May 2010

For the first time in a long time it looks to be an embarrassment of riches for the National party board selections. Last year the board, under pressure from caucus muffed their chances for a good president but instead elected a proven lazy man. Caucus diminished their influence by their lobbying, they won’t be listened to quite so readily again.

Today in Waitiangi though the choices for the board improved significantly with Alan Towers openly declaring his candidacy. He is the Chair of the Northern region, the largest and most critical region that National has. To fail in Auckland is to fail in New Zealand. The board knows this, the leader knows this and the members know this.

That makes Alan Towers the number one pick out of the 5 declared candidates thus far, but it also presents a dilemma. The Northern Region will easily lock in behind Towers and a small rump of Goodfellow loyalists and other disaffected groupings will split their remaining votes between Stephen McElrea (a relative unknown outside Auckland and viewed by some as a divider, though with some good ideas) and Goodfellow. Peter Goodfellow and McElrea will have to fish from the same small pond and those votes just won’t extend far enough to tip out Towers as Northern’s preferred candidate.

Lower North Island will vote for Malcolm Plimmer at number one and the South Island will fall in behind Roger Bridge. Central North Island can’t swing enough to upset the balance so the final three will rest on preferences.

Mr Goodfellow must surely now exercise some sensibility ad consider his position. The words “gracious exit” must surely ought to be muttered quietly to him, if not already then soon. My sources tell me that the 9th Floor want Bridge, however after the board election there is still some very capable candidates for president.

The two front runners though would be Roger Bridge and Alistair Bell. Both would be a massive improvement over what National has now. Bridge just needs a boot over his head in order to avoid repeats of his noisy oops last election. He understands the big picture, governance and would be a good fundraiser. It was Bridge that kick-started the Victory Fund that Goodfellow is trying desperately to claim credit for. However the true visionary is Alistair Bell, though it is by no means certain that he will put his name forward for president. Bell is smart enough to seek assistance where required and has a fantastic track record in Auckland, delivering in both 2005 and 2008.

First things first, the delegates at National Conference this year have , so far, 5 candidates to choose from to fill the three vacant places on the board. I will go out on a limb here and pick that they will finish in the following order:

Alan Towers, Malcolm Plimmer, Roger Bridge.

Stephen McElrea will come fourth ahead of Goodfellow on the simple basis that he will hoover up the remaining “anyone but Peter” vote. Peter Goodfellow will come dead last in the current field of 5, though close to McElrea. The other three will be a long way in front.

The board election will be exciting this year, even without perennial toy tosser Wira Gardiner participating.

Some people are nice, others send you emails like this:

from: chelsea smith <chelseasmith93@live.com>
to: tipoff@whaleoil.co.nz
date” Sun, May 30, 2010 at 6:23 PM
subject: tip…

Hope this helps…

I have uncovered a guy who’s been pretending to be a productive member of society, preaching etc, outing others, but in truth he’s been leaching, first off my insurance premiums, now off my taxes… He’s claiming he’s depressed. I’m sure he is.  Being found out as a fake would make me sad as fuck. You’re wife seems nice. And I’m guessing her plea for help so you don’t go to jail is her only hope. May be you can practice what you preach and just man up now. Get a job. Stop interfering in other peoples lives and shut up. You never know. It may cheer you up.

Chelsea

Thanks Chelsea (doubt that is your real name) thanks for showing the same amount of understanding of the issues surrounding depression as Fidelity Life.

While I was at Waitangi over the weekend I didn’t spend a great deal of time at the national Party Northern Region conference.

That doesn’t mean that The Whale’s spies weren’t active.

On Saturday just before the lunch break one of the organisers got up and explained how lunch was to work. hose who had pre-paid for their lunch had it catered and they were identified with a blue sticker on their conference label. The basic rule was, no sticker, no lunch. Quite simple really.

So as people lined up to access the lunch area a nice lady volunteer who had given up her time for the weekend to help organise the conference was checking people’s labels. She was overhead asking a fairly non-descript man where his label was. He showed it and she said to him upon observing the missing blue dot that he could purchase his lunch at the cafe but entry to the lunch area was for people who had paid.

The man who was attempting to freeload into the lunch replied that he didn’t need a sticker. The nice lady was very certain that he did at which point he said to her “Oh no, I don’t, you see I am the President of the party”.

So the man who pretends he is president, a man whose family is on the NBR rich list, didn’t or couldn’t be bothered paying for his lunch and then expected a volunteer who had given up her time freely to let him in just because he was the President. The president position, I might add, which holds a stipend of $100,000 per annum.

The man has no shame. Now wonder people are talking about it being a race for 5th place between him and another candidate for the board.

Andrew William, the Mad Mayor of North Shore has tried to score some cheap political points over the current furore over the new prison block adjacent to Mt Eden Prison.

The new eight-storey 30 metre high Mount Eden prison currently under construction would not have been permitted if North Shore district plan rules were applied, due to its proximity to a prominent volcano, says North Shore Mayor Andrew Williams.

“The North Shore district plan has specific provisions in relation to maintaining the volcanic cones free from unnecessary structures and obstructions. Height restrictions in view corridors for Mount Victoria and North Head, Devonport ensure these regionally significant cones are protected visually.”

“I am appalled at the way this extermely tall prison has been built right in front of beautiful Mount Eden, and that this structure will for all time be a blot on that volcano’s presence in the region. It should not have been permitted to go to 30 metres in such close proximity to this iconic mountain, which is very precious to the people of Auckland.”

“This rings alarm bells for me as we head into the Auckland super city that Auckland City would seem to have such a lenient district plan as to allow this monstrosity, whereas North Shore City would not permit it under our rules. Harmonizing the district plans of all the cities in future will need to recognise that some areas of Auckland have much higher expectations of the built environment, including recognition of important natural features such as volcanic cones.” says Mayor Williams.

The man is a fricken idiot and clearly hasn’t driven past the prison or down the Southern Motorway for quite sometime. The new prison structure isn’t even as high as Auckland Grammar next door nor higher than St Peters acros the Motorway. Indeed the Mountain Road overbridge is higher than the fricken prison.

The only bells ringing are the ones in his head. To even talk about the construction as being on the volcanic cone is a imbecilic statement. The prison is being built on land that was excavated as a quarry by prison labour to pave the streets of Auckland. Auckland Grammar school has fantastic playing fields because of the quarry and Auckland’s streets have alluring kerbstones because of it. To now suggest that Auckland should adopt a silly North SHore district plan whgen the facts don’t fit The Clown’s press release is as equally stuppid as the people who voted for the Mad Mayor in the first place.

While we are talking about imbeciles, perhaps Phil Goff might like to take up offer  of the Mayor of Newmarket, Cameron Brewer, to organise a public meeting for him. It’ll certainly be better attended if Brewer organises it instead of Goff’s flunkies.

An Auckland business advocate says he will organise former Corrections Minister Phil Goff a huge public audience outside Mt Eden Prison to hear him speak about the highly contentious accommodation tower block he commissioned. Mr Goff just needs to name the time and day.

“I hope Phil Goff takes up the invitation because he is effectively the architect of this much-talked about building. I suspect the Leader of the Opposition won’t be so keen given the angry public reaction in recent days. However I can promise him a big crowd if that helps,” says Cameron Brewer, chief executive of the Newmarket Business Association.

Brewer is spreading his organisational skills around offering others the opportunity to attend as well.

As well as inviting Mr Goff, Mr Brewer says he will ask former Auckland City Mayor Dick Hubbard and former Chairperson of Auckland City’s Planning Committee Councillor Glenda Fryer to attend. He says the previous Auckland City Council can also run but it can’t hide on this one.

Mr Brewer says according to Mr Goff back in 2007, the Corrections Department had consulted extensively over the prison redevelopment including “18 meetings with council officers over a period of two-and-a-half years.” The project had also been assessed and approved by the previous council’s urban design panel and been approved by council-appointed planning commissioners.

“At the time Mr Goff assured the Auckland public that given all the design work, the new buildings would not be an eyesore, nor would they stand out as a prison, and that the old prison would be made more attractive. In 2007 he also claimed the views of Mt Eden from the motorway would only be lost for 1.6 seconds. It seems the public now begs to differ on every one Mr Goff’s promises.”

He is so thoughtful to offer his considerable skills to let Phil Goff and the City Vision folk talk to the people about the prison. Glenda Fryer must have missed some other rather important meetings too.

Cameron Brewer says on the issue of building height, the previous Auckland City Council’s own urban design panel concluded in October 2006 ‘that the proposed building heights represented a good balance between the department’s site-capacity requirement, retention of the heritage features and minimisation of visual impacts.’

“It’s unbelievable that Councillor Fryer is now feigning surprise at the height of the contentious tower block visible from the motorway. She was Chairperson of the Auckland City Council’s Planning Committee when the tower was signed off.

“Some have been quick to point the finger at the current council and Corrections, but the reality is this is a legacy of the previous council and government. Correspondence shows that Mayor John Banks desperately tried to achieve a better outcome after he was elected at the end of 2007, but sadly it was too late. Everything was locked in and signed off by then.

“Sadly the horse has long bolted. I voiced my outrage about the redevelopment plans over two years ago but such concern seemed to fall on death ears. As a community we’ve now got to work with the hand we’ve been dealt with. The outcome is far from ideal but we have to move forward. A public meeting with Phil Goff would help people do just that.”

Back in 2008 when former Corrections Minister Phil Goff announced his $216m redevelopment plans for the site, Mr Brewer argued that it was a crying shame that the Government didn’t take the opportunity to relocate the prison and sell off the prime central city site for some quality commercial and residential development.

“Two years ago when Mr Goff was boasting about the new facilities to be built at Mt Eden, I predicted that the Labour Government would regret this decision in the future. I suspect the Labour Party and City Vision councillors will now be running scared of any public gathering, but the invitation stands,” says Cameron Brewer.

Good grief, Phil Goff, Labour and City Vsison are looking remarkably like they consult with Andrew Williams and the rest of the brains trust that want to try to run Auckland.

Google is amazing. Type in “Insurance Companies are” and Google fills in the rest. How does it know?

I wonder how long before Fidelity Life are….completes with crooks?

Google knows Fidelity Life are crooks

Sometimes the CIA is all class and other time no class at all. This is just so much class.

Jeff Stein reports that the CIA in 2003 considered making a fake sex tape of the Iraqi dictator with a teenage boy as a way to discredit him:

The ideas were patently ridiculous, said the other former agency officer. “They came from people whose careers were spent in Latin America or East Asia” and didn’t understand the cultural nuances of the region. “Saddam playing with boys would have no resonance in the Middle East — nobody cares,” agreed a third former CIA official with extensive experience in the region. “Trying to mount such a campaign would show a total misunderstanding of the target. We always mistake our own taboos as universal when, in fact, they are just our taboos.”

South Park got there first, of course.

Don’t you just love the CIA official explaining “Trying to mount such a campaign”…..oh dear.

hat tip Firearm Blog.

If you do nothing else today, watch this video. Wunderbar!

Imagine this in Auckland…..I’m up for putting this together.

Fidelity Life has a brand, they say they are the New Zealand Insurance company, yet when you ring them almost exclusively you get a South African accent. Even their tame psychiatrist Anthony Asteraidis is a South African.

That isn’t so bad. When you check their website to find out just how wonderful they are you get nonsense like this:

Our values

Being part of Fidelity Life means you are part of an extended family of New Zealanders.  We have a wide network of talented people who are dedicated to making Fidelity Life a friendly, progressive and trustworthy insurance and investment company.We strive for both excellence and integrity, and see all our staff, suppliers, policyholders and advisers as PART OF OUR BUSINESS – PART OF OUR FAMILY.

Our values are:

• Listening & Responding
  We engage in dialogue to create value through our relationships.
• 100% NZ Owned
  We retain our original focus to “keep faith” and care in times of need.
• Stewardship
  We make wise and prudent use of resources entrusted to us for safekeeping.

Let me tell you line by line exactly what that crap all means.

For the privilege of paying your premiums you would expect them to mean what they say. That is true while you are paying your premiums and not making claims. The agent even pretends to be your best mate as he swans off to South Africa on a Fidelity Life funded holiday. When the crap really hits the fan though what you get is treated like the unwanted idiot son of your cousin, the guy who shits himself in public and plays with poo. You know, everyone has a relative like that. That is what Fidelity Life means when they say you are part of the family.

They aren’t lying, what they mean is that you are part of the family that they would really rather not have to talk about.

Let’s talk about “a friendly, progressive and trustworthy insurance and investment company” shall we. Fidelity Life has put 5 case managers on me. Some couldn’t have cared a fig for me, my welfare or anything else. Just so long as I sent my forms in they cared enough to check to make sure that if I had forgotten they could stop a payment. One case manager in particular was assigned to me to get rid of me as a client. She told me that. She told me to my face that I was a difficult customer and that she was going to sort me out. She even told me after the first time they cut me off with no evidence or reports to justify their actions that this was to “tune me up”. She said it at Fidelity Life‘s HQ in Grafton. She is also  the one who told me that I should really just go and book in a series of ECT to get the pain over and done with. I’m serious and I’m not making this up. That is exactly what she told me to do. I remember that day like it was yesterday, I even remember Raylean’s name and I remember that she too was a South African. This is the caring , trustworthy insurance company called Fidelity Life.

Trustworthy is an interesting claim to make, particularly when you send Private Investigators after you. They were dumb private investigators though because I caught them. It isn’t really trustworthy either to send letters to you booking appointments with Fidelity’s tame doctors to highlight in bold that if you fail to make the appointment then your payments WILL cease. Yep, just like that, bold and underlined. No matter that they plan to cease your payments anyway once they conclude with their doctors.

You see this trustworthy, friendly insurance company called Fidelity Life sent me along to their doctors. What they didn’t say was that they had specifically asked those doctors to find out specific things. Only one doctor had the honesty to tell me before the meeting what the purpose of the meeting was. One thing they wanted to know was whether I was taking illegal drugs. Another was if I was malingering. The answer that all of those providers to Fidelity Life was emphatically no.

The trustworthy Prof. Gorman, sent me to see a psychologist to conduct some test to see if I had an underlying head injury. Just in case there is something untreated, don’t worry, mate, it is just some routine tests. Not surprisingly both Prof. Gorman and Ralf Schnabel found that no I didn’t have a head injury, that yes I did suffer from above average depression amongst other things like hypo-mania, and hyper-vigilance. They used these reports to say that I was fit for work because my cognitive functions were high.

I had made a claim for and been accepted for depression, and not although I still suffered depression, and indeed, one eminent doctor has said that the ongoing actions of Fidelity Life have cause me to under go three additional severe depressive episodes, but because I have high cognitive functions and no brain or head injury I was now unilaterally fit for work and the payments were suspended forthwith. Oh and for a nice see you later present they offered me $50,000 just so long as I signed a piece of paper that meant that I could never, ever claim for depression again for the rest of my cover of 25 years. They were ending the claim unilaterally without discussion, transition or anything else, and ending any further claims for the next 25 years and trying to get away with that for $50,000. Nice trustworthy Fidelity Life.

Think of it this way. If I had cancer and made a claim and Fidelity Life accepted it, then subsequently sent me for test to see if I had three testicles and then came back and said “Great news, you don’t have three testicles, you can return to work”. I would still have cancer and still unable to work, but not in the warped world of Fidelity Life.

So you see dear readers, you mustn’t really believe what insurance companies write on their websites. They like to obscure the reality of how things work. They would like to obscure that people will lose their houses, be impoverished, place their marriages in jeopardy, all because they have no integrity, do not honour contracts and cast you aside without a care int he world despite their flowery words.

I think I might start a campaign for an inquiry into the life insurance industry, the claims that they make in publications, and their deliver of service. I mean it would be a good idea if National are to consider opening up ACC to competition to conduct such an inquiry to ascertain whether or not private companies like Fidelity Life can be trusted with aspects of the ACC account. Perhaps a select Committee inquiry? Yes I think that is a fine idea.

Pete “The Alleged Pirate” Bethune is using the New Zealand media to cry him a river of tears.

Prosecutors in the trial of New Zealand anti-whaling protester Pete Bethune will request a long sentence if he is found guilty, his lawyer says.

The father of two teenage daughters, Danielle, 15, and Alycia, 13, may be facing up to 15 years imprisonment if he is convicted on some of the five charges he is facing in the wake of his aborted Southern Ocean protest voyage earlier this year.

His trial begins in the Tokyo District Court today.

Boo-fucking-hoo. He must have known that illegally and dangerously boarding a vessel in the Southern Ocean, that has a legal right to be there, that trying to disable ships in the Southern Ocean, would result in criminal charges. That is called consequences.

Just as the consequences for me continually breaching name suppression is $1000 fine or potential 3 months in jail for contempt of court, so too for Pete the Pirate. He should stop his whining and take his licks, just like I will if I finally get convicted.

Ginga Whinga Stephen Simpson had a moan about Hug a Ginga Day on Friday. Tonight I popped into the supermarket and was accosted by this evil image of a day walker.

I have also noticed that there seems to be a quota on TV for adverts. Nearly every second ad has Gingas…they are being over presented in TV ads and in some TV shows, like Life for instance where nearly every person in the damn show is a Ginga.

Labour has more than their fair share and they seem to congregate around Phil Goff like he is some sort of Ginga magnet. I’m pretty sure that National has rules against being a ginga and a member.

Anyway I hope Mr Simpson will be writing to Continental Soup complaining about the exploitation of day walkers for advertising.

Evil Continental Soup Day Walker