UN

via Stuff

So here’s this man, David Shearer.  He’s got no track record with Labour, but they want him.

Why?

He’s done an awesome job for the UN, got an MBE from the UK (not New Zealand), and is obviously capable at some level.  But why does the New Zealand Labour Party want this particular man?

Before promoting anyone internally?

Before any hard grafting unionists?

Before any social barrier busting gays?

Before any career politicians that have stuffed envelopes and walked up more garden paths to ask for a vote than Shearer has had hot dinners?

What is so special about him?

Read more »

The United Nations is a pretty fun place. The headquarters hosts all kinds of cultural events. Everyone’s open-minded about the dress code. Delegates can even show up hammered to budget negotiations. Or at least they used to be able to.

At a General Assembly budget committee meeting on Monday, the United States ambassador for management and reform at the UN stood up to scold his colleagues for always showing up drunk to negotiations.

“There has always been a good and responsible tradition of a bit of alcohol improving a negotiation, but we’re not talking about a delegate having a nip at the bar,” said Joseph “The Fun Police” Torsella. “We make the modest proposal that the negotiating rooms should in future be an inebriation-free zone.”

Uh oh.  Maybe Charlie turned up to the party too late?   Read more »

As mentioned a few days ago, Helen Clark was scheduled for a Reddit AMA at 5 am today.  It’s all done and dusted, and can be found here.

Every AMA has an introduction explaining what the AMA is roughly about, and some proof that it really is the person you’re talking to:

Dear Redditors,

In two days I will attend the conference “Making the MDGs Work: From Advocacy through Implementation to Acceleration and beyond” in Bogotá, Colombia (event page: http://ow.ly/i1xRF ). There, I will speak on the development agenda post-2015 and on what comes after the Millennium Development Goals which will expire in two years.

I’m looking forward to your questions on this topic and on anything else you may want to know! I will begin answering them at 11AM EST for approximately an hour.

EDIT 12:13PM Thanks everyone – must fly. Tonnes of questions! Very stimulating. Let’s do it again some time. Thanks for your interest in development (and New Zealand!). Spread the word about the MDGs and the importance of speeding up progress over the next 1,000 days! Follow our big MDG conference in Bogota – on Twitter #MDGs2013 and http://www.undp.org/live! Over and out!

Proof it’s me: http://ow.ly/i1uCf More: http://ow.ly/hYgRI

“Making the MDGs Work: From Advocacy through Implementation to Acceleration and beyond”.

Catchy.

A few of the more popular questions/answers (as voted by the readers) are:   Read more »

Cameron Slater at the Truth reports

Charles Chauvel has quit parliament in a fit of pique, taking a lifeline no doubt supplied by Helen Clark, though he denies this publicly.

It is no secret that Charles Chauvel was a fan of David Cunliffe and this will be a large factor in his bolting from Labour.

What is of more interest however is that Chauvel sees an exit to the UN as more preferable than sticking around and hoping that a David Shearer led Labour party may perform an electoral miracle and manage to govern after next year’s election.

Chauvel has clearly weighed up Labour’s chance and also his own and realised both are slim at best.

Click here to read the rest of Cam’s article.

Just as Labour is starting to build a little bit of momentum against the Government, they end up shooting themselves in the foot with this side show.

As Labour rolled out their new Housing Policy it has become impossible  for people to accept that the numbers are realistic.  But it makes you think: Surely Labour wouldn’t be so stupid as to come out with a policy where the numbers don’t add up?

So the real answer is:  They haven’t told us everything.   Yet.

At one point the only solution seemed to be Container Housing, but as Labour had gone to the wire on campaigning against containers being used for prison cells, the Container Housing chalice would be poisoned from the get-go.

So there had to be another answer.

Here is Labour’s Housing Lottery Secret that makes ALL the number stack up:

Pallet housing.  PROTOTYPE BUILT FOR PRINCE CHARLES’ ROYAL GARDENS” IN CONJUNCTION WITH IBM, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, AND THE EARTH AWARDS

Youtube Video (embedding disallowed, so here’s the link)

Pallet House

The inspiration for the Pallet House Project came from the fact that 84% of the world’s refugees could be housed with a year’s supply of recycled American pallets. Pallets are specifically designed for transport and delivery – so cost is negligible when carrying shipments of food, medicine and other types of aid to refugees. A 250 square foot ‘Pallet House’ requires 100 recycled pallets nailed and lifted into place by 4-5 people using hand tools in under a week.   — The Earth Awards

And there you have it.  This has to be Labour’s Housing Secret.  It solves all their problems:  It’s cheap, it has a small foot print, uses recycled materials, and can be put up by 4 or 5 people in a week.

Awareness is the first step.

On December 7th, a documentary will be released on YouTube (yes, released on YouTube, not MSM).

Narrated by Morgan Freeman, this groundbreaking new documentary uncovers the UN sanctioned war on drugs, charting its origins and its devastating impact on countries like the USA, Colombia and Russia. Featuring prominent statesmen including Presidents Clinton and Carter, the film follows The Global Commission on Drug Policy on a mission to break the political taboo and expose the biggest failure of global policy in the last 50 years.

Bookmark this page if you like to view it.

Looks like Ban Ki Moon is in a spot of bother just after being re-appointed.

A damning report on Ban Ki-Moon has suggested he is overly secretive, tries to censor criticism and allows backroom deals to dictate who gets some top UN jobs, days after he was granted a second term.

The UN Secretary-General is accused of presiding over an “opaque” system, in which senior officials are hired after vacancies are not properly advertised and applicants’ backgrounds are not always checked.

Mr Ban, who was eased into a second term earlier this month with no opposition, has not increased transparency in hiring practices, a report by the Joint Inspection Unit (JIU) found.

When confronted with its findings, his office attempted to make changes that “simply eviscerate the entire report” and demanded that their comments on it be kept secret, it said.

The JIU, a team of up to 11 inspectors elected by the UN general assembly, examines various aspects of the UN with the aim of “enhancing the efficiency” of its international operations.

It was asked almost two years ago to investigate the “effectiveness, coherence, timeliness and transparency” of hiring in the UN Secretariat, the executive body headed by Mr Ban.

It looked at the appointment of 150 top-ranking officials, such as Under Secretaries General and Assistant Secretaries General. The jobs are eagerly sought by member states despite being supposedly neutral roles.

Looks like Len Brown and Ban Ki moon have been swapping sneaky and furtive training manuals. Sounds like a very similar operation to the the way the Auckland Council goes about its business.

After Auckland perhaps Len Brown could go on to better and bigger things, it seems the UN is well used to sneaky and furtive senior public servants.

Turkey does New Zealand a big favour and saves us a lot of money on a “Nice to Have” seat on the UN Security Council. As if New Zealand hasn’t done enough for the UN, we gave them Helen Clark.

Turkey’s decision to join the race for a United Nations Security Council seat might have lessened New Zealand’s chances of winning one, but the Government says it is pleased with the support it is getting from other countries.

The council is made up of five permanent members – the United Kingdom, France, China, Russia and the United States – with 10 temporary representatives elected by member nations.

Prime Minister John Key announced at the UN General Assembly in New York last year that New Zealand would make a bid for one of two Western Europe and Others Group seats in 2015-2016.

Spain had been the only other country in the running until last week, when Turkey announced it would also stand.

Turkey had previously made a commitment to support New Zealand in its bid for a seat.

A spokeswoman for Key said yesterday that Turkey’s decision to run for a seat was disappointing.

Some poor old granny is probably living in a quake damaged home in Christchurch that is impossible to keep warm, but that’s ok, we are going to have a” nice to have seat” on the UN Security Council. That will sure keep her warm.

Even though Murray McCully says we aren’t going to be spending millions like other countries he does still use weasel words to describe that theya re spending money, just not any new money.

While other countries have previously been reported to have spent millions in fights to win security council seats, McCully said New Zealand would not be spending money on its campaign.

“We’re not going to be spending any money on this race in the sense that I’m not asking for any budgetary provision to be set aside,” he said.

I’ll bet they are spending money though, just out of existing budgets.

Two news stories that caught my eye on the news tonight…

1. The UN wants us to send half our navy to fight pirates off the coast of Africa.
2. The Sea Shepherd pirates who had to scuttle their own ship when it wouldn’t sink on camera are attacking civilian fishermen.

My idea?

Send the Sea Shepherd pirates to fight pirates off the coast of Africa!

I’d pay serious money to watch that!