New Zealand Celebrates the 4th of July with a Nation Wide semi truck protest agaist taxes: Queue the Rolling Slowdowns

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The Government has been up to no good recently with tax payer money. Recently, they bought back a lagging and in poor condition national rail system that they had sold a few years back for $300m. The buy back price was listed at $700m but over the last few weeks the actual cost has been calculated at closer to $1billion (taking into consideration the cost to buy off private employees, upgrade infrastructure that is in deplorable shape, oh yes lest we forget repaint all the old trains - that OZ wanted to put in a museum - with the logo Kiwi Rail).

Now this week on Wednesday they announced that on the following day they would be drastically increasing the fees charged to drivers of diesel vehicles - which specifically hits the truckies hard in the pocket. Strange that the gov does this after buying the rail back. "Hey guy's if truckings too expensive why don't you try our rail option". Worst of all they did this with no notice. Companies couldn't plan for the change or renew prior to the price change.

Well the truckers had enough and accross the country they rolled into the city centres and motorways (what few KM they actually have) and blocked traffic for hours this morning. When I left home at 6:45am they were already lined up nearly the full length of Queen Street (the iconic heart of NZ).

Check out the story and photos at the following links.

News Story
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/1/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10519878

Photos
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/multimedia/image.cfm?c_id=1&gal_objectid=10519878&gallery_id=1390


But thank god we do live in a relatively speaking free country where expressions of dissent and protest can be made without being made to dissapear, ie. China. I was reading in the humours short news stories about Chinees police preparing for the olympics. One of the lines that they are learning is: "don't pretend to be inocent." What? I see some good china news stories in the next few months.

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Photos

Taken from my office window at 7:30am
Trucks stacking up on the viaduct.

Fully Backed up with traffic
Viaduct fully blocked by truck traffic.