January 2009

Peters’ big black shop­ping trol­ley — Win­ston Peters’ big, black min­is­te­r­ial four-wheel-drive was meant to get him around the coun­try to do his job bet­ter. But on Fri­day morn­ing — nearly three months after he was ousted from Par­lia­ment — it was prov­ing a rather use­ful… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

As is usual now for the MSM they do not credit a blog with scoop­ing them with the story. Rebecca Milne, the fat-arsed reporter, must be an avid reader of this blog because she sent pho­tog­ra­phers round to Winston’s place after this blog had already pho­tographed the car over sev­eral days and pub­lished the address. You would think she would have had the cour­tesy to at least shout me for lunch.

The Sunday-Star Times also cov­ers the non-return of the bauble-mobile but missed that it got picked up on Friday.

Time from this blog ask­ing why he hadn’t returned it to the car being picked up — 6 days. Pho­tos on Thurs­day, car picked up Fri­day. Just what on earth are the fools at Min­ste­r­ial Ser­vices doing that an unpaid blog­ger can beat them to the car in just 4 days when they have taken more than 3 months?

Both papers, how­ever, let Min­is­te­r­ial Ser­vices and Win­ston Ray­mond Peters, 63, Unem­ployed of no fixed abode off the hook because of their indo­lence. Why weren’t these ques­tions asked and answered;

1. What date did Win­ston Pters make the alleged arrange­ments to pur­chase the vehicle?
2. What date/s was he asked to hand back the vehicle?
3. How many times was he com­mu­ni­cated with about the vehi­cle and what man­ner of communication?
4. What charges, if any, have been made on the fuel card between the fol­low­ing dates? 9 Nov 2008 — 30 No 2008, 1 Dec 2008 — 31 Dec 2008 and 1 Jan 2009 — 31 Jan 2009.
5. When will WRP, 63, UONFA be invoiced for the fuel?
6. Did WRP, 63, UONFA use the vehi­cle on his recent trip to Tau­ranga to wind up his cam­paign com­mit­tee at the final meeting?

Since we can’t rely on the MSM to ask the ques­tions,  then this blog will do so and via an OIA request.

Wait­akere Mayor Bob Har­vey has a pen­chant for putting both feet in his mouth and mak­ing an arse of himself.

Today is no excep­tion with him bleat­ing to the West­ern Leader (isn’t that an oxy­moron?) that he isn’t paid enough.

“I con­sider myself grossly under­paid for the work I do 24 hours, seven days a week,” he says.

“MPs get a life­time pen­sion when they retire, yet when I fin­ish I won’t get a thing, even though I’ve done 16 years in local gov­ern­ment. It’s grossly unfair.”

Oh Boo-fucking-Hoo Bob, cry me a river of tears.

Here’s a thought why don’t you ditch the may­oral chains, the job dis­ap­pears in about 18 months any­way, and go find a job in the real world instead of suck­ing off the ratepay­ers tit in your ivory tower built at great expense.

Banksie must be grin­ning from ear to ear today. Any con­tender against Banksie for the Lord Mayor role seems to seems to want to spike their own guns before the get go. The Cock from Camp­bells, Andrew Williams (still wait­ing for the court date Andy) self destruc­ted long ago, Mayor Len Brown, though com­pe­tent is only a heart­beat away from a by-election, Bob just blew both feet off and is a Labour lia­bil­ity right now. That pretty much clears the decks of any seri­ous contender.

Yizard is said to be con­tem­plat­ing stand­ing but that’d be the hard­est she has thought about any­thing for a while.

Two arti­cles today in the Her­ald today show just how out of touch Labour had become and still is when it comes to Law and Order. It is tak­ing Judith Collins all of her strength not to smack around some of the nump­ties she has inher­ited and you can almost hear her teeth grind­ing when com­ment­ing Labour’s incred­i­bly rude and out of touch con­tin­ued med­dling in the Police Force.

Back off, Collins tells Goff — Police Min­is­ter Judith Collins has accused Labour of “politi­cis­ing” the police by invit­ing Auck­land regional com­man­ders to speak to the party’s MPs at their out-of-Wellington cau­cus meet­ing. “It is incred­i­bly impor­tant that police… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Judith is right, clearly Labour got used to hav­ing the Police at their beck and call, it became increas­ingly very handy with all the­Labour Party meme­bers and min­is­ters involved in crimes to have the police become dis­in­ter­ested in pros­e­cut­ing them. I note that Len “Mega­phone” Richards still remains uncharged for his assault against a pro­tes­tor out­side teh Labour Party congress.

Labour needs to pull their heads in and STFU. I find it incred­i­ble that they are hav­ing a meet­ing of “stake­hold­ers” to “under­stand” the issues in Auck­land. Just WTF were they doing for nine years that they don’t know what is going on in Auck­land, for­merly a Labour strong­hold? I can under­stand their frus­tra­tion a lit­tle because Helen Clark relied so heav­ily on per­haps the lazi­est MP known to Auck­land in liv­ing memory.

Prison pre-fabs to halve cell costs, halt ‘extrav­a­gance’ — Cor­rec­tions Min­is­ter Judith Collins has slammed the “extrav­a­gance” of the pre­vi­ous Government’s prison build­ing pro­gramme and is look­ing at using pre-fabricated mod­u­lar units to slash con­struc­tion costs by more than half. She said… [NZ Her­ald Pol­i­tics]

Jusith Collins has again shown some inno­va­tion when it comes to Cor­rec­tions and is look­ing at mod­u­lar designs rather than the extrav­agent mon­strosi­ties that Labour built. I doubt a National gov­ern­ment will be installing under­floor heat­ing for any new prison.

I think though that the Min­is­ter could go even more mod­u­lar and build a new prison out of used and leaky ship­ping containers.

I went to Wark­worth today via Sil­verdale and the new toll road going north.

My first stop was with Clas­sic Campers, they spe­cialise in Clas­sic Retro VW Kombi and Mod­ern camper rental, or depend­ing on where you come from, Microbus, Vanagon, T4 Trans­porter or Combi hire. Pretty cool niche tourism busi­ness. Chat­ted with Bevan for about an hour then went north to Warkworth.

I got back on the motor­wat at Sil­verdale and headed up to Orewa where the new North­ern Gate­way toll­road starts. What a bloody mar­vel, not hav­ing to mean­der down through Orewa and then slog over the hills past Hat­fields Beach and Wai­w­era. I reckon the $2 charge is just fine and you would eas­ily save that in time and petrol.

Still three quar­ters of my fel­low motor­way users peeled off and went the long, slower free routes. Suck­ers! The toll road rocks and has some good views. The engi­neer­ing is spectacular.

I say give me more toll­roads, this one rocks. The only down­side I can see is the fools that pull over to pay on the road­side rather than bar­rel on through and sort it out with the 0800 num­ber or on the website.

I reckon this road shaves a good 10 min­utes off the trip and since I went up to Wark­worth and back again I saved about 20 minutes.

You would use more than $2 in petrol going the long way due to the hill gra­di­ents and the stop start nature of tra­vers­ing Orewa’s res­i­den­tial areas.

Defi­nately a huge benefit.

Proven liar, Al Gore, likes to drone on about the cli­mate and how he intends to save the planet. Ofcourse this is the same Al Gore that claimed he invented the inter­net, so take every­thing he says with a grain of salt.

A real cli­mate sci­en­tist, unlike Al Gore, has gone through his bol­locks and iden­ti­fied all of the pro­pa­ganda tech­niques used by Al Gore and his “sci­en­tific” advi­sor, the now dis­cred­ited James Hansen.

Listed below are ten pro­pa­ganda tech­niques I have excerpted from Wikipedia. Beneath each are one or more exam­ples of Mr. Gore’s rhetoric as he has attempted to goad the rest of us into reduc­ing our CO₂ emis­sions. Except where indi­cated, most quotes are from his tes­ti­mony before the U.S. Sen­ate Envi­ron­ment and Pub­lic Works Com­mit­tee, March 21, 2007. (Mr. Gore is sched­uled to tes­tify again tomor­row, Jan­u­ary 28, 2009, before the Senate’s For­eign Rela­tions Committee…if the cold and snowy weather doesn’t cause them to reschedule.)

Appeal to fear: Appeals to fear seek to build sup­port by instill­ing anx­i­eties and panic in the gen­eral population.

“I want to tes­tify today about what I believe is a plan­e­tary emergency—a cri­sis that threat­ens the sur­vival of our civ­i­liza­tion and the hab­it­abil­ity of the Earth.”

Appeal to author­ity: Appeals to author­ity cite promi­nent fig­ures to sup­port a posi­tion, idea, argu­ment, or course of action. Also, Tes­ti­mo­nial: Tes­ti­mo­ni­als are quo­ta­tions, in or out of con­text, espe­cially cited to sup­port or reject a given pol­icy, action, pro­gram, or per­son­al­ity. The rep­u­ta­tion or the role (expert, respected pub­lic fig­ure, etc.) of the indi­vid­ual giv­ing the state­ment is exploited.

“Just six weeks ago, the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity, in its strongest state­ment to date, con­firmed that the evi­dence of warm­ing is unequiv­o­cal. Global warm­ing is real and human activ­ity is the main cause.”

“The sci­en­tists are vir­tu­ally scream­ing from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There’s no longer any debate in the sci­en­tific com­mu­nity about this.” (from An Incon­ve­nient Truth)

Band­wagon: Band­wagon and “inevitable-victory” appeals attempt to per­suade the tar­get audi­ence to join in and take the course of action that “every­one else is tak­ing”. Also, Join the crowd: This tech­nique rein­forces people’s nat­ural desire to be on the win­ning side. This tech­nique is used to con­vince the audi­ence that a pro­gram is an expres­sion of an irre­sistible mass move­ment and that it is in their best inter­est to join.

“Today, I am here to deliver more than a half mil­lion mes­sages to Con­gress ask­ing for real action on global warm­ing. More than 420 May­ors have now adopted Kyoto-style com­mit­ments in their cities and have urged strong fed­eral action. The evan­gel­i­cal and faith com­mu­ni­ties have begun to take the lead, call­ing for mea­sures to pro­tect God’s cre­ation. The State of Cal­i­for­nia, under a Repub­li­can Gov­er­nor and a Demo­c­ra­tic leg­is­la­ture, passed strong, econ­omy wide leg­is­la­tion man­dat­ing cuts in car­bon diox­ide. Twenty-two states and the Dis­trict of Colum­bia have passed renew­able energy stan­dards for the elec­tric­ity sector.”

Flag-waving: An attempt to jus­tify an action on the grounds that doing so will make one more patri­otic, or in some way ben­e­fit a group, coun­try, or idea. Also, Inevitable vic­tory: invites those not already on the band­wagon to join those already on the road to cer­tain vic­tory. Those already or at least par­tially on the band­wagon are reas­sured that stay­ing aboard is their best course of action.

“After all, we have taken on prob­lems of this scope before. When Eng­land and then Amer­ica and our allies rose to meet the threat of global Fas­cism, together we won two wars simul­ta­ne­ously in Europe and the Pacific.”

Ad Hominem attacks: A Latin phrase which has come to mean attack­ing your oppo­nent, as opposed to attack­ing their argu­ments. Also Demo­niz­ing the “enemy”: Mak­ing indi­vid­u­als from the oppos­ing nation, from a dif­fer­ent eth­nic group, or those who sup­port the oppos­ing view­point appear to be subhuman.

“You know, 15 per­cent of peo­ple believe the moon land­ing was staged on some movie lot and a some­what smaller num­ber still believe the Earth is flat. They get together on Sat­ur­day night and party with the global-warming deniers.” (Octo­ber 24, 2006, Seat­tle University)

Appeal to Prej­u­dice: Using loaded or emo­tive terms to attach value or moral good­ness to believ­ing the proposition.

“And to solve this cri­sis we can develop a shared sense of moral pur­pose.” (June 21, 2006, Lon­don, England)

Black-and-White fal­lacy: Pre­sent­ing only two choices, with the prod­uct or idea being prop­a­gated as the bet­ter choice.

“It is not a ques­tion of left vs. right; it is a ques­tion of right vs. wrong.” (July 1, 2007, New York Times op-ed)

Eupho­ria: The use of an event that gen­er­ates eupho­ria or hap­pi­ness, or using an appeal­ing event to boost morale:

Live Earth con­certs orga­nized world­wide in 2007 by Al Gore.

Fal­si­fy­ing infor­ma­tion: The cre­ation or dele­tion of infor­ma­tion from pub­lic records, in the pur­pose of mak­ing a false record of an event or the actions of a per­son or orga­ni­za­tion. Pseudo-sciences are often used to fal­sify information.

“Nobody is inter­ested in solu­tions if they don’t think there’s a prob­lem. Given that start­ing point, I believe it is appro­pri­ate to have an over-representation of fac­tual pre­sen­ta­tions on how dan­ger­ous (global warm­ing) is, as a pred­i­cate for open­ing up the audi­ence to lis­ten to what the solu­tions are, and how hope­ful it is that we are going to solve this cri­sis.” (May 9, 2006 Grist interview)

Stereo­typ­ing or Name Call­ing or Label­ing: This tech­nique attempts to arouse prej­u­dices in an audi­ence by label­ing the object of the pro­pa­ganda cam­paign as some­thing the tar­get audi­ence fears, hates, loathes, or finds unde­sir­able. Also, Obtain dis­ap­proval: This tech­nique is used to per­suade a tar­get audi­ence to dis­ap­prove of an action or idea by sug­gest­ing that the idea is pop­u­lar with groups hated, feared, or held in con­tempt by the tar­get audience

“There are many who still do not believe that global warm­ing is a prob­lem at all. And it’s no won­der: because they are the tar­gets of a mas­sive and well-organized cam­paign of dis­in­for­ma­tion lav­ishly funded by pol­luters who are deter­mined to pre­vent any action to reduce the green­house gas emis­sions that cause global warm­ing out of a fear that their prof­its might be affected if they had to stop dump­ing so much pol­lu­tion into the atmos­phere.” (Jan­u­ary 15, 2004, New York City)