Open mike 05/04/2010

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, April 5th, 2010 - 25 comments
Categories: open mike - Tags:

Open mike is your post.

It’s open for discussing topics of interest, making announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

Comment on whatever takes your fancy.

The usual good behaviour rules apply (see the link to Policy in the banner).

Step right up to the mike…

25 comments on “Open mike 05/04/2010 ”

  • Comments are now closed

  1. Dave 1
    5 April 2010 at 8:40 am

    I think some of you might enjoy this new podcast that a friend and I have started up; The Egonomist.

    Basically it’s two mates discussing NZ issues. More for entertainment and a laugh than as a serious news source, but I hope it can be informative too.

    http://www.TheEgonomist.co.nz, or for iTunes users: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=365575555

    • Adrian 2.1
      5 April 2010 at 9:18 am

      Its a bad day when Llaws makes sense!

    • ianmac 2.2
      5 April 2010 at 9:46 am

      The Charman: Rod Oram is pretty clear on the disaster and crime in the Govt action in “Taking over Canterbury”. Watch the allocation to dairy farmers of an increase in water for irrigation when there is already too much water taken out of the rivers. How can they get away with it? Who cares?

    • Draco T Bastard 2.3
      5 April 2010 at 1:17 pm

      The simple fact is that selling off our businesses and property to foreign owners is bad for our economy. The economists actually know this but defend it on the theory that the world economy will be bigger than it was. Of course, the theory that they’re working with is complete delusion.

    • lprent 3.1
      5 April 2010 at 9:50 am

      It was however rather pointless. The reason that they had to bring in special legislation was because ECan was fulfilling ALL of their obligations under the acts.

      As Rob Oram points out

      There was, though, a minor inconvenience, the panel conceded. Whatever the shortcomings of the council, it had not breached its duties under either the Resource Management Act or the Local Government Act so the only way to boot out the councillors was by passing emergency legislation.

      The government obliged last week, appointing Dame Margaret Bazley as chief commissioner of the region. She will be joined by up to six more commissioners. They will run the council until 2013 at the latest.

      This is an appalling abuse by the government of power, process and good sense, not to mention voters’ rights.

      I guess this government thinks that even if you’re doing your duties, but happen to stand in the way of their funders, you should go. Fits with Tony Ryalls insane practices in the health area as well.

      Characteristic of petty aristocratic thought and a sense of entitlement….. The NACT government!

  4. Peter+Johns 4
    5 April 2010 at 9:56 am

    The government has failed again. The Easter road toll is 50% higher than 2009, with a day to go.
    FAIL.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/3547618/Easter-road-toll-nine-after-baby-dies

    [lprent: Whats with the ‘+’ ? ]

    • Peter Johns 4.1
      5 April 2010 at 10:24 am

      must be a mistype

      • lprent 4.1.1
        5 April 2010 at 10:35 am

        I noticed because when I was reconfiguring the site I turned on an option to say that non-logged in comments required a first-time release of the message from moderation. It will be a pain in the short-term releasing long-time commentators from moderation. But hopefully this will allow us to constrain people like gitmo (and others) who keep commenting under different identities.

        Thought: I’ll just check that it isn’t an artifact of the javascript I created for loading the non-logged in comment fields. They load from the cookies and just unescape the value. What browser are you using?

    • ianmac 4.2
      5 April 2010 at 10:41 am

      You may have noticed that prior to the last election, National hammered the then Government by blaming them at times outrageously for such things as Crime and Health stats. Even the effect of anti-domestic violence promotions which caused higher reporting was turned into a political tool. Shame Shame. As they said in Question Time recently “when crime is up and Labour is in power, it is BAD! When National is in power and Crime is Up, it is good!” Poor old Pete would agree with all that. Warped.

  5. ianmac 5
    5 April 2010 at 10:21 am

    Over on Pundit Maree Baker explains the signicance of the changes. She “There is no fast tracking provision, no alteration of the legal test and no alteration of rights of appeal in respect of resource consent applications.” and “resource consent applications to take and use water are only affected by the provisions in respect of moratoria.”
    http://www.pundit.co.nz/content/canterbury-water-woes#comments
    Other commentaters Like Rod suggest that there will be further depletion of water in favour of dairy farmers. I don’t really understand what the risks are.

  6. lprent 6
    5 April 2010 at 11:14 am

    Armchair Critic just pointed out a error showing up in cached pages with the re-edit. I’ve disabled that plugin for the moment and flushed the cached pages.

    I’ll have a look at it as soon as I finish these other plugins I’m writing.

    I’ll bet that they’re using the same plugin order value, and therefore it is the order you plug them in that has significance…

  7. Armchair Critic 7
    5 April 2010 at 2:19 pm

    Local government amalgamation is not a popular option in the Waikato.
    http://www.stuff.co.nz/waikato-times/news/3514657/One-region-not-super
    Acknowledging that the polling is very unscientific, the thing that struck me about this article was how delusional some of the people who we elect to govern us are.
    Prof Scrimgeour tells us there is “…a big public demand for change…”. Well I haven’t seen even a hint of it. Let’s just hope NACT let the voters of the Waikato Region have their say through the local government elections process in a couple of months.
    Ex-mayor Evans believes the reason for the strong opposition was that “…people do not have enough information about what is being proposed…” and Rodney Hide believes it is because “…people are nervous about change…”
    I’m picking that the opposition stems from the fact that the Waikato region is made up of a wide range of quite different communities and amalgamating them just means less representation and less democracy, in return for little demonstrable benefit.
    I’m thoroughly sick and tired of claims from local government leaders that amalgamation would provide them with a stronger voice at central government level. And I ask these leaders, how so? And what makes them think I need them to speak on my behalf? I have my own voice. So how about they stick to what they are elected for and represent their constituents at a local level? If they want to have a voice in central government, stand as an MP.

    • Draco T Bastard 7.1
      5 April 2010 at 4:19 pm

      I’m picking that the opposition stems from the fact that the Waikato region is made up of a wide range of quite different communities and amalgamating them just means less representation and less democracy, in return for little demonstrable benefit.

      They looked at what happened to Auckland and said that they didn’t want it.

      and Rodney Hide believes it is because ” people are nervous about change ‘

      No wodney, they’re nervous about the dictatorial government that you will put in place.

  8. Quoth the Raven 8
    5 April 2010 at 4:10 pm

    Interesting little piece:
    Cooperative Economy in Salinas

    The Salinas area, a region centering on the village of the same name, includes some thirty communities comprising a total of around six thousand people. The area economy is a network of cooperative enterprises, commonly called “the organization,’ that includes some 95% of the population.

    It was picked up at reason:

    The editor of The Commoner, a website devoted to “the commons-based society,” travels to South America to study the co-ops that dominate the economy of Salinas, Ecuador. He finds an intricate mix of voluntary cooperation and entrepreneurship — not the sort of combination that should befuddle a libertarian, but one that leaves the writer scratching his head.

  9. Quoth the Raven 9
    5 April 2010 at 4:14 pm

    Interesting little piece: Cooperative Economy in Salinas

    The Salinas area, a region centering on the village of the same name, includes some thirty communities comprising a total of around six thousand people. The area economy is a network of cooperative enterprises, commonly called “the organization,’ that includes some 95% of the population.

    Also picked up at reason

    The editor of The Commoner, a website devoted to “the commons-based society,” travels to South America to study the co-ops that dominate the economy of Salinas, Ecuador. He finds an intricate mix of voluntary cooperation and entrepreneurship — not the sort of combination that should befuddle a libertarian, but one that leaves the writer scratching his head.

  10. Draco T Bastard 10
    5 April 2010 at 8:08 pm

    http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163

    Link goes to NASA launch @ ~ 10:20 NZ time

The server will be getting hardware changes this evening starting at 10pm NZDT.
The site will be off line for some hours.