Tuesday, September 12, 2017

"Turkey" O'Connor strikes again!


Image result for clip art turkey at dinner

So "Turkey" O'Connor has struck again...
It was appalling that he did not stand aside as Chair of the Parliamentary Health Committee on End of Life Choice a couple of years ago - he forfeited his moral right to head up the investigation when he made a public statement of his personal point of view. It was worse when he urged Catholics to send in "submissions" favouring his point of view. It was pretty bad when his Committee produced a mealy-mouthed report that did not really move the issue in either direction. And his public statement after the Committee finished its work was a masterpiece of subterfuge and misstatement.
Now he has revealed that after listening to some 1800 personally presented submissions he still doesn't understand the distinction between end of life choice for terminally ill aged people and the desperate plight of physically well people who feel that suicide is their only choice.
When I first criticised O'Connor for maintaining that it was OK to publicly promote a point of view at the same time as presiding over an investigation into the issue one of my readers observed that it was like asking a turkey to preside over a committee discussing the future of Thanksgiving.

Well, to mix a metaphor, the turkey hasn't changed its spots

Friday, September 8, 2017

Electric Gridlock

One of the amazing characteristics of Electric Vehicles has already made itself known in our household. It's not the limitations of range - it's the astonishingly cheap cost of running.
We've clocked up 1000 kilometres in a month - mainly because an overnight charge which adds three or so dollars to our power bill will give us an all-day outing all over the gorgeous hinterland beyond our suburb. And we've done that almost every fine day.
We took a couple of friends on a bit of a short trip around the local suburbs and realised that 12 kms added up to just over ten cents each. We've shown the car off quite a lot and there's enormous interest.
Indeed, one of our neighbours who had a quick introduction to electric motoring in our Leaf has just come home today with his very own BMW, a beautiful, large but very compact vehicle.
Only now have I realised that if a large proportion of the motoring public discovers how much cheaper an EV is to run than an ICE (Internal Combustion Engine to you!) Auckland's gridlock can only get appallingly worse. Why would you bother with a bus when the cost of driving your EV may be actually less than the busfare?
Perhaps we had better promote EVs a little more cautiously.
But it's a lovely way to go....