One of the highlights of my media career was getting the Sunday Star Times to give Selwyn Muru a column. He produced almost of year of columns, amusing, sometimes angry, always illuminating. Then the section editor changed and he was dropped for an Iain Sharp column, which as far as I am aware never generated a single watt of illumination, apart from the glare of his whiteness (which he can;t help of course).

"started in the last term of the last Labour Government". You jest. I've been using the OIA a lot longer than that and it's been gamed since day 1.

Sorry, that's the unpaid intern's job.

Taseer's explanation of the rise of madrassa - are these not charter schools?

I'm not saying SAP can't be a great system. But if you want it to be inflexible and hierarchical, it really delivers. As you've told me often, it's all about the bits you do before it even gets to the technology.

The reality is though that SAP is the ideal solution for the Auckland CIty. Once the decision was made to allow the old Auckland City Council to control the hiring process, everyone in Auckland got jobs and a status rise, while everyone else took redundancy or is now working under a 25 year old who knows nothing about what they are supposed to be doing. The Auckland council culture was allowed to continue, which means big, expensive, inflexible, hierarchical, rule-driven software is just the ticket.

Important to remember, ATA argued everything had to be done at crisis speed, so there would be no open tender process. That means for example Technolgy One, which does council systems very well, and was used by at least one of the constituent councils, didn't get a chance to bid. It's headquartered in Brisbane, so it would have been a lot easier to get mods done and new features developed than dealing with Waldorf.