August 2010

The Dompost Editorial kicks of my story nicely.

One of the things I haven’t heard talked about with Hubbard’s mess and the South Canterbury Finance situation is if the Government Guarantee still stands.

I find it hard to imagine that there isn’t some sort of weasel clause in the guarantee that says if things are materially  different from when the guarantee was given then the guarantee may not stand.

Banks do this to people all the time, the irony have this being done to a bank would be delicious, albeit a dodgy third rate bank.

Let it fail, clean out the crap.

Policy on Public Transport

Public Transport hasn’t worked in Auckland for the very simple reason that it is a large, spread out city with a small population on a global scale. There are not enough people close enough to public transport stations to mean they can commute solely using public transport. They likely will have to drive first, then get on to public transport. This defeats the purpose of taking a bus or a train, if you are in your car you might as well go the whole way by car.

Aucklanders and Albany voters have voted with their cars, and last year only 32000 people used public transport to get into the central city. The demographics of Albany are such that just 5% of voters take public transport. The voters of Albany have voted with their cars.

That means I will support more roads, more parking and if this means toll roads that ease congestion, I am all for them. Lets just end the hypocrisy about public transport being good for everyone, because if it was people would have stopped driving before now.

The big problem with public transport is it is always something “other people” should use. So the Whaleoil policy on public transport is to identify the “other people” and make it mandatory for them to use public transport:

“Other people” include

-       Green Party Members

-       Public transport advocates

-       Cyclists who whinge about roads not being rider friendly

-      Anyone who votes for Andrew Williams

If we could get this group of whingers off the road we would ease congestion and make it a lot easier for the rest of us to get around.

Vote Slater - Albany - Auckland - Keeping the Buggers Honest

Cit­i­zen A

7pm Thurs­day Tri­an­gle & 8pm Sun­day Sky 89 & Free­view 21

With Bomber (I think he is the host) and Sel­wyn Man­ning (He looks nothing like the Wikileaks fellow)

The Herald has an article on Albany and the candidates. Since it is in today’s Herald I will outline succinctly why I am standing.

I am a small ‘c’ conservative that wants to see local government stick to local government issues, and not get involved in other issues like social welfare, social engineering and promoting ethnic diversity. Plenty of different nationals live in Auckland and most of them don’t require hand outs. Lets keep it this way.

The campaign in Albany is a practice run for the general election, where telling the truth about a candidate is really important, especially when the candidate is liberal with the truth, wrong or has terrible personal ethics. A case in point is Andrew Williams who has put in a nomination in Albany purely for insurance sake as he will never in a month of Sunday’s get elected as mayor.

Far from being a side-show, I am deadly serious in making sure that Andrew Williams is not elected in Albany.

Public meetings were a pleasure for Mr Williams at the last elections. He used them as a platform to attack wasteful spending and, in particular, the proposal of Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey and the Infratil company to start commercial flights out of Whenuapai Air Base.

He triumphed, and many of Mr Harvey’s critics on the shores of the upper harbour are now lumped in with East Coast Bays folk who also would have been in the flight path.

Andrew Williams flip-flopped over Whenuapai, and then when elected embarked on perhaps the most wasteful spending ever seen in North Shore, including the spending of extra millions deciding on whether a pool should be sited in one place or another just 200 meters away. Now that the airport is a dead issue so should Andrew Willaims. Don’t forget the ratepayers money he literally widdled away against the trees of Hurstmere Road. Public meetings are not going to be fun for Andrew Williams this year. I am going to hold him to account plus any other candidate that either supported and enabled his drunken rampage through the ratepayers pockets or any new candidate that makes grandiose promises of spending of ratepayers cash.

I will explain my policies in depth over the coming days, but rest assured they will not be like any others, the old ways are dead and it is time for some new thinking. You won’t hear from me any support for “modest rates increases”, I will be campaigning for rates reductions and I will explain how that can be achieved.

Vote Slater - Albany - Auckland - Keeping the Buggers Honest

from 11foot8.com

There is a bridge like this on Auckland’s Southern motorway, might I suggest to my readers at NZTA (yes I know you do) that a couple of cameras on the Penrose Road overbridge and you would have a solid Social Media hit right there.

I have another idea for Crusher - Nutraloaf.

from Boing Boing

The authorities at Cook County Jail have a new way to punish unruly inmates: Nutraloaf, a dense block of food-like stuff that meets the requirements of providing prisoners with daily calorie intake and nutrients, but deprives them of enjoyment. Chicago magazine sent food critic Jeff Ruby out to try it. He reports:

Nutraloaf

An employee from Aramark Correctional Services–a branch of the Philadelphia-based company that also provides fare for college dorms and NFL stadiums–presented me a Styrofoam container sagging with a blunt ginger-toned mass roughly the size of a calzone and with the appearance of a neglected fruitcake. It had nothing else in common with either.

The mushy, disturbingly uniform innards recalled the thick, pulpy aftermath of something you dissected in biology class: so intrinsically disagreeable that my throat nearly closed up reflexively. But the funny thing about Nutraloaf is the taste. It’s not awful, nor is it especially good. I kept trying to detect any individual element–carrot? egg?–and failing. Nutraloaf tastes blank, as though someone physically removed all hints of flavor.

Turns out, there’s a pretty interesting debate going on right now as to whether Nutraloaf—and similar dishes at other correctional facilities—falls under “cruel and unusual punishment”. So far, Ruby writes, all the lawsuits brought against excessively bland food have failed.

I’m thinking that this should be standard fair not a punishment. Nutritional, yet bland. Maybe at Christmas they can have gravy with it…..nah!

There is a saying “Too big to Fail” and the supporters of Alan Hubbard and South Canterbury Finance are campaigning along those lines, but here’s a thought, why not let it fail?

There should be no such thing as too big to fail. Stupid, lazy and idiot business owners, lenders and creditors should be cleaned out.

Have another thought too, into whose pockets does the bail out go, and has this situation been engineered by at risk lenders who knew it would fail but lent more money to SCF and associates anyway knowing that they had a government guarantee with which to fall back on.

As is always with these situations, follow the money. Follow the money and let it fail.

As for the drop-kick borrowers with second and third mortgages to SCF, they deserve the hiding they should get by leveraging themselves so highly in the first place. SCF and Associates companies will have pouring literally hundreds of millions into dairy conversions that should never have been financed in the first place.

In a true free market SCF and its associated companies would be let fail. My pick is, is that Bill English and his other pinko mates in cabinet like Pedobear Power will want to chuck taxpayers cash at this, I say they shouldn’t.

Let it fail and then see what happens. The clean out would be good for the economy in the long run.

Of course we could always sell the lot to the Chinese, better they take the risk than the NZ taxpayer.

I’m over the teachers unions, The Teachers Council and teachers in general. They are against National Standards for no other reason that it is the national party proposing it, they want huge pay increases because they were silent for Labour for nine years, and they through the Teachers Council and the registration board keep allowing dodgy teachers to hide their names and continue teaching.

On the front page of the Sunday Star Time today it is there in all its glory, the protection of criminal teachers by the Teachers Council.

THIS IS the story the Teachers Council did not want told. The search for the information on criminals teaching our children ultimately needed the intervention of the ombudsman. Journalist Catherine Woulfe – now based at Sunday magazine – sought the facts but the council declined, on the ground it was not in the public interest. Official Information Act requests were made asking for a range of information on teachers self-reporting a conviction since January 2008. The council again refused, primarily on the grounds it “would require substantial collation and research”. It also said it wanted $3277.12 to cover costs. The Sunday Star-Times went to the ombudsman, who reduced the charge to $760, which we paid. After a year of persistence, the council has finally provided the information.

And while they were obstructing the Sunday Star Times and trying to protect dodgy teachers they were issuing press releases and letters explaining just exactly how they want teachers to vote in a “survey” of the members.

Now don’t get me wrong here, not all crimes are equal and people can certainly make mistakes in their life that shouldn’t necessarily impact their career, but life is tough and sometimes you just have to cop it on the chin. Not if you are a teacher though. You get a free ride, especially if your crimes are against children.

In the past two years, 58 teachers have dobbed themselves in for being convicted of offences punishable by more than three months jail.

That is the threshhold [sic] which requires them to be investigated by the New Zealand Teachers Council.

Despite the admissions, those who retained or were granted teachers registration included ones convicted of:

* Indecent assault against a teenage girl.

* Assault with a blunt instrument and male assaults female.

* Possession of an objectionable publication but is awaiting sentence.

* Threatening to kill, and assault on a woman.

* Grievous bodily harm with reckless disregard.

And a district court judge has also ordered the teachers council to reconsider a primary teacher it banned after she verbally threatened children in class.

I can handle drink driving offences, and fraud, anyone can make mistakes like that once and get over it and still not affect their ability to teach, but I’m afraid that possession of objectionable material, indecent assault, assault, threatening to kill and GBH do not a teacher make.

I remembered a quote in the NZ Herald by Trevor Mallard about this issue regarding the Teachers Council.

Labour education spokesman Trevor Mallard said the council should be moving towards more openness with the public and parents.

“In the end the presumption should be towards openness, and naming is part of the punishment. If you do something that is that serious that you are suspended or struck off, then that should be a matter that is public.”

Education law expert Patrick Walsh said parents had “a right to know”.

And those comments were about the news that:

Five teachers disciplined for offences ranging from sex with students to watching porn in a classroom have had their identities protected as calls to “name and shame” grow.

The details of the ruling against the teachers were published by the Teachers’ Council this week. Two teachers disciplined for misconduct could be back teaching next year. The cases include:

A married male teacher struck off for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old student for 18 months.

A male teacher struck off after being caught cruising a public toilet for sex;

A female teacher struck off after being caught claiming the DPB while working;

A female teacher suspended for a year for showing porn to a colleague in a class of 5-year-olds;

A female teacher warned for slapping and hitting 7-year-old students.

The rulings prompted fresh calls for an end to the secret nature of the Teachers’ Council.

I thought it would be timely to see what Mr Mallard had to say this time around and so I popped off an email and received a reply within about 15 minutes. His reply to my questions (and yes I checked if they could be on the record) leaves no room for doubt where he, a former teacher and Labour’s spokesperson on Education, stands on this issue of criminally convicted teachers remaining anonymously in the classroom.

I think that in some cases there is room for suppression. But I think there is a systemic breakdown between Police, the Teachers Council and Trustees/Principals.

I think there should be a system whereby each is obliged to inform the other and the Council keeps what might be described as an interim or grey list. That would mean problems couldn’t shift from school to school.

I wouldn’t rule out a teacher with a criminal conviction teaching but can’t think of a good reason for hiding it from parents.

One way of course of meeting that goal is to remove the automatic secrecy that applies in almost every case The Teachers Council deals with and remove also name suppression from our courts system in the case of the accused. Then there can be no doubt whatsoever as to who is teaching our children. By keeping secrets, name suppression and the Teachers Council create and perpetrate that there is something which must be hidden, so the presumption by parents, rightly, is that the crime must be bad. However the truth is that they aren’t. To my mind it matters not a bit that a teacher got caught with his hand in the till at the rugby club when he was secretary, or Mrs Art Teacher got pinged once for drink driving. It doesn’t affect their role as a teacher. But sex crimes and assault against children. No mercy, name and shame.

The Teacher's Council - Pedobear Seal of Approval

It is time we removed the keeping of secrets from our courts and from our classrooms. The sooner people accept that one of the consequences of breaking the law is getting named the sooner they will realise that they made a mistake.

Remember next time you hear teachers unions, The Teachers Council, The Principal’s Federation and the Auckland Primary Principals Association banging on against National Standards that they support the hiding of teachers details who are convicted of sex and violence crimes against children and that they want those same teachers to be teaching YOUR children.

I’ll start listening to all of them about national standards when they stop hiding criminals.

The PPTA, NZEI, The Teachers Council, The Principal’s Federation and the Auckland Primary Principals Association have all earned the Pedobear Seal of Approval for devious crim protecting behaviour.

Gambling is a tax on stupidity after all. If you choose to gamble on cricket you are likely to be ripped off.

A man has been arrested over an alleged betting scam during the current Test match between England and Pakistan.

That said, is match fixing worse than chucking?

I don’t think so…everytime a chucker plays he is cheating and sports such as they are make it pretty difficult difficult to engineer the way you want it each and every time. Unless of course you buy a whole team of cheats.

Police are questioning Pakistan’s cricket team over newspaper allegations of match fixing during the current test match against England at Lord’s, the team’s manager said on Saturday.

“I can confirm that we are aware of the allegations and Scotland Yard police are with us now at the hotel and we are helping them with their enquiries,” team manager Yawar Saeed said.

“This is as much as I can say at the moment.”

British newspaper the News of the World alleged in its Sunday edition that Pakistan players were secretly paid to deliberately bowl no-balls during the fourth and final Test against England as part of a betting scam.