From Wikipedia on the Kursk

While the tragedy of the Kursk played out in the Far North, Russia’s then Pres­i­dent Vladimir Putin, though imme­di­ately informed of the tragedy, waited for five days before he broke a hol­i­day at a pres­i­den­tial resort house in sub­trop­i­cal Sochi on the Black Sea before com­ment­ing pub­licly on the loss of the pride of the North­ern Fleet. A year later he said: “I prob­a­bly should have returned to Moscow, but noth­ing would have changed. I had the same level of com­mu­ni­ca­tion both in Sochi and in Moscow, but from a PR point of view I could have demon­strated some spe­cial eager­ness to return.”

Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina was a PR dis­as­ter for George W. Bush. He didn’t take enough inter­est, left the details to FEMA who were use­less and suf­fered as a result.

The lessons are there to be learned.  Putin was was on hol­i­day at the Black Sea and couldn’t see why he should not stay on hol­i­day which really hurt his rep­u­ta­tion amongst the Rus­sians. George W. Bush fucked up roy­ally with Kat­rina, but did Bill Eng­lish and Mur­ray McCully learn the lessons that lead­ers need to lead?

Nope they didn’t. The first two politi­cians on the plane out to Samoa this after­noon were Chris “Cruis­ing” Carter and Win­nie Laban, dis­patched by the Co-Leader of Labour Phil Goff.

Where the fuck were our guys? Why wasn’t Nikki Kaye, Simon Bridges, Aaron Gilmore and every other avail­able back-bencher espe­cially the 2008 intake all put on the bloody plane com­plete with gum­boots and “We Care” t-shirts and some shov­els and spades bloody first. Oh no….the first sup­port Samoa gets is from bloody Labour oiks! It is shit like this that really gets my goat with National sometimes.

Bill Eng­lish is acting-Prime Min­is­ter and act­ing is all he seems t be able to do and Mur­ray McCully is respon­si­ble for MFat. There are two heads right there that should roll. This really should be the final straw for Bill English.

Pop­u­lar­ity: 8% [?]

I recieved the fol­low­ing mis­sive from the North Shore City Coun­cil this morning;

9.20 AM
30 Sep­tem­ber 2009

The North Shore City Coun­cil is pass­ing on advice from the Min­istry of Civil Defence advis­ing North Shore res­i­dents to keep off the beaches for the next hour.

Although the Min­istry of Civil Defence is not pre­dict­ing a major event in New Zealand, sen­si­ble pre­cau­tions should be taken in the light of this morning’s tsunami alert.

Accord­ing to infor­ma­tion received by the Min­istry, a tsunami of 1.5m was gen­er­ated in Samoa as a result of a 8.3 mag­ni­tude earth­quake off the coast of Samoa.

Waves can be expected to be smaller in New Zealand, esti­mated at 1m at the East Coast and Bay of Plenty.

Wave heights out­side of these regions will be advised as soon as pos­si­ble, but it is unlikely that ter­ri­to­r­ial author­i­ties will need to expect a wave of any height greater than 1m.

The Min­istry advises that areas of con­cern in New Zealand are North­land, the Coro­man­del, the Bay of Plenty and the East Coast north of Gis­borne.  The threat is in par­tic­u­lar to peo­ple in small boats and on the beaches.

I was wait­ing for the fol­low up email from the Clown of Camp­bells Bay, the Mad Mayor of North Shore, Andrew Williams advis­ing us all to ignore offi­cial warn­ings and that just so long as you took your dog on a leash and wore a life­jacket that it was per­fectly alright walk­ing the North­ern beaches and that he intended to do just that despite all the advice to the contrary.

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Len Brown now thinks he is a head of state or Prime Minister:

“We will be in con­tact with the heads of gov­ern­ment there, and like other heads of state we will wait to hear how we might help.”

He also thinks hard work­ing ratepay­ers in Manukau should have their prop­er­ties taxed so he can turn Manukau City Coun­cil into a for­eign aid agency:

Manukau Mayor Len Brown says his city is poised to offer any sup­port that Samoa and Amer­i­can Samoa may need after today’s dev­as­tat­ing tsunami.

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1. Where in the world is Richard Bradley?
2. How come all the doc­u­ments relat­ing to the fail­ure of Hop­scotch Finance are sealed until 20011 by court order?
3. Isn’t that highly unusual?
4. Is it true that Hop­scotch Finance has lost $8million?
5. Why doesn’t Richard Bradley own any shares in Chrisco anymore?
6. Why is the Com­Com and Sec­Com on the go slow over com­plaints about Chrisco and their finan­cial sta­bil­ity and busi­ness practices?
7. How come Richard Bradley’s house won’t sell and why has the ask­ing price dropped $15million
8. Will Chrisco agents get all of their com­mis­sion come November?
9. Why are Chrisco going to “tax” them 10% of their com­mis­sion if they take it it early?
10. Have you checked out the fine print on the prices they value the goods at? You may well be sur­prised come Christmas.
11. Are these guys dodgy or what?
12. Why have 20 peo­ple been made redun­dant at Chrisco and why has this been kept on the “down low”?
13. Where is the imag­in­ery and ille­gal Chrisco “Visa” Debit Card at? It’s been like months since they announced that.
14. Why won’t Visa talk to Chrisco anymore?
15. Why do they use iner­tia sell­ing in their brochures?
16. Why hasn’t the Com­Com done any­thing about that either?
17. Who is run­ning Chrisco these days anyway?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 6% [?]

As pre­dicted by this blog yes­ter­day the Maori baby killed at the week­end by it’s “care-givers” had Silly First Name Syndrome.

A 22-month-old baby who died at the week­end did not live at the house where she was first reported injured, police said yesterday.

The baby, named as Hail-Sage McClutchie of Hamil­ton, was reported seri­ously injured in a house in Studholme St, Mor­rinsville on Saturday.

Para­medics were called when the child stopped breathing.

Police spokesman Andrew McAl­ley said she did not live at the Studholme St house.

Mr McAl­ley would not say whether the tod­dler was with her par­ents, or whanau, when para­medics were called just after mid­day Saturday.

I know peo­ple are going to say to me that I should call the baby Maori, even with the sur­name McClutchie, but seri­ously since when did the news­pa­pers start report­ing on every fam­ily as whanau wen there was a death?

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Len Brown, or more to the point Conor Roberts, his Labour Party min­der at the ivory tow­ers, seems to be a bit miffed at some of the out­cry over the Brown/Bradford ticket.

In his urgency to allay any fears it seems he is has now endorsed self appointed “Bishop” Brian tamaki as part of his all inclu­sive coun­cil offering.

I was won­der­ing who will be next for the Brown/Bradford ticket?

Is there some children’s tv char­ac­ter that he could also add to the ticket?
Per­haps B1?
or one of the Wig­gles?
maybe that dead ele­phant Kashin?

Ohh­hhh I know the gay Tele­tubby!

Pop­u­lar­ity: 6% [?]

This Ten­der­watch process is get­ting out of hand. There are sim­ply ridicu­lous Ten­ders being pro­posed. These two are for the Health Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of Social Devel­op­ment to look into.

I reckon that there is lit­er­ally bil­lions being pissed away by paper shuf­fling bureau­crats ten­der­ing out bull­shit things that either neededn’t be done or they should be doing in the first place.

Com­plete and Utter waste of fricken money

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Today a man suf­fer­ing from Silly First Name Syn­drome who killed a another man in a fit of road rage got sen­tenced to just 3 years prison for what the judge described as an “appalling case of what may be described as road rage.”.

Three fuck­ing years. No-Justice Pot­ter should be flayed. Three years. That is pathetic.

On his daughter’s third birth­day, Bio O’Brien, 28, was jailed in the High Court in Auck­land today for three years for the manslaugh­ter of Jas­matb­hai Patel, 78, in the Auck­land sub­urb of Mt Albert on April 7.

After their two cars were involved in a minor col­li­sion, O’Brien dragged Mr Patel from his vehi­cle and attacked him.

Mr Patel fell and hit his head. He died in Auck­land Hos­pi­tal the next day.

This guy should really have his neck stretched.

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Sue Brad­ford resigns, Maori are still wail­ing about a ‘h’ and seats on a coun­cil and still Maori are killing their chil­dren. Another Maori baby has died, I think that is two a week they are run­ning at right now. I would almost lay a bet that the lat­est death is also Silly First Name Syn­drome related.

The fam­ily of the Mor­rinsville tod­dler who died in hos­pi­tal on Sat­ur­day night were known to Child Youth and Family.

“Although we have had no involve­ment with the tod­dler, her wider fam­ily is known to Child, Youth and Fam­ily,” said gen­eral man­ager Lor­raine Williams.

“My con­do­lences are with those who loved and cared for her. We will con­tinue to work along­side the police as they com­plete their investigations.”

Res­i­dents near the Studholme St house in the Waikato town say they were told the tod­dler had brain dam­age when para­medics arrived on Sat­ur­day afternoon.

Police said she had seri­ous injuries and said her death was sus­pi­cious. How­ever, they remained cau­tious about labelling it a homicide.

Spokesman Andrew McAl­ley said there were still a num­ber of med­ical tests that had to be car­ried out. The cause of death had not been confirmed.

Whanau still had to be con­tacted before the name would be released and that might not be for days.

The CYF spokes­woman makes me sick to the stom­ach. She offers con­do­lences to those who loved and cared for her. Does any­one spot the major flaw in her thought processes. loved and cared for chil­dren do not die from “seri­ous injuries” or in “sus­pis­cious” cir­cum­stances” nor do they suf­fer “brain dam­age” mirac­u­lously before para­medics arrive.

Michael Laws was right when he wrote to those silly school chil­dren. We should start tak­ing Maori lobby groups seri­ously when Maori stop killing their kids.

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I got this email from a trainspot­ter. One who clearly has never looked at the rail map of Auck­land with any­thing except glazed over eyes and co-related that to a map with one of Auck­land where peo­ple ACTUALLY live.

Trains suck. They suck at almost every­thing they do and every study that proves they work is based on a pop­u­la­tion 10 times the size of New Zealand and run­ning trains on a gauge other than the orphan one we use. If my sug­ges­tion of a ded­i­cated truck­way was imple­mented then we could run freak­ing road trains.

Also, idiot, trainspot­ter, to get things onto a train you need, TRUCKS to get the stuff there, and TRUCKS to move it again at the other end. Why not just stick it on a TRUCK end to end.

I don’t even know what a DMU is and i sus­pect I wouldn’t care even if I did. Why is that tossers who don’t live in Auck­land, usu­ally tossers from Welling­ton or the Social­ist Repub­lic of Christchurch see fit to tell us in Auck­land what is best for us. Rail most cer­tainly isn’t, never will be, couldn’t pos­si­bly be and won’t be good for us in Auckland.

Why? Because you mud­dle headed igno­ra­mus, Auck­land is built on an isth­mus. Every­thing has to go through an area at Otahuhu that is only 500m wide from the Manukau har­bour to the Wait­em­ata har­bour and why the road is fricken called Portage Road there.

Unless mas­sive tun­nels and bridges are built capa­ble of car­ry­ing both vehi­cles and trains thre isn’t going to be a rail solu­tion for Auck­land. You can’t even catch a train to the North Shore because some genius decided that the Har­bour Bridge should take cars only and even then under-designed it.

If you want to see just how truly fucked the Auck­land trans­port sys­tem is then use the Maxx web­site and plot a trip from say How­ick to Hen­der­son. That’s a real trip from my house to my in laws. I plot­ted the quick­est: $13:50 and 2hrs and 09 min­utes and the cheap­est $12:70 which take 3hours 20mins.

I sure as fuck am nort pay­ing $13:50 or even $12:70 to sit next to some rank smelling poor per­son for a min­i­mum of two hours. That would cost some­one  far more than that if I billed that time out. In two hours I can drive there and have an hour long meet­ing and drive back all for cheaper than $12:70 includ­ing the drive thru break­fast at McDon­alds, which you sure as fuck won’t get on a bus or a train.

So with no respect at all shove your fuck­ing trains.buses/public trans­port up your fuck­ing arse and fix my fuck­ing roads. even if I have to pay a toll. Bet­ter still make petrol $3:00 a litre so I can travel unhin­dered by poor peo­ple in barely warrant-able cars across Auckland

Pop­u­lar­ity: 6% [?]

Chris Carter really is a pedan­tic poof. He posted this press release which waf­fles on and on. A shorter more mean­ing­ful Chris Carter in press release to Angela Merkel would be:

“I am from Labour. We want to con­grat­u­late you Madame Chan­cel­lor. You are a woman. This is good. But it would have been bet­ter if the SPD won instead.”

What on earth would Germany’s embassy con­vey to Merkel? Let’s imag­ine the reply from Merkel back to Carter.

“Thanks. I am a woman. That is good. I hear your balls are squeezed into a lemon shape for games.  Best, Angela”

Pop­u­lar­ity: 5% [?]

From Red Alert – Not only is their step-granny a Labour MP, with names like Chance and Chay these two lit­tle wal­la­bies don’t have a hope.

I’m off to Aus­tralia this week, with part­ner John, to meet his two new grand­sons, Chance and Chay (yes, well they are Aus­tralians) and so John can meet for just the sec­ond time his two-year old grand­daugh­ter, Mala  – (and before you ask, we’re paying).

Because I can never sep­a­rate the per­sonal from the pol­i­tics, I’ve made a list of things to look into including :

1. Why Aus­tralian clean­ers are now paid $21 an hour when ours are still paid $12.55, when they’re employed by the same con­trac­tors.
2. What Rudd has done dif­fer­ently to Key to end the reces­sion ear­lier and with lower unem­ploy­ment than NZ.
3. Why increas­ing work­ers’ rights in Aus­tralia is not seen as reduc­ing pro­duc­tiv­ity or harm­ful to busi­ness when in New Zealand it’s seen as the oppo­site.
4. How many firms have really gone bust because they have to pay the same min­i­mum redun­dancy pay I am propos­ing in my Redun­dancy Pro­tec­tion Bill.
5. What’s hap­pen­ing with the National Trans­port Com­mis­sion report that said that exces­sive client power and poor pay and con­di­tions for truck dri­vers were a major cause of the high lev­els of deaths and injuries on Aus­tralian roads – and whether Joyce should take note.
6. What forms of con­tract­ing arrange­ments for inde­pen­dent con­trac­tors do they have that give them more rights and col­lec­tive bar­gain­ing power.

Should be a great trip!  I’ll send photos.

I wouldn’t be send­ing pho­tos or doing those other things, I’d spend time con­vinc­ing the care-givers of these two the errors of their ways in nam­ing their kids. They may well befaill the pox that is Silly First Name Syn­drome, mind you if Darien spends a lot of time hug­ging and kiss­ing them she may catch it.

Just one more ran­dom ques­tion though. Do cus­toms in Aus­tralia allow smack through in your lug­gage or does it have to be bought local?

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The new cell­phone ban law will pro­hibit the use of the cell­phone as a nav­i­ga­tion device even if mounted on the dash of your car in acradle.

This sort of namby-pamby bull­shit was sup­posed to end with the change of gov­ern­ment but it just rolls on as offi­cials just don’t seem to get it.

Just to clar­ify, it is alright to have a map­book open on your lap but not ok to use the GPS nav­i­ga­tion func­tion on your smart phone with audi­ble directions.

This is stu­pid law that is unwork­able. Why not ban the eat­ing of hot meat pies, the smok­ing of cig­a­rettes and the drink­ing of cof­fee while we are at it as they have caused far more acci­dents than the use of cellphones?

Pop­u­lar­ity: 6% [?]

Here’s why Len Brown would make a lousy mayor of Auck­land. He can’t get the rub­bish col­lected prop­erly – for two weeks a revolt­ing unhy­gienic mess was spread all over a local park next to res­i­den­tial housing.

If he can’t keep his own back­yard clean in Manukau, how can Wait­akere or North Shore trust him to get basic things right like rub­bish collection?

Maybe Len’s too busy think­ing of free swim­ming pools, Maori Seats and how Sue Brad­ford could use our rates to fund unem­ploy­ment ben­e­fits to care about basic coun­cil ser­vices like rubbish.

Look on the bright side though – even the rats get social hous­ing under Len Brown!

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I wasn’t sup­posed to blog on this till tomor­row but since Cr. Bhat­na­gar has it plas­tered on his Face­book wall I see no rea­son not to now.

The daft draft Auck­land City Offi­cers’ liquor pol­icy to be withdrawn.

Draft Liquor Pol­icy to be withdrawn

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