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5:30 pm, February 1st, 2023 - 60 comments
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"New leader" – tick.
Same National – tick.
"Same old tired ideas" (tax cuts for the rich, boot camps for the not so rich) – tick.
Time for choleric Christopher to look in the mirror? Tick tick tick!
Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear…
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/local-government/131122167/leaked-emails-reveal-auckland-mayor-wayne-brown-trying-to-gag-councillors-amid-flood-response
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/auckland-floods-mayor-wayne-brown-tells-councillors-i-will-take-care-of-the-big-picture/5ULYL7MO7ZC37IUEIVZCZBPHYU/
But he doesn’t talk to media cos he thinks they’re all drongoes. Small man syndrome?
Oops, just noted he's quite tall.
I was thinking you were talking about his complex, not the physical reality.
It was both but not made clear.
Given most of the councillors are streets ahead of Mayor Brown, I find his attempt to silence them outrageous. He comes across as a Kiwi version of Trump – an ignorant, narcissist bully boy. I hope the councillors don't allow him to blackmail or bully them into submission. He needs calling out at every turn.
Not silencing. Its just saying the mayors job is to speak for Auckland and its best if one voice. It was a request in the email not a command
Thats the mayors job description on the council website- Speak for Auckland
Notice its what party leaders do as well, speak for their party.
Welcome to how it works in the real world.
The Standard is the opposite of course as it doesnt have one voice ( or any as posters speak for themselves) , thats by design
Brown has 180,000 votes to say he speaks for Auckland Council
Have you not been following the Auckland Floods/Brown fiasco?.
He is pursuing this idea in spite of the fact that he was MIA and the void in leadership was competently covered by several councillors and several MPs. Aucklanders were lucky that there were people of the calibre of the ones who did step up.
The phrase 'closing door etc' springs to mind but also what does a person expect would happen if they do not lead from the front when it is expected of them.
You are not seriously thinking that Brown did a good job during the floods are you?.
Even Luxon send a tweet asking for a Declaration to be made, albeit just a little bit after it was made but he has said he also communicated this by text privately to Brown.
You know it is always good to be able to say an improvement is needed instead of making yourself look a bit silly by being so one-eyed.
180,000 votes and not a single peep from Brown. He lost his credibility and blew his mandate, Mr Nix-it.
Who stopped the rain?
He was attempting to silence them. Its called 'reading between the lines' and those who are closest to him (city councillors in this case) would know exactly what he was doing. Hence the response by Chris Darby.
Now, what if Councillor Darby had been defending Brown's lack of action. Maybe along the lines that… he [Brown] was understandably upset about missing out on his game of tennis and it temporarily took his mind off the ball? (tongue-in -cheek)
Would Brown be sending such an email/text? You bet he wouldn't.
Completely wrong as you have been mislead by an inaccurate story
The full email says he encourages councillors , and they must talk about ‘their local issues’.
as he said before the election
'I’m not here to be loved or liked. I don’t see myself as warm or friendly. I see myself as a fixer. I’m an engineer and I build things and that’s why I’m standing for the mayoralty of Auckland because I and I alone have got the knowledge to get things done. I’ve done it before in Auckland and I can do it again.'
https://www.metromag.co.nz/society/wayne-brown-the-gunslinger
Again, I ask why the Standard is providing a platform for this nasty right wing rubbish? Do you not read the feed on the side of your own blog?
https://pointofordernz.wordpress.com/2023/01/16/garrick-tremains-view-4/
I agree
Me too – it is very unfunny as well
Yes I agree about the deteriorating quality of this column.
A week ago I said this about the same column
I used to enjoy TransTasman and I am still grateful to have a link to waspish RW thought. No-one can say the columns, and particularly Garrick Tremain's cartoons, are a must read though.
Looking a bit further at Garrick Tremain I find that he was the cartoonist with the cartoon about the measles epidemic in Samoa in 2019. Distinctly unfunny and tone deaf.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/118272681/unrepentant-cartoonist-garrick-tremain-continues-to-lampoon-editor
Tremain's cartoons have very seldom been funny and he has always favoured the Right.
It was good news when the ODT dumped him after (yet another) racist effort
I quite liked his cartoons in NZ Farmer, more quirky than political. He seems to miss the mark politically.
Shanreagh…you might have missed his racist (IMO very ! ) snips at Nanaia Mahuta..and of course the attacks on Jacinda Ardern. (IMO misogynistic).
Ol' Garrick quite often combined the 2…
And..I am not going to link any. As..I do NOT want to give oxygen to the ass.
You could google…
I have seen the latest offerings and am not impressed hence my earlier query about Point Of Order.
The only cartoons of Garrick Tremain that I can deal with are the ones from The Farmer.
His cartoon at the time of the measles epidemic in Samoa was just awful.
Possibly passed his best? Another grumpy old man a la WB?
I will have another look at when i get on a desktop again. It was centre- right but analytical when I last looked at it.
BTW: Any suggestions for other sites i can take a rss feed from?
I don't mind the written stuff so much as I mind the terrible, awful, etc ……. cartoons.
They seem to pop up leading the posts. If there was some way of the written stuff being linked to and as an adjunct, once the written stuff is on screen the cartoons appear then that would be OK with me.
The cartoon that alerted me to the falling standard of the cartoons was the one linking WEF with former PM JA. This has been an ad nauseam part of the anti vaxx play list and so I was a bit surprised to see it in an ostensibly legit feed. I couldn't really care if she does go to WEF/Davos but there are a number of 'far-out' conspiracy theories about WEF
The Juice Media
Daily Kos
Jonathan Pie
Needs to be New Zealand.
Ah right. Some really good stuff happening on Substack. RSS feeds are at {blogname}.substack.com/feed
David Farrier: Webworm
Bernard Hickey: The Kākā
David Slack: More than a Feilding
Nick’s Korero
Mostly the material on substack requires a login to see more than the come-on. I'll try them out.
They came up ok
Great! Thanks.
🙂
Have to be small enough number of items per day to not overwhelm the column.
Juice media is perfect (and I love those ads).
Daily Kos has a multitude per hour. Would require an extra column.
The Jonathon Pie looks ok on youtube as well.
I'll try those two out
Updated: The RSS on youtube are munted.
Wellington beat Aucklands record rainfall of 249mm in 24 hr, but it was back in 1976.
Lower Hutt rain gauge 264 mm in 24 hrs. I think most of Petone was fully underwater
https://hwe.niwa.co.nz/event/December_1976_Wellington_Flooding
NIWA says similar to Dec 1939 rain event
What is the point of your pointless comment?
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/weather-news/300798265/auckland-has-just-had-its-wettest-month-in-history-niwa-says
Are you making a point of making pointless comments on TS? Your comments used to be better than that.
Its Daily Review my friend . Theres doesnt have to be a point- that you approve of .
It is what it is . Not the most 24 hr rainfall in a major city in the last 50 years.
I think the Hutt was more badly affected than Auckland , which had pepper pot flooding issues here and there.
NIWAs also saying its only the second wettest Auckland day ( 24 hrs) since records were kept. The days rainfall have more impact that a months
Another pointless exercise to score a point in your silly one-upmanship games. You sound like Wayne Brown in your diversionary comparison with Lower Hutt and your irrelevant whataboutisms, strawmen, and red herrings.
never heard of Hydrology have you. if you did you would know that monthly rainfall is completely irrelevant for pluvial flooding.
A lot of claims for Aucklands rainfall were the ‘biggest’ in relation to the flooding. It was higher again (24hrs) 175 years ago and higher again in Hutt Valley.
Its a media ‘hook’ when they want pointscore and click bait, but thats fine by me, maybe not good enough for you.
Tell me more about point scoring and Wayne Brown ?
It will fill columns for the next 3 years
go on then, explain how monthly rainfall is completely irrelevant for pluvial flooding. Especially in relation to hydrology.
Time of concentration .
many flood victims mention how the 'water suddenly rose very quickly' which is what happens for creeks and streams when theres heavy rain.
For a stream its in the order of an hour or less. Thats were the 1 hr or 24 hr hour falls. Thats why they are called pluvial
For larger rivers it might be weeks, eg Waikato. But some shorter rivers like the Buller a few days
For the Missippi you would interested in monthly rain falls, but thats fluvial floods not pluvial
also a consideration is how much water is in the landscape (hence the previous month does matter). I don't know Auckland's catchment but in other areas this is definitely an issue. When the ground is waterlogged, the ability of the landscape to receive water is diminished.
Thanks for asking questions Time of concentration
many flood victims mention how the 'water suddenly rose very quickly' which is what happens for creeks and streams when theres heavy rain and the TC is what matters and from there the level the water rises ( as the design objective is to have the house floor level above that – and you wont get it approved by council unless you can show that. A side issue is the methods the TC can be increased to slow the flood level rise down)
For a stream its in the order of an hour or less. Thats where the 1 hr or 24 hr hour falls come in. Thats pluvial
For larger rivers it might be weeks, eg Waikato. But some shorter rivers like the Buller a few days
For the Mississippi you would interested in monthly rain falls, but thats fluvial floods not pluvial for almost all rivers
It looks like you’re point scoring and counter-point scoring all by yourself, for yourself, with yourself – why don’t you start your own blog with comments closed except for yourself?
Up to this point, you focussed on rainfall, mainly in Auckland, and some pointless comparisons, Auckland with Auckland itself, about the wettest month vs. “only the second wettest Auckland day ( 24 hrs) since records were kept” [your emphasis]. Talking of trivial point scoring! Rainfall is meteorology, AFAIK, not hydrology. Only a mind reader would have known that you were thinking of “pluvial flooding”, in Auckland, and that your poorly made point was in fact about the flooding in Wellington in 1976 in comparison.
Up to this comment, not a single mention/link to ‘lots of claims’. It is a strawman, inside your head.
The ‘media hook and clickbait’ is another strawman.
Assuming it is ‘not good enough for me’ is another strawman. Are you a beta version of a brainless chat-bot because it makes no sense to me.
And then ‘Wayne Brown’ comes riding out of nowhere and makes an appearance in this thread out of the blue!? It is whataboutism, but then again, you are a Wayne Brown apologist, we have noticed. In fact, you were willing to die on that hill in October when you also dug in and copped a 1-month ban. Because it is Election Year, moderation will be a lot more stringent. Make of that what you will – I have wasted enough time on you.
This is unintelligible. Its daily Review, any topic can be bought up.
if something doesnt interest you, let it go
This is unintelligible. Its daily Review, any topic can be bought up.
if something doesnt interest you, let it go.
It was not the topic nor any imaginary disinterest in it – the topic of weather events causing flooding and major damage is highly pertinent.
You chatbots lack self-awareness and understanding of your actions and consequences. Your chatbot comments lack clarity, intention, and meaning aka pointless.
Chatbots never understand when they are missing the point, they just keep replying with inane replies.
Occasionally, chatbots are defeated and respond with a does-not-compute, as you did, QED.
Bogus audio to go with the bogus documents, images, and videos.
Marvelous.
On January 23, ElevenLabs — an AI startup founded by former Google and Palantir employees — announced two things: a $2 million funding round, and the release of a beta for a AI voice generator called Eleven, described in a company press release as an "AI speech platform promising to revolutionize audio storytelling."
"The most realistic and versatile AI speech software, ever," reads the venture's website. "Eleven brings the most compelling, rich and lifelike voices to creators and publishers seeking the ultimate tools for storytelling."
Now, a little over a week later, ElevenLabs is already being forced to reckon with, as they put it in a Monday Twitter thread, "an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases." And though the company didn't clarify any details about said misuse, a Motherboard deep dive into the 4Chan gutters found that a number of the site's chaos monsters strongly appear to have abused the tech to produce phony clips of celebrities saying racist, violent, or otherwise terrible things.
Shocking stuff, we know. Surely nobody could have seen this coming.
https://futurism.com/startup-4chan-voice-cloning-ai
Someone will have to explain this to me. Are the alternate bus routes not laid out? Or the authorities don't have a map yet of flooded routes? Because this looks dangerous in a number of ways.
https://www.facebook.com/debbie.burrows033/posts/pfbid02bktjJqpVcAEQifBwT4AZ7gA76rjxzn9Kb35Xx4fT4Ve5y5gxk3dXG9FBepucUtHGl
link not showing, try this,
https://media.scribblelive.com/2023/1/31/4d8566b4-b65f-4215-9136-9a00c5b22918.mp4
good lord, have to resort to TV news,
https://www.1news.co.nz/2023/02/01/bus-driver-filmed-taking-on-auckland-floodwaters/
Yeah, it's been called out as pretty dangerous.
It seems apparent that AT had not (despite the Friday incidents of buses doing much the same thing) – given bus drivers any information on how to handle flooded roads, or directions about safe driving in flooded conditions. Or given them authority to abandon scheduled routes and either turn back, or find a way around the flood.
Bus drivers are not exactly given agency in choosing their routes, and are penalized for missing timing targets. So they are, perhaps, inclined to try and get through, rather than turn back, or around.
AT have also been called out over not acting quickly enough to post updates about road closures due to flooding, and signal alternative routes. [Where are the road cones, and their deliverers, when you need them!]
https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/20-auckland-buses-flood-damaged-at-hails-drivers-bravery-refuses-to-say-what-drivers-were-told/F2BWQSYRONEQDCADTL2NID7Y2U/
another reasonably important system failure.
I'm assuming the bus this morning wasn't in an emergency situation like on Friday?
Yeah, I think so. The Friday ones were where the bus was effectively 'trapped' – in a bus lane with no way out – or water rising rapidly around it.
And the situation was new to the drivers – no one (at least in Auckland) had experienced anything like the rapidity of the water rise in areas which are not normally prone to flooding [Our flooding, in the past, has tended to be tide or storm surge related and/or water pipes bursting]
This was several days later (so plenty of time for AT to have done some coms with their drivers), and after possible flooding had already been signalled (this particular street was also flooded on Friday) – so they had time to plan for route changes.
I don't think that the monolithic organizations are coming out of this well. Organizations that devolve decision-making to local level (thinking fire-service, etc.) and local community/volunteer groups (surf-lifesaving did a sterling job rescuing people) – have been outstanding. Organizations which try to make all decisions at the top level, much less so.
Dave Letele (for example) has called out Auckland Council/Emergency Management for designating the South Auckland emergency refuge centre at Manurewa (miles away) – rather than in Mangere (close to where it was needed).
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/483350/auckland-flooding-mangere-residents-say-they-felt-abandoned-and-traumatised
I assume with all the damage in Auckland it has become more likely that Wayne Brown will push ahead with selling off assets such as Auckland Airport shareholding to pay for the repairs and all that. Those shares have increased by about 22% from around the local minimum at the time Brown was elected in October last year.
won't that be a full council decision?
Yes, absolutely and it will be voted on. The process is described here:
https://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/plans-projects-policies-reports-bylaws/our-plans-strategies/budget-plans/Pages/budget-decision-making.aspx
how much support does he have from the councillors?
TBH, IDK. I believe Council is split pretty tightly across the middle and each vote could therefore easily go either way. The Budget vote will be a biggie, of course. I don’t think Brown has the required people and lobbying skills and prefers brute force and bullying tactics.
Other commenters will undoubtedly have better informed views on the fault line(s) in Auckland Council.
I'd rather see the Government do a deal to fix some of Auckland's infrastructure issues and 'buy' the city's AIA shareholding in return.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/483472/auckland-rents-to-go-up-after-flooding-property-investors-body-says
This 'investor group' spokesperson seemingly completely misunderstands the purpose of investment. As well as a poor understanding of 'market forces' and their lack in the NZ housing 'market'
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/479433/rents-on-rise-again-as-landlords-pass-on-costs
Rent freeze to counter rising living costs now!
Of course a major part of the lack of housing..and the increase of land..lords (some with major property portfolios) : sir John Key, mass immigration (for why/what reason?), banks lending to same etc etc…
Anyway maybe..we could see a final end to that BS lie of the "philanthropy of land..lords".
Landlords provide housing like scalpers provide tickets
Has ex-Parliamentary ticket scalper Trevor Mallard rented out his place in Wainuiomata then?
I don't care. That’s irrelevant.
Rent freeze now
https://rentersunited.org.nz/
https://rentersunited.org.nz/rentcontrolsnow/
Stop trolling
If you must indulge in property speculation, here's how you do it