ACT rookie recants; Comment of the day

Comment of the Day:

The four pillars of liberalism/libertarianism: Abortion, euthanasia, sexual depravity and drugs.

Not a great recipe for a functional society.

from Urban Redneck

And in other news:

New Act leader Jamie Whyte has back-tracked on comments that incestuous relationships between consenting adults should not be illegal.

Doesn't like the heat in the kitchen.  Obviously a line was crossed in the Kiwi pysche.  

There is hope, New Zealander's really do have some limits of tolerance on muck serving from progressive liberals.

Ex TV3 Barbie gets her knickers in a twist

Broadcaster Rachel Smalley has spoken for the first time on why she turned her back on her high-profile TV3 role.

I didn't feel that there was any desire to invest in women in senior primetime roles ... I was frustrated

Poor frustrated dear, just cannot make any progress in the real world because of her genes.  As usual, thinks the employer owes her a living.

she told of growing frustration because there was "nowhere for me to go"

Most would realise there is zero promotional prospects for the fairer sex on the TV station that nightly screens New Zealand's greatest Mazda car salesman.

I despair at the Ken and Barbie style news presenter

At least TV3 has one less Barbie to make up each day.

Confirmed: TVNZ lies to your face, caught manufacturing news

Williams read: "My mother always told me that people who talk slowly think slowly.

You talk slowly, Peter Williams."

TVNZ admits this and some of the other comments which elicited a strong viewer response were totally fabricated.

Typical lying MSM.

Really? ACT kneecaps itself

NZ voters may put up with wall to wall queers marching in prides, whores prostituting themselves in every second residence and the like, but incest?

Act Leader Jamie Whyte is standing by his comments that incestuous relationships between consenting adults should not be illegal

A step too far I think.  Goodbye ACT.

Uganda makes a stand on homosexuality

Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni will sign a controversial anti-homosexuality bill

Pity some more countries weren't willing to do similar and tell the blackmailers to piss off.

In New Zealand, we just rolled over in the progressive muck for votes.

Climate change promoting charlatans grow ever desperate

Eruptions of at least 17 volcanoes since 2000, ... ejected sulphur whose sun-blocking effect had been largely ignored until now by climate scientists

Wasn't worth including when their fudged hockey stick line was going interstellar and the money was rolling into fund the newfangled GoreBull catechism.  Now suddenly sulphur is where it is at when they've been cornered by their lies.

A new deadly greenhouse element?

Another grasp at straws more like it as the sun relentlessly bombards our puny little piece of dirt with nuclear radiation.

For the next time you're on Grab A Seat

a great laugh from Six Degrees of Blondness

Dannevegas: Steam Arrives

Steam train from Napier, ex Art deco weekend, arriving in Dannevirke this afternoon en route back home.  Once a very common sight in this station, a steamer now only draws a hardy few out on a blustery afternoon.

Cunliffe zaps cat in microwave, 5 minutes on high.

No, not the Cunliffe impersonating a NZ Labour Party leader.

Cruel bitch.

NZDF has lost it's way

New Zealand Defence Force has been ranked number one in an international study assessing the integration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender service members in armed forces

I pity those that have to work for such an organisation.  All I can say I am thankful that I no longer work for them.  It was a good run, but females, dykes and queers at sea ruined the Senior Service for me.

God help us if we ever have to go to war.

Which media tosser came up with 'Spark'?

Telecom will change its name to Spark this year

the name would better reflect the company's "new direction" and aspirations

Aspirational???  I'll believe that when the gummint bureaucracy that is Telecom / Chorus / Spark or whatever shiny new aspirational name it calls themselves when they can get hardwired ADSL to my front gate less than 6Km from town.

I guess those on Xtra email would feel the same.

Is it too early for a Tui?

Impressive!

The full drop from 25 miles up as filmed on multiple Go Pro cameras.  Better than Mach 1 achieved, about 5 minutes of freefall.

from Theo

All very tittivating, but where's the backup?

Breast examination images of more than 3000 South Island women have been lost due to an IT server failure but no patients have been put at clinical risk, Southern DHB

Where's the backup?  Obviously there wasn't one.  Another government IT failure.

Maybe the DHB needs to look at how porn sites manage to reliably store millions of images of titties with backups.

Maybe the Large German Gentleman could rent them some storage space with backup.  After all, his Mega storage is really really secure.  Not.

At last, good news for Labour: "he's not hated"

David Cunliffe . . . he's not hated

Really?  The faithful will be pleased.  But the numbers say otherwise.

Labour leader David Cunliffe appears to be more polarising

His rating as preferred prime minister is just 18.2 per cent.

After a week of recent gaffes, I'd have thought that wasn't good for Labour.




Meanwhile the demi-god Key retains his popularity rating.

Prime Minister John Key is by far our most liked and trusted politician, with 59.3 per cent of people liking him, and 58.7 per cent also trusting him

Indeed, good news all round.

Hey Clint disappointed

Colin Craig has launched legal action against Greens co-leader Russel Norman, over remarks Norman made about Craig at Auckland's Big Gay Out. 

Fairfax understands Craig's complaint relates to Norman suggesting Craig thinks that a woman's place is in the kitchen and a gay man's place is in the closet. 

Dear, dear, it's only Monday and already 2x greenie fails on the board today.  Zero traction on his 'solar power for all election bribe', now a defamation by lunchtime.

a spokesman from Norman's office said they had not yet received the letter. 

Norman was yet to respond publicly over the legal action but was in discussions over it. 

The spokesman said it was "disappointing" to hear about the letter through the media. 

Hey Clint is pissed he didn't get to work up some spin before Norman was cornered by the media.

As to the comments in question, barefoot and pregnant as well as being in the kitchen is good for me.

"Regime of violent discipline": My, how times change

smacked his children and hit them with a wooden spoon

assaulted his son using an open hand, and regularly hit him round his legs with the spoon

Rugrat probably deserved it.

a regime of violent discipline over nearly two years

But how times change. Regime of violent discipline?  Very light and short-lived by my standards.

Half a century or more ago, such corrective punishment was the norm in most families.  I can well remember often being on the receiving end of such discipline (and a lot worse) to deservedly place me back on track.  Never did me any harm, but all of us, including mum, did steer well clear of the old man for a week or more at times.  And it wasn't the only house in the street.

Such was life, you hardened up and got on with your lot.  Not like the pussified children of today hiding behind the anti-smacking law, most of whom are in dire need of a decent 'wait until your father gets home' clip round the ears or a sound thrashing to show them where the straight and narrow lies.

For the UK girl that has everything...

from here

Chess pieces move in corrupt Jafaland [update]

A hotel, shopping centre and residential apartments will be part of the country's tallest building which has been given the go-ahead for a central Auckland site

Neat, another viewing platform built on a super shaky volcanic field.

Mayor Len Brown announced the Auckland Centre tower project today, saying it is on the route of the planned City Rail Link. 

Based at the corner of Elliot and Victoria St, it is a $350 million-plus, 52 storey, 209-metre tall commercial development by Shanghai-based New Development Group (NDG) 

It will have a 302-room hotel and entertainment complex, residential apartments, shopping centre, restaurants, cinema and sky decks.

Now that's convenient. Some pieces in the jigsaw puzzle that is Jafaland politics are moved on the chessboard.

• Lying Len takes a dodgy trip to China last year
• Not happy with extension arrangements by Sky City, but suddenly changes tack
• Exceedingly keen to build a super-expensive railway to nowhere, no-one wants
• Will not man-up for indiscretions on ratepayer's dime and resign

One has to wonder if 30 pieces of silver have been paid to get his name on a plaque.  Obviously, anywhere will do, as our most esteemed mayor continues to reek of corruption and desperation.


[update]

Meanwhile in other news:

Casino company SkyCity's profits have slumped

Minimum Wage: There is always hope

A long one, but worth a read...

 

The alarm goes off. It’s dark outside, and single mum Mary wakes to get ready for work at the checkout of a local supermarket. Like most of Britain’s poor, she has a job that leaves her and her children trapped below the poverty line. She finds herself competing with colleagues for overtime, just to earn a few more pounds to spend on her kids. Her employer couldn’t care because he knows it is the taxpayer who has to step in and subsidise those poverty wages to give Mary a chance to pay the bills and feed her children.

Mary had a rough night’s sleep because it’s nearly time to pay the rent. She would love nothing more than a secure, affordable home for her family but, like 5 million others, she’s stuck on a council housing waiting list where the taxpayer will once again subsidise her lifestyle. Her beloved Government keeps her rent high by handing out billions to landlords in “housing benefit” safe in the knowledge they will recover it via the taxation system to once again “redistribute” to the “needy”.

On her way downstairs, 35 year old Mary knocks on the door of her 19-year-old son, Tyrone. He is one of nearly a million unemployed young people. Tyrone sends in biro scrawled CV after CV, to supermarkets and call centres, and often does not even get a response. The odds are that being unemployed at such a young age will leave him with a lower wage, and an increased risk of being out of work, for the rest of his life. Her beloved Government has spent trillions installing an “equal” education system that means he is just as qualified in media studies as the downs syndrome kid who spent all day disrupting the class and stopping anyone actually learning anything of value to an employer.

As she approaches the front door, Mary glimpses another reason for her sleepless night: an unopened energy bill lying on her kitchen table. As the bills have soared, so the hot meals she eats have declined in number. Her beloved Government has pumped billions into the banking sector to hold up corrupt and bankrupt banks via quantitative easing thus reducing the value of the Pound. No wonder everything costs more, the pound is worth less. And so Mary leaves for a grueling shift at the supermarket, working hard to earn her poverty.

Mary isn’t a real person, but there are millions of people in this country who share aspects of their lives with someone like her. We all have to pay, literally, as poverty-paying bosses, layabouts, scroungers and rip-off landlords milk our ridiculously bloated welfare state whilst politicians laugh in our faces.

The beloved Government and much of the media have answers for people like Mary. “Instead of being angry at your situation,” Mary is told, “be angry at unemployed people, immigrants, the EU.” It is an Agenda of Fear. The bankers who plunged Britain into disaster, the politicians in the pockets of the wealthiest bankers and Union leaders, the fat cat public servants and corporate lobbyists – all are let off the hook. The Agenda of Fear makes sure that the real solutions to the problems faced by someone like Mary – and the nation as a whole – are never even discussed.

It’s time for Old Holborn to step in. I give you:

Old Holborn’s Agenda for Hope.

1. Minimum wage has to go. Never mind a living wage, if your labour is not worth what some titled Lord in Westminster decides it should be, you’re on the scrap heap. Forever. If you are naturally too stupid to earn £7 an hour, you are denied the chance to earn £5. The state has to stop setting the price of labour – your labour, your market, your needs – not being forced by law to sit on the sofa on state benefits.

2. Scrap housing benefit – completely. The only reason rents are so high is that Landlords and councils know damn well that some Mandarin in Whitehall will send the housing benefit bill straight back to the taxpayers. If you can’t afford to live in Mayfair, don’t live in Mayfair. Don’t demand I pay your rent whilst the State inflates the housing market.

3. Income tax is barbaric. It is forced theft and the penalties for refusing pay are equally as abhorrent as anything the Mafia could come up with. Set it flat and simple at 10% for everyone, regardless of income and leave money where it belongs -in the pockets of those who earned it. We have up to 80% marginal tax rates in this country, purely so it can redistributed according to the whims of politicians who after 100 years of promises have still not lifted the poor out of poverty. As agents, the State is worse than useless merely creating more clients for its never ending schemes of poverty reduction whilst doing the exact opposite.

4. Slash corporation tax to 10%. Before you scream, please try to understand that every single penny paid in corporation tax to the State is taken from you – either by lower wages or higher prices. Corporations don’t print money, it comes from the consumer via profits or the employees via lower wages. Slash the tax on success and watch competition drive down prices and increase wages.

5. Let bad banks fail. I can’t say it enough. Just one bank failing would send the vital message that the magic money tree no longer exists and it is not the role of the State to prop up bad investments and corrupt practices.

6. Stop the vanity projects. HS2, huge airports, sports stadiums and all the rest are only possible because some poor sod on minimum wage is being forced to pay for it. If business wants it, business can build it. Worked for the railways and the canals, didn’t it? We have commuters traveling 100’s of miles a day to do jobs that can be done locally, whilst the taxpayer subsidises their rail tickets. Local enterprise zones and low taxation will bring jobs to where the people are, not the other way around.

7. The Welfare State. Where do I begin? The population is addicted to free handouts financed by the population via duplicious politicians – utter madness. Poverty inflicted through excess taxation sees working families going begging cap in hand to the very people who grabbed half their earnings in the first place. Scrap it, reform it, do whatever, but do something before we are all slaves to it.

8. Reduce the role of the State to upholding the law and protecting the borders. I see no reason for a State run health service, a state run education service or a state run Hip Hop dance troupe on a State run television service. Decentralise down to local communities with a local taxation for any extra services the community demands – the Swiss do. Any problems there and you go and slog it out with the mayor in a bar on Sunday mornings over a pint – not some gigantic quango in Glasgow with a call centre in Bombay and a chairman on a golden public sector pension payoff.

9. Just leave us alone. Stop meddling, legislating, interfering, measuring, regulating, monitoring, commentating, studying and spying on us. We are grown ups, not children. No one can better represent us than us and I’m amazed that in the 21st century we are still forced to rely on minority representatives to vote on our behalf. For crying out loud, we have the internet now!

flogged in full without apology from Old Holborn himself,

applies equally well in the Socialist Antipodes of Aotearoa

Academic gets her knickers in a twist over safety ad

Massey University lecturer and feminist commentator Deborah Russell, who today viewed a preview about the making of the video, said she objected to the use of "highly sexualised" images in a safety video

Really?  Not all can enjoy business trips on the taxpayer dollar to spread unwarranted feminist tripe. 

Sounds like the academic needs a serious dose of reality to untwist her knickers.

Oz: Now is the time for "lean, efficient government"

Abbott is determined to break sharply away from Labor's economic policies to clearly define a new incarnation of traditional Liberalism: lean, efficient government with as little intrusion into the economy as possible; a high degree of corporate and personal responsibility; minimal union influence and power; and containment of welfare spending.

There will be few rescue packages and little federal largesse. Abbott and Hockey have continued their pre-election warnings of impending doom unless there is sweeping change and have said that taxpayers' money must not be regarded as a lifeline.

Individuals have been told to better manage their own financial affairs. So have companies, in the clearest possible terms. Abbott has rejected further subsidies to the car industry, allowing Holden to quit production and risking the departure of Toyota, the sole remaining car-maker.

One can only hope that our little Johnny, fresh from putting natives in their place and offering settlement bribes, takes those ideas onboard when he crosses the ditch for the upcoming talkfest.

Ratepayers paying for "total and utter incompetence in every respect"

Furpro had damaged the plantation and was not following "industry accepted" practice. 

Cyanide bait bags were being secured to the trunks of the trees by 75mm nails and 50mm fencing staples. The pines were also being "blazed", where the bark is removed with a machete or axe, to set traps. 

Farmer said the company faced losing the bottom 600mm of each tree or the timber being rejected at a saw mill because there were nails in the trunk. 

"We still have to signal to the saw millers that there were nails in the trees. That could very well have an effect on our final price." 

The then Environment Waikato (now Waikato Regional Council) awarded the contract to Furpro, who did the work and damaged the trees.  Subsequently Furpro went belly up with its indemnity insurance lapsing.

Te Mata Forest Ltd claimed damages of $753,000 for the destruction of the plantation...

The council confirmed a payment has been made, but chief executive Vaughan Payne said he could not disclose the settlement sum. 

Payne said the vast bulk of the settlement was met by the council's insurers, not ratepayers, and changes had been made since the incident. 

The spin just gets worse with some council wallah saying it will not cost ratepayers.  One wonders what next years premiums for the council will be.

parties signed a confidentiality agreement regarding the settlement .. a shareholder at Te Mata who is not bound by the agreement, called the council's behaviour "absolutely appalling". 

the incident caused "major concern" to shareholders

The saga continued with the council doing its best to slither out of being liable.

The company claimed it was misled by the regional council and, as a result, the council was liable.

the handling of the contract was "negligent" and the council should have been more scrupulous when it awarded the contract. 

"It smacks to me of total and utter incompetence in every respect."

Another Carls Jr ad that fails to make the cut.

ht Theo

A strong, unrelenting focus on reducing ... unions

strong, unrelenting focus on reducing compliance costs and unnecessarily burdensome regulation

changes to the bill are the ability for employers to walk away from collective bargaining, the removal of the requirement for new workers to be employed on the collective agreement for their first 30 days, and the ability for employers to dock the pay of staff on partial strikes

The gummint must be doing some right if the unionised are up in arms about having their cosy compulsory collective recruiting arrangements removed from legislation.

Labour to a T

Well, maybe a Silent T.

pic flogged from here.

Napier City Council committee designs a museum ...

Napier's new $18 million museum and gallery cannot hold the collection it was built to accommodate

it now appeared that just 40 per cent would be able to fit in the building

... and find out that only 40% of the collection will fit into the new building.

Council chief executive Wayne Jack yesterday said ... he did not know how this happened. He was not sure if there had been an intention to store the entire collection in the new building, but admitted there were no plans in place to store any part of the collection elsewhere

in no way is Hastings council in any way responsible. 

This is a Napier City Council project and someone's made a huge error

Damned right!  An error of gargantuan proportion that ratepayers will foot.  As expected, the tossers are running for cover.

Funny how they stored 100% of the the collection off-site for three years during the build, but failed to notice how much space might eventually be required.

Maybe they should make room for the design committee and the quantity surveyors to be permanently stored in the footings of the new building now required to hold the other 60% of the collection.