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The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

  • Kathy Boluch’s conversations about the Red Sox with her mother and sister include discussions about the players’ facial hair and spitting habits.

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  • Kathy Boluch’s conversations about the Red Sox with her mother and sister include discussions about the players’ facial hair and spitting habits.
    “We apply many of our theories to the players’ overall performances,” said Boluch, 51, of Scituate.
    But the trio also talk about more serious matters like batting averages and fielding percentages.
    “When the season begins, we usually have daily conversations about the team’s progress,” said Boluch.
    “And we share a lot of suspicions and observations that most men find ridiculous,” she said, referring to hair length and the like.
    Despite the successes of the Patriots, Celtics and Bruins, most local female sports fans prefer baseball. Scarborough Research found that more women attend Major League games than the combined total of the NFL, NBA and NHL. In fact, in Boston more than 60 percent of females call themselves Red Sox fans, up from 45 percent in 2001, Scarborough reported. Boluch is one of them.
    And, winning World Series championships helps.
    “I think that Red Sox Nation, in spirit, has gained a lot of women fans,” said Boluch. “When they win, it’s like anything is possible.”
    When you see the nearly 40,000 people who pack Fenway Park at every game, one thing is clear: females are a prominent fixture.
    At a game against the Yankees this season, the lines for the ladies’ restroom was so long, some missed an entire inning. And you can’t miss the sea of pink caps and jerseys at the ballpark. After all, Major League Baseball reported 46 percent of all purchasers of official licensed gear are women.
    Some groups of women were gathered at Fenway for a girls’ night out, others were mothers taking kids to the country’s oldest ballpark to root for the hometown team.
    Other local women flock to the Red Sox because baseball is a sport they can play, especially with their kids.
    “This is a game, that as a young girl, you’re more apt to be able to play with your friends. It’s just something that’s easier to do,” said Carole Alkins of Brockton, who is the senior manager of client services for the Red Sox.
    Jack Falla, a former writer for Sports Illustrated who teaches sports writing and public relations at Boston University, said his grandmother was the first person to take him to Fenway Park. “The first person to take my son to Fenway was my wife,” he said.
    Debbie Corey, 43, a a kindergarten teacher at Sacred Heart Elementary School in Weymouth, leads the Jimmy Fund’s Rally Against Cancer at the school.
    She said she’s a fan because the Red Sox are inspiring.
    “The kids get really into it. It’s very exciting,” she said.
    Page 2 of 2 - In the past few weeks, a hop-a-thon sponsored by her class has raised more than $5,000 for the Jimmy Fund.
    “My class usually sends me to a game at the end of the year for my end-of-the-year gift,” said Corey. “I usually bring my husband and my oldest daughter, who is a softball pitcher at Saint Anselm College.”
    Corey said her passion for the Red Sox started when she was very young.
    “I have been an athlete all of my life. Baseball is my favorite sport. I like the strategy and thinking that occurs during a game.
    “It is also something that grounds my family. My (oldest) daughter and I call each other after every major play. We think we have convinced my youngest daughter, Julie, to join the Nation.”
    The Celtics might take home their 17th championship this season, and the Patriots might bounce back and win it all again next year.
    But it’s the Red Sox who will continue to keep the female fans coming back for more.
    “If you’re a Red Sox fan, you’re a Red Sox fan forever,” Alkins said.
    Material from GateHouse News Service was used in this report.
        • »  EVENTS CALENDAR


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Home  | About  | Contact

Paul Funeral Home, (705) 724-2024, of Powassan, ON, is known by the families we have served over the past 89 years, and among many Canadian funeral homes, for caring to provide exceptional service. We have a reputation for being a constant, comprehensive source of support to both the bereaved and professionals. Why settle for anything less than exceptional service at one of life’s most challenging times?

We continually strive to provide the highest professional standard of efficient, family-like and very personal service, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and have since the funeral home was established in 1896. Since Herman Paul purchsed the funeral home from James MacArthur in 1926, it has been known as Paul Funeral Home and operated by members of the Paul family.

Whenever you call, whenever you need our assistance, be assured that we will treat you the way we would like to be treated, like close family and a valued client.

We want this website to be a resource that you will visit again and again, just as you would feel free to give us a call, send an email or drop into our office. Please explore the site, use our interactive services and provide us with comments on the usefulness of our website and/or how we can improve to serve you better. If you would like to show support to someone you know who has experienced a death of a loved one, please click on the appropriate obituary and then click on the button at the top Condolences. We especially recommend signing up for our instant alerts whenever a new obituary is posted on the site by clicking the button under the Canadian flag at the top of this, our Home Page...

 Join our obituary notification list

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Find out about all the financial and emotional benefits that come with Pre-Planning Funeral arrangements for yourself or a loved one.
Planning ahead can save a lot of unnecessary stress and Pre-Paying is one of the soundest investments you can make.

Order flowers, view tribute videos, sign guest book and more to celebrate lives of those missed dearly.
Helpful resources to guide you through this difficult time.
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Area News | Home | Marketplace | Community

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Paynesville Press - February 26, 2003

Speech team hosts meet at PAHS

Over 300 students from 18 schools participated in a high school speech meet at Paynesville Area High School on Saturday.

Junior Sami Tierney took first place in creative expression, junior Melissa Andrie was first in discussion, and ninth grader Caitlin Lien took first in informative speaking for Paynesville.

Second place winners were junior Callie Frieler in storytelling and ninth grader Amanda Kern in extemporaneous reading. Ninth graders Emily Mehr and Lisa Lenzmeier took third place in creative expression and discussion respectively.

Ninth grader Courtney Colbert took sixth in poetry and junior Peter Schreifels took sixth in prose. Juniors Maureen Flanders and Jenn Terres earned honorable mention in prose.

Annandale won the small-school trophy for first place, with Eden Valley-Watkins second, and Litchfield third. Sauk Centre won the large-school trophy with Rockford second and New London-Spicer third. Small-school and large-school designations are computed based on the number of entries in the speech meet and not based on the size of the school.

Contact the author at editor@paynesvillepress.com   •   Return to News Menu

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Salary and Career News Round Up: The 'Happy' Salary, Franchise-Buying Baby Boomers, and Happiness vs. Job Hunting Success

Every Friday we round up the salary trends, career stories and job news that you may have missed during the past week.

  • You don't have to be rich to be happy. According to a recent poll conducted by the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, $50,000 is the magical annual salary that will make most people happy.
  • In today's difficult economy, the generation born between 1946 through 1964 find themselves in a tough position. Many have been laid off, and those who haven't might feel they're being overlooked for advancement. The Executive Suite lays out five reasons baby boomers will rally back by buying a franchise.
  • Searching for a job is one of the most stressful things a person can go through. It's easy to feel down, but new research shows a connection between happiness and job hunting success.
  • There aren't many employees out there who would be willing to share their lunch with their boss, let alone a kidney. If you're feeling frustrated with your job, this article by Inc should put things in perspective. Is this the world's worst boss?
  • Should you use a recruiter? How do you become more visible? These are just a few of the questions high-level execs should ask on a job hunt.

More From Payscale

The World's Longest Invoice Fights for Independent Workers' Rights
Lunch Breaks vs. Naps: Which Do Office Workers Think Boosts Productivity Best?
5 Ways Meetings Inhibit Productivity

(Photo credit: Electron/Wikimedia Commons)

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1932 Ford “Deuce” Vickie Special

1932 Ford “deuce” Vickie Special

Tom and Dottie Gossard belong to the Payson Car Club, R.C.C.A.C., and drive to many car shows during the year. After all the hard work, there is no trailering — the fun is in the driving.

The photograph shows a “deuce” hot rod — deuce meaning the last number from 1932. There were many other automobiles made in 1932, but only a Ford is “deuce.” That is the respect hot rodders have for this Ford. ’32 was the first year Ford made a V8, the engine of choice for hot rodders for more than 30 years. Racers in the 1940s and 1950s wrote on the cowl — the immediate area of the hood — an advertisement for cams, engine builders, or perhaps their names. Our 1932 Ford is a “Victoria” — that is the reason she was christened the Vickie Special, following in the tradition of old time racers. Folks have asked me if that is my wife’s name. The answer is always the same, “no, it’s my girl friend’s name, my wife’s name is Dottie.”

Our ’32 Ford is an old restored hot rod. The top was chopped 3-1/2 inches. The car’s top was lowered as a way to streamline it back in the 1940s. The car was raced on the California dry lakes, Muroc and El Mirage, during that time. Dry lakes are large, long  flat spots like Bonneville, Utah, where racers could go flat out, as fast as the car could go. The “Vickie” has a hot motor, a built Chevy V8, hot cam, Dart Heads with big valves, high rise intake manifold topped with a big Holley carburetor. Followed by a Muncie 4 speed floor shift transmission, and a Ford 9 inch rear end.

When we bought the car in 1981, it was beat up, had bullet holes and was missing many parts. It was a real challenge to put it back on the highway.

But since it was one of many hot rods built in our garage, it just took some time and hard work.

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Palm Beach Atlantic University

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79 F

July 29, 2015

Student Life Camp Makes Impression on Youth, Local Community

August 3, 2012

Teenagers Taylor Reid, Bella Atandi and her sister Olivia Atandi will head home to Port St. Lucie this weekend full of stories about the games and fun activities they enjoyed during Student Life, a Christian summer camp held this week at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

But it will likely be the group discussions and quiet times of reflection that they remember the most, they said.

The camp leaders are able to explain concepts in a way that young people can understand, the teens said.

Contemporary Christian band Bellarive leads worship during Student Life camp at Palm Beach Atlantic University this week.

“You learn a lot of new stuff” in addition to what can be gained in a traditional church setting, said Reid, 15, who was part of a youth group from First Baptist Church of Port St. Lucie.

More than 600 youth from 22 churches across Florida and as far away as North Carolina attended the week-long camp, which concludes today.

Student Life is an organization based in Birmingham, Ala., that stages large-scale, Christian-themed summer camps across the country. This is the fourth year that PBA has hosted a Student Life camp.

This year’s theme was “Audacious,” and the lessons centered on how to live a radical life for God, how to be on guard and how to stand firm for Him, said this year’s speaker, David Rhodes.

Rhodes is a speaker, author and co-founder of Wayfarer, a resource ministry based in South Carolina. He also is a 1996 PBA graduate who went on to earn a Master of Divinity degree from Beeson Divinity School in 2000.

It was exactly 20 years ago that Rhodes first came to PBA as an undergraduate. He said it was during his PBA years that he grew from knowing that God was righteous to knowing that He is good.

Rhodes said that to be able to come back here and see young people dedicating their lives to God is a testament to His transformational power. “You see God’s redemption coming full circle in a lot of ways,” he said.

Rhodes and his wife, Kim, have been involved in camp ministry for more than 15 years. The couple met at PBA.

Rhodes, who travels extensively through his work as a speaker and author, has been working with the Student Life founders for years, dating back to his days at Beeson.

“These are friends and family, not just an organization,” Rhodes said.

Another PBA alumnus, Pastor Rick Thompson of Living Waters Community Church in Fort Lauderdale, brought a group of 30 students to the camp. It is the third year he has brought students to Student Life, he said.

The bands are great, the speaker is good and the energy level is high, he said. “The kids come back talking about it for weeks,” Pastor Thompson said.

Leaders at First Baptist Church of Indian Rocks in Largo brought 100 students to this year’s camp. Family group leader Bryant Nardozzi has accompanied previous groups of campers. “It was cool to see them spiritually progress and grow and to see the Lord working in them,” he said.

Student Life also has a mission camp component in which several groups of campers travel off campus to volunteer in the surrounding community.

This year, 106 mission campers traveled off campus to do work for such organizations as Paint Your Heart Out, Berkshire Elementary, Seagull Ranch, Seagull Academy, J.A.Y. Ministries, Operation Hope, Mailbu Bay Apartments and Quantum House.

General News08/2012

You can read Palm Beach Atlantic University's outstanding student newspaper "The Beacon" in print, on the web or via the University's free mobile app, Palm PBA. PBAU is a private, Christ-first college in West Palm Beach, Florida, USA.

901 S. Flagler Drive
West Palm Beach, FL 33401
888-GO-TO-PBA 888-468-6722


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Joshua | all galleries >> Canon 5D Mark III > The Moor in B&W
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The Moor in B&W

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Very impressive portrait in monochrome! V.


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Steve Butler | all galleries >> 6RRC Six Rivers Running Club >> Avenue of the Giants Marathon 05/06/07 > 0036 copy.jpg
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USS Daedalus

This entry is part of the PBM List.

Costs: Free
Frequency: every 2 days
URL: [ dead link ]
Type: Space, Sci-fi
Last-Update: 2010May06
Keywords: free, open-ended, www, human, space, rpg

USS Daedalus is a stargate sim based onboard the ship USS Daedalus. We do various scenarios such as; fighting wraith, finding and exploring new planets, cataloguing plantlife etc.

The sim is 18+ as we wanted free reign for stories, so players can go as far as their imaginations take them.

Played the game? You can send me comments to be placed on this page by writing But don't write me attempting to join the game -- write the GM, whose address is above.

Are you the GM? You can update your listing by writing If you have something new to say about your game, for example an opening for new players, you can create an announcement for your game.

Don't see your favorite game? Then you can add an entry for it.

Return to the PBM List.

Greg Lindahl


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A miscommunication has led timber framers to drill too big a hole in the arm's axle, compromising its strength. Beffeyte's strategy is to slowly increase the counterweight so as not to stress the arm.

The first toss falls woefully short, as expected. Weight is added to the carriage, but still its missiles miss their mark. Before the last toss (the remaining timber framers have a plane to catch) Brandt nudges the ball's guiding ramp a sword's width to the left. The launching prong also is bent slightly.

The final toss is a bulls-eye, proving that Edward I of England could have used this giant siege machine to vanquish his Scottish enemies. The men go home satisfied, their hands-on experiment a castle-smashing success.

Medieval Arms Race | NOVA Builds a Trebuchet | Life in a Castle
Destroy the Castle | Resources | Transcript

Medieval Siege | Pharaoh's Obelisk | Easter Island | Roman Bath | China Bridge | Site Map

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Previous DemocratizerNext Democratizer
Alexander Graham Bell

Born:   1847, Edinburgh, Scotland
Died:   1922, Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia

Did You Know?

On February 14, 1876, only hours after Alexander Graham Bell had filed a patent for his telephone, fellow inventor Elisha Gray arrived at the U.S. Patent Office to file his intention to patent a telephone. A battle over who would be credited with the invention ensued, ending in a victory for Bell.

Photos: Library of Congress

The man behind the invention of the telephone was a Scottish immigrant who taught deaf students, loved to experiment, and never left his research to head a business.

Visible Speech
Alexander Graham Bell was born in 1847 in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Melville Bell, developed Visible Speech, a set of written symbols designed to aid the deaf in speaking. When he wasn't schooling the young Alec in this system, Melville was encouraging his son to explore photography, music, and virtually anything electrical that struck his fancy.

The Harmonic Telegraph
In the 1870s the Bells moved to Canada and shortly after that, to Boston, Massachusetts, where Bell took a teaching position at the Pemberton Avenue School for the Deaf. He became increasingly interested in the possibility of transmitting speech over wires. Teaming up with a like-minded machinist, Thomas A. Watson, Bell worked for a year, and succeeded in transmitting the first telephone message on March 10, 1876. Bell took his "Harmonic Telegraph" to Philadelphia's Centennial Exhibition, where it astonished crowds. The partners were convinced their device could make money; they just weren't sure how.

Phone Customers
Doctors and pharmacists became early adopters of the technology, along with wealthy individuals, including Mark Twain. The famous writer installed a phone in his Hartford home even though he complained, "The human voice carries entirely too far as it is." In a mere four years, the American Bell Telephone Company deployed 60,000 telephones, providing service in every large American city. Polite young women found work at the switchboards, which were open from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Telephone poles began to dot the landscape; the state of Vermont lost 45,000 pine trees in 1885 alone. By then, Bell had withdrawn from the business, leaving others to build the telephone industry.

Sound Research
Inspired by Thomas Edison's Menlo Park labs, Bell founded Volta Laboratories to continue his sound research. In 1885 a Volta team developed an improved version of Edison's phonograph, called the graphophone, that both recorded and played sound. Bell's most optimistic project was the photophone, a method of sending sound through the medium of sunlight. Bell predicted it would one day rival the telephone. It failed in cloudy weather, however, and eventually evolved into the spectrophone, an early forerunner of spectrum analysis. In his later years, Bell moved to Nova Scotia, where he died in 1922.

Previous DemocratizerNext Democratizer


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Egg: the arts show
the series air dates see and do egg on the arts about egg resources peeps
film / video
visual arts
web art

Art Crimes: The Writing on the Wall
This site documents graffiti and other artistic forms of vandalism throughout the globe, with many links to graffiti, art, media, and hip-hop sites.

The Estate Project
Sponsored by the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, this site documents and helps distribute works by artists who are HIV+ or have died of AIDS. It has recently launched Artery, an online publication.

Weekly updates on news stories in the international art world -- thefts, forgeries, museum scandals, exhibits, new laws, and more.

Web site of London's Design Museum, offering a wealth of information about the museum. Appropriately, the site is very well designed and utilizes Flash to present different aspects of the museum, including an interactive gallery exhibiting selected design objects.
An Internet-based museum experience, presenting major exhibitions, works, and other art-related content online, in a rich and interactive environment that encourages individual and group exploration and learning. Utilizes Flash, RealPlayer, and Live Picture Zoom Viewer.

The Artchive
Virtual art museum with galleries of masters' works, theory and criticism, art CD-ROM reviews, and art links.

The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO)
The Art Museum Image Consortium (AMICO) is a not-for-profit association of institutions with collections of art that have come together to enable educational use of the digital documentation of their collections.

Dia Center for the Arts
Dia Center for the Arts ( has initiated a series of artists' projects for the Web by commissioning significant projects.

resources visual arts


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Tuesday, 28 February 2012

Still laughing at Wikileaks. And Stratfor.

I don’t know if you noticed, but Julian Assange’s Wikileaks just released a boatload of documents hacked or otherwise acquired from Stratfor Consultants, a global research firm that (in the words of Atlantic magazine) “brands itself as a CIA-like ‘global intelligence firm.”

Except, as The Atlantic also points out, “only Julian Assange and a few over-paying clients are fooled.”

For comparison's sake, [says The Atlantic] The Atlantic often sends our agents into such dangerous locales as Iran or Syria. We call these men and women "reporters." Much like Statfor's agents, they collect intelligence, some of it secret, and then relay it back to us so that we may pass it on to our clients, whom we call "subscribers." Also like Stratfor, The Atlantic sometimes issues "secret cash bribes" to on-the-ground sources, whom we call "freelance writers." We also prefer to keep their cash bribes ("writer's fees") secret, and sometimes these sources are even anonymous.

Basically, they conclude: Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously.

[Hat tip Glenn Reynolds/ Diana Hsieh ]

Glendowie Montessori Open Day

imageIf you’ve ever wanted to see and get the feel of a proper Montessori environment—there being so many Montesomething classrooms around instead, being just Montessori in name only—then this Sunday at Glendowie Montessori Preschool is your chance.

Come along and look around and talk to Directresses Carol and Cathy.

This is for anyone interested in Montessori education, whether as a parent, a friend of education, or you’re just interested to see and learn more about what makes a Montessori environment tick.

imageAfter all, it’s a ‘hands-on’ method of education. So take the chance to get ‘hands on’ with what the Montessori classroom has to offer, and have all those questions answered you’ve always wanted to know, like:

Or just send them a question of your own. They love questions.

(And if you already know you want quality Montessori education for your child, feel free to add your child’s name to their Wait List.)

Where: Glendowie Montessori Preschool, 227 West Tamaki Road, Glendowie, Auckland
When: Sunday 4th March, 3 to 4:30pm
What: Montessori Open Day!

GUEST POST: Licensed Building Practitioners Don’t Read ‘Anthem’

Guest post from Citizen LBP113707

As of today I am Citizen LBP113707. I was once an individual. I was once a craftsman. But not anymore. My personal style and the techniques with which I used to ply my trade no longer stand for anything. I now have to perform my work arbitered by people who produce nothing and who yearn for nothing of spiritual value. Unfortunately these sorry souls have found a threadbare reason to force their lack of life on to me and countless other craftsmen, many of whom have no doubt come to the realisation that it is time to find another way of earning a living.

DBHTherefore, since the coming of Licensed Building Practitioner status to my ‘sector’ (the words ‘trade’ and ‘profession’ no longer being appropriate), I shall no longer refer to myself as ‘I.’ I am now either ‘we’ or ‘us.’ We are no longer an individual. We are a number. We are now units aggregated into the great(er) collective.

Our ability to adapt, improve and to innovate is no longer required. Instead we must conform to the grey mandates of the collective. No longer are we required to explore new ideas. We are able to formulate new ideas in our minds but we are not to take these ideas any further unless we have received permission from our grey leaders; those more equal than us.

So now that we are card carrying Citizen LBP113707, what is the benefit to collective society to which we now belong? We will find that small-business owner-citizens will disappear as costs incurred and newly-enforced red tape will suck up more working hours than is viable.

Also, while being  given ‘guidelines’ within which to build (the rigidity of which belies the name, the practices being spoken about being ‘enforced’ on us) we will nonetheless bear all responsibility when any of these guidelines fail. As they will. This means we will have to find ways to hide our finances to protect ourselves when our grey leaders come to clean us out regardless of whether we are to blame or not.

Monday, 27 February 2012

Stop patronising us - Pacific leaders

Here’s something very encouraging that happened over the weekend: the reaction of Pacific groups to in NZ to Paula Bennett’s patronising “green paper” on so called “vulnerable” children.

At the national conference of the Pacifica women’s council over the weekend, the Minister of Social Development was told bluntly her suggestions the Pacific family is the solution to child abuse and neglect is based on “a romantic myth.” [AUDIO REPORT HERE]

Basically, Bennett’s report recommends “recreating traditional island villages in cities as a solution to Pacific Child abuse and neglect.”  But the response of participants at the meeting was essentially: “Get real.”

The chief executive of west Auckland’s Waves anti-violence trust [for example] told the national conference of the Pacifica women’s council it is a wonderful fantasy.

The assertion, she says, that “taking care of the Pacific family automatically ensures healthy, safe children is a myth.”

And Peggy Fairburn-Dunlop, lecturer in Pacific Studies at AUT, says the suggestion is the Pacific family is the solution,

but it’s time to stop ignoring that it’s also a big part of the problem… We all know there are things that are not so good that go on within families, and we can no longer hide those and pretend we don’t see them.

A refreshing honesty that if transmitted more widely should itself begin to be part of the solution.

Equally, she says, it’s dangerous to make policy on the assumption all Pacific families are the same—suggesting at least implicitly that it’s time to start treating people as individuals rather than as “members” of some community predicated on skin colour.

And South Auckland youth worker Katrina Mika reckons young families of whatever colour  just need good parenting help, not (in my words, not hers) more patronising mush from Ministers.

And many suggested even the idea of calling these children “vulnerable” was itself patronising, which it is, and all children should be treated equally, whatever their race.

I couldn’t agree more.

And I couldn’t be happier hearing sentiments like these from those one so rarely expects it.

Friday, 24 February 2012

Schadenfreude, thy name is Graham

imageA few years back, a friend’s father arrived home from a meeting to select National’s successor in the blue ribbon seat of Remuera after Alan Highet’s retirement.  Said friend’s father, “It’s always been said we could elect a donkey to stand for National in this electorate and it’d still get in. Well, that’s we’ve done this year.”

The donkey they selected was Douglas Montrose Graham, former Minister of Injustice, known to some in the past as Lord Montrose, and (after a guilty verdict in the High Court today) now known only as Inmate Graham.*

Because this mellifluous piece of human excrement, this canker on justice and bloated sack of self-importance, has today been found guilty of fraud.

Not for what he did as Minister of Injustice in the Shipley Government, when he mandated that defendants have their assets confiscated by the state, even before they’d been found guilty.

Not for what he did as Minister in Charge of Treaty Capitulations in the Bolger Government, when he took millions of dollars out of the pockets of New Zealand taxpayers to give to tribalists for things those taxpayers didn’t do.

Not for what he did as Minister of Apartheid, lecturing NZers at one point during his reign “The sooner we realise there are laws for one and laws for another, the better.”

Not because after a lifetime in the trough he retired to Tuscany to write his memoirs in Italy—and demanded a further sinecure from the taxpayer to pay for sojourn.

Not because he came out of retirement to tell taxpayers “You better keep paying your taxes” so he could be kept in his retirement in the style to which a lifetime of troughing had made him accustomed.

He was not tried in court on any of those things, more’s the pity, but the bastard did finally find himself in court for defrauding investors of Lombard Finance—his defence, ironically enough, was one of incompetence—and was tried and today found guilty.

Guilty of helping to defraud investors of $127 million. [Full judgement here.]

No, it was not for any of those many other things of which he was culpable. But it’s enough.  This is an entity who has never made on honest living, his entire wealth having come out of the pockets of unwilling taxpayers and deluded investors.  Such a life demands a deserving final chapter.

Never could schadenfreude have come to a more deserving dirtbag. The only tragedy is that hundreds of investors had to lose their life savings to make it happen.

* * * *

* He won’t be, of course. Being guilty of fraud causing losses to investors of around $227 million will never attract a custodial sentence. Jail is for people who attend a different class of social function.

No, McCully wasn’t there

There’s been an email thread going around the advertising industry in recent weeks, started when an email from the head one big agency calling his competitors “bastards”—bastards moreover who were going to “steal his staff”—was inadvertently sent to that very bastard.

The email started as an informal internal memo telling colleagues to get down to a certain Auckland careers show before those other bastards stole the hot talent they’d just been talking about. Naturally, the abuse and the error were enough to send the email string viral, with much mirth all round at the schadenfreude involved.

And, this being the advertising industry, it was only natural that the whole thing was a complete set-up. A set-up set up by the very talent hoping to be picked up at the careers show, in collusion with the the heads of those big two advertising agencies who were sponsoring the event.

Now you’ve got to admit, that shows real talent.

But what’s it got to do with Murray McCully and his now very public emails?

Well, the little dwarf certainly has no talent, but he sure is a shifty little fuck.  Just shifty enough to make wonder whether anyone really stole them. Just the sort of devious attention-seeker who might think letting his own emails out into the wild might garner him some; with just the sort of machiavellian mind that might think numerous emails about overpaid and overfed diplomats might be a good release about the time you’re about to cut the fat out of MFAT.

After all, his (now former) opposite number in Canberra has said much worse than anything in the fairly tame emails released thus far. The rat fucker.

And the local journalists who swallowed whole the story of them being hacked, making the emails and not the cutting of diplomatic FAT the story, are no less gullible than local ad men.  Are they.

GUEST POST: Importers ask government to break strike

Guest post by Daniel Silva of the Importers Institute

The Importers Institute has today asked the government to pass urgent legislation empowering the Port of Auckland to dismiss striking port workers and contract out the work to private operators.

The Union today threatened to extend a two-week strike into three weeks. During that period, importers and exporters will have to spend many millions of dollars diverting cargo to other ports and airfreight, to keep shops and industry supplied. The exodus of shipping services from Auckland to other ports will accelerate.

This is not a genuine labour dispute for better pay and conditions. What the Union is demanding is quite simply a monopoly on wharf work, usurping the right of management to manage the Port. In effect, they are striking for the right to run the Port for the benefit of the Union. Their members will get nothing from this action, except for one month's lost wages and most probably redundancy.

The Importers Institute asked the Port management what the cost would be of moving the work over to private contractors without delay. We were told that is not possible. Under current legislation, a Court would probably force the Port to take back the striking workers. This is apparently something to do with the 'good faith' nonsense legislated by Margaret Wilson a few years ago.

We call it nonsense because the Union has been guilty of the utmost bad faith. They have lied through their teeth concerning the average remuneration of their members (over $90,000) as well as pretty much about everything else concerning this dispute.

The current government has had plenty of time to reverse the legislative excesses of the last government, but chose instead to smile and wave. The time has now come for the government to assume its responsibilities and prevent a bunch of industrial thugs from holding New Zealand to ransom.

We already have legislation that prohibits some forms of industrial action, for example sympathy strikes. That has not stopped the managers of the Union from going off to Sydney to ask their comrades in other countries to boycott New Zealand. The government's obligation is clear and urgent.

Daniel Silva is the head of the Importers Institute, an informal national association of New Zealand importing companies keeping members informed on topical issues of interest, and representing importers’ interests before policy makers and the public.

Drew House, by Simon Laws

The Australian climate offers opportunity especially for unique holiday houses. Like this one for photographer Marian Drew and family by Simon Laws of Anthill Construction for “a one of a kind campsite” in Seventy South, near Gladstone and right next to  “the most northerly surf break on the east Australian coast, at the start of the Great Barrier Reef.”

Prefabricated housing doesn’t have to be dull.

[Hat tip the Organic Architecture blog]

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Slavery, secession, states’ “rights” and those who (still) defend them

Around seven-score and twelve years ago the Confederate slave states of the United States America seceded from the Union in a bid to protect their alleged right to own human beings as property, and brought about the first war of the industrial age.

The obscenity of slavery brought about a war on industrial scale that became the bloody pointer to the “Great War” and its charnel houses on the Somme, at Passchendaele, at Verdun—a war about which there is nothing to celebrate except its end—and attitudes that still taint America today.

BoganThe flag of the slave states, the Confederate ‘Stars and Bars’ Flag of War, is now largely just a symbol of the Bogan. Thank goodness. But astonishingly, there are today still otherwise learned folk about who defend the Confederacy on whose behalf troops took it into battle. Who defend the Secession. Who defend, explicitly, the state collectivism of so called “states' rights” and, implicitly, the barnyard collectivism of state-sanctioned racism.

Disgracefully, some call themselves lovers of liberty.  Unbelievably, many of them are happy to pretend the war was never about slavery. Bizarrely, many of them camp out at the Mises Institute (motto taken from Mises’ own, i.e.: “Never Give In to Evil, But Proceed Against it Ever More Strongly”) and help to poison both the name of a good man and the Institute’s otherwise excellent economic work.

Fortunately, a short and easy read by one Jonathan Blanks demolishes this posturing. If this issue is one you’ve ever followed, then I commend it to your attention:

They are all prostitutes. Well, two of them are.

Whale Oil has done sterling work hunting down the real story behind the case of Tania Wysocki. Turns out the only real prostitutes in this story are Herald journalist Simon Collins and Labour MP Jacinda Ardern,who between them  pimped out her story  and those of many other undeserving poor in the much celebrated Herald series.

Anyway, after driving out and listening to Tania, something neither Jacinda nor Collins bothered to do, (Collins having written his story on the way and then doing more talking than listening), Whale Oil has a very different story than the one that was pimped out. Take a look:

Ayn Rand was an “illegal” immigrant…

There’s a few things that US Republican candidates (and other antediluvian anti-immigration  bigots) can learn from Ayn Rand—one of them, reckons Shikha Dalmia, is Ayn Rand being an “illegal” immigrant…

[Sorry, video won't embed, so click the pic to watch it at the WSJ site.]

(Bottom line of Rand’s story: you have no more reason to tell the truth to an immigration officer than you do an SS office looking for your child.)

[Hat tip Y. Lee]

It’s still all Greek to some people [update 3]

You’ll have heard it reported in recent days that Greece has been “saved.” That the Greek government has been bailed out by the European Central Bank and the EU Rescue Fund (EFSF), that things will be tough for a while, but the Greeks will now be able to dig themselves out of their hole.

Nothing could be further from the truth—and the fact Gareth Morgan subscribes to this fiction (among three other fictions) is almost certain proof the outcome won’t be all rosy.

What has just happened in this second Greek bailout (remember how the first bailout was going to save things?) is another enormous tranche of borrowing lent to the Greek government to save it from its previous enormous borrowing. And if that sounds stupid, it is—but only if you think this is a rescue of Greece.

It is not a rescue of Greece.

Because it is not so much a bailout of Greece by European central bankers, but a bailout of European bankers put together by European central bankers—with German taxpayers picking up the tab.  Greece is now officially a ward of the international community—and as a ward its only job now is to make its guardians rich, or at least to provide a conduit for whatever of its mis-loaned money its guardians can claw back through good old EuroPolitik.

Face it, there was no other way European bankers were going to get any of their money out of Greece—not with Greek 1-Year Bond Yield having just hit 682%.  So when you hear bankers whooping it up because the “rescue” plan has gone through just remember to whom the lifebelt has just been thrown. And it’s not the Greeks.

Frankly, the best thing the Greeks could do now is default, and then leave the Euro Currency Zone.  And the best thing German taxpayers could do is let them—and then leave the zone themselves.

NB: Liberty Scott has an excellent summary of how things came to this pass, and how a Greek default would help:

PS: Oh, and in case you were wondering … yes, Virginia, bailing out banks is inflationary.

UPDATE 1: Mish summarises the options:

The sooner Greece exits the euro, the more likely Greece will be able to prevent still more capital flight. The smart money has already left. (Please see Germany Draws Up Plans for Greece to Leave Euro; Athens Rehearses the Nightmare of Default; Merkel's Denial Rings Hollow.)…
    The best solution would be for Germany to exit the Eurozone first, but that is not going to happen.
The next best option would be for a simultaneous bank holiday involving all Greece, Portugal. Spain, and Ireland at the same time as noted in
Why Greece Must Exit the Eurozone, How it Will Happen (and Why Portugal and Spain Will Follow); Does the Euro Act Like a Gold Standard?
That too is highly unlikely. Thus the odds of a protracted, one-by-one, and very costly breakup of the eurozone is the most likely outcome whether or not Greece survives the Ides of March.
For further discussion including an analysis of why it would be best for Germany to exit the Eurozone, please see
Eurozone Breakup Logistics (Never Believe Anything Until It's Officially Denied).

Short of a real gold standard emerging, my own opinion is that best economic outcome would see the more solvent countries (solvent only in relative terms, you understand) such as Germany, Finland, Austria, The Netherlands etc. leaving the Eurozone to go back either to their original currencies or a common one, which would quickly find their/its own value; leaving the less solvent, the halt and the lame, to soldier on under the (relative) discipline of a bargain basement Euro.

It would certainly make a southern European holiday something of a bargain.

UPDATE 2: Philip Bagus on “The Future of the Euro”:

“The problems of the eurozone are ultimately malinvestments…    even before the crisis, governments had accumulated malinvestments due to their excessive welfare spending.
    Two causes had incentivized social spending in Europe’s periphery. The first cause is low interest rates… an expansionary monetary policy by the European Central Bank (ECB) and … an implicit bailout guarantee…
    The second cause is that the euro is a tragedy of the commons.”

UPDATE 3: An overview on what just happened in Greece from Krazy Economy, “A Note on Greek Banks Recapitalization

As an overview, here is what we have:
The Greeks (actually you can insert any European Common Market country you want because the pattern is consistent throughout) borrowed from anywhere they could for a massive spending spree.
They required the banks to be a major lender.
They required the banks to have little or no reserves against the loans to the government.
The government can’t repay the loans.
The banks are failing.
The government, with money acquired from elsewhere because it has done stupid, insane things, is going to buy the failed [Greek] banks.
These banks are even more tied to government policies than before.
The government has ownership and control of the banks.
Does anyone think that the Greek banks will be better off?

Meanwhile, and this is perhaps the main point of the whole fiasco, the reality evasion in high places and low:

The failure of putting two and two together is a common theme in the entire European debt crisis. It is most blatant with the Greeks.
This week there have been more “strikes,” riots, and protests against the terms required by the agencies that would bail out the Greeks. Many of the chanted slogans and posters and banners declare that the foreigners are dictators and imperialists. The protestors want the politicians to “resist”!
    The Greeks appear like angry four year olds who have been told that they can’t have the toy on the shelf because mommy doesn’t have the money. How and what are the politicians suppose to resist? They are suppose to resist the requirement that they do not incur more debt. They are suppose to resist the requirement that they try to pay back their existing debt. They are suppose to resist the requirement that if they are given money they spend it wisely instead of like a drunken sailor (my apologies to sailors).
    The Greek protestors have no contact with reality. None. They have no idea that money has some connection to real things. That real things are made by someone who wants to be paid for their efforts. That borrowing actually means that the lender expects to be paid back.
    The Greek country is a testament to modern education and economic “thinking.”

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

One year on, and Christchurch is still on welfare [updated]

I think I agree with Lindsay Mitchell and others who feel uneasy about the mawkishness of the widely publicised public commemorations one year on from Christchurch’s February 22 earthquake. As she says,

The commemoration of tragedy, not confined to Christchurch by any means, is starting to take on a strange religiosity in a largely secular country.

To which reaction I add my disgust at the entities grandstanding in the commemoration who have done nothing since the tragedy but get in the way of individuals trying to recover from the disaster.

The earthquake was the first disaster. It has delivered a second one: the political decisions made in the aftermath.

From day one on, the earthquake has delivered to the kind of person who feels drawn to clipboards and jackboots the power over others they could never get in real life. In fact, virtually the whole panoply of government, central and local, has been ranged against those trying to recover—from Gauleiter Brownlee and Boss Parker on down, with the clipboard wielders in the van: standing athwart individuals trying to rebuild staying “Stop!”

Folk in houses only partially damaged, or not damaged at all, are told by council thugs to “Get Out.”  “By order!”

Folk in other houses are still waiting to be told by government’s minions whether or not they will be allowed to rebuild, repair or remove themselves, or whether (or not) EQC will bother paying their repairers.

Builders have been left to sit on their hands while all this happens, since there’s precious little rebuilding going on, or allowed to go on.  Not just due to the dithering of  EQC et al. Right round the city, while people desperately seek new housing and queue for the few rentals around, there is good land to build houses on. But it can’t be built on and it won’t be built on, because the council’s overlords and underplanners have deemed it all off limits: “off limits” because to build here would violate their precious “strategic plan” for the city—after earthquakes strong enough to shake the city to the core, but not strong enough to shake a “strategic plan” drawn up long before earthquakes were even thought about, and dangerously infected even then with the poison of so-called “Smart Growth.”

IMG_0281[1]Meanwhile, those belatedly selected by the government’s mandarins to build “temporary accommodation” for Christchurch’s evicted hordes have finally coughed up around the city what can only be called refugee camps—the all-too predictable sub-standard apologies of places that will quickly become the slums of tomorrow, while helping to kill residents’ dreams of todays. [Read David Haywood talk here about his move into the spirit-killing Linwood Park “Temporary”  Earthquake Village he’s photographed at right.]

Touring around the outskirts of Christchurch one year on an outsider can only be impressed at all the energy and activity going on. Going on in all the homes and businesses located and relocated there on the outskirts, frequently over the opposition of planners who wish them elsewhere.

This is where the real business of Christchurch is now being done—in rubble used as concert chambers, garages being used as factories, in factory units being used as offices, in offices being used as shopping malls, in houses being used as shops offices, factories and over-cramped boarding houses.  But the council’s town planners and earthquake mandarins haven’t helped any of this process in any way at all; in the days after the earthquake they stopped owners demolishing dangerous buildings, and since the second they’ve done all they can to hinder these necessary and spontaneous “re-zoning” of activities within the city.  And it’s fair to say the council, CERA and Gerry Brownlee have treated business owners with property still inside the CBD with nothing but contempt.  Little wonder these business and property owners have been protesting for virtually the whole of the twelve months since the second big earthquake, and for four months before that.

So to see all these various lackies and sawdust caesars standing up on their hind legs today spouting about their good works keeping Christchurch on its knees is too much for me to stomach.

One year on Christchurch continues to struggle. What the earthquake couldn’t do, governments central and local have done instead. The first disaster was the earthquakes. The second disaster is the political decisions made in their aftermath.

Give people back their lives. Give them back their property rights. Discard this pathetic idea that only government can do things—when all it does do is either tax, ban or subsidise. Take Christchurch off its knees, take it off welfare, make it an Enterprise Zone for Galt’s sake …. and then get the hell out of the way.

That’s my advice for the mandarins one year on. Just get the hell out of the way.

UPDATE:  Auckland council without an earthquake is considering doing what Christchurch council after an earthquake is not considering, i.e., relaxing (albeit only very slightly) the planners’ ring fence around the city.

But even these baby steps are beyond the pale for Christchurch’s planners.

Stephen Fry, Steven Joyce and Government broadband

imageHe loves gadgets and he’s tweeted from many places around the world, but Stephen Fry was less than satisfied with government broadband here in EnZed. And he reckons we EnZedders should rise up and take on those responsible.

“You wouldn't put up with potholes in your roads,” he says, though we do, don’t we, “so you shouldn't have to put up with Third World broadband standards as well.”

But we do, don’t we.  We not only put up with it, you vote for it.

So who’s responsible for the potholes in local broadband? Well, it’s fashionable to blame the private telcos, of course.  But consider that around six years ago, right when those private telcos were considering plans to roll out the next generation of broadband across the country, Labour’s David Cunliffe began dismembering Telecom—to the loud applause of  Labour hacks, National stalwarts and Telecom’s competitors—and announcing plans to “roll out” government fibre.

Would-be private investors in next-generation broadband began quietly reconsidering their own investment plans. Why put your own head in the noose when you could reap the benefit of a taxpayer “investment.”

Then around four years ago in a throwback to its Think-Big Muldoonist past the incoming National government began announcing that it would be they who would be “rolling out” the next generation of high-speed, bells-and-whistles broadband, the “roll out” of which would be a flagship policy of their first term.

Potential users and rival telcos alike waited with bated breath while nothing continued to happen. And now that the former promoter of National’s next generation of high-speed, bells-and-whistles broadband Steven Joyce has moved on to bigger, better and brassier things, the non-roll out has been left to first-time minister Amy Adams—who instead of being photographed in front of new high-tech equipment sits in her new office writing press releases boasting :

The Government has set aside $1.5 billion for ultra-fast broadband, and aims to have the service reaching 75 percent of New Zealand in the next 3 5 7 10 years… contracts had been locked in, the rollout was under way, and competitive wholesale prices had been secured, but it was up to the industry to ensure New Zealanders got the quality and performance they expected at prices they could afford…

Or in other words, “we’ve spent lots of your money already with only paper promises and electioneering hype to show for it. But stop whining, because you’ll get it when you get it.”

At least she recognises, if only partially, that government itself delivers nothing. That in the end it is still “up to the industry.” But perhaps she and other EnZedders might reflect that the industry might have done better and much earlier—that big private investment might have been directed into this area much sooner—if big government hadn’t been flexing its muscles for the last six years in the hope of  a political windfall.

After all, it looks like up to $33 billion could be the real return to NZ from the investment, if it ever comes to pass, some of which would have rubbed off on private investors. But when any private investment would have been drowned out by government and (no doubt) damned by luddite nationalists in every party, and when NZ’s largest telecommunications company is being dismembered and partially nationalised as a reward for owning and having rolled out the last national network, it’s no wonder no private investor wanted to take the risk.

As a blogger who’s now left the building once said:

If telecommunications companies think someone is going to steal their networks,they won't build any more of them! It's really simple. Now we are stuck with waiting for the government to waste my tax money building something that every private interest is now too scared to.

Former Telstra Australia head Sol Trujillo said much the same when similar threats were directed his way from the Australian government. He:

derided Kevin Rudd's election-promised "partnership" to build an across-Australian broadband network, calling it a "kumbaya, holding hands" theory. It might have been an election promise, but looks like no- one stopped to ask the company supposedly being partnered. Said Trujillo: "We are only going to participate in the things that we own and control."
    Mr Trujillo, firmly backed by chairman Donald McGauchie, said Telstra was happy to invest $4 billion or more of its own money rather than the taxpayers' - but only on its terms and pricing…
Australia needs a fast, modern telecoms infrastructure [says Trujillo]. And the quickest way to get there is to allow unfettered competition. Mr Trujillo says that America and Europe learned long ago that “to foster competition the government cannot control the levers, it must let the market work. Virtually every other country has moved towards less regulation in telecoms” …
    Worried that giving rivals a free ride would undermine his profits, Mr Trujillo is threatening not to lay the fibre: “My duty is to our shareholders—including 1.6m ordinary Australians. I will only invest where I can earn an economic return.”

So when private investors aren’t able to earn a return? Or they are (falsely) led to believe they can be given an unearned free ride on someone else’s network? Then you end up where you are today. As our late friend Anna Woolf said back in 2008: Remove the Red Tape, the Fibre Optics will follow. Or don’t, and it won’t.

So when you’re complaining about your broadband service today, it’s government broadband you’re complaining about.

Potholes and all.

Tuesday, 21 February 2012

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR'S: A Book Worth Buying

imageLibz leader Dr Richard McGrath returns with fire in his belly, his regular column, and a book you just have to buy…

Nanny State has had it good recently, what with the censorship of “disgusting” images of Piri Weepu bottle feeding his infant daughter; the blanking out of “horrific” footage of signage advertising Coca-Cola and fried chicken; and the hysterically defensive reaction following revelations fewer people have been out cycling, and more of them are suffering injury, since cycle helmets (i.e., knob hats) were made compulsory.

Thank goodness for people like James Bartholomew, who documents the far-reaching and almost unerringly negative consequences of state interference in our lives. Along with commentator Lindsay Mitchell, I had the pleasure of dining with James in Wellington a few weeks back during his brief visit conducting research for a new book he is writing. His pet topic is the welfare state in all its forms, and to prepare for James' visit I ordered a copy of his chronicle of Britain's decline from a once great nation to the 'sick man of Europe', entitled The Welfare State We're In.

It was a great, if sobering read.

Published in 2004, the volume traces the origins of the welfare state to the time of Henry VIII and his seizure of monasteries previously functioning as charity hospitals and emergency welfare providers. Bartholomew reveals the increasingly coercive nature of the State in funding and providing health care, unemployment and disability compensation, education, housing and social support.

Unfortunately, as is plainly evident to anyone who cares to look, in each and every area in which the government has intervened - albeit often with compassion and a desire to work side by side with private providers and charities - the result has been the crowding out of the voluntary sector, and an increase in death and misery for the intended beneficiaries.

In other worlds, state welfare is not welfare.

Neither is state education education. After decades of state-funded 'education' in the UK and more than a hundred years of compulsory education, one in four adult Britons is functionally illiterate (sound familiar?). Yet before the advent of government welfare and state education, about 85% of industrial workers in the UK were already members of friendly societies providing welfare and support for members and their families. Since that time, the working class has been taxed into poverty, with many of them unable to make provision for a pension and purchase unemployment insurance.

A pervasive and recurrent theme throughout the book is that the welfare state was not needed in the first place! Where people had the means and the necessity to provide for down times, they did so, and gave huge amounts of their disposable income to the less well-off.

Bartholomew likens the avoidable deaths in Britain's National 'Health' Service to 'a train crash every day,' estimating over more 15,000 souls dying annually than the mortality that would occur under a system of non-government hospitals and primary care.  (Sound familiar?)

He documents the terrible results of laws that encourage broken families, and the often horrific consequences when the offspring of solo parents are placed in the care of non-biologically-related males. Most telling are the examples that highlight a general decline in public morality ('the falling off of decency') as a result of intergenerational unemployment and a breakdown in the passing down of values such as hard work, thrift and personal responsibility.

The author relates low levels of taxation to high rates of growth, using the example among others of the World's Greatest Ever Bureaucrat and his hand in creating the world's freest country. James' description of Britain's underperformance in every facet of human advancement - including medical research - since the rise of the welfare state, makes sad reading.

I recommend this book to all readers. It is packed with facts, memorable anecdotes and killer quotes, and is a valuable historical reference. One comes away with a much greater appreciation of the root causes of the United Kingdom's current malaise. In many senses, the origins date back centuries. But it was David Lloyd George and Winston Churchill (who would have guessed?) that really got the ball rolling in the early twentieth century. Once Labour took power in 1945 Britain's fate was sealed, but the die was already cast.

Couldn't happen here, could it?

Dr Richard McGrath is a Masterton GP and the leader of NZ’s Libertarianz Party. When threatened with extreme violence he can sometimes be made to write a column.

Monday, 20 February 2012

Unaffordable housing? No wonder!

_HickeyONCE AGAIN BERNARD HICKEY offers the insalubrious example of a commentator who knows something is wrong, yet knows nothing about how to fix it. Nothing that is beyond yelling “Something Must be Done!” And by “something he means “someone.” And by someone, he means the government.

First, the problem:

Auckland and Christchurch now have massive shortages of waterproof and undamaged homes that regular families can afford to own…
    The Department of Building and Housing forecast this month that New Zealand needs to build around 20,000 to 23,000 housing units a year over the next five years to keep pace with population growth. Meanwhile New Zealand has been building at a rate below 15,000 a year for the last three years…
    The crisis has intensified since 1999 with the introduction of the Metropolitan Urban Limit and the revelations that an entire generation of homes is leaky and will have to be either reclad or rebuilt…
    This crisis is playing out in a variety of ways.
    There is, of course, a rise in homeless numbers. But the more obvious increase is simply in the price of homes and rents. Both are rising quicker than the wider inflation rate and price rises outside of Auckland and Christchurch. There is an inevitable reaction to this, which is for young Auckland and Christchurch workers and families, those who are not property owners, to simply give up.

He is right that rents are rocketing and new homes are becoming less and less affordable.  The annual Demographia study has shown for years that even during this Great Recession house prices as a proportion of income in New Zealand’s cities are among the highest in the developed world—and increasing*. And the Productivity Commission (from whom Hickey got his figures) point out that “for younger people and those on lower incomes there is a missing step on the property ladder, particularly in Auckland. The chances of them ever purchasing their first home are decreasing.”

He is right, too, that while would-be home-owners burn, governments in Auckland and Wellington continue to fiddle—with train sets in Auckland, and with a pathetic, partial, poorly-done privatisation programme in Wellington.

The problem then is this: what is to be done? And the problem with Hickey is, he has no bloody idea.

So like every simple statist who Wants Something Done, he simply cries that Gummint Should Do Something!

“Government-owned land would need to be opened up and town planners overruled,” says Hickey, getting it half right, before heading down the route of statists immemorial in calling for “taxpayer money … to be invested and lots of it.” Presumably building those affordable houses that the government has made it unprofitable for private builders to build, using resources that will cost more than the sale price.

imageIt’s the same “solution” put forward by Fran O’Sullivan (left) a few months back when she called for private land to be nationalised—expropriated outright by the grey ones—newly stolen land on which the Gummint Should Do Something.

Like O’Sullivan, Hickey is a business columnist. Yet just like her he has no idea how business works.

And they both write and talk about politics. But neither apparently have any conception of how politicians have caused the very “market failure” they describe. Because while calling for government to fix the problem by doing more, they never even bothered to ask themselves this fundamental question: whether it is government activity itself that has largely caused the problem.

And it has.

IN A NUTSHELL, THE big problem is that government has gone beyond right: it has passed laws giving the Reserve Bank the power to print money, bureaucrats the power to prescribe the methods and materials by which houses are built, and  planners the power to control and restrict people’s land.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Sunday, 19 February 2012

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Creating a job is easy. Creating a remunerative job is not.”

The 'Consumptionist' Dead End
Jonathan Hoenig:  Why the persistent belief that the economy will grow as a result of government spending is flawed.
If you keep repeating a lie long enough, people eventually start to accept it as truth. So even as government debt hit new record highs and bankrupt entitlement states like Greece collapse, how else to explain the persistent belief among many politicians and policymakers that … the economy grows as a result of government spending….

Friday, 17 February 2012

FRIDAY MORNING RAMBLE: Take a look at these!

Another short ramble around a few things that caught my eye this week…

  • A new report suggests an earthquake in Wellington would  dwarf the economic damage of the Canterbury earthquake .  The report, however, takes no account of the enormous economic benefit to the country of the complete destruction of Wellington’s government departments. (We can dream, can’t we?)
    Cost of a major Wellington quake? $40b – N Z  H E R A L D
  • Stolen memos and fabricated documents from the climate sceptic Heartland Institute reveals that private individuals who agree with the aims of the Institute gave them money (shock, horror!). Meanwhile, the Institute advanced funds to fellow skeptics like Anthony Watts and NZer Bob  Carter to the tune of $88,000 and $1600 respectively, giving such scientists an unfair advantage in over the $1,2 million sucked from the taxpayer by James Hansen and the $300 million warmist campaign of Al Gore.
    In other words, “What the Heartland document show is how badly warmists have been beaten by those with a fraction of the resources they’ve enjoyed.”
    Hippies hate Heartland -  D A I L Y   B A Y O N E T
    The Anatomy of a Global Warming Smear – Anthony Watts, W A T T S   U P   W I T H   T H A T
  • If the philosophical father of America was John Locke, then that of New Zealand was utilitarian Jeremy Bentham.  Murray Rothbard examines the thought, economics and failings of the man whose corpse now entertains students at University College, London.
    The case of Jeremy Bentham, should be instructive both to historians of this funny little country, and to “that host of economists that attempt to weld utilitarian philosophy with free market economics.”
    Jeremy Bentham: From Laissez-Faire to Statism – Murray Rothbard, M I S E S  DA I L Y
  • The Ayn Rand Institute is thrilled to announce two new ARI ventures “that we believe have the potential to make a huge impact on the fight for capitalism”: a new book, and a new blog.
    Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government
    by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins
    Laissez-Faire: The Uncompromised Case for Capitalism – A R I

Yaron Answers: What is Capitalism and Why Do You Say It’s Moral?

  • We’re near the endgame. But when will the tipping point into currency collapse begin? Author of the Paper Money Collapse Detlev Schlicter reckons the EuroZone crisis is just the beginning. “The tipping point comes either when concern about inflation or concern about sovereign solvency (in major countries) reaches a certain point. When people sell bonds and demand higher yields we are in the endgame.” Watch him and his interviewer here:

  • Steve Coogan used to be a comedian. Now? Not so much.
    What the Dickens has Coogan become? – Tim Black, S P I K E D
  • You want music with a joyful sense of life? You want musical fluency? Then the Hot Club of France are your men.  Here’s some rare film of the genii doing one of their quieter numbers (filmed, unfortunately, by a cameraman eager not to show Django’s unique fretwork dexterity).

Check back soon for more…

Thursday, 16 February 2012

DOWN TO THE DOCTOR’S: Seagull? No, it’s a duck.

_McGrath001Don’t look now. Dr Richard McGrath is back with his formerly regular column. This week: Is that a bird, or a plane? No, it’s a duck!

Assuming Trevor Mallard still possesses any shred of integrity after a lifetime in the public trough, then his exposure this week as a 'ticket-scalper' will only move forward its inevitable extinction.

In 2006 The Mallard stated quite baldly: "When there is bulk buying of tickets to [major] events simply for the purpose of profiteering, scalping is a rip-off that could deny many people the opportunity to see [the] event."

It’s now revealed he made a tidy TradeMe profit on a major Wellington event happening this weekend.

In 2011 his party went to the polls demanding those accruing profit on their assets be his hard by the grey ones.

And despite him "struggling to see the difference in principle between tickets and houses,” he sees no problem now with either the sale or his price-gouging.

If any integrity is left him after his playing away from home and his court appearance for assault, his lies about “bag men” and cash for policies and his attack on Brethren church-goers as “chinless scarf wearers, then to retain whagt little is left he should at least hand over the dirty profits to the ticket issuer, or perhaps pay a contribution to the government based on capital gain—a voluntary proposition the IRD website helpfully makes possible.

Not that I se any problem myself, mind you, in either ticket scalpers or profit-takers. Unlike the daily labours of politicians, both help the market.

In my view, and against the previously stated views of The Duck, all laws that impede a free, uncoerced market in goods should be scrapped—including any that prohibit the reselling of concert tickets. Ironically, under a government 'led by my Libertarianz party, Scalper' Mallard would be able to sell as many concert tickets to unsuspecting teenagers as he liked. But not a government headed by his own party.

It is difficult however to see how an unapologetic Mallard will possibly be able to explain his way out of this latest disaster, unless of course he truly believes there should be one law for politicians and another law for the rest of us.

Perhaps now the Hutt South Scalper has realised the virtues of the market first-hand he could do the decent thing for a change: "So how about a ticket to the Lady Gaga concert for my daughter?"

Dr Richard McGrath is a Masterton GP and the leader of New Zealand’s Libertarianz Party.
When prodded hard, he writes a regular semi-regular very occasional column for NOT PC.

Wednesday, 15 February 2012

A man has just been deported from one country to another to face the death penalty for a crime that is the ultimate in victimless crimes, i.e., a crime that has no victim.

The man has been deported from Malaysia to Saudi Arabia to face a charge that he blasphemed, i.e., that he defamed Allah in a tweet, i.e., that he “insulted” a non-existent being.

Which means he defamed a victim that doesn’t exist, in a medium few if any in Saudi Arabia are allowed to read, from a jurisdiction that has nothing to with them.

And Islam is still a religion of peace.

Much discussion this morning about the MP with the coolest name in Parliament, Mojo Mathers, and whether you or I should pay for an electronic note-taking system so the new Green MP can do her job.

She’s deaf, you see, and can’t do the job properly without one. It will cost us around $30,000, apparently—about the size of Bellamy’s bar bill on a slow afternoon.

So fair enough, surely. It’s a small enough sum; it can be taken out of the existing Parliamentary Budget without any problems; and this is supposed to be a representative democracy, surely, and when folk from all walks of life are in Parliament their democracy should provide whatever’s need to do their job, no?

No. Not really. Not exactly.

Because Speaker Lockwood Smith is reportedly examining whether to impose a new  obligation on taxpayers, rather than spending less elsewhere. Like subsiding Bellamy’s, for instance.  (Bad Lockwood.)

And yes, it’s a small sum.  But even a small sum has to be authorised; has to be taken from someone.  And there is nothing in law to justify a new imposition like this. (Laws about subsidising the trough at Bellamy’s on the other hand…)

And fundamentally, small though the sum involved is, the argument about spending it goes back to the nature of government and of parliament ,and and what they’re there for.

Government’s job is not to raise the self-esteem of its participants—its job is to protect individual rights. That’s their only justifiable job.

So Parliament’s job, in this sense, is not simply to be a club wherein participants are made to feel better about themselves. It’s not a place where you go to raise your self-esteem. It is instead an arm of government (at least in principle if not in practice) that helps keep the other arms somewhat in check—to ensure they are protecting individual rights.

And frankly, then as long as taxpayers continue to vote people in to do that job (at least in theory) it doesn’t matter whether you’re deaf, dumb, blind or transgender. If you’ve been voted in to do the job by taxpayers (and even some Green voters do pay taxes)  then you should have the tools to do that job.

After all, there’s extra reinforcing needed for Parekura Horomia’s seat. And we’re obliged to pay for that, aren’t we?

Aren’t we?

* * * * *

* Paid for by those taxpayers who voted for them, ideally.

Monday, 13 February 2012

Come on baby, be my econo-Valentine

It’s not quite “come on sucker, lick my battery” stuff, but economists are warming up for Valentine’s Day with the #FedValentines tag on Twitter [hat tip Offsetting Behaviour]. My favourites, from the SanFrancisco Fed:

I'm going to extraordinary measures to increase your stimulus.

My love is elastic, my commitment too big to fail.

And from NPR’s Planet Money:

But, soft! What light through yonder discount window breaks? It is the East, and Ben is the sun.

I'll be your lover of last resort.

And the Marvin Gayesque:

When I get that feeling I want quantitative easing.

With those out of the way, Craig Biddle identifies a more serious point: the connection between Say’s Law and Romantic Love (and you were going to say you’d just been thinking along those lines, huh?):

The realm of romance, like that of economics, is governed by Say’s Law. Supply constitutes demand. What you produce (supply) is what you have to trade in the marketplace (demand.
    Say’s law does not mean that if you create something people will want it—or “if you build it they will come.” It means that if you want to trade with others, you have to produce something with which to trade—something of value. The values you create—whether computers or works of art or educational services—constitute your demand on the goods and services created by others. What you create is what you have to offer in trade for what others create.
    The same is true in romance. If you want a relationship of mutual love, you have to produce something with which to trade—something that a good person will want and be able to love. The one and only demand you can exert in the realm of romance is what you have made of yourself. That is your “supply”; it’s what you bring to the table.
    This is not an analogy; it is the literal truth. And it applies to both mind and body…
    If we want a wonderful, lasting romantic relationship—if we want to fall in love and stay in love with a great girl or guy—then we have to make ourselves of value to such a person.
Supply constitutes demand. “Take what you want and pay for it”….

* But maybe if Flight of the Conchords were to try econo-ditties as well as Robo-boogie?

Peace activists?

Yes, folks, the trial of the Urewera 18, 16, 15, 4 has finally got under way this morning in Auckland’s High Court.

So we may finally hear some facts about what this motley lot are accused of, rather than the self-serving soft-soaping they and their chums have been peddling on their behalf.

It has now been four and a half years since the 18 were arrested. Four and a half years! Four and a half years in which the crown muddled while defendants and their lawyers and their friends in the media churned out press releases, interviews and media events in their defence. In the absence of a real trial we had instead a trial by media—a “trial” in which defendants were feted while all the substantive evidence against them was suppressed at the behest of their own lawyers!

Law has been very much the loser in this case.

But let’s not accept any crocodile tears about how long it’s taken for this crew to finally get before the court—like the crocodile tears John Minto et al were crying this morning about how tough it’s been for them to be on bail for so long.  Because right from day one of this whole debacle, the Urewera 18, 16, 15, 4 and their lawyers have been using every delaying tactic in the book. (That their requests for suppression only delayed proceedings even longer puts their crocodile tears now over the delays into damning perspective.) But if a justice system cannot pull together a case in four years, while fending off the shysters out looking for a loophole, that’s a pretty serious indictment of the system’s failure.

And while out on bail Tame Iti was allowed to dance his way around Europe on the taxpayer.

Only in New Zealand, one suspects, would a man facing charges of participating in an organised criminal group, unlawful possession of firearms and possession of restricted weapons be allowed to swan off around Europe on a dance tour while taxpayers sit here at home picking up his tab.

So let’s hope we finally do hear some facts in coming days. Or else we’ll be left to conclude only that our “justice” system is little more than a laughing stock.

That’s a hell of a price for a train set

“Socialist governments traditionally make a financial
mess.  They always run out of other people’s money.”

- Margaret Thatcher

His ambition, he said, was to make Auckland the world’s most liveable city.

It seems, however, that after dreaming up a new train set, a fancy new bridge and various other fantasies, mayor Len Brown is instead intent on making Auckland among the world’s most expensive cities in which to live—with petrol, tax and rate hikes mooted to make up the $10-15 billion shortfall between reality and his fantasies.

And this is on top of the general rates rise he and his minions agreed last year to impose on us this year.

Nice, huh.

We’re in a deep and worsening recession, and all this clown can think about is means by which to extract even more of the hard-earned from those who earned it.

Thank goodness for the “Super” City, eh.

Glendowie Montessori

I’ve written many times about the benefits of Montessori education for your youngsters, not just through their early years but right on through primary and high school. If you can find them in your neighbourhood, and if they’re not just Montesomething schools instead of the real thing.

Well, lucky old Glendowie. If you’re lucky enough to live in Glendowie, Glen Innes or anywhere in that area, I can tell you that a new Montessori classroom has just opened for your two-and-a-half to six year olds—and this is very much the real thing. It’s called the Glendowie Montessori Preschool, and it opens for business today at 227 West Tamaki Rd!

What’s more, there’s also an excellent Montessori primary classroom that can take your children at six.  So if you have young children and this is your stamping ground, then you’ve just fallen on your feet.


text:
best cheap mobile phone with camera.

  alibob1526 14:19 PM 02 Mar 13

If I wanted an ordinary mobile phone with a decent camera & normal battery life,(a week or more) what would be the best buy. PAYG, not interested in internet,facebook or the other items that seem to come with most phones these days, just capable of phone calls & decent photo's. Not interested in the multiple hundreds of pounds jobs, just cheap.

  Woolwell 17:29 PM 02 Mar 13

Normal battery life for a modern mobile is not a week a more, 2 or 3 days with light use perhaps.

You need to enter a phone shop and see what deals are available.

  rdave13 21:30 PM 02 Mar 13

Browse Google. Found an 'unlocked' phone with a 5 Mp camera.

Get a 'sim' only PAYG from any of the suppliers.

  benlinus 12:32 PM 01 Apr 13

Try to find it by google, but than ever I have seen have a top better timing with maximum 3-4 days, and there is a huge quantity of mobiles best nice camera result at low prices.

it is avalible at google u search out it and may b ur problem will solve

This thread is now locked and can not be replied to.

Windows 10 release date, price, features UK: Free upgrade available July 29 with 10 years of free…

Why Vodafone’s frequency choice should interest you: The benefits of 800MHz

Digital visionaries discuss Designing the Future

Apple Pay UK launch guide and participating UK banks: HSBC, First Direct finally support Apple Pay


text:
Bluetooth Headset with Windows 7

  peter.bland149 18:07 PM 24 Jan 13

Can I use a Bluetooth headset with my laptop running Windows 7?

  mgmcc 21:06 PM 24 Jan 13

I don't see any reason why not, but the Laptop needs to be Bluetooth enabled, either with a built-in Bluetooth adapter or with a USB adapter plugged in.

This thread is now locked and can not be replied to.

Windows 10 release date, price, features UK: Free upgrade available July 29 with 10 years of free…

Why Vodafone’s frequency choice should interest you: The benefits of 800MHz

Digital visionaries discuss Designing the Future

Apple Pay UK launch guide and participating UK banks: HSBC, First Direct finally support Apple Pay


text:
If you want thrills, forget the prime-time action dramas on network television this season. The real high-stakes TV action is taking place among tech titans battling it out for boob-tube dominance.

Amazon, Netflix, and YouTube are all competing to beef up their content offerings. Meanwhile, Apple and Google are racing to deliver new TV technologies for your living room.

The future of television consumption is at stake. Since the rise of online video, TV companies have feared the impact of people dumping their cable subscription in favor of content they watch on the Internet. But so far, no mass defection has taken place: According to the latest earning reports by major cable companies, most American households still pay for their cable TV subscriptions. For the most part, analysts say, people who are cutting the cord and dropping their subscriptions are doing so not because the alternatives are so attractive, but because they can't afford the monthly bill. In fact, most of them don't have a broadband connection.

Old-school TV is doing just fine at the moment, with around 100 million cable subscribers--a lucrative market that technology companies hope to tap into by changing the way we enjoy video content. In addition, more than 70 percent of online Americans visit video-sharing websites such as YouTube, according to Pew Internet research, so demand for good-quality online video--and new ways of consuming it--is on the rise too.

That's where content services and technology companies come in, hoping to offer consumers a convenient way to watch whatever they want whenever they want it. On one front, streaming services such as Hulu and Netflix are securing deals with content creators to provide viewers with more than just old movies and TV series. On another, Google has revamped the software for its Web-connected Google TV, and Apple is said to be developing products that may revolutionize our interaction with our television sets.

The Content Services

The three major players in the content streaming arena are Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix. All are battling to get exclusive rights to certain studios' movies or certain networks' TV shows. They hope that exclusive content will entice users to join or stick with their service.

For consumers, exclusive content is not a particularly welcome development, since it means that they may have to subscribe to a number of services, each with its own fees, to gain access to the best movies and TV shows available.

Amazon's Prime Instant Video service is basically an entertaining add-on to the online retailer's $79-per-year fast shipping service. Prime Instant Videos work on computers and on nearly 200 models of set-top boxes, Internet connected TVs, and Blu-ray players, including the Roku box and Google TV devices.

Netflix charges $8 per month to let you stream advertising-free movies and TV shows on consoles (including the Wii, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360), as well as online, on iOS and some Android devices, and on the Apple TV, Roku, and TiVo boxes. Hulu Plus also charges $8 per month and works on as many devices as Netflix does, excluding Apple TV.

Yet in their current form, these streaming services aren't yet ready to replace your cable provider. For one thing, many new movies are unavailable for streaming for at least one month after they're released on DVD. And TV series are often embargoed until a month after the last episode of a season has aired.

But if you like reruns and older TV shows, streaming services can be a great supplement to your TV subscription. Cases in point: Netflix and Amazon last week unveiled separate deals to expand their lineups of Disney and ABC series, including Alias and Switched at Birth, plus old episodes of Grey's Anatomy and Desperate Housewives, and all episodes of Lost, Brothers & Sisters, and Ugly Betty.

If you don't want to pay increasingly pricey monthly fees for streaming TV and you don't mind watching ads, consider YouTube, which has some interesting plans to shift from its current reliance on user-generated kitten clips to high-quality video. The Google-owned site is set to unveil some 100 channels of original programming from partners such as the Wall Street Journal, Madonna, and Ashton Kutcher. These channels, for which YouTube is reportedly paying producers some $100 million in advance advertising revenue, are set to debut early next year.

The Living-Room Devices

Apple and Google, the ultimate mobile-space rivals, are making slow but steady progress in their campaigns to penetrate consumers' living rooms, with set-top boxes to complement cable or satellite receivers. Google's initial effort, the Google TV-equipped Revue box, was a flop at $399--but this summer Logitech lowered the Revue's price to a more palatable $99.

And late last month, Google began pushing a free update to Google TV OS, which includes (at launch) some 30 new TV-optimized Android apps. The apps consist mainly of casual games and screensaver-like animations (a faux fireplace, for instance), but apps on your TV have the potential to become the channels of the future. For example, video content providers might launch a video app in the Android Market that offers you either free, advertising-supported content or subscription-based, advertising-free content. What the subscription price turns out to be is one of the biggest unknowns that may help determine whether this approach will stick.

So far, CNBC, CNN, Fox, and Wall Street Journal are on board with apps. Apps on your TV will help transform Google's set-top box OS into a casual gaming platform (eight simple games are currently available, including an Angry Birds clone).

Still, don't place your bets on Google TV until Apple has taken its shot. Steve Jobs biographer Walter Isaacson reports that, at the end of his life, the Apple CEO was excited about a project to create an "integrated television set that is completely easy to use." The Apple set wouldn't need to include complex remotes or a bunch of set-top boxes, Jobs believed.

It's unclear whether Apple's approach will take the form of an integrated television or an inexpensive box--essentially an overhaul of the currently available Apple TV. The new Apple TV may ship as early as 2013, according to reports, and it could be based on Siri, the voice-enabled virtual assistant technology found on the iPhone 4S. A Siri-controlled TV would not be without difficulties, however, as my colleague Ian Paul notes. Siri needs a permanent Internet connection to work, so if your connection went down, you wouldn't be able to control the set, unless there's a backup pushbutton remote.

Who's going to prevail in the battle for your living room? It's too early to pick winners among the competing companies. But the winning approach will surely give you much more control over your entertainment options--allowing you to pay for only the content you're interested in and letting you watch that content when you want to.

Follow Daniel Ionescu and Today @ PCWorld on Twitter


text:
So much for higher education. A University of Alabama at Birmingham survey reveals that one third of college students use mobile apps while driving. Worse the numbers don't change among those college students who have previously been in accidents where the use of a mobile phone application was a contributing factor in the accident.

Not So Smarty-Pants

Yep--even students who have been in accidents because they were chatting, texting, or using mobile apps on their cell phones cannot resist the draw of the smartphone app. Of the 93 college students who took the survey, 10 of them had crashes related to distracted driving in the past five years, while three of them had two accidents.

"What really stood out was the number of participants who verbally reported understanding that using mobile Internet while driving was dangerous, but continued to do it," researcher and student at UAB's Department of Psychology Lauren McCartney told Reuters.

The survey was given to UAB students who own a smartphone and use Internet-based applications at least four times a week. Among survey respondents, 10 percent said they "often," "almost always," or "always" use mobile apps, while 35 percent us them "sometimes."

Hypothesis: Obvious

We already know chatting and texting can be hazardous--what about mobile applications? You don't have to have a college degree to know they're worse.

"Something needs to be done because in psychological terms, Internet use involves substantial cognitive and visual distraction that exceeds talking or texting, making it much more dangerous," McCartney said.

Ok, I probably could've told you that. (If you don't believe me, try playing Angry Birds next time you're's tough.)

Text Time? Use an App Instead

While 33 U.S. states currently ban texting while driving, there's no specific ban on mobile apps. In fact, my friend got pulled over once for "texting" in California: all she had to do was show the cop she was using the Google Maps application on her iPhone, and he let her off without so much as a warning.

That said, a study from the University of Utah shows that about 2.5 percent of the population is made up of "supertaskers," or super multi-taskers who can safely use cell phones and drive without taking a hit to either skill.

McCartney will present her findings at the 119th American Psychological Association convention in Washington, D.C., in August.

Follow Sarah on Twitter (@geeklil) or on Facebook


text:
Silex SecurePrint

  • editor rating: excellent
  • Comments
  • April 28, 2006
  • Pros

    Easy to install and effective. Can protect three printers. Doesn't inconvenience non-Secure Print users.

  • Cons Pricey. Installation and enrollment take time. No troubleshooting feedback at the printer.
  • Bottom Line

    The Silex SecurePrint package is an effective solution to prevent data theft at the printer by requiring fingerprint authentication. But at a starting price of $499 for one user, it is also an expensive solution.

By Oliver Kaven

Print Security in Practice
In testing, Silex SecurePrint performed as expected. I set up three different printers at PC Magazine Labs with no snags. The moment you send a print job to an attached and configured printer, the system warns you that the job will be held in the queue until you release it by validating your identity at the printer's location.

One downside is that the user doesn't get any feedback at the fingerprint scanner. If you don't press your finger onto the scanner in the same manner as you did when enrolling it, you could have trouble getting a positive identification. Since this feedback shows only on your PC, it's not much help in troubleshooting the situation at the printer. But even if you do have a problem getting recognized, repeated finger scans usually resolve the problem. I'd advise trying a few practice scans with the fingerprint scanner still attached to your PC.

The initial price of $499 for one user license is steep for small businesses. In most cases, it'd be more economical to get that user a dedicated office laser printer instead of the SecurePrint system. But once you connect multiple users, the Silex system has a definite price advantage. If you can't take the chance that one of your coworkers (or anyone else with access to your office) might take a peek at your printed documents, you should check out the Silex SecurePrint system.

More biometric device reviews:
•   DigitalPersona Personal 4.0
•   MXI Security Stealth MXP 8GB
•   M2SYS Desktop Biometrics Suite
•   Silex SecurePrint
•   APC Biometric Mouse Password Manager
•  more

Oliver Kaven
By Oliver Kaven Editor - PC Magazine

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