Thank you Michael Cullen for buying back the trains! Since my youth I have always dreamed of owning a train set. You have finally fulfilled my dream, although I am only one owner out of 4.2 million I relish the idea that I own one four millionth of the rail system of NZ.
In 1993 NZ sold the rails to Fay Richwhite and American owned company Wisconsin Rail. They didn’t do anything with it for 15 years, and now we’re at a stage where NZ’s rail infrastructure is crumbling. Free market capitalism in this case did not work. This is not surprising since there are only four million people dispersed over a huge geographical area.
In many ways New Zealand resembles the Island of Sodor. In the third book of Thomas the Tank Engine, Sodor’s railways were nationalised! Wikipedia describes the Fat Controller as:
“In charge of all the engines on Sodor and seemingly has a great deal of say over other vehicles. As a young man, he learnt to drive in Elizabeth, the vintage Sentinel lorry.
He has overseen the construction of a number of lines and has been involved with the opening of several tourist attractions on Sodor.”
This is much the same as Michael Cullen’s journey to the helm of NZ’s economy. He learnt to drive the economy under Roger Douglas in the late 80’s and has overseen the government buying back many other state assets since 1999, prudently managing the engines to get the job done.
Thomas had his troubles, but he always came through with the sound advice of the Fat Controller. In fact Thomas won the Fat Controller’s respect by saving him and James in one of the first books. Maybe this leap of faith on Cullen’s behalf – buying back the rails – could save Labour’s electoral bacon. This could be seen as building steam up to this years election. It is too bad that the Fat Controller waited this late in the game to play the train card.
Week on the Blogs
Jackson wrote some self sexing Salient in-jokes in a post about production night at the Salient office. He also did a post on McCain being asked a question featuring the word cunt.
Conrad got all deep and posted a cool monologue from the movie ‘Network’. It was supposed to make you think and shit. He found a cool rap about The Economist magazine which made him wet, and made a post about Barrack Obama, with a title that showed his black sense of humour.
Comment of the week
Superior Mind on Obama slips the Chain
“Hillary scares me. She looks like her skull is trying to leap out of her face and bite someone.”