Since that post I’ve thought further about the practice of global trading currencies, securities, futures and financial instruments and have found that my attitude would better be described as abhorrence. Financial trading is actually a betting game with huge financial stakes for the players, which has huge but mostly hidden impacts on the lives of the rest of us – the 99.9% who don’t play these markets.

I was talking with a friend who in recent months has been making a comfortable living out of a scientific and business pursuit of online sports betting. I found myself reflecting on whether his income process was useful or damaging to society. My answer was “neither”.

I cannot for the life of me find anything in his new career that makes the world better. At least in Lotto a percentage of the stakes goes to community developments. Personal private-sector betting merely moves money around between winning and losing players, with the bookmaker taking a cut. At the same time, though, my friend is not actually damaging society. He’s not a problem gambler, and has systems built in that prohibit his activities from harming his family financially.

When I think of the money traders (commonly called “Wall Street”), I do not feel the same level of tolerance. Or any tolerance whatsoever. I may be wrong, but … I think they’re a blight on society, and that their departure would make every economy in every country more productive.

As with sports gambling, any damage they do among themselves is none of my concern really. These traders choose to play their game and accept that they will win some and lose some as they spend their day speculating on what will go up and what will come down in price. Some traders are bound to get into personal difficulties and probably affect the lives of their families, but apart from that, there’s no wider damage.

But unlike sports gambling, global financial traders DO have an impact on the way economies operate. With their betting they can influence the value of currencies: if they have enough funds the richest of them can outbid reserve banks and force exchange rates to move against the wishes of sovereign states. Although I don’t properly understand how it works, short selling of stocks or financial instruments can and often does artificially destroy the value of those assets. In other words, the activities of these gamblers actually affects the outcomes of what they are gambling on.

America being what it is (the land of the brave), there will always be a group of people there who are self-motivated to use whatever means they have to make easy money at the expense of others, without doing anything productive or useful at all. And the free enterprise-driven regulatory framework within which they play will always protect them. So I cannot see these trading leeches ever being eliminated unless capitalism collapses totally.

But my abhorrence of the money-market men is one reason why I support a global Financial Transaction Tax, a tiny percentage tax which would be placed on every financial transaction in the world. It may add a few dollars to my own personal banking each year, but just imagine how much money it would reap for the whole of society – and how much it could moderate the amount of betting going on among Wall Street traders – if every multi-million dollar transaction they do every day was subject to this tax!

Perhaps that would mean that these trading leeches would, however unwillingly, actually be contributing something to society for a change.

Isn’t it amazing how quickly we forget how grim it looked and sounded back then, when American banks such as Lehmans and other ginormous corporations went under or were bought and/or propped up by the US government, and it looked like the next Great Depression would happen?

It was just over three years ago now, but in the meantime various bailouts and much money-printing helped keep the wheels of commerce and consumerism spinning – at least for a while longer. And while they keep turning, we are led to believe that the problem is over. We may have a mild recession, we’re told, but the system will right itself in time and we’ll be able to get back to economic growth and raising our so-called standard of living.

I read this book aiming to understand a little better how it happened, and hoping to gain a view on how the capitalist system that the US has bestowed (or inflicted) upon the western world must be changed to turn things around to a sustainable system rather than business as usual which is merely delaying the inevitable.

You see – and I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging – I was one of those who sort of saw it coming, back before the experts were saying that “in hindsight the GFC was bound to happen but no-one could have predicted it beforehand”. It was in fact predictable, and this book shows how the storm gathered. Greed, irrational optimism and adherence to a credo that “values (particularly of real estate) always rise” combined to make most of us blind to what the dark clouds were telling us.

The author of The End of Wall Street is not an expert business reporter but simply a thorough researcher with a good reporter’s way of simplifying complex facts and parallel developments into a consistent, readable narrative. Not that I understood it all – but then not many people back then seemed to fully understand what the Wall Street traders in stocks, equities, securities, bonds, mortgage swaps, CDOs etc were actually doing. But I think I’ve got the gist of it now, thanks to Roger Lowenstein.

What the traders and banks were in fact doing was speculating on the value of anything they could get their hands on or could imagine mathematically (particularly future values), and more often than not with no inkling of the value or riskiness of those things. The name of the game was not owning anything but rather moving money, IOUs, stocks, bonds, mortgages, sliced mortgage securities, and other intangibles around between themselves, collecting a percentage along the way with each transaction along with any capital gain.

They made the hamster’s treadmill spin faster and faster (going nowhere in particular, of course) until, one day, it seized up. Perhaps a bearing broke or a spoke snagged. The Wall Street traders and banks were left with nothing tangible, nothing of intrinsic value, and no way of borrowing money to pay for the stuff they had in their hands or the debts they owed when the treadmill snagged.

Now we’re seeing something similar in effect, though different in substance, in the Euro crisis. All bailout plans are merely attempts to keep the hamster’s treadmill moving, short-term ways of keeping cash moving around by borrowing from anywhere and using the period of time before repayment is due to work out some way of doing it again to keep the lenders happy.

Anyone who publicly says what is pretty obvious – that this cannot be sustained even in the medium term – is considered an unwanted pessimist or doom-merchant. The goal of the wheel-greasing process is to maintain enough confidence among consumers and money dealers to see the system through another day, week or month. The horizon appears to be little further than this.

My view remains as I wrote in August in this post, that it’s the change of tide we should be reacting to, not the waves. The tide is coming in and we’re the children on the beach trying to build defences and diversion channels to stop the individual waves from destroying our sandcastles. In the end, the tide will win.

As Roger Lowenstein concludes, the lessons are there for the learning, and if we don’t learn them and make the changes necessary to our capitalist system, we will continue to get it wrong.

The curious thing for me is that I don’t seem to be able to muster much feeling about it, one way or the other. Why would that be?

Hopefully it’s not that I’ve passed a certain age when the discomfort of unpopular protesting is unattractive; when the people seen on the TV in their occupation tents look scruffy, insincere or thoughtless; when I think I have better things to do with my limited time. Pity help me if I’m letting that level of superficiality affect my judgment!

My first problem (and that of so many other people who are not up with spontaneous social media networking and the like) is that the target of the Occupy movement – especially in New Zealand – is not clearly defined. On the Vietnam war and the Springbok tour, we all knew precisely what the issue was and what we protesters (and our opposition) wanted. With Occupy, the target appears to be the ultra-rich 1% of the capitalist world. Or is it the capitalist system as a whole? Or is it the establishment? I guess the ambiguity reflects the difference between a “campaign” and a “movement”.

And if the target of the occupiers is one or all of these, exactly what is it that they would rather do and how would they start to achieve it. Unlike Vietnam or “the tour”, there is no single action or policy change that will stop excessive greed/wealth/capitalism.

So I find it difficult to rouse a feeling of solidarity with the occupiers as they camp out on public land in Auckland, Wellington and several other centres. Also, compared with the size of the occupying “forces” and the policing responses in America and the UK, the Kiwi groups are pretty ineffectual, apart from causing some short-term damage to grass cover, some health issues and general annoyance to a minority of opponents.

It’s actually a problem for protesters if no-one is inconvenienced or angered by them, so it is to be expected that the occupiers will persist and try new tactics even when many think they’ve had their fair time. But in the end their gains will be small, if any.

On the other side of the coin, the right to protest is in my opinion absolutely vital to any healthy society. Near the top of my list of life’s guiding principles will always be the knowledge that all it takes for a dictatorship to be established is for good people to say and do nothing. To not stand up against bad policies is to pay no respect to the people over the centuries who fought for democracy and individual freedom.

So the occupiers are right to keep before our faces one of the biggest societal problems the world is now facing – the growing gap between the ultra-wealthy 1% and the so-called 99% who must show restraint in their life choices or are simply too poor to have any economic options at all. The issue should be something we are all aware of and prepared to think about.

Is the wealth gap one of our biggest problems? Like an increasing number of commentators in recent months, I believe it is. Particularly the notion that the gap between the top few percent and the rest is actually widening. It’s a huge problem – and a potential time bomb – because the consequences affect every part of every society – even, eventually, the top 1%. But that’s too big an issue for me to tackle in this article, so I’ll give it some further thought in a separate post soon.

I won’t argue the merits of his salary in his particular setting, apart from agreeing with sentiments in the scores of letters which filled the opinion pages of The Press. So many people in that quake-broken city are hanging on by a thread, financially and emotionally, and the rest of the country is being reminded ad nauseum of the need for restraint in wage expectations and government spending.

This decision is an insult to all except the upper clique of officials and corporate bosses who increasingly are losing contact with the rest of the population.

Executive salaries have bothered me for years. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, aware of the arguments of supporters generally along the lines of (a) you have to pay what the market demands, and (b) you suffer from wealth envy. But it just doesn’t wash.

1. The “market demand” argument is run by the people who benefit most from it. The “market” for senior executives is small and created by the senior execs themselves. They maintain it by bidding each other up. Each new position is filled by someone who is already in the clique but who demands or expects more money. The whole thing must be unsustainable – you just cannot keep bidding up the rewards at a rate faster than the underlying rate of economic growth without the system ultimately falling apart through its own illogicality or a rebellion by “the masses”.

2. That so-called market is rarely tested. With most workers, excessive wage demands lose you the job. The labour market works pretty efficiently, be it fairly or because of ruthless control from the bosses. But when hiring a new senior executive no-one seems to have the guts to say, we can get someone else if you demand too high a salary. There really is no effective market for the top dogs, so they cannot justify it through “market forces”.

3. One would like to believe that quality senior executives would see job satisfaction, their leadership status and the knowledge that they are useful as part of the reason they take on such positions, not just the pay. Many people do outstanding work of great benefit to society without the motivation of being paid an obscene fortune to do it.

4. In Christchurch in particular, the recovery process is clearly reliant on many people in leadership positions going the extra mile without expecting big money in return. That’s how the city will rebuild. It’s insulting and depressing to the ordinary people who are making this extra effort that their leaders are seen to be doing it mainly for the money.

5. In Marryatt’s case, it has long been known that he desperately wanted the job anyway. He and his supporters reportedly fought tooth and nail to retain his position. It’s not as if the council needed to give him a big pay rise to keep him.

Hopefully someone with greater understanding of finance and stock markets, and who knows how to count in billions, will be able to help me out.

There are two parts to the election debate about whether or not to sell 49% of five NZ state-owned enterprises – the economics of it, and the ideology underlying private sector versus state sector ownership of large infrastructure businesses.

The incumbent National party is going to the electorate with the policy of selling 49% of the enterprises (Air New Zealand, a coal miner and three electricity generators) into private hands.

Initially the rationale was to raise $7 billion (or $8b, one minister said) and to use it to retire that much debt. That seemed pretty clear-cut. As the election campaign got underway, and noting the trouble in overseas debt and equity markets, the number got revised to several alternatives depending on which National minister was talking, with the most common figure now $5b – $7b. A good enough estimate – what’s a mere $2 billion between friends? (Or does this mean National is really just guessing? Well, of course they are to a degree – how can anyone calculate how much you can sell anything for on an open market?)

Then the fudging began. In order to make the policy look more attractive, National framed it as selling some assets so as to fund other new assets (presumably ones that would otherwise not be built). These new assets – about $1b worth I believe – will include better facilities for schools and better roads. So, that’s $1b less for retiring debt, so we will need to borrow more to cover that gap.

Then National decided to make the sales proceeds into a fund for election sweeteners. First off the block was nearly half a billion for irrigation schemes, which will benefit farmers and then hopefully trickle down to the rest of us. So that bit of public asset sales revenue will go to the benefit of a few. Other recipients from the same fund are promised elsewhere.

In summary, a significant proportion of the funds raised by selling 49% of five state assets will now NOT go to retiring debt, so the National party needs to borrow more or cut a few billion off public services to achieve its target of getting back to surplus within its timeframe.

If I’m wrong in my logic and calculations, please someone tell me.

The other thing I may be wrong about, but would welcome correction, is the question of who will buy the shares. We’re talking about $5 – $7 billion that needs to be raised or, apparently, it’s not worth the sales going ahead. And National is sure that the large majority of the money will come from Kiwis. My questions are:

1. Is there $5b – $7b floating around in New Zealand, outside of the share market, looking for companies to invest in? If so, where is it?

2. If a hunk of that money is to be supplied from part of what Kiwi shareholders already hold in the New Zealand share market, what is the point of moving it from the existing NZ companies to these new ex-state assets? How will that help boost investment in local business and development? Or if locals will need to borrow to buy shares, that puts our (private) borrowing in an even worse state when we’re being encouraged to save more and reduce debt.

3. I assume that such large sums of money could come from Kiwisaver providers, the Super fund, iwi and other large NZ investment funds. But that would mean that most individual “mum & dad investors”, who National is boasting will love to buy shares, will in fact only own shares indirectly, as part of funds they have no control over.

4. Getting back to fundamentals, how many New Zealanders will be able to afford shares in these assets on the open market? There can be no financial concessions to Kiwis because that would reduce the amount raised, so the government will be aiming to get top dollar from everyone. Only the wealthy investors of this country, with money to spare, will be able to afford any significant holdings in the sold assets.

5. As with the similarly contentious issue of the sale of NZ farms, the top money is overseas. In any open market where the seller is after as much money as possible, the buyers will be the ones with the most money. And it won’t stop at the initial public offering; in time the initial buyers will want to sell, especially if the price is right, so eventually non-Kiwis will own pretty much all of the 49%.

As a person with a long-held interest in politics and the political process, I’ve watched the progress of many New Zealand general elections. I have to say that this one has become the most remarkable one of the lot so far.

With the National party as seemingly certain winners just a week ago, the events around the unauthorised recording of what is now dubbed the “teapot tape” conversation between John Key and John Banks, now familiar to every Kiwi with a radio or TV, have unexpectedly changed the whole contest in the most bizarre way.

It seems likely to change the way the votes play out, though not enough for National to lose, but it will have a longer-term impact on the way Kiwis view political manipulation and the use of hierarchical authority.

The event that led to the teapot tape recording was itself only a relatively minor, lightweight one. Key and Banks could have covered those topics in true privacy, without the invited media nearby and somewhere other than a cafe open to the public, and we’d have never known. They almost certainly do have such inter-party strategic political conversations from time to time.

But it’s the reaction of Key to the news that the conversation was heard that is truly remarkable, even unprecedented. And because of that reaction the incident has developed a life of its own, fuelled entirely by the PM and his advisors.

And furthermore, I’m starting to believe that the PM has decided to use it to encourage the diversion of media and voter attention from the real issues and hence starve the opposition parties of air, for short term gain and without too much thought to the longer term effects for the country and Key himself.

There appear to be four types of reactions by voters:

1. Those who couldn’t care less one way or the other about Key, but are annoyed at the media’s continuing interest in the situation, spoiling their TV viewing.

2. Non-political souls who love Key regardless of anything he says and does, and have made up their mind long, long ago based on his smile and charm.

3. Some very intelligent people who really want the National party to win, and are working on strategies to deflect attention from what was said at the Banks-Key meeting and use the media’s interest to advantage.

4. Other intelligent and concerned people who are outraged by most of the events arising out of Key’s initial reaction to turn against the media, and who see the emergence of some aspects of Key’s character that are rather disturbing – probably as disturbing as many felt about the character and influence of Robert Muldoon back in the 1970s and early 80s.

Here’s my list of outrageous and manipulative actions and statements around this affair:

A. The initial inviting of the media scrum for the staged event (endorsing the ACT party candidate John Banks in the Epsom electorate and thereby to take advantage of and, in the eyes of some, manipulate the rules of the MMP voting system) and expecting to manipulate the publicity of the endorsement via a compliant, eager-puppy media. This displays the arrogance of a person who is fully self-assured that he’s running the whole show on behalf of his adoring supporters.

B. Being so stupid (this one I still struggle to believe) as to risk the outcome of the event by talking about anything other than the weather. To assume there were no lip-readers or people with acute hearing through the glass partition or from nearby tables is cockiness at best, and the stupidity of people who think they are untouchable at worst.

To claim since that it was a private meeting was insulting to any thinking person. If you need a private conversation, go somewhere where it’s private; if you want to be seen to be talking beside cameras as close as a metre away, then at least keep it squeaky clean.

C. The inability of Key to come clean from the start, take it on the chin and get on. Or was this a considered strategy to deflect attention from opposition parties’ policy debates? Or a way of getting popularity be attacking the media who many people wish would shut up? Or simply gaining sympathy for the poor old media victim John Key?

D. Calling in the police to chase up evidence of a possible crime is disturbing, especially so when the police then threaten media outlets to keep quiet. Over such a minor thing and in the hurly burly of an election campaign, does this indicate how Key thinks he should maintain authority and control of the debate and the populace in general?

E. Invoking analogies with the News of the World scandal began a series of desperate responses by Key which have since become ever-more insulting to intelligent people. They show him to be rattled and speaking without thinking.

F. For example, invoking the “slippery slide” argument by using an extreme and outrageous example of a youth committing suicide as a result of a secret taping of his/her parents talking. What kind of idiot does he think I am?

G. Assuming the guilt of the cameraman, and slandering him (innocent until proven guilty?) about a “crime” that hasn’t yet even been established, while at the same time claiming he is taking a “principled” stand against such “crimes”. This, along with calling in the police, smacks of a worried man in a position of power using his office to rein in his subjects.

H. Saying that the police have new-found spare time to do the work of investigating this “crime”. What an insult to the busy police force, and to anyone who’s still waiting for police to investigate a real crime such a break-in of their house. Some claim Key was just joking, but looking at his face on camera as he spoke, I doubt it.

I. Risking the sight of police marching through media offices with search warrants and confiscating papers, even ones that are not directly related to the recording. This sounds like a police “fishing” expedition, will make long-term enemies of the media, and looks even more like abuse of Key’s privileged position.

J. Giving Winston Peters (who I cannot stand but acknowledge his political nous) the chance to dare police to arrest him for saying what he has already, thus gaining a huge boost in votes from his core constituency. And by not allowing the conversation to be made public, Key is inviting Peters and others to suggest all sorts of other mischief about what may have been said, even if it wasn’t.

K. Increasing the risk that the Epsom voters, seeing themselves as being thought stupid for going along with the manipulation, will not do as told and vote for National instead. National voters have pride too!

L. And finally, Key is setting up his probable next term of government with an angry New Zealand Herald, and other top media, as enemies. Until now, most have given the appearance of being supportive of Key on balance, but after search warrants and “don’t publish” threats, those days are past.

My main annoyance is seeing and hearing Key and his team talking as if I’m totally stupid. His efforts to defeat the media are insulting to the thinking electorate (except those who are forced to defend him).

What the saga does show is more about Key’s character. I wrote in an earlier blog article  that I was becoming increasingly concerned at glimpses of another Key, one who gets nasty when he doesn’t like the questions or challenges from journalists. One whose face reveals a nervous, shifty demeanour when caught out. Apparently he was nicknamed the “smiling assassin” or something like that when he was a money market man. Seeing his refusal to engage with the media now shows continuing attempts to manipulate the media by blaming them. All with a smiling mask on his face.

The teapot incident has shown us even more of this other side to his beaming smile. Clearly in his makeup there is some combination of arrogance, disrespect for the voting public, inability to consider losing, and pig-headedness when things start going wrong.

We may not altogether like the political media, especially those currently hounding on this issue, but media digging for basic facts is a vital if sometimes irritating part of a free democracy. If we say they should just shut up and report what politicians want us to hear, we may as well let them be a compliant tool of the political elite. And that is a slippery slope which we must always be aware of and avoid, no matter who may be embarrassed by being found out.

I’m finding this campaign one of the more interesting for the past 15 years or so, in that for a change there are significant policy differences between the two major parties, and the Greens are also playing a solid part in the game.

I’m still listening to and reading about many policy details from several parties, and I’ve already changed my mind on which party I’ll be voting for – and may do again before polling day. (I’ve decided to give my electorate vote to Damien O’Connor, but my party vote remains open.)

I’m not going to add anything of substance to the debates on the various major issues, but do have some concerns – indeed, irritation, maybe even anger – over the part that most of the media are playing in the process. Normally one expects various media have their own leanings and emphases, but I feel that this time around the bulk are (perhaps even deliberately) building and working around a debate framework which is less about actual policies and more about how people are reacting to policies.

What I mean is that most of the media pundits are making an effort to push their own opinion about whether this policy will be unpopular, that one doesn’t need scrutiny and this or that politician is or isn’t doing well in selling their message. Telling us, in other words, how we should be reacting.

Of course, it all started many, many months ago when every media outlet continued to play on the inability of Labour’s Phil Goff to gain any ground in the personal popularity stakes against the seemingly invincible incumbent PM, John Key. While it is perfectly valid for media to report on poll results, constant interpretation by reporters and political editors that Goff hasn’t a chance feeds a negative cycle in which people subsequently surveyed use that prediction to decide not to vote for Goff. (Keep reading to the end to see a simple up-to-date example of this.)

(It’s like the business confidence surveys which ask businesses whether things are looking up or down – most go with the current trend for the very good reason that if most others believe things are getting worse then things will most likely get worse, regardless of what any individual business can do.)

This became so bad as the year went on that whenever Goff made any statement of positive policy or criticism, it was cast by reporters in the light of “well who cares, because he won’t get in anyhow” and “he’s in a desperate position so he has to start saying desperate things”.

Now in the election campaign proper, this slant has continued. Personally, I was heartened to hear that Labour proposed to gradually raise the retirement age, following its decision to advocate a capital gains tax, which I also firmly agree with. (See an earlier blog.)

Over the years political commentators have consistently criticised Labour and National for being either (or both) meek/safe in their campaign policy announcements or putting up only popular promises like subsidies and price cuts. Finally a party gets the nerve to propose some (desperately needed, these days) things which may not be popular in the short term but which are fairer and better in the long run, and the main political commentary is that Labour must be desperate, with reporters looking around for people to tell us all how bad this will be for them (eg, 40 year olds saying they won’t want to work for two more years when they get to 65).

If Labour had played it safe they would have been slated for being timid and offering nothing new, having no vision, etc.

Then there was the great excitement among commentators over John Key’s “Show us the money” crack. Some could hardly contain themselves, replaying it over and over like it was the most profound statement a politician had ever made. One TV3 guy even told us seriously that Key had “crucified” Goff with the taunt. I thought the debate itself was fair enough – Key had a right to question Goff about policy costings, but for the commentators to jump in and tell what we should think about it is simply unfair. Both political leaders should be scrutinised by the media over their party’s policy costings, with equal fervour but without editorialising.

Want an example of how the media consistently work to undermine Labour? It’s often subtle, almost hidden, but it’s there once looked for. I didn’t have to go far – this morning’s edition of The Press, (page 6 lead):

The actual story was that Winston Peters said his NZ First Party (a minor third party for those readers not familiar with our elections) will not go into coalition with any other party after the elections. The headline was fair: “Peters rules out any coalition deals”. Then the article proper starts with: “New Zealand First leader Winston Peters may have destroyed Labour’s already slim chances of creating a coalition government after announcing he would not work with them”

There are three below-the-belt strikes here; did you spot them? First, the main story (and therefore the intro) should have been about Peters’ decision, not about what affect it may have on just one of the other parties in the race (no comment made about what affect it may have on National). Second, the use of the phrase “destroyed” – who would bother voting for Labour if they are constantly told there is no point, that their chances are now destroyed? And third, the totally unnecessary inclusion of Labour’s “already slim” chances. That is the subtlest but probably most insidious piece of editorialising in this news story.

I haven’t voted for Labour for some years, but I may well do it this time around. I refuse to be led by media who have forgotten their job of reporting the facts and decided they should also guide the debate and choose sides for us.

Given that polls so far suggest MMP will stay, much of the rather infrequent discussion on the topic this year has been on what we don’t like about MMP – viewed by both anti- and pro-MMP camps.

For the record, I too am one who believes that MMP is better than the alternatives, but could do with some tweaking to make it fairer.

In this article I want to address one common criticism of MMP which I think is an unfair criticism. The guts of MMP is that about one-half of successful candidates are voted in through winning geographic electorates in a winner-takes-all manner, and the remainder of seats in parliament are filled from the top of each party’s list to make up true proportional representation of parliament overall, for each party getting over the 4% party-vote threshold.

Most candidates stand within an electorate and are also placed on the party list (though a few choose solely one or the other). If they are high enough on the list, they take a seat in parliament whether or not they win their electorate seat.

What rankles many people is that if a candidate loses the electorate vote (and especially if they had held the seat so have now been dumped or voted out) they can, if ranked highly by the party organisation, remain in parliament.

Detractors call this, “sneaking in by the back door”, and demand a rule change that says that if a candidate loses the electorate vote they cannot then get in on the list. Otherwise, they say, how can you vote someone out who has not served you well?

This request sounds reasonable at first, and it appeals to a common Kiwi attitude (which also comes out in law and order issues and when people demand someone be blamed for things that go wrong) of needing to punish a politician seen as unpopular, unfashionable ineffective or simply in the wrong party.

I have two problems with this punishment-motivated attitude, which makes me believe that making such a rule for MMP would have far more downsides (and serious ones at that) than benefits.

First, such a rule would make it very much harder for aspiring and promising young politicians to enter the game. In fact, the only two ways they could enter parliament would be either:

(1) be placed in a very safe seat for that party – meaning they would have to wait until such seats are vacated by old-time stalwarts; or

(2) avoid standing for any electorate seat, which they would likely lose due to their inexperience, and instead work their way up the party list from the outside to an electable position, a process which could take many years.

One of the roles of electorate voting (in which only one candidate can succeed) is that it gives a starting point for new talent, providing them experience and an opportunity to show their party their vote-winning talents. Banning losers from being successful on the list would stifle that talent.

My second big problem with this (potential) change of rule is that sometimes very good politicians in marginal seats, who still have a worthy contribution to make even in opposition, are victims of swings against a government. Their seat loss may have very little to do with their own ability but more to do with a change in fashion or national mood.

Certainly, there are some parliamentarians who deserve to lose their seat due to poor performance. They are best dealt with through a lowish list ranking so would lose their seat anyway in a party swing. But I believe there would be many more pollies who do not deserve to lose their place in parliament when their party goes out of favour.

To make it a rule that candidates who don’t win an electorate seat cannot get in on the list would provide us with a parliament made up of never-retiring politicians on both sides who managed to get safe seats, along with a random assortment of others who chanced their arms in marginal seats or were accepted purely on list positions, having not even campaigned.

For those not familiar with the week-by-week progress (or lack of it) in planning for post-earthquake Christchurch, the list of majorly contentious issues includes unavailability of insurance, access to the partly demolished CBD, saving heritage buildings versus widespread demolition, delays in decisions on land status, payouts for red-zoners, and where displaced families will live.

Now there’s a relatively new one: how will the new CBD look and function, with residents and developers at odds over the draft plan put forward by the city council.

The council plan, developed from thousands of submitted ideas from across the community, sees greener spaces, fewer cars, restrictions on building heights and, over all, a planned and more people-friendly “look and feel”.

Developers say some of the proposed regulations would be too onerous and restrictive on the people who are expected to fund the rebuild – the CBD property owners and investors – and many will take their payout money elsewhere leaving no-one to finance and build what the populace wants.

Letters to the editor show a big divide: those supporting the free market solution of letting investors do what they want, and those who say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to design a city that suits people.

Sadly, both are talking past each other, and I see few published opinions that seek to balance the two views, so here goes.

I may be wrong, but …. I believe the larger businesses and landowners with the money and the community-minded residents actually need each other.

Residents and town planners who seek to design spaces and facilities that will make for stronger and healthier communities simply do not have the money to do it. Nor do they legally own the land on which their dream will be built. The people who hope to live in the kind of ideal city environment suggested by the draft plan can only do so if they have jobs to pay for it through rates and consumer patronage. And this can happen only if those who have the money to invest in buildings for businesses see a financial return.

Big business must expect certain incentives to stay and get involved. But the people pushing the business side of this dispute do also need to get down off their high horses and realise one key factor – if the CDB that they rebuild is not attractive or friendly to the people of Christchurch, they will be wasting their money anyway.

They need to listen carefully to what ordinary punters are saying, and consider their own involvement in that light. Otherwise current trends of small businesses moving to the suburbs and shoppers buying from suburban malls will simply continue, and the city will remain hollowed out for decades and provide no incentive for investors.

Hopefully the current stand-off between CBD investors and council planners will cool down and each will see the need for the other if the city is to rebuild successfully. The right sort of investors and developers will seriously consult with their potential customers and shape their thinking to develop building solutions that make the city attractive enough to win over the populace. And environmentally minded citizens and planners will work with developers as partners, not adversaries, to show them what will and will not work and why; and be thankful that someone is prepared to put hunks of money back into their beloved city.

It is, in fact, a classic case of market forces at play. Developers must accommodate and plan for their potential clientele, while residents, as consumers and citizens, must rely on funders to give them the choices they want.

I’m one of, apparently, a minority of New Zealanders who do not fully trust him, and my trust level is falling rather quickly now as the pressure of elections mounts and a variety of tough issues need addressing. [This is not a Labour party promo – I’ve already written once before about my problems with Phil Goff’s presentation.]

Like many, I didn’t know much about Key before 2008. He seemed a typically busy chap trying, as all opposition politicians do, to defeat the then Labour government at the 2008 election. But I do remember one incident in that election campaign which for the first time made me very uneasy about him.

I don’t recall the precise detail, but he had been publicly denying meeting some international person of interest (I think it was a campaign funder or strategist) and then on TV camera he was confronted with evidence that he had in fact met that person. The look on Key’s face was disturbing: his eyes flickered away from the interviewer, the smile became forced, the skin went a little shiny (microscopic sweat), and there was a slight sneer as he floundered away doing whatever came to him at the moment to divert attention. It reminded me of certain children I know when caught telling fibs.

It was the first time I’d seen something in his face that didn’t fit with the constantly smiling politician with the self-deprecating “shucks” style that resonates with many Kiwis.

I’m writing this now because in recent times I’ve seen that other face a few times again but with a somewhat more sinister arrogance added. It happened in his reaction to Nicky Hager’s book on what our troops are up to in Afghanistan, again last week when caught out misleading parliament about Standard & Poors’ credit rating cut for NZ, and his reaction to Labour’s complaint about Key’s reaction to the chap threatening to jump from parliament’s gallery.

It’s a look which us oldies see and dislike in many young people. The rolling of the eyes, the slight sneer, the look that says “Whatever!” to dismiss the argument.

I recall that when challenged recently on something pretty indefensible (I think it was the Hager claims) and he’d run out of ways of fudging the facts, he dismissed further discussion by saying “So sue me!” or something to that effect. That’s the grown-up version of “Whatever”. The man thinks he’s so popular and charming now that he can dismiss arguments in such an off-hand, arrogant and wide-boyish manner and get away with it.

The thing which prompted me to write this was his manner in his televised press conference about the Standard & Poors issue. After managing to evade any candid and truthful response by bending words for a while, he finally gave in to persistent questions about what he actually said in parliament and how that didn’t tally with the truth, for a few seconds his face lost its self-assured smile and instead displayed the surly curled lip, the shiny skin, the avoidance of eye contact, and that teenage look that effectively told the media, “So what. The people love me so I can say what I want. Who cares. Whatever.”

This swipe is more than just that I don’t like the man’s manner when he’s made to feel uneasy. What does concern me is that his way of dealing with difficult moments when he’s caught out shows that underneath the affable exterior there is a person who has some contempt for the people who seek deeper answers and who challenge his confidence. I don’t like that in a leader.

Right, that’s off my chest. Now back to talking about issues.