Helping To Stop Kiwi Rail Line Closures

I designed this Facebook banner yesterday for "Grow Kiwi Rail". Check out their Facebook page - it is worth a look. This one was mainly my own effort, but it was based on designs that I did with my daughter Monique for a series of protest street posters. Monique is a graphic designer in Wellington and I just happened to be visiting her when I got the call to help out.

In NZ, the Government runs the railways ( Kiwi Rail) - albeit reluctantly. They have let the rolling stock and branch lines become so run down that they are becoming more and more uneconomic. Consequently the roads are clogging up with commercial freight that is breaking up the road surface. Where I live in Northland this means logging trucks are a everyday road hazard. These trucks are moving huge volumes of unprocessed logs to North Port (near Whangarei) - heading for China. It then gets manufactured into stuff that gets re-exported back here as unemployment and NZ manufacturing factories closing down. If that sounds illogical, it is. But it makes plenty of short term dollars for the powerful trading elite, loggers and truckies who slave over 60 hours a week to pay their bills.

I am happy to help out anyone who fights against this. The campaign will be a long haul! Good luck to them. More cartoons about this to come.

If The Hat Fits....

I once thought that New Zealand governments were relatively free of corruption, but no longer. Our country now seems to be a "Land Of The Long Murky White Cloud" where our Prime Minister, John Key, is being put under pressure to reveal what he knows about  New Zealand being called a tax haven and his possible connection to unethical practices.

This is because thousands of hacked files, from the Panama company Mossack Fonseca, are exposing shady rich listers and even some international leaders as corrupt tax avoiders and identifying where their millions of dollars are hiding. I heard John Key today denying any involvement in such a thing and I have decided to take him at his word. However, he did not seem as certain about his blind trust funds and where they were invested. On the surface this appears quite reasonable because blind trusts are supposed to make sure his role as Prime Minister is not compromised by any financial investments he might have.

In my opinion, just because they are legal, it does not make blind trusts morally ok. I think we should be able to see all the businesses and investments owned by Members of Parliament to make sure they are financially squeaky 'clean' when making decisions that affect us all - hence another John  Key Cartoon from my pen (which is a modified version of a recently posted cartoon). As I looked at Key's body language and heard his voice when he was being interviewed, I suspected that he knows a lot more than he says he does. Time will tell.

A Drop In The Bucket

Guess what the minimum wage is going up fifty cents! Our Prime Minister John Key has had a pay increase in the meantime to over the annual income for many welfare beneficiaries income for a whole year. Time for a living wage instead of $15.25 to over $18 per hour. That would create unemployment I can hear neo-liberal  ideologs say. Not so; in my opinion it would grow the economy because poor people would spend it all on survival and motivate employers to be more efficient and automate. Automation spurs growth by providing more high tech business opportunities and in a small country like NZ we need technological advancement to drive a growing economy less reliant on low skilled labour doing unpopular and unhealthy menial work.

Rough Traveling In Northland

Huge amounts of unprocessed timber is heading for China and being being trucked out on congested roads in Northland NZ and yet the railway system is being run down and closed. Crazy

26 Million Dollars Later

Valentines Day

Laptop Lover finds a way - an old animation of mine that I have refreshed and added to. If you cannot play this file, then go to You Tube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-U8LKObLfw

Starting Over

There are times lately when I tire from looking at a glittering screen. That is when I pick up my pencil, prepare my dip pen and unscrew the cap on the India Ink bottle. After a scratchy patch of drawing and inking, I can now open up my new acquisition - a Plano Tackle Box. It holds most of my watercolour gear and I bought it recently to ease the clutter on my drawing desk.

This purchase look some time while I wrestled with what brand to buy. My selfish instincts yelled out "Hey, go get a Chinese one from the Warehouse for $15!" (The Warehouse is the NZ equivalent of Walmart). Then my altruistic side said "Come on, buy an American made one ($40) from a small hunting and fishing shop in Whangarei - they need the money and NZ needs American manufacturers to prosper so that they, and their workers in the USA, can buy our products and bankroll their Government who helps keep us out of the clutches of foreign invaders. Remember also, they keep the Internet open etc as well."

For a change, my better side won and I bought a tackle box made by Plano that was manufactured in the USA. I wonder how long they will keep doing so as the USA continues de-industrialize and send almost all their manufacturing industries overseas? Don't Americans know that without a manufacturing base a country eventually becomes an indebted and a militarily toothless shadow of its former self?

If any of you reading this are living in the USA - please vote for a President, Congress and Senate that is determined to rebuild your country to the primacy it once possessed. Overlook your selfish side and spend your money buying manufactured goods made in your homeland. Tell your politicians to shape up and stop being ripped off by greedy businesses who freeload by paying hardly any tax in the USA and exploit mistreated workers abroad who are enslaved by ruthless elites and manipulating governments that pile up huge reserves of your money by unfair trading - and spend it on building up their own military power and American assets.

That is enough proselytizing for now, time to go fishing in my Plano tackle box for ink, paint and pencils - and get away from this screen!

Happy New Year!!