What Information?

It was quite extraordinary watching the Minister for Local Government making a promise on TV to provide information to the public in the future. 

To respond in such a way to a strange journalist that has issues was amazing.

Ministers of the Crown normally have weasel words to extract themselves from any semblance of  a straight answer so it was a puzzle that Watts was so direct in making a promise to make 'information' public.

The question is what information? Whos information? 

Straight away we have a problem .For a start having Minister for Climate Change is questionable. Of course it is fashionable but why do we have one?

The Climate has always changed. Nature is a wonderful thing and those of us that live with nature understand its complexities. Any attempt to try and harness its seasonal moves is silly.

A monster has been created and the 'information' the Minister was alluding to appears to be that around natural events or disasters and the industry that has been created out of understanding nature.

At this moment in time we have had a fair share of events that have shaken some of us out of our warm beds and tried our strengths to the extreme.

Trouble is those that benefit have lost the plot and those that may bear some responsibility have pulled the covers over.

Information, Mr Watts , is wide and varied and we have incredible access to all manner of information through our screens and search engines.

It can be twisted and bent , interpreted and  modified  .It depends on who is the beneficiary.

From the outset there is a problem. The baseball bat of climate change..

Talk of mandatory adaptation planning for Councils is frightening. They will be using information.  What information?

The power of Government and Councils in the future in the name of  climate change doesn't bear thinking about.

It is all based on a lie. That is a fact .

Carbon is not a problem. Climate change is not man made but  decisions made in the halls of power will revolve around the false information , carbon naughty  and man made climate change real.

Decisions will be made with no perspective. No generational knowledge . No logic .No rational thought.

Information on risk and adapting will be made with modelling and speculation.

Unfortunately the people will pay a massive price for the deception.        

     

 Another Story

It's a while since the flood but recently I caught up with a local I hadn't seen to have a chat with.

I had heard rumours about his eventful day so had the opportunity to sit down with him and hear his story.

Eventful it was.

He was preparing to take his wife to hospital for treatment on the day of the flood and when walking out to the car noticed the water flowing in the driveway and thought that's odd. He had never seen water there before.

He managed to get his wife in the car and headed off to town. He had to cross a significant bridge not far from his house and arriving at the crest was stopped by a hi vis creature and told he could not cross. He told the hi vis   he had to get his wife to hospital and would run him over if he tried to stop him.

He had noticed the raging water under the bridge but was determined to get to hospital.

Off he raced and cleared the bridge. It really was a raging torrent  but he had to do it.

later on in the day he tried to get back home and was prevented travelling on several roads and made a round trip to get as close as he could.

He finally realised how bad things were and arranged to stay in town.

When he finally arrived home a few days later the damage was extreme .His home contents were strewn about amongst the silt and water and years of accumulated books and furniture ruined.

His property was in one of the worst hit places and the water would have been as high as the ceiling.

His well had an upstand that had been snapped off and water was flowing freely across his property to the road. He asked council for help to no avail and eventually a company turned up and managed to stop the flow .

He was sent a big bill for the job which typified the approach of some following the flood. Make money out of the disaster. 

I am sure the firm could have easily waived the fee at such a stressful time.

To add to the pain he had many visits from looters who removed property at night and searched through all his house and sheds.

He is still having issues with councils which I will not expand on and has a massive cleanup job to do.

   

At least now there are some people rallying around to help him.

It's been a tough couple of years. 

 

Silly Season is here. 

I was going to refrain from commenting on the coming political three month decorating of corners and hedges and buildings with kiwibuilt structures championing a new round of  faces that hope to change the world.

Been through it all before and have to say it's quite frightening seeing your own moosh smiling at you as you commute around the village.

There's not much in the way of messages now , promises here and there but mainly a mug shot, some small some large, promoting the best angle that may induce a tick in your box.

There is scant material available to enable a  critique of the candidates but from what I have seen there is a thread that is unfortunate but goes with the times where it is hard to get smart people with a political nose to stand for office .

Listening to a candidate interviewed on local radio was indeed a concern as they were a current elected councillor and spoke with confidence but the substance was infused with all the common politician speak that  bureaucrats have managed to craftily vaccinate unsuspecting nodders with when sitting in carefully constructed meetings.

Once you pass through the chamber doors you are captured and like Hotel California you can go home whenever you like but the agendas will never leave.

It takes a special person to bridge the expanse between the guy paying and the monster gorging itself on easily extracted largesse.You have to keep your head and subject yourself to the pub test and the wife test to enable a rational  seat at the table.

That is only half the story.

I note a number of candidates known to me flashing their credentials like a roll of honour thinking that a doctorate or list of  outrageous achievements is the solution to successful political decision making. 

It's not.

Local Body politics has transformed in to a party influenced machine and the independent thinking that is required to achieve a logical approach to rate expenditure , has been expunged and replaced with social and race based approaches to the detriment of hard working ratepayers.

That is why the well meaning standing to make a difference wont.

Bridging the expanse calls for both life experience and a canny ability to sniff out the political wind that is guiding the call . It has become a very tricky track to walk , to weigh up who is fooling who and who is in the game for what.

That brings me to the key part of the jigsaw puzzle that  is possibly intentionally hidden so that the council machine can continue to grow , expand and spend.

Legislation.

Local Government is a creature of legislation. Many Acts to refer to to enable Houdini escapes from any situation .

Councillors need to have an understanding of the law so they can decipher the complicated papers crafted and presented to them meeting after meeting to convince them to vote for items that have been deliberated on in office huddles away from pesky politicians.

So budding politicians and even befuddled incumbents should show some acumen when it comes to law and political agendas.

It is not easy.        

       

The Rates Game

Glorious ratepayers have received the windowed envelope in the last few weeks.

The one that is such a joy to open. The one that makes one jump with excitement and smile uncontrollably.

Nervous fingers  rip the firmly stuck flap and expose the coloured sheet of details to behold.

Where does one start? 

It's a trick actually. They (you know, them that think up these puzzles) , they make sure there is a range of print size, a list ,explanations , highlighted passages  and a box here and there.

It always seems easy to find the penalty .If you don't pay on time you get slogged with another 10%.

Many befuddled ratepayers don't know that the legislation says a council can charge 'up to 10% penalty' but I have never seen one that chose a lesser figure. Even when interest rates dropped to levels where us slaves were able to breathe and put something extra in the shopping trundler , the bureaucrats would never draw the option to the attention of the compliant decision makers. It stayed at 10%.

However back to the sheet of delight.

Over the years government have allowed councils to have add ons. In other words more ways of extracting  cents from ill informed drones who never read the finer details and write the cheque with a 'whatever' .

The worst option given to Local Authorities was the ability to impose a Uniform Annual Charge.

What an opportunity to slip in a raft of options to raise more funds to spend unwisely.

Back to the rates. 

The recent storm , or Gabrielle, stirred up more than the mud and water. More than the problem of silt and where to put it.

The Council wallahs must have been doing overtime thinking how can we give the affected ratepayers all the help available but sneakily recuperate any expenditure when they are not looking.

The help of course was tremendous from some Councils that understood the gravity of the situation and remitted  rates for two years. It was of huge assistance but now the plan has been revealed.

Ha, ha. We have unlimited power . What we gave we will retrieve. 

The ratepayers that have clawed their way back to some sort of normality have now been slipped a charge for Gabrielle. Have they  charged everyone , every ratepayer with this levy? I hope so.

Spread the load. Especially when some of those affected were sacrificed to take the brunt of the event because of the historical planning for the Flood Control scheme.. In that case then they should not have to have the added burden of a levy at this time.  

The other aspect to this rates imposition is the question of valuations. The valuations used for the latest rates are the same as pre Gabrielle. My bank showed me a valuation recently that had reduced since the event.

It looks as though there is a desire to retain the value so they can extract as much rates as possible from the damaged area rather than go through an exercise that would adjust for the tragedy. 

The Councils therefore, have smiled and waved at us and then when we were heads down resurrecting  our mansions and swimming pools they pulled the rug.

I actually questioned the local MP about the valuations but no response .No understanding . No worry.

  

     

 

 

Confirmation of Thoughts

Sometimes it takes a long time to get to the bottom of issues.

At last I have found someone with the knowledge and years of experience to confirm what I have been thinking in relation to the disastrous results following Gabrielle.

It's such a complicated matter  and their are many threads to join together to enable some understanding of the engineering and the impact on infrastructure involved in trying to hold back nature and its power when it challenges our , what may seem to be pathetic , resistance measures.

What is apparent is the implications of the truth,  muddy the waters (see what I did there) and political considerations , responsibility  and arse covering come to the fore.

With the clarification of many details I now feel for the first time that there may well be a case for compensation for those affected by the flood. 

One wonders if the hurried settlement of red stickered properties had something to do with stemming any claims that may have emerged from the worst affected.

Trouble is ,with some time to reflect and analyze  we can expose the extent of what happened and if there is any culpability apparent.

My thoughts about loss of institutional knowledge and experienced personal from authorities has been confirmed .The value of long term involvement just cannot be denied. Even extending back to conversations by staff with residents who have witnessed historic events and can explain details about what occurred.

We have a situation where all this knowledge , along with engineering ,practical tasks and political decision making will never be able to gel in to a collective , positive , future tackling event because too many players are involved .

It will take years for our community to build again. May be it will be prevented from re establishing because of politics and bureacracy.

 

  

   

 

 People vs Fantasy

Or reality vs  modelling.

A situation is building behind the scenes but for now I note the friction and distance between the authority and the people.

People who have lived experience ie lived in an area for a long time and lived in so far as, been through a life time of  ups and downs , a life time of battling all types of weather conditions , are more knowledgeable than late comers and shiny arses that sit in air conditioned offices and postulate about what may happen in the future.

It's my broken record but it keeps reappearing as we build our way back to normality. 

Modelling will never reproduce the wisdom and wealth of a lifetimes experience.

I have discussed a situation with a flood recovering friend who stands to lose his property because of the madness infecting the department of  over reaction and 'do something at all costs' group that are immune to reason.

The rationale is that something must be seen to be done. Vast amounts of ratepayer money needs to be spent so that a report can be written and heads nod to a job well done.

It does not matter if the work carried out is a waste of time, a complete waste of resources and a totally irrational response to a disaster as long as there is a visual imprint on the records.

Something must be done.

There are now a host of properties that are going to be disrupted , dismembered, purchased, reconstructed and scarred for a lifetime because something must be seen to be done.

I hope this is a phase we are passing through but I have my doubts.

Logic and reason are failing in so many aspects of life and they may have gone out the window.

We may be left with modelling, AI and a surfeit of bullying and arrogance.  

       

 Texas , Nelson, Weather

Trying to absorb the news about flooding in Nelson Marlborough has been hard enough. So many similarities to Gabrielle and the stories reflect those of many friends locally.

What a gutsy lot are kiwis. Listening to farmers interviewed after being slammed by the event , here they are knuckling down and confronting the challenge after a few days reflection and time to let reality sink in.

Great to hear one farmer say they needed heaps of help but there was no point waiting for the Government.

He's right. You have to get on and start the battle. Shift the silt. Fix the fences .Look after the stock.

Life's a bitch at times.

It concerns me that again the sticker process kicks in smart quick.

Red , yellow, white. It is wrong. More analysis on this later.  

And Texas.

We thought we had it bad. Texas is another story. Walls of water 30ft and 40 ft high at the height of the flooding. Can you comprehend that?

My heart goes out to all those who have lost loved ones in a flash. Lives turned upside down .Families devastated .

Mother nature is all powerful.

It is pointless trying to compare the Texas situation with New Zealand. The geographic situations are different along with so many other factors.

The common factor is weather.

It is an opportunity for the non thinkers to point the finger at that nasty 'global warming'

Agendas galore.

What is needed is  more thought about what is really happening .Why is the weather behaving the way it is?

Recently I was thinking of  a period we went through in the nineties where we experienced a number of serious hail storms .

Humans lose their minds at times.

It is always tragic having to deal with major losses .I was involved in committees at the time. One of my friends was totally wiped out .Never recovered. 

The response to these weather events was to invest in hail cannons, hail netting and other innovative measures to prevent damage in the future. Every time a black cloud appeared there were cannons waking us up with their explosions and whines.   

What has happened?

We have experienced some hail in the years since but nothing like the smashing events back then .I don't know if hail cannons exist any longer. There is certainly plenty of hail netting about on the off chance.

The weather is constantly changing. Every year is different .There are patterns but nothing stays the same.

We live with nature.

Some understand , some don't. 

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