February 2010

Well Telecom might. There is now an auction on Trademe for such a thing.

111 Back Up System on Trademe

Of course not, except for one shopping mall in the UK, which thankfully we now know because of an officious security guard and an equally officious constable that the mall is a hot bed of activity for paedophiles.

According to his blog, Kevin visited the Bridges Shopping Centre in Sunderland with his son to spend the £10 his father gave the boy on a family visit. While there, he seated his son on a coin-operated train ride and snapped a photo of him with his cameraphone. At this point, a Bridges security guard came by and ordered him to stop taking pictures. He said that it was mall policy, and implied that Kevin was taking pictures because he was a paedophile. Kevin told him that this was ridiculous and took his son to find his wife and get out of the mall. He also took a picture of the security guard “so that if I later wanted to make a complaint to the centre I would be able to identify him.”

Outside of the mall, Kevin was stopped by a police constable who had received a complaint from mall security that a suspicious potential paedophile had been taking pictures on its premises. The PC threatened to arrest Kevin “for creating a public disturbance” and ordered him to delete the photo of his son. The PC also averred that the Bridges Shopping Centre is a hotbed of paedophile assaults.

Between the cop and the guard that mall is probably suffering a massive deline in patronage. How long before this kind of crap arrives here?

Telecom is trouble, deep trouble. Last night the 111 system in Auckland failed.

Telecom spokesman Mark Watts says this morning’s 111 emergency calls system failure “shouldn’t have happened” and is “a bad look” after the company’s recent repeated XT failures.

The 111 system failed in the greater Auckland area around 3.30am this morning, with some callers unable to reach police, fire and ambulance.

Mr Watts said customers in west Auckland may still be experiencing problems but the 111 system has now been fixed for the rest of Auckland.

This is bad for Telecom. Either their software change management procedures and their software stress testing are crap or there is something else.

One hypothesis is industrial sabotage. It sounds far fetched I know but I was talking to a long-time Telecom associate plus several staffers well above the tools level. They were saying it is just one hit after another and they are inexplicable. The network sits there ticking along nicely and then all of a sudden gets taken out. If it was software it would be everywhere. If it was hardware it would either be isolated to a dud node or it would be everywhere. Now don’t get me wrong here, I have zero love for Telecom having sold against them and their anti-competitive practices for more than a few years, I am not making excuses for them, just suggesting a hypothesis.

It isn’t unreasonable to suggest that someone is actually doing the damage on behalf of parties unknown. Nevertheless no-one has done more damage to the shareholders wealth in Telecom than Helen Clark and Michael Cullen, though that will be exceeded soon if they can’t fix/find the errors.

F**k Telecom

I see fron DPF’s Facebook page that Cactus Kate is in Wellington.

Is this the reason for Tiger’s gleeful disposition at the moment?

I blogged the other day about “Gary” Twyford looking like he is a bout to get the shaft again with Caropotamus Beaumont putting a bill up on Auckland Issues and “Gary” Twyford putting one up on banning Depleted Uranium weapons.

On the surface it looks like “Gary” has worked hard bu the reality is very different.

It was written by a whole lot of other meddling pinkos in a Wiki.

No wonder he is always getting one in the pooper from labour, he is just plain lazy.

Can you be served by email?

In stark contrast to the Clark years, where ministers got 10 in the sin-bin, Phil Heatley has effectively been dismissed by John Key for misuse of his Ministerial Credit Card and other irregularities which will come in in the goodness of time.

John Key had to do something with other ministers becoming a bit loose with discipline. From this day forward they will have had their attitude adjusted with an effective sacking.

Just by way of comparison, despite taking illegal donations, not declaring the donation and lying to the Privileges Committee, Helen Clark and Labour stuck by Peters till the bitter end. Clark only basically stood him down until after the election but still with full ministerial pay and privileges. Don’t forget the staunch defense of Taito Philip Field until he made the fatal decision to suggest he might go independent and then Labour dumped him faster than  shit at 30,000 feet. John Key has acted and acted fast sending a message to his cabinet and to his caucus that bullshit will not be tolerated.

Phil Heatley will stay on as MP for Whangarei.