This week has prob­a­bly been a real tough week for John Banks after TVNZ and Mark Cry­sell spent three weeks of muck rak­ing work at the behest of Len Brown’s Labour flunkies. Bernard Orsman’s arti­cle isn’t much bet­ter and does him­self a dis-service shop­ping tawdry tales Labour has been try­ing to get in the media for 3 weeks. He should ask him­self why he is stu­diously ignor­ing both Brown and Williams using coun­cil resources and the spam­ming of coun­cil staff on the beg for money. John Banks had to face some­thing that no par­ent wants to face and he dealt with it admirably.

Non-political peo­ple have com­mented to me how well Banksie han­dled him­self in the face of an obvi­ous hit. They say that you just know that Alex Banks got a boot in the arse, one he deserved. Now polit­i­cal peo­ple are weigh­ing in and that is why I say that Len Brown’s cam­paign is over.

John Banks is a polar­is­ing indi­vid­ual, admired by some, hated – not too strong a word – by oth­ers. For my part, I have not changed my view of the man I attacked on The Ral­ston Group, the talk-back host I deplored on Radio Pacific or the Mayor of Auck­land in his pre­vi­ous incar­na­tion. But either he has changed or I have. I sus­pect it’s the for­mer. Cer­tainly the per­son I have got to know in the past fort­night is a very fine man indeed. Or maybe there are two John Banks, two sides to the one man – the father and the politi­cian per­haps. I’d be happy to have the father con­tinue as Mayor.

That peo­ple is an endorse­ment. Not only is it an endorse­ment it is an endorse­ment from Brian Edwards. That was the end para­graph. Now read this from the mid­dle of the post.

Ten days ago I was one of five speak­ers at an Auck­land May­oral Fathers’ Break­fast at Sky City organ­ised by Par­ents Inc., the organ­i­sa­tion founded by Ian Grant. Each of us had seven min­utes to give an inspi­ra­tional address on father­hood to the 750 men present. The Mayor of Auck­land, for­mally host­ing the event, spoke first.

I’ve heard a lot of speeches in my time and few have been mem­o­rable. I don’t think I’ll ever for­get the seven min­utes in which John Banks held that audi­ence in the palm of his hand, enthralled. He did not, as his advi­sors have sug­gested, talk about his own trau­matic child­hood. He talked about the trou­bled kids he has met in the course of his job; kids on drugs, kids in trou­ble with the law, kids in borstals and pris­ons, lost boys and girls. A com­mon theme, espe­cially among the  boys, he observed, was the absence of a father in their lives. These were boys with­out role mod­els, boys who didn’t know how to be men. Fathers mat­tered and fathers had a respon­si­bil­ity to teach their kids the dif­fer­ence between right and wrong.

Deliv­ered entirely with­out notes, the short address was spell­bind­ing, extremely mov­ing, and entirely met the inspi­ra­tional cri­te­ria laid down by the breakfast’s organ­is­ers. When he returned to the table, I said to him, ‘If you could talk like that dur­ing your cam­paign, you would cer­tainly be the first Mayor of the Super City.’

When the illu­mi­nati of the left feel so com­pelled to write posts such as this then you realise very quickly that Len Brown’s cam­paign is over. When Brian Edwards puts a spike in that hard you KNOW Len Brown’s cam­paign is over.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 1% [?]

Related Posts:

{ 0 comments }

Minimum Main Road Speeds

by Whaleoil on September 3, 2010 · 11 comments

Granny DriverThere is noth­ing more annoy­ing than when you travel on the motor­way and dis­cover some halfwit is going at 70, or on state high­way one and there is moron trav­el­ling at 80, with a huge tail back being caused by one driver’s self­ish deci­sion to drive below the speed limit.

Slow dri­vers on open roads cause crashes. They force peo­ple that just want to travel at the speed limit to take tough deci­sions about pass­ing, and some of these cause accidents.

So the Wha­le­oil trans­port pol­icy is that there will be min­i­mum speed lim­its on motor­ways and main roads. If you drive more than 10 km under limit when there is no good rea­son too (being old, dopey or use­less is not a good rea­son) you should be fined for hold­ing up traf­fic and cre­at­ing anger among fel­low tax pay­ers who expect you to drive at the speed limit.

Given that the ratepay­ers of Albany Ward over­whelm­ing favour using their cars for trans­port this is a sen­si­ble pol­icy for them to support.

Respon­si­bil­i­ties come with along with rights. If you want the right to drive on the main road, you have the respon­si­bil­ity to ensure you travel at a speed that allows traf­fic to flow.

Under Whaleoil’s trans­port pol­icy peo­ple whing­ing about a min­i­mum speed limit are classed as other peo­ple, and will be forced to become manda­tory users of pub­lic transport.

And the impact of slow dri­vers on pro­duc­tiv­ity is huge, so we need to stop slow dri­vers from wreck­ing the dri­ving expe­ri­ence for the rest of us, as well as cost­ing the economy.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 2% [?]

Related Posts:

{ 11 comments }

Len Brown used coun­cil emails to solicit sup­port and funds and now Andrew Williams is using his coun­cil resources as a bully pul­pit to assail polit­i­cal opponents.

He has just sent out an email and press release that breaks almost every rule as set out by the Auditor-General.He has tried to be clever by dis­guis­ing his attack as a press release but make no mis­take it is elec­tion­eer­ing and worse it is elec­tion­eer­ing using resources not avail­able to his opponents.

Andrew Williams will be in no posi­tion to hold any­one to account after I dis­patch him in Albany Ward come elec­tion day.

Campaign email sent via Council email system

His angry, bully pul­pit tac­tics have no place in the super city. Vote Slater to rid your­selves of the idiot Williams.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 2% [?]

Related Posts:

{ 6 comments }

I’ve been read­ing the dis­cus­sion doc­u­ment for the pro­posed changes to the child sup­port regime.   It took me for­ever to find the thing – god knows I spend far too much time on the IRD web­site as it is, so I hon­estly thought I knew my way around the site.   Appar­ently not.  Any­how, I found it even­tu­ally, and so can you:  http://www.supportingchildren.ird.govt.nz/

The first thing I noticed is how much more com­pli­cated the pro­posed new for­mula is for cal­cu­lat­ing child sup­port lia­bil­ity.  Cur­rently, you take the pay­ing parent’s income, deduct a liv­ing allowance, and then mul­ti­ply it by a per­cent­age (depen­dent on how many kids you’re pay­ing for), and hey presto, there’s your child sup­port bill.  Under the new for­mula, you take both par­ents incomes, deduct a liv­ing allowance for each of them, and use a pro­gres­sive sys­tem to cal­cu­late an amount which appar­ently rep­re­sents the cost of look­ing after the chil­dren.  Then, you mul­ti­ply this fig­ure by the pay­ing par­ents income (after the liv­ing allowance), and divide by the sum of both par­ents net incomes, to find the total lia­bil­ity.  Very com­pli­cated indeed.  One won­ders if the addi­tional money allo­cated to the IRD to inves­ti­gate tax fraud cases will end up being used to employ more staff in the Child Sup­port Depart­ment instead…. but more likely, you’ll just have to wait on hold longer when you try to call them.

Now, before I go on any fur­ther, I want to clar­ify a cou­ple of things.  Firstly, I agree that the child sup­port regime needs an over­haul.  The cur­rent sys­tem doesn’t reflect the addi­tional costs that a non-primary care­giver incurs in car­ing for their child – after all, it costs Daddy just as much to  pro­vide an extra bed­room for Lit­tle Johnny as it does for Mummy.  It’s also not fair that some par­ents pay an absolute for­tune in child sup­port, and then the cus­to­dial par­ent does every­thing they can to pre­vent access.   I absolutely believe that fathers should, in all but the most extreme cases, be allowed  - nay, encour­aged – to have a rela­tion­ship with their chil­dren.  It is, after all, in the best inter­ests of the child to have a lov­ing rela­tion­ship with both parents.

But, I’m sorry, I’ve got a few prob­lems with the pro­posed changes.  Firstly – the new for­mula, being based on both parent’s incomes, doesn’t seem to allow for the sce­nario where a par­ent is pay­ing child sup­port to sev­eral ex-partners.  I’ve searched the entire doc­u­ment to find a clause spec­i­fy­ing how such a sit­u­a­tion should be treated – to no avail.  If another reader can point me to such a clause, I’d be most appre­cia­tive.  But on the face of it, the pro­posed for­mula sim­ply doesn’t allow for such a sce­nario – and it should.  If some casanova sires chil­dren by mul­ti­ple moth­ers, he should take respon­si­bil­ity for all those children.

Sec­ondly, under the pro­posed for­mula, if the cus­to­dial parent’s income increases, the child sup­port lia­bil­ity decreases.  Thus, if the cus­to­dial par­ent works harder to get a payrise, their ex – not them­selves, not the child, but their ex – ben­e­fits.  This just doesn’t seem right.  It would reduce the incen­tive for cus­to­dial par­ents to be pro­duc­tive – after all, why strive for a payrise if you won’t ben­e­fit from it?

Finally  - under the pro­posed changes, child sup­port will decrease for EVERY SINGLE par­ent with full cus­tody.  I haven’t done the cal­cu­la­tions yet for shared-custody arrange­ments, so I can’t com­ment on those – I will endeav­our to do these over the next few days.  I’m sure a great many pay­ing par­ents will be quite happy with this, but bear in mind that many cus­to­dial par­ents count on the child sup­port pay­ments in order to meet the costs of run­ning a house­hold and look­ing after their kids.  Sub­stan­tial decreases in child sup­port pay­ments will cause extreme stress to those who will now have to find other ways to meet their finan­cial oblig­a­tions.  It’s not dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how the kids could end up miss­ing out.

Please refer to the fol­low­ing table, to see the effect of the pro­posed new for­mula on child sup­port pay­ments.  Please note that all pay­ments are based on a non-custodial par­ent who has no depen­dents liv­ing with them, and no shared care:

  25 k, 1 child 25k, 2 children 40k, 1 child 40k, 2 children 70k, 1 child 70k, 2 children 100k, 1 child 100k, 2 children
Cur­rent formula 1,951.56 2,602.08 4,651.56 6,202.08 1,0051.00 13,402.08 15,451.56 20,602.08
New for­mula                
Cus­to­dial par­ent <16,054 1,520.82 2,147.04 4,070.82 5,747.04 8,400.00 12,474.80 11,766.30 18,240.54
Cus­to­dial par­ent 40k 1,472.95 2,122.96 3,832.83 5,627.77 7,729.75 11,878.22 10,747.88 16,826.08
Cus­to­dial par­ent 70k 1,347.56 2,091.77 3,431.15 5,272.60 6,906.88 10,812.90 8,942.38 13,927.08
Cus­to­dial par­ent 100k 1,219.31 1,911.74 3,065.88 4,799.72 5,746.62 8,949.92 7,344.50 11,438.50

 

Gotta say – the dead­beat dads are gonna love Peter Dunne for this one.   And one can’t help but won­der why he’s so insis­tent on mak­ing life harder for sin­gle parents?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 4% [?]

Related Posts:

{ 4 comments }

Just having a conversation here about Interesting Names

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

I see one of the Inter­est­ing Names is in the paper again. A doc­tor has been sus­pended from prac­tis­ing for nine months after plead­ing guilty to pos­sess­ing images of child sex abuse. The doc­tor, whose name is sup­pressed, was sen­tenced to four months’ home deten­tion after admit­ting 25 charges of pos­sess­ing objec­tion­able mate­r­ial and one charge […]

Link to Full Article 7 comments

Please Explain Mr Hubbard, you too Bill English

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

If Far­rar can cut/paste so can I. Bernard Hickey (dude eat some­thing) has sent a please explain to Alan Hub­bard. It should be nailed on the door of South Can­ter­bury Finance and at teh gate of Hubbard’s house and stuck to his wind­screen of that shitty lit­tle Volk­swagon. Dear Allan Hub­bard: Please say sorry and thanks. […]

Link to Full Article 3 comments

This global warming thing is a real bastard

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

Looks like this Global Warm­ing thingy is real hard to pin down. Heavy rain across much of the coun­try and thick cloud in the south east made for a dis­ap­point­ing end to the sum­mer hol­i­day. The month also saw the cold­est tem­per­a­ture recorded in August for 23 years, with mer­cury falling to 12.8C in Edg­bas­ton, Birmingham. […]

Link to Full Article 7 comments

Distortions that might work

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

So Peter Dunne wants to change the Child Sup­port Sys­tem because more than $2 bil­lion remains unpaid by dead­beat par­ents. I know of one dead beat dad who doesn’t even so much as call his daugh­ter let alone pay any­thing towards her upkeep. There are plenty of oth­ers out there. At the same time we […]

Link to Full Article 12 comments

National have mis-judged the public sentiment

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

From the emails del­ug­ing my inbox and from talk in the street I think National have badly mis-judged the pub­lic sen­ti­ment in bail­ing out Mr Magoo’s Finance Com­pany for rich farm­ing types. When you have to get Trea­sury to start explain­ing then you know they are los­ing the argu­ment. the old adage that if you are […]

Link to Full Article 5 comments

Politician of the Week — Nick Smith

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

Now this grates, it really does, but credit where credit is due. Nick Smith going to announce that he won’t get in the way of more roads and quicker deliv­ery of the roads for Auck­land, ulti­mately mean­ing they will be cheaper to the tax payer. Envi­ron­ment Min­is­ter Nick Smith will announce tomor­row that he is putting […]

Link to Full Article 3 comments

The poor are eating rubbish food because healthy food is too expensive?

by Whaleoil September 2, 2010

Low income New Zealand fam­i­lies would have to spend up to a third of their income to eat health­ily, a researcher says. A sep­a­rate study reveals about 40 per cent of New Zealand house­holds go hun­gry, skip meals or scrimp on ingre­di­ents because they are not “food secure”. Food secu­rity is a key topic for […]

Link to Full Article 10 comments

Need a reason to Vote Slater? I’ll give you 12 million reasons

by Whaleoil September 1, 2010

I’ll give you 12 mil­lion rea­sons why vot­ing for Slater in Albany Ward is a bet­ter option than giv­ing your vote to Andrew Williams or Julia Parfitt. North­ern Aquatic Cen­tre deba­cle – Andrew Williams and Julia Parfitt fought tooth and nail to have the pool located 200 metres from where it will even­tu­ally be built. […]

Link to Full Article 3 comments

Would you vote for someone who.…

by Whaleoil September 1, 2010

…couldn’t even spell the name of the city he is cur­rently the Mayor of prop­erly? Once is bad but twice on the same page is just sloppy cut and paste, even DPF can do bet­ter than that. next thing he will be spelling Auck­land like “Aucklen“…..oh wait! Related Posts:No Related Posts

Link to Full Article 0 comments

Ungrateful Pricks

by Whaleoil September 1, 2010

Even after hav­ing their “invest­ments” saved by the rest of New Zealand bail­ing out their dodgy Mr Magoo finance com­pany, investors in South Can­ter­bury Finance still aren’t grate­ful. Instead of bend­ing their knees in grate­ful appre­ci­a­tion to the rest of New Zealand for sav­ing their “invest­ments” they are flip­ping us all the bird. There’s less sympathy […]

Link to Full Article 3 comments

Sneaky

by Whaleoil September 1, 2010

via the anony­mous Tip Line. Sneaky cop in Hast­ings. One won­ders whether Jack Daniels is in fact an offi­cial spon­sor of the NZ Police and if so did Howard know? Related Posts:I can flyyyyyyyyy!Wednes­day Weapons – Lady­Smith .38 SpecialPer­haps the Police could get one of these pup­piesIf you have to say it ain’t so, then it […]

Link to Full Article 2 comments