What this reveals is that he must be quite clever to gain that amount of wealth, and succeed in both economic and political arena.  As a banker, you can also safely assume that he is highly financially literate. So lack of knowledge can hardly used to explained Key's comparison of wage gap between Australia and New Zealand:

Loyalty dictated John Key take the support option. To loud guffaws from the Labour benches, Key told Parliament that he had been advised that the gap between gross average weekly earnings in Australia and New Zealand, adjusted for purchasing power parity, was $160.25. "That is certainly a lot less than it was in 2005, when it was $187.60."

Indeed it is. But National did not win the 2005 election. It was elected in 2008 when - according to Key's own figures - the income gap had narrowed to $138.

There are two things that I definitely did not expect - 1. how did he become a millionaire? 2. I am actually very surprised to find out that the wage gap actually decreased - at a quite considerable rate, at the time when Labour was at the helm until the recession. I guess this is just another example of misconception that the right-wing biased media has created.  You thought you know the very essence of politics, but in fact you only know the facts as being digested and manipulated by others.

New Zealand’s has experienced serious changes even before it is implemented. As the centre-right wing national government gets elected in 2009, the scheme has undergone a hasty review, and several changes were resulted.

One of the major issues that will eventually topple this ETS is the removal of caps on total amount of emissions allowed nationally, and by sector. Government is responsible to supply unlimited amount of emission units at a fixed price of $25 per unit until 2012.

Now this is a very weird thing to do by a government which proclaims itself as “pro-market”. The reason for a cap isn’t just limiting the country’s total emission, but providing a market mechanism that provides financial incentive for cleaner sectors to emerge.   By removing such cap the scheme becomes no more than a new type of tax, since there is no limit on the amount of emissions, businesses can go on as usual, and the cost of this new “tax” is conveniently  transferred to end users – i.e. every day consumers.

And this appears just like what has happened.

The effects of ETS are further reduced by not having agriculture sector included in the scheme until 2015. As the country’s largest polluter, agriculture accounts for nearly half of the total greenhouse gas emissions.  This isn’t a sign that such issue is being treated seriously in New Zealand.

No wonder this ETS receives very little support – consumers absolutely hate it, even  politicians don’t agree. From the very right wing Act Party, which highly doubts the existence of global warming, to the very left environmentalist Green Party, all voted down for such scheme.

But such scheme does provide a good example to rest of the world though – how it should not be done. I highly doubt the ETS will last as its current shape for long - a major overhaul might just be an election away.

So what kind of financial potential a university graduate may possess? In a recently published OECD report (PDF) on education, it is suggested in New Zealand, on average, a male university graduate would earn about NZ$ 170,000 more in his lifetime than those with only high school qualifications.

It may sounds like a lot but it's the earning increased in lifetime. Put that in context of a typical working life of a Kiwi (age 22 - 65), the average increase in wage works out like $80 a week, about 10% - 15% percent increase from the average wage in New Zealand.

Furthermore unless you are lucky enough to have rich parents,  you'll have to pay for your tertiary education nowadays. In my situation, I estimated that I need at least 12 years (4 years university and 8 years full time working) before I can reclaim the amount I invested in education. This estimation is actually too optimistic, as you are less experienced and earn less in first few years.

Inflation would make the repayment a bit faster, thanks to the interest-free student loan.  However, that does not help in the long run as your other costs would also increase.

The return rate for your investment in tertiary education varies, largely depends on how much financial support you get from your parents and the government, but 10% - 20% in the long run should be a pretty accurate estimate. It does not sounds too bad, but there are also risks. It depends the wider economic environment is tied up to your employment status, if you don't work, you no longer receive the return on your investment.

From a pure monetary sense, I would rather invest my money in real estate market than education. However according to MasterCard, there are things in life you just cannot put them in  monetary value. The report suggested three: people with tertiary qualification are generally more healthy, has more interpersonal trust, and are fairly interested in politics.

The Weatherston case is likely to be one of such cases. There is clearly a logical fallacy here, Weatherston used, or abused the availability of  provocation as a defense, doesn't necessarily mean provocation defence  is flawed - in fact, I could argue this in the exactly opposite way, it has  proved that the defense is very reasonable and not accessible to people who want to get away with what they have done - therefore Weatherston failed.

There is no doubt to me that provocation is a geniune defence, I consider myself a pretty quiet and calm person all the time, but just like everyone else, I sometimes can lose my mind too.  Current law requires jury to assess whether the evidence could prove a "reasonable man" could be provoked, I think that's pretty much about right - no person at his/her right mind yell to others "come and kill me", however, imagine if one constantly abuses both physically and verbally, overpowered you,  and protection order does not work, are you still feeling confident that you won't lose your mind?

The defence in the Weatherston case, did not only argue the provocation, but also by paint Weatherston as a person with mental problems. This could be a even stronger arguement, however, 200+ cuts clearly do not qualify as a man who  temporarily lost self control, and that did not pass the jury.

This has happened to generations of immigrants, even if they are already a proud NZ citizen - this is one of the things that makes you feel not that proud of your choice.

I don't really want to label it racism, but look at what happens when the tide is turned:  The new "Kiwi first" employment policy means a Japanese restaurant owner cannot recruit chefs from Japan because there already are people with "appropriate" skills available in NZ.  According to the report,  people with "appropriate skills" meaning they need to learn the difference between sushi and sashimi on job.

And yet many "Kiwis" are moaning in the discussion forum, saying people deserve a chance to learn, asking why don't they train kiwis on job?

The rumours that Asian people only employ Asian employees are totally untrue, at least in the Chinese community I know of. There is golden rule for any Chinese entrepreneur who wants to start a business here - a Kiwi receptionist is a must.  This is not because Chinese entrepreneurs cannot pass NCEA leavel 1 English, but people out there just don't want to deal with businesses that are not owned by "one of them".

Any employer would prefer people with local experience and knowledge while having suitable skills, however, if they cannot find any here, they ought to be allowed to employ from oversea. If my memory serves me right, it was this government which wants NZ to increase its productivity and become a global economy - not.

Unlike a lot of backseat drivers who have never been to the site, I have no problem with how the police handled the inccident.  It is more than obvious that police wanted the gunman Jan Molenaar alive, otherwise AOS would storm the house before we know it. Unlike the Aramoana massacre, Molenaar snapped, but he poses no immediate threat to the public, therefore it's best to talk it out rather than end it with another life lost and put the Police in further danger.

The real problem of this tragedy, I think is the internal police procedures. I still prefer the polic to not carry any guns in daily patrols, but this incident was to carry out a search warrent, but the police failed to foresee the danger of such activity so failed to carry guns. It's the police authority failed to protect the safety of police force.

This was also the case in the death of Don Wilkinson. His fate was sealed when they decided not to carry guns.

It's quite similar to what I expected, but bit different from what I wanted (I'll talk about this later). A "supercity" looked inevitable, but I also expected that the current local councils structure will be maintained at some degree, it's common sense that one grand council will not work. There are two common misconceptions in the general public, and a right wing government actually fuelled them: first, bigger is better; second, this investigation is about cost cutting.

The objective of the commission, was cleared stated as:

to receive representations on, inquire into, investigate, and report on the local government arrangements (including institutions, mechanisms, and processes) that
are required in the Auckland region over the foreseeable future in order to maximise, in a cost effective manner,—
(a) the current and future well-being of the region and its communities; and
(b) the region’s contribution to wider national objectives and outcomes.

Most people tend to confuse the meaning of "cost cut" with "cost effective". In fact, in my opinion, one council that takes care of everything is not necessarily cost-cutting, and has the potential to actually increase the total cost.  However, with the right management, the super city council can be cost effective. This change will eventually save a bit of money in the short run, but will it be the sum that public sector killers (aka Nats) wanted? Not necessarily:

Preliminary analysis, which will need to be quantified in detail by the Establishment Board, suggests that adopting the Commission’s proposals for structural change will result in estimated efficiency savings in the indicative range of 2.5% to 3.5% of the total expenditure of the Auckland councils planned for 2008/09 (of around $3.2 billion). This represents estimated efficiency gains of between $76 million to $113 million per year.

113 million sounds like a lot, but when translated into rates, it's really not that many, at least I doubt it - the integration costs, as suggested by the commission, cost even more than that at around 200 million, and I also expect more people employed in the long term to manage such a large city. I can only see substantial cost saving from council owned organisations like water supply, that is likely to same a fair amount of money, but whether that saving will be transferred to you ... well, it's at local politicians' discretion, and that's bit scary, as a unified region is more likely to return a left leaning mayor, due to the majority of the population are  urban.

I agree with the Commission's decision to maintain the current local council structure in principle.However, I don't agree the functions though:

In addition to the elected governing body of the Auckland Council, local democracy will be maintained through six elected local councils operating within the unitary Auckland Council. Local councils will oversee the delivery of services by Auckland Council staff and will undertake local engagement in four urban and two rural districts.

My understanding of Auckland's current problem is, how should I put this, policy inconsistency and fragmentation, and kind of "too locally focused" way of thinking in each local council.  Auckland Region is more connected than ever, and policy of one district council will have direct impact on one or more other councils, and usually council act on their own rather than sitting together to find out the best solution for all.

However, one district plan, one spatial plan, and one long term council community plan will not solve this, in fact, there's a danger to make things even worse as the policy role is even more dictated. The people who understand local issues and needs are not mayors or councillors, but planners and other people who get in touch with the community every day. A single plan has the risk of more imbalanced development.

What I preferred was the super council acting as a over-guiding authority, each local council still makes its part of the district plan, but they come together under the guidance of the grand council and merge as one plan. The current proposal also does this, but it's bit over the top.

Local democratic participation is also important on local issues, so it worries me a bit that all community boards will be abolished.

For the rest of the functionalities of each level of governance, I agree with the Royal Commission.

But the arrangement and structure of the new councils is not that good. I really don't see the need for local councils to have councillors, a single (or three)  councillor from the grand council is more than enough to manage local issues and represent its local council in the region wide context - 22 local councillors for current Auckland city really sounds like a bad joke to me.

In general, I'm ok with the current plan, but there's sure a large room for improvement.

If you were interested in my opinion, here it is. Maintain community boards, but with a larger area, or use the current electorate system we have. Each community returns one grand council councillor,  this councillor is also the local council councillor, and should know the local constituency very well and know where the problems are. In that way we got  a better consistency of policies in different areas, while the local needs and identities (like Waitakere's eco-city) can be maintained.

Oh, and by the way, I don't see reason why National will not adapt the recommendations made by the commission. In fact, I have heard that the law change proposal is already finished, its just waitting for cabinet approval, which shouldn't be a problem at all.

It is how the witness described the event really amused me:

"Two of them [Asians] were in school uniform and an adult was with them. One had two baseball bats, [and was] flinging them around like bloody chopsticks," a witness said. He said as soon as the youth with the baseball bats appeared everything escalated. “It was just like a rat’s nest being disturbed by a fox terrier, they were going everywhere.

bezdomny ex patria's comment focused on the racial motivation of this witness recall:

...  why? I mean, why use this word “chopsticks” in your seriously warped simile? Could it be the Asian-ness of those doing the flinging around? Some bizarre stereotype of kung fu movies?
And to then follow that up with rats? Wow, you really are trying to reinforce the image of Timaru as a racist, redneck hole, aren’t you?

Well, it sure did a good job on reinforcing the image that I always had in my mind: rural parts of the South Island is the most racist part of NZ. If you are from there, no offence, the bad guys are always the minority.

However, as  a Chinese who get so used to racial remarks, I was really wondering, how did this comment made itself onto the paper, black and white? Regardless of racism part, this chopsticks comment is also factually flawed. It is a common sense that when you are in middle of a fight, you hold on with your baseball bats and smash you enemies as hard as you like, you don't fling them around like "blood chopsticks". I suspect that this witness either exaggerated the situation, or made the whole thing up.

For Timaru Herald, allowing such comments to be published on its paper, really shows how it lacks professionalism.

As the Herald reported today, Fonterra confirms that it has sent Sanlu an European Union "provisional statement" on health effects of melamine, the file states a safe level of concentration below 20mg/kg . I blogged this  in my Chinese blog month ago, but forgot to mention it here:)

This changes the whole situation a bit though, what I knew was an "EU standards", not "provisional statement". One of the reasons why Sanlu kept selling tainted milk powders even after contaminants were discovered, is because that its boss, Tian Wenhua was confident that the "standard"  provided by Fonterra shows there's a safe level, so Sanlu mixed good powders with bad ones to keep the concentration of melamine in individual packaging below that level. To this date the evidence shows that they really did well to control the concentration of melamine below 10mg/kg for products after August.

As reported by Chinese media, Fonterra directors did not "reject" the whole idea of the controlling measures - this tells me Fonterra not just knew the contamination, but also did not try to stop production of melamine contaminated milk.

Now this directly contradicts to what Fonterra said today:

" ... However, he (Andrew Ferrier) said Fonterra was "vividly clear" to Sanlu that the only acceptable level of melamine was zero"

Really? So what happened between August and September? They dodgy Chinese did all without Fonterra's knowledge? Well, we are talking about common sense here, if you got a 43% stake in  a large company, and you know it is in trouble, will you keep your eyes shut on your investment?

I still maintain my position, although none of Fonterra directors faced court in China, they should at least face investigations here at home.

I'm not an expert on copyright issues, but thanks to Wikipedia, anyone who regularly contributes to it should understand a fair amount of copyright laws.

Despite of being a "teen", I'm not anti-copyright, instead, I respected copyright whenever I can. I think copyright protection is very important for our society today to progress as it encourages originality and creativity. Therefore every time I want to use external materials for blog, I  make sure that I only use free materials (public domain, Creative Commons) or apply the fair use policy.

But the problem is, although I did my best and tried to respect copyright, I feel that no copyright owners, especially the big ones, respected me for being a good citizen. In fact, in my eyes copyright organisations like MPAA and RIAA  are more like "copyright terrorists" now. They abuse their powers as a copyright owner, pointlessly terrorise people so they can earn just that extra bit of income.

There's a classic case on copyright terrorists in action in UK, I cannot find the exact source at the moment but I have no problem to recall the details . A copyright group accuses workers in a vehicle workshop of infringing their copyright, because workers listened to radio stations while they work, and that, in a sense, is a "public display".

Copyright terrorists worldwide also tried to demonise legitimate tools and file shares. P2P is a classic example, as a tool, it is not illegal, it is the share of copyright materials that is illegal(not under all circumstances).

Copyright terrorists won't tell you that sometimes it is legal to download copyrighted materials. In many countries, if you own a music disc, it is actually legal to download a second copy from the internet as your back up. And there's also no problem to download a TV series if it is also available to you via your local TV stations - it's no different than recording the programme from your TV, it only becomes illegal when you distribute the materials for commercial purposes.

Back to the topic then, what section 92A is about?Here's that piece of meat（just 92A, but 92a - c are all relevant, see pdf here.)

92A Internet service provider must have policy for terminating accounts of repeat infringers

“(1) An Internet service provider must adopt and reasonably implement a policy that provides for termination, in appropriate circumstances, of the account with that Internet service provider of a repeat infringer.

“(2) In subsection (1), repeat infringer means a person who repeatedly infringes the copyright in a work by using 1 or more of the Internet services of the Internet service provider to do restricted act without the consent of the copyright owner.

So how do the copyright terrorists get to know who's downloading their copyrighted material? I don't expect ISPs to monitor internet traffic because that would be too costly to any ISP. Copyright terrorists will depend on themselves to find out what you are doing.

In a P2P network you need to disclose your IP address in order to get others share what they've downloaded to you, so there should be no problem for anyone to see what your IP address is downloading or uploading. However, as I said, just being a part of a P2P network doesn't necessarily mean you are bad. So will the copyright terrorists make sure your download is illegal before they send the request to cut your Internet? Yeah right.

Not to mention that quite a lot of people's computers are infected with trojans, viruses and malwares. Sometimes these nasties download stuffs without your knowledge.

The law provides a mechanism that allows copyright terrorists to cut your internet connection without the need  to prove you guilty, in fact, you have to clear yourself in order to get your internet restored - where's the principle of innocent till proven guilty?

In that sense, I regard this new section of the copyright law as a great threat to the funding principle of our justice system. Copyright terrorists will abuse this new law for sure.

As an Internet user, I think every one should start to worry about this section 92A thing and do something right now.Yes there are piracies, but most pirates are ordinary people like you and me who cannot do much harm to our society, and big film makers and Microsoft survived with them;  now what we are facing is copyright terrorists trying to abuse their power as copyright owners, they use lawyers, political powers to invade our privacy, punish us without any kind of trial.

Who is the lesser of two evils? Simple.

The herald has a report on the reaction from Fonterra, New Zealand's biggest company which had 43% share of the Sanlu Company. The prosecutors of this case also disclosed more details on the case, here's my translation of  the summary, and the original is here (in Chinese).

• While sick babies appeared as early as in march last year, Chairwomen of Sanlu only learnt the problem with their product in May, and nobody knew the actual cause (melamine) . Sanlu product was sent away  for inspection on July 24. To keep the issue secret, the inspector was informed by Sanlu that the samples they received are "some raw materials".
• An emergency meeting was held on 1 August, hours after Sanlu received the report back the inspector.  Fonterra claims this is the first time that the issue has come under their attention. News from the Chinese side seems to confirm the claim, however, with one thing missing in the herald report: although Fonterra wanted a product recall, their directors "did not reject" the proposal of not to recall openly but to do it in secret.
• Chairwoman of Sanlu, Tian Wen Hua, made a report to local government a day after the emergency meeting, but had no clear response.
• First Chinese media report on the link between kidney stones and Sanlu products, published on September 9. As Herald reported earlier,   New Zealand Ambassador to China was instructed to act on the issue on September 8.

You know the rest.

I think it's becoming more and more clear that New Zealand government played a big part of making the scandal public, and NZ officials' should be praised for their effort.

However,  there's also more evidence pointing out that there was indeed a cover up at some level, possibly between Sanlu and Hebei Provincial government. And I have to say, if Fonterra really tried hard to make the recall happen as they claimed before,  there's no reason why the total public recall shouldn't happen in Augest. I'm still very suspicious of the Fonterra's involvement in the cover up.

Weather was not the only thing that went well. Economy.  NZ as a whole, despite the worries,  spent more compare with the last holiday season. Even me, a typical Chinese who loves to save rather than spend, nearly exhausted my purse.

However, it doesn't mean that I and other shoppers have full confidence on the economy, instead, I feel exactly the opposite. That's why I have spent most of my money on  stocking up  clothing,  small appliances and  other stuffs I really need rather than luxuries,  so I don't need spend another cent on non-necessities until the next Christmas.

Most businesses fully realised this kind of thinking among the shoppers.  They also need  to  keep themselves alive in 2009,so there was also an urgency for them,  that they need to convert stocks to cash as soon as possible before the recession hits them hard.

It's kind of a win win situation, both shoppers got what they want in the holiday.  Actually I'm now starting to think that recession isn't that bad as I first thought - reduced price on food, oil ... nearly every thing, aren't those what we wanted a year ago? This sounds more like greedy businessmen's recession, rather than the one for the general public.

For those who are likely lost their jobs in the new year (National predicts that will be about extra 4% of the work force), a comprehensive and working social safety net is where their confidence lays.People know the state will help them if they found themselves in trouble, so when come to spending, they were less hesitated to open up the purse.

However, I do like to talk about it a bit. My original post was trying to make fun out of  this "hurt feelings" phenomena to make the topic looks less serious -  as I do in pretty much every political issue. I did express a bit of my opinion but it was quite blur and was largely undetected by translators.

By publishing that post, I hoped that  my fellow countrymen can have their own opinion on these four questions:

• Did those countries really hurt their feelings?
• Why more than 1/5 of the world are such "culprits"?
• Is there any country that has genuinely hurt their feelings not on the map?
• Or is there something wrong with that kind of diplomatic expression?

I don't mind how they would be positioned on the political spectrum, as long as they start to think themselves, not to just follow what's being said in People's Daily or Global Times, then I'm happy.

It wasn't just a pointless internet research to kill some time, I got many previously unknown facts to me out of it. The biggest "feeling hurter" of Chinese people's feelings for the last century, which is Russia in my opinion, despite the fact that it has accommodated the Dalai Lama's visits before, was not on the map. The phrase was never used on Russia even in the worst times between the two countries.

Instead, it's the countries like Nauru or St Lucia, which most ordinary Chinese would have great difficulty of finding them on a world map that have hurt the "Chinese people's feelings".

It was also discovered that meet the Dalai Lama does not necessarily "hurt Chinese People's feelings". It is highly circumstantial - Sarkozy suffered a storm of Chinese criticisms for having a conversation with the Dalai Lama; but the Polish president did that too, and hosted the Sarkozy - Dalai Lama meeting on Polish soil, and yet still got away with it.

Compare with that, Iceland and Jordan, hurt Chinese people's feeling by allowing the visit of former vice president of Republic of China Lien Chan in the late 90s. Needless to say, he later turned out to be an "old and great friend" of Hu's.

The reflections of my findings I gathered from China-related blogsphere were surprisingly diverse - as long as my fellow countrymen start to think themselves rather than just follow what's being said in the People's Daily or the Global Times, then I'm happy that my effort is worth something.

Most people seem to agree with me on the fact that the vast majority of the "hurt feelings" incidents happened after 1970s is as the result of China opening up itself to the world  - the famous economic reform（改革开放）started in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping.

However, some attributed that fact to Mao's death in 1976, suggesting that his departure left Chinese people's feelings unprotected and vulnerable to the outside world, and the economic reform has severely undermined the interests of ordinary Chinese people.

Some Chinese netizens were equally surprised as myself to discover that countries like Australia, South Korea or Russia were not the map. Equally, other people were surprised to find countries like Albania ("the only shining beckon of communism in the sea of Soviet revisionism/Capitalist Europe? [I'm not quite sure]") in the list. What do these facts mean is up to their own interpretation.

It also raised discussions about the phrase "hurt Chinese people's feelings" itself. I always regarded it as a very absurd and childish thing to say on the diplomatic stage.  Countries don't hurt each other's feelings - they speak with 'carrot and stick'(at least for now). You don't say somebody hurts your feelings when he attacked you
with a stick, you either fight back (... well, if you are powerful enough) or just get over with it.  Put yourself in a 'weak' position and make yourself sounds like the "justified" side does not do anything good but only fuels unhealthy hate and revenge thoughts among the general public as people discover that crying for "hurt feelings" won't solve anything.

And even worse, repeated use of the phrase diminishes the power of the "real" feelings of the Chinese people. The value of Chinese people's feelings deflates every time the phrase is being used - it looks less important in the foreign eyes as the feelings can be "hurt" repeatedly with no apparent consequences.

There are people who do feel that their feelings have been genuinely hurt by the countries I listed, and made a good use of my map by keeping it for future "revenge".

However, for most of the Chinese who remain apolitical for most of the their life, the expression is just something demonstrating the total
disconnect between the State's affairs and real people's life. What's the point to care who's been hurting me lately? I don't run the country, and I never had a say on anything even regarding of my own feelings.

What do you think? Any different thoughts? I would love to hear it from you.

Here's how I take this issue - just consider the following questions:

1. Which one is more dangerous for driver and other road users -  hanging in the middle of the road waiting to turn right, or turn left?
2. Which one is expected to take more time to complete? Or let's put it in another way, which one is likely to hold up the traffic?

I think the whole debate is a no brainer. I just don't understand why so many people out there find this rule "confusing" - what part of the "give way to your right" is too hard for them to understand? If they don't understand traffic codes, who let them pass the tests?

Or those people just want to take less attention while driving?  As I understand, this right hand give way rule does  require extra caution from drivers - check whether there is any cars there waiting to turn right, and check mirrors to see if there's any traffic on inner lanes.

But paying your full attention to the road isn't what you are suppose to do while driving?

I think this rule is a classic case of kiwi ingenuity - solve right turn problem with one simple rule.  The real problem is not the rule, is the drivers we have on the road.

However, thanks to Wikipedia and university library, people like me can get a chance to browse through the subject.

I personally think logic is an extremely useful subject as it can be applied to nearly every aspect of real life. If you can keep yourself as a rational and clear thinker, which means to know at least the most common type of fallacies,  the world is suddenly a totally different place through your eyes - you realise that fallacies that are designed to trick you to buy products or vote for a party are just everywhere. Now you sort of understand the lack of education on logic among the general public, otherwise nobody can sell anything.

I was discussing about common logic fallacies with my friend. We were discussing fallacies in the last election, below is just a summary of our ideas in the conversations, they are quite interesting, but may not be necessarily right - and I just sort of copy and pasted from the chat, changed a bit, but this entry my not look like a blog, I apologise for that.

Appeal to fear is the most common type of fallacy politicians like to use. Fear, for us mankind, is a very natural instinct, any fear card played by politicians are usually quite useful, especially for the minor parties.

A classic example of this is Winston Peters - fear of immigration, particularly appealing to mid-aged and senior voters. Proven to be successful in last few elections - not so well to neutralise the bad publicity as the result of his corruption scandals in the last election.

Another not so well known fear card player is Rodney Hide - I'm not sure whether I judged him right or not, but he has a tendency of manipulate public's fear of crime.

But Helen Clark is the worst player of fear I've ever seen - her attack on the credibility of John Key has proven to be disastrous. She just got no skills on how to logically trick the general public - still remember the "two national party guy" ad? It basically means, "John Key is untrustworthy, so Helen Clark must be trustworthy" - a classic example of play on a combination of fear and false dilemma.

So how about National Party? They just didn't need to do anything as they were already on the road to victory. However, you can still trace some of their plays ...

• "a change for a brighter future" - does a change really necessarily mean a "brighter future"? This statement looked more real after Obama's victory, apart from people like to follow the majority in America for a "change" , why?
• "communism by stealth" - not a election slogan, but good a mention as it is a classic example of name calling -  how much you know about communism, apart from USSR? Is it necessarily bad?

Green party is quite clever compare to others. Instead of manipulate your fear, they appeal to your emotion. Still remember their ad? A cute kid looks like she's about to cry, because you didn't vote for Green.

"Good for our children" is a fairly common type fallacy used widely by politicians,even the Wikipedia got an article on it. If you are a The Simpsons fan, Remember Helen Lovejoy's gag? "Won't somebody please think of the children!"

It's also because I can never forget and forgive the massive incompetence of the last National Government and how that was ended nearly in tragedy.

Helen Clark and the Labour Party have done a good job in last nine years. There were downsides and unpopular movements, but if you look back, most of them were from Green politics.

I personally admired Helen Clark's strong leadership, a courage to do what's best to the country, not what electorates want. History will prove this.

She was also a great ambassador of New Zealand, she won respect for herself and New Zealand when she said no to invasion in Iraq. In China, many of my friends admired New Zealand's dignity, impartiality and selflessness as Clark first tipped the milk scandal in China.

And I'm glad to have her as my local MP for the last 27 years. She fought tirelessly for the benefit of the local community, and helped me during my hard time.

There was no doubt that National is on the road to form next government, but as I marked in my twitter, no matter who wins, it will sure be a sad turning point of New Zealand politics. As New Zealand First gradually fades away, New Zealand departed from centrist route, becoming vulnerable to irresponsible acts done by either extreme right wing like ACT or extreme left represented by Greens.

I consider myself pretty centred so it was a hard choice for me.  But when I looked at the current economic crisis, I had to come to the conclusion that John Key might be a better choice - there's no doubt that bankers and capitalists like John Key are responsible for the current world economic crisis, so he should know how to manage New Zealand through it. Why? Arsonists are usually the best fire-fighters, because only they know where the fire started.

It must be warned that John Key needs to be strong enough to resist temptations from old guards inside the National Party. I don't know much about John Key, but most of us know fairly well about old faces like Bill English, a guy like him should never be left in charge of anything alone.

John Key was also given a mandate to keep National as a centrist party and not influenced by 5 ACT MPs especially Roger Douglas otherwise he risks to become a one term PM.

Finally, just a condolence to Labour party and last nine years, it has been good nine years. Brooke Fraser, arithmetics(although it is actually a Christian song):

Nah that's just joking, the real note is ...

While most of the contents in this blog are about politics, I actually prefer to remain as apolitical as possible in my real life. That's one of the reasons why I did not promote my blogs to my friends.

The reason's quite simple. I've always found very difficult to have any real discussion or debate on political issues with some people, especially my fellow countrymen. If you oppose their views, the trend is, they will try to win the debate by putting all sorts of labels on you. In that way they would feel like they are on the moral high ground, or what we Chinese call Ah Q - well in fact, I feel quite sorry for them.

But the even sadder thing is, some searches have found that personal ideology to overrules facts is more like a fact of life, and we may just have to live with them.

So I'll still remain as apolitical as possible in my life.

New Zealanders are always proud of their progressive, sometimes radical social values. They are part of our nation's identity. We cannot compete in economy with countries like USA, but we can lead the world in social issues.

We did not seek a balance between rugby matches and our value, we also shouldn't do like what Mr Key said, "a balance between environment and economic development". Mr Key also should not be hesitate to answer the question on the 1981 Springboks tour, I agree the past has no value in order to help us solve our current issues, but Mr Key's personal values are  important though, for me, to assess whether he's the right man. His hesitation to answer that question, shows me that he got no social value at all - that was the defining moment of our country and yet you have no opinion on that?

For that reason, National is definitely off my list for now - if we lose our identity, New Zealand will no longer be New Zealand.

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In terms of the debate itself, both did fine. But clearly John Key is more energic and won the debate. After 9 years of Helen Clark, you can even tell what she's going to say before she actually says it.

And it's quite weird that John Key didn't mention the phrase "national party" a lot in the debate ...probably only once or twice.

Nats need money to fund their tax cut,  so they slashed the government contribution and reduced employer contribution into the fund; some people praised for that as well.

But wait a minute  -  for us, especially ones who joined the KiwiSaver, isn't this just politicians play your money around? give you a $1,000 tax cut, and take out $1,000 government contribution from your KiwiSaver?

Em....

But melamine is almost insolvent to water. If it was added in the raw milk stage, it is hard to believe that San Lu does not have any knowledge on it, as the precipitation will almost occur in the milk.

San Lu, the producer has a motive to add melamine to the milk in the production stage because it gives the end product a false high protein reading. But this possibility is not publicly investigated at the moment.

Just some facts you may be interested to know ...

• Melamine was later found in varies milk powder products, including some reputable Chinese brand.
• However, San Lu's product got an extremely high reading (2000+ mg/kg), compare with 100 or less mg/kg in other products)
• Only one type of  San Lu milk powder product was found to be "contaminated".  It is the cheapest of its type in the market.
• San Lu products were granted exemption from state quality surveillance inspection because of its "excellent performance".

So did San Lu or dairy farmers deliberately added melamine into the milk powder? In my opinion, the short answer is yes, with a long answer "no". San Lu, like nearly everybody else, adds bit of high tech stuff like melamine into their products. But there's no need to boost protein % by add 2000+ mg/kg melamine, so something must gone wrong in the process, which probably San Lu's QCs have no knowledge of.