Go well Penny

The Herald reports:

When Penny Bright rang to say she had been dying and might yet continue to do so, her voice was weak and she struggled at times.

“David Bloody Fisher,” she said, her usual greeting, but it was faint. Her Warship – as she likes to call herself – usually bellowed down the phone.

She was about to turn 64. The day of her birthday was the day she was supposed to die, according to doctors when she turned up at Auckland City Hospital on August 31.

As if Penny Bright ever listened to anyone with authority.

But here was Penny fighting a battle that everyone loses eventually and she knew it.
“I’ve never felt less energy or more tired in all my life,” she says.

But who’s going to do our democracy now, I asked her. For years I had watched with bafflement and some wonder at Penny’s determined fight against infringements on citizens’ rights.

Penny is delightfully mad. I will miss her.

She has been a long-time commenter on Kiwiblog. She has made over 6,000 comments from 2010 to August 2018. Always fought her corner and stayed calm, even when others yelled at her to pay her rates.

One can disagree with her tactics, but still welcome her unrelenting focus on fighting for better transparency at Auckland Council.

Her political battles have been her life, and as they both come to an end, may she go well into the night.

The Herald further reports:

Former Auckland City Mayor John Banks has expressed his admiration for activist Penny Bright, who is gravely ill in Auckland Hospital.

Banks told Herald he is thinking only kindly of Bright at this time and very sad to learn she is so unwell. …

Banks said he had no animosity towards Bright, but “admiration for her braveness in her stand for the matters she cared deeply about”.

“It will never be said she didn’t keep us on our toes and made us have second thoughts about the things she stood for and stood against. With all her many crusades she never left us in any doubt,” said Banks.

Nicely said John.