Monday, January 28, 2008

Sign the anti smacking petition

The "anti smacking bill", or repeal of section 59 last year has lead to a petition for a referendum.
The referendum has 280,000 signatures and needs 20000 more for a referendum to be held at this years election at the end of 2008.

Give Sue Bradford, Helen Clark and her mates a slap in the face!!

Download and sign the petition here

C Political Animal 2008

Victim of Electoral Finance Act forced to shut down website

The first publicized internet victim of the Electoral Finance Act has finally come to light.

21 one year old Andrew Moore has had to take his website down at Don't Vote Labour because the Electoral Commission threatened him with legal action should he not do so.

Now those doubters who didn't believe this would happen and those that voted for the Act , should hang their heads in shame because an individual's freedom of speech has clearly been denied here.

Andrew is right. You shouldn't vote for Labour, The Greens, NZ First, Jim Anderton and the others who supported this piece of Stalinist filth and Andrew and people like myself should be allowed to freely say so.

Please support Andrew and others in the fight for freedom of speech. Go to his website here:

Andrew's Site

The message below replaces the previous content on Andrews site but he has a forum there.




Related Political Animal reading


Electoral Finance Bill Vote
NZ losses democratic freedom
Mike Moore turns the knife
List of MPs who voted for Act
Cartoon and comment
Auckland Protest against EFB
The purpose of the Bill is clear


C Political Animal 2008

Second stab at Burger Fuel denied

Chart for Burger Fuel Worldwide Limited O (BFW.NZ)

Trading in Burger Fuel shares has been spasmodic at best, since listing on the NZAX
on July 17 2007. They hit a low of 29c earlier this year.



The Burger Fuel(BFW) chart tells a horrible story.

Down 18% today to NZ 42 cents and testing its all time low of 29c.

No operating news yet but sales and profit figures will be coming up in the next month or so.

Some news just at the end of last year though that a Wellington Burger Fuel store was extensively damaged. That would take out a fair amount of revenue.

My efforts to get BF shares have again come to a greasy end.

I tried to put a bid in today at 25 c but was refused by ASB Securities because "it was too low"

The "5% rule" applies, where you cant bid below 5% of what the last sell price was.

That is, even though a bid of 29c was on a buy order a few weeks back and the last sell was above 60c the buy order was allowed to be placed.

The ASB broker told me "someone at the NZX put it through".

I still cant figure out how I'm supposed to get my bid in, for what I think the company is worth, in such an illiquid stock if I'm not allowed to put my bid in how I see fit.

Time may take care of the share price though.


Related reading on the Share Investor Blog

NZX share trades with strings attached
Don't buy Burger Fuel, yet
Burger Fuel: Inside info?
Burger Fool IPO: Burger Fool?
Exclusive Interview with Burger Fuel's Josef Roberts
Burger Fuel's Daytime drama
Burger Fuel share price out of gas
Beefing up store numbers
Director explains share price drop
Burger Fuel slims down in value
Burger Fuel and Coke
Marketing Burger Fuel's future
Pumpkin Patch VS Burger Fuel
Burger Fuel results and commentary


C Share Investor 2008

What happened to risk?

What happened to risk?

A question no doubt in some of my readers minds.

In relation to financial markets, investing and business it seems to be an archaic concept only seen as a entry in the Oxford dictionary.

The market turmoil that started with the Sub Prime fallout and associated credit crunch, several months ago, has highlighted what has been going on for many years, those that take risks in business and investing no longer seem to suffer consequences when the risk that they took doesn't quite give the expected payoff.

After global State bailouts of banks with "liquidity" problems and talk of sub prime borrowers being bailed out or their bad decisions to buy houses they could ill afford, the latest avoidance of risk involves the insurance companies that insured sub prime bonds against collapse.

For goodness sake you want to remove risk from insurance?

Let me borrow and modify a classic Tom Cruise flick, insurance is risky business!! Please don't sue me Tom.

The talk of a bailout last week led to US markets doing a Lazarus and finishing up by around 2.5%.

It ain't a positive investors, its a pure unadulterated negative.

The investing world isn't the only place risk and consequences has been removed from life, Governments worldwide have been trying to do this for years.

In New Zealand Helen Clark, and her merry bunch of Labour Party socialist risk aversionists have recently passed a law to allow citizens to easily declare bankruptcy and come out of it without paying back debtors. This is linked to student loans that don't attract interest and therefore students have no incentive to pay them back.

All risk taken and no consequences for that risk.

Over the last 9 years Aunty Helen has bubbled wrapped an entire nation so much so that the risk that she talked about when she gave a eulogy at Sir Edmund Hillary's Funeral has almost been completely removed.

When we remove consequences for risk though, we increase the risk that mistakes will continue to occur.

Those in the financial industry being bailed out, institutionally and individually are simply going to continue to do what they have done if there are no brakes on their behaviour.

The looming danger is ironically low interest rates, what led us into the whole sub prime fallout and reckless borrowing and lending in the first place.

Record low rates after 9-11 led to a frenzy of cheap credit and with similar low rates coming down the pipeline one doesn't have to be a Warren Buffett to figure out that this is not such a good thing at all.



Related Political Animal Blog Reading

Labour's Socialist Peril


Related Share Investor Blog Reading

Leaders must come clean over losses
Credit Crunch a blessing in disguise
Global Credit Squeeze: There is no free lunch


C Share Investor & Political Animal 2008