SUPER PAYDAYS ARE UNFAIR NOT SUPER

Many superannuitants are living payday to payday, and finding it difficult to manage. But if they were paid weekly instead of fortnightly they would find it much easier. And they would be getting paid more for nine months of the year.

Household bills arrive monthly and must be paid by certain dates, especially when there are discount-dates, and supermarket specials are issued weekly. But because New Zealand Superannuation is paid fortnightly there is a constant mismatch between income and expenditure.

If superannuitants work out what your monthly average is by dividing your annual total by twelve, you find that with fortnightly payments you are being paid below that monthly average for nine months of the year, and above it for only three--and those three good months are always a long way apart. This year, for example, the above-average months, the good months, are January, July and December. So there's five-month stretch to endure where you are below your monthly average. That situation is unfair and unjust because it makes it more difficult to manage--all because because the government and its bureaucracy cannot be bothered taking real human-beings and real life into account.

If superannuitants were paid weekly instead of fortnightly they would have a better, more even income, and there would be twice as many months in which their income was higher than their monthly average. For example, someone being paid $700 a fortnight would be getting a monthly average of $1517, if you divide the total for the year by twelve, but the actual monthly payments are $1400 for nine months of the year and $2100 for three of them. In 2013 those high months are only January, July and December. Therefore in
February, March, April, May, June, August, September, October and November the payments are $117 below the average, so there are long below-average stretches. But if that same person was paid weekly, the monthly income for January, April, July, October and December would be $1750, and the other months would be $1400, so there would be more above-average months and they would be closer together.

It would be much easier for elderly people to manage. But the Minister for Old Guys, Ancient Monuments, Greyheads and Other Advanced Specimens of Humanity (Hon. Jo Goodhew) and the CEO for the Ministry of Social Development claim that it would cost a fortune to change from paying superannuation fortnightly to weekly. But a brain-damaged earthworm with flat batteries and a spade through its gizzard could work out that it wouldn't cost anything to tell the super computer program to run twice as often. It runs weekly for the dole, so there's no reason it cannot do it for super. Or are unemployed bods worthy of the best treatment but wrinkly bods aren't?

If you agree, and want to put pressure on the government to do the right thing by superannuitants, please sign the petition

( http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/new-zealand-government-pay-superannuitants
-weekly-not-fortnightly-to-make-budgeting-easier ... is the address to cut and paste if the link doesn't work for some reason)

WAIHEKE'S ANTIPODES

Click here to find the exact antipodes of where you live.

Waiheke's exact antipodes is in Spain. The illustration shows the exact antipodes of the Oneroa Post Office, so if you dug straight down from there you would come out in the Spanish countryside.

To get to the antipodes of your place, zoom out on the Original Map, move it your country, then zoom it  and move it about till you have the red pointer right where you want it.

OPENING WALLETS WITH ZIPPY LINES

The really, really, really exciting headline in the New Zealand Herald announced with really, really, really breathless excitement that 'Ziplining is coming to Waiheke Island.' 

Wow!

What we have always called a flying fox is now being called a zipline. That makes it really, really, really new and really, really, really exciting. Double wow!

(For Wikipedia on ziplines, click here.)

What it means is that three flying-fox cableswill be defacing the Waiheke sky on Trig Hill, all so that three pairs of people can ride, side by side, 'over vineyards and down into native bush' (says the Herald).

EcoZip Adventures is the outfit that wants to make a buck out of this. 'EcoZip', which sounds like something that closes the fly in your natural pants, is yet another silly notion from the buckaroo brigade. Just put Eco in front of a dumb idea and expect everyone to bow down and flock to you with their wallets wide open, showering you with their bucks.

After the suckers have trundled along the flying fox EcoZipper says there will be guides to lead people on boardwalks and tracks through the bush to its flash new visitor centre. They will teach them about Waiheke. All that will take about an hour and a half, says EcoFly/Zip/Quickbuck.

The Zip blokes say that what they are creating is a chance for anyone to get up close and personal with our native bush, to reconnect with nature.

On a wire? On boardwalks?

Have they never heard of feet? Nothing can beat walking through the New Zealand bush on the leaf-mould. Certainly not three flying foxes for two, or boardwalks. Or Zippy off-islanders telling us all about Waiheke.

Those zippies are shooting us a line. Zip it, guys.

BOOK OF WAIHEKE STORIES PUBLISHED ON AMAZON

The full twenty-six episodes of the The Lower Deck, the over-the-top stories about Waiheke Island history, both real and unreal, can now be downloaded in a single click to your Kindle or PC from Amazon, for a mere $US2.99 (or its equivalent in the Euro, the UK pound, etc.)

Click here to go the right place in Amazon.

Episode 1 remains on the The Lower Deck blog as a free sample.

Enjoy...

AIRPORT! A DUBIOUS DISASTER MOVIE

Please! A Brit with a Dubai mentality buying up for 'development' our airstrip, the so-called Waiheke Airport. We need that elitist greed landing on Waiheke, right next to a beautiful regional park, and a quiet bush-clad village, like we need a dagger in the heart.

A Big Thanks to the careless Overseas Investment Office with its right-wing anti-community mentality for giving its blessing to the purchase.

And an even Bigger Thanks to Denis Musson who dreamed up the whole filthy-lucre scheme in the first place and hocked it off for millions.

'The love of money is the root of all evil.'

MY BOOKS AND STORIES PUBLISHED!

Over the years, both living on Waiheke Island and before I came here (and wish I had come much earlier in life), I have written a huge amount--millions of words of one sort or another--ranging from professional writing in information technology, business and science, to children's and adult fiction, to legal opinions, to local-body reports, to design descriptions, to blogs, etc., etc. The fiction has covered a very wide range, from fantasy to horror, from romance to humour, from metaphor and environmental activism to classic tales reminiscent of Hans Christian Andersen, the Brothers Grimm and Tolkien.

Some of my stories are very short, some are full-length books; they vary in length from a mere 360 words on one page to over 33,000 on 84 pages. But 360 words can be just as compelling as a much longer work. The length should be whatever it comes out to; it should fit the story. The 360-word work is a horror-story, whose brevity heightens the horror (and the black humour).

Creative Waiheke is of course an ideal environment for a writer, so they flourish here, but an unpublished writer is a perpetually frustrated being. And till now none of my stories have been published (on paper, I mean), either because I made no attempt, or as was the case with my first book, a fantasy written long ago called The Wing-Friends, because although the publishers liked it they declined it. They liked it because their reader, the famous Dorothy Butler, recommended it, but they did not think there was a big enough market in my native New Zealand to make it worth their while. The opinions of publishers are the bane of author's lives...

How many times in history have books been declined by publishers, or only published in very limited numbers, because publishers did not think they would be successful, but then were runaway best-sellers, never out of print? The Scarlet Pimpernel and The Lord of the Rings are two of myriads of examples. There must be many books that die in drawers and never see the light of day, but would be very successful if they were published.

To get round all that, the ideal is be your own publisher, but traditionally that has meant a large initial outlay because of the cost of a print-run and marketing. Print-on-demand publishing, in which copies are printed only when ordered, opened large cracks in that obstacle, but although the outlay was not anything like as large it was still not an easy road, especially if you had a number of works to publish.

In the past few days I have discovered, rather belatedly, to my chagrin, that Amazon has swept away all obstacles with free services, both ebook and print-on-demand. The ebooks are published via Kindle Direct Publishing; the print-on-demand are published via a part of the Amazon empire called CreateSpace. The Internet has radically changed the author's world. Yay! No longer do publishers have the whip hand, or any hand at all. Now the author is in charge, and has a direct line to readers. Which is how things should be. Chronic frustration can now be removed with a some uploading and a few clicks of a mouse.

So I have started publishing a number of my stories myself. The shorter ones are or will be in ebook format, for reading on an electronic reader or a computer. The longer ones will be in print-on-demand paperback format.

To find my stories go to Amazon and enter my name in the search box: Nobilangelo Ceramalus, or just Nobilangelo, or click on this link. As the days go more and more will be there. so far I have published seven ebooks. Soon I shall publish my first print-on-demand book, The Wing-Friends. I also plan to publish an environmental book, The Earth-Guard, via print-on-demand, as well as other things in both formats, about a dozen all together perhaps.

The exclamation mark at the end of the title of this posting is therefore an indication of my relief at being able at long last to get my stories out into the world where they belong.

I hope there will be people who will enjoy them.

PLAN TO ADVOCATE IS NOT TO PLAN TO DO

(A milestone: this is post number 200 in this blog)

The Waiheke Local Board has issued its Local Board Plan 2011 in the form of a beautiful glossy 44-page A4 booklet. The front cover is headed 'Local Board Plan 2011 - Your Voice for Your Community'. The back cover has the fine print: 'Auckland Council disclaims any liability whatsoever in connection with any action taken in reliance of [sic] this document or for any error, deficiency, flaw or omission contained in it. Adopted in October 2011.' The first error is 'reliance of', which should of course be 'reliance on'.

The aims presented in the booklet are laudable, so is the high quality of the presentation, but the fine print gives the game away, as does the constant interation in item after item of what the Board gives as its role: 'advocacy.'

That is of course its role in law--to be an advocate for the community (not, as it claims, to lead; in a democracy it is the people who lead)--but the strong impression one gets is that that the Council is in charge, not the people of Waiheke, that the best the Board can hope for is to shout through the door, and the best we can hope for is that our community will what is best for it. Or, more accurately, that we will not get the worst.

I hope they succeed, I hope we succeed, I hope Waiheke will remain Waiheke, despite the constant efforts of the greedy, the soul-less, the haters of all that is beautiful and true and good. The Board's booklet has its heart in the right place, but it is not being permitted to do much more than speak.

Should we be surprised? Of course not. When he turned our local-government world upside down and created a mammoth bureaucracy topped by a centralised council and a very powerful mayor Rodney Hide had the hide to say that he was 'putting local back into local government.'

As a Waihekean wisely observed, 'We vote for the people we hope will do the least harm.' In Rodney Hide we got the most.

Sorry, Mr Hide, you cannot get better local government from a powerful central body, remote from localities. Especially when the locality is way across the ocean.I an island is a place apart in body and mind. It should not be ruled by those it is separated from. That is against nature, against reason, against humanity.

Advocacy means a lot of shouting across the water. Shouting in hope. We should be doing.

Would that we had our own council again, or at very least one whose heart beats in tune with ours. A behemoth centred in a city has the heart of a city behemoth, not the heart of a small village-rural island. It can never have that. An island is separate physically; it should be governed separately.

The only good thing that came out of Hide's machinations is that we got rid of some evil bureaucrats in Auckland City Council. But we are still at the mercy of a glossy super-council. The best we can hope for is that it will be less merciless than the old lot. We got a fine booklet. Will we get the community to match?

I wish bureaucrats, and politicians (who are just bureaucrats who make speeches), would get it into their skulls that they are messing about with people's lives, not with little black marks on white stuff, even if it is glossy white stuff.

In summary. Much the same, but less evil than before. So far. 'The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.' We shall be vigilant, we shall always shout when we are being stomped on. We are Waihekeans. To live on an island is to protest against the big mainland, so shouting and being feisty is what we are. Would that we could be left to our own devices!

And that we had full control over our rates, instead of having only little bits of it parcelled out by others.

So 'advocate' is is. Loudly!

But that is not how it should be. The purpose of local government in New Zealand is defined and laid down in law, in section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002 :

10 Purpose of local government
The purpose of local government is--
(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and
(b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.

Decision-making, not advocacy-making. Action, not talk. Democratic and local, not remote. First and foremost by--and by the local community. Not first and foremost on behalf of. And even when it is on behalf of it is to be democratic and local. That is the law. Good, democratic law.

MULTIPLE MPs

Waiheke could hardly have done better in the election. For us MMP means multiple MPs. Three! Nikki got the seat and Jacinda and Denise got in on their party lists. So we get the whole political gamut: centre-right, centre-left and left. All we missed out was a man, or two, or three...

If competition really is all that its accolytes believe it to be, Waiheke can expect a good haul of the baubles of office.

But this article in Gulf News would not inspire anyone to put a bauble-box on lay-by.

EVIL BOATSHEDS

This 'poetic' infernal memo, a tizz about the fact that the historic boatsheds in Rocky Bay pre-dated the Resource Management Act 1991 and therefore never got resource-consents, must have got its wires crossed in some Supersilly teacup and fallen into my inbox by mistake. At the risk of being reported to the police and sent to Guantanamo Bay I am making it public (verbatim):

I wuz sitting in me dessk,
In me VERY IMPAWTINT Cownsilly jobb,
Werking for thuh Supersilly Megga,
An thinkking reel hard
How to mayk thuh wirld
Purrfict--
Spesshilly Whythuhheckee,
Whitch is fulla loonies
An kats wot woant herd--
Suddinnly I spotted that them
Ole bote shedds in Rockhead Bay
Aint got no Rise-sauce Consints.
Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggggghhhhh quoth I,
That's it.
I'll mayk them gett Saucy Consints
Then thuh wirld 'll be awlright
An I'll be thuh hero of thuh wirld
And thuh SuperSaver of Whythuhheckhee.

So I isshooed commahnds:
Get SAUCE CONSINts for them
Ole bote Sheddds
Aw thay'll bbee dimolished.
I leened back in me chair.
Fulla pride
At me clvverniss.

Then I hadda wunnerful thawt:
I betcha lotsa places on
Thatt isle of rebels nevver
Got SAUCE CONSINTS
(Coz they wuz bilt befaw 1991
When thuh Sauce COnsints ACT
CAyME IN,
But that don't madder)
SO NOW I'VE GOTTA CUNNING PLAN:
I'll ishoo SAucy commahns
To awl them Badd Ole Bildings
An I'LL DIMMOLISHh AWL thuh badd stuff.
YAY!!!
Dubble YAY!!!
I betcha thadd'll get riddovv
All thuh loonies
An all thuh madd kats
An all thuh feistee iddeeits,
Thenn the only peepills on Whythuhheckee
Will be thuh gwid wunns,
The besst wunns,
The Edyukated Clevver Wunns,
The only wunns wot can get
Evreethink rite,
The only wunns wot can spell--
LIKE MEE!!!

FREEDOM OF CHOICE

When we are free to choose
We are not free
From the consequences of our choice.

10,000 PAGEVIEWS!

To my astonishment Waiheke Notes is the most popular of my blogs (although because statistics were not counted by Blogger till May 2009 blogs that have been going far longer, such as EStar, may actually have had more).


But Waiheke Notes has just passed 10,000 pageviews--from the time that Blogger began counting in 2009, which was about two years from when this blog began in August 2007. To be precise, 10,008 as of this morning.

 
An even bigger surprise is where the readership is. As you can see from the map, America and Norway particularly stand out. So do France, The Netherlands, Lithuania and Russia. Even New Zealand ;-)  Along with the Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and the UK.

Thank you, readers.

If you like my odd sense of humour you may also like my other Waiheke-related blog, The Lower Deck.

THE GOOD LEADER

The great Chinese philosopher, Lao Tzu, said of leaders:

A leader is best
When people barely know he exists.
Not so good
When people obey and acclaim him.
Worse when they despise him.
Fail to honour people,
They fail to honour you.
But of a good leader,
Who talks little,
When his work is done,
His aim fulfilled,
The people will all say,
'We did it ourselves.'

FERRIES AT THE BOTTOM OF QUEEN STREET

All Waihekeans believe in ferries. We have to, we cannot do without them. They wand us from the Supersilly to our island paradise.

Which raises the subject of suitable names. Given what That Man said about dealing with us--that it was like trying to herd cats--it was very appropriate to call the first one Quickcat. There are no quicker cats than us, particularly when Orcland is trying to herd us somewhere we don't want to go. (And MEOW does mean the Moral Equivalent Of War.)

That underclaws the fact that we have a reputation for being feisty, which we are extremely proud of, so Feistycat would be a fitting addition to Fullers' Waiheke fleet.

But Fullers have yet to acknowledge our airy belief in ferries. They came close when they acquired a boat called Wand-erer. But for their next vessel they should admit the whole truth, and call it Tinkerbell.

Then as some unfortunate too-later sprints despairingly for a rapidly retreating gangplank, we could all call out in gleeful unison, 'Ask not for whom the Tinkerbell tolls. It tolls for thee!' (apologies to John Donne)

Or, if they want to be a tad more serious, and very Shakespearean, they could call it Titania.

THE SITTING MYSTERY

When a bird sits on a nest (a process they call nest-sitting) it produces chicks, which grow into birds.

There is also the simple modern system that has replaced all that old-fashioned nonsense called building, the process called house-sitting, which produces cabins, which grow into dwellings.

There is also of course truck-sitting, the system which results in the pitter-patter of little Fiats, which grow into all sorts of things, from Roll-Royces to Hummers, Toyotas and tanks.

However, no one has ever been able to discover what you have to sit on to produce politicians...

ACT ON A HIGH

Don Brash, the coup-leader of the ACT Party (he had replaced Rodney Hide in a party coup earlier in the year), and the former head of New Zealand's Reserve Bank, created a punster's paradise by coming out and brashly saying that he supports the decriminalisation of marijuana. John Banks, who is standing for the Epsom seat for ACT, later came out strongly against what the Beloved Leader had opined. All that at the same time as the international banking system was trying to prevent life as we know it melting down, and the ACT Party was close to zilch in the polls.

Brash ACT = bad act.
Brash leader of the ACT Potty.
Potty head.
Pot head of Potty Party.
Brash ACT = comedy skit.
Brash = comedy skite.
Brash gives comedy skit by putting pot on head.
Don Pot tilts at windmills.
Donning a pot.
Brash reveals bad potty training.
Brash fires loose pot.
'Weed dump anti-pot law,' says potty head.
Nothing but a big ACT.
Don puffs ACT into dreamland.
Marijuana oblivion for Don.
All smoke and no fire.
Brash cannabilises ACT.
A bud too far.
ACT's little buddy.
ACT--from a Hide to a high.
Banks struggle to stave off D fault.
Glib foulup crisis envelops Banks.
Don's pot protrudes in comedy ACT.
Epsom salts drain the Brash pot.

('Buds' according to a news report is a slang term for cannabis.)

Brian Rudman's take on it in the New Zealand Herald makes rich reading. The Herald's editorial also questioned Dr Brash's strange behaviour. So did another Herald columnist, Garth George.

SAY YES TO THE TINSEL GOOSE!

O goody! A marina! At Matiatia! Only a blockhead would oppose such a spiffing advance. It's jus wot we all need.

So stop griping on and on and saying it'll benefit only a few yachties. And mess up Matiatia.

Stop all that. Look at the big picture. Think! Doesn't your tender liddle heart bleed for all them poor Orcland yachties having to sail and sail and sail and sail for hours and hours and hours and hours before they can be where they want to be--out here in the Gulf.

But when all you gripers shut up, and stop stopping progress, they'll be able to have a hideously expensive berth at the glorious, brilliant, over-the-top, ever-so-wunnerful marina at Matiatia-- and then they'll be able to hop on Superflyte and be out here in only 35 minutes. Ever so much better than having to start from Westhaven or Half Moon Bay or some other dumb place made for inferior beings and do that long long slog every single time.

And we Waihekeans will have something to be proud of. Proud! We'll have created a special breed, a breed apart, the Matiatia breed. Super-Yachties!!! Won't that be wunnerful? Won't your liddle hearts swell to bursting every time you think of all the good we'll have done to the world?

And consider those poor bods, down to their last million farthings, who are going to build this wunnerful thing for us. Even their GG's are down to their last electronic platinum horseshoes. So they need lots more of them farthings. So let 'em get 'em. Wots good for them is good for everyone. Right? Of course!

OK, OK, OK, we'll have to poo permanently on our doorstep and mess up our nice little bay for ever. And the traffic and the parking down there will be even more horrendous. And stupid stuff like catching ferries will have to give way a tad. So it'll be a bit of a hobble on the ole transport hub. But you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Or have a windbreak to coddle yer yachts without breaking wind. So stop yer griping, all youse dummies.

It's totally obvious that Waiheke totally lacks taste. And with a marina it'll have it--at last! Because it'll be how it should be: MARINATED in a very rich source. Burp!!!

PITIFUL CENTRAL IN WALLY-VILLE

Brilliant! In a city of a million people, to which they had invited the whole world, they built a 'Party Central' that could hold only 12,000.

Why didn't any of those political geniuses ask themselves how a bath-full was going to cram itself into a thimble?

And why couldn't they see that their bright-'n-shiny Super Silly, newly built out of a Nat-picking mashup of  ideological Lego, would not fail to drop the party ball, collapse the party scrums and miss every goal on the fan-zone paddock?

If they were the All Blacks they wouldn't even be able to beat the team from Libya. Which doesn't have a team...

Party Central in a World-Class City? No: Pits Central in a Wally-Class Silly.

But they got the shape of that building right. A legless white elephant.

KERBING THE ACCIDENTS

O goody! Martin Reynolds, the manager for Downer Roading (of course he has no vested interest worth bothering your head about) has solved for all us dummies the problem of accidents on the island's roads. All we need is kerbing and channelling. For he says that if Te Toki Road had had it that errant bus would have stayed on the straight and narrow instead of trying to make a career change and become a bridge.

Please ignore the fact that Te Toki Road has more outrageous bumps per square millimetre than Gaddafi's face, that it does violent assault and battery to every vehicle that can overtake a snail, and that it has been like that since Cook came here in his Sealegs in 1769. Just pay a fortune (to Downers) to make it a clone of Auckland Silly.

Which of course never has a single accident.

Because it is stuffed full of kerbing and channelling.

If we paid enough rates to Mr Reynold's empire to get all our roads on over-the-top Downers we would all be on our uppers.

And the island instead of being its nice old charming rural self would look like Orc Land.

THE TRUTH ABOUT HAPPY FEET

The Happy Feet saga is really one of two things:

('Happy Feet' can be seen via this Google Search)

1) All the Emperor Penguins got together and had a hui about climate-change. They decided that because we'd messed up their environment they had to make a new penguin world. So their smartest bird volunteered to be the advance guard for a brilliant plan.

Step One was for him to swim a few thousand kilometres 'off course' and turn up on a beach in New Zealand (his grandfather did it in 1967 so he actually knew the way like the back of his flipper).

Step Two was to be make sure he was seen eating a lot of sand. The humans
fell for that one, called him Happy Feet (his real name is Superbrain) and
took him in VIP transport to get lots of TLC. When they'd pumped out the
sand they set him up in his own luxury quarters and chipped in to feed him
lashings of grade-one salmon.

Step Three was for Superbrain to become such a global heart-throb that the
stupid humans would be sucked into giving him a First Class ticket back to
his clan, so that he won't have so far to swim.

Step Four will be a penguin Twittering all over the Southern Ocean, then
every bird will click in to Superbrain's Google+ Circle to find out exactly what to do.

Step Five will be millions of Emperor Penguins on every New Zealand beach
eating sand then getting stuffed with salmon in the lap of luxury.

Step Six will be New Zealand having to sign a Treaty of Emperors in which
the foreshore and seabed are ceded to them birds. Otherwise they'll eat it
all and refuse to barf it back.

2) It's a metaphor for the capital-gains tax. If we eat sand now and put up with a bit of stomach-pumping we'll all live on salmon for ever.

BUSING ON AN EDUCATION PROMISE

The bureaucratic bullies who insist that Waiheke kids must pay for the
school bus and/or trek over hill and dale to catch one, have overlooked a
small matter of international law. New Zealand signed up long ago to the
International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights. Its Article
13 begins:

1 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise the right of everyone to education. They agree that education shall be directed to the full development of human personality and the sense of its dignity, and shall strengthen the respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. They further agree that education shall enable all persons to participate
effectively in a free society, promote understanding, tolerance and
friendship among all nations and all racial, ethnic or religious groups, and further activities of the United Nations for the mainenance of peace.

2 The States Parties to the present Covenant recognise that, with a view to achieving the full realisation of this right:

(a) Primary education shall be compulsory and free to all;
(b) Secondary education in its different forms, including technical and
vocational secondary education, shall be made generally available and
accessible to all by every appropriate means, and in particular by the
progressive introduction of free education;

Obviously to the bureaucrats 'free to all' and 'accessible to all' mean
something not found in any dictionary. Perhaps they couldn't pay for their
school buses, and never learnt to read.

BUSING BACKWARDS TO THE FUTURE II

Aha! I have worked out the true meaning of those flash new world-class
bus-shelters. They obviously have nothing to do with real human beings, so
it is tempting to think they were beamed down on a shonky circuit from some
intergalactic thunk-tank, thus proving that extra-terrestrials do exist, but have no intelligence.

But, no, their real purpose is to show us that Auckland is designing its
flash new world-class city for extra-terrestrial non-intelligence; a place
no one human would want to be--especially when it rains. Today the non-human bus-shelters, tomorrow the city. Thanks for the warning.

STOP THE BUS--IT'S HOLEY PROGRESS

'Design is thinking made visible.' Whoever designed the new 'bus-shelter' at the stop opposite the Red Cross had thinking that was so brilliant that it had nothing to do with the real world. But if you are brilliant you do not need to let reality get in the way of spending ratepayers' money...

First the seat in it is so brilliant that it does not use the full width. It goes only two-thirds of the way across, so it cannot accommodate more than a couple of people--or three very friendly ones. So all that brilliance does very few people any sheltering good.

But it is far more brilliant than that. Because it is so brilliant that it
faces into the teeth of the prevailing wind, and unlike the old shelter it
is so brilliant that it has no half-wall in front to block out as much wind and rain as possible.

Its brilliance goes even further. Because the three walls that the brilliant minds have put there are metal, brilliantly perforated with zillions of holes. Obviously to allow the wind and rain to come through from all four sides.

After all, where is it written that a bus-shelter should actually shelter
people while they wait for a bus?

Then it has a brilliant, expensive sign 'All buses stop here.' That is what a bus-stop is, surely?

It is also very brilliant at spending the maximum amount of money. OK, they could have used platinum, so they missed out on being super-brilliant, but they did pretty well despite that handicap. First they laid some expensive concrete--pink concrete, as nature intended. Footpaths cost $422 a metre, so there must be well over $1000 in concrete under the brilliant new bus-stop. Then there is all that expensive powder-coated steel--except for all the places where there are expensive holes in it to let the wind and rain in. And steel strong enough to stop the Titanic from sinking.

Why all that brilliance? The only 'reason' that can spring to mind is a
bladder. No, not the one that needs emptying several times a day into a
china receptacle in a small room (or into the back garden down in the Garden City in Rockjelly Island). No, this is the one that thirty blokes hoof round special paddocks. For a thingy called the Holed Cap. That might be a spelling mistake. But it's something like that. Wold Cup? Whirled Cop? Whatever it is it needs brilliant bus-shelters that shelter no one.
Otherwise bods from other places might larf at us.

Which means that that 'bus-shelter' is actually a brilliant monument to my
one-word joke: Progress!

The shiny new Auckland Council thinks it can design a wunnerful world-class city. It cannot even design a bus-shelter.

TRAFFIC LIGHTS! YAY!

So it has been suggested by an Island Leader that we install traffic-lights because of the extra traffic that will be generated by the Wunnerful Merger Of The Library & The Service Centre at the top of Oneroa. The very first traffic lights on village-rural Waiheke Island!

What a brilliant idea! This fuddy-duddy piece of rock has resisted up-to-date change for too long. We should be in the twenty-first century, with all the civic goodies, and all its mod-cons. With the emphasis on cons.

But one set of traffic-lights is not enough. We need them on every corner. It doesn't matter if your street only gets one car a day, or a week, or a year, it needs lights on the corner. Think of all the accidents that would be prevented. If you are so mean-spirited that you think it would be a colossal waste of money, and time, and fuel and patience a gadzillion times a day, think again. Isn't human life worth anything to you? Even if it only saved one life in a thousand years that would be enough. It might be yours.

But people might be killed crossing the street at other places. So we need lights in the middle too. Every corner, and every middle. And twenty middles for long streets. Aaah! Think of what a wunnerful island we would have them!

So, please, Island Leader, give us modernity, warp us willy-nilly into the civic mould, give us all them 21st-century mod-cons. Lotsa cons, that's what we need. Bring on them lights. Please!

And on top of the advantage of being made gloriously full up with civic cons, and thus no longer looking like a Rock of Backward Hicks, a zillion traffic-lights will look so totally pretty! Red, amber, green, and wasp-striped poles. Aaaaah! It makes you go weak at the knees just thinking about it! A visual treat! Better than all those boring trees (ditto those yucky iconic baches that can't stay on their hillsides after some flash new neighbour messes with the drainage).

So get with it, Waihekeans! Start a riot in the streets. March up and down and yell and scream and shout: 'We want traffic-lights everywhere!'

;-)

CAMERA THE BARRICADES

I am told that a newly-elected member of the Waiheke Local Board has come up with an absolutely brilliant idea. Perhaps he got it from his dog. He suggests having security cameras at Matiatia and Kennedy Point watching out for Undesirables.

Of course, like all new ideas, it needs a bit of fine-tuning to work off the rough edges. Or should that be ruff-ruff edges? I dunno. But whatever the edges, there also needs to be a link from them cameras to some of that high-tech face-recognition software, with a bit of artificial intelligence thrown in--i.e., the sort of intelligence made in the Beehive. Usually in Bellamy's on the late-night shift.

Then it would really be able to recognise Undesirables. It would spot them in nanoseconds. They would look like bods who'd been marinating in Bellamy's.

But spotting them would obviously not be enough. Which is where we take a leaf out of Dr Who's book. Sort of. Because we get some of those Dalek bods--those giant pepper-pots that glide about at a malevolent rate of knots, and have inside them beings that look like a cross between the brain of a sheep and a tin of Watties spaghetti, and keep saying 'Exterminate! Exterminate!' in cracked voices and firing off their ray-guns at Undesirables.

We would of course recycle all the zapped Undesirables through the compost. Waste not, want not!

But the idea could be extended. We could do all that extermination stuff over in the city and at Half Moon Bay. Bump them off before they get on the boats. That would save a lot of diesel (we have to think of Fullers now that they're on the Board). And it would keep the island tidy. Undesirable corpses are so messy.

But we could extend the idea even further (and save even more diesel!) by getting Junk to Funk to modify some Daleks to attend to the Desirables--i.e., the bods who come across here and spend lotsa lovely money. Our Waiheke-Modded Daleks would reach into those Very Desirable Pockets and steal all their money *before* they got on the boats.

Then they wouldn't be able to afford to come, and would have go home sadder and wiser bods, but we would still get their money, which is all we want, without having to suffer their litter all over the place, their cars mashing our roads and their wastewater clogging our loos.

It just shows what can be done with a really brilliant idea.

Roll them cameras! Exterminate! Exterminate!

BIG BUSINESS NOT THE COMMUNITY

Jim Hannan said that the majority on the Waiheke Local Board installed Jo Holmes as Deputy Chair because she is a businesswoman.

And when she was sworn in, she swore, as everyone elected to a local-government position must, to act in the best interests of the Waiheke Community. But the heavy-duty item in her business record belies her promise.

Several years ago she founded a newspaper on the island, Waiheke Marketplace, which did well, deservedly, and went from being just a wrapper round a lot of real-estate advertising to being a community newspaper worthy of the name.

But then, for private gain, she sold it to big business, to a multinational, to the Fairfax empire, an outfit alien to a village-rural community and alien to Waiheke. The paper is now just another of Fairfax's vast empire of suburban newspapers.

That was certainly not a deal that was in the best interests of the Waiheke Community.

It is just as well that we also have a real community newspaper: Gulf News. It is owned and run by an islander for islanders, its roots are deep in the island's bedrock, and it is deep in the hearts of all Waihekeans worthy of the name.

'Marketplace' turns out to have been the right name, and harbinger of its ultimate fate; for its fundamental concern was the eye-for-the-main-chance market not the caring community.

SWEARING-IN MOVIE

The movie version of the swearing-in meeting on the 6th of November is now in pre-production.

It is to be called Saturday Afternoon in Dodgy City.

;-)

SUPERSILLY BOARD NUMERO UNO

So now we have our first Supersilly Board.

And what a fun show it was! The in-crowd was sworn in to much swearing from the memorable crowd that crowded in to the Memorial Hall. And crowded round the much-applauded. And crowded out the doors to the much-less-applauded.

So now, as that old cartoon show used to say at the end of each programme: 'Listen next week for the next exciting episode of Felix the Cat.' On the island famous for being full of cats who refuse to be herded. Because they want to be heard.

POWER-HUNGRY SPIN IS NOT DEMOCRACY

In letters to Waiheke Marketplace (whose editor has unfortunately decided to be strongly partisan towards her former boss) Faye Storer, Jo Holmes, Don McKenzie and Jim Hannan attempted to justify appointing Faye as chair of the Waiheke Local Board rather than Denise Roche, whose 2239 votes were far ahead of Faye's 1849. Their spin ignores the facts and the law, and therefore abdicates their duty to the community.

In Faye's letter she claimed that the 4:1 vote to install her as chair was 'democracy.' Bunkum! 'Democracy' comes from 'demos', which means 'people'. A 4:1 vote is not the voice of the people, it is just a majority amongst five individuals.

The democratic point is heavily underlined in law by section 14 of the Local
Government Act 2002 (LGA2002), which lays down the principles by which local government must be conducted. Section 14 opens with: '(1) In performing its
role, a local authority must act in accordance with the following principles: (a) a local authority should--(i) conduct its business in an open, transparent, and democratically accountable manner;' and '(b) a local authority should make itself aware of, and should have regard to, the views
of all of its communities.'

'Open, transparent and democratically accountable' means accountable to the
community--and nothing else. It does not mean 'accountable' to the mutual back-slapping of a cabal. It means true democracy, the democracy of the electorate--not just getting the numbers amongst those elected then sticking on a 'democracy' label to make it look kosher.

Board members are not there to express their opinions, especially partisan ones. They are there to represent the community, to re-present its will within the context of democratic statute. If they fail to uphold 'democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, the community'--underline 'the community' in red--they can be haled into court under the LGA2002 and fined up to $5000.

Decisions on the Board should be made according to the community and democratic statute, not dogmatic, self-serving opinion driven by a lust for power. 'Robust' party dogma does not establish democratic facts. The will of the people does.

Jim's claim to have the support of the centre-right for the 4:1 vote by The Four, and his obvious notion that the island wants a centre-right board, is so much self-serving assertive garbage. If he researched and analysed the election result instead of thinking that he can create facts with 'robust' assertions he would see that the centre-left vote comfortably exceeds the centre-right total. By about 8%.

On top of that if you add Denise's vote to Faye's, then reckon Denise's margin of that total, it comes out at just under 10%. That is about 25% more than the margin of left over right across the whole community, which shows that the extra strength of Denise's support is personal not political.

The vote at the election was split and dispersed by a large field of candidates, which was overwhelmingly dominated by the centre-left. The centre-right cannily concentrated on a few candidates, mostly under one banner. Clever, but they cannot claim a mandate. Waiheke is a predominantly a people-place not a power-place.

The specious arguments by The Four are also contradictory. They said they voted for Faye because of her experience as a councillor and Board member, although Denise also has both. Then they voted for Jo as Deputy, who has no experience at all. Convenient arguments to try to justify the unjustifiable.

But even if Jim were right about a shift to centre-right on Waiheke it is a great pity that the left-right tribal argument has sullied the island's local government. The only party that counts is the community. Candidates, successful and unsuccessful, should be not be right-wing, left-wing, tail-feathers or beak. Just Waihekeans. Anything else is dishonest and grossly anti-community. If you love wings stay off the Board. Go to MacDonalds.

Being impartial is not only good morally, and best for the community. It is also the law, because it is the oath of office in all local-government elected positions.

The 4:1-elect do not get it. You are not elected to positions of power. You are elected to positions of representation, bounded by statute. You are there to re-present the will of the local community in accordance with the will of the national community expressed in the heart of democratic statute. That is your job. Get it! And do it.

Two candidates put themselves forward for the position of chair. One has the
confidence of 2239 people in the Waiheke community, the other has the confidence of 1845. It is glaringly obvious, under the democratic principle, who should be the chair and the deputy.

To the Gang of Four: ignore the community at your peril!

COMMUNITY DEMOCRACY OR PARTY-POLITICS?

On the 6th of November the newly-elected members of the Waiheke Local Board will be sworn in. Before the whole of the Waiheke Community they will make a promise, a morally- and legally-binding promise. Each will promise 'faithfully and impartially, and according to the best of my skill and judgement, to execute and perform, in the best interests of Waiheke, the powers, authorities, and duties vested in, or imposed upon, me member of the Waiheke Local Board by virtue of the Local Government Act 2002, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, or any other Act.'

First up is 'faithfully and impartially'--two words bound together by 'and', which means they operate together, so the faithfulness of Members must be impartial and their impartiality must be faithful. 'Impartial' means, amongst other things, that they must never operate in any way that has any allegiance and owes any obedience' to any party. In that job there is only one party: the Waiheke Community. One party, the community; one friend, the community. And count no one as an enemy. Impartial.

The Local Government Act 2002 (LGA2002) is a huge Act, with hundreds of sections, but it is perfectly summed up in the forty words of section 10: 'The purpose of local government is--(a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of, communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

*Community* democracy and the four well-beings. That is every Board Member's
job-description, that is what they must, above all, be faithful and impartial to.

If they are faithful to their oath of office, faithful to section 10 of the LGA2002, and faithful to the truth, they cannot fail to be faithful to the Waiheke Community. If they fail in any of those they will fail it.

They should start being faithful and impartial by voting in Denise Roche as Chair of the Board. The strong whisper is that because most the Board are National supporters they will be voting along party lines, and therefore that she will not get the nod. She should. She has been a hard-working, vigilant Councillor. She has proved herself. She has the experience. And she won far more votes from the community that anyone else--her 2239 is well ahead of the others on their 1845, 1646, 1378 and 1361. For the rest of the Board to vote anyone else into that position will be an abject failure of impartiality and an abject failure of democracy. They will have listened to the will of a political party over the will of the people in the Waiheke
Community.

Thus, only minutes after promising to be faithful and impartial, and to operate according to the LGA2002, which means section 10, they will have failed to keep their promise.

Like everyone in local government they should always remember that failure to comply with the LGA2002 is defined by it as an offence, and that if they commit that offence anyone can hale them into the District Court. If found guilty they will be fined up to $5000.

--

Nobilangelo Ceramalus,
Member of the Waiheke Community Board.

..................................................................

Postscripts (not part of the letter).

I am told, although I have not checked it, that the new super-shiny WLB will not have a budget. Unlike the departing WCB, which had, over the three years, about half the million within its decision-making powers, the new thingy will have nothing, not even a SLIPs budget. Worth doing some meaty investigative journalism on... I'd like to see Len Brown's and Doug McKay's comments on that. If the WLB has no money under its decision-making powers, what power will it have?

They should have had that joint WCB-WLB meeting open to the community. It was a very good meeting, which the community would have benefitted by seeing. Too much of what we do is invisible. Then when it comes to an election people vote without having much idea of what we do, and vote in people who are not suitable. Even handicapped to the point where they cannot do the job.

WAIHEKE'S CRIPPLED LOCAL BOARD

Please! A Board of only three!

One of the two men elected to the Waiheke Community's Local Board, Jim Hannan, Fullers' man, is dogmatically adamant that he can work fulltime for Fullers and also be a Member of the Board. Rubbish! Being a Board Member is a fulltime job. If he actually tries to do both jobs, conscientiously, he will kill himself. Otherwise he will be cheating the community.'No man can serve two masters.' His poor judgement is evidenced by his being so adamant that he can--regardless of fact and reason.

Just wading through the email from council officers can take all day. His poor judgement is also evidenced by his electioneering promise of jobs. He will be a Member of the Local Board, an enitity that in law is not allowed to employ people, and does not have the power to create employment. His promise is all sizzle and no steak.

The other man elected, Don McKenzie, is a very nice man, and very able to the extent that his blindness allows, but it is impossible to do that job without eyes, whatever he and his friends might claim.

Site-visits, for example, are impossible without sight. Just in the recent weeks I have done on three on behalf of the community. One was to see whether the community had got value for money in the restoration of the Pioneer Cemetery. Was it a job well done, or not? That was the last of three visits to it to oversee and discuss the project. A blind man could have done none of them. Nor could he judged and voted from the photos shown to other Board Members.

Another site-visit meant going to evaluate 8 hectares of forest and bush that the Council was considering buying. Getting there meant going along tracks, some too narrow for a man and a guide-dog, and crossing a small swamp on narrow, loose boards. Seeing it and judging it, seeing the magnificent 270-degree view, and arriving at a decision would all be impossible without eyes. The effect on me would have been no different to walking down my front path.

The job needs eyes in many necessary aspects of the job--studying charts, graphs, diagrams, drawings, slides and videos, reading and comparing many thousands of pages of written material on paper and on the Net, including hand-written material, and closely following what is on screen during Board meetings. Anyone who cannot see any of that has to rely on the skill and judgement of others, which means it is impossible for him to be true to the oath of office he must make on the 6th of November--his statutory promise to do the job to the best of his own skill and judgement. For him, in all the places where eyes are needed, he will have rely completely on the skill and judgement of the others, which makes them de facto Board
Members, unelected.

A guide-dog is useless in the labyrinth of local-government decision-making. A dog cannot read.

And software that can turn computer text into speech is useless in the face of handwritten material and any words that are not in text format. If the format is a scan or a photo that software is helpless.

Congratulations to the three. But you will have to work even harder than you should have to, to compensate for two handicapped men, one handicapped by a chronic lack of time and demonstrably poor judgement, the other by a very restrictive disability.

The 1300-odd people who voted for the two men obviously do not know, or do not care, what that job is.

Party-voting for local-government positions is very stupid. It is also way out of kilter with the law, because successful candidates must at their swearing-in promise to be impartial. Party-politics do not belong in local government. 'Vision Waiheke', the ticket the two men stood on, was just a National Party front; their claim to be independent was flim-flam. The Waiheke Community must now live for the three years with the consequences.


----

Footnote: Waiheke Marketplace claimed in a front-page story by the editor, George Gardner, that the new Board is centre-right, a swing from the far left of the existing Board. Where did George get that nonsense? Three members are right-wing: Tony Sears, Herb Romaniuk and Ray Ericson. Denise Roche is on the left. Eileen Evans would be centre-left. I, as I said in my election leaflet in 2007 am not left-wing, right-wing, tail-feathers or beak. I make decisions on the facts, not on some party-ideology. Only fools do that. So on balance, if you want to put a stupid wing-label on the present Board, it would be centre-right. Certainly not far left. Not left at all. And a much better Board than the new one.

HIDE THE EXPERT ORGANISER!

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise his own party but thinks he can organise Auckland.

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise five people, including himself, but thinks he can organise 1.5 million people.

Rodney Hide, the man who cannot organise a tin-pot party of right-wing extremists but thinks he can get right the biggest local-government re-organisation ever attempted in Australasia, a re-organisation of a type that AUT says has never been
attempted anywhere, ever.

Rodney Hide, the man who admits that he did not think through to the human consequences of soliciting into his party a man who had as a 'prank' stolen the identity of a dead baby, but who thinks he can organise the lives of a third of New
Zealanders.

Rodney Hide, the man who ALWAYS tells the truth to the nation...

Rodney Hide, the Mincer of Local Government.

The word hyprocrite comes from an Ancient Greek word, which means actor. Traditional image to represent theatre is a pair of masks, behind which the actor hides himself as he assumed an acted persona. The ACT Party is led by a man called Hide. I do like God's sense of humour.

-------------

Did Waiheke jump joyously into the Super Silly or were we pushed by the thick Mr Hide?

Rodney Hide, the man whose accolytes seriously think that Waiheke, a small village-rural community, belongs with the huge maelstrom of the CBD of New Zealand's biggest city, and manage by plastering over the rule of law with egregious lies to make that outrageous shotgun marriage look as if it fits the rule of democratic law.

It was nothing but the age-old lust for territory, dressed up. A wolf in sheep's clothing.

Section 10 of the Local Government Act 2002 says, 'The purpose of local government is (a) to enable democratic local decision-making and action by, and on behalf of communities; and (b) to promote the social, economic, environmental, and cultural well-being of communities, in the present and for the future.'

'When men cannot change things, they change words.' -- Roman proverb.

TELECOM REX ON WAIHEKE

So King Telecom is telling Waiheke that it is too much of a skinflint to upgrade our 372 exchange so that the entire community can have from it all the modern telecommunication goodies that other communities have.

It is saying that if you want all the wunnerful stuff you have to be moved to a 371 exchange. Thus with the stroke of an arrogant executive pen Telecom Scrooge has removed two of the things that identify us, things we have in common--the iconic fact that for all our telecommunications we all have the unique prefix that means Waiheke, and our friendly habit of quoting to each other only the four digits personal to us.

There was no need for another prefix. The 372 prefix provides 10,000 numbers, and there are oodles left.

Telecom has thus made 372 Waihekeans second-class telecommunications citizens. For first class service you have to be something else. All because it is too bean-counting mean to make 372 a first-class exchange.

Good ole Telecom Rex!

BEWARE OF TEENAGE RIPPLES

Many years ago in Amsterdam a little boy poked out his tongue one winter's day and touched the iron railing of a bridge. It froze to it and stuck. The fireman had to come and carefully thaw out the joint to get him loose. The newspapers reported the incident, and next day there were dozens of little boys all over Amsterdam with their tongues stuck to bridges.

My case has shown two teenagers on Waiheke Island that they can lie to the police and the court and get away with it, and by that means get an adult into very serious hot water. They can make a false allegation and make it stick, and that the police prosecutor has skilfully shown them how to present themselves in court to achieve that. They have received a malignant education.

Therefore adults on Waiheke are now vulnerable to any teenager with grudge. All he or she needs to do is arrange things so that the target adult is alone with two or more of them, then agree on a story of a criminal act, and the adult is on his or her way to a guilty verdict and possibly a jail sentence.

The teenage grapevine never sleeps, so that How To is bound to get round those who have little interest in telling the truth, care nothing for the harm they do to the lives of others, and have a score to settle.

The recent case where a New Zealand teenager was found guilty of burning the mother of her former boyfriend to death by setting fire to her house because she wanted to get back at him is an extreme example of the same thing.

For adults, particularly on Waiheke, the moral of my story is before you allow yourself to be alone with a couple of teenagers study their shoulders. If there is a chip on them aimed at you, beware! And if you find yourself alone with them, avoid creating even the smallest chip. The court has given them the whip hand.

The Law of Unintended Consequences can be a harsh and terrifying law.