Hard News: What Now?
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
And if it turns out to have been a generally-expressed objection, then a very public “You’re disgusting” from the HDC is in order.
The Office of the Health and Disability Commissioner has no jurisdiction over services beyond the traditionally-defined health or disability sectors (which don’t include CDEM, other local government or police).
Whether it's the HDC or the HRC, someone needs to do a very loud, very public denunciation of the suggestion that it's an inconvenience to support an official national language and interfere with the transmission of essential information to a segment of the community. Especially when the justification of that "inconvenience" is as bullshit as "We don't want him in the shot."
I don't want them to get all officially telly-offy, I just want them to make a public proclamation that, if this story is true, the outlet(s) involved are right up there with looters.
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Have they found out yet who ordered that church in Sydenham demolished?
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Someone from the Council engineers, I believe. Imminent threat to human life is an acceptable trump of heritage values, IMO.
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Sacha, in reply to
someone needs to do a very loud, very public denunciation
You'd expect someone in a leadership role to do that, yes. The responsible Minister, perhaps. Please feel free to contact her about it.
Here's Tariana Turia's media release celebrating Waitangi Day ceremonies being delivered in all three languages.
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Sacha, in reply to
Imminent threat to human life is an acceptable trump of heritage values
Agreed - but neither building owners nor media seemed to have received any communication that it was the case.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Plus, of course, I object to throwing taxpayer money at projects simply because it keeps companies open. Adapt or die, and don’t expect society to pick up the tab for your failure to adapt.
That's basically been happening in Japan for years under the Liberal Democratic Party, with the infamous roads to nowhere.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
Commissar gagging to flatten heritage buildings.
FFS, Sacha, I've literally just watched Brownlee make a statement that is, to be extremely generous, unhelpful. (He could also do with a wee reminder that a good proportion of heritage buildings are in private hands and we Nats are supposed to be big on fucking property rights.) But do keep the rhetorical needle off the red line, shall we?
Even if it's either unsound or prohibitively expensive to restore damaged heritage buildings, it's more than possible that sections can be sensitively and safely integrated into new building. So, everyone (not least the responsible minister) could do with some slow, deep calming breaths.
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Stephen Judd, in reply to
But do keep the rhetorical needle off the red line, shall we?
I just had a small stroke as the part of my brain that processes irony received too much blood and died.
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Craig Ranapia, in reply to
I just had a small stroke as the part of my brain that processes irony received too much blood and died.
So would reading any reliable history of the untold misery actual Commissars caused during the Russian Civil War and Mr. Stalin's regime. Perhaps someone could come up with an equivalent to argumentum ad Hitlerium for lazy and vulgar invocations of Stalinism and Soviet repression for rhetorical effect?
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Sacha, in reply to
Given the circumstances, I stand by that as a fair characterisation of the Minister's buffoonery. Not as if a tabloid career beckons, either.
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The consequence of rushed, poorly-considered, poorly-debated legislation.
It wouldn't surprise me if parliament in the next month puts through a "Christchurch reconstruction bill" to take over the city council planning process, stream line consents, authorise demolitions etc. The details of that will be quite interesting.
So would reading any reliable history of the untold misery actual Commissars caused during the Russian Civil War and Mr. Stalin’s regime.
The common use of the term as most people would use it - a minister or other head who has significantly more powers and control than would be normal in a democracy - isn't too far off the powers that parliament granted him last year. I can't see anyone around here arguing that he's sending people to gulags, but that's only one meaning of the word.
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Sacha, in reply to
I can't see anyone around here arguing that he's sending people to gulags, but that's only one meaning of the word.
True and I'm happy to try suitable alternatives. Suggestions?
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Question Time? Probably not. A signer can probably only interpret someone speaking sense.
He's dead right there!
@Mathew
Imminent threat to human life is an acceptable trump of heritage values, IMO.
So. More than 300 people are going to imminently die this year on the roads. Gerry's answer should be to get rid of cars.
No, the two questions that need to be asked, answered and funded are:
1. Do we want that building back and rebuilt?
2. Then we pay for it regardless of the cost won't we?
If we are keen about keeping as much of the original in the rebuild then it can be disassembled first and rebuilt with the necessary engineering inserted. It's only money and because we have decided we want it. It will be done.
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Heh - from the impolite tweets file:
ChCh: Keep some of your old buildings, I'd be more worried about Gerry Brownlee collapsing on me in an earthquake #eqnz
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John Armstrong examines some implications for the upcoming Budget.
With the Treasury now estimating the recessionary impact of the earthquake will slice some $5 billion off the tax take, English must grasp some big political nettles to satisfy the international credit rating agencies, while simultaneously avoiding throwing the nationwide economy into full-scale recession in an election year.
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National's restructuring of the state sector is ideologically driven. But that's been disguised by its argument that it is bolstering the frontline with extra staff to get better services from state agencies. This is being done by drastically reducing the number of "backroom" bureaucrats in Wellington.
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Then came the earthquake. With the offices of several Government departments damaged or destroyed, frontline officialdom in Christchurch simply could not function.
Suddenly, it has become patently clear why those Wellington-based public servants are so essential. The lights have burned late into the night in departmental head offices across the city. The Herculean, but largely invisible efforts by head office officials have underpinned what has, so far, largely been an effective and well co-ordinated response to getting Christchurch back on its feet.
No prizes for guessing who will be basking in this success, however.
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He suggested that because of the number of central-city buildings under threat of demolition, Christchurch might develop as a city with large satellite business districts.
I think this is a very bad idea. I also don't really like the idea of Key and Brownlee (or even Parker!) dictating what happens in Christchurch. It's fair enough that they have visions of what they want to happen, but we need to make sure it's the people of Christchurch that get to decide what their city looks like.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
Perhaps someone could come up with an equivalent to argumentum ad Hitlerium for lazy and vulgar invocations of Stalinism and Soviet repression for rhetorical effect?
There already is. It's called McCarthyism. Then again, it's lost a lot of its punch, so maybe teabagger will have to stand in for now.
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W.Lego, in reply to
OK to demolish imminent threats but need we be so quick to render the buildings unrebuildable for ever through site clearing and dumping? This is not a decision to be made quickly nor without consultation and debate.
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The Herculean, but largely invisible efforts by head office officials have underpinned what has, so far, largely been an effective and well co-ordinated response to getting Christchurch back on its feet.
My brother is a manager in Civil Defence national office, and he's on day 12 now of 12 hours on, 12 hours off shifts working in the bunker. Last September he had the same - a few days after his wife and three daughters under 5 moved into a new house.
Civil Defence along with every other government department had its budget sliced when the current government came into power and I think that while they'll have a few "do better next times" on the record, they seem to have done a pretty good job.
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Sacha, in reply to
we need to make sure it's the people of Christchurch that get to decide what their city looks like
Good luck with that
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A commenter in the Standard's story about the eastern suburb response explains the mechanism for mis-allocating portaloos.
One point I heard made on the radio, (can’t remember who exactly was speaking, but they were CCC), was that the basic systems they run are driven by volume and quantity of complaints. They were saying that this system may have failed them in the eastern suburbs in this instance, because the level of complaints coming from there didn’t match with the need. This was in comparison to other suburbs was the direct implication. Obviously part of this was to do with the lack of power and what not.
That fits - it's why some suburbs in any city have better-maintained roads and footpaths if the trigger is complaints from residents who have the resources and know-how to speak up.
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Another link from that thread to a Herald story about local MP Lianne Dalziel living amidst the wreckage and speaking out.
But the problems Dalziel lists are echoed in dozens of interviews done by the Herald on Sunday in these ruined suburbs. There are kilometres of streets here where portable toilets have yet to arrive. Food is plentiful but it would make a dietician turn green; people soon tire of sausage sizzles when they become the staple diet, accompanied by a fine dusting of silt.
Dalziel says: "These people have waited before. The level of tolerance on this side of the city is not there. I knew what went wrong last time. They've actually let it happen again.
"The council is so stupid. Council treats everything as business as usual. Do you know how they allocated the portaloos? It was who rang their 0800 number the most. If you don't have power, phone ... how can you ring?
"Every time I speak out I get told I'm politicising things. I'm not apologising to anyone for speaking out."
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This should gladden hearts everywhere - government to set up all-powerful agency to manage quake recovery.
Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee told the Herald on Sunday the new centralised structure would "punch through the red tape" and co-ordinate work being done by other organisations.
"We need something that can move a lot faster than what we have been doing," Brownlee said. "That requires a lot of changes to these legal niceties."
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Now, it is the "immense" task of rebuilding the suburbs that Brownlee is determined to undertake - and he said it dwarfed the work needed in the city centre. He pledged to announce, by March 18, a new structure to speedily manage the rebuilding: "The business-as-usual approach is not going to work."
He said the process happening before the February 22 earthquake was not fast enough - and now the problem was 10 times the size.
Engineers and private sector construction managers have spoken critically of the approach adopted by Christchurch City Council, described as slow and bureaucratic. Labour MP Lianne Dalziel - whose electorate is among the hardest hit - was more blunt still. "I'm over the council. They're incompetent."
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Also fits with what Lianne Dalziel says:
Do you know how they allocated the portaloos? It was who rang their 0800 number the most.
She's pretty furious, and rightly so given that she's one of the residents of Refugee City.
I think it's pretty trite to say that someone who's actually living in the same conditions as her constituents is "politicising" anything, especially since those who're levelling that particular accusation probably had a shower before speaking, have a home that's not likely to be condemned, can use a flush toilet at their leisure, and aren't subsisting on sausage sizzles. -
Sacha, in reply to
Snap
And more from same Herald story about the suddenly in-focus eastern response.
Disaster officials were yesterday told their focus must shift to the people in the suburbs, not the buildings in the city centre.
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Most of the response has been run by National Civil Defence controller John Hamilton. He will go to the eastern suburbs for the first time today to see the damage first-hand.
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Hamilton said: "We grossly under-appreciated the scale of the damage in suburban areas. The scale of the operation is so big it is a challenge to provide these services for so many people."
If the folk at the top have been totally focused on the cbd USAR work, that might explain how Key conflates the two functions (given that we know he has seen little on the ground). That's being generous.
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