December 2011

The Maritime Union is striking again:

Ports of Auckland faces yet another strike – for 48 hours from this morning ((Friday)) – in an increasingly bitter dispute which has already disrupted shipping three times this month.

The strike from 7am by more than 300 dockers covered by the Maritime Union will carry the row over unsettled collective employment negotiations through the first dawn of 2012.

There has been no attempt by either side to break the impasse since the workers at the port’s two container terminals held two 24-hour strikes last weekend, including on Christmas Day, and issued notice of a fifth round of stoppages early next month.

The Port has now offered a 10% pay increase, which in this economic climate is very generous. The Union responded by giving notice of yet another strike, which is now in effect. It is still not clear what the Union actually wants, except to ensure that it retains a total monopoly of stevedoring at the Ports of Auckland.

It is now time to break the strike and break the union at the same time.

One option would be to do what President Reagan did to striking air traffic controllers in the US thirty years ago. Sack the lot of them and employ new people. Unfortunately, John Key is no Reagan and New Zealand doesn’t really have the laws to enable the government to do this in any case.

John Key could promote a law change to have union officials, who act in bad faith, held personally liable for the damage that they cause to others. Bad faith provisions were brought in by Helen Clark’s government but there is currently no real liability associated with bad faith actions.

Perhaps the best route, however, would be for the Ports of Auckland to follow the same path as Qantas did recently. They should simply make all members of the Union redundant and, like Tauranga, and put its stevedoring out for competitive tender by private operators. The Labour politicians in the Auckland Council won’t like it a bit, but will not ultimately have the political courage to stand in the way of management. There will be a period of disruption, no doubt, but as Qantas discovered, that is far preferable to a slow economic death at the hands of self-serving unionists.

The formation of an alternate union also has merit. It seems the Maritime Union is hell bent on destroying the Port and the jobs that go with it. Give them their wish.

The government should also move forthwith to repeal section 55 and section 65A of the Employment Relations Act 2000 that provides for employers to deduct union dues from salary on behalf of unions. This is a very simple adjustment and could very easily be part of an Omnibus Bill.

The hold of the Maritime Union over the Ports of Auckland and the many businesses reliant on trade through the port must be broken.

A local authority has come up with a great idea for moving on drunk and drugged youths:

An English city council has used pig dung to eject teenagers from a woodland where they were drinking and taking drugs. Elderly residents of Middlesbrough, northeast England, complained, so officials thinned out the trees to make the area more visible from paths and then spread a thick layer of pig manure on the ground.

A Middlesbrough Council spokesman said: “Feedback from the residents indicated that, although there was a slight whiff, they would much rather smell a pong than a bong.”

Perhaps Auckland Council could look at this for Aotea Square.

As is usual these days the only commentators that Red Radio run to are Pinko scum. They clearly don’t like MPs saying what the rest of us where thinking:

Commentators say two National Party MPs showed a lack of judgement in posting tweets implying the guilt of a teenager charged with an attack on a child in Turangi.

Louise Upston and Tau Henare both tweeted their thoughts after an arrest was made on Wednesday.

Both condemned the accused in separate tweets before he stands trial.

Mr Henare would not comment on tape, but said he stood by what he had written.

However, he says on his twitter account that he may have got carried away with the initial tweet.

Ms Upston says she was only trying to show her support for the police who worked on the case.

She does not believe her comments have jeopardised the accused’s chance of a fair trial.

Media law lawyer Steven Price says it’s always inadvisable to make public statements about the guilt or innocence of a person before a trial.

However, he says that the twitter comments are likely to have been forgotten by the time the trial comes.

Media commentator Russell Brown says neither Ms Upston nor Mr Henare have demonstrated respect for the law and its processes.

He says legislators have a responsibility to uphold the law.

Looks like Russell Brown is halting his constant self promoting blog posts about Media 7 and his mum’s lamb chop recipes to get back into politics. He may find that times have moved on and one post a week regurgitating your radio slot really doesn’t cut it anymore.

Steven Price is of course the flea lawyer who tried unsuccessfully to sue me on behalf of Pearl Going.

Proverbs 30

³² If you have been a fool by being proud or plotting evil,
cover your mouth in shame.

Yesterday I blogged about the need for proper human resources management in political parties, in particular dealing with hopeless performers.

The old saying in business is “what gets measured, gets done” and so it must be for MPs. You can’t hold them to account by some sort of amorphous and transient scheme of measuring their success or otherwise.

That really means defining some sort of KPI system for parties and voters to hold politicians to account.

It can’t be useless either because the flip side of measuring something is that behaviour adjusts to only those things that are measured. I’ll give an example. A mate of mine has a large team of sales reps. He adjusts their targets and goals every quarter to focus on different outcomes for the business that he requires. Their commissions an bonuses depend on meeting the changing and evolving KPIs.

In parliament it would be useless to set a target, for example, of a certain number of written questions. If you did you would get plonkers like Grant Robertson who would fire off 500 in the first month then sit back and point to his massive success in meeting that KPI without actually achieving anything.

No, the KPIs would have to include party specific items as well. Like growing membership. Now you might say that shouldn’t happen but think about it for a moment. The best MPs I know have massive party membership, the poor MPs and those continually at risk have low membership. By being engaging and in your electorate and available means people identify with you and identify with your party. A strong membership also allows you to turn out masses of volunteers and dominate in the ground war, leading people to again identify effectiveness and seek to join.

There is of course a problem with the List MPs. They are like the sales people on high retainers and low commission structures in a business. There is no reward for them to toil and as a consequence, generally, are fat dumb and lazy. About the only exception is unless they are a senior manager. KPIs for these politicians is a ust since there is no real ability to toss them out unlike electorate MPs.

Still there is a problem for parties if MPs are failing to deliver. New Zealand doesn’t have a recall system and with the expiry of the waka jumping legislation it is almost impossible to get rid of them altogether.

If you have ideas for a KPI system for politicians then I’m all ears. Political parties need a mechanism for measuring politicians, that way things will get done.

So many to choose from. However the commenters were unequivocal. The nominees for the Whaleoil Awards – Worst List MP are:

Katrina Shanks – Dopey, and stood up and made one of the most embarrassing speeches ever seen in parliament on the so-called Skynet Bill, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that her time is up. But for the vagaries of MMP, Katrina would be pursuing employment opportunities elsewhere.

Catherine Delahunty  - seriously doolally, deluded and hopeless. Plus she is a Green MP. One commenter, perhaps unfairly commented that she had been campaigning for Movember all year.

Darien Fenton – where to start, she epitomises nasty, single handedly derailed any traction Labour was making with the Rugby League crowd when she stupidly attacked the Mad Butcher for daring to voice an opinion. This clothe cap wearing hard left unionist is only in parliament because of the hold unions have over the Labour aprty and her high list ranking despite any redeeming features. Darien Fenton has already won the Worst Politician and the Worst SMOG, could she make the trifecta and take out this award too?

Sue Moroney – Another of Labour’s nasties. This woman is so unlikeable that every electorate she stands in results in her opponent winning and usually increasing their majority. This has become known as the Moroney Effect. National MPs keep their fingers crossed and a few pray that Labour will select Sue to stand against them.

Gareth Hughes – Green, an idiot, big mouth, and scare-monger. He was the one who claimed wrongly that the MV Rena had broken up and sunk and that Tauranga’s beaches would be closed for 20 years because of the oil spill. He stood in Ohariu and is Wellington based but racks up massive travel bills. He has taken to the trough better than most.

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Some people really are thick:

A 34-year-old man will face a raft of charges after allegedly fleeing the scene of a burglary in Auckland today, evading pursuing police, then crashing into a stationary police car.

The drama began when witnesses reported seeing a blue Holden leaving the scene of a burglary in Remuera about 9am.

Police spotted the same car a short time later at Wash World on St Lukes Rd, but when police approached “it drove away at speed” and officers lost sight of it.

The same vehicle was seen by police on Symonds St where it was seen to drive onto Anzac Ave, before disappearing from view.

Police then pursued the fleeing driver on Beach Rd but the chase was abandoned at the bottom of Parnell Rise “due to the speed of the vehicle”.

After driving up Parnell Rise, towards Broadway, police said the vehicle crossed onto the wrong side of the road and crashed into a stationary police car.

Boing Boing documents the unfolding PR disaster that is Paul D.B. Christoforo. He is a one man brand wrecking machine. Not only has he wrecked his own brand, Ocean Marketing, but also that of his client, N-Control.

It all started with a snarky email to a blogger, turns out that the blogger has a massive blog and well…follow the trail of destruction:

1. The Customer Is Usually Wrong. Ensure they understand this by sending them illiterate, angry emails. That bitch got told.

2. It’s Not A Lie If You Believe It. Mayor of Boston come on Bud you run a show that’s all you do.

3. Devote your hypothetical 125-strong PR team to a smear campaign of the gatekeeper who runs a key conference where you sell your clients’ products.

4. When pretending to be your own former business associates, reply from your personal email address; bonus points for using this address on anabolic steroid advice forums.

5. If You’re Wrong, Be Boldly Wrong. Bloggers never pay attention to carbon copied customer service complaints!

6. Name drop people who already loathe you, in a medium with a permanent record.

7. When cornered, claim that it’s everyone else who is being unprofessional.

BONUS: 3 rules for Twitter stratagy.

1. If your name is not available on Twitter, change a random consonant or vowel until it becomes available. No-one will notice the difference.

2. Buy 20,000 followers, but only use the account to harangue abused customers.

3. Instead of changing your account handle when the heat is on, abandon it completely so that someone else might take it.

Kim Jong-un has been confirmed as Supreme Leader of North Korea

• @Covlin @tauhenare not surprising that Red Radio got two pinko commentators to whinge either #
• @nzben not surprising that Red Radio got two pinko commentators to whinge either #
• The Kiwi Bloggers Daily is out! http://t.co/maQDgdne ▸ Top stories today via @citizenbomber @cactuskate2 @bustedblonde #
• Posts from Whale Oil Beef Hooked | A blog by Cameron Slater for 30/12/2011 – http://t.co/wQdQ3io5 #