‘Bureaucrat’ bites back

Written By: - Date published: 12:40 pm, September 8th, 2010 - 19 comments
Categories: public services - Tags:

A hell of a lot of those ‘back office bureaucrats’ that the Nats love to attack have been working their arses off on the Christchurch earthquake. You would think they’d get some respect from their political bosses. You would think wrong. A contributor writes:

Check this quote out from Key:

The Prime Minister said Brownlee had been given the task of overseeing the recovery because he could “knock heads together” and sweep away bureaucratic roadblocks.

I beg your pardon? I believe these ‘bureaucrats” that supposedly needed their heads knocked together had already self-deployed in a superbly orchestrated response on Saturday morning before that fat f*ck had even slid on his grimy Y-fronts.

Always bagging the public service, even when they’re out there risking their lives assessing damaged buildings, dealing with a traumatised public, and in general making Key and Brownlee look good.

19 comments on “‘Bureaucrat’ bites back ”

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  1. F.Y 1
    8 September 2010 at 12:54 pm

    before that fat f*ck had even slid on his grimy Y-fronts.

    LOL Cameron, is that you?

    • Blighty 1.1
      8 September 2010 at 1:01 pm

      mate, Slater’s a bludger, not a bureaucrat. The guy wouldn’t know the meaning of hard work.

  2. Herodotus 2
    8 September 2010 at 1:00 pm

    http://blog.labour.org.nz/index.php/2010/09/08/frustration-builds-for-those-who-wait-in-christchurch-east/
    According to this post from Labour these civil servants and not being consistant with there messages, perhaps there does need to be some banging of heads. There is at least 1 MP not happy.

    • Blighty 2.1
      8 September 2010 at 1:06 pm

      she’s mainly complaining about the Ministers’ offices, not the public service.

      Nothing’s ever going to be perfect. Not sure how the PM having a swipe at the publice service helps.

    • kevyn 2.2
      16 September 2010 at 1:59 pm

      Dalziel’s post is oh so typical of ignorant politicians. She claims that “Orion got their power on after I called them the night before, ” The truth is that, unlike this former cabinet minister, Orion had actually been working with Civil Defence facilitated Canterbury lifelines engineering group since 2004 to combat the xtremely high earthquake risk in Christchurch. In the Listener Dalziel is quoted as saying she was completely unaware of any earthquake risk to Christchurch. It is because Orion spent more than $10 million on a seismic upgrade program for it’s substations and transformers that it was able to restore power to 90% homes within in hours rather than days.

      Mind you, all of the local MPs seem to have been ignorant of the earthquake risk despite many reports from EQC, Transpower, Transit and regional and local authorities. Thank goodness scientists and engineers don’t live by the maxim “ignorance is bliss”, which seems to be the motto of the modern politician.

  3. the sprout 3
    8 September 2010 at 1:50 pm

    Thanks Guest Poster.
    Some of us understand who really gets the work done in this country, and who are the posturing users only in it for themselves. The others vote National.

  4. scrubone 4
    8 September 2010 at 3:09 pm

    Here’s a situation.

    Suppose I want to put a drain across neighboring sections. The law requires me to draft a formal letter to gain approval from those neighbors. I however own the sections myself.

    Suppose you were the council’s man who was giving me consent. What would you require I do?

    • mcflock 4.1
      9 September 2010 at 2:27 am

      Okay, I’ll bite:

      I’d tell you what the rules were as they applied to your case. They might be reasonable if the letters also went to council and were filed in each property’s separate archive box, and it would make life and legalities easier in 50 years time when the properties are under separate ownership and somebody puts a backhoe through the drain. Or it leaks.

      If you were pleasant to deal with I’d maybe give you a quick “fill in the blanks” letter for you to fill in on the spot and thereby satisfy all the filing requirements. If you got uppity about damned boorockrassees I’d probably just let you whinge and spend $$$ on lawyers. But then I can be a bit of a bastard sometimes.

  5. insider 5
    8 September 2010 at 3:24 pm

    I read ‘bureaucratic’ roadblocks not bureaucrat, ie systems not people. The heads being knocked may be mayors and councillors who approve regulations and set council policy and priorities, not the staffers.

  6. rich 6
    8 September 2010 at 3:53 pm

    Would these be the same bureaucratic regulations that made builders construct earthquake strengthened buildings? And led to nobody dying in the Canterbury quake, unlike in regulation-free Haiti, where half a million died in one the same strength.

    • NickS 6.2
      8 September 2010 at 9:04 pm

      Yeap, people often think the RMA etc is there to hinder them, heck one of the people I was working for didn’t get why the council required fireproofing in the two storey wooden house they’re renovating…

      [insert quips about fire speed and house survivability in a fire here]

      /shrug

    • Swampy 6.3
      26 September 2010 at 9:33 am

      They are not talking about overriding eartquake codes, they are talking about resource consent and consultation and all those bureacratic form filling paper waving processes that take months sometimes years to complete.

  7. lprent 7
    9 September 2010 at 7:09 am

    The only thing that Brownlee is notable for is his total disregard for due process and his completely inadequate grasp of the facts required to make decisions. The two are probably related by having a basic laziness conflicting with a self over estimation of his own abilities.

    Notably there is his ability to completely screw up the progress of government bills through the house to the point that the house now spends more time in urgency than for any previous government. It looks like Brownlee tends to screw things up.

    Then of course there is his mining debacle, power ‘reforms’ that don’t do anything useful, etc etc. In fact can anyone point to anything that Brownlee has done right?

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