February 2011

Word is coming through the tipline that long time party stalwart and long time friend of my old man and the Whale, has managed to create for himself a sense of inevitability around his winning the selection for the safe seat of Rodney.

According to sources within the party Brent Robinson seems to have lost every delegate that was not stacked in his favour, and some of them are cracking, and Scott has picked most of them up. National often rewards tenure without justification but in this case Scott deserves his long awaited chance of running for office.

For those that do not know Scott he is a former Northern Regional Regional Chair, and former National Board member. He has done is time for the party, including being let go from senior position in the commercial world for continuing to serve National which shows a huge degree of dedication to the party.

Obviously if you have tenure as long as Scott does in the National Party you have a few enemies but that is normal for experienced political operatives. Unfortunately this has always been the case in Auckland where many people fight silly battles over stuff that does not matter, and as a ranking member of the party Scott has had to get involved.

Scott does have a few negatives that have also come through the tipline. Most appear to be from people in the McCully/Boag camp who think this blogger is too dumb to work out the game they are playing. In in the interests of fairness the weaknesses are [With my comments in brackets]:

• Scott is too old. [WO: True, he is is older than Maggie Barry so he will never make it into cabinet especially with the cycle the way it is - he would likely be 64 before National is next in government.]
• Scott is not particularly likable. [WO: Sure Scott is not as user friendly as someone like John Key, Paula Bennett or John Carter, but he is a lot more likable than Tim Groser or Chris Finlayson. And he wont rabbit on in latin.]
• Scott has a blood feud with the President who is shacked up with Scotts ex-wife. [WO: So what! Both men are big enough to deal with this and for those morons in the party who think the President will break a habit of a lifetime and actually do anything let alone try to kneecap Scott, it is not going to happen. Ever. Not even Scott can enrage Peter enough so he will get off his arse and do anything.]

This blog is not endorsing Scott, as it stays neutral, but it is saying do not vote for Brent Robinson, who’s unethical behaviour means he is not fit for political office let alone the local bowling club committee in Orewa.

It is times like this that we need leaders who act and don’t fart-arse around.

Judith Collins has acted. With accomodation now at a premium in Christchurch and a flood of rescue workers coming in to help they need to be housed.

Christchurch’s Rolleston prison will be cleared to create beds for the influx of rescuers into the city following yesterday’s 6.3 magnitude earthquake.

Corrections Minister Judith Collins said the prisoners would be moved to the higher security Christchurch Mens’ prison, emptying 320 beds for rescuers. The rescue teams now include 200 police from Australia on top of their specialist search and rescue team.

Excellent, the only thing that she could have done better than that was to chain them all up and put them on shovels.

Ahead of the first meet the candidates evening in Rodney tonight I hear through my vast network of informants that apparently Cehill Pienaar thinks that I have been silenced, that no more will be heard from me on Rodney.

Sorry meneer, I cannot be silenced quite so easily.

The New York Times has an old link to an article about the fight against the removal of apartheid, a fight Cehill Pienaar was in the front lines of.

Where did Cehill make this comment about FW deKlerk’s trip to Europe to discuss the process to bring about the end of apartheid.

At a rally at the Voortrekker Monument:

A hillside amphitheater behind the Voortrekker Monument was filled with whites holding flags of the old Boer Republic, the Conservative Party and the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement along with bright umbrellas against the autumn sun.

Mr. Treuernicht contended that the African National Congress, which espouses nonracialism, hated Afrikaners and ”rejects our right to exist.” Mr. Treuernicht proposed that Inkatha, a Zulu political and cultural organization headed by Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi, ally itself with the Conservatives to stop Communism from taking over South Africa.

Ahhh…so he was there speaking to the neo-nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement led by Eugène Terre’Blanche, and there is also the link to Inkatha. Just a reminder to dear readers of the flag of the AWB. a flag that was flying in great abundance when Cehill Pienaar made that impassioned speech.

I will not be silenced while we have un-reconstituted racists inhabiting the National party, and worse when those same racists are plotting and colluding to jack up a selection on behalf of Brent Robinson. There are four other fine candidates that delegates can choose from without choosing the malignancy of these two.

I have just been sent the attached email via the tipline.

It is from Max Legg, Senior Minister of Victory Church in Auckland and was sent to all MPs and other elected officials. In the email he says:

However, I do believe this Quake is a sign also to all New Zealanders, that the Nation as a whole has to wake- up to serious mistakes along the way.

Often these kind of acts, (eg.Quakes) are outside man’s control, and are warnings to tell us we are going off track.

NZ cannot go on murdering 18,000 unborn children, Undermining the God given authority of parents to discipline their children, Legalising prostitution , homosexual unions,( in kind to marriage), allowing youngsters to easily have access to alcohol, allowing repeat offenders to drive and kill.

The punishments are not matching the crime, and on and on the list goes. These acts bring a curse on the Nation.

This is exactly the sort of fundamentalism that we don’t need in New Zealand, or in our politics.

About the only thing he didn’t do in that email was blame Mark Hotchin.

Email from Max Legg

Cactus Kate highlights the difference between good corporate citizens int touch with the community and bad corporate citizens.

Air New Zealand didn’t disappoint with their special airfare and lack of exploiting supply and demand at this time. At midnight Tuesday NZ, Wednesday was booked out but you could fly with 2 bags as well from Christchurch to Auckland or Wellington on Thursday for just $48 one way. A jubilant generous Facebook friend managed to secure three seats for his close family to repatriate them to Auckland.

An “adopt a Cantabrian” scheme needs to take place where families around New Zealand simply relocate their relatives from Christchurch where they can. Air New Zealand has helped this FB friend achieve such a goal.

Good on Air NZ. And what dod “Fongterror” do?

Today Fonterra announced amid the rubble more payout 60 cents to bring the average farmer payout to $1 million. It also received a boost from a 1 cent dive in the dollar the moment news spread of the quake.

Back in September, Fonterra donated a pathetic $1 million to Christchurch’s first earthquake. So the real question will be what will Fonterra do the day after the big earthquake? Because they’ve missed out on the day it happened. Perhaps they were too busy feeling smug with their payout news to bother. Payout announcements that are starting to have all the crass PR hype attached that farmers complain of Aucklanders having. Farmers have truly become the new New Zealand wankers and today it showed up with the backdrop to their jubilant trumpeting PR news of more money in their own pockets – Christchurch was devastated.

Cactus doesn’t hold back when it comes to New Zealand’s biggest beneficiaries.

Reports in are that farms in the region escaped the worst brunt of the real quake. But farmers know too well of the generosity of the New Zealand taxpayer when they have their once in every hundred year drought every couple of years or other natural disasters they never seem to have insurance cover for. Not to mention the Kyoto bill that the taxpayer is going to fork out for on their behalf for signing up to the stupid scheme.

So big question Fonterra, will you withhold a large chunk of that 60 cent payout today for Canterbury? Or will you plead more pathetic poverty yourselves and we see a token attempt at charity such as the “freeze” in the price of milk for this year on the just 5% of your total production that is consumed in New Zealand?

Air New Zealand seems to know how Kiwis feel, Fongterror doesn’t. Watch them put their hands out when the next rains come.

These photos are of a Polish Army DANA 152mm self propelled gun firing in Afghanistan.

Phil Goff is making a pig’s ear out of everything he touches at the moment.

David Farrar notes his incosistency with his position on poll results and today he made a terrible error in a speech  at the Fourth US NZ Partnership Forum. His rhetoric is catching him out terribly.

“As David Lange once put it ‘we are a strategic dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica!’

Lange never said that — Henry Kissinger did but he was talking about Chile! In 1985 George Schultz quoted Kissinger but substituted NZ for Chile.

Goff’s memory of the Lange years when he was a right wing Rogernome is obviously faulty.

There is a lot of talk at the moment about Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi and his influence in Egypt, especially now that Mubarak has gone.

Here is a video of the fella, just so Bomber and his pals can get to know just what it was that they wished for.

Useless is what our current laws are when a creepy pedo is hiding himself behind name suppression laws.

Name suppression has been granted to a 33-year-old Napier man facing a raft of indecency charges after police found thousands of images of local children on his computer.

The unemployed Onekawa man appeared before Judge Geoff Rea in Napier District Court facing six charges of doing an indecent act.

His arrest came early this morning after police were tipped off by the public to a potential sighting of the man, who had been seen taking photos while driving past schools on a number of occasions in the past few weeks.

On both prior occasions he was reported to have been in a silver car.

Police found the man in his car at the Maadi Rd, Onekawa, shops shortly after 8.30am and had to use pepper spray after he became aggressive. A camera was found in his possession.

Detective Sergeant Tim Smith said police searched the man’s home shortly after his arrest and found around 1200 images of young girls and mothers walking babies on a USB stick as well as “objectionable” material on CDs and DVDs.

It appears the photos were taken locally as well as in Taupo said Mr Smith.

He asked for name suppression so he could inform his family and his soon to be ex-girlfriend.

I thought that was what newspapers were for?

After reading The Richest Man Who Ever Lived: King Solomon’s Secrets to Success, Wealth, and Happiness, a book by Steven K Scott, I have been reading Proverbs every day. There are 31 chapters in Proverbs and so I read a chapter each day. If it is February or any other month with less than 31 days then the last day I will read the remaining chapters, and then start again from Chapter 1 the next day.

As I have ben reading each chapter I have come across Proverbs that apply as much to today as they did when the book was written. I have also noticed that many Proverbs relate to governance. Today being the 22nd, I read Chapter 22 and verse 8 leapt from the page as being particularly pertinent for Rodney electorate.

Proverbs 22:8 (New Living Translation)

Those who plant injustice will harvest disaster,
and their reign of terror will come to an end.

National party delegates are sensible people, as they go into the meet the candidates meetings and the final selection I know that they will do the right thing.