Category: Uncategorized

After 6 Years, Apparently National has Discovered Housing is an Issue.

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Legitimate questions that need honest answers
As well as less hysteria from both sides

Professor Mayhem's avatarSlightly Left of Centre

Bill English is quite right to say that the stock of houses owned by Housing New Zealand Corporation is not sufficient to meet the needs of low income kiwi families. But is he right to sell off the HNZ portfolio without telling Kiwis what he intends to do with the proceeds?

The issue, as identified by a recent review, is the location and condition of around 22,000 state houses, with an estimated value of around $5billion.

There is a clearly defined issue with the Governments stock of housing, in that much of it exists in areas where there is little or no demand, or the stock is dilapidated, dangerous or generally unfit for human habitation as a result of years, or even decades of inadequate maintenance.

If the Government commits to reinvesting the proceeds of a State House sell-off back into the social housing asset base that I will be…

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Power Crisis Over? Teeth Gnashing Begins

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However, will the result  be the same as 1998?

 

And so the Isthmus is no longer powerless with power restored to all but a few hundred homes as of this morning.

For full details (and saving me repeating a lot of it) you can read the Herald article here (as well as see the damage): http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11338075

 

And so with the Crisis over and the response teams doing a very fine job (and so I send thanks), the job of teeth gnashing (the inquiry) will begin.

However, I do wonder if the inquiry will be somewhat pointless as unless it was truly an Act of God that set the cables alight we I am suspicious again of: Failure in planning, governance and investment.

From what I can see from the Herald this morning in the above linked article it seems already it might be just that.

 

Let me put it this way. Go watch the second Matrix Movie where they attempt to enter the building where Neo will find the Architect. They need to shut the power down to the building or the self destruct triggers. So they blow up a power station which initially causes the black out until the smart grid reroutes power very quickly. The back up was shut down manually after that but that was caused by man-made (well Niobe) interference.

Point?

Large advanced cities have smart grids that reroute power in the event such as what Auckland just went through. Granted that Otahuhu Power Station and substation got reinforced and that the new cabling rerouted power back to the City Centre however, Penrose is still a choke point and it again (last was 2012) blacked out a large portion of the Isthmus. After the 1998 and especially after 2006 sagas this should not happen of we truly invested in a true smart grid system. AND we should not be paying a cent more on our power bills to get such a system. No Prime Minister, your advice should have been to tell the AECT (read the Herald article on who they are) to forego the $300m dividend paid out to consumers for five years and have that dividend money invested back into the grid until we have a true smart grid.

 

However, knowing New Zealand we will do the teeth gnashing and within three years maybe another blackout on the Isthmus…

Consider ourselves lucky we don’t operation commercial nuclear power stations…..

 

Letter to the Editor – An own-goal from a particularly stupid National Supporter

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Something to make you smile and go OWN GOAL.
Now if we use the Exchange rate and go from US$50 then to keep it level he should have been paying around the NZ$60 mark. So heck an over 50% pay cut? Yeah own goal

Frank Macskasy's avatarFrankly Speaking...

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Frank Macskasy - letters to the editor - Frankly Speaking

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There was something about this letter that didn’t quite ring true…

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Dave Christie - Titahi Bay - National Party

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It seemed “too cute” by far. Too clever. And it seemed familiar, as if I’d read the story elsewhere – or something similar to it.

Sure enough…

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michelle bachmann - right wing fuckwitry

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Which prompted this response from me to the Dominion Post’s editor…

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from: Frank Macskasy <fmacskasy@gmail.com>
to: Dominion Post <letters@dompost.co.nz>
date: Thu, Oct 2, 2014
subject: Letter to the Editor

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The editor
Dominion Post

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Re Dave Christie’s letter, telling the story about his “friend’s little girl wanting to grow up to the the Prime Minister so she could house and feed all the homeless people; and then Christie replies they should all mow his lawns for $25 and do other work around his house”.(1 Oct)

Perhaps Mr Christie could have added that the story was actually lifted, almost word-for-word, from Republican House Representative…

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@tarnbabe67 : Cosgrove’s conspiracy theory backfires

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I am honestly getting sick of this really. The longer this goes on the more damage it will do long term to our democratic institution which heavily relies on (but not exclusively) the contest of ideas in a free and open manner.
How on Earth can we contest ideas in the democratic institution when the main opposition is screwed.

Labour has two choices:
1) Haul backside and fix their mess
2) Die and allow a new party or parties rise from the ashes – Free Market style

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

Intelligent people occasionally make stupid mistakes. Exhibit A: Karen Price setting up an anonymous Twitter account in order to lambast her husband’s foes. There’s something very unMachiavellian about choosing an “anonymous” Twitter handle that allowed people who knew you to guess your identity…

It wasn’t a smart thing to do, but let’s look at it in context. Convention dictates that as a “political wife”, Karen Price doesn’t get to vent in public about her husband being put through the wringer, especially not when most of those putting him through the wringer are in fact his own colleagues. Twitter provided an ability to vent anonymously, at a time of enormous stress and pressure.

So she got found out. And she’s apologised:

“After a period of intense media attention and scrutiny of our family, I set up and used an anonymous Twitter account over the weekend and made a number of comments that…

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September ’14 – NZ blogs sitemeter ranking

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A quieter month despite the election but still in the top 40.
My thanks to readers and followers

Ken's avatarOpen Parachute

education-bloggers

PLEASE NOTE: Sitemeter is playing up again making it impossible to automatically get the stats for some blogs – those I list below. Maybe more bloggers will shift to StatCounter or other counter.

No stats could be found for these blogs:

Works in progressSportsfreak
Weakly Whirled NewsInfectious thoughts
Two Minutes SportScience Behind the Curtain
Wysiwygpurple’s BlogGrumpollie
Stats ChatLouis’ Outlook
Webweaver’s worldWest City Darts
Social Media and the 2014 General ElectionA conservative perspective
Love your workSave our schools NZ
Today is my birthdayThe Meaning of Trees
This Mum Rocks

There are now over 300 blogs on the list, although I am weeding out those which are no longer active or have removed public access to sitemeters. (Let me know if I weed out yours by mistake, or get your stats wrong).

Every month I get queries from people wanting their own blog included. I encourage and…

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The Labour leadership meltdown continues

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Democracy best works when we can contest ideas freely across the realm. How can we with the main opposition in such disarray. Come on Labour get it together for democracy’s sake if nothing else

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

Over the weekend, I road tripped it down to Wellington, where I had a beer with a pollster, briefly checked on what announcement Cunliffe had made mid-Saturday afternoon, and then proceeded to ignore politics. Fine wine and convivial company was far superior… But of course, although one can ignore politics, politics has a habit of keeping on happening.

So Cunliffe resigned. Or he announced that he will resign at the next caucus meeting, which is tomorrow. Although he still wants the job. He’s triggered a leadership ballot, hoping to avoid the death by a thousand cuts of waiting for his colleagues to destroy him, leak by insidious leak.

Unfortunately, there’s no timeframe yet on when the leadership ballot will occur. Will the party wait for its campaign review to be completed before the ballot? Cunliffe will be hoping not – it’s what he resigned in order to avoid. His opponents want a…

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An Anti-Feminist Walks Into a Bar: A Play in Five Acts

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Some humour – in five acts.
Made me smile as well as chuckle quietly

Automattic Special Projects's avatarWhatever

PROLOGUE

ACT I

ACT II

ACT III

ACT IV

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Inevitable Labour pontification post

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I remember a particular shunning of the blue collar worker (I believe it was called the Waitakere Man) prior to the campaign. The blue collar worker found in Wiri, Takanini, East Tamaki, the Airport and Penrose of which are all our big industrial estates and historically natural Labour strongholds. However, this seems no longer as the social conservative vote either went to NZ First or even National.

Labour have a lot to do to become an effective opposition for which our democracy so needs in order to contest ideas.

It will be interesting to see where things go but at the moment National are on a solid foundation for its fourth term