Open mike 20/03/2010
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6:00 am, March 20th, 2010 - 29 comments
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Good corporate citizen?
http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3478777/Roading-firm-defends-500-000-donation
Bribing the council by the sounds of things.
Tagged donation. Donation unconnected to award of contract. Sponsorship. No tenders. Public excluded meeting. Unhappy councillors.
A sign of the future for the Super City? Anti-spam “pulled”.
Some choice quotes from the link provided by Darren:
Higgins Group chief executive officer Alan Cockrell said those slating the deal with Hastings District Council were “focusing on the wrong things”.
[I can see how he would think that.]
The company that scored a ratepayer-funded $1.8 million roading contract after giving $500,000 toward the project says it was just trying to be “a good corporate citizen” and the practice is not unheard of.
[I believe that too.]
Mr Cockrell said the Higgins family were “trying to be good corporate citizens”. While it was unusual for a donation and contract to seem to be tied up together “it’s not the first time it’s happened”.
[There ya go. If you want a decent public transport system you just need to be able to pay bigger bribes than the roading lobbyists.]
Though Higgins said it regarded the contract and the donation as “two separate transactions”, a council paper presented at a public-excluded meeting on January 28 noted that “Higgins Ltd has indicated the sponsorship agreement is contingent on them being awarded the … road works”.
[Game set and match, the public can forget about sustainable transport solutions, as long as this sort of bribery is perfectly legal and “not unheard of.” and soon under the Super City, to be made secret, as well.]
[And just in case there was ever any possible threat to this system of backhanders and bribery. This article finishes with a timely warning, to all those who doubt the wisdom of this system.]
Trust chief executive Jock Mackintosh said politicking on the matter would “potentially damage funding” opportunities.
[Thanks to Rodney Hide’s foresight, this sort of behaviour is to be cemented in place in the Super City reorganisation. All “potentially damaging” – “politicking” will be prevented in the new Super City. Because Rodney has decreed that all the meetings of the un-elected council business managers, (initially to be appointed by him), are to be carried out in secret, and without public minutes, and zero public accountability.
Using the words of the council contractor, Higgins Group, this secrecy will be able to stop the public, “focusing on the wrong things”. ]
I just want to know if anyone knows or what they think about the claims that National is ‘the mafia’, which is displayed on Queen St in Auckland next to the Mrs Higgins store?
Shocking I know, but apparently teabaggers don’t know what the hell they are talking about, and view things not only through a different framework, but in ways that have literally nothing to do with actual reality.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/willingly-brainwashed.html
Ah, the pettiness and the cruelty that constitutes and informs the politics of the right these days. Swastikas being waved at Labour is a nice wee reminder that we apparently drink tea here too.
Check this out; fuckn hilarious.
I’ve been predicting it for ages, but if the health care bill passes, it may well trigger peak wingnut.
So at peak wingnut we won’t actually be short of wingnuts but it’ll be too expensive to mine them?
The psychological cost of maintaining the crazy at that level means we will either, as a species, sort our shit out or pretty much revert to being chimps.
Here we have well known wingnut hoping for attacks on his own troops, for example.
Dumb wingnuts, especially Rush Limbaugh
Wow I don’t even know what date it is today.
Anyone watch “The Nation’ on TV 3 at 11am? It’s very agenda-like. Its obvious they have a few kinks to sort out and I’m not sure Duncan Garner is the best person to interview politicians. He didn’t get much out of Joyce. Joyce didn’t do much wrong but he didn’t do anything right either. Stephen Parker as host was pretty good but does need a few episodes to sort himself. The Panel which comprises of two people was decent. Though I hope its not just a bunch of Newspapers reporters/columnists. I thought the piece on River access etc was good. Though it could have been shorter.
I guess the big difference to Q&A is where Q&A provides plenty of news for TV One. The Nation just doesn’t have that. Particularly as any news would then go on a Saturday which isn’t a rich day for political stories. Also I can’t imagine their viewer numbers were very good since they didn’t advertise the show.
The main problem with now having three political shows is how similar they are. Both The Nation and Q&A have a panel and a guest who is interviewed while Backbenchers has four MPs and isn’t that substantive. There is no political show in New Zealand that can handle substantial issues.Personally, I’d love to see a political & current affairs show where the first 30 minutes is political news covering stuff we wouldn’t ordinarily see on the evening news then devote the last 30 minutes to a talk-fest
[lprent: I was wondering why I saw a dup comment… ]
Both The Nation and Q+A are funded through NZ On Air’s Platinum fund.
http://www.throng.co.nz/nz-air/bliss-platinum-fund
Why should we be paying for broadcasters to make news and current affairs? The money comes from the government and there’s no reason not to think that it doesn’t carry either actual or implied expectations. Not saying broadcasters are impartial but who’s to say that’s not in the back of their minds when they decide to grill Joyce on air…
Well quite possibly. But then if that was just a shady area we couldn’t have any public broadcasting. Without government funding TV 3 wouldn’t have a political show on its network. The same goes for TV One now days. Hugely disappointing but people don’t wish to watch them. Of course Saturday 11am is hardly a good time to have a political show. I would hate to see their ratings for the program.
That is why there is some merit in TVNZ being split and seven being siphoned off into a fully public broadcast model while the other TVNZ channels remain as a SOE or are sold off to someone that isn’t Sky or Canwest or whoever owns TV 3 and C4.
I guess one interesting aspect is that until recently Stephen Parker was Brownlee’s Press Secretary.
“Not saying broadcasters are impartial..”
You should be saying that they are not impartial, because they are not impartial.
At best, state funded broadcasters are liberal nationalists…which is certainly preferable to a lot of alternatives I could think of, but in no way, shape or form anything approaching ‘impartial’.
Well, they’re generally nationalists. I’m not sure you can draw the conclusion that public funding makes them more likely to be liberal, it just removes the inherited free-market bias.
I didn’t draw the conclusion, merely made the observation
Ok, I finally gave in and clicked on the Monteiths ad at the top of the site (transcribing vbscript into php is extremely boring…).
Looks like they pick up all of the comments from the major blogs categorize and snippet them. Quite funny looking at a RSS microcosm of the local blogs…
And no this isn’t a promotion for the advertisers. I can’t even drink their beer on my current diet (dropped from 109kg to 101kg since the start of the year). Talking of which, maybe some red wine will make the coding less boring..
I must find out if we’re earning any money from them..
Tis funny.
Remember that aggregator ‘Nih’ set up in the early days of this site that allowed users to check comments from individuals across different blogs and identify sock puppeting trolls on holiday from the sewer?
That was sweet.
Sounds real sweet. Anything archived?
Can’t find anything off hand. But it was neat. From memory, basically you could read comment sections from here, kiwiwblogblog and a couple of other places. The neat part was that you could click on a commenter’s name and get all their comments from across the blogs over whatever timeframe you want.
You could also get all the comments from a group of names. Look at the timestamps and voila, guerrillas in the mist.
I guess it started getting pretty cumbersome quite quickly though. ‘sod used it agin the unlamented ‘insolent prick’, ‘prophet’ and other needed gaps in our national discourse.
Carmel Sepuloni will be Labour’s candidate for Waitakere. Very interesting. I did think she was best suited for the seat from the two people I am familiar with that were contesting for selection. Though Twyford still has no electorate. He’s in a real hard position because all the winnable electorates currently held by National are taken up by others within Labour. Auckland Central with Jacinda Ardern and Carol Beaumont likely to be the candidate again for Maungakiekie. Unless someone in South Auckland decides to retire. Twyford really has no where to go. The only real possibility is Northcote which while very unlikely to be a winner for Labour in 2011 has tended to be a swing seat in the past.
If Key and kohorts take over environment canterbury and especially the water components there will be a big fight. I would venture to predict that it would be enough to assure Ket of being a one-term wonder.
He should just fuck right off.
So you think Canterbury will be the flash issue? Not Auckland? Not mining? Not GST?
Perhaps you’re right.
Or perhaps we don’t have any fight left in us these days? Could we manage 1981 Stop the Tour now? Could we manage Save Manapouri?
Or have we become comfortably numb…
Yes I think Environment Canterbury will be a flashpoint. But just probably for a smaller population. However we all know how these things can magnify and also how small swings here and there can make a big difference in the result.
Auckland, mining and GST will also be such flashpoints in their own spheres.
And absolutely yes a Save Manapouri type campaign would easily spring up. That proposed, and now canned, road from Haast to Hollyford by Brownlee and Hagaman was one such. Near every single person I spoke to re that, including tourism operators in the area, referred without prompt to lying in front of the bulldozers. The feelings in the south and west are pretty ferocious about protection. And majority imo.
Key I think is smart in many ways but he seems quite out of touch in many others. Perhaps it comes from spending too many years in the banking lake of fire.
Near every single person I spoke to re that, including tourism operators in the area, referred without prompt to lying in front of the bulldozers.
That’s reassuring to hear, v.
vto are you on crack? I’m not sure you know rural Canterbury, Otago, West-Coast or Southland whatsoever with the crap you’re spouting.
A well written insight on why we need to focus on climate change now:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/15/charlie-brooker-time