Open mike 16/03/2012

Written By: - Date published: 6:00 am, March 16th, 2012 - 45 comments
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Open mike is your post. For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.

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

Step right up to the mike…

45 comments on “Open mike 16/03/2012 ”

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  1. Pete George 1
    16 March 2012 at 7:47 am

    Labour and Greens pushed the ‘no plan’ plan in the eledction campaign and are continuing the theme, hoping it will stick by the next election? Both parties said Key’s goals announced yesterday wer absent any plans.

    Shearer said yesterday “Everyone in this room knows the difference between a woolly plan”. ‘No plan’ plan – plainly plonkers.

    (Maybe MOM is not a plan that’s worth highlighting).

    • Bored 1.1
      16 March 2012 at 8:21 am

      Pete, it is your scussy self serving little Dunne monster that will enable the Nats to achieve their plan of gifting themselves and their paymasters NZs assets. Yes they have a plan and it is very scummy, and you soil yourself with it by wiling association. Disgusting.

    • David H 1.2
      16 March 2012 at 4:02 pm

      Why is it that ALL the Links you use, are to your own bloody website? Where nothing of any substance is done.

  2. Uturn 2
    16 March 2012 at 7:56 am

    Not content to murder the English language, logic, reasoning and any measure of quality in their profession, the media are now attacking their sources!

    A rare animal was killed last week by a camera man in Germany.

    “…it was a direct hit…”

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,821389,00.html

  3. Bored 3
    16 March 2012 at 8:16 am

    Who watched Campbells interview with the PM last night? Key was well rehearsed and his usual smooth as glass self when answering questions about the loss of jobs in the public sector. The ultimate snake oil salesman charm oozed.

    Repeating the following mantras …”Salient point is outcomes not numbers (of public servants reduced)..dont need to know numbers….better product, outcome, and experience for NZers engaged with the public service…..all businesses innovate and change is a constant….we will target transparency, delivery of outcomes, results…”.

    Sounds good until you break it down. It is the language of a sociopath.

    People to Key are numbers and numbers dont matter, only outcomes matter. Ergo a public servant is a number who exists to the PM only as an outcome producing number.

    We the NZers who engage with the Public Service are expected to recieve business outcomes, measured with us as the primary outcome (eg 85% of us getting NCEA L2), ergo we too are mere outcomes, mere numbers.

    Keys language is the language of business, not of public service or community / citizenry. He kept as far as possible away from talking money but it was obvious that Key used business words such as efficiency, effectiveness to avoid the plain grubby fact that this is all about paying less to deliver less.

    Keys sociopathology was there for all to see, his words said it all: is not about delivering service to citizens, its about delivering $ outcomes to our masters. And he is master number one, a number, devoid of humanity, a mere cypher.
    .

    • Bill 3.1
      16 March 2012 at 9:28 am

      …the plain grubby fact that this is all about paying less to deliver less.

      Although words like ‘expenditure’ and ‘efficiency’ will be peppered throughout any explanatory justification for what’s happening, the truth of the matter is that whether services cost less or more is neither here nor there in the scheme of things. What matters – all that matters – is that the public service is diminished, unions knackered and that services are privatised.

      • Bored 3.1.1
        16 March 2012 at 4:00 pm

        So true Bill, these bastards are so cock arrogant that they think the blarney Shonko comes up with will trump our poor little minds.

  4. rosy 4
    16 March 2012 at 10:04 am

    The poor: always with us, necessarily not us

    A well-written article on the origins of the culture of poverty. 50 years ago Michael Harrington’s book ‘The Other American’ introduced the invisible poor, such as Appalachian cultures, the inner-city ghettos, farm workers and the poor elderly, amongst others, to middle America – disabusing them of the notion of a classless society. Harrigton described a the poor in terms difference:
    “There is … a language of the poor, a psychology of the poor, a worldview of the poor. To be impoverished is to be an internal alien, to grow up in a culture that is radically different from the one that dominates the society.”

    Harrington thought the poor were distinguished by a ‘culture of poverty’. This was in turn interpreted (apparently unintended by Harrington) in a way that meant although they should be helped, there was in fact, something wrong with them. The result of this thinking is a prevalence of victim-blaming and a belief that entrusting the poor with money, for instance, would only lead to a worsening of their condition:

    By the Reagan era, the “culture of poverty” had become a cornerstone of conservative ideology: poverty was caused, not by low wages or a lack of jobs, but by bad attitudes and faulty lifestyles. The poor were dissolute, promiscuous, prone to addiction and crime, unable to “defer gratification”, or possibly even set an alarm clock. The last thing they could be trusted with was money. In fact, Charles Murray argued, in his 1984 book Losing Ground, any attempt to help the poor with their material circumstances would only have the unexpected consequence of deepening their depravity.

    The author of this article finishes with the following observation:

    Fifty years later, a new discovery of poverty is long overdue. This time, we’ll have to take account not only of stereotypical Skid Row residents and Appalachians, but of foreclosed-upon suburbanites, laid-off tech workers, and America’s ever-growing army of the “working poor”. And if we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.

    This interpretation of a ‘culture of poverty’ enables some people to contrast themselves as “disciplined, law-abiding, sober, and focused. In other words, not poor.” Whereas in reality the only culture of poverty is in their heads. Poor people are poor – that is all. Deal with poverty, not to the poverty-stricken.

    • just saying 4.1
      16 March 2012 at 10:59 am

      I couldn’t agree more Rosy. Thanks for posting that.

      It’s been all too easy for, particularly the smug, comfortably off, to pat themselves on the back believing themselves to have naturally risen to the top in a kind of moral, as well as intellectual “meritocracy”. They “know” that people get what they deserve and we shouldn’t interfere with the natural order because giving to the undeserving only further weakens them and hastens their decay. The compassionate thing is to be cruel to be kind, but make sure the children of the poor always have books available, in case the genes of the inferior, somehow throws up a potentially upstanding and worthy citizen.

      bah

      • rosy 4.1.1
        17 March 2012 at 2:15 am

        Thanks JS, I think articles like this are really important in breaking down the narratives of difference that are accepted into common usage with no real understanding of how accurate they might be.

        I agree with DH, below, that people lack empathy with the poor, I don’t agree that money doesn’t matter though. It does matter – money is what makes the non-poor see themselves as ‘different’ when they’re not. In my climb up the social ladder I’ve seen similar behaviours exhibited in a variety of social settings, but with different results, for example drunkeness, assaults, children having accidents while off playing ‘unsupervised’, taking financial risks and indiscriminate spending, but also a pride in work, family and achievement. The rich and poor are not different groups, they do however live in different contexts.

        I also very much resent, as you suggest, how the non-poor see rewards, from a secure financial base as necessary to incentivise themselves but believe withdrawal of rewards, from an already financially precarious base will incentivise the poor. It simply can’t happen, for the majority of the poor, that their lot will improve without a stable base and positive reinforcement. The opposite is equally likely IMO – life will get worse and poorer decisions will be made. This is also where DH’s contention that money doesn’t matter falls down.

        And in Uturns words

        No one will fix poverty by standing back, hand out, just out of reach, calling, “Reach out, take my hand if you aren’t lazy!” Helping people help themselves involves stooping, picking people up, holding their hand, and then walking forward together. And while that happens, inside that person, they being to discover they can make steps themselves and they participate with you. And while you are with them you too are changed. Sometimes the person you assist lets go of your hand, sometimes they will always need a place to lean – but that does not mean things are not changing, that they are not growing and that each action is not a development from the last.

        The sons of widows and teenage mothers climbing the socio-economic ladder, supported by a stable financial base and positive reinforcement, and then kicking the ladder away is the complete opposite to this.

    • DH 4.2
      16 March 2012 at 11:11 am

      I think it’s more than just money Rosy. Self respect is hugely important and it generally follows that when you’re poor you’re lacking in that area. We are social creatures & we all want to be accepted & respected in society. If you’re poor you feel like a social pariah; a lesser human being. Strip a man or woman of their pride and what have you got left?

      I’ll always maintain that the poor don’t want charity or sympathy. They just want self respect and for that they need access to decent jobs before they build up so much baggage from being social outcasts that they’re irredeemable.

      The word empathy comes up from time to time & I think that is what is lacking among us. To truly understand the poor we need to walk a mile in their shoes and most people seem incapable of doing that.

      That’s not to disagree with you btw, just that money isn’t the solution it’s only a stopgap IMO.

      • muzza 4.2.1
        16 March 2012 at 11:19 am

        “We are social creatures & we all want to be accepted & respected in society” – Speak for yourself, the acceptance of society to me, I take as an insult from a bunch of people who don’t know a thing about me…

        Take your point though in regards to the social aspect, but as far as accepted by society….No thanks, Ill decide the personal acceptance criteria for myself!

        • DH 4.2.1.1
          16 March 2012 at 11:37 am

          The opposite of accepted is rejected muzza. Would you prefer to be a social reject that no-one wants anything to do with?

          • Uturn 4.2.1.1.1
            16 March 2012 at 11:55 am

            In my opinion, the opposite of rejected, is appreciated.

            Appreciation means knowing what something is and what it is used for. In the case of a human being, instead of “their use”, it means understanding how they relate to you, to others and their effect on the world. It is the begining of a respect for people that does not have to be earned through meeting arbitrarily enforced cultural rules.

            By understanding that appreciation is the opposite of rejection, we move out of the binary accept/reject cycle which requires no thought, no rationality, no understanding. Anyone can like or hate something.

          • muzza 4.2.1.1.2
            16 March 2012 at 12:59 pm

            DH, good to see you are trapped into the 2 dimentional thought process..

            Look at it this way, we have been shovelled into little boxes, which society like to be able to relate to in order to feel they are safe, secure and in control, when really this is far from the truth.

            People who understand what life is a little more, and see the constraints that have been set around us, will see that the essence of a person is far more important than what they have, what they do for a job or any of that meaningless stuff, its a slave mindset to focus on the trivial, or only on ones ownself, without looking outward to those who most need assistance!

            Society needs to get out of its collective coma, and see that they are making this place into a shitehole of their own making, and due to selfish arrogance, foolishly believe that because they perceive “society” to accept them, that they, and society are actually “right”

            #couldnotbemorewrongiftheytried

      • Vicky32 4.2.2
        16 March 2012 at 4:18 pm

        I’ll always maintain that the poor don’t want charity or sympathy. They just want self respect and for that they need access to decent jobs before they build up so much baggage from being social outcasts that they’re irredeemable.

        That’s right, but in the interim, money is a solution! How can someone get a job with bad teeth, glasses from a $2 shop and no money for bus fares to interviews?

        • just saying 4.2.2.1
          16 March 2012 at 6:17 pm

          I’m pretty wary of the ‘money isn’t the solution’ meme too.
          Using the anaolgy of a deficiency disease, you treat the deficiency with what is deficient eg vitamin C for scurvy and tackle the reasons that the patient became deficient. Too many people who like to tut tut about ‘fishing rods’ (and I’m not saying you are one of them DH) or, in the modern parlance, bollocks like “excellence in education”, are really advocating that we not provide what is deficient, and often use abhorrent quasi-moral arguments about supposed moral deficencies in the poor, in order to absolve themselves from any ethical obligation to help those in need.

          • DH 4.2.2.1.1
            17 March 2012 at 10:26 am

            Well money is certainly the solution to the problem of not having money. But giving people more money doesn’t address the problem of why they don’t have money in the first place. Giving more money in the form of decent jobs solves both problems IMO.

            Present thinking from both the Nats & Labour seems to be that poverty in NZ is caused by poor education; the solution being to make sure everyone is well educated and poverty & unemployment will disappear because there’s always a shortage of skilled workers. So they pump more & more dosh into the education system. That we’ve been trying this for a good twenty years now with little success doesn’t seem to sway the pundits of this…. just chuck more money at it, has to work sooner or later.

            Another line of thinking is that if beneficiaries had enough income to get by on they’d sort their own problems out. It does have some merit but I don’t subscribe to it as a solution per se; jobs don’t appear out of thin air and the real problem is we don’t have enough decent jobs for people. Take Vicky’s example above. IMO she’s right, some more dosh would help that person with bad teeth get a job. But they’d get the job at the expense of someone else. The underlying problem would still be there.

    • Uturn 4.3
      16 March 2012 at 11:49 am

      From Rosy’s post:

      “Harrington thought the poor were distinguished by a ‘culture of poverty’. This was in turn interpreted (apparently unintended by Harrington) in a way that meant although they should be helped, there was in fact, something wrong with them. The result of this thinking is a prevalence of victim-blaming and a belief that entrusting the poor with money, for instance, would only lead to a worsening of their condition.”

      This is the problem of social commenters forgetting the bias trained into psychologists, well, the good ones at least: You cannot observe something in its natural state. The limitations of being an observer include interpreting the subject/object by your own values. You change the subject/object every time you interact with it. These limitations can only be reduced by investigating yourself first and knowing your own bias and the many ways a mind will trap you, unconsciously. Of course, stopping to investigate yourself costs time and is very inconvenient to business that wants immediate results. But I’ll not go that way in this comment. The point that you highlight and that we see in action from Shearer’s speech yesterday below, is that the epidemic of forgetting the influences of your upbringing and culture is spreading:

      “Now, what happens if we put this in the New Zealand context?
      The first thing we can say is this: we have some very high-achieving children and some high-achieving schools.
      The best and the brightest do very well and I am proud of them.
      But I’m not just interested in the bunch that leads the marathon into the stadium.
      Some of them are outstanding and the very best of them finish their race in world record time.
      They’re an inspiration for the others.
      But if you track back along the rest of the field, it doesn’t look so world class.
      Many of them are coming in hours later.
      Many of them are giving up before the finish.
      And too many of them aren’t even turning up at the starting line.
      We have a long tail of failure.
      We have to fix it.”

      We have to fix it? Listen to him praise “success”, that is, money, coming first, beating others, individual effort. Listen to him talk of inspiration, pride and admiration like they are, inherently, desirable concepts for the psyche – some kind of peaceful clearing in a forest where nothing happens – and morally correct states. Listen to him proclaim that life is a competition. That time is a factor, an inconvenience – to him. That we must be “world class”, no choice. And that if we don’t hurry up, we will assumedly lose the race. Listen to him say that “giving up”, leaving the race, having an alternate view is “wrong”. We must fix what is “Wrong”. Good rich kids will freely join the race; bad poor kids are wrong and need fixing. They will be fixed.

      Now to be fair, though I hate to be fair right now, Shearer failed to define any of his points. They were empty vacuous statements, so wide in parameters that they could mean anything, but where they did link up, as in the marathon example, we begin to see what beliefs Shearer supports.
      His ideas cater to those infatuated with themselves, with a small world view and limited understanding of who they are in relation to the outside world.

      “Inspiration” is a personal experience, felt by the individual, usually pleasurable. It generally doesn’t last and historically can even be the beginning of a series of incidences leading into schizophrenic episode. Admiration is a projection of one man’s fantasy wish – he sees something he wants, imagines the value of it above all other traits, his mind departs for the future when he too might possess those traits. He’d like to be the acclaimed Hero, too – neglecting the present and who he is right now and how his own qualities might be developed and expressed in the world.

      Admiration tricks the mind into another state of infatuation: a good athlete is admirable, look at him score tries; surely he would also be a good business man, a great husband, a sober driver, of sound mind and worthy of political comment and influence? Every few months, from the stories of stupidity from our national level athletes, we discover that one thing does not mean another.

      Is life a competition or have we made it a competition? In Shearer’s brave new, New Zealand, will anyone be allowed to drop out of the money race of infatuation fantasy to find out? Will poverty and social exclusion be the price they pay? How much time should Shearer allow an explorer to search? Whose measure will he use? That of the Boomers, who rarely look outside the last sixty years to understand just how fragile the material gains of free-market economics really are? Will he take a longer view and realise that a man could spend his whole life searching, pass incomplete information to his colleague and that person pass it to another before a clearer understanding is reached? Will they too have to live in an increasingly hostile society, because of their now enforced poverty? Will the crowd in the marathon stadium have gone home by then?

      Will he take an Eastern View, and simply sit and wait, comfortable in the unknowable unexplained, the Tao? Probably not. Will he frown on and ridicule the Buddhist athlete, who will not eat meat, or participate in farming animals, or the construction of electronic materials used for things that are not “mindful”. How does the blatant dismissal of alternative culture in NZ set us up for the multitude of friends here now that are not Christian, and are not interested in Shearer’s marathon? Could it be that Shearers marathon is so utterly morally flawed, it is actively divisive? And all this to court 10% swing voters – a group that will never stay put because self interest has no loyalty to anything but it’s owner. And right at the bottom, children being forced into holes that don’t fit them, being destroyed mentally, labeled as wrong, and condemned to poverty.

      Shearer has forgotten the impact of his own viewpoint. Poverty is not “wrong”, though it certainly is a painful reality. Poverty is no more wrong than cancer is wrong. Cancer exists, poverty exists – understand and intervene as necessary. Poverty is a symptom of a problem we create by impatiently believing wrong ideas. We fail to observe our environment in the present, see who is here and who they are and we certainly do not live with them each day, letting time be a coincidental measure of what happened instead of a distance between now and our impatience to see a future that we do not understand.

      No one will fix poverty by standing back, hand out, just out of reach, calling, “Reach out, take my hand if you aren’t lazy!” Helping people help themselves involves stooping, picking people up, holding their hand, and then walking forward together. And while that happens, inside that person, they being to discover they can make steps themselves and they participate with you. And while you are with them you too are changed. Sometimes the person you assist lets go of your hand, sometimes they will always need a place to lean – but that does not mean things are not changing, that they are not growing and that each action is not a development from the last.

      What people forget with their focus on imagining the future is that no two days are the same, they don’t know the future and there is more to learn in the present than the past can tell us. If life was all about past experiences defining our futures, we’d all be completely satisfied by now! Life would be easy, no surprises, just follow the official recipe.

      Helping people to help themselves is a matter of participation in the moment and for the long term, realising that that the time measure of how long you are together is irrelevant to the discoveries and developments made. It is not a case of reading a magazine about the activities of the Red Cross, deciding you want to help – from the position of your privileged white middle class existence – parachuting into a ravaged country with aid structures already in place and when you get tired, going home to general applause.

      Stay home and fix the messes we’ve created. Learn about yourself and your people in the face of the hatred from your family, your friends and society that will pour on you when you try, from nothing, with nothing, to make a change. Then you’ll see your own culture in a different light, it will start to crumble, and you’ll comprehend it a little like those from a position of poverty would. What good is charity and assistance when it is just the comfortable helping the poor on the weekends while during the week they vote in regimes that maintain and create more hobby problems for them to attend?

      There’s a unattributed story that talks about true assistance and what it can do:

      A master and his disciple were walking in the garden and the young monk asked, “Master, in the old days men often saw God. Why is it so hard to see him now?” The master replied, “No one now is prepared to stoop low enough”.

      A plan that is based around infatuation with material success will discourage people not just from stooping, not just from bending their knees, but even glancing below waist height.

      From Rosy’s post:

      “ The author of this article finishes with the following observation:

      Fifty years later, a new discovery of poverty is long overdue. This time, we’ll have to take account not only of stereotypical Skid Row residents and Appalachians, but of foreclosed-upon suburbanites, laid-off tech workers, and America’s ever-growing army of the “working poor”. And if we look closely enough, we’ll have to conclude that poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.”

      And here is another proof of cultural bias from that author. Poverty, as has been outlined here from various commenter’s recently, is not just about money, it effects resources, minds, perspectives. That author believes that somehow, those that ran in Shearer’s marathon were superhuman from the start. They did not suffer flaws. The identities of those people were not humans first, professionals second, but professionals first and only. Well, those now out of work professionals find out pretty fast that human identity is not anything to do with what you do for money. Sometimes the shock leads them to suicide.

      Our nation is sick, mentally, philosophically, spiritually. Instead of facing that fact, Shearer and others like him, have done the equivalent of offering free cigarettes to those with self induced emphysema; cheap proof alcohol to cirrhosis suffering drunks; and live-in slaves to sociopaths. Then gone further to encourage children into the cycle. I’m pretty pissed of about that.

      • just saying 4.3.1
        16 March 2012 at 12:49 pm

        …parachuting into a ravaged country with aid structures already in place and when you get tired, going home to general applause…

        Add in a one percenter salary and pension scheme and you’ve described Shearer.

        I find it interesting that Shearer went to Papatoetoe High School (I believe he was head boy) at a time that the lower middle class, such as made up the majority of people in Papatoetoe at that time, never had it better. Among fellow students were those from the deprived state-housing suburb of Otara, they were poor, often hungry and generally despised by Papatoetoe Pakeha. Shearer would have been exposed to daily incidences of racism from teachers and students alike. He left school and aspirationally voted National in that Labour stronghold. Like many of his peers (such as Phil Goff), he made excellent use of his education and natural advantages, and moved up the socio-economic staircase.

        It wasn’t until he was overseas that he was suddenly moved by poverty and oppression. Like so many middle-class warriors, poverty and injustice is so much easier to get angry about when it’s happening somewhere else, and doesn’t entail any reflection on one’s own place in perpetuationg the causes.

  5. Jackal 5
    16 March 2012 at 10:07 am

    Odgers vs Bomber

    Nobody wants to read continuous vexation built on speculation, we want a functional and truthful rightwing commentary, which is unfortunately largely lacking from New Zealand’s blogosphere…

    • Bored 5.1
      16 March 2012 at 4:04 pm

      Beautiful descriptions of Cactus…another overblown by her own importance has been….. Catcus is such an old windbag full of hollow threats…. a discredited and defunct commentator who hides behind a barbed wire fence, too afraid of her own shadow to step out into the light.

  6. Penny Bright 6
    16 March 2012 at 11:52 am

    FYI Brian Rudman’s view of yesterday’s Auckland Council’s decision on the Ports of Auckland issue.

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/brian-rudman/news/article.cfm?a_id=1&objectid=10792426

    (My Local Government) OIA request to UNELECTED Auckland Council CEO – Doug McKay
    (15 March 2012)

    “WHO GOVERNS THIS AUCKLAND $UPERCITY COUNCIL?

    ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES OR THE UNELECTED COMMITTEE FOR AUCKLAND?

    What is driving this Ports Of Auckland dispute has been the Auckland Council Investment Limited’s ‘Key Performance Indicator’ (KPI) that ‘POAL’s ROE (Return On Equity) increases from 6.3% to 12% over the following 5 years by 30/06/2016″.

    Councillor Richard Northey, Chair of the Auckland Council Accountability and Performance Committee asked the Chief Executive of Auckland Council Investments Ltd (ACIL), Gary Swift in a letter dated 20 January 2012 asked:

    “2. What was the origin and justification for the above KPI? …”

    The answer from the Chief Executive of Auckland Council Investments Ltd (ACIL), Gary Swift in a letter dated 27 January 2012 :

    ” I’m not exactly sure where the return on equity target of 12% originated…..
    I think Doug McKay may have suggested 12% when he met with the POAL Board.
    ……”

    KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS IN STATEMENTS OF INTENT ARE ‘GOVERNANCE’ MATTERS – TO BE DECIDED BY ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES – NOT THE UNELECTED CEO OF AUCKLAND COUNCIL, DOUG MCKAY, WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR ‘OPERATIONAL’ MATTERS.

    Please provide the following information which confirms:

    1) IN WHAT LAWFUL CAPACITY, AND ON WHOSE LAWFUL AUTHORITY DID YOU, UNELECTED CEO FOR AUCKLAND COUNCIL DOUG MCKAY MEET WITH THE POAL BOARD AND ‘SUGGEST’ A 12% RETURN ON EQUITY (ROE) KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR?

    2) PLEASE PROVIDE THE MINUTES OF ALL/ANY MEETINGS BETWEEN THE POAL BOARD/ THE ACIL BOARD AND YOURSELF AS CEO OF AUCKLAND COUNCIL WHERE A 12% RETURN ON EQUITY (ROE) KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR WAS DISCUSSED.

    3) PLEASE CONFIRM WHETHER A 12% RETURN ON EQUITY (ROE) KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATOR WAS EVER DISCUSSED BETWEEN YOURSELF AS A MEMBER OF THE UNELECTED PRIVATE LOBBY GROUP – THE COMMITTEE FOR AUCKLAND – AND THE CEO OF PORTS OF AUCKLAND, TONY GIBSON, ALSO A MEMBER OF THE COMMITTEE FOR AUCKLAND.

    4) PLEASE PROVIDE THE INFORMATION WHICH CONFIRMS HOW MANY CONTRACTS HAVE BEEN AWARDED TO COMPANIES WHICH ARE MEMBERS OF THE COMMITTEE FOR AUCKLAND, FOR THE PROVISION OF GOODS, SERVICES OR PEOPLE, SINCE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AUCKLAND TRANSITION AGENCY (ATA); THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE AUCKLAND COUNCIL, AND/OR ANY OF THE FOLLOWING ‘COUNCIL CONTROLLED ORGANISATIONS’ (CCOs):

    ACIL
    RFA
    ATEED
    ACPL
    Auckland Transport
    Waterfront Auckland
    Watercare

    or any subsidiaries thereof …..”

    Penny Bright

  7. Penny Bright 7
    16 March 2012 at 11:55 am

    Who is REALLY running Auckland Council and the Auckland region?

    In my considered opinion – the UNELECTED Committee for Auckland.

    Check it out for yourself:

    http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/member-organisations

    Penny Bright

    ‘Anti-Corruption Campaigner’

    • Te Reo Putake 7.1
      16 March 2012 at 12:07 pm

      Hey, Penny, I heard you stuffed up MUNZ’s chance to talk with the AK council yesterday by constantly interrupting proceedings to the point where the meeting was shut down. Is that true?

      • muzza 7.1.1
        16 March 2012 at 1:44 pm

        From what I saw at union meetings Voice, MUNZ did not even know what the ROE/SOI/PBE even were

        These documents, and the employment contracts and legal freamework should have been the core of the strategy, and it looks as if they were not!

        Can’t comment on yesterdays meeting as I was not there, but MUNZ should actually be thanking others who have handed to them on a plate, information that MUNZ were clueless about!

      • Penny Bright 7.1.2
        16 March 2012 at 2:35 pm

        Thank you for attempting to seeki TRUTH from FACTS Te Reo Putake.

        The FACTS are that – yes – I did make some interjections.

        (It is VERY difficult to just sit there and listen to information which is factually incorrect – whether it comes from Auckland Council ‘in-house’ lawyers, or the Mayor of Auckland.)

        The meeting was closed down after I asked if I could speak, (and was refused) after hearing the Mayor get it completely wrong by comparing the situation of State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) – which are PROFIT-ORIENTED ENTITIES, with this POAL situation – where the Council Controlled Organisation (CCO) – Auckland Council Investments Ltd (ACIL) is a PUBLIC BENEFIT ENTITY.

        I waited until just before the vote was to be put – before I asked to speak and was declined.

        So – as I have done on many othe occasions – ‘when people’s rights are under attack – stand up fight back!’ – that’s what I did on this occasion.

        I pointed out the FACTS and the LAW.

        (Given that I have been previously arrested on 22 occasions in Auckland City Council days, and it has been 21 – 1 to me – that I know that the legal advice upon which Council has been relying, hasn’t been reliable.)

        I also knew once the Mayor had stated that he was not going to support the motion – that there wouldn’t be the numbers for it to pass.

        The normal situation under ‘Standing Orders’ is that ‘DEPUTATIONS’ are heard BEFORE the Council or Council Committee starts items of business set down for that meeting.

        So – if MUNZ had applied for ‘speaking rights’ they would have already been heard.

        (I arrived about 15 minutes late, because I had widely distributed by email the above-mentioned ‘Local Government) OIA request to UNELECTED Auckland Council CEO – Doug McKay
        (15 March 2012)

        “WHO GOVERNS THIS AUCKLAND $UPERCITY COUNCIL?

        ELECTED REPRESENTATIVES OR THE UNELECTED COMMITTEE FOR AUCKLAND?”

        Please be advised that I have raised the issue of ‘Public Benefit Entities’ and broader issues regarding opposition to ‘contracting out’ , at Council meetings for quite some time.

        Hope this helps.

        Penny Bright
        ‘Anti-corruption campaigner’.

  9. Chris 9
    16 March 2012 at 1:21 pm

    I know not many here like Whaleoil but you really should watch this:

    http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2012/03/the-redneck-south/

    It amazed me.

    • felix 9.1
      16 March 2012 at 2:15 pm

      What amazes you about it?

      Nothing said in that video would be out of place in the average kiwiblog or whaleoil comment thread.

    • Morrissey 9.2
      16 March 2012 at 6:50 pm

      It amazed me.

      That’s only because you don’t know much, and to compound that, you are incurious.

      If you had a clue, you would know that the people on this film have been chosen carefully to present a stereotypical picture of southerners as illiterate, superstitious, toothless fools. The woman asking the questions is the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, and she has a vested interest in doing that.

      These guys say some hair-raisingly ignorant things, for sure, but they are no worse than what you’ll hear from the likes of Whaleoil, David Farrar—and more disturbingly, John Key.

      The only reason you have to laugh at these guys is that they are dirt-poor, and they have funny southern accents. At least they’re funny to the minds of sniffy insiders like the Pelosi family.

      • Chris 9.2.1
        17 March 2012 at 10:54 am

        You really think I didn’t realise they went and picked the most backwards people possible with extreme views. 

        That doesn’t stop it being amazing that people in America still hold those views. If you really think that the views expressed on there are the same as those held by Whaleoil David Farrar and John Key then it is who doesn’t know much and is incurious.

  10. Doug 10
    16 March 2012 at 4:44 pm

    How can this be true?

    Today’s New Zealand Roy Morgan Poll shows increasing strong support for Prime Minister John Key’s National Party 48.5% (up 3% since February 27-March 11, 2012). Support for Key’s Coalition partners has changed little with the Maori Party 1% (down 0.5%), ACT NZ 0.5% (unchanged), and United Future 0.5% (unchanged).

    Support for Labour has fallen 1.5% to 30%, Greens 12.5% (down 0.5%), New Zealand First 5% (unchanged), Mana Party 0.5% (down 0.5%) and Others 1.5% (unchanged).

    If a National Election were held today the National Party would be returned to Government.

    • Grumpy 10.1
      16 March 2012 at 5:30 pm

      Another rogue Roy Morgan……

    • Morrissey 10.2
      19 March 2012 at 2:35 pm

      If you really think that the views expressed on there are the same as those held by Whaleoil David Farrar and John Key

      It’s not a matter of whether I think so or not; the fact is that they do. Their anti-democratic statements are just as extreme; they are just more affluent, and their accents don’t sound funny to the likes of Alexandra Pelosi.

      then it is who doesn’t know much and is incurious.

      I know a lot more than you do about American politics, and obviously a lot more about New Zealand politics.

  11. vto 11
    16 March 2012 at 5:26 pm

    So the Chinese government are very aggressive, calling me and other kiwis racist and laying out bare threats, while at the same time being racist themselves about who can buy their land.

    The very fact they have done this requires heavy resistance.

    It is an indicator moment everybody …

    • Grumpy 11.1
      16 March 2012 at 5:31 pm

      Very true. Until they start selling theirs, they should keep their hands off ours…..

      • vto 11.1.1
        16 March 2012 at 8:00 pm

        The volume of political comnmentary will speak volumes.

        Just like the voluminous nature of the Chinese governments comment.

        Care to comment anybody?

    • Bill 11.2
      16 March 2012 at 6:01 pm

      What you on about VTO?

  12. ianmac 12
    16 March 2012 at 6:18 pm

    Fracking program on 60 Minutes Sunday evening TV3.

  13. just saying 13
    16 March 2012 at 6:47 pm

    http://www.nzherald.co.nz/opinion/news/article.cfm?c_id=466&objectid=10792353

    An extemely well written article about how increasing use of private health care is wrecking the public health system:

    Expanding the pay-for-treatment sector may wreck the free one, writes Tim Parke

    New Zealand’s world-class hospital care depends on extremely well motivated senior medical staff.

    The solution to rising healthcare costs in tough economic times is not, as some vested interests would increasingly have you believe, to maximise the number of people using the private health sector. As a public hospital emergency specialist, I fear that expanding private healthcare may instead fragment and irretrievably damage an effective public system, resulting in the country as a whole paying more for potentially worse healthcare

    Well worth reading in full.
    He concludes:

    So, if a mainly public hospital healthcare system is cheaper, fairer, less divisive, and produces good outcomes on international comparisons, why encourage the use of alternatives? Instead of spending money on private health insurance, perhaps a lesser sum invested in the public system through taxation could make up for some of its current deficiencies and protect it for the future. It certainly has the best chance of delivering comprehensive health protection to all – even if they get old, lose their job or get sick with something unprofitable.

    * Tim Parke is clinical director, Adult Emergency Department, Auckland

    So taxation, clearly not a Labour man then 🙂

    • ianmac 13.1
      16 March 2012 at 7:44 pm

      I wonder if the healthcare system as Tim Parke describes would have the same effect on ACC?

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