glossary: Understanding Raleigh's New Development Code, the Diagnostics & Approach Report .

And bear in mind that town planners everywhere use these euphemisms for control—including here in Auckland, where Rodney Hide is about to give the scum more power over your property.

Sanera’s sign-off line from author C.S. Lewis is apposite:

    “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

The nannying never ends.

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Time for SOLO to change its name

 

Why have I posted so many recent posts opposing or explaining the odious Alt-Right movement? Because too many people I know and once valued have become infected by its virus, and intellectual hygiene demands that be acknowledged and rebutted (or an attempt at least made).

One local place that’s become a carrier for the virus is a site that’s still confusingly labelled “Objectivist,” although it’s now clearly anything but.  It should be abundantly evident now to any visitor of Lindsay Perigo’s site “for Sense-of-Life Objectivists” that it promotes neither sense-of-life nor Objectivism -- and should not be confused by anyone for an example of either. Nor of libertarianism.

I  say all this because Lindsay and I have shared stages together, and been long-term collaborators on any number of projects over many years, and any reasonable person may assume I share all his views. I don’t. And very definitely not the views he apparently harbours today.

Mr Perigo’s admirable obsession with opposing Islamist’s thuggery has now sadly morphed, as it has become more single-minded, from being just anti-Muslim to being odiously anti-human. And repellent. After not having been there for some time, here are some examples that sprang out without even needing to dig too deep:

“We need to recognise that most existing ‘humans’ are just that: humans in inverted commas—anti- and sub-human, but existing in human form.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/9935#comment-123072

"Yes, people are, by and large, scum. That much has become irresistibly apparent to me..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10060#comment-124011

"Humanity as a whole (my God, how OrthOists will hate that expression) is still *sub*-human. "Sub" must be circumvented and superseded  ... I cannot imagine it will come about without an intervening cataclysm wherein all sub-humans are Karmally wiped out by the effects of their own mindlessness, and we can start over.
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253

Humanity “as a whole” is “sub-human,” he says routinely. This from a man who once excoriated what he then called “humanity diminishers.”

“Yes, people are, by and large, scum,” he says without irony on a site that calls itself “Sense-of-Life.” (Can you see that sentiment fitting anywhere within the parameters of that pic above?)

And who you might wonder are all these “sub-humans” for whose end he so fervently hopes? Anyone who disagrees with him, it seems. Including me, who had the temerity to suggest earlier this year that he had chosen an introductory selection of classical music not from the more dramatic moments of romantic music but from the more “tepid” end of the spectrum – I received my indirect response to my riposte that very week; “my answer,” said Perigo, “to the pig-ignorant mewlings of the sub-humans who say Romantic-era music is ‘tepid’." Which was me, except it wasn’t – accuracy too [such as this partial and highly-flawed account of a recent and rare public outing] being another casualty these days of Mr Perigo’s increasingly inward focus.

And how about those he labels “OrthOists,” you ask, of whom he’s often so critical? It’s hard to know since neologising at the expense of clarity is an unfortunate Perigo fetish, but I think (this week at least) it must mean anyone who subscribes to the views espoused by Ayn Rand instead of those emanating from the fever dreams of the conspiracy theorists and worse with whom he now converses daily in his comments section of his site, where most of his site’s work is done.

So vast amounts of weirdness and worse, and not just from his regular commenters and bloggers, many of whom are expicitly white nationalists under whose influence, it appears, Mr Perigo is now…

…leaning explicitly towards eugenics…

"There is no such thing as a right to breed.  Breeding is an imposition upon the bred without the consent of the bred. It's a form of initiating force. Then, Objectimorons will tell the involuntarily bred they have a duty to stay alive simply because they've been bred. This is rational??!! Benevolent??!! In this shitty world of Peter Keatings??!! ... The most important thing as far as the survival of Western Civilisation is concerned, aside from stopping Islamofilth immigration, is stopping The Filth from proliferating. In most cases, it's the only thing The Filth knows how to do. The Filth must be thwarted."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125444

"Anyway, there should be a new party proposing licenses to breed and to vote, wresting education from the child-molesters, along with my Not One Muslim immigration policy. I'd like to call it something provocative like the Western Civilisation Party."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/8744#comment-125979

…denying universal rights …

"We don't have a right to life just because we're alive and have a human body, though that's what the OrthOist position amounts to..."
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10253#comment-125418

…expressing unrestrained support for the likes of Pauline Hanson …

"Move Over Brexit! Yoooooooge Setback for Filth in Australia!: Move over Brexit! Pauline Hanson, reviled by Filth, has just won a seat in the Australian Senate, and will possibly pick up two more once this weekend's election results become more clear... I personally delight in contemplating how horrified Obleftivists across the ditch in New Zealand will be at this advance for civilised values and human freedom.”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10270

…and political assassination.

“If ever Obama were to be targeted by an Omar Mateen [i.e., the mass-murderer], that would be poetic justice. I have no hesitation in saying that Obama is one ‘faggot’ whose martyrdom at the hands of the murderous bigots he has enabled would constitute Karmic justice ….”
http://www.solopassion.com/node/10259

Lest you think any of this is intended as humour, it isn’t.

As for reason, in his view it is apparently now an impotent force in the world with none of the power the “Filth” has to move it. So reason is impotent, and evil a force in the world – and a single obsession has become a near universal reason- and humanity-diminishment.

And yet in all his years of opposing and writing about Islamic thuggery, his decade-long singular obsession, his thinking has never matured beyond “Death to Islam.” No solutions at all, zero, beyond “not one Muslim,” a policy enthusiastically embraced at the fever swamp. As if it were possible to simply ban or bar or wipe out 1.5 billion people from existence.

And a man who once cheered Ronald Reagan demanding a Soviet Premier “tear down this wall” can now be found seriously insisting that America must “build a wall” itself, and not just along its Mexican border but along its Canadian border as well !

True story.

Furthermore, Mr Perigo has explicitly repudiated Objectivism, which he now calls "Obleftivism" (whatever that means). Instead, while repudiating the philosophy that the very masthead of his site trumpets and by which he attracts unaware readers, he is now promoting something he calls "Authenticism" -- which in all the years he’s been talking about it has never bothered to fully define apart from arm-waving about most humans not possessing rights (which humans? "Filth?" sub-humans? people with whom he’s had a disagreement?) and putting humans' animal side before their human. And his own personal cultural and highly unphilosophical heroes now hail from the explicit alt-right, including internet bores Stefan Molyneux (a white nationalist known to SOLO’s visitors as “Molly”), Paul Joseph Watson (who helps runs conspiracy sites like “InfoBores” and “Pathetic Planet”) whom Perigo calls “my new hero,” and Milo Yiannopoulos etc., [Milo for President! enthuses Perigo] as too do those with whom he now converses on his website -- which wears the banner of an Objectivist site while repudiating the philosophy.

So as sense-of-life goes, yet alone commitment to reason and just basic intellectual hygiene, there’s every reason to shun the site and demand he change the name, if not yet his direction.

Because, you know, Mr Perigo is free to adopt whatever repellent views and associates he chooses. But just basic intellectual honesty demands he not label those views and the site they frequent as something they are not.

Time to change the name and just go full retard. (Or, if it’s not too late, to reconsider.)

But since, like the pic at the top of the page, this one at the bottom also represents almost everything to which the site formally known as SOLO now stands opposed (including the grin), I thought I’d finish with this:

.[Pics by ObjectivismForIntellectuals and PlanningForLiberty]

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Gridlock!

The limits to government action are generally measured by the apathy of the populace.  For too long, New Zealanders have been pushed around and trodden up on by scum, with the only response to the bullying being some quiet moaning over the dinner table.  But New Zealanders' apathy has made the scum more  grasping, not less.

For once, tomorrow, the apathy is over.  The anger of New Zealanders at all the thieving and the nannying and all the venal power lust will be directed at government through thousands of truckies in cities across the country protesting the overnight raid on their wallets by Annette King -- protesting against a government, and a minister, who has proved better at doing us over than it has at protecting us, and has now taken the opportunity to prove that by putting the boot into an industry which is already on the canvas from rising fuel prices.

The chaos caused by truckers tomorrow morning is a barb directed at big government on behalf of all of us.  Let's get in behind them.

UN Commission of Inquiry has more news for Gareth Morgan

The head of a UN Commission of Inquiry into the place Gareth Morgan recently described as “just fantastic”—a place whose economic achievements have been “magnificent”—calls North Korea a place harbouring “unspeakable atrocities.” Retired Australian judge Michael Kirby, who has spent recent months gathering evidence in South Korea and Japan from North Korean defectors and other victims,  says "testimony heard thus far points to widespread and serious violations in all areas."

He said the evidence, both sobering and heart-rending, had "given a face and voice to great human suffering."

Let’s (not) bash landlords

Everyone’s getting excited about the prospect of watching Bill English bash landlords tomorrow afternoon, with no thought (or just poorly-thought out thoughts) as to what bashing landlords will do to tenants, or to whether or not landlords themselves deserve to be bashed by the double-dipper.

Which of course, they don’t.

But bashing landlords is always fashionable, and those doing the bashing can always count on the support of ignoramuses who can be heard to argue that landlords’ income is unearned—i.e., that their rents and the capital gains they might enjoy from their property are “unearned income” that these (so-called) “greedy scum” don’t deserve to keep.

Now, if you think that sort of argument and this sort of argument sounds just like stale, warmed-over Marxism, you’d be right, as Amit Ghate points out today in a fortunately-timed article entitled ‘The Nonsensical Notion of ‘Unearned Income’.’ 

    “The concept of ‘unearned’ income is the remnant of a long-refuted economic theory known as the ‘labor theory of value.’  Though first proposed by classical economists such as Smith and Ricardo, today it is most closely identified with Karl Marx, who was its last — and most consistent — advocate.
    “Essentially the labor theory of value holds that values are determined by the (physical) labor it takes to create them. Thus physical exertion becomes the measure of an item’s worth. According to  Marx — and to his modern adherents like [Bill English], [Idiot/Savant], [the writers of The Standard] et. al. — any values created in ways other than by brute force are ‘unearned.’ …   So while today’s politicians generally fail to protect the individual’s right to property, they’re openly hostile to so-called ‘unearned’ income and property.  Hence their unabashed support for these new taxes.”

I recommend reading Amit’s explanation of why this idea of “unearned income” is fundamentally wrong, and is the argument behind more than just attacks (and taxes)on landlords.  Hint: it’s all about the mind, grasshopper.

POSTSCRIPT: There’s an added irony about the parasites who attack landlords as “greedy scum” while sucking down as much taxpayers’ largesse as they can.

In general the parasites at The Standard and No Right Turn uphold Marx’s exploded Exploitation Theory (i.e., the theory that “capitalism promotes a system of slavery wherein the labor of workers is exploited to attain profits on behalf of the relatively few businessman or capitalists”) and Marx’s “Iron Law of Wages” (i.e., the theory fallacy that without trades union and benevolent labour-loving government, employers would pay employees whatever they want, driving employees’ wages right down to subsistence level).

But when it comes to landlords, they’re both now arguing against the Exploitation Theory, “arguing that [rents] are set by supply and demand, not at whatever level the landlords want and not at whatever level the tenants want.” See, here’s IowaHawk writing in the comments at The Standard:

    “Rentals are not set by landlords saying:
            ’Gosh Humphrey, I think I deserve an extra $500 a year.”
            ‘Why yes Reginald, that’s only fair. I deserve to make an extra $1000 a year in rent, so I’ve raised the rent on my peons too!’
    “No. Rentals are not set by landlords making up what they want. They are set by supply of rental property vs demand for rental property. Charge too much and you find your property empty – and for landlords with a mortgage that’s very, very expensive.” [Emphasis in the original]

Ironic, don’t you think.  Especially because the same argument they’re using here for rents overturns their own theories about an “iron law of wages”: that is to say, wages are not set by employers making up what they want, [emphasis mine] they’re set by a combination of supply and demand and the productivity of labour. (Read George Reisman’s ‘Classical Economics vs. The Exploitation Theory’ for the full story on this, which also explains the role of the mind in overturning the fallacy.)

Get your best posts here ...

Once again, here's the best half-dozen barbs against barbarism posted at NOT PC this week, based largely on what got readers stampeding to the site.   If you missed out, here's what kept readers most informed, enlightened and entertained this week:

1. A Gordon Gekko drive by. Who to get angry at when dishonest scum like Rod Petricevic and Mark Byers keep floating to the surface -- and how their thieving helps to explain inflation.
2. Robert Heinlein's house. A house for fans of Robert Heinlein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard Neutra -- or people whose souls are stirred by efficiency.
3. Scum.  What Labour brains think of hiring labour.
4. Privatising the forests. One of New Zealand's largest privatisation was effected this week.  How come the usual suspects didn't notice?
5. Falsely inflated drug harms.  "Spectacular but useless" is  just one description for an index of the costs of drug harms that ascribes all the  the costs incurred due to prohibition to the costs of the drugs themselves.
6. Its Kelo Day! Take one day out to remember those people whose houses are taken by government to give to crony phony “businessmen” like Donald Trump.

And of course the best news all week, without question, is this news at Annie Fox's ...

QotD: "You have people with a predisposition to nihilistic, amoral power seeking who don’t necessarily buy into the postmodern philosophical framework, but who adopt it as a set of 'tools' for them to advance their own personal and social agendas, whatever those happen to be."

Stephen Hicks: "So [for the postmodernist] power in the service of Truth; power in the service of Justice: that goes away. All that we are left with is Power..."

Jordan Peterson: "And so here’s the simple and easy explanation [for that]:
You [the postmodernist] want to dispense with the idea of 'justice' and 'truth' because that lightens your existential load, because now there’s nothing difficult and noble that you have to strive for, and you want to reduce everything to 'power' because that justifies your use of power in your pursuit of those immediate goals that you no longer even have to justify because you don’t have to make reference to any higher standards of, say, 'justice' or 'truth.' It’s certainly not reasonable either for those who claim that 'all there is is power,' that they’re not themselves motivated equally by that power."

Stephen Hicks: "So ... what you can always say, in effect, is that philosophy is autobiographical. In many cases philosophers will put their pronouncements in third-person form, or in generalised form, but if you always put it down to third-person formulations, it can be profoundly self-revelatory.
    "So if you say, for example, 'Human beings are scum'—there you have some sort of a pessimistic assessment of the human condition. Well, built into that then is the idea that I, if I 'first-personalise it,' that 'I am scum.' What you’re really doing is a first-person confession. And it’s always then an illegitimate move to exempt yourself from the general principle.
"Or [you might say]: 'Everything just is 'power relations' and 'people imposing their agendas on other people.' Then what you’re saying is: 'Well, my fundamental commitment is power, and I just want to impose my agenda on other people.'
So ... it can go both ways: It can of course be that you have people who, for whatever reason, have a predisposition to nihilistic, amoral power seeking, and when they become adults and 'intellectual,' they latch onto theories that indulge them, that enable them to rationalise their predispositions.
"And ... a lot of Postmodernism ... is disingenuous in that form. People don’t necessarily buy into the postmodern philosophical framework, but rather ... [adopt it] as a set of 'tools' for them to advance their own personal and social agendas, whatever those happen to be."

~ from a conversation between Jordan Peterson and philosopher Stephen Hicks about Hicks's book (which is excellent, by the way) Explaining Postmodernism.
NB: The Youtube conversation is here; the transcript is here.

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Shop killers

I'm sure the thoughts of every thinking New Zealander are with the widow and three daughters of Navtej Singh today, who was shot  and killed by thieving scum as he stood unarmed and defenceless behind the counter of his family's Manurewa bottle store.

And I'm sure every thinking New Zealander will already be wondering how it would have been different if retailers were able to defend themselves with mace or pepper spray, or a taser or gun -- all of which are illegal for ordinary New Zealanders, and any of which might have made the criminal scum think twice before their murderous raid.

The world needs more mah-jong factories

Time for a joke.

Q: How much do you charge?
LAWYER: $500 for three questions.
Q: Crikey, that’s expensive isn’t it?
LAWYER: Yes it is. What’s your third question.

Famous for defending scum, lawyer Barry Hart has been brought before the Law Society for charging fees at $1000 an hour despite much of the preparation work being done by a junior lawyer who had been practising for only two months.

News lawyers are charging like wounded bulls is hardly news. Law is a restricted monopoly—made so by lawyers.  They interpret an impenetrable and ever-expanding library of laws—all written by lawyers. Their over-charging is reviewed—by other lawyers.

The only news here is his colleagues crying crocodile tears over his over-charging, all the while wishing they could charge like he does.

Mencken was right: with very few very noble exceptions lawyers are mostly scum themselves. They play both sides of the street while taking money to lie for a living—and that’s the good ones. The bad ones head straight to parliament. As Mencken once observed:

All the extravagance and incompetence of our present government is due, in the main, to lawyers, and, in part at least, to good ones. They are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of citizens has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah-jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost half.

The world needs more mah-jong factories. Urgently.

Tuku’s trough could fill a whole coastline

Those of us who remember Tukuroirangi Morgan's time in parliament, and at Aotearoa Television, remember with some enthusiasm for the entertainment it gave us all what a glutton he was for a perk. His sense of entitlement was so tangible it was something we mere mortals can only wonder at. (Q: Why did the chick cross the road? A: The chicken's mana entitled it to cross the road whenever  and wherever it wanted.) 

Those of you too young to remember it all need only a ribald sense of humour and the ability to Google Tuku+Morgan+underpants to catch up. And you should, because everyone but Tuku had a blast.

These trough-snout proclivities of the Tuku are so clearly innate with him that it's very easy to believe recent stories that he and the rest of the Tainui top table which he chairs are paying themselves an awful lot for doing very little—a revelation for which the woman who revealed it has just been sacked by the very head honcho of the trough, by the Tainui “king” himself. (A sacking that looks as petulant as it is irregular.)

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what a Browntable looks like—a table of top troughers who don’t give a fig either for the people who pay their way, or the people in whose name they they claim to speak.

It’s to scum like this, and to the rest of their similarly-placed Browntable brethren around the country, that the National Party now wants to make a gift of nearly two-thirds of the coastline—not to individual Maori, or to individual non-Maori, either of whom might be able to prove some sort of common-law property right in what is presently un-owned, but who will now have no forum win which to make a case; not even as some under-the-table kind of privatisation, which will pass these parcels of foreshore and seabed into individualised titles that could end up in the hands of those who value them the most.

No, the National Party just wants to put it all straight into the trough and (after a few short  pas des deux in Chris Finalyson’s office) to give it straight to tribal “leaders” like Tuku and his ilk, so these self-serving scum can keep themselves in pork and clover until such time as they come back to the taxpayer saying “More!”

This is what has many people feeling very aggrieved about National’s compromise arrangement on the Foreshore & Seabed Act: because it will simply add more coastline to the already overfull Browntable trough, without delivering even a schnapper’s worth of justice for anyone.

But this is not to say the opponents of National’s planned handover are correct in their own criticism.

Hone Harawira, for example, seems to think the whole coastline should simply be handed over as is where is to the Browntable, simply because they are who they are. (The Browntable’s mana entitles it to whatever and wherever it wants. So there.)

And the ACT Party & the Muriel Newman-led Coastal Coalition have been running an even more bizarre line. Instead of opposing crown ownership and arguing for real property rights—i.e., upholding the common law right for people’s day in court to argue for their rights in these areas to be recognised, which was precisely what the original Court of Appeal decision allowed—or arguing for a simple privatisation of coastline by the granting of individualised, transferable titles—they’re arguing instead that two-thirds of the country’s coastline should remain nationalised in perpetuity.

But since many of them also believe that “before Maori arrived in New Zealand settlements had already been established … by Chinese miners, and by the Celts,” it’s clear that logic plays no part in their campaigning.

Seizing their assets steals your liberty

A new Bill allowing the state to seize the assets of criminals is not just wrong because those assets will be digested by the maw of the state rather than used to help restore the lives and property of the victims of said criminals, but it's wrong because it completely overturns the basic principle of being considered innocent before the justice system actually proves your guilt.

Susan the Libertarian gets it right, as she so often does. This is an attack on the liberty of all of us -- it just starts with an attack on those people already considered odious.

I know why you might think, 'well, who gives a toss about the likes of gang members, because they're scum' - (and you'd be right about that) - but unfortunately, that is not the point. Not at all.

The 20th century philosopher, Ayn Rand, put it this way: 'In the transition to statism, every infringement of human rights has begun with the suppression of a given right's least attractive practitioners'.

In other, simpler, words: the totalitarians will always start by interfering with the rights of scum like criminal gang members and paedophiles. And then, before you know it, they move onto the rest of us - and people say things like "well, how did that happen?"

It happened because good intentions will ALWAYS be plead for any assumption of power.

Just recall, if you doubt that, how the law introduced to extract the assets of drug king Mr Asia are now used routinely by the IRD to filch from the bank accounts of those the IRD considers too recalcitrant.

LINK: More power to seize criminal assets - Newstalk ZB
On the move to seize assets from individuals suspected of criminal activity - Susan the Libertarian

RELATED: Law, NZ Politics

Polemic writing: Use a sniper's rifle, not a shotgun

Okay, for those who wanted it, here it is: my tired, ten-year-old advice on how to write a press release, nipped and tucked so it now advises how to write a good polemical blog post (see if you can spot the joins). Not every blog post is a polemic, but every poster of polemic blogs might find this useful. If you don't need it, don't read it.

[From the archives...] Want to be a libertarian blogger? Great!! Here's a few guidelines to help you put together your posts:

Unlike this one, every good post needs a hook on which to hang your argument. A post is a seduction, and you have to seduce people into reading it, however you try and do it. The readers you want to seduce are busy people -- you have to find some means of giving them a way in by making it seem worth reading on. And then you have to make sure it is worth reading on.

Most people won't read beyond the first paragraph (particularly if they're reading you on a news reader), so that opening paragraph must be provocative enough to grab the attention AND to make your point in one hit -- AND try and seduce them into reading further. Make that first paragraph count. That's as much as most people are going to know (or care) about what you think.

If they want to read further, they probably want to know why you said what you said. Tell them - that's why second, and sometimes third, paragraphs were invented. Explain your position, and make those paragraphs count.

Notice I said "second, and sometimes third, paragraphs"? Don't piss around. Your readers are busy people, and so are you.

Press releases need the oxygen of timeliness to survive; not so for blogs. Press releases make the news; blog posts generally comment on the news. So unlike press releases you can get something off your chest even a week or more later -- a great way to relieve that blood pressure. But a week or so later you have to have something to say that hasn't already been said - and most people's minds were already made up on Day One.

A good post uses a sniper's rifle rather than a shotgun - it has ONE strong point rather than several, and it doesn't spray its load around: it shoots straight for its target. (If you do have two points to make on a subject, then write two posts.)

On a similar point: no flab. Put your posts on a diet. If a post was a muesli -- a bit of a stretch, I know -- then it needs lots of sultanas, and bugger-all bran. Too much filler and too many filling words and you're on your way to sounding like a Hubbard's cereal. Edit your posts, with brevity being the virtue prized above all, clarity being second.

Every post is a missionary, trying to change the world, but each one goes out on its own, without you to explain what you meant by it all. Before pressing 'publish,' read it through as if you're an intelligent reader without any clue what you're talking about. How does it sound to them? If it sounds like you don't have a clue, then you have more work to do.

Invite the reader to form your conclusions for you. If for example you're going to insult someone, by the time you've given all your reasons for despising somone your insult should just be the logical conclusion -- your reader should be able to join you in agreeing.

Argue forcefully. If you don't appear to believe what you're talking about, then why the hell should your reader?

If they've read all the way to the end, your reader will want to know why they bothered. Leave them a moral. "It's enough to make you vote Libertarianz" is an obvious one. "Politicians are scum," is another. Whatever it is, try to leave the reader some quotable one liner to remember, one that sums up what you just said.

And finally, if you want to use words like 'vermin,' 'scum,' 'maggot,' and so on, then go right ahead. If you don't, your comments section will soon be filled with them anyway -- best you get in first. :-)

Hope that helps you. Go to it!! And as my footie coach used to say: Do as I say, not as I do.

RELATED: Blog