Canterbury

The bogans of Christchurch are trying to rub each other out. Should we stop them?

A street fight, a back-country car chase, a gun and a hit-and-run.

What sounds like a script for The Fast and the Furious played out on a rural north Canterbury road when rival Christchurch boy racers clashed at the weekend.

Police said the incident, in the early hours of Sunday, culminated in two teenagers – and their car – being rammed by a four-wheel-drive on the side of a road near Rangiora.

The 19-year-olds, who were standing beside their car when they were struck, were admitted to hospital with cuts, bruises and grazes.  Read more »

Seriously, I believe it is a valid option, and the dog squad needs some training.

Police say they may “go and say hello” to boy racers planning a protest outside the Christchurch central police station tonight.

The protest has been organised through a boy racer Facebook page, which features photos of T-shirts with the letters FTP on the back.

It invites members to the “peaceful park-up” outside the St Asaph St station at 11pm.

The idea is “to show that we will not tolerate the misapropriation (sic) of police powers and their complete misconduct towards boyracers and those of us out to have a goodtime [sic],” the page administrator wrote.  Read more »

Things appear to be looking up in Christchurch…businesses are reporting that there is no one to fill vacancies for jobs:

Some of Christchurch’s biggest employers are calling for more unskilled immigrants to be allowed into New Zealand to fill job vacancies.

While the city calls for tradesmen, engineers and management-level workers as the rebuild gets into full swing, some businesses say there is a similar need for those willing to do low-paid, unskilled work.

Trish Paterson, recruitment manager for Christchurch-based employment agency Ryan Recruitment, said many local companies were struggling to fill positions that required no qualifications or skills that can be learned on the job.

“It’s not so much that [jobs] are not available, but in a lot of cases they are paying minimum wage and there are other employers paying more, even if it is only 50c per hour, people will move jobs for that,” she said.

The company was even struggling to find people to stand with Stop/Go signs to manage traffic at road works.

Employers needed to adjust their expectations, she said.

“The old attitude ‘if they want the job they have to fit in with us’ is now unrealistic.

“Quite often it is about thinking outside the square . . . taking a more lateral approach and sourcing people that can be trained to do the job, perhaps people they would not have considered in the past.”

Most importantly, Paterson believed, Christchurch needed to bring in more immigrants.

Right so it appears that there are no unemployed at all left in Christchurch…I wonder what the stats say?  Read more »

How about that global warming treating you down south?

Unseasonable snow has joined the wild and wet weather chaos in many parts of New Zealand, particularly the South Island, with holidaymakers stranded and key services knocked out.

Several days of heavy rain compounded yesterday, with the West Coast and Fiordland bearing the brunt of the storm.

In central Otago this morning, an operation is underway to get people out of the Lindis Pass after a heavy snow fall.

Read more »

Good grief…first word problems people, first world problems, still at least whining about insider trading in the Anglican Church is better than buggering little boys in the Catholic Church, so things are improving.

A British MP has raised the prospect of insider trading in the Church of England after a last-minute flurry of bets with bookmakers on Justin Welby becoming the Archbishop of Canterbury.

A string of bookmakers stopped taking money on the Bishop of Durham to succeed Dr Rowan Williams earlier this week after a sudden run of money on the favourite even before media reports that the decision was imminent.

The decision to remove democracy in Canterbury was sensible based on how useless the council were. The decision not to return to a democratically elected council was terrible, especially when the head commissioner was advocating for some form of democracy.

Now the womble filled Human Rights Commission is saying Amy Adams and David Carter had a total shocker.

Axing Environment Canterbury elections until at least 2016 is a breach of the Government’s commitment to democracy, New Zealand’s Human Rights Commission says.

Chief human rights commissioner David Rutherford yesterday hit out at the Government for introducing the Environment Canterbury (Temporary Commissioners and Improved Water Management) Bill, during a Local Government and Environment Select Committee meeting.

The bill will allow Government-appointed commissioners to run the regional body until at least the 2016 elections.

“Our view continues to be that the undemocratic way in which the original legislation was introduced, and its continuance, is simply wrong from a human rights perspective.”

In September, Local Government Minister David Carter and Environment Minister Amy Adams said ECan elections would not be held until 2016 at the earliest, despite an earlier Government promise to hold regional council elections next year.

This decision was a simple play to ensure David and Amy’s farmer mates got free water and a free right to pollute. These are simply subsidies or corporate welfare, and socialism. David Carter won’t be around for much longer but it will leave an indelible black mark on Amy Adams’ much longer career.

Westpac have released their latest quarterly update on regional economic confidence and it shows that Canterbury is by far the most optimistic region in the country.  I guess the unions will say they haven’t been talking to them and sucking up their crap lines.

Canterbury has seen another surge in economic confidence and is now the one unambiguously optimistic region in the country, with a net 36% of households expecting mainly good economic times over the year ahead (57% expect good times, 21% bad). While parts of the regional economy are still struggling, the repair and rebuild effort is now clearly underway, demand for repaired and non-damaged homes has pushed house prices beyond their 2007 peaks, and the unveiling of the new central city plan may have lifted optimism as well.

While the latest education announcement was a big fuck up (is that now two strikes for Hekia?) it seems that most people in Canterbury (perhaps it is the silent majority) actually understand that things are picking up and work is getting done.

It was the media’s fault:

Prime Minister John Key has defended Minister of Education Hekia Parata’s handling of a sensitive proposal that involves closing and merging some Christchurch schools.

Confusion unfolded over last week’s announcement that 13 Canterbury schools could close and another 18 merge in a proposed $1 billion reshape of education in the region.

Mr Key blamed media outlets who broke an embargo for the confusion and distress in Christchurch over proposed changes.

He defended the way the announcement was handled saying the only other option was asking schools to keep the news quiet and that wasn’t possible.

“We asked the media to respect an embargo and in my experience the vast, overwhelming bulk of New Zealand media are very responsible and one part of the media didn’t.”

He said people in Christchurch were not upset about the process in which the decisions were delivered, but the decisions the Government has made.

For the second time in a week aspiring National Party leader Amy Adams has had an absolute shocker. She was going to let Len Brown stitch her up on Monday, and now she has imposed a dictatorial regional council on Canterbury.

Pinko makes a sound case for why this is a bad decision.

I’ll leave the finer points to him and point out that is a seriously flawed decision from Amy Adams because if there is one thing that pisses off tree huggers and lefties and their fellow happy travelers it is removing democracy. Amy has just given them all a big reason to hate her and campaign hard against her. This will be bought up again and again through out her career, and they will compare her to dictators all over the world.

It is hugely ironic that while we point the finger at Fiji for being undemocratic and not conforming to our finger-wagging we have the government by decree almost doing the same thing to the people of Canterbury.

This week has convinced me Amy Adams has a political tin ear.  Or she is a bit short in the brain department. Either way it has been a career defining week for her, and not in a good way.

Once can forgive Gerry Brownlee for his form, after all he has had a lifetime of this sort of behaviour, right from the time at St Bedes when he was the coach of the rugby team and conducted practice from the warmth of his car accompanied by pizza, bellowing orders across the carpark at the team on the field.

I don’t think the case for continued halting of democratic processes for the Regional Council has been made.

ᔥ 3 News

NIWA reckons that this winter is going to be warmer than usual:

NIWA is forecasting average to above average temperatures this winter, compiled with cold snaps and normal rainfall.

It says the La Nina event which has dominated the tropical Pacific for several months has faded out.

Really? Check out the related articles:

While NIWA says things are going to be warmer than usual the NZ Herald reports:

Temperatures plummeted to near-record lows for the first week of June, with reports of temperatures as low as minus 11C in inland Canterbury.

I wonder what people in the South Island think about global warming now?