Author Archive
Transport in Auckland and National’s deliberate incompetence
Written By: - Date published: 6:58 am, July 25th, 2017 - 36 comments
National appear to be completely uninterested in spending Aucklander’s transport taxes on Auckland. Instead they want to put in roads that have no economic measurable benefits for Auckland except to increase the road congesting trucks on our roads. Why do National hate Auckland?
National again subsidises their land banking contributors from taxpayer funds.
Written By: - Date published: 8:41 am, July 24th, 2017 - 25 comments
The announcement that National were granting infrastructure funds to develop housing projects in the far north and south of Auckland caused me some amusement. Wisely Auckland council resisted this boondongle that only benefits land bankers, speculators and their political party (National) for some time. To the point where National used taxpayer funds instead.
Why is Whaleoil being pathetic or paid on Toddy?
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, June 21st, 2017 - 32 comments
We may never know if Todd Barclay was one of the Simon Lusk / Cameron Slater Dirty Politics ‘clients’. However if you read the Whaleoil today, he has finally received instructions (umm) figured out the spin line … Whatever…
Offline this morning for a short time
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, June 6th, 2017 - 9 comments
Updated: The server will be shifted when its network link gets shunted to a new location. That will happen sometime Wednesday. So the site will be offline when it does as I have to physically pick up the server and reconnect at the new location.
Completed
Sitemeter is broken – no Open Parachute stats.
Written By: - Date published: 1:35 pm, May 20th, 2017 - 6 comments
Over months, the readings from Statcounter had gotten increasingly inaccurate. Since the other public site stats packages have significiant other flaws on highish volume sites, we stopped running any. That means that the blog rankings for this site at Open Parachute stopped. Bomber can claim a empty position because he can’t check his statistics.
Four eyes and an arsehole
Written By: - Date published: 9:06 am, May 17th, 2017 - 40 comments
NZ with its various operations around this end of the Pacific really doesn’t need its own intelligence gathering operations blown by the current incompetent blowhard of the White House. Nor does anyone else who shares information with the US. That is the problem with Trump childishly boasting about the intelligence gathered by others merely to boost his ego.
New ambassador will represent Trump well.
Written By: - Date published: 8:55 am, April 21st, 2017 - 58 comments
Trump has nominated a failed senator Scott Brown to be the ambassador to New Zealand. As a Fox presenter of alt-facts and a supporter of waterboarding to produce them, he sounds like a ignorant dickhead. A worthy representative of the Donald.
Stormy weather in the North
Written By: - Date published: 12:08 pm, April 13th, 2017 - 65 comments
You’d have to say that an Easter cyclone is one of those truly awful scenarios for Auckland. Forget the water. What happens when the Harbour Bridge and the Airport probably close? It is going to be a hell of an Easter on the roads and travelling. More extreme weather brought to you from climate change.
Dirty Politics done in the Netsafe style – part 3
Written By: - Date published: 10:17 am, April 7th, 2017 - 25 comments
No further information from either Netsafe or the complainant. I can’t proceed any further apart from writing explicit site HDCA instructions. The Daily Blog has had the samehappen, with an attempt to gag any public debate on their actions by Netsafe. Amy Adams has hurriedly issued a press release saying how wonderful the HDCA is… I guess she doesn’t like debate.
Pity the RWNJ (for they are going to be spinning in pain)
Written By: - Date published: 6:04 pm, April 3rd, 2017 - 60 comments
If you are one of the right wing nut jobs that read this site, then Horizon puts out some truly scary polls. But if you aren’t an idiot and actually take the time to read material before criticizing it (unlike Hooton on ‘Hit and Run’) then this points to a tight election as is usual under MMP. But with all of the swing in the direction of a Labour led coalition. But I am sure the simpleton spinners will have another explanation.
Dirty Politics done in the Netsafe style – part 2
Written By: - Date published: 12:30 pm, March 31st, 2017 - 41 comments
Ok. Round 2. Still no more relevant information from Netsafe.
I’m getting somewhat irritated with them. When exactly are they going to get off their arses and provide the information that we need to make a decision?
Dirty Politics done in the Netsafe style.
Written By: - Date published: 9:29 am, March 30th, 2017 - 48 comments
I just got sent a notice of complaint from Netsafe under the HDCA (Harmful Digital Communications Act). It appears to me that Netsafe still either hasn’t read the act or that they are cooperating with the perpetrators of Dirty Politics. Either way, I don’t have time to deal with people who don’t put in the information required by the act for me and the unknown author to make a decision. Updated
What is the story?
Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, March 24th, 2017 - 47 comments
I’m finding that the way that stories are reported rather interesting and full of hidden bias. Looking at the London attack and the “Hit and Run” stories, you have to ask about what editors and some journalists choose to focus on in stories. They often seem to miss the point about why things happen and what the consequences are.
Dear Izzy
Written By: - Date published: 9:12 am, March 15th, 2017 - 27 comments
Married couple, increase after tax $8.36 a fortnight each or $4.18 each a week!!!!! Disposable Income, 0.5971428 each a day !!!! Goes up on April 1st, how the hell did they arrive at this sum?
I find out.
National’s flawed RMA ripoff still failing
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, March 15th, 2017 - 13 comments
Maori Party Co-Leader, Marama Fox, is playing hardball over Nick Smith latest attempts to weasel out of commitments on the deeply flawed RMA changes that National has spent the last few years trying to find any support for in Parliament. The bill is crap. The Maori party should just drop it regardless how many baubles they think they will get from it.
Trump’s confidence: The kiss of death?
Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, March 3rd, 2017 - 39 comments
Watching Steve Brannon and his alter ego Donald Trump operate from a long way away is almost amusing. Total confidence == Jeff Sessions needs to recuse himself from the enquiry into unlawful contacts with the Russians..
National bolster their moribund blue-greens
Written By: - Date published: 8:28 am, February 28th, 2017 - 74 comments
I read this morning in Politik that Vernon Tava has left the Greens and appears to be leaning towards National. It doesn’t seem to me to much of a problem to lose a conservationist to National. It just means that the Greens can concentrate more effectively on the work of getting everyone trying to build a cleaner sustainable future.
The Trump bump
Written By: - Date published: 9:30 am, February 19th, 2017 - 27 comments
This week’s Economist looks at the resurgence in the business of the more effective mainstream media in the US. But the effect reaches all the way over here. Even I’m reading more on a the ongoing debacle that is the incompetent Trump White House. Good reporting and perfect reading for the summer season and I suspect that it is impacting all of the blogs at present.
Auckland NIMBYs refused
Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, February 14th, 2017 - 12 comments
If Auckland as a city wish to retain representative samples of our past, then we should concentrate on how to preserve those rather than trying to deny the migration that increases its population by something like 50 thousand people per year. This is a working city – not a museum.
1.2 million comments
Written By: - Date published: 6:01 pm, February 5th, 2017 - 7 comments
We just hit 1.2 million comments published. I noticed by accident!. Typically it was on politics
Peter Thiel’s citizenship and consequent questions of corruption
Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, January 28th, 2017 - 52 comments
Journos have been looking at how Peter Thiel gained citizenship. Not because he shouldn’t have been made a citizen. But it was done without any public notice using a special section of the immigration act. That reeks of a corruption route by a minister or officials. Reasons need to be made public for this and other decisions done this way.
New Lynn should grab Greg Presland (damnit)
Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, January 26th, 2017 - 103 comments
Greg Presland has been daft enough put his hand up for Labour candidate in New Lynn. That would be unfortunate for this site. But my advice for Labour and New Lynn is to grab him. Media say that the leading candidates are him and Deborah Russell. Regardless of a her competence, a non-Auckland resident is a big ask in the era of MMP seats.
Living without our fridge – 4-6C hotter
Written By: - Date published: 12:56 pm, January 1st, 2017 - 100 comments
My first degree about 35 years ago was in earth sciences. And one of my lifelong passions has been reading the history, prehistory, and evolutionary history of humans. The timescales give me an appreciation of the farcical attempts of humans to stop crapping in our narrow evolutionary space over the last century. We’re going to live in a hot hot world we weren’t evolved for.
To protect whistleblowers…
Written By: - Date published: 2:14 pm, December 17th, 2016 - 16 comments
One of the claims made by Edward Snowden was that there were no effective channels in the NSA to whistle blow to. This claim appears to have been spectacularly validated thursday with a POGO report that the NSA’s Inspector General, its final whistleblower protector, has been suspended for retaliating against another whistleblower.
Whaleoil and Rachinger – the final chapter starts
Written By: - Date published: 8:24 am, December 12th, 2016 - 88 comments
In the Manakau District Court later this morning the trial of Ben Rachinger on fraud charges related to a admitted solicitation attempt to hack this site by Cameron Slater begins. The trial is set down for 5 days. Unfortunately I won’t be there. However there aren’t any court orders to prevent me from expressing my views and advice on the trial.
Politik on Labour/ Greens
Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, November 24th, 2016 - 18 comments
I was rather amused reading Politik’s “Despite the pact Shaw takes on Robertson“ and was struck by the strange way that some political commentators (and probably some politicians) view the world at the political coalface. They really need to start to think about political parties as being like any other organisation. Tactical compromises without a strategic focus will always kill any organisation – eventually.
TPP: An epitaph for self-interested treaties done in secret
Written By: - Date published: 1:23 am, November 23rd, 2016 - 39 comments
The misogynist buffoon, under-skilled charlatan and ignorant bigot that the Americans have elected to be their constitutional monarch for the next four years appears to have effectively killed the constraint of trade agreement known as the TPP. From a freer trade advocate, avid exporter, and labour movement supporter with a touch of green :- Good riddance.
Netsafe finally gets its act together on the HDCA – sort of… and inadequately
Written By: - Date published: 2:38 pm, November 20th, 2016 - 7 comments
Apparently today, Netsafe will start acting as the “Approved Agency” of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015. This is an act that is meant to deal with some of the excessive online abuse and bullying. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to me that Netsafe is currently capable of dealing with the task. Instead they look like incompetent monkeys.
NZ Tech
Written By: - Date published: 9:01 am, October 21st, 2016 - 45 comments
The top 200 tech “exporters” are now turning over NZD 9.4 billion. This year revenue increased by more that NZD 1 billion. Which is pretty phenomenal bearing in mind the sluggish world economy. It meant that they grew an additional 3000 odd highly paid jobs in just those top companies. Even this intellectually bereft government isn’t proving to be too much of a hindrance to tech business.
Online voting – the only choice for idiots
Written By: - Date published: 3:45 pm, October 9th, 2016 - 139 comments
As a computer programmer and someone who has been involved in politics for decades, I’m always amazed at idiots like Malcolm Alexander of the LGNZ talking about something that they clearly don’t understand the technicalities of. Online voting is way too fragile to roll out. And anyway young voters are still going to not have their voting details at hand.
A MPI boondoggle subsidy for Wairarapa land speculators?
Written By: - Date published: 9:17 am, September 21st, 2016 - 23 comments
You have to wonder about the quality of some of the economic process control that goes on for National’s politically important subsidies to the farming industry. A economic review of a Wairarapa Water application for second stage feasibility funding from the Irrigation Acceleration Fund for the “Black Creek” and “Tividale” irrigation schemes makes it look like government funded boondoggle.
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