In the traditional FPP (First-past-the-Post) system, the candidate receiving the most votes is elected.  And even though most electorate candidates are chosen by the party heirarchy, at least the voters in the electorate can chose between them.  Poorly performing MPs can be voted right out of parliament, and they face the vote every three years.

Unlike NZ, Britain retains the traditional system.  A recent referendum overwhelmingly rejected a form of proportional representation called the Alternative Vote, which is similar to the STV (Single Transferable Vote) system used in Australia.  Both systems require voters to rank candidates in order of preference, and if no candidate scores more than 50% of the vote, a formula is applied counting up all the preferential votes.  The result can be the election of candidate who was the first choice of very few voters, but the most popular second choice.  In other words, nobody gets what they wanted.

NZ’s MMP system at least does not have that drawback.  Each voter votes twice – one vote for the member for his or her electorate, and one party vote.  The elected members representing each constituency are still chosen by FPP according to the electorate votes, so the one with the most votes wins.  ”Proportional” representation is supposedly achieved by having list MPs.  A party that wins no electorate seats must achieve at least 5% of the overall party vote before it has any MPs in parliament.  The total number of  MPs for each party in parliament (electoral plus list MPs) is proportional to the party’s share of the overall “party vote”.  So MMP has another advantage – it is not vulnerable to gerrymandering.

But it does have other drawbacks.

Any party with 5% or more of the overall party vote will have 5% or more of the MPs in parliament.  Thus, small parties that may possibly never gain an electoral seat in parliament can be represented there by one or more list MPs.  Gee, that sounds fair.  Bingo – proportional representation!

Except that it is not really proportional.  The result of MMP is a much higher likelihood of coalition government, in which no major party gains a clear majority and so must go into coalition with one or more other parties in order to form a government.  Because they wish to maintain public perception of their points of difference, the major mainstream parties do not form coalitions with each other.  Inevitably, the coalitions are formed with one main party and one or more minor ones.  And that is why the representation of the minor party is in fact disproportionate.  A minor party in coalition with a major one has a proportional share of the total seats, but much more that a proportional voice in parliament – it has real power.  Because the price it demands for of going into coalition is the promise of the major partner to promote and vote for an agreed set of its policies or private member’s bills.  It is, remember, a minor party.  If  only 5% of voters have given it their party vote, there is no assurance that the 95% of those who did not do so actually accept its policies.  Yet with this arrangement, some of them will become law.  The tail ends up wagging the dog – a recipe for bad law and bad government.

It has another major drawback.  List MPs are never directly elected by the voters – the public has no opportunity to chose who is in an who is out.  Each party creates its own list of potential list MPs, in order of party preference.  When all the party votes are counted and the numbers allocated to each successful party, the seats are allocated strictly in party list order.   And naturally the parties tend to stack the top order of the list with MPs they want to retain, even if the public rejects them.  The top of the order is usually occupied by senior electorate MPs, to keep their positions safe regardless of what the voters might prefer.  In effect, MPs at the top of the list can almost never be voted out.  That can hardly be called democracy.  MMP should be scrapped – it is neither truly proportional nor truly democratic.

The NZ Herald thinks otherwise.  After the British result, and in anticipation of the forthcoming NZ referendum on the future of MMP, the Herald has published an editorial (see Appendix) calling for the survival of MMP.  The Herald firmly believes it is a Good Thing, giving the voters of NZ the government they want.  The Herald article even says that “tails have not wagged dogs”.  I disagree, firmly.

Were it not for MMP, NZ First, the Greens, the Maori Party and ACT either would never have been represented in parliament or would have had only a couple of seats.  Under the cosy coalition arrangements with MMP, this is the reality:

• In coalition with Labour, NZ First’s Winston Peters scored the plum role of Minister of Foreign Affairs.  Hardly the choice of the NZ voter!
• In coalition with Labour, the Green’s Sue Bradford rammed through the most hated legislation in NZ history, the unnecessary and totally ineffective anti-smacking bill that has had zero effect on child abuse.
• In coalition with National and against the wishes of almost everybody, the Maori Party has overturned the Foreshore and Seabed act

God knows what will happen if ACT under Brash forms a coalition with National after the forthcoming elections.

Appendix – the Herald Editorial:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10724716

There is something very wrong with our priorities.

The world is reeling from, and must deal with, natural and man-made horrors.  Natural ones like the Christchurch and Japanese earthquakes, or tropical cyclones.

Man-made ones like the western world’s EU and UN-orchestrated CAGW-driven self-destruction and Libyan carnage.   And the consequences of the  stupidity of installing  nuclear power plants that rely on power to to run cooling systems that prevent fires, meltdowns and widespread radioactive contamination after an emergency shutdown.  Without considering that an emergency capable of forcing a shutdown can also knock out power supplies.  Especially in an earthquake and tsunami-prone location like Fukushima.

Rightly, these horrors are reported.  They deserve our concern.

In the middle of all this, I see a report of the views of an English TV producer given wide publicity.  Brian True-May is the producer of  the much-loved “Midsomer Murders”.  According to him, the ITV1 detective drama is “the last bastion of Englishness” and he asserts that ethnic minorities have no place in English villages.  That, of course, is ammunition for the politically correct brigade, who campaign actively to have every British programme portray minorities.

This is the “issue”, you see.  The programme has run for 14 series and has featured only one ethnic minority character!  And we are told that ITV is in “urgent discussions” about the lack of diversity in the programme.

That view is hotly disputed by the novelist Anthony Horowitz, as reported in the Telegraph: http://t.co/KlK8Ohw.  Horowitz wrote the first episodes of the drama and came up with the title.  As Horowitz notes:

“Brian True-May’s comments were inappropriate and should not have been made, but in our over-sensitive society there is this silly reaction to anything we say that involves ethnicity or religion.

Brian True-May’s comments were clearly inappropriate because race is an irrelevance here. The point about Midsomer Murders is that, in a village in Midsomer, all outsiders are equally unwelcome whatever their colour. If your family has lived here for 300 years, they’re likely to be white. That’s quite obvious.

“It was a foolish observation to make because colour is not an issue.”

The truth is, there are very few non-white people living in the Midsomer villages.  According to the landlord of the The Six Bells in Warborough, Oxon, pub that features so often in the series, there is only one black man in the village,  Who, by the way, drinks at the pub.  The series depicts the villages as they are.  Does that make it racist?  Is “The fresh Prince of Beverly Hills” racist?  Is “The Cosby Show” racist?

Of course not – none of them are.  So why bother to float achingly politically correct and factually incorrect ideas?  Well. there’s a guaranteed audience – a public that slavishly laps up celebrity gossip, and thirsts for controversy and sensational news.  Were it not for that demand, and the existence of media to satisfy it, ideas like that would float like lead balloons.

There is quite enough really sensational and controversial news to report. There are sufficient matters of real importance to discuss.

Like me, a bloke called Eric Worrall comments on journalists’ blogs from time to time.  He has an interesting explanation for why people concentrate on trivia, and are so ready to believe rubbish like this accusation of racism.  Decadence is what he calls it.  He notes that decadent societies focus on the inconsequential and lose sight of what is really important.

That’s probably the most accurate definition of decadence that I have ever seen.

On Tuesday 8 March 2011, Justice Joseph Williams sentenced Rikki Leigh Scott Ngatai-Check, 23, to life imprisonment, with a minimum non-parole period of 17 years, for kicking a two-year old toddler to death for wetting his pants.  Seventeen years before he can even apply for parole.  That’s pretty strong these days, when our penal systems are organised on the precept that all criminals are basically good guys, who need only TLC and rehabilitation to set them right, in spite of our appalling rate of criminal recidivism.

The sentence is deservedly strong.  Here is the shocking sequence of events, transcribed from the NZ Herald report:

The murderer was in charge of the little boy, who slept on the couch while Ngatai-Check spotted cannabis with a friend.  The boy woke up wet.

Ngatai-Check spun the child around, slamming him into a coffee table.  The impact broke the child’s ribs, causing internal bleeding.  The caring killer took the wounded boy to the toilet and left him there, while he went to the bedroom to play video games.

Five or ten minutes later, the boy came into the bedroom, trailing toilet paper.  Ngatai-Check sat up and planted a roundhouse style kick in the boy’s stomach, tearing internal tissue.  Then he kicked him again, ramming him against the wardrobe door.  This time the impact split the boy’s pancreas.

Ngatai-Check then took the boy to hospital, where he died.

One might expect the judge’s words to be at least as strong as the sentence.  One would be wrong.  This is what Justice Joseph Williams said:

“You did a monstrous thing, but I do not think you are a monster.  No one says you intended to kill Karl”.

Noting that Ngatai-Check had no previous history of violent behaviour, the judge said the stress of his hidden relationship was possibly made worse on the day because “you probably didn’t want baby Karl dumped on you again and just wanted to chill out”.  Moreover, Justice Williams said beatings from a stepfather when he was young had taught Ngatai-Check that children should “harden up”.  The judge noted further that in later years Ngatai-Check had been in the shadows of the Wanganui drug and gang scene, which normalised brutality. There, “violence is not just OK, it is downright cool”.

But the judge said there were “sadly too many cases like this”, in which adults abused the trust of vulnerable children – some much worse than Ngatai-Check’s.  He also stressed that the mandatory 17-year non-parole period was introduced by Parliament as a reminder that “these little people are at our mercy. We can so easily kill them”.

In NZ, murder means unlawful deliberate homicide.  Intent must be established to the satisfaction of the jury for a murder conviction to be obtained.  Yet here we have a sentencing judge who states that the killer, poor little Rikki Ngatai-Check, did not intend the killing, that he is a victim of his upbringing and gang lifestyle, wanted nothing more sinister than to chill out, and is receiving the heavy sentence only because an act of parliament made it mandatory!

What on earth is the judge thinking of?  All I can offer is a very astute quote from a Daily Telegraph blog posting by a British journalist, James Delingpole:

“We no longer understand or value our civilisation; indeed many of us feel rather embarrassed about it. We have been taught to view all our great historical achievements through a filter of post-colonial guilt; we have learned the weasel art of cultural relativism where, in their own special way, cultures that practise female circumcision and bury homosexuals under walls are just as vibrant, valid and meaningful as the one that gave us Michelangelo, penicillin and the splitting of the atom; we’ve been persuaded that elitism and authority are undesirable”.

Judges like Williams may be part of the reason that Parliament found it necessary to impose a seventeen-year minimum parole period for child-murderers.  I am sad that it was necessary, but glad they did so.  Frankly, I wish they would do so for all murders.

It is time to think carefully about the future of coal and oil-fired power stations in the NZ power-supply portfolio.   New Zealand has a lot of choices for power generation, renewable and non-renewable.  The renewables we have include hydro, geothermal and even the most expensive and unreliable of all renewable sources, wind.  We also have coal and gas-fired thermal stations.

We need them all.  Our capacity can be crippled by earthquakes at any time, and we would be foolish indeed not to  be prepared.

2503 MW of NZ’s electric power capacity is provided by dams built along the Southern Alps, which exist because of the great alpine fault in the South Island.  They provide reliable, renewable power, but they are at risk if (when) the really big earthquake strikes.  The recent Christchurch earthquake tragedy that has befallen New Zealand is a reminder of what is just around the corner, and when that happens a large proportion of our power supply will be severely compromised, if not destroyed.

NZ’s biggest thermal plant, with a capacity of 1448 MW, is at Huntly in the North Island.   It is run by Genesis Energy.  Here is the information from Genesis:

http://www.genesisenergy.co.nz/genesis/index.cfm?0E16177E-E313-418B-F397-3021BCE6E1EF

And here is the Wikipedia information about the site:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H…

According to the Wikipedia entry, there are plans to emasculate the Huntly facility, shutting down much of its capability and reducing it to a backup role.  The entry says:

“The plant, as one of the biggest carbon dioxide greenhouse gas generators of the country, contributing over half of New Zealand’s emissions of greenhouse gases from electricity generation, has repeatedly drawn the ire of environmentalists and has been the focus of associated protests. A 2006 government report outlining future anti-climate change and energy policies was seen by the operator as a sign that the plant might have to be closed by 2015 under these plans, with around 10 years of design life still remaining.

Resource consents to operate the four coal fired units expire in 2013.  Due to increasing costs of coal, equipment reaching its design life and costs due to the emissions trading scheme, operation of the four steam units is expected to be phased out, with their role declining to dry year, reserve generation. One of the four coal fired units will be taken out of service in 2012, and a second in 2015.”

I don’t know how much of what the Wikipedia article says about the capacity reduction is true.  I hope it is not, and that the plant will continue to operate.  It is one thing to aim to maximise power generation from renewable sources, especially reliable and high-producing ones like hydroelectric and geothermal sources.

Relying totally on renewable energy resources is quite another matter, especially when they are at risk.  And given our position on the Pacific rim of fire, those resources certainly are at risk.  More than most countries, we need considerable redundancy and diversity of power supply.  Failure to build more fuelled thermal power plants would be as foolish as failing to to take advantage of our hydroelectric and geothermal opportunities.  Removal of existing thermal capacity years before the end of its design life would be more than foolish.

It would be criminally stupid.

There are some unbelievable comments in made in the “New Zealand Herald” about the recent tragic spate of fatal accidents involving bicycles and motor vehicles.  Some suggest licensing and WOFs for bicycles, as if that would make cycling less hazardous!   Another comment says there is  ”no space for cyclists on the road – they need their own lane they are the biggest hazard, they put themselves in a lot of danger by being on the road.”  The cyclists didn’t die on motorways that are restricted to motorised traffic – they were killed on ordinary roads.

Sadly, the comments above were representative of the tone of a significant proportion of the comments about the Herlad reports.  Comments that illustrate what is wrong with the attitude of too many NZ motorists.

One comment from a man named Rhys has it right – NZ should use the Dutch approach.

The Dutch approach is twofold – it addresses the safety of the roads, and it addresses the attitudes and behaviour of motorists.   The Netherlands invests heavily in bike lanes to reduce the likelihood of accidents.  Real bike lanes – not a half-share of a footpath.  These run parallel to all major roads, and cross the countryside.

But of course, even in the Netherlands, not all roads have bike lanes.  Dutch road laws and behaviours are based on the premise that roads are for all users – pedestrians, cyclists and motor vehicles.  The only roads on which motor vehicles “rule” are motorways.  On all other roads, cyclists and pedestrians rule.  Motor vehicles use them as a convenience, not as an unfettered right.  The legal onus is on the motorist to avoid collisions with people and cyclists, without exception.

That does not mean that there are no road rules for cyclists.  Of course there are.  Cyclists can be prosecuted for dangerous behaviour or for failing to give way, and police will act when cyclists break the rules.  But being in the right does not prevent prosecution of a motorist who collides with a bicycle.  It is extremely rare for a motorist to be cleared after a collision with a bicycle.  If the motorist does not have incontrovertible proof that he/she could not have possibly avoided the accident, even when the cyclist was flagrantly in the wrong, the motorist will be found guilty, and the punishment is severe.  The same goes for accidents with pedestrians.  The result is that motorists are very careful of cyclists and pedestrians, very patient when cyclists are on the road (even two or three abreast), and very courteous toward pedestrians.

The Netherlands is the safest place in the world for a cyclist or pedestrian.  And traffic still flows, quite happily.

This story was reported in the Dominion Post, NZ Herald and in Stuff.co.nz.

The New Zealand Defence Force bought $590,000 worth of bullets for the army’s Steyr rifles, despite the manufacturer warning they were useless.  The stock of 5.56mm ball ammunition had worked well in the past, but when the manufacturer changed the alloy content, they could no longer be fired accurately because the bullets disintegrated as they came out of the barrel, the Dominion Post reported.

Army spokesman Kristian Dunne said the ammunition was bought for use on the Ardmore range, south of Auckland and their reduced range overcame the danger that a ricochet would fall outside the safety zone.

I don’t know about you, but the way I read that, the bullets are supposed to be safer on a short target range.  But because they disintegrate they are inaccurate.  Yet the army sold the 1,284,220 rounds of ammunition to Gun City in Christchurch for between $300,000 and $350,000, meaning a loss of around $240,000.  Gun City director David Tipple said he had sold a large quantity of the ammunition to a United States wholesaler and kept the rest.  I doubt that either Gun City or the US wholesaler intend to use the bullets as ornaments.

Defence Minister Wayne Mapp said the army’s decision to sell the ammunition was appropriate and the best way to minimise the cost to the taxpayer.

Someone please tell me that the NZ Army has not sold sub-standard, potentially dangerous ammunition to a dealer, to be sold on to public purchasers in NZ or overseas.  All for no better reason than to minimise the loss they would suffer as a result of incompetent purchasing.  Please please convince me that is not true.  Please convince me that the Dominion, NZ Herald and “Stuff” have been guilty of shoddy journalism and failures in sub-editing.

Because right now, I am disgusted with what the Dominion, Herald and “Stuff” reports appear to reveal about the army and the Minister of Defence.

References:

NZ Herald Article: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10634190

Stuff.co.nz article: http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/latest-news/3502207/Army-off-target-with-590-000-of-dud-bullets

Democracy is not working for Maori, according to the New Zealand Minister of Maori Affairs, Pita Sharples.  He says Maori will not be fairly represented in the Auckland super city.

New Zealand has separate Maori seats in parliament, which is something Sharples wants for the super city, and he now says democracy is failing Maori.  “There is a democratic process but it’s not working for Maori, they are outside of that system,” Sharples says.  He says the principle of one person one vote will not give Maori representation.

“Unless we find some ways for them to be more involved, that is user friendly to their culture, then we have to do something else and I believe seats for Maori is the answer,” Sharples says.

The principle of one person one vote gives every individual equal representation.  Not every racial group – every person, regardless of ethnic origin.  European countries have comparatively recently become democracies.  European societies evolved from a tribal system, in which everything belonged to the chief, the tribes were constantly at war, and no common man had individual representation.  The societies developed into feudal systems, in which everything belonged to the king or duke and his lords and knights, the kingdoms and fiefdoms were constantly at war, and no common man had individual representation.  Finally (and with much struggle) European societies became democracies.  Pre-European Maori society and culture was tribal, and the tribes were constantly at war.  Now New Zealand is a nation, not a collection of tribes or fiefdoms, and it is a democracy.  That democracy brings individual representation to all.

Maori culture, having declined for too long, is undergoing a renaissance within our democracy, and is flourishing.  So what’s this about democracy not being user friendly to Maori culture?  What does that mean, Pita?  Are you implying that Maori who, like you, have been through the NZ education system, are inherently incapable of understanding the political system, inherently incapable of benefiting from the representation they now have?  Isn’t it time to acknowledge that all can achieve and make their mark according to their abilities?  That all Maori people can aspire to academic distinction, or to become a Minister of the Crown?

But if you are right about democracy not suiting particular races, then let’s try it your way.  Let’s have a racist organisation.  Let’s have, say, separate seats for New Zealanders of European descent, and for New Zealanders of Chinese descent, and of Samoan, Tongan, ad nauseum descent.  Let’s have a racially divided proportional representation, with the interests of each racial group stridently represented by each bloc.  And decided by majority vote.

No?  You bet, no!  It would pit ethnic group against ethnic group, leading to hatred and conflict instead of acceptance and harmony.  Let’s have simple democracy instead.  It may not be ideal, but it’s the best we can hope for.

Like you, Pita, I have Maori and European ancestors.

References:

Pita Sharples on Democracy:  http://tvnz.co.nz/politics-news/sharples-says-democracy-not-working-maori-3428048

In 2009, 16 children died in New Zealand, killed by members of their own families.  Child Protection Studies chief executive Anthea Simcock said the figures for child deaths equated to one killing by a family member every 23 days.  “This research shows child abuse at its clearest and most stark.  We need to start talking about child abuse …  Child abuse is a massive problem in its own right.  Let’s not allow it to be hidden under the blanket of family violence”.

Child abuse in New Zealand is a disgusting disgrace.  Its a double disgrace.

The first disgrace is the collection of apologies for human beings who visit violence upon defenceless children – all too often their own family.  Pita Sharples, the Minister of Maori Affairs in NZ, calls them “mongrels”.  He’s  not wrong.

Tragically, the violence often ends in death.  From 1993 – 1996, 35 children up to the age of 14 were killed by members of their own families.  (Died from injuries purposely inflicted).  That’s 8.75 deaths per year.   By August 2007, the average child-abuse death rate per year was reported to be 12.

And that leads to the second disgrace.  Politicians who mouth on about how disgraceful it is, about how we are all collectively responsible, and promise firm action to protect children from abuse.  In 2007, they took that “firm action”.  And now in 2010, here is what NZ still sees:

Ineffectiveness of Child, Youth and Family (CYF) – the social welfare agency charged with protecting the interests of children.  No meaningful overhaul of their procedures.  No tracking of known problem parents to see if they have more children when the state has taken their abused babies into care.  No attempt to address the social breakdown and lowering of educational and behavioural standards that result in children that grow up to be selfish, careless and abusive parents.  (Children are carefully taught their rights, but nothing about responsibility or duty of care).

The “firm action”  was an easy politically correct “solution” – an anti-spanking bill.  Almost all of the NZ parliament, Tory and Labour, Greens and Maori Party, forgot that they were elected by the people of NZ, and colluded to ram this monstrosity into law against the wishes of nearly 90 percent of the NZ population.  The new law classifies all parents who resort to spanking, even when it is  necessary, as criminals by default.  Good parents and bad.

It is now a criminal offence to spank a child in NZ – period.  No spank is considered reasonable under law.  The police have the sole choice on whether to prosecute.  If they decide it is “trivial”, then the parent is not prosecuted.  So only the police can consider a spank reasonable or trivial – incredibly, the courts of law cannot.  The parent has no defence if charged except to plead “Not guilty”.  If it is proved that the parent spanked the child, the only possible verdict is guilty.

So what we get to address child abuse is an anti-spanking law, to stop us from hitting and beating our children.  The vast majority of parents never would do that.  The kind of mongrel (the Minister’s own term) that would hit and beat a child would not pay a blind bit of attention to any law prohibiting spanking.  No more than a recidivist drinking driver would be deterred by lowering the driving alcohol limit.

How do I know that child-abusers are not deterred by the anti-spanking law?  Results.  Since it was passed in 2007, the rate of child-abuse death has continued.

When a petition in 2009 overwhelmingly called for the repeal of the anti-spanking law, the government did nothing.  No, the law is working, they said, and necessary to prevent child abuse.  And besides, they criticised the wording of the petition!

I have news for you, NZ politicians.  The law is not working.  It is an unjust and ineffective law, and NZ children continue to suffer and die at the hands of those whom it should be their birthright to trust, unprotected by effective laws and failed by NZ social welfare.  Read this, and weep:

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10629760

The weka is a native New Zealand bird.  It s a large, brown flightless bird that has a famously feisty and curious personality. These two qualities traditionally made the bird an easy food source for Māori and early European settlers.  The Europeans called them “wood hens”.  By all accounts, they’re damn good eating.

The UN, its environmental propaganda unit (the IPCC) and the organisers want us to believe that man-made CO2 and methane emissions are the cause of global warming.  They and their supporters refer to anyone who is skeptical of that claim by the derogatory term “Denier”.  They wish us to feel guilty about the perfectly natural twentieth century warming, and blame ourselves for it.

This is organised religion at work – massive manipulation on a scale not seen since the Dark Ages.  Its purpose is the increase and entrench the power and wealth of the UN.  If it is not constrained it will impoverish us all – while the developing nations continue to develop, financed by our CO2 carbon-credit taxes.  Think about this:

From the time of Constantine until after the Renaissance, the dominant organised religion of the Western world set up the most enduring bureaucracy of all time to build and maintain its power.  It had it all – Fear of mortality, original sin, guilt about sexuality, the seven deadly sins, blessings, indulgences, tithing, the inquisition, the priesthood, cathedrals, the Swiss Guard and more.

It still exists, but its power is but a shadow of what it was in the Dark Ages.  Sadly, nature abhors a vacuum, even a power vacuum.  So, now we have the UN.  It already has many of the infrastructure elements of the old church.  But it has lacked the driving religion that is needed for really comprehensive power.

Until now.  Now, it has Anthropogenic Global Warming.  I have seen the priesthood (the IPCC) and that’s bad enough.  I am not keen to see what the UN will do for an inquisition.

The Key Components of Organised Religion:

Organised religion purports to bring us enlightenment, universal truth, knowledge of God and salvation.  It does nothing of the sort – it’s about control, wealth and power.  It achieves this by feeding us baloney, fostering fear and guilt, positioning itself as the sole path for forgiveness of our sins,  and charging us for that “service”.

It also builds infrastructure to support its aims.  The organisational infrastructure includes bureaucracies to maintain our fear and guilt, punish us when we don’t comply with their rules, collect our payments and recruit us as disciples to promote and enforce their views.  It also always includes a priesthood whose duties include propaganda to promote the baloney that is central to its control.  Some organised religions even maintain military and security organisations.  The physical infrastructure includes imposing cathedrals, churches and temples to which we are required to come for our regular indoctrination sessions and express our gratitude.

A key element of most organised religions is fostering of hatred for non-believers and dissenters.  Those who do not believe are branded as heathens.  Any expression of dissent or disagreement from believers is branded as heresy or blasphemy, and severely punished.