Waterloo

Chancing to catch a train from the towering structure
in Lower Hutt known as the Waterloo Interchange,
I found myself on a cold wet Saturday morning waiting
on the platform with nowhere to shelter. I huddled
behind a wall to stay out of the wind. Astonishingly,
this vast edifice contains no warm waiting-rooms, no
ticket office, no refreshment kiosk, no staff. You can’t
even buy a daily paper there. If ever there was an
argument for revitalizing the railways, then this is it.
I foresee the day, as people swing back to public
transport, when stations such as this once again hum
with activity, instead of being just draughty barns.

Media7

Thanks to a friend, last Wednesday I was able to see for
the first time the two new current-affairs programs on
TV7. Of the first, Back Benches, the less said the better.
It should be taken off the air at once. The other one,
Media7, has a potentially useful life as kind of television
equivalent of Mediawatch (Radio New Zealand National’s
excellent Sunday-morning show). Russell Brown makes
a totally credible presenter, though he might have let the
discussion among his guests—on this occasion, Kim
Griggs, David Cohen and Deborah Hill Cone—run more
freely. Griggs is a television natural and the saturnine
Cohen should probably have a Jon-Stewart-style show
of his own. With Phil Wallington coming on board as
producer, Media7 should get even better. The awesomely
well-informed Brown deserves this kind of television
exposure and I’m glad he’s got it.

Railpolitik

The good news is that the Government led by Helen
Clark has bought back the national railways network,
which should never have passed out of state hands
in the first place. Put this alongside the Government’s
move to ensure that Auckland International Airport
does not fall into foreign hands, and we have, I think,
a turning of the tide. And not just because it’s election
year in New Zealand. It could be argued, in fact, that
more-market mania has passed its zenith, and that,
from here on, Western governments are going to be
much more pro-active in matters of public utility
ownership and national control of key assets. This
view is certainly held by British left-wing commentator
Martin Jacques, who has argued in the Guardian that
the British Government’s nationalization of the
Northern Rock bank, to prevent it from going under,
is highly significant. It marks, he says, the end of one
era (that of neoliberal economic orthodoxy) and the
beginning of another, in which state intervention and
control will no longer be seen as the Devil’s work.
Jacques even foresees a swing back to protectionism;
don’t rule it out in New Zealand either, heretical as
that may be to say.

The bad news is that the Clark-led Government, having
apparently grasped the nettle of global warming, has
partly withdrawn its hand with exclamations of pain
and dismay. The decisions to postpone various aspects
of the Emissions Trading Scheme—not exactly the
most enlightened way to tackle global warming in the
first place, but at least a gesture in the right direction—
send all the wrong signals about petrol use and private
transport. It makes a political football out of something
too important to be kicked around every time the cost
of living goes up. The Government may think it's
being kind to people by sparing them extra expense
as the scheme begins to phase in, but it’s only going
to make matters worse in the long run.

We have to accept that the great age of the private
car is over. No kidding. No stalling. No pretending
otherwise. No putting off the day when serious
alternatives (and not soft options like the ETS)
must be thought about, planned and introduced.
That day is now. Actually, it was several years ago;
but encouraging people to go on pumping fossil-fuel
carbon into the air like there was no tomorrow is
no way of making up for lost time.

Epochal

“The great epochs of our life come when we gain the
courage to rechristen our evil as what is best in us.”
—Nietzsche. That is a tremendously brave thing to
say—to think, even. I have wrestled with the idea for
years. Can it be that the same impulse underpins
both good and evil?

This dog bites

I am not sure how much longer John Key’s mantra “If
elected, National will not sell any state assets” is going
to hang onto whatever tattered shreds of credibility it
has, so long as it keeps being followed by the rider,
“not in our first term anyway.” With the first part of the
statement Key sends a flag up the flagpole; with the
second part he shoots it full of holes. Believe part one
at your peril. That his advisers could allow him to spout
such politically feeble stuff is a sign that all is not well in
the National Party, where compromises are clearly
being made almost weekly between those, like Key, who
will do anything rather than expose the party to
accusations that it has a radical right-wing agenda, and
those who still swear by the blood of Don Brash.
Desperate to get back into power, yet terrified of showing
its true colours, National is yapping like a muzzled dog at
the moment, virtually rolling over and waving its paws in
the air in order to show the voters how cute and cuddly it
is. Beware: this dog bites.

Think again

Further to my blog of last Tuesday ("Go figure"), I have
belatedly caught up with the news that one of the first
things Nicolas Sarkozy did on becoming President of
France last year was to ask economists Amartya Sen
and Joseph Stiglitz to advise the French Government
on the way in which it calculates its economic and
social well-being.

Well, good on him. Whatever his politics, Sarkozy has
shown a refreshing willingness to think outside the
square. He has also announced that advertising will be
removed from state television channels. Dare we hope
that a New Zealand government would ever do the
same? Dans nos rêves.

A recent opinion piece in Time argues that GDP is still
far and away the most reliable measure we have of a
nation’s prosperity but let’s see what Sen and Stiglitz
come up with. Every time someone objects to more
enlightened means of measurement, one cannot escape
the feeling that, just as the big oil companies were
reluctant to develop less quick-profit alternatives to
fossil fuels, so alternatives to GDP don’t suit the people
with most to gain from exhorting us all to produce more,
spend more, waste more.

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