Politics

Len Brown is being castigated for his draft Unitary Plan, and rightly so.

He knows he is in trouble because now at every public meeting there is a small army of paid council officials handing out hastily prepared documents in an attempt to counter the opponents of the Unitary Plan.

One wonders though why the $30 million rate-payer funded spin doctors are even being deployed to defend the plan…I thought it was supposed to be a draft? Surely the process of public submissions is so people can voice their support or otherwise? Why the need to defend the plan?

Unless of course we were all supposed to meekly submit and prostrate before the Night Mayor for his luminary vision for Auckland.

Len Brown is also being very sneaky and furtive over some aspects of the Unitary Plan. Like his plans for stealth tax.

You have to look very carefully to find this, because you see it is not included anyway in the section of the Council website that deals with the Unitary Plan…instead it is hidden in a little traversed area called the Rural Urban Boundary, where there is a link to an Addendum to the Unitary Plan.  Read more »

Kevin Rudd is starting up the rumour mill again after his last cowardly leadership challenge. He always does this with a bit of seeding from the back benchers who then leak to outside sources.

Senior Liberal frontbencher Christopher Pyne says a Labor source has told him Kevin Rudd will again challenge for the leadership in June.

Mr Rudd this week revealed he now supports gay marriage, having voted against it in parliament in 2012.

Mr Pyne told ABC radio on Wednesday the change of stance on gay marriage was a signal Mr Rudd intended to challenge Prime Minister Julia Gillard.  Read more »

Unite Union is taking on McDonalds, apparently over what they call “stolen wages and stolen breaks”.

Unite claims $2.5m “Stolen Wages, Stolen Breaks” against McDonald’s

Unite are submitting an employment authority case against McDonald’s today for unpaid breaks that the union estimates has resulted in unpaid wages of $2.5 million.

“We have wage and time records from two stores (one a McCopco store and one a franchisee) for the last four months that confirm a consistent pattern of not paying for lost lunch breaks – as they are required to do under the collective agreement,” said Unite National Director Mike Treen.  Read more »

He can always become a press secretary…TVNZ has a lot to answer for. It seems they have become the hatchery for Labour party candidates and mouthpieces…either that or they are actually embedded journalists, who are then brought in from the cold.

Mike Hosking had a great editorial on NewstalkZB this morning.

The numbers don’t appear to lie or in this case even mislead – there are fewer people leaving for Australia. Not just that, there are more people coming here from all over the world. This is from Stats NZ yesterday.

Yes an I blogged about that earlier and how Labour’s scam is now failing.

Let’s look at Australia first. This was always going to happen given Australia was always going to end up in the sort of trouble it has. When we panic about the people leaving the country the way we did a year back, we were made to feel like we were inferior and any number of TV shows couldn’t wait to line up the endless parade of people saying things like “there are more jobs over there” or “there is more money over there” or “NZ doesn’t offer me anything”. Or other TV shows would line up comparison couples – one in Sydney, one in Wellington – and they’d compare shopping lists and school fees and weather forecasts. It turned into this dumb sort of game where NZ came second and we’re supposed to feel stink.  Read more »

The Planning Parrot writes:

Again the Night-Mayor Brown’s team of merry men have come up with a crazy idea that has been inserted in the draft Auckland Unitary Plan.

Section 3.1.3.2 Air quality under the heading “Air Discharge from transport” states:

Require applications for land use consent or designation for a high traffic-generating activity to demonstrate that:

a. Air discharges from vehicles have been assessed using best practice methods, such as modelling and monitoring, appropriate to the scale of the discharge and any potential adverse effects;

b. The combined concentrations of air discharges arising from the activity and and back ground levels will not cause adverse effects on human health or on regional or local air quality, and will meet the AAAQS;

c. Easy access to public transport is provided so that people have an alternative to private vehicles;

d. Access to and the layout and design of land use or activity facilities walking or cycling as a practical alternative to the use of private motor vehicles for trips to/from the activity”.  Read more »

via the tipline

If you ever needed a reason to understand why the Conservative party cult led by Colin Craig is simply not credible as a political party have a look at this Facebook status update that was posted today, and then deleted.

Maybe there is hope.  At least someone in the Conservative Party actually realised that was a gigantic blunder and deleted it. Shame my army was vigilant.

Read more »

The skulduggery in the Ikaroa-Rawhiti selection means the nasty faction of the Labour Party is going to parachute in their candidate, Shane Taurima, over the line ahead of the very well regarded local candidates Henare O’Keefe and Meka Whaitiri.

Meka and Henare should sit down with the kaumatua of Ikaroa-Rawhiti and come to an agreement that one of them will stand so they do not get beaten by an nasty faction imposed outsider.  Read more »

Two very good people, and very good potential MPs Henare O’Keefe and Meka Whaitiri are currently getting shafted by the nasty faction of the Labour Party who want to parachute in one of their own to Ikaroa-Rawhiti.

The orchestrated stitch up is being run by some very unpleasant individuals who have proven they are unelectable. Sources inside their camp are saying that they are terrified of Meka who is far more intelligent and competent than they are, and is likely to leap frog them to senior positions if she makes it into parliament.  Read more »

UPDATE: Judge not dud after all

Another dud judge has caused some outrage. I’m not normally someone who would side with a union, much less the Corrections Association and Bevan Hanlon, however Judge Philippa Sinclair has really shown just how pathetic some of our judges are:

A dangerous high-security prisoner who killed a Corrections officer has been sentenced for assaulting two more but will spend no extra time in prison, a penalty the prison guards’ union calls disgraceful.

Latu Kepu was already serving a jail sentence for the manslaughter of prison guard Jason Palmer when he attacked two other guards in separate incidents last October.  Read more »