len brown

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Nats must hate Auckland’s building consents boom

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, July 15th, 2019 - 59 comments

The rate at which the building consents have increased in Auckland, and the shift to a more useful mix, has been incredibly fast. You can understand why National after their decade of failure for housing and transport have been targeting the authors of that success. It highlights National’s economic incompetence.

Fuster and Cluck ride again?

Written By: - Date published: 1:39 pm, February 27th, 2016 - 13 comments

John Palino has all but announced that he will also stand for the super city Mayoralty and there is a rumour that Simon Lusk will be his campaign manager.

Len Brown stands down

Written By: - Date published: 9:14 am, November 8th, 2015 - 59 comments

Len Brown has announced that he will not contest the Auckland Mayoralty next year.

Five years as a united Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, October 30th, 2015 - 168 comments

Auckland Council is delivering a publication to all Auckland households celebrating five years of Auckland super city. But is there any reason to celebrate?

Christine Fletcher’s dear Phil letter

Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, October 15th, 2015 - 17 comments

Christine Fletcher has penned an open letter to Phil Goff where she criticises in trenchant terms super city’s current performance and offers some thoughts on where improvement can be made.

Ports of Auckland is out of control

Written By: - Date published: 8:33 am, May 3rd, 2015 - 30 comments

Ports of Auckland’s recent behaviour outlines a major weakness with Auckland super city.  Corporate interests are able to take precedence over the wishes of our democratically elected representatives.

Len Brown is toast

Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, March 18th, 2015 - 119 comments

Bernard Orsman has reported in the Herald today that Len Brown’s campaign team no longer back him and are considering support for a Phil Goff run for the mayoralty.

Len Brown’s future

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, October 19th, 2014 - 41 comments

The Herald has stated that Penny Hulse will not rule out an attempt at the Super City Mayoralty although she will not do so if Len Brown is standing. Now is a good time for Len to say what he intends to do.

No Right Turn: Electoral donations, corruption, and transparency

Written By: - Date published: 4:11 pm, June 11th, 2014 - 37 comments

Writing in the Herald, Fran O’Sullivan tells us what we all knew: that political donors have expectations, and want favours in exchange for their cash. She’s too polite (and Establishment) to call it corruption, but that’s what it is. Its time we forced parties to do so as well. Transparent public funding if required. If the choice is spending public money or permitting corruption, the choice is pretty clear.

Penny Hulse and the decriminalisation of cannabis

Written By: - Date published: 8:21 am, May 18th, 2014 - 52 comments

Auckland Deputy Mayor Penny Hulse this week called for there to be a rational debate on whether organic cannabis should be decriminalised.  Her reasoning is sound.  The natural kind is better than the synthetic kind and prohibition is not working.

Auckland’s city rail link may be accelerated

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, April 6th, 2014 - 32 comments

The introduction of new electric trains to Auckland’s train system is going to put increased pressure on the Government to bring forward funding of Auckland’s inner city loop. Will it stick to its anti train beliefs or will it succumb to pressure to change in election year?

Jordan Williams: running the shell game

Written By: - Date published: 6:28 pm, February 12th, 2014 - 40 comments

Jordan Williams and Simon Lusk

You have to look at the “taxpayers union” and ask how even the idiots who were behind ACT think that they can play the same trick to a new generation. But Jordan Williams seems to think that despite the law, Len Brown should pay for a Auckland council ordered audit of the mayoral office. Perhaps he should actually read the law about the supershitty that ACT foisted on Auckland ratepayers. Reading the law may prevent another legal failure from the lawyer who lost for Cameron Slater.

A glorious waste of money for the titillation of perverts

Written By: - Date published: 9:28 am, February 8th, 2014 - 70 comments

The fiasco of the wet dick and the perverts shuddered to a conclusion yesterday with the direct bill of around $250,000. Len Brown was strong-armed into paying $40,000 for the audit which turned up nothing much except that his wife brought a lot of hotel nights. Questions remain about who was responsible for the waste caused by the lack of scoping of the external audit. Looks like dirty politics at the ratepayers expense.

Herald massaging a message

Written By: - Date published: 5:19 pm, January 23rd, 2014 - 23 comments

The Herald continues its tabloid-style vendetta against Len Brown by serving up non-news in a shock-horror frame to make the mayor look bad. With a combination of the delicate removal/rewriting of what was said and a a senile loss of memory about the chains imposed on Auckland by National, Act and Rodney Hide – the Granny Herald continues its downward slide into irrelevance.

Auckland Council’s next 100 days

Written By: - Date published: 9:54 am, January 14th, 2014 - 46 comments

Auckland Council probably has only 100 days left to sort itself out.  Otherwise it is going to be a long three years where the prospects of good being achieved will be poor.

Wet Dick and the Perverts (reprise)

Written By: - Date published: 5:04 pm, December 28th, 2013 - 15 comments

If we look at the google impressions and click throughs onto our site, someone could probably write a sociological paper on exactly how many hidden perverts there are that the right wingers in the council are reflecting. I have to say that that I am quite pleased that we had poor click through for the “bevan chaung naked/nude” queries.

Wet Dick and the Perverts

Written By: - Date published: 10:37 am, December 27th, 2013 - 136 comments

It should be the name of a group from a bizarro version of the 1960’s. But no, it is what passes for the governance of the Auckland City Council these days. There is our mayor with his wet dick. Then we have the five perverts who are busy emoting faux outrage whilst quietly forgetting that we elected them to help run a city. Dick Quax, Cameron Brewer, and the handful of other perverts in council can play with that aspect of their lives on their own time.

The Standard’s ten most popular posts for 2013

Written By: - Date published: 8:53 am, December 27th, 2013 - 60 comments

A review of the Standard’s ten most popular posts for 2013.

Reef piranha

Written By: - Date published: 8:32 pm, December 22nd, 2013 - 42 comments

Today’s Herald editorial gets one thing right – a media pack has turned on Len Brown. But it’s not gutsy journalism – it comes straight out of the Rupert Murdoch playbook. Len’s latest sin is his upgrades – EY says  they total  $32,000 for 64 occasions. That’s $500 an upgrade, which seems  a lot on top of what Len paid. The report does not detail how this total was arrived at, and I cannot find any example of any journalist asking questions about it.

Ernst and Young should investigate Cameron Brewer

Written By: - Date published: 7:46 am, December 20th, 2013 - 240 comments

Cameron Brewer apparently forgot to file a declaration of interests in 2012 which should have included details of a four day junket to the Gold Coast paid for by Mediaworks.  Dick Quax forgot to file returns in 2011 and 2012.  Is an investigation required?

A Tale of Two Cities

Written By: - Date published: 10:03 pm, December 19th, 2013 - 91 comments

It was the best of times in Wellington today. Council workers will get a living wage, and parking wardens will become council employees so they will get decent pay also. It was the worst of times in Auckland as the right-wing Scrooges having failed to remove Mayor Len Brown took it out on their workers by overturning his call for a living wage for Council staff.

Showdown at Auckland Council

Written By: - Date published: 8:52 am, December 19th, 2013 - 264 comments

Today’s Council meeting will no doubt develop a great deal of heat but little light.  And then hopefully everyone can settle down and working on the real job which is to create Auckland into a great city.

NRT: Unacceptable

Written By: - Date published: 9:13 am, December 14th, 2013 - 187 comments

No Right Turn has a view on Len Brown accepting nearly $40,000 in undeclared complementarities from the hotel industry. How many of these were from SkyCity? And who else has been getting them?

Len Brown will today propose a living wage for Auckland Council employees

Written By: - Date published: 7:48 am, November 7th, 2013 - 15 comments

Len Brown will today propose to Council that it funds a living wage for all Council and CCO employees.  It is intended that this is funded through savings, particularly with high level wages, and efficiencies and will be brought in over three years if supported by the Council.

BLip: The swearing of the Auckland council

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, October 30th, 2013 - 18 comments

BLip is well known on this site for his ever-growing linked lists of the lies of John Key. But it appears he has been branching out into the role of reporter in this hilarious account of the swearing of the Auckland council last night that was picked out of Open Mike.

What’s the play?

Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, October 16th, 2013 - 108 comments

No-one’s happy with the revelations about Len Brown’s private life, apart from Slater (himself also an adulterer) who is wallowing in all the details that Chuang seems only too happy to provide. But what’s interesting is that this is clearly a political play. Who’s behind it and what do they have to gain? The players: Slater, Slater snr, Chuang, and Palino.

Len is standing again

Written By: - Date published: 7:33 am, July 16th, 2013 - 40 comments

len-brownLen Brown has announced that he will again seek Auckland Super City’s mayoralty.  I know this will provoke a mixture of views but style wise I think he is great and substance wise he has had successes but should have done more with MUNZ, the living wage project and Sky City.

John Key re-announces Len’s plan

Written By: - Date published: 3:57 pm, June 28th, 2013 - 42 comments

So John Key has today re-announced the Auckland plan, albeit delayed. So the Central Rail Link is on.  There’ll be a 2nd Harbour crossing that’s tunnels. Combine it with Christchurch and Key’s spent about $10 billion this week.  Bill English will be having a heart attack… but then, it’s all spending in the distant future […]

Nats sign up for KiwiBuild?

Written By: - Date published: 6:16 pm, May 10th, 2013 - 26 comments

KiwiBuild has already been a success, scaring the Nats in to producing, in conjunction with Len Brown’s Auckland, a more significant housing policy. The “Unitary Plan” is woefully short on detail, but it concedes that KiwiBuild’s target of 10,000 new homes a year is easily achievable (I guess it’s only impossible when Labour propose it).

National’s war on Auckland

Written By: - Date published: 12:57 pm, March 14th, 2013 - 49 comments

motorway madness

Phil Twyford is the Labour MP for Te Atatu, and Labour’s spokesperson on Housing and Auckland Issues. He is also asking the same questions that many Aucklanders keep asking as they watch a succession of government ministers trying to valiantly advance backwards into Auckland’s past with no obvious purpose.

Woka Woka Wharfie Fundraiser – Akl tonight

Written By: - Date published: 12:15 pm, April 3rd, 2012 - 10 comments

Something to do in Auckland tonight: What:  Special screening of The Muppets Where:  Hoyts Sylvia Park, Mt Wellington When:  Tonight, April 3rd, 6.10pm to 8.30pm Don’t let those muppets at the Ports of Auckland get you down, come laugh at the real Muppets instead! Some door sales will be available, or you can email julie.fairey@gmail.com […]