*

Friday, September 06, 2024

Upcoming turkey shoot in the Far North

The 13 councillors voted unanimously, reaffirming a decision they made in May to continue with their Māori ward for the October 2025 local elections

... and then doubled down to continue waste ratepayer funds.

they pushed back against what Cr Hilda Halkyard-Harawira labelled simply Government efforts to remove Māori from local government with the council having to poll people about this decision to keep the ward

We will soon see what the rest of the electorate thinks of such decisions as turkeys vote for Christmas.

Tuesday, August 20, 2024

Luxon finally gets off the fence!

the Crown is sovereign

and

the position is very clear, 

Māori ceded sovereignty to the Crown

 

At last, a New Zealand Prime Minister states the obvious.

Now lets watch the screams from all and sundry as the heat is applied.  All manner of hangers on, including activist judiciary, deep in the racist corruption that has plagued New Zealand since the Waitangi Tribunal was invented.

One hopes that Luxon has the cojones to stand this ground.  I think not, soon to be a one-term manager, a he speaks with a forked tongue dependent on the audience, once again as witnessed by this weeks visit to the Huntly truckie in Mahutaland.

Friday, August 16, 2024

There's truth in that

The Waitangi Tribunal has slammed the Treaty Principles Bill as ‘unfair, discriminatory’ and will ‘belie’ the partnership between Māori and the Crown 

"belie" - to show something to be false

A partnership?  Now there's a lie, often cited by those dining large on the taxpayer dime, which is yet to be proven to be anything but a falsehood.

  



Tuesday, August 13, 2024

Enjoyable outcomes await...

Mr Aardvark has once again been poking things of import.

Eventually the SWDC's drawbridge will be dragged down and the shutters pried open by the voice of public outrage.

I notice that, faced with the seemingly tireless onslaught of inconvenient facts and evidence being posted by me on a regular basis, they've even hired a new communications officer to try and spin their way out of the hole they're in.

Fat chance.

You can't "spin" this sort of thing away. I don't make hollow allegations and everything I present is backed up with hard evidence. For the SWDC, the only way out of this hole is to do your damned jobs properly without favour, bias or prejudice and I seen no sign of that happening at all in that building.

They haven't even learned that if you poke a bear (such as myself) with a stick, the outcome may not be something you enjoy.

Let the games continue!


Am a daily Aardvark long-time lurker and as ever, time to stock up on the popcorn.

Monday, July 29, 2024

Polls will be worth every cent

Northland ratepayers potentially face thousands extra in costs for the polls on the less-than-three-year-old Māori wards as a result

the new Māori ward legislation was due to become law on Wednesday

this new legislation could mean the demise of Māori wards

After a recent horrendous rates rise, polls leading to excising those elected via apartheid means from the FNDC ratepayer teat will be worth every cent.

Monday, July 22, 2024

Luxon still sucking on cultural teat

On cultural aspects within the entity, such as karakia, Reti said Levy would take advice from the Houhora Māori Committee

WTF?  

Mr Luxon, either you are governing New Zealand or the natives having completed their coup, have you spreadeagled over their barrel sucking from the cultural teat.

When are you going to cease their co-governance desires forthwith and immediately secularise every facet of government?

Saturday, July 20, 2024

Outages II

Remind me how many $M was spent on the last road closure into Northland?

30mm of rain overnight, only recently opened after a never-ending closure and the Brynderwyns are closed yet again by slips on SH1.  The alternative northward route is also closed by a slip.

Mr Simeon Brown, this infrastructure is long overdue for a four-laned fix.  Set the D9's to 15 degree incline and proceed apace toward the summit and down the other side.  A tunnel would be even better to extend the 'holiday highway'.

Meanwhile, further north, the Mangamukas remain closed despite $160M+ being poured into the supposed fix.  Also this piece of infrastructure has the dubious honour of being closed more often than being open in the past five years.


Outages...

 


Thursday, July 04, 2024

There's the problem...

"Over my dead body" or similar intent - fighting words from the head honcho at Jafaland Central.

Aucklanders don’t appreciate a dump like Wellington telling us how to live. As a city, we don’t like to be told what to do.

This will be fun as the planners protecting their patches are fired  The government is finally doing something about housing.

Time to get the popcorn in.

Thursday, June 20, 2024

Flight of chance

I see this morning that KIW690 is halfway back to Cairns from Tokyo.

A flight of chance.  

Will it make it or will Mr. Luxon have to spend more hours on the deck in Port Moresby?

Monday, June 17, 2024

Removing bureaucrats from your next build [updated]

“Removing the regulatory red tape will not only speed up the build process, it is also estimated to save up to $6,500 just in the standard building and resource consenting fees per build, not to mention all the savings in time and resource," Bishop said.

As a possible owner-builder, I'm all for total removal of the arse-covering box-ticking assume zero responsibility bureaucracy of hoops to jump through councils currently impose on prospective builders.  A knee-jerk reaction to leaky buildings they say.  My local bureaucracy (FNDC) wants to charge $7K+ just for a building consent, let alone anything to do with a resource consent!  And not to mention the "permission to build" separately charged PIM.  God help you if the local savages decide to need to run their eye over proceedings. Taniwhas and necessary bribes abound in those processes.  

Below are some issues that add to the regulatory overburden for owner-builders.

If you can reliably nail or screw bits of 4x2 together, or successfully maintain / replace a single piece of weatherboard / roofing iron / gutter,  pour a concrete footing, you could be an owner-builder.  Although legally mandated, unfortunately there is zero support from the bureaucracy for anything to do with owner-builds.

We have a proven, long established, mostly functional, current building code (NZS 3604:2011) that limits the build envelope to 10m height, 12m maximum width, anything over that envelope needs an engineer.  It also has very well defined range of buildable wind zones which ultimately determine the well listed bracing requirements, up to Extra High (200 km/h) wind zone, above which an engineered design is again required.

Recently a 30 square metres allowance was given for small buildings, an increase from an archaic 25m2 allowance, still not even big enough for a decent 2-car garage.  Now this government wants to go to 60m2 for granny flats attached to an existing main house without council regs.  Good on that!  

Unfortunately, previously when the increase to 30m2 occurred, the last Labour government saw fit to further restrict owner-build options under the building code to exclude the well detailed Extra High wind zone and reduced the envelope height limit to 8m.  Insidious changes to force further entrenchment of regulations.  No doubt engineers had a say in that to preserve their uber-expensive work stream, similarly as was said elsewhere  (Slam Dunc) re this new change - "the engineer will need to run their eye over your design and your good to go!".   I hate to think how much "engineer" will be inserted in this latest mooted change.

I say no to any engineer increase, the current envelope limited building code was designed way back in 1999 to get engineers out of the workstream on residential builds.  It has been extensively modified since then to even include necessary changes from the Canterbury earthquakes. From the BRANZ Basis of Engineering of NZS3604 the ethos is as below:

NZS 3604 Timber-framed buildings sets out the construction requirements for light timber-framed buildings in New Zealand that do not require specific structural engineering design. By limiting the size of the building and scope of application, a series of solutions are presented, enabling a designer to select an element or detail appropriate to the situation without needing to engage a structural engineer.

For those users of NZS 3604 whose projects, designs or systems fall outside its scope, it is important to know the technical basis for the standard. This report documents the engineering basis used to derive the technical provisions of NZS 3604, including the member selection tables and connections. Ambiguities and problem areas are highlighted for attention by future standards drafting committees.

Engineers (and architects) currently do everything to insert themselves into the residential build workstream, causing the owner-builder near insurmountable hurdles.  Councils, each in their own fiefdom, do everything to make design difficult - every consent requires endless paperwork on proven products to support the consent.  Most of this paperwork is commercially available for products that are widely utilised in multiple residential builds.  If a product is stated to meet a required design standard - no paperwork should be required!  Manufacturers employ a lot of expensive engineers to prove their product meet the standards.  

Council wallahs are no more than box-tickers when such products are questioned over fitness for purpose.  (witness the recent furore over Winstone Gib plasterboard versus Elephant plasterboard - councils said if Gib was specified, the equivalent could not be used)

BRANZ is another trougher - every house consent is taxed (BRANZ levy) on the build cost.  Now an owner-builder is rightly not allowed to charge for his/her time on build, but the local council thieves tax the consent as if the build was done by a fully charged out builder!  Another regulation in dire need of change.

Now if we can in future build 60m2 granny flats without regulation, why not build a house 3 bedroom (about 95m2) without the bureaucracy? An increase of 35m2 should be easy, after all the only difference is more bedrooms!

Watch this space - councils and engineers will do every thing to stymie the owner-builder workstream.

I look forward to any small steps toward total removal of councils out of the build workstream.

Tuesday, June 04, 2024

Yes!

“Māori wards are a mini version of Māori seats in Parliament. Is your next step after Māori wards to remove Māori seats in Parliament?”

The answer to that question is an emphatic "Yes!"

The sooner the better for New Zealand.

Further in same article:

“Local community members deserve to have a say in their governance arrangements.”

via Granny, as naysayers do their level best to stop the bill.


Tuesday, May 28, 2024

Time to get off the fence Mr Luxon

Asked whether the calls for strike action on Budget Day as part of the nationwide activation were appropriate, Luxon said: “No, that would be illegal.

”I think that is wrong – I think that is entirely wrong. Feel free to protest, that’s what we have weekends for. Te Pāti Māori, they’re completely free to protest as long as it’s legal.

”It’s pretty clear what the rules are around strike action and I would suggest to you that’s not one of them.” 

"Illegal" you say?

Time is up, show the rabble who's in charge.  The rest of New Zealand watches with bated breath, knowing that you do not have the cojones to address this long festering issue.

Currently you are on a fast-track to being a one-term government.  National won't get a second chance, all are watching for definitive action.  Get off the fence. 

Saturday, May 25, 2024

Winston's taxi service in air yet again [update]

Trip #3 for Winnie's taxi to Noumea under way.  No sign of any dingoes so far.  Utterly amazing that our ancient Herc is still flying, guess the techs pulled another all nighter.

I see a Frog Airbus is almost 3 hours out of BNE heading to islands.  I guess that now Macron has gone back to his school mistress, the recently imported Gendarmerie and Foreign Legion types are surplus to requirements.  It will be Bon Voyage for Paris, France is going to let the place burn.

[update] The Frog Air Force Airbus passed overhead headed for the NE Pacific.  It passed directly over the Noumea International Airport at flight level 330.  Just to show who's really in charge in the colony.  The imported gendarmerie must still be ashore subduing errant islanders dreaming of independence.

Friday, May 24, 2024

Rescue flights on again

Now that the head cheese eating surrender monkey has been to Nouvelle Caledonie and I assume has buggered off, the rescue flights are today on again.  No doubt the frogs deployed a few capable Gendarmes and Foreign Legion types in recent days to quell internal rioting. 

Our ancient Herc has been in and is just airborne out of the sh*thole toward New Zealand.  I wonder where the 757 is?  Joined its sister as spares?

Meanwhile the Dingos have one C130J (a decent aircraft) about to land, the second has just departed Brisbane aimed for the sunny islands.  At least their aircraft are fit for purpose.

I remain amazed ours actually made it there and back without a breakdown.  We'll watch to see if they run again tomorrow.