Posts by George Darroch
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Yes - to the tune of $430 million a year, excluding agriculture.
If we include agriculture, then it's over a billion dollars a year in ongoing direct subsidies.
That's around $230 dollars in subsidies from every single New Zealander.
-
Didn't the bulb minimum standards also require the CFLs to have passed minimum reliability standards? (I'm not sure about my memory here).
-
Uptake was slow, and there were two main reasons. 1) People were poorly informed about their benefit, safety and functionality. 2) Price signals weren't transparent – you can't tell how much of your power bill was for your lightbulbs, and how much was for your dryer. So even if your incandescent lightbulb wasted $118 more power, you'd never know, since the price signals weren't clear to the end user. That's market failure.
I was going to reply, but I found that Keith Ng's acidic takedown of this line of argument is better than I could do
-
Hardly. Commercial radio in NZ is a voracious duopoly.
You are absolutely right about the ownership of commercial radio.
I was thinking about the wide range of non-commercial stations. There's healthy diversification even in some very small submarkets. I've heard the anecdote that Auckland has more radio stations per capita than any other city of comparable size, and while I don't know if it's true, it wouldn't surprise me.
-
And the completely frustrating thing? Mandating minimum standards are by far the most cost effective measures for combatting climate change. They actually save large amounts of money.
This very neat graphic demonstrates where they stand
The decision of the New Zealand Government today to not regulate 170g minimum emissions standards for passenger vehicles is just beyond belief.
-
There are quite a few problems existant that are more complex than choosing lightbulbs - like the appropriate national debt, balance of payments, youth suicide, homelessness, waiting lists, economic growth, Afghanistan, unemployment, Fiji, immigration, over burdened prisons or global warming - to which I'd like to see the government focus some energy.
And this is where the problem is. The light bulb and home water systems minimum standards were a response to climate change, and there is at least some kind of popular mandate for measures to address climate change. Energy efficiency is also about how much money you have left in your pocket at the end of the year. Burning less natural gas for electricity every year would also help our balance of payments. Labour completely botched their explanations, and the idiots took full advantage of it.
They were also complementary to minimum standards* in other consumer products, there because market failure means that people choose products that impose significant externalities, and don't deliver to people's stated expectations. Markets can fail to deliver products adequately, despite demand, because of barriers to access. Regulation can, when used effectively, remove those barriers to access.
*If anyone says ban, I'll gently correct them.
-
The only reason this occurs is because of the lack of will and talent displayed by journalists. When journalists only want a one sentence answer then complex issues can never be explained. When interviewers interrupt and derail experts who are trying to explain things then the public never even has the chance.
That is true, but the cause is more systematic. New Zealand has one of the most deregulated media environments in the world, which has resulted an effective duopoly across every media, and a large number of regional monopolies.
The exception is radio, which is perhaps the healthiest, and still has a public institution.
Why is poetry so awful these days?
I only ask because
I was listening to Jenny Bornholdt on
Nine to Noon and thought to myself
"This is crap."Paul advises that they are in decline, however.
-
But of course, the Greens are quite happy to throw evidence out the window of their Bowen House offices when it suits them.
Sue Kedgley:
I will officially open this inaugural Natural Health Expo
...
My topic at 10.30am is:
"Why the NZ Government needs to embrace Natural Healthcare into the Health System"Chartered Natural Healthcare Professionals will be available to explain their work, with opportunities for the public to explore and experience numerous modalities including: Massage, Reiki, Reflexology, Kinesiology, Breathwork, Su Jok Onnuri, Flower Essences, Self Realization meditation/healing, Ortho-Bionomy, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Natural Medicine , Craniosacral Therapy, Holistic Pulsing, Hellerwork and Natural Healing.
I'm not going to get too upset when they practice these things which absolutely have no evidence of efficacy, despite the externalities they generate. But to inflict these on the rest of the population, and give them the credibility that "Government approved" generates in the credulous?
-
My Father was very angry with the lightbulb ban, not because he's a climate change denier but because almost every light switch in his house is on a dimmer switch, CFLs blow up if you put them into those sockets and he was going to have to get his whole house rewired. He wasn't terribly impressed with the Green/Labour position that anyone protesting the ban was a far-right flat earth luddite.
He was angry because he had been misled. By National and ACT Party MPs, talkback hosts, and editors and "journalists" who couldn't work out a simple concept.
There was no ban.
There was however a minimum standard.
To quote Jeanette Fitzsimons, from an excoriating attack on Phil Goff
National members have admitted to me that they knew what they were doing, they knew they were misleading the public, but it was too good an opportunity to miss because Labour hadn’t explained its policy – even to its ministers, it seems. Phil, do you have to perpetuate their lies?
The lighting standard was similar, and on its own was expected to save households who currently have incandescent lights around $500/year. Many current incandescent lights would not have met the standard, but the better ones would have, along with compact fluorescents and halogen lights and LEDs.
Quite. $500 dollars per year.
-
When in doubt, wear black all year round. Seems to work for Wellingtonians - and Melburnians, for that matter.
Melbournians wear much less black and dark grey than Wellingtonians.