Featured post

ROCKY BAY NEVER WAS OMIHA

A Waiheke Island Myth Part 1 On Waiheke Island, New Zealand, a myth has grown up among a handful of people in the Rocky Bay Village th...

Thursday 7 September 2017

FACEBUNK RULES THE BOARD!

[Recent News Item: The Waiheke Local Board decided not to support making Rocky Bay the official name of the village by having the New Zealand Geographic Board gazette it, giving as its reason a poll it ran on Facebook.]

Facebunk Rules! OK!
--------------------------

Oh goody! Progress! Stupendous progress! All de people-problems of the world is solved!

Yup! De Waiheke Local Board has shown duh way. Ev'ry democratic difficulty is now de thing of de
past. Yay! Triple yay!!!

The silly ole law wants community consultation, democracy and all dat stuff. But dat's a chore anna
bore and such a tedious waste uv time. Who needs it!?

Not us, not we de Waiheke Local Board. For we has duh new way. We has a wunnerful replacement for dat dumb consultation thingy.

Yes, we has. We jus' conduct a Facebunk poll. A Facebunk poll! Yes, den we knows for sure and sure
and sure what de community thinks and wishes its liddle heart for.

Doesn't matter two hoots dat enny bod on de planet, all de way out to Alpha Centauri, can use de
Facebunk poll, and dat dat's a tad or five past our bailiwick, and dat we can't check dem Liddle
Green Men 'gainst de local electoral roll.

We doesn't care about pesky details like dat. We jus' quote de Facebunk numbers and sign our
hieroglyphics on dem and it all looks all kosher. Yeah! Right!

Facebunk! Mush better than a bit uv silver on da palm of some ole gypsy in a tent. Yeah!

Democracy by Facebunk. Brilliant! Next we'll get Pallymunt to replace elections with Facebunk--and
it'll be Pollymunt! Yay! Duh Waiheke Local Board! Leading de way into de stun age!!! Hit 'em with
Facebunk. They'll never know the deference. Yeah!

Thursday 27 July 2017

ROCKY BAY THE TRUTH IN BRIEF

To set the Rocky Bay record straight with true documentary provenance for those who may have been
misled by false assumptions, or misinformation, or mischievous stories, the original Maori name of
the land that became the Rocky Bay Village was Kuakarau (spelt Kauakarau in those days). It was a
subdivision of what had been a block of Maori land called the Kuakarau Block, Block 342, plus a tiny  bit of the Whakanewha Block in the southeast corner (see the map).


'Rocky Bay' as the name of the smallish bay where boats now bob on swing moorings first appears on a  Maori Land Court map dated 1865, and is affirmed on a Crown map dating from 1877.

When the village above Rocky Bay was formed placenames were only legal and official if they were
assigned by the Governor-General on behalf of the then Monarch, King George VI.

But 'Kuakarau' and 'Rocky Bay' were ignored by the two Europeans who subdivided the Kuakarau part of their farm. Instead, for marketing purposes, and without Royal authority, they deployed 'Omiha Bay' and 'Omiha'. And although they were 100% European they covered their marketing prospectus with Maori symbolism, which they had no blood right to.

The Maori Land Court map of 1865 accompanied a successful claim by three Maori men to
joint-ownership of the Kuakarau Block, its official name. They listed their genealogies, which the
Court carefully recorded. Nowhere is there any mention of an 'Omiha' or any name anything like it.
It was never the original Maori name; it has never been the official name; it is listed as 'Not
official' on the New Zealand Geographic Board's gazetteer.

See this blog for more details and other documentation. 

Wednesday 15 February 2017

BORED CHICANERY

Chicanery by those in positions of power is so boring. So predictable. So pointless. So wicked. When such people use rhetoric, or vanity of title, or overbearing character, or loud voice, or procedural diversion, or some other trickery to evade the truth and keep to paths of falsehood that have become habit in someone to whom they tug the forelock--when that is so they are not worthy of a public position, for they have betrayed the trust of those who voted for them.

A case in a point is a presentation made in the Public Forum segment to the Waiheke Local Board at its first meeting of 2017, At least it was meant to be a presentation, but it was very soon apparent to the chairman that the presentation was running swiftly towards the facts, and had already exposed a situation that was, very obviously, too obviously, a threat to public safety. As well as being very bad manners and chronically inconvenient to people. But he did not want those facts to be aired in public, he did not want anything to be done to correct the ill-mannered, inconvenient and dangerous situation--a situation whose constant potential was to be fatal.

So what did the chairman immediately the presentation began to expose the public danger? Under the gaze of everyone in the public gallery, he interrupted, he stopped the presentation, by very cleverly asking the presenter what he wanted. The answer from the presenter was that he wanted a resolution that would be presented to a government entity, a resolution supporting the permanent correction of the rude, inconvenient and dangerous situation.

'Under standing orders,' the chairman said, 'we cannot make a resolution based on a presentation made in the Public Forum.' Very, very clever.

If he had been honest he would have said to the presenter, 'Please present us with all the facts so that the whole board is fully informed, in public, so that the public is also informed, then with your assistance, keeping to standing orders, we can formulate a resolution that will correct the wrong situation. We want to act in the best interests of the community, as we are sworn to do.' That would have been honest.

But to cover his dishonesty before the public gallery he asked the presenter if he would meet with him the following week to present the facts. The presenter, innocent as the lamb led to the slaughter, agreed. 'Any time that suits you,' he said.

He was, by serendipity, tripped up, because the very next presenter, by nice coincidence, supported the danger that the first presenter had exposed. But that was ignored. Of course. The first presenter, whose case had just been proved, was not invited back. Because there was going to be a meeting with the chairman, wasn't there? Wasn't there?

But the following week came and went, but without a meeting, without the slightest contact from the chairman--not directly, not through the Relationship Manager from the Council. So the presenter asked, by email to the Relationship Manager, when the meeting would be. He was told that it would be on Tuesday the following week, and to name the time that suited. He did. But on Monday the meeting was cancelled, by email. The chairman told him the meeting was not necessary, because the Local Board had had a workshop the previous Friday and it had decided to do nothing. (None of those email communications were done directly by the chairman, it was all through the Relationship Manager at Auckland Council.)

So the Local Board, which had not had the facts presented, had managed to have a 'workshop' to make a decision. But why let the facts get in the way of a perfectly uniformed decision????????? A Local Board is a quasi-judicial body. Not being interested in the facts has nothing whatever to do with justice ('justice' comes from the Latin 'ius,' which means 'right'

All elected members of local bodies must under the Local Government Act 2002 swear this oath of office, swear it and sign it:

'I, AB, declare that I will faithfully and impartially, and according to the best of my skill and judgment, execute and perform, in the best interests of [region or district], the powers, authorities, and duties vested in, or imposed upon, me as [mayor or chairperson or member] of the [local authority] by virtue of the Local Government Act 2002, the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act 1987, or any other Act
Dated at: [place, date]
Signature:
Signed in the presence of:
CD, [mayor or chairperson or member or chief executive of local authority]'.

To suppress and evade the facts and make decisions in a factual vacuum is not faithful, and is not impartial, and has nothing to do with best skill and judgement. And failing to take the simple action needed to end a situation which at worst would be fatal is certainly not in the best interests of the community. Nor is it in accordance with any other Act, in particular the great ones that enshrine the immeasurable rights and freedoms on which New Zealand is founded and based. It does not, for example, fulfil the solemn promise made to us all in statute that 'we will not deny or defer, to any man, either justice or right', or the strictures to do all things according to due process of law, and that anything not done accordingly 'shall be void in law and holden for error.'

All those statutes had been brought to the attention of the chairman in 2016 so he cannot plead ignorance of the greatest statutes encompassed by his oath to adhere to 'any other Act.'

Those who wilfully fail to fulfil their oath of office have turned it into a lie. They have betrayed their duty to their community and to the best of the laws that govern us--and laid themselves wide open to some form of legal action to force them back to the straight and narrow. The only language they should ever speak is the truth, strongly, boldly, without hesitation. For that alone is impartial, that alone is public service. They should never sully their mouths, their thoughts, their actions with weasel-words, which are words so adulterated with wastewater that they stink to high heaven. (Note that the chairman alone went out of his way to swear his oath of office on the Holy Bible). They should stand strong for their community, especially when the situation has dangerous potential; milk-and-water spinelessness must be rejected. In this matter they failed. Abjectly.

Thursday 5 January 2017

START PANICKING!

START PANICKING!
I am very, very, very worried. Because of the glowing articles about Waiheke in Lonely Planet and
other places that should have kept their big mouths shut, and because so many people are leaving
America to escape Donald Trump and Britain to escape Brexit and everywhere else to escape
climate-change, the island is being deluged with alien bodies and alien vehicles.

As a result it is sinking. I have been taking precise measurements, and on the busiest days, when
the island was alien flesh and metal from one end to the other, it was an astonishing 10 metres
lower.

I felt the supermarket shaking, so our bit of the Earth's crust is definitely being deformed  far
faster and more violently than that old myth called the rule of law.

So two imminent disasters are staring Waihekeans in the facials. Either the tonnage of alien flesh
and alien cars will suddenly be too much and the island will sink into the sea and we shall all
drown. Or when all the aliens go home the island will rise 10 metres in a big hurry and the
consequent earthquake will shake us all to pieces.

--

(Written on behalf of Chicken Licken who has been kidnapped and fried by KFC)
(So HE was right)

INCOMPETENT INORGANIC: PART 5

Although Scotty was reduced to ashes and shot into orbit in an urn long ago (Scotty of Star Trek for those to whom that means nothing) he is still beaming things up to the USS Enterprise and working wonders with seemingly dead machinery.

He must be. Because a few days ago the fridge-freezer suddenly vanished. One day it was there; the next it was gone. No goodbyes, no parting notes, no so-long-and-thanks-for-all-the-fish, no word of any sort.

Its disappearance would be a big mystery, except that by a quirk of quantum entanglement I have learned that Scotty modified it and sold it to some intergalactic being with blue skin and retracting horns, who fitted it into a warp drive. Apparently old fridge-freezers from Earth can produce endless warp flux by adding a clever gizmo produced by the guys on the Fifth Rock orbiting Sun Four in the Orion system. Which must be the ultimate in recycling. If the Council only knew, it could be making enough intergalactic credits from piles of dead fridge-freezers to pay off the global debt.

So the Incompetent Inorganic Saga lasted only five weeks--enough time for a 1960s Apollo mission to have got to the Moon and back ten times over. That's progress for you...