See tomorrow’s Otago Daily Times for more on SDHB.
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Link received Thu, 16 Apr 2015 at 9:40 p.m.
█ Message: Snap!! – it’s also happening in Dunedin
### whaleoil.co.nz March 27, 2015 at 1:30pm
The waning of Key’s National: the arrogance and irony
By Cameron Slater
The life cycle of any political party leader is clearly understood. What we are seeing now, the vulnerable John Key, the floundering of previously successful people that surround him, and people previously loyal turning their backs on him didn’t just happen in the last four weeks. The by-election simply has made it more visible in a shorter period of time.
Read more
When John Key is out there, he only sees crackpots and sycophants. He’s had so much of it, he can’t even recognise when someone turns up with something genuine and important. The same for his MPs. –Slater
Then there was MAYOR DAVE.
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Related Posts and Comments:
17.6.15 Southern District Health Board sacked !!!
9.6.15 Southern District Health Board
1.5.14 Dunedin Hospital buildings SORRY STATE
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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr
What if? Dunedin... 
Yahoo. Richard Thomson out of a job, potentially. Who saw that coming.
Is Cull too late? Is he electioneering or simply bolstering Jinty’s GREENIE food resilience regime at DCC.
OOH, it’s about jobs… Daaave’s gotta make 10,000 new jobs happen, with another $10,000 payable on each salary, over 10 years !!! Haaaaaaa
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### dunedintv.co.nz April 16, 2015 – 6:50pm
Mayor adds voice to growing tide of concern
Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull is adding his voice to the growing tide of concern about the plan to outsource hospital kitchen work.
Video
### dunedintv.co.nz April 16, 2015 – 6:49pm
Health Board staff calling on Dunedin residents to make future healthcare needs known
Southern District Health Board staff are calling on Dunedin residents to make their future healthcare needs known. An awareness day is being held around the country, with locals campaigning at Dunedin Hospital. And they say advanced care planning is much simpler than some might think.
Video
Some of us have been calling for a Commissioner for SDHB for 7 years now.
Slow wheels.
But when we found out Richard Thomson recommended the same chartered accountant to head DCC Audit and Risk Subcommittee, as SDHB brought in to tidy up (whitewash) after Swann, wellllllll…. Writing On The Wall.
And it’s not like RT likes the Council’s best whistleblower.
Yeah well fair’s fair. There is a chance that when Lee Vandervis looks at him he doesn’t see anything worth keeping, not even in the garage on the shelf behind dust-covered tins holding around 2 cm of solidified paint in shades of tan and lavender.
Slater might be a creep but what he says here about Key and his government makes sense. It is refreshing when Slater on the right and Trotter on the left are able and willing to expose the weaknesses of their own side and not be blindingly partisan.
Polticians under the weather, politically, ignore realities and the end is in sight. At the local level we see it here.
Lee Vandervis and now Hilary Calvert in her excellent OP in the ODT last Monday, as well as Aaron Hawkins with his thoughtful contribution over a number of current issues, clearly see the myopia of the incompetent Cull Council. This has been engineered by the Greater Dunedin cabal who for so long have smugly believed they know what to do and don’t countenance any other input.
Cull’s response to Hilary Calvert’s OP has the legendary nasty Cull edge.
Talking about myopia he includes the stadium as a revenue earner for the DCC through DCHL. Jesus, save us.
Greater Dunedin is, unfortunately, loaded with medium performers, quite successful by reputation. Unfortunately they had already risen to or slightly above their level of competence before being elected to council. It’s hard for the voter to pick in advance who’s got more in the tank, and whose foot is already flat to the floor, with the fuel gauge needle hovering over empty.
### ODT Online Fri, 17 Apr 2015
SDHB in ‘serious freefall’
By Eileen Goodwin
Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman has rejected a claim the Government is considering installing a commissioner at the Southern District Health Board. Labour health spokeswoman Annette King said a document she obtained revealed the board was in “serious freefall” with a ballooning deficit.
Read more
Link received Fri, 17 Apr 2015 at 8:29 a.m.
█ Message: It would appear the Nats have obtained a copy of DCC’s secret little handbook – “Democracy for Dummies”
### thestandard.org.nz 9:35 am, April 16th, 2015
A culture of intimidation
By Anthony R0bins
National has a long history of attacking and intimidating people who are expressing inconvenient opinions. It’s a culture that brought us dirty politics, and one of its recent manifestations was the attempt to silence a roading advocacy group during the Northland by-election.
Back in January, New Zealander of The Year Dame Anne Salmond wrote:
“Over the past decade or so, politicians seeking to uphold their own power have abused democratic freedoms in New Zealand. Journalists including Jon Stephenson (for reporting on New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan), Andrea Vance (over a suspected leak of a report about the GCSB spy agency), and Nicky Hager (for exposing scurrilous relationships between senior politicians and muck-raking bloggers) have been intimidated and attacked. While our leaders do not shoot people, they work with others to try to ruin the lives and careers of those who disagree with them. The means may be different, but the intent is the same. One way or another, their critics (however valid their points of view might be) must be silenced….”
Read more
ODT 13.4.15 Calvert opinion (page 9)
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### ODT Online Fri, 17 Apr 2015
Council-owned company governance in accord with best practice
By Dave Cull
OPINION Claims made by Cr Hilary Calvert in Monday’s ODT about Dunedin City Holdings Limited (DCHL) and Dunedin City Council-owned companies are factually wrong. More worrying is the potential damage to the value of ratepayer assets such misrepresentation can cause.
Read more
Cr Calvert is spot on about the desirability of Delta’s wish to grow. Growth is good or bad depending on whether you’ve got a tumour or a crop of broad beans.
Delta’s decision-making, going on previous form, ain’t worth a hill o’ beans.
### ODT Online Wed, 6 May 2015
Good reason for concern
By Calvin Oaten
OPINION Cr Hilary Calvert (ODT, 13.4.15) expressed concerns councillors were being excluded from the full picture regarding the health of the operations of the various subsidiaries which were in turn overseen by Dunedin City Holdings. Therefore, they were unable to perform duty of care to the ratepayers.
Read more
### ODT Online Sat, 18 Apr 2015
SDHB wants 5% cuts across all services
By Eileen Goodwin
The Southern District Health Board wants to cut costs by 5% for its services and those of contracted providers, as it grapples with an “awful reality”, chairman Joe Butterfield says. The board’s projected $42 million deficit in 2015-16 was revealed this week in a leaked document released by Labour health spokeswoman Annette King, who said it showed the board was in ”serious freefall”.
Read more
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### ODT Online Sat, 18 Apr 2015
Editorial: Embattled southern health services
OPINION The latest news about the Southern District Health Board must be disheartening to all concerned. […] Is the opaque and extraordinarily complex population-based funding increasingly unfair for the far-flung South with its high numbers of elderly and static population?
Read more
I think that it is time to let people know the REAL reason for the mysterious strength of the NZ dollar. The country has no underlying strength that would justify the dollar at the level that it is. Its strength is due to two factors:
1) Buffer currency – The NZ dollar sits at around the fourth largest traded currency worldwide by volume. This has no relationship with ‘real’ trade, which now accounts for less than one fifth of one percent of all global currency exchange trade. The NZ dollar is used as a buffer – a currency that can be used to ‘park’ funds, usually for a split second before they are moved elsewhere. As the derivatives bubble is blown up once again to stupendous proportions, some of this spills over into currency trading volumes, which in turn increases demand for the NZ buffer dollar. Whenit goes ‘pop’ so too, to a certain extent will the NZ dollar.
2) Export property – The second reason why the dollar is so strong is due to a real export market that we are doing really well in at the moment – largely because nobody other western country with a brain wants to play. This is the market in export property, largely Auckland/Lakes residential, but pretty much everything else that is not bolted down as well. I can’t tell you exactly how well we are doing, because the government is determined that nobody should know. But we are clearly doing well for it to furnish the skyhooks that it does to the NZ dollar.
Export property is a bit like export milk, and is probably going on at pretty much the same scale. When somebody buys a litre of milk off us, they have to pay (eventually) in NZ dollars, which they have to buy either using their own currency or a tradable equivalent. When an overseas buyer buys an Auckland house exactly the same thing has to occur, but on a much grander scale. If a Beijing magnate buys a Ponsonby pad, then NZ $3 million (or more) have to be bought by them somehow to pay the (usually local) vendor. If they buy a dozen (not unknown I hear), then it’s the thick end of $40 million. The Govt is saying that overseas buyers are only a small part of the Auckland property market. That’s not what I’m hearing from those who actually go to the auctions. It all adds up to a lot of NZD’s.
Why is the Govt determined that nobody should know? Well if it got out just how much of a trade surplus we’re running in this particular market (China does not do export property at all – sensible fellows!), people might very unwisely call upon them to put a stop to it. To do so would crush the ‘unstoppable’ Auckland/Lakes/Farm property markets instantly. It would also blow the bottom out of the dollar in a pretty much similar timescale, bringing the consumer bonanza to an abrupt stop all round.
That would wind back immigration pretty swiftly smashing the property market yet further. The fall in the dollar would also expose the Government’s and local authorities’ (especially our own) exposure to overseas currency denominated debt swap arrangements – leading to a fiscal blowout in the books which would coincide with a massive fall in the tax take as local business, no longer fuelled by cashed-up local property exporters, shut up shop all round.
So Jonky does have a grip on the NZ export property market, but in the manner that a man holds a snarling wolf firmly by the ears. He doesn’t like it, but he doesn’t dare let it go!
Rob, why do you have to be so clinical in your assessments of the real NZ situation? Particularly when we have such big matters to consider like closing the library on Sundays, or whether to speed up the Cycleways programme so as to get a better subsidy from Transit NZ. These are the things that matter, not the fact that NZ might go down the ‘turler’ with or without the wolf’s ears.
It’s out of date already Calvin. Let me revise it to more closely align to Jonky’s current situation: For “holds a snarling wolf firmly by the ears” read “holds a screeching waitress by the hair”.
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{Refer this comment re J Key. -Eds}