June 2010

New Zealand’s foreign policy commitments have barely changed since the government changed in 2008. In particular our foreign policy goals with regards to Fiji have hardened rather than changed.

It is then with little surprise that we now find that Fiji has joined the non-aligned movement. The NAM was largely the brainchild of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, president of Egypt Gamal Abdul Nasser and Yugoslav president Josip Broz Tito. As such it comprises of much of S.E. Asia, Africa and Islamic nations. From Wikipedia:

The purpose of the organisation as stated in the Havana Declaration of 1979 is to ensure “the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of non-aligned countries” in their “struggle against imperialism, colonialism, neo-colonialism, racism, and all forms of foreign aggression, occupation, domination, interference or hegemony as well as against great power and bloc politics.” They represent nearly two-thirds of the United Nations’s members and 55% of the world population, particularly countries considered to be developing or part of the third world.

Fiji is now part of the Non-Aligned Movement, their Prime Minister Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama confirmed.

Commodore Bainimarama said this following a meeting with the undersecretary of the Department of Economic Development of the Abu Dhabi Government Mohammed Omar Abdulla in Abu Dhabi.

He highlighted that Fiji is now moving away from its former international partners like Australia and New Zealand.

“Fiji is now part of the Non-Aligned Movement and is focused on its Look North policy which involves developing relationships with countries outside the southern Pacific sphere,” Commodore Bainimarama said.

I’d say the decision of Fiji represents perhaps the largest failure of New Zealand foreign policy in our lifetime. We have, through pious bully-like behaviour, forced Fiji into a grouping of communist or Islamist nations largely controlled or manipulated by China. Through our insistence in returning Fiji to a form of democracy that was based upon a racist constitution and structural nepotism we have actually encouraged them to seek support and assistance from other countries.

When we could have sat around the table and offered electoral assistance or supported the Commodore’s road map to returning to democracy we have instead wagged the finger and tut-tutted our way to allowing a foot-hold in the South Pacific for Chinese imperialism at the point of the cheque-book. It is a spectacular foreign policy failure and one which Murray McCully has played his part in causing this chain of events to occur.

Instead of acting like big brothers New Zealand and Australia treated Fiji like a naughty boarder at a hostel. It should be no surprise now that Fiji will not be listening to any further commentary from New Zealand regarding its internal politics. Even when our government issues silly travel warnings about Fiji the general public knows better and continues to vote with their wallets and holiday in the most accessible tropical paradise to New Zealand.

Now with Chinese largesse instead of NZ and Australian parsimony, Fiji will have improved infrastructure and better access to resources. We have only the policy wonks at MFaT and the politicians of successive governments since the first coups in the 80′s to blame.

A decision for Fiji to joined the NAM is irreversible now. The situation is lost. It is best now that New Zealand realises this loss and starts to act in a more useful fashion toward Fiji. I say this because it is abundantly clear to all that our former policy objectives with regard to Fiji have abjectly failed.

We can now look forward to watching state visits of Fiji democratic luminaries such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Chavez of Venzuela, Kim Jong-il of North Korea and Sr. Gen. Than Shwe of Myanmar (Burma).

Personally I am very sad that the country of my birth has taken this step, but politically I can see that they had no choice. Through out actions and our words we forced them into this position. What will be interesting to see is the march of other South Pacific nations into the arms of the NAM as they watch the economic benefits of cuddling up to China manifest themselves in real ways.

Guido Fawkes explains what is happening to the Times website and this is before they have even started charging for the paywall. The internet will defeat paywalls. Even ones thought up by Rupert Murdoch. Traffic is king and paywalls diminish traffic.

The “gurus”, and i use that term loosely seem to think that people will pay for what they can obtain elsewhere for nix. To some extent the demise of MSM to the online crowd-sourced world is a phenomenon of their own making. They still charge a premium for advertisements in the hard copy and devalue their online ad spaces to such an extent that they say the models do not work. Advertising isn’t about clicks it is about eyes on impressions.

I don’t know what the future holds for revenue and payment to online content providers, but I know one thing for sure, it isn’t paywalls and it isn’t CPC. Some one smart will crack this nut one day and the existing models will die faster than ever seen before. Mobility, speed and location crowd-sourcing are what the market wants. They don’t care that the picture is imperfect, or the video wobbles, they just want what is happening NOW, and will consume any content that gives it to them, and the less it is edited the better as far as they are concerned. All of that together makes the MSM methods of production and delivery obsolete.

The wall is up at The Times even if payment isn’t required yet. It started on May 24 and traffic has more than halved in the month since. It will probably halve again and then some when the cash register opens…

I’ll wager Danny Finkelstein, who is overseeing the Wapping paywall project, that within 12 months no Times political columnist will have more measurable readers online than Guido. Lunch at the restaurant of his choice…

The only person to sook it up worse than Levin Rudd is Looney Len Brown.

Kevin Rudd loses to soul-less Ginga

Why does Looney Len Brown lie?

He always get caught and I always catch him, yet again he is telling porkies with relation to his expenses.

Yesterday the Auditor General refused to accede to his request for an investigation he was in such a hurry to have. He was in such a rush it took him over a week to ask the Auditor-General to step in.

He then went on Campbell Live (isn’t he just the patsy Len lover) and said that the office of the Auditor-General said that there was no need for an investigation because of the council’s robust systems. However the letter says nothing of the sort. In fact quite the opposite.

Office of the Auditor General tells Looney Len Brown to naf off

It basically tells Looney Len to bugger off as his poxy council will cease to exist in a few short months and they are doing other stuff on this anyway. It never even mentions the council’s processes in the way Looney Len and his Labour lickspittles have spun the story.

Len Brown called in the Auditor-General because he said it was the only fair court in the land and he didn’t want a kangaroo court. Since the only fair court in the land doesn’t want a bar of his political grandstanding via his office then the kangaroo court it shall be. Actually it will be the Killer Whale court because Looney Len Brown seems incapable of telling the truth and so it is up to me to hold him to account till he does. I’ll stop telling the truth about Len Brown when he stops lying to the public.

Last night was Miss Whaleoil’s choir recital. It was fantastic and of course the most beautiful girl in the choir was Miss Whaleoil.

The singing was wonderful, that is until one school got up and sang a song about the myth of Global Warming and all the things that we had to do to “save” the planet. Most of them involved distasteful things like re-using things, or recycling old things into brown things. Well stuff that. I like shiny new things and I’ll damn well have them despite the luddites.

Then I read in the NZ Herald a piece from Deborah Hill Cone, who is so must better writing mummy angst pieces than other things.

She wrote how no matter what the government mandates the teachers are still in control of our kids and how rooted that all is.

My daughter’s teacher – she once told me off for daring to help my daughter put her chair on her table “she can do it herself” – sat us briskly down with the manner of a chief executive leading an errant sales manager into the boardroom. A boardroom with teeny weeny chairs; you immediately feel at a disadvantage sitting with your chin on your knees. She produced a complicated chart with my daughter’s performance on various criteria for reading, writing and maths.

There was no positive feedback or praise. I got the distinct impression my daughter had been found wanting. Me too, in fact.

My daughter was apparently doing fine actually – as far as I could tell – but it was difficult to work this out as all the focus was on her areas of ineptitude. It seems this is what national standards do to you. She is 5. Let me say that a bit louder: SHE IS FIVE.

How did this craziness come to be? When I went to see the principal he said “Well there are National Standards now, you know.”

Yes, there are National Standards, and now that the teachers lost that battle, they are going to make sure that they shove the most screwed up version of standards down parents throats as possible and lay all the blame at Anne Tolley’s door step.

The school previously had a sign outside saying it did not support the introduction of national standards, so presumably this was not being done with especially good grace. I can’t help wondering whether teachers bringing in something like this reluctantly are actually going to do more harm than good – “sorry your child just got emotionally lacerated but it’s not our fault – blame Anne Tolley”.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? Nowhere good for parents or children.

The real problem here though, is not the national standards but the teachers themselves. I might support the Education Minister’s campaign to shake up the arrogant antiquated teachers union with its tenure for all, but damned if I want my small daughter being collateral damage. Tolley may have imposed national standards on them but when it comes to our kids, teachers still hold all the power.

When do I get a chance to turn the teeny weeny table and give the teacher a “parent-led” conference? She can sit in judgment on my 5-year-old daughter yet I get no say about her performance as a teacher? I’d like to sit her down on a small chair. I would tell her it’s most important to love kids and show them that learning is the coolest thrill they will have in life. I would tell her moods are contagious – if you have lots of positive energy kids will catch that. They are more likely to learn by having the best fun ever.

Of course if DHC did that, then the teacher, being a cowardly bully would then seek retribution upon the child. Does that mean we should give up on holding teachers to account? No, of course not, but we do have to be smart about it otherwise the dullards in the union dominated education sector will end up doing what they always do and socially engineering our children their way and now your way.

I was sent this by a loyal fan who was bored at work this rainy Auckland day.

Cameron Slater - Shrek the Blogre

Dr. Greg Denny

The man is a moron.

If he didn’t want to be famous he shouldn’t have had 300,000 pornographic images on his ACC supplied computer. I’ve already been charged for this idiot, best $1000 bucks I ever spent.

This guy is (well he was before this) a very Senior Doctor in Palmerston North. He worked as the Branch Medical Officer for ACC also. It was on his work laptop they found all the images.

“It is not understating [sic] it to say that his blog then constitutes a crime scene and [the Manawatu Standard was] abetting in the commission of a criminal offence,” the man said. He accused Mr Slater of committing a crime by publishing his name and “from that point onwards I am protected by the Victims’ Rights Act”.

Fuckwit, What about all of his victims huh?, oh that’s right a stupid judge thought that he should have name suppression because none of the images were of New Zealand children so no one got hurt.

The attitude of this idiot knows no bounds.

Since he thinks he is the victim, then he may as well suck up a bit more victim-hood. Abusers akways make out that they are the real victims. Fuckwit!

Welcome to being famous in a bad way.

Looney Len Brown cried in public, he said he was being picked on, he said he was innocent, he said that the only fair court in the land was the Auditor-General, he said he would be cleared.

Well, that was the plan, chuck it to the Auditor-General, get a clearance, carry on as though he hadn’t troughed it up, broke the council rules, said he would continue to break the council rules and then convince everyone he was somehow perfectly qualified to run the Super City.

The Auditor General has refused to investigate the credit card expenses of Manukau mayor Len Brown.

In an emotional address to Manukau Council on June 15 Brown said he wanted the Auditor General to look into the way he had used his council credit.

“I’m going to the Auditor General with what I’ve got, I can’t find any other fair court in the land,” he told the council’s policy and activities committee.

His request for the auditor general to step in followed scrutiny over his card use which included buying personal family items such as Christmas ham, a stereo system and a hotel visit. The items were all later repaid but the purchase of them went against council policy which states the credit cards cannot ever be used for personal items.

Brown’s credit card reconciliations were absent of tax receipts for many of the transactions which made up the $16,977.22 he spent since becoming mayor in 2007. Council policy, and Inland Revenue legislation, requires a tax invoice is retained for all purchases, especially for those over $50.

But the Auditor General today said it had declined his request.

He balled his eyes out nearly two weeks ago, but only got around to writing to the Auditor-General on Tuesday this week. The Auditor-General thought about his request for all of about 5 minutes and told him to bugger off.

A spokeswoman for the Auditor General confirmed a letter was received on Wednesday from Brown and a response given to him today which said an investigation would not happen.

The office would not release a reason why, or give media a copy of the letter, saying it was up to Brown to do so, if he wanted.

In a statement released by the council this afternoon, Brown said he accepted the Auditor General’s decision to not spend time looking into his expenses.

“They acknowledge that I have made mistakes, but they are sufficiently confident in our existing audit arrangements. The letter states that the council’s response is appropriate and there is no need for further involvement of the Auditor-General,” Brown said.

“I have acknowledged these same mistakes and reimbursed the council.  I was confident that Manukau City Council’s processes were robust.”

His statement is facetious in the extreme. The council’s processes weren’t robuts, they were as bullet-proof as a singlet. Len Brown troughed it up for 25 months and the processes never once got a proper tax receipt, only once in 25 months did Len Brown sign off his returns as required by the council card policy and never once did his CFO ever question his expenses. Robust? Bollocks!

Len Brown’s pres release says he paid it back, he hasn’t he still owes ratepayers for his Volare dinner. It wasn’t a fundraiser, it was an opera night, it wasn’t council business, it was a dual celebration, for Looney len’s birthday and for a new child born a few days before, and a judge was entertained.

When will Looney Len come clean?

Kevin Rudd’s short reign as Australian PM is over. Rolled by Julia Gillard. Don’t hold out much hope for an improvement in Australia though.

Opposition figures said Ms Gillard was also tainted by cost blow-outs on the school building projects. ”Sure, they’ll get a bounce for a while but people want stability,” he said. ”This mob is a pack of amateurs.”

Labor in Australia suffers the same problem as Labour here. A talent pool as shallow as a car-park puddle.