General Debate 4 March 2011

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Manolo

The Messiah will be known as the worst president of the United States in recent history:

Florida Judge Orders Obama Administration to Expedite Health Care Appeal

The Florida judge who ruled against President Obama’s health care law on Wednesday ordered the administration to expedite its appeal, if it plans to, within seven days.

District Judge Roger Vinson, who issued his original decision on Jan. 31, ruled then that the individual mandate in the new law is unconstitutional, and since it is basically the entire linchpin of the law, he declared the remainder of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act void.

The administration went back to Vinson to ask for clarification of his ruling. Vinson on Wednesday responded to the request by granting their motion — and ordering the government to go either to the appellate court or immediately to the Supreme Court.
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March 4, 2011 8:55am
The only red for me is that of Manchester United

In today’s New Zealand Herald, columnist Brian Rudman writes that Auckland’s proposed rail loop must go ahead. That Auckland mayor Len Brown’s projects must continue and that we cannot not use the Christchurch earthquake as an excuse for not going ahead with these projects. I read Rudman’s column. The more I read it them more I detest the man. He becomes nothing more than a clichéd intellectual Aucklander who travels no further than Whangaparaoa and has probably never been further south than Wellington, let alone small town New Zealand.

Auckland can survive without the travel loop. We still need Christchurch to be our second largest city. The bigger south island towns still need Christchurch to be big, to support the services and industry of the south. The city needs the help from central government. Surely Rudman can see past his nose to realise that we are all New Zealanders and in this disaster together? As so many others have posted, it really is the height of crassness for Aucklanders to say don’t forget about us, as loved ones still grieve for the bodies that may never be recovered from the rubble of the fallen buildings.

Come my own personal revolution, Rudman will be first against the wall.
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March 4, 2011 9:17am
Manolo

Come my own personal revolution, Rudman will be first against the wall.

Nobody would argue with that. 🙂
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March 4, 2011 9:19am
flipper

ARE WE SURE HE HAS BEEN TO WELLINGTON?
THIS EX AUCKLAND STAR LEFT WING “SCRIBE” HAS PROBABLY NEVER BEEN FURTHER SOUTH THAN THE BOMBAY HILLS.
HE EXHIBTS ALL THE TRAITS OF A FLAT EARTH SOCIETY ADHERENT!
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March 4, 2011 10:05am
AlphaKiwi

Interesting seeing Americans debate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOWe4-KXqMM&feature=related
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March 4, 2011 10:12am
Manolo

PC on Figjam’s “sudden” decision to retire:

A name change for Simon Power?

It seems I’ll have to stop calling the retiring National cabinet minister by the nickname of Simon Power-Lust. It doesn’t really fit now that he seems to have given up on being Prime Minister.

Why would a man touted by his own colleagues as the next National Party leader step down now, in his early forties, just when he’s entering the best years of his working life?

I don’t buy the conventional wisdom of John Armstrong, who reckons it’s a simple political calculation based on National’s chances in 2014. I reckon there’s a little more to it than that.

Here’s a man who, if he hadn’t joined the National Party as a young man, would have faced a future as a Palmerston North solicitor. A man who missed out on getting offered a big legal partnership, and went into politics instead. A man who as Attorney General has been changing the way those big legal partnerships will be working, and as Minister for Public-Private Partnerships has been busy blurring the boundaries of public and private—busy putting the state’s resources behind the pursuit of private profit.

And now, coming into the most productive years of his professional life, I suspect he wants to sit on a few of those boards and help reap some of those private rewards for himself by parleying his political connections for profit. As Minister for Public-Private Partnerships he’s made it possible for political pull to make so many profits—and he’s decided, you see, that he wants to be part of the New Aristocracy of Pull.

He wants a name change from Simon Power-Broker to Simon Power-Lust.

http://pc.blogspot.com/
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March 4, 2011 10:21am
AlphaKiwi

Just another reason why the UK should leave the EU.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12633382
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March 4, 2011 10:29am
Redbaiter

For those missing the regular Friday Photo
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March 4, 2011 10:34am
nasska

Manolo @ 10.21am

It is also possible that he has realised that he is less use than the five permanently unmanned checkouts at our local Pak & Save & has decided to get out before some of his half baked initiatives come back & bite him on the arse.
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March 4, 2011 10:35am
JeffW

Red Man U, not sure whether the issue with Rudman is so much that he is pro-Akl but that he is so left wing that all government expenditure is good.
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March 4, 2011 10:52am
Manolo

For those missing the regular Friday Photo.

Nicer type of birds than the usual ones!
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March 4, 2011 10:53am
malcolm

Why am I not surprised that Redbaiter has phonecam pics of prostitutes?
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March 4, 2011 10:57am
Chuck Bird

“National day of mourning could create one-off holiday”

Legislating for employers to pay for another holiday will do little to help the economy but for what benifit – a day at the beach where the water is polluted?
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March 4, 2011 10:57am
Offshore_Kiwi

Andrew Bolt has an example of how wonderfully well the multi-culti experiment is working in Australia:

Touch One Touch All
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March 4, 2011 11:00am
Pete George

has phonecam pics of prostitutes?

Self portrait of a linkwhore? Attention deficit desperation.
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March 4, 2011 11:05am
Rick Rowling

Manolo – “worst president in recent history”

Well, yeah, I guess when Dubya’s worst moment was something Kanye West said. It’s hard to follow on from such a shining example of statesmanship eh?
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March 4, 2011 11:23am
Bobbie black

Just watching Breakfast, never realized the Grey District Mayor’s name was Tony Kokshoorn, that’s a beauty, I think even Petra (God what was she thinking with that hairdo and lipstick, like a cheap 1960’s…won’t say it just think it, thought crimes alert) had to fight back a giggle.

Does he have a brother called Richard?
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March 4, 2011 11:24am
Murray

That was my first thought Chuck. Punish employers more, winning plan.
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March 4, 2011 11:33am
Bobbie black

Of course that would imply that Petra HAD a personality though.

Tough call.
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March 4, 2011 11:38am
Offshore_Kiwi

Manolo – “worst president in recent history”

Mate, remove the word “recent” from that statement and you’re getting close.
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March 4, 2011 11:45am
Pete George

An irresponsible headline:

No big Wellington quake coming – seismologist

What the seismologist actually said was:

Ristau said Wellington could expect three or four quakes of a similar magnitude and depth every year.

“It’s not to say that an event like that couldn’t happen in Wellington – in fact one day it will. But these couple of earthquakes that we’ve had in Wellington, they’re not any indication that there’s anything bigger coming for Wellington in the near future.”

“One day there will be a Canterbury-size earthquake in Wellington, or even bigger than that.”

Dr Risatu said it was impossible to predict when the next big one would strike the capital.

“All we can do is basically look through the past historical and geological record. We know that the faults exist, we know that the earthquakes do happen, and we can figure out on average how often they happen and when the last one was. But that’s about the best we can do.”

A major earthquake was expected once every 700 years, and Wellington was about halfway through that cycle, he said.
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March 4, 2011 12:43pm
Manolo

Hats off to the brilliant Karl du Fresne for his lucid writing.

Is it time the media started scaling back the coverage of the Christchurch earthquake and its aftermath? I think so.

The saturation coverage is inescapable. It’s overwhelming and threatens to become oppressive.

It is also wearing thinner as journalists have to search harder for new angles. As time goes by, reporters will inevitably be tempted to keep the quake drama running by sexing stories up with tacky sentiment that demeans the victims of the tragedy.

I’m not suggesting the major media organisations suddenly pull all their reporters out of Christchurch. It will continue to be a running story for weeks. But the time has come to start giving space to the other important issues have been shunted aside over the past two weeks.

In saying this, I’m not backing away from my previous comments about the crucial role of the media at times like this. As in so many things, it’s all a matter of balance.

http://karldufresne.blogspot.com/2011/03/its-time-to-ease-off.html
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March 4, 2011 12:54pm
Manolo

The tyrant Chavez trying to save the skin of the criminal Gaddafi. I hope the South American dictator fails.

Venezuela talks up Chavez’s Libya peace plan

Caracas (Reuters) – Venezuela pushed a vague peace plan for Libya on Thursday, saying President Hugo Chavez’s friend Muammar Gaddafi was in favor of foreign mediation.

Though rebels have rejected talks with the Libyan president and some analysts view the Chavez plan as grand-standing by the socialist leader, officials in Caracas said the idea had gained traction in Tripoli.

“Libya accepts the proposal to work for a negotiated end to the conflict accompanied by an international commission,” Information Minister Andres Izarra told Reuters.

“Venezuela will continue its contacts in the Arab world and elsewhere to find formulas for peace.”
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March 4, 2011 1:44pm
calendar girl

Mark Hotchin of Hanover Finance fame is getting a little over-excited about the unauthorised removal of a small memorial to his father at Matarangi Golf Course on the Coromandel Peninsula: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=10710098

I can understand Hotchin Jnr being annoyed to find petty criminals in his own back yard, especially those who show vindictiveness towards his public tribute to his late father. But, despite Hotchin’s recent “charm offensive” through PR agents and the news media, he and his wife made themselves public targets of a sort through their conspicuous personal extravagances after thousands of unsophisticated “investors” lost significant sums of money in Hanover’s collapse.

Now Hotchin alleges self-righteously that his wider family members have also endured break-ins, vandalism and harassment by some “pretty sick” people. Why should I believe Hotchin on this? (I note that, while he himself faces no charges of criminal activity, he is presently under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office – no small achievement in itself.) If he or his family are themselves repeated victims of crime, as he claims, no doubt he has reported each incident to the proper authorities. Or is his latest outburst just another tactic recommended by his professional PR advisors?

Hotchin has a major difficulty recognising that people who invested in his company are pretty sore at losing their money with which he was entrusted. Any sensible (or less egotistical?) person in his invidious position might have chosen a more prudent course of keeping a lower profile while the issue was being resolved, both administratively and legally. Instead, he and the charming Amanda chose to continue the high life to which they were accustomed and – in their minds – entitled. They can hardly complain now if a few eggs are thrown in their direction.

None of this justifies illegal actions against natural persons or property. But, as far as we know, the Hotchin family has endured nothing (at least nothing corroborated so far) that would qualify as major crime. Hotchin is crying out for sympathy that is in desperately short supply in his case. His shallow apologies fail to impress, as do his claims that the freeze on his assets leaves him too little on which live.
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March 4, 2011 1:52pm
cha

Mark Hotchin of Hanover Finance fame is getting a little over-excited about the unauthorised removal of a small memorial to his father at Matarangi Golf Course on the Coromandel Peninsula

The fact that his brother has gone dog on his fellow directors and been rewarded with a slap on the hand with the wet bus ticket combined with the animosity toward the old man there’s a picture being painted of a family a few rungs above the Harris mob from Christchurch and I reckon the bleating is just another tactic recommended by his ~~fellow gang members~~ advisors.
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March 4, 2011 2:39pm
paws

flipper (183) Says:

March 4th, 2011 at 10:05 am
ARE WE SURE HE HAS BEEN TO WELLINGTON?
THIS EX AUCKLAND STAR LEFT WING “SCRIBE” HAS PROBABLY NEVER BEEN FURTHER SOUTH THAN THE BOMBAY HILLS.
HE EXHIBTS ALL THE TRAITS OF A FLAT EARTH SOCIETY ADHERENT!
Wow i got 20 demerites for shouting with 4 words one word NZ, flipper are you a mate of Mr Farrar, a good friend?????, or are there two sets of rules on this blog like national and hone key ruin the dole bludging masses and reward the rorting troughing rich,just asking but i get demerits and i ask why the punishment???
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March 4, 2011 5:54pm
reid

dole bludging masses

So you think they are as well paws – i.e. bludgers and far far too many of them.

I’ve been waiting all my life to hear a lefty say that. Finally, you admit it.

Can’t wait to see what you next say.
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March 4, 2011 7:41pm
pentwig

@paws

Strangely paws you raise a point that I agree with.
You did gain 20 demerits for “shouting”
Flipper “shouts” and does not gain demerits. Why?

Perhaps some crybaby complained formally to DPF through the proper procedure and DPF felt he had better react.
If that is the case I suggest the procedure laid down by DPF is what you have to pursue.

If your complaint is successful then we all know what to in April when the phool is allowed to return-
complain formally en masse and GB will be the great blog it is without the phool.

But we must not forget that the blog belongs to DPF and his decision is final. Rightly so.
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March 4, 2011 8:22pm
Rex Widerstrom

Just for the record, really, I record an example of why I argue that deterrence (e.g. “3 strikes” and other measures) is ineffective in reducing the level of crime, because most crime is committed by the reckless, the stupid and/or the impaired.

An 18 year old girl staying with her daughter “gets really smart” so a 71 year old grandmother chucks a hammer at her because it was “the nearest thing to hand”!!!

Then, having killed her, conspires with her daughter to bury the corpse in the back yard (because no one will ever associate us with the crime then!!).

Anyone think a “strike” would have entered the minds (and I use that term loosely) of those people?!
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March 4, 2011 8:34pm
Viking2

Those Aussies are just as stupid as any other lot on the planet Rex.
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March 4, 2011 8:51pm
Viking2

A another thought on blog supression orders.

Courts in a lag behind contemptible digital wave
March 4, 2011

Comments 22

Gerry Harvey complains that the internet is mucking-up his cash flow. Bookshops are said to be shutting their doors because customers can buy what they want online for half the price. Newspapers are working out what to do next as the digital era cuts into traditional ways of delivering news and advertising.

By now it is well established that new technologies unleash forces that are both creative and destructive.

The usual ways the courts deliver justice according to law is another struggling field of human endeavour being seriously challenged by the digital era.
Advertisement: Story continues below

If you listen to the dire warnings of judges and other big wigs quite a bit of destruction is being wrought.

What to do? Is the answer for the courts to order the removal of potentially prejudicial articles from newspaper websites, as was recently the case here?

Or should judges just be content with hammering into the heads of jurors that they should not research the accused on the internet while a criminal trial is in progress?

As one legal observer put it, these remedies ”don’t cut it”.

Justice Derek Price’s recent order before the start of a criminal trial for this newspaper to remove online articles about an accused still left plenty of other fodder in cyberspace for information-hungry jurors to lap up. The point has been well made that it is not possible for the internet to be scrubbed clean, and as WikiLeaks demonstrates, with servers in many jurisdictions, information cannot be corralled.

One court officer says he spent two days on the phone trying to track down the server hosting a single article that another judge wanted expunged from public view. Calls were made to Australia, to Singapore, then to South Africa. The server could not be located and it is pretty clear that court officials dread being asked to go on these pointless expeditions – especially since all international calls have to be placed through the Supreme Court switchboard.

Still, jurists of the utmost fame insist this is the way to go. The former lord chancellor Lord Falconer told the BBC three years ago that there would be about 20 English cases a year that would require removal of material from the internet.

Three years is a long time in the digital age, so that number would now be well out of date.

Some courts are less obliging. Last year the High Court in Ireland refused an application by an accused to force the DPP to surf the internet and seek the removal of potentially prejudicial material. The judge said that is no part of the function of the prosecutor.

A former director of public prosecutions in England, Ken Macdonald, says judges are ”giving up” trying to stop juries using search engines and social or open media to access information and comment about an accused.

Macdonald admitted during an Intelligence Squared debate in London that it is also impossible to enforce rules against jurors doing their own research online.

Defendants also can be exceedingly helpful, uploading pictures of themselves with weapons. One accused in a recent aggravated burglary case has a website called ”gangster zone”.

Young jurors, in particular, turn to the internet as a matter of instinct – regardless of the directions by the judge. If they get caught they may be in trouble, but it is something that the courts are not equipped to handle.

A survey by universities in South Australia and Tasmania done late last year found ”many times [jurors] said they were not given the whole story. There was a feeling that they did not get the whole evidence.”

If people feel the system is hiding important information from them the impulse to find out more is understandable.

In November the Lord Chief Justice of England, the aptly named Lord Judge, said that if juries are to survive they must stop using the internet and breaches should be punished.

He also disapproved of Twittering in court because of the risk of a mistrial.

A month later he issued an interim practice guideline saying that, on a case by case basis, Twittering from courtrooms would be acceptable. That’s how fast developments are taking place.

If journalists are taking notes and then going outside to phone reports through then this is not vastly different from microblogging from court. The important proviso in the interim English guidelines is that only legitimate journalists can indulge in ”live text based forms of communication”. Apparently non-journalist bloggers, who often provide wonderful reports and analysis, are in the cold.

The upshot was terrific live tweeting action from the Magistrates’ Court handling the Swedish extradition case against Julian Assange.

As we know, the United States is another world. A committee of court public information officers found that 40 per cent of judges who responded to a survey are active on social media sites. Of course, a lot of them are elected, so they are probably doing their level best to pump out their own prejudicial material.

The protection and control of the jury process is being assaulted like never before. Yet the remedies are not effective. What is to be done is not clear. All that is clear is that the free flow of information is unstoppable.

justinian@lawpress.com.au
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March 4, 2011 8:52pm
Bobbie black

Nice performance by the Black Caps.
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March 5, 2011 1:27am
Manolo

Some sort of poetic justice. The warmists will despair.

NASA satellite rocket launch fails, lands in ocean

A rocket carrying an Earth-observation satellite plummeted into the Pacific Ocean after a failed launch attempt Friday, the second-straight blow to NASA’s weakened environmental monitoring program.

The Taurus XL rocket carrying NASA’s Glory satellite lifted off early Friday morning from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, but fell to the sea several minutes later. The same thing happened to another climate-monitoring satellite two years ago with the same type of rocket.

“We failed to make orbit,” NASA launch director Omar Baez said at a press conference Friday. “Indications are that the satellite and rocket … is in the southern Pacific Ocean somewhere.”

Officials explained that a protective shell atop the rocket didn’t come off the satellite as it should have about three minutes after launch. That left the Glory spacecraft without the velocity to reach orbit.

The 2009 failed satellite, which would have studied global warming, crashed into the ocean near Antarctica.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_SCI_GLORY_SATELLITE?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2011-03-04-07-48-04
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March 5, 2011 6:36am
Bobbie black

What is wrong with TV1 journalists?

Jumping on any negative point to what, get more ratings?

John Key, didn’t go to all the Eastern suburbs and talk to ALL the people without water, power and shitters.

Oh, f’ing Hell, it’s coup time!

So some jumped up journo, who looks like she’s straight out of journalism school attacks him on camera?

At least he was there.

He is the PM for Christ’s sake, he is also supposed to be running the country.

Think TV1, think.

For God’s sake.

I know, what’s the best way for us to raise our ratings, at this national DISASTER time?

Attack the PM.

Genius! That’ll help bring the country together.

Cutting stuff there girlie.
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March 5, 2011 6:50am
Bobbie black

TVNZ, the people who brought us all this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rXlIWuMI84
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March 5, 2011 6:57am
Yvette

Rex, is the three strikes law something imminent criminals consider before acting, or is it intended to force judges to impose more appropriate sentences more consistently? Is it not more to do with those administering the law, than those about to break it?
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March 5, 2011 7:22am
Pete George

is it intended to force judges to impose more appropriate sentences more consistently?

Three strikes forces judges to be more inconsistent in their sentencing on comparable crimes.
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March 5, 2011 7:29am
Manolo

David Cameron is cutting contributions to the useless U.N.

U.K. Pulls Plug on United Nations Spending

Critics of U.S. spending on the United Nations got a huge boost—and supporters of that spending, especially the Obama Administration, took a body blow—from an unlikely source this week: the British government, long one of the U.N.’s staunchest supporters.

In a sweeping and hard-nosed reorganization of priorities for its $10.6 billion multilateral foreign aid program, the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government of Prime Minister David Cameron has pulled the financial plug entirely on four U.N. agencies at the end of next year, put three others judged merely “adequate” on notice that they could face the same fate unless they improve their performance “as a matter of absolute urgency;” and issued pointed criticisms of almost all the rest.

The major exception: UNICEF, the U.N. children’s aid agency, which got a strong endorsement and a funding increase.
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March 5, 2011 7:37am
Yvette

So, Pete George, three strikes appears to fail for Rex’s reasons at the criminal end, and if you are right and it doesn’t improve sentencing by judges, the whole thing is a bloody failure then.
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March 5, 2011 8:22am
Bobbie black

“One more Tones!”
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March 5, 2011 8:31am
Falafulu Fisi

Manolo said…
The warmists will despair.

I’m a skeptic, however I’m disappointed that this satellite crashed. More scientific data is needed, the more scientists have on their hands for analysis, the better insights into whether warming is due to man or a natural process. If we wished every scientific attempt to collect more data to fail, then science will fail us as a human race, because then we would revert back to what Ken Ring is doing, just dreaming up things with no basis in scientific methodologies. In saying that I think that there is a small influential group of scientists at NASA who would go as far to twist the data collected from satellites and other scientific instrumentations to confirm their already biased conclusion that warming is man-made, based entirely on computer models which contradicted certain observations. The collection of scientific data is something that both skeptics & warmists should support.
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March 5, 2011 9:17am
Bobbie black

Nah, let’s start naming these media scavengers, in the, let’s try and f up John Key as he didn’t visit everyone:

Here they are, some guy called Simon Dallow, whose marriage broke up after allegedly marrying an Australian lesbian.

And here, in all her Pullitzer glory, her name is Beth Bates.

Hey Beth I am nominating you for the Pullitzer, I am.

Maybe you would want to reflect on your journalism effort today? You…d…b….?
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March 5, 2011 9:28am
Nookin

Bobbie: maybe time to back off the turps a bit. Dallow has a sound reputation and his relationship with Ali Mau doesn’t really have a great deal to do with his journalistic talents. All the same, I doubt whether he will reflect on the negativity of that particular piece with any pride.
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March 5, 2011 9:49am
Viking2

Why don’t we just sell TVNZ. Save us all this hand ringing.
Nats. are keen to sell bits of the best but usually in business you get rid of the under performing and slouthful and non core business. TVNZ is all of those things.
Non performing, sloughtful and non core.

Won’t be worth a lot but they could roll Kordia back in and there might be a million or two for disaster relief.
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March 5, 2011 9:52am
Viking2

his journalistic talents.
eh, he’s a lawyer ffs.

edit; a failed lawyer, like most of them
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March 5, 2011 9:53am
Viking2

Here goes cover up Len again.

Auckland Council chief executive Doug McKay – with backing from Mayor Len Brown – yesterday refused to release the “earthquake-prone building register” of 412 unreinforced masonry buildings because it was out of date and could affect owners’ property values.

Mr de Leur said the Auckland City register was public information. “There’s no doubt about that at all; it is a public register.”

But his superiors overruled him on whether it should be released.

About 5 per cent of commercial buildings and 2 per cent of residential structures in the city centre are unreinforced. Photo / Richard Robinson

Up to 412 commercial buildings in the old Auckland City area are likely to collapse in a moderate earthquake, according to a public register which the new Super City council is keeping secret.

Auckland Council chief executive Doug McKay – with backing from Mayor Len Brown – yesterday refused to release the “earthquake-prone building register” of 412 unreinforced masonry buildings because it was out of date and could affect owners’ property values.

“It’s in the process of being reviewed to find out which of the old buildings have been upgraded and which ones have not,” Mr McKay said.

Mayor Brown said the council was taking a “measured response to this issue”.

He had asked council officers to draw up a regionwide list of earthquake-prone buildings as quickly as possible.

Many of the buildings are in old town centres built at the turn of the century, such as Dominion Rd’s shopping and restaurant district.

Similar fragile buildings – most of them two-storey double-skin brick buildings comparable to the weakest structures in Christchurch – are in Kingsland, Sandringham Rd and the Onehunga Mall.

About 5 per cent of commercial buildings and 2 per cent of residential structures in the city centre are unreinforced.

Council building control manager Bob de Leur told the Weekend Herald that the old Auckland City Council had drawn up a list of 412 buildings that could be susceptible to earthquake damage.

He said not all the buildings had been properly assessed and some had since been strengthened.

The Building Act defines earthquake-prone buildings as those likely to collapse in a moderate quake, causing injury or death, or damage to any other property.

The Wellington City Council has gone public with a list of 808 buildings identified as likely to be affected by a severe quake. Of these, 172 need urgent strengthening.

A report commissioned by the Auckland City Council in 2006 found that a 6.5-magnitude earthquake could claim about 11 casualties in central Auckland, among a daytime population of 600,000, and cause damage that would cost more than $1 billion to repair.

The low casualty figure is because of the hard volcanic rock under Auckland and the fact that a development boom took place after construction standards were toughened, so many buildings are earthquake-proofed.

So ACC thinks 11 casualties from a major earthquake when it has 400+ unsafe constructed buildings in Auckland City and more unsafe buildings in the rest of its acc area.

LaLa Land.
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March 5, 2011 9:58am
Nookin

Brown’s excuse is crap. Releasing the report may attract some stigma to a building but when the issue of value really matters (potential sale, leasing arrangements, rent review etc) everyone who has a stake in it will know quite readily whether it has been upgraded. In the meantime Brown is saying to the public that it is none of their business whether a building that they might be frequenting on a regular basis may or may not be safe. I would have thought that if a building made the register the public have every right to know if a building may land on their heads in an earthquake. I also would have thought that the public have every right to expect the council to have pulled its finger out by now. Wouldn’t take 10 minutes to find out whether upgrade works have been consented and certified.
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March 5, 2011 10:17am
Bobbie black

@Viking2, ooh that hurts, it really does.

Nah, I had a pretty good success rate in law, ask anyone who knows me.

I won my first two jury trials, serious violence cases.

I never had any disciplinary action against me in my ten years or so and I am still on the Australian and NZ registers and fully able to sue someone for defamation, note.

I just got sick of it, boring, mundane.

I generally write now.

I may go back to it later.

What’s your job by the way?

Let me guess rocket scientist or brain surgeon?

Am I warm?

🙂
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