Apartment hotel proposal has FATAL Flaws : ODT offers Flimsy Poll

Updated post.
Tue, 7 Aug 2017 at 2:58 p.m.

We (Dunedin) are confronted by a poorly detailed, plonk-down apartment building proposal that we suspect is fronted by an agent for Asian developers –it would not be unusual for such a proposal to be offered on the strength of tainted money looking for safe haven in the South Pacific.

Our gullible country.
The gullible shiny pants Grow Dunedin partnership.
Our ever so gullible city council under the leadership of cull-cat Cull.

A massively over-height apartment building with a frilly hard-to-read podium base is proposed —a building that may never see a five star hotel as the anchor tenant (never believe unquantified/unqualified pitches from used car salesmen, if all they offer is a Price plucked from the air).

Not so long ago large tracts of New Zealand land were bought and sold for glass beads and muskets.

A lot can happen between resource consent being granted and a deathly, failing, improperly costed build.

Is Dunedin City Council about to find out.

Beware the gift horse.
It turned out Dunedin disliked the hocks of the last one (41 Wharf St), ridden by a little cardigan-wearer. The local suits were paid to make the waterfront tower seem generous, rousing and necessary. Ha-haaa.

At ALL times, the Dunedin City Council MUST stay acutely awake despite its needful dependence on independent commissioners and independent professional advisors – the latter advisors, along with some council staff, appear to have greatly missed the Fact that the minimal concept plans presented for 143-193 Moray Place DO NOT provide a workable building; or a building compliant with district plan objectives, policies, rules, and anticipated environmental results ….or prevailing traffic standards.

Oh dear. ‘So much’ [$$$] for the independent advice. Yes, expensive use of expert and staff time to massage the applicant dream – to no convincing or winning effect.

Further, Dunedin City Council MUST be prepared to APPEAL the outcome of the decision-making process should it wish to AVOID being left with another expensive DEBT VEHICLE in the form of one unfinished and or leaky building …..as the collapsed companies, and dusty heels of run-away developers and construction personnel disappear back to Asian shores, far away from Lake Tekapo ….. dangerously constructed, whole or in part, as a further burden on beleaguered Ratepayers of this fair city.

“What a stupid thing to assume!” you thunder.
“How? On what grounds?”, you chide.
“Dunedin NEEDS a five star hotel!”, imperiously.

You think it’s that simple ??
You’re about to be done over, Buds.

The inference being, oh great apartment hotel supporters, that all that glistens in green-tinted glass is gold, or might be a five star hotel. Yeah right.

It never was. The gold, I mean.
The five star hotel, I mean.
A hoover-up of NZ cash to offshore parties who remain anonymous throughout planning and consenting, and construction and building operation; all supported by the errant notion of immigrant labour and (imperfect) imported materials.

You might as well ask now, How MUCH will the Dunedin economy make ($$$) on this “slap in the face” to the community owned district plan (statutory), and the (strategic) spatial and the central city plans which are publicly consulted policy directions informing the city council’s annual and long term plans.

Not much.

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During five days of evidence and submissions, one knowledgeable submitter, Mr Russell Lund – well up on construction management, hotel building costs, the visitor accommodation market and investment patterns, and the risk and liability to local authorities in consequence – carefully outlined the quandaries which for various councils around New Zealand have become money-losing Unalterable Fact.

In the original written submission for himself and Suzanne Lund (affected property owners), Mr Lund asserted:

The “assessment of effects” is hollow and of no substance. Under the Act, the assessment of effects is required to be just that, an assessment of effects on the affected properties and tenants. Incredibly, the assessment makes no attempt to examine the effects on all the affected parties.

This, of course, is echoed in independently written and voiced submissions by many opposing the application; and curiously, it is underlined in evidence given by Mr Don Anderson (planning consultant) and Mr David Compton-Moen (urban design, visual amenity consultant), for the applicant.

My own submission to hearing states:

We can’t take what is offered [from the applicant] on trust, because it is incomplete and imprecise; therefore the assessment of effects is difficult to pin down to anything concrete and remains unhelpfully superficial – this was “the work” the applicant was to table for us, we thought, to generously persuade us that moving beyond the ‘norms’ of height in this Dunedin location has measurable benefits against other sites or, through strong honest examination of design alternatives for this site.

I am open to being persuaded. It is expensive to do that persuading. However, it has to happen in other city centres in this country. For an expensive building, isn’t it worth doing the budgeting for preparation of your case – to get the result you want, which is consent to subdivide and build. These are open questions but they lie at the heart of A for architecture as the practical art and science of building economics and professional practice. Behind and in front of the commercial facades, that must have depth of delivery. […] And so I come to the white building model here [a 3D-printed solid plastic model of the proposed building, of hand-held size, put into evidence by Christchurch architect Thom Craig], and the drawings presented by the applicant. There appears to have been too much time spent on merely diagrammatic ‘entreaties’ to architectural form and texture without hacking into 3D investigation. There is not one clear drawing of the way the podium can work for the public or the ‘retailers’ or ‘exhibitors’ – or indeed the people staying at the hotel, servicing the building functions and or using vehicles on site. We get an idea ‘about it’, a not convincing one, there is too much guesswork to do. And so the commissioners’ questions have been rather intense.

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Now, back to the points the Lunds are making. In their original submission on the application, Mr Lund says:

7. I have serious concerns about the expertise and amount of resource that has gone into assessing the feasibility of the project. In the last year, the Otago Daily Times advised the developer, Mr Tosswill of Horizon Hospitality, had indicated that the cost of the project, which was then 200 rooms and 52 apartments was $50-75M. The proposal now is for 210 rooms and 66 apartments, which is not substantially different. The car parking and front of house areas are similar to the original application. The application confirms the hotel has a gross floor area of 20,835 m2.
In my opinion this hotel will be not built for anything less than around $100M, and this casts serious doubts over the viability of the scheme.
Evidence of this is found for the building costs of the much simpler 200 room 4 star Novotel Hotel being built at Christchurch airport after a competitive tender process (and utilising an Asian fabricated structural steel structure). It is well known in the building industry that the tender costs received for that very regular and efficient 7 level hotel were $4,500-5,000 per m2. The Novotel is a filing cabinet design, that is, it is a completely regular rectangular structure which provides the most efficient floorplates and the best wall to floor ratio, ie the least amount of exterior wall enclosing the maximum possible amount of interior space. The Novotel has no balconies.
The applicant’s proposal is far less efficient, and therefore more costly per m2, as it is effectively three blocks grouped around a central core, but the blocks themselves are not rectangular, but have recesses, and there is a significant amount of extra cost with most rooms having screened “smokers” balconies, which entails effectively, 2 exterior systems, one for the rooms, and another enclosing the balconies.

8. The application confirms there are 16,136 m2 of above ground (habitable or hospitality space) and 4,687 m2 of below ground, back of house / car park space. At a cost of $2,200-2,500 per m2 for the below ground floors, and $5,500 per m2 for the above ground space, the proposal has a construction cost of over $100m, excluding land, furnishings, design marketing, et al. The total budget excluding GST will be around $130M. A feasibility study will typically have to include a development margin of at least 20 %, preferably 25 %, if any sort of lender is involved. This means the end value of the project will need to be at or over $160M. If the best case scenario is adopted and Mr Tosswill is able to convince Chinese or other overseas investors to pay the current market value in Queenstown for premium, new managed hotel rooms and apartments of $10,000 per m2 – for a hotel with an unproven demand in Dunedin, it is still not enough.
Selling all the apartments and hotel rooms will yield about $90M, which is a long, long way from the $160M end value needed. The parking and lower public floor spaces on a yield basis will have a value of around $10M, that might get the project to $100M. Mr Tosswill in earlier reports stated that the value was around $90M, so while there is broad agreement on the likely end value, the estimate of the cost is not close to reality. Mr Tosswill may be planning to bring in a Chinese construction company who will park a retired cruise ship at the waterfront for the duration of the project and have their workers stay there, but they will be subject to the same minimum wage laws, working conditions and health and safety requirements that local companies face, which will dramatically reduce any cost benefit from using overseas labour. (The idea of having a cruise ship accommodating Chinese workers is not fanciful – the Chinese government offered to repair the damaged sections of SH1 after last year’s Kaikoura earthquake using that same method, and did not require any New Zealand labour resources, but the Government decided that this was politically unacceptable). One hopes it would be also unacceptable to have a Council endorsed project built using essentially, forced labour.

9. There is sufficient doubt around the financial viability of the project that the applicant should provide some evidence that the entire scheme is not in fact fanciful, but makes economic sense, and provide details about the proposed ownership model, which is highly relevant to Council, in light of their liability which is discussed below.

10. Mr Tosswill may think he is able to make savings from current building costs by utilising Chinese products, but many Local Authorities around New Zealand are very wary of various untested products as there have been many failures for which Local Authorities ultimately end up bearing the cost of.
This raises another issue which is the massive liability that the building control division of the Dunedin City Council will be exposed to, in relation to its building consent approval and compliance monitoring. The experience of the QLDC in recent years is extremely relevant : A large number of hotel and apartments have been built in Queenstown and the individual hotel rooms and apartments are sold off individually. A body corporate is then responsible for repairs and maintenance. The developer has no long term or permanent stake in the completed structure, and therefore no incentive to specify materials and pay for quality standards with the long term in mind. As Warren Buffet has said, “show me the incentive and I will show you the result”, and the result for QLDC has been an ongoing series of legal actions brought by Body Corporates against Council, alleging that Council was at fault in some form, and as they are the “last man standing”, the Council have inevitably had to pay substantial figures. [I have] experience of several of these, having repaired one major complex in Queenstown at a cost of several million dollars, and provided cost evidence in regard to two others, also in Queenstown in the last year. It should be remembered that QLDC has a 7 metre height limit, but despite this, on complexes less than a quarter of the size of the proposed hotels, the cost to repair has run to millions. QLDC has advised this year in the Otago Daily Times that it has now completely drained its reserve fund for remedial building work, and any further costs will need to come directly from ratepayers. It has spent $3.6M just on legal fees for remedial building liability cases, which will rise to close to $4M by the end of this year.

11. At the Hearing, in submission, some proposals will be presented to show how the design liability and weathertightness risk to Council and ratepayers can be mitigated in the unlikely event that the proposal is given consent and such consent is upheld in the Environment Court.

Proposal 1 : A bond be posted with Council to cover sufficient funds to get the building to completed weathertight envelope and have the podium and all external works completed in the event the project is halted.

Proposal 2 : The applicant provide a Owners Protective Professional Indemnity, and have DCC named as an insured party on the policy. This is to protect indemnify the DCC against any claims brought against them in relation the building consent process, compliance monitoring or any matter for which they are liable for.

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The applicant tabled NEW evidence at the hearing, from Infometrics. At its website, Infometrics (NZ) says it “provides industry, regional, and general economic analysis and forecasts that assist organisations in making their planning, policy, and strategic decisions”.

In the Lunds’ submission to hearing under the subheading ‘Dunedin Hotel Economic Impacts – Ongoing GDP Effects’, Mr Lund says:

….Infometrics assume that the 64 apartments will all be in the hotel pool, but acknowledge this is unclear. This significantly increases the GDP contribution as it raises the income of the hotel by around 40%, assuming conservative tariff rates of $250 per night and $350 per night per apartment. Infometrics also assume that there will be no “crowding out” of the existing activity, ie ALL guests would otherwise have not come to Dunedin had this hotel not been there. This is an unrealistic assumption.
In my opinion this report is an example of tailoring assumptions to achieve the desired outcome.
At Section 2, the “impact” of the construction phase is estimated at $45.6M in total, but based on the “key assumption” that there is capacity in the construction sector to build the hotel without crowding out other investment”. This appears to mean that if other projects are delayed, there is in fact no benefit at all because $63M of other projects will simply be displaced by the alleged $63M cost of this project. History shows that in Dunedin, Clients such as the DCC, University and some private clients keep a close eye on the state of the market. Many Ministry of Education projects have strict cost guidelines, and will not proceed if they are over budget. There have been examples of work deferred in Dunedin when the market is busy, and the Post Office Hotel is one of them. The Owner Mr Geoff Thompson, deferred the construction of the hotel for several years when he first owned the property citing the overheated construction market, due to the construction of the $220M Milton Prison project in 2005-2007.
At the present time, there is a high level of commercial construction activity at present, witnessed by the fact that there are main contractors from outside Dunedin performing the 2 largest projects in Dunedin (The Dental School and the University Science 3 project). There is every likelihood some projects will be delayed due to the high level of activity.
The report assumes that 21.1M of the $63M, or a third of the cost, will flow into the local Dunedin economy. This would be on the basis that local companies and suppliers are employed, but this is far from clear, given the estimated cost of $63M. The only way the cost could be anywhere near this level is if virtually all of the materials were low cost imports, and quite likely a proportion of the labour cost component.
The only significant material that will be made locally is concrete, and it is only the basement levels that will be predominantly a concrete structure. If out of region companies were employed for work to do such trades as painting and carpentry, as they were at the Forsyth Barr stadium, then that figure will not be accurate.
Infometrics then ascribe $16.1M to the “second round of economic effects” but acknowledge there is some “leakage of spending outside the city”. If an outside main contractor, or even an overseas contractor completes the work, they will very likely bring with them their out of town networks of subcontractors and suppliers and there will be much less than the $16.1M as the second round of effects. Having completed many projects out of Dunedin, I have first hand knowledge of the negligible economic effect of construction on the region concerned. Generally, goods and services are sourced from habitual suppliers with whom there is an ongoing relationship, and only the small consumables are sourced from local suppliers.
Mr Tosswill should clarify what the intention is regarding the construction of the hotel, and if that is not forthcoming, then he should at least confirm what type and form of construction contract will be used as that perhaps more than anything will determine whether there is the possibility of a meaningful local business component.

On ‘Construction Cost’, Mr Lund refers the commissioners to the Lunds’ original submission, continuing with:

Further facts about construction
Examples of risk from imported products
FCC (Fletcher) budgeted to use Chinese sourced bathrooms in the Novotel Christchurch projects. Did not work. Has cost FCC $2M extra (unbudgeted) to get prefab bathrooms built locally in Canterbury. The cost is $26,000 per bathroom.
Chinese steel : there are 2 major CBD projects underway in Christchurch that are steel structures using Chinese fabricated steel. On one project the steel is 12 weeks late and on the other it is 16 weeks late. The Chinese suppliers had committed to make the steel, then out-sourced it to another firm without advising the contractor, and the delays have resulted. On one of these projects there is now legal action between the Engineer and contractor because of the nature of the steel does not conform to the specification.
There is a further major dispute litigation on another major project now completed due to extreme delays with the steelwork and external cladding. The project was around 10 months late, and the Owner lost the anchor tenant (The Government) due to the delay. That project was tendered on the basis of using a large degree of imported materials from China in association with a large state run Chinese construction company, but the project was so disastrous (financially and in terms of market perception), involving a loss of 8-15M on a $50M project, it has caused the company to withdraw from large scale commercial construction and focus on project management.
External Cladding : There are only a very small number of NZ firms with the capability to design and build the curtain walling, and they have a huge backlog and extremely onerous business terms that will not be acceptable to any funder or main contractor, so the Owner will probably need to contract with them direct, and take on this risk.

These important matters aside, the legal submissions brought to hearing by Ms Lauren Semple (for Millenium & Copthorne Hotels) and Mr John Hardie (for Misbeary Holdings Ltd) blew the application out of the water; so did the transport evidence to hearing by Mr Andy Carr (for Millenium & Copthorne Hotels) to which Commissioner Mr Stephen Daysh responded by asking if the problems (such as summit points, swept paths, access to basement parking, onsite coach travel, and truck travel as well as loading access) pointed out by Mr Carr in his assessment of the proposed building’s perimeter road were “fatal flaws”? Yes, was the direct reply. Refer article: Traffic problems at hotel (ODT 3.8.17)

The hearing is adjourned until 17 August.

All ODT can do is offer a flimsy and inconsequential readers’ poll.
Not Based On Reality. Go ODT! LOL

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█ All application documents, reports, evidence and submissions for 143-193 Moray Place – Non-complying activity – LUC-2017-48 & Sub-2017-26 at this link.

Related Posts and Comments:
● 11.7.17 “Fat” gawky Hotel and Apartment building : Questionable design even with 4 floors lopped off
● 14.5.17 RNZ reports July hearings for proposed hotel apartment building [comments by Mr Tosswill]
● 4.5.17 Submissions close 10 May : Proposed 17-storey, est. 62.5 metres-high Moray Place hotel/apartment building
● 7.4.17 Proposed hotel *height and design* —the very least of it #sellingoursouls
● 5.6.17 Application lodged for FIASCO Hotel by Tosswill #DunedinWrecks
● 18.12.16 DCC set to take away CBD car parks without Economic Impact research
● 15.10.16 Battle of the hotels : DCC meat in the sandwich (unedifying)
● 5.10.16 Dunedin bauble #votecatcher
● 4.10.16 The Demon Duck freak show of partial ‘Civic’ information! Before voting closes! #Dunedin
11.1.16 Un hôtel. Dunedin.
19.8.15 Hotels ? Business ? [DCC lost +++152 fleet vehicles] —Cull in charge of building chicken coops, why ?
1.4.14 HOTEL Town Hall… Another investment group, Daaave’s pals from the communist state?
25.3.14 Hotel We LIKE: Distinction Dunedin Hotel at former CPO

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

█ The following images are taken from Appendix 6 – Consultant Urban Designer’s Report – Appendix plans (PDF, 1.5 MB).

They comprise
● 2 cross sections – originally provided as applicant evidence by Thom Craig Architects Ltd, and
● 7 photomontages of anticipated views – originally provided as applicant evidence by Paterson Pitts Group (surveying, planning, engineering)

– to which new height levels have been added in the evidence provided by independent Urban Design consultant Garth Falconer for Dunedin City Council.

[click to enlarge]

Christchurch City Council : Highly Dubious Entity #YaldhurstSubdivision

Subject: Ongoing Property Dispute at Yaldhurst Subdivision

Christchurch City Council held a full council meeting on 27 July 2017.

Readers, the CCC meeting video of Agenda item 26, about Yaldhurst Subdivision, is recommended viewing/listening.

Legal advice to Council is given by Rob Goldsbury, CCC Head of Legal Services – an atrociously lacklustre, unjust and obstructive performance.

The Council stupidly steps itself into (again!) the Constructive Fraud Action being progressed at the Christchurch High Court by Residents/Caveators of the Yaldhurst Subdivision. Although, we see that Councillors supposedly have no idea they’re already in it up to their eyeballs through the actions of Council staff and issues of non-compliance. Interesting.

Christchurch City Council Published on Jul 26, 2017
Christchurch City Council VIDEO
27.07.17 – Item 26 – Yaldhurst Village Subdivision – Dedication of Road – Sir John McKenzie Avenue

The video continues at about 1:26 after a preliminary silence [muted blue screen] – keep watching. The quality of picture is poor throughout. The discomfort of those seen in the public gallery is most perceptible.

Meeting Agenda and Unconfirmed Minutes follow here below – minus Attachment A, Yaldhurst Village Lots 601,613 Plan.

The Council did not vote unanimously.

The Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board motion was lost.

With the second motion, in short, the Council resolved that Lots 601 (residential) and 613 (commercial) on LT 448725 will be dedicated under Section 349 of the Local Government Act 1974 as a road, in order for the road to vest.

The resolution goes against the Residents’ private property rights.

See the previous post to refresh on the Residents’ situation.

Note, by the votes for, the dishonesty and incompetence present.

Note, by the votes against, the integrity of those supporting the Community Board and members of their community: the private property owners (the Residents), in their protracted, brave and courageous fight against an unjust malevolent council staff working in cahoots with unscrupulous developers.

Vicki Buck is a class act.
Rob Goldsbury, an utterly shameful man.

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Christchurch City Council
Agenda

Notice of Meeting:
An ordinary meeting of the Christchurch City Council will be held on:

Date: Thursday 27 July 2017
Time: 10.05am
Venue: Council Chambers, Civic Offices,
53 Hereford Street, Christchurch

….

[agenda item]
Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board

26. Yaldhurst Village Subdivision – Dedication of Road – Sir John McKenzie Avenue ………. [page] 529

[the report]
Council
27 July 2017

Report from Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board  – 13 June 2017
 
26. Yaldhurst Village Subdivision – Dedication of Road – Sir John McKenzie Avenue
Reference: 17/733313
Contact: Richard Holland richard.holland@ccc.govt.nz 941 8690
 
Note that this report was left to lie on the table at the Council meeting on 6 July 2017.
 
1. Staff Recommendations
 
That the Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board recommend to the Council:

1. That Lots 601 (residential) and 613 (commercial) on LT 448725 will be dedicated under Section 349 of the Local Government Act 1974 as a road, in order for the road to vest.

2. Note that a Deed of Indemnity will be executed by Infinity Yaldhurst Limited which will indemnify and keep indemnified the Council from all actions, proceedings and claims made by any land owner in relation to the Council accepting the dedication of Lots 601 and 613 on LT 448725, as road.

3. Also note that the Council shall not be required to issue a Section 224(c) Certificate under the Resource Management Act 1991 in respect to Lots 601 and 613 on LT 448725 until all the safety audit requirements as specified by the Council, and included in the Variations of the subdivision consent, have been physically built to the Council’s satisfaction.

4. That the General Manager City Services be delegated authority to negotiate and enter into on behalf of the Council, such documentation required to implement the dedication.
 
2. Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board Recommendation to Council
 
Part A

That the Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton Community Board recommend to the Council:

1. Option 2 of the staff report, namely, That the Council not agree to a dedication process and inform Infinity Yaldhurst Limited to pursue the matter through the Courts in accordance with the Property Law Act.
 
2. That the Council agree to meet with the adjoining property owners to discuss options on a way forward regarding the Yaldhurst Village Subdivision.
 
Vicki Buck and Anne Galloway requested that their votes against the above decision, be recorded.
 
Attachments
There are no attachments for this report.

Cats —or, Infrastructure spending, Council debt, and Disenfranchisement of Ratepayers

Council cat squad checking rego fees [supplied]

After the great floods, the common affliction amongst leaders, “water on the brain”.

█ The ‘thinking’ – DCC cat control remit for LGNZ AGM

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At Twitter:

Warming: The "cat rangers" are coming – if Local Govt NZ President & Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull has his way (Video) https://t.co/VHyv1Ns2sy

— Dave Goosselink (@davedunedin) July 26, 2017

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“There may be issues with cats but they also serve a useful purpose in controlling pests. The cat population doubled to two at my place last year, and we have more tui and bellbirds around than ever, as well as visits by kereru and eastern rosellas and fantails and waxeyes. The cats occasionally catch a bird but most often it is a sparrow or a thrush. But it looks like the Dunedin council and some others are keen on requiring the herding of cats. They kept as quiet as they could on cats during the local body elections, and now mid term they try to foist it on the public. Devious.” –Pete George at YourNZ

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Councils will now lobby the government to finish its National Cat Management strategy.

### radionz.co.nz 6:05 pm on 25 July 2017
RNZ News
Councils seek greater powers to control cats
By Michael Cropp – Wellington Local Government Reporter
The country’s councils are calling on the government to give them extra powers to protect wildlife from cats including microchipping, de-sexing and registration. Local bodies have the power to control dogs and their behaviour, but they only have jurisdiction over cats when they become a health risk. While the remit presented by Dunedin City Council at the meeting acknowledged the companion role of animals, it noted cats are a danger to wildlife. […] The controversial remit scraped through with just 51 percent of the vote at the Local Government New Zealand annual general meeting.
….Auckland mayor Phil Goff said his council abstained from the vote because it was not sure what it would mean for the 500,000 cats in the country’s largest city. “We are in favour of practical measures to protect native birdlife …. We’re not in favour of bureaucratic measures that might involve millions of dollars of council time and energy but doesn’t achieve the objectives that we set out to achieve,” Mr Goff said.
Read more

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More about ‘LGNZ The Blight’:

Local Government New Zealand – Media Release
Local government to debate four remits and elect new President at AGM
News type: National news | Published: 21 July 2017
The local government sector will voted on four issues when it gathers for its annual AGM in Auckland on Tuesday 25 July. There is a focus on litter legislation, local government funding, cat management and health in this year’s remits. The AGM follows this year’s LGNZ Conference, when over 600 delegates from local government and its stakeholders, industry and community will gather in Auckland for the two day event [23-25 July]. The theme of this year’s conference is Creating pathways to 2050: Liveable spaces and loveable places. Remits are voted on in a secret ballot and if passed will become official policy and be actioned by Local Government New Zealand. Local government will also be voting for a new LGNZ President to replace Lawrence Yule, who steps down after nine years in the role.
….National legislation to manage cats
The third remit was proposed by Dunedin City Council and asks that LGNZ lobby the Government to take legislative action as a matter of urgency to develop national legislation includes provision for cost recovery for cat management.
Throughout New Zealand councils are tasked with trying to promote responsible cat ownership and reduce their environmental impact on wildlife, including native birds and geckos.  Yet, territorial authority’s powers for cats are for minimising the impact on people’s health and wellbeing, and regional councils’ powers are restricted to destruction of feral cats as pests.  The remit seeks the protection of our wildlife and native species by seeking regulatory powers for cat control, including cat identification, cat de-sexing and responsible cat ownership.
….The LGNZ AGM is open to members only. Following the meeting, LGNZ will advise of the outcomes of all votes.
Read more

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Cat rangers and collars with bells on are some of the ideas Dunedin City Council wants to lobby Government for.

### Stuff.co.nz Last updated at 14:28, July 10 2017
Cat control: many Kiwi councils ready to lobby for national rules
By Libby Wilson
Councils around the country are looking to band together to rein in roaming moggies. Dunedin City Council has suggested its colleagues help it push the Government for national rules that could include cat rangers and shutting cats in overnight. Seven other councils around the country have given the idea, and its environmental focus, their backing ahead of a July vote at the Local Government New Zealand annual meeting.
Read more

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‘Vacuum of cat management policy and services in Dunedin’, local submission says.

### nzherald.co.nz 29 Jun, 2017 7:02am
Dunedin council proposes registration of cats in New Zealand
A Dunedin proposal that could result in the registration of cats in New Zealand will be discussed nationally. The proposal from the Dunedin City Council, in consultation with seven other councils, will next month go to a Local Government New Zealand (LGNZ) vote. If it is successful, LGNZ would make it a policy, and begin lobbying the Government to have it made law. The proposal could see the Government called upon to develop legislation for cats similar to the Dog Control Act. It already has the support of the Otago Regional Council, one of 78 councils which will vote on the idea.
Read more

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### ODT Online Wed, 17 May 2017
DCC seeks support for cat control
The Dunedin City Council will seek support from other New Zealand councils to gain greater control of cat management. If additional support from councils was gained, a remit would ask Local Government New Zealand to call upon the Government to give councils statutory power to control cats. The DCC was researching a Wellington City Council bylaw on microchipping cats. However, the current bylaw could not be enforced by non-compliance fees. Cat management would focus on the control of wild cats.
Link

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S T O P ● P R E S S

At Facebook:

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Related Posts and Comments:
26.7.17 RNZ Morning Report : Guyon Espiner sticks claws in Cat Cull & Curfews
25.7.17 To borrow from Stevie Smith : ‘the truth is I think he was already stuck’
22.7.17 Regional state of emergency lifted in Otago (incl Dunedin & Waitaki)
21.7.17 Rainy Day reading —The Spinoff : Ministry of Transport fraud case
21.7.17 DCC ORC : Heavy rain warnings preparations #PublicNotice
1.7.17 LGNZ, don’t wish ‘his lordship’ on New Zealand #VoteRachelReese
3.6.17 ODT updates mayoral vehicle serious injury crash information
24.4.17 LGOIMA vehicle (DCC) : Hyundai Santa Fe (2016) written off Jan 2017
10.12.16 Oh christ ! [LGNZ bureaucratic dopefest]
21.7.15 Dunedin to host LGNZ 2016 conference —FFS TIME TO TAKE IT OUT
21.5.15 DCC and LGNZ, total losers
2.2.15 LGNZ run by Mad Rooster Yule, end of story
10.10.14 Cull consorts with losers at LGNZ
26.6.14 LGNZ #blaggardliars

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Southern Police : Nothing changed since Tom Lewis wrote Coverups & Copouts

Remember when Police bought up all the copies they could, and ‘disappeared’ public library lending copies….

Nothing has changed. No-one is policing the Police.
This is the New old news….

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C L O S E ● T O ● H O M E

A 25-year-old woman says she filmed a police officer minutes before he attacked her.

### ODT Online Wed, 19 Jul 2017
Police assault allegation
By Rob Kidd
Police are investigating allegations an experienced Otago police officer subjected a woman to a vicious attack while he was off-duty. The 25-year-old complainant said she was at a fancy-dress birthday party on Saturday night when the alleged assault took place. She said the man, who was wearing a wig at the time, smashed her face into the bonnet of a car before dragging her down a driveway on her front. The pair had never previously met, she said. “He just lost it.” The Otago Daily Times has chosen not to identify the officer involved, the woman or the town where the alleged incident took place. A police spokesman said police were aware of a complaint about an off-duty officer early on Sunday. Police would not confirm whether the man remained at work.
Read more

****

Speaking of cover-ups….

After reading the Otago Daily Times (page 3) yesterday, it was interesting to google the name *Kallam Croudis* —there’s a name for Conflicts of Interest, past and present.

NZ Police should sack Croudis. What a corrupting and observable liability—

Det Snr Sgt Kallum Croudis has been criticised over his handling of a case which resulted in a woman’s confession being thrown out by the court.

### ODT Online Mon, 17 Jul 2017
Judge critical of senior officer
By Rob Kidd
A senior Dunedin police officer has been slammed by the court over his involvement in a case in which he had a conflict of interest. Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis spoke to a suspect at least three times without being part of the investigation team. Judge Michael Crosbie also criticised the officer’s record-keeping and his “casual approach”, which resulted in police obtaining an unlawful confession from the woman regarding the death of a Dunedin man. In his judgement ruling the confession inadmissible [Judge Crosbie] noted Det Snr Sgt Croudis was a friend of the dead man’s father. Southern district commander Superintendent Paul Basham said the comments of the court would be taken very seriously and “the issues raised in the judgement are of concern”. A spokeswoman later confirmed police would not pursue the prosecution against the woman. […] At the May hearing, [Croudis] said he spoke to the female defendant at least three more times before she had a “voluntary” interview at the station.
Read more

Back when, the same, the same….
ONE BAD COP AMONGST MANY

### Stuff.co.nz 01:43, Jan 31 2009
Judge lambasts top cops in damning report
via Sunday Star-Times
The actions of some of the country’s highest-ranking police have been criticised in a damning Independent Police Conduct Authority report due out later today. The report – released after a two-year investigation – makes adverse comments about 10 Dunedin police, including four inspectors, a detective senior sergeant and two detective sergeants. Justice Lowell Goddard is understood to criticise police for their involvement in private investigations of ACC clients – and for how they handled their subsequent inquiries into complaints. The inquiry was launched after conflict of interest allegations that Peter Gibbons – a former Dunedin CIB head who became a private investigator working for ACC’s fraud unit – used his police constable son-in-law to improperly obtain search warrants and seize property from ACC clients. The clients alleged that when they complained, senior police – including three of Gibbons’ former CIB colleagues – failed to act. […] Gibbons, who was a detective senior sergeant in the CIB in the 1990s, supervised three of the police criticised in the Goddard report Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis, Detective Sergeant Malcolm Inglis and Detective Sergeant Brett Roberts. A previous internal police inquiry showed Croudis assigned Henderson ACC-related cases knowing about his conflict of interest as Gibbons’ son-in-law. Inglis and Roberts conducted the initial inquiries into Van Essen’s complaints. Croudis, Inglis and Roberts have been involved in both the original inquiry and reinvestigation of the David Bain mass murder case. Croudis arrested Bain in 1995.
Read more

****

Peanut-brain danger man Jeremy Buis of Dunedin Police….

Stuff.co.nz Last updated 22:36, July 17 2017
Police officer convicted for harassing Dunedin businessman for years
By Jack Fletcher
Dunedin policeman Jeremy Buis was responsible for the more than two-year campaign of harassment of local businessman Daniel Pryde. Jeremy Fraser Buis, 39, was convicted on a raft of charges relating to the harassment of Daniel Pryde after a June 2012 parking dispute escalated. Suppression of his occupation was lifted in the High Court at Dunedin on Monday. [17 July 2017] …. In April, Buis was found guilty of criminal harassment, threatening to do grievous bodily harm and intentional damage. He was sentenced to 200 hours of community work and order to pay emotional harm reparation of $15,000. Buis’ name suppression was lifted on April 21, but his occupation remained suppressed until Monday.
Read more

****

Southern Police have a dreadful history including participation in the crimes and events described in Coverups & Copouts, for which no prosecutions have issued. Few street-wise people in Dunedin trust the thin blue line to do their job. Is it any wonder Buis, Croudis and their ilk exist, and what of the off-duty police thug who attacked the 25-year-old female complainant on the weekend?

For these men, Louise Nicholas doesn’t exist.

****

### ODT Online Wed, 19 July 2017
Integrity of police threatened
OPINION New Zealanders need to have faith in the police force, a belief that when bad things happen to them, someone will be on their side, helping to right a wrong. That faith has been sorely tested in past years when police officers themselves have decided they are above the law. At the extreme end of the spectrum, in the United States, there has been ongoing debate about the role of the police in the shootings of young black men, in particular. Now, a white Australian woman has been shot in a Minnesota alley after calling the police about a possible assault in the alley behind her home. Most New Zealanders will surmise those sorts of incidents will never happen in this country. But the line between upholding the law by men and women in uniform and them taking the law into their own hands is becoming increasingly blurred. This week, the Otago Daily Times has reported on two incidents which have shaken public confidence in the police to the core.
Read more

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

[previously]

Comment by Elizabeth
2017/03/31 at 2:24 am

Calls for a Royal Commission of inquiry into historic child abuse have been rife these last weeks, inflaming social media and mainstream media (MSM) around New Zealand.

Bless their hearts, Lauda Finem, based offshore, banged out a post at their website yesterday that easily sums up the New Zealand ‘scene’. This is a must read.

LF’s introductory comments are provided here, with excerpts of relevance to Dunedin.

[begins]

March 30, 2017 1:14 am • Lauda Finem
Why Bill English & Nasty Nats find Child Abuse Royal Commissions Terrifying
For the past month or so Kiwi newspapers and other media outlets have been slowly publishing stories relating to the growing chorus of voices calling for a Royal Commission into historic child abuse.
The latest trigger seems to have been an open letter calling for the same, although, in our view, a very narrow, much less desirable version of the ‘Royal Commission Into The Institutional Responses to Historic Child Sexual Abuse’ that our Australian PM Julia Gillard was forced to initiate in 2013; which is only now beginning to release various stats and reports on some of the findings and the evidence that has been heard.
Bill English, the halfwit that National decided to replace John Key with, has of course avoided mentioning the apparent success of the Australian commission, noting only that it might come in handy for New Zealand’s state sector when it comes to lessons that might be learned.

[photo caption] Just how much sway has Police Commissioner Mike Bush had on a government that is clearly terrified of any inquiry

English is in fact completely out of touch with reality in almost everything he has said publicly on the subject; going so far as to claim that there is nothing to be gained or learned by New Zealand establishing a similar inquiry.
This is despite the success of the Australian model and the fact that both Ireland and the UK have also conducted national inquiries.
Not only is the National party Government determined NOT to hold such an inquiry, they are also, seemingly, equally determined not to even entertain the notion that the victims of historic child abuse, sexual, physical and emotional deserve an unreserved apology from the crown. They also deserve to see, where at all possible, their abusers convicted and serving prison sentences.
This fact alone should have every right thinking New Zealander appalled. More especially given the likely scale of the criminal offending, if the Australian Royal Commissions findings are anything to go by; there being absolutely no reason to believe that New Zealand’s statistics would be any different to those of Australia.
In fact, if one is to take the figures recently released by the Australian Commission, and then compare them with the suggested 1100 children that the Kiwis say have been sexually abused whilst in care historically, clearly, New Zealand has had a far more significant problem than Australia per capita.
In fact, New Zealand’s problem does not seem to have abated, the country is still in the grip of almost daily reports of contemporary offending; the only conclusion being that the problem is not only systemic but there may be continuing cultural or institutional causes for its existence.

Read more at http://www.laudafinem.org/2017/03/30/why-bill-english-nasty-nats-find-child-abuse-royal-commissions-terrifying/

● To view the open letter and petition go to http://www.neveragain.co.nz/

****

[excerpts – Lauda Finem]

The first thing that has to be said is that those who have only just arrived at this cause are only calling for an inquiry into children in State care. This is significantly less than the Australian model which has left absolutely no rock un-turned in its pursuit of perpetrators, cover-ups and the truth.

—

The beauty of the Australian model is that it has captured everything, the words “Institutional Response” powerful in who it captured. Cardinals, Bishops, Priests, Religious orders, schools, Teachers; state and private, police, social workers, the scope has been enormous….and rewarding, if the sheer volume of the Commissions results are anything to go by.

—

There is some anecdotal evidence that the New Zealand police have in fact been one of the primary reasons for the National Party Government, to date, being loathed to even consider a Royal Commission. First and foremost the absence of the religious organisations stands out like balls on a short haired dog. Second, the absence of the New Zealand police.

—

Does Bill English seriously believe that New Zealand Govt agencies, including the country’s systemically corrupt police force will learn anything from the published results of the Australian Royal Commission? Does any New Zealand politician seriously believe that for one minute? If they do then they should be pointed in the direction of a clinical psychologist for evaluation and treatment.

—

For both the New Zealand police and the country’s government it’s always been about harm minimisation, not for the unfortunate victims you understand, but rather for themselves.
Until recently, Police Association president for life, Greg O’Connor, was living breathing evidence that the New Zealand police force had gained absolutely nothing from either of the two Australian State crackdowns on police corruption. In fact, many of the gang rapes committed by New Zealand police remained concealed for years after both of those inquiries, some that we are aware of, indeed probably many more, remaining outside the public’s knowledge, the Police Commissioner and Prime Ministers dirty little secret.

—

Just how many of these men and woman suffered serious abuse at the hands of paedophiles and psychopaths working for New Zealand Govt agencies, including its police force?

—

In short, Bill English knows that once the scale of historic sexual physical and emotional harm to Kiwi children is known to the public the government will no longer be in control of the inquiry. Growing public anger will inevitably ensure that any Royal Commission gets what it needs, whether initially proposed and sanctioned or not, to aid in the job of ascertaining the enormous scale of the problem in New Zealand.

—

Evidence of these police and Government cover-ups is to be found here on Lauda Finem, it’s also to be found in a variety other places, libraries and online.
The work of Kiwi investigative journo Ian Wishart, in particular a special investigation Wishart conducted over a two year period, culminating in his 2007 accusations of New Zealand Police involvement in organised child sexual exploitation rings in both Christchurch and Dunedin. Accusations that were never properly investigated by police or the IPCA for quite obvious reasons.
Police behaviour that was at the time of the offending known to John Jamieson, then Christchurch District Commander and subsequently, as Commissioner of police (1984 – 1994), a man who the Catholic Church, following Jamieson’s brief and unremarkable political career, hired with the obvious intention of insuring that all accusations of historic child sexual abuse were mustered smoothly out the back door, much to the Arch Bishop’s benefit.

—

Prior to joining the Catholic Church John Jamieson, as Commissioner of Police, himself assisted in concealing, from the media and the public, allegations of rape, violence and corruption against serving police officers, one of whom escaped to South Africa with the aid of at least nine other serving Gisborne police officers.
In short, Bill English, without a shadow of a doubt, is fully cognisant of the scale of the historic problem in New Zealand, in particular the police involvement. He also likely knows that the scale of Historic child abuse in New Zealand is far greater than what has historically occurred in Australia, if only on a per capita basis.

—

New Zealand police have in the past used all sorts of skulduggery in efforts to thwart official inquiries into their unlawful practices and conduct, including sexual and physical abuses.

—

[photo caption] Two dirty cops: ex New Zealand police commissioners John Jamieson (L) and Howard Broad (R) Jamieson was certainly, without a shred of doubt, a master of the dark art of police corruption and cover-up

—

Lauda Finem have in the past written extensively on the existence of these practices and a secret police network, comprising ex police, some turned corrupt private investigators and others turned corrupt politicians, from local bodies right up to New Zealand’s Parliament.

See: New Zealand Police, ODESSA and just how they look after their own

See: New Zealand’s most powerful political force is?

—

We would also recommend that readers check out Ian Wishart’s article “To Serve and Protect”, also published in 2007, it’s an eye opener and gives readers some idea of what could be investigated had the New Zealand Government followed an identical path to that of the Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

See: Ex police commissioner Howard Broad to head CYF inquiry

Like ex Commissioner Jamieson, Police Commissioner Howard Broad was implicated by Wishart in sordid events which had been exposed by ex Christchurch cop turned whistle-blower and author Tom Lewis.

[ends]

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Quick references:

August 14, 2007
Ian Wishart: To Serve & Protect: June 07
http://www.investigatemagazine.co.nz/Investigate/13956/to-serve-protect-june-07/

Tom Lewis: Coverups & Copouts (Hodder Moa Beckett, 20 March 1998)
The book written by ex senior police officer Tom Lewis traverses the seedy side of Dunedin during the eighties, including the infamous ‘Dunedin Sex Ring’ case.

[promo]
“There have been police enquiries in New Zealand and there has even been the odd exposé but there has never been a book like Tom Lewis’ COVERUPS AND COPOUTS. His story will shock the average New Zealander and shake the New Zealand police to the very core. Not only does the former detective sergeant describe in methodical detail some of the worst coverups in NZ police history, but he punctuates his story in the most compelling fashion. Tom Lewis actually dares to name names. From commissioners to constables, the truncheon isn’t spared. This book will not have won Tom Lewis any friends in the New Zealand Police, but it will finally lay bare to New Zealanders what most had never thought possible of our Police:
* Christopher John Lewis – the truth behind the royal assassination attempt
* Ron Jorgensen – alive and well – and living in Australia
* Dunedin sex ring – why the police copped out
and much more.”

More on police officer Tom Lewis and the Dunedin Sex Ring:
http://www.presscouncil.org.nz/display_ruling.php?case_number=2015
Case Number: 2015 Tom and Teresa Lewis Against Otago Daily Times | Press Council Meeting December 2007

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Posts by the New Zealand Police Conduct Association (NZPCA):

July 27, 2014
INVESTIGATEMAGAZINE.TV publish allegations
http://nzpca.co.nz/investigatemagazine-tv-publish-allegations/

July 27, 2014
Tom Lewis

Tom lewis

July 27, 2014
“Cover ups and Cop outs” the book

“Cover ups and Cop outs” the book

August 1, 2014
Police respond to allegations and possible publication

Police respond to allegations and possible publication

****

Other references:

The Bazley Report

PCA refuses to investigate Dunedin Police claims

[ends]

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

*Image: deviantart.net – Behind my eyelids are islands of violence by feebeelu

DCC makes no direct return from rugby or events held at Fubar Stadium

L A S T ● M O N T H ’S ● P R O N O U N C E M E N T ● F R O M ● A B O V E

ODT 20.6.17 (page 6)

ODT 26.6.17 (page 8)

Trevor Lloyd: Defeat of British rugby by the All Blacks in 1905 [pinimg.com]

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Asbestos contamination at Dunedin Railway Station

[womentravelnz.com]

There’s a new tenancy at the Dunedin Railway Station.

People working on the project had been told the whole underfloor area was safe to enter; that there was plastic down.

Turns out the plastic cover ran short, and a number of site workers had crawled across bare dirt, kicking up a lot of dust as they went – it was found the area had been contaminated with asbestos.

We understand workmen from several companies have been affected.

The Dunedin Railway Station is a council owned property. Affected sitemen have since had their names added to the WorkSafe Asbestos Exposure Database; and Health and Safety meetings have been called to review safety drills and gear provision.

It appears a few people have slipped up along the ‘food chain’ of managerial responsibility for the workers, starting with DCC management (the building owner).

We hear DCC is now paying for workers to be educated on what protection gear they must wear on exposed asbestos worksites.

—

Related Post and Comments:
19.6.16 Thoughts on ODT Insight : Chris Morris investigates Asbestos plague

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Emirates Team New Zealand must WIN #AmericasCup2017

[via catsailingnews.com – click to enlarge]

—

The Kiwi juggernaut rolls on while @oracleteamusa have their backs against the wall. Results and more: https://t.co/bovNMbHyBf #AmericasCup pic.twitter.com/9DfsbVbABB

— America's Cup (@americascup) June 25, 2017

—

At Facebook:

35th America’s Cup match
Race 7: Emirates Team New Zealand beat Oracle Team USA by 12 secs
Race 8: Emirates Team New Zealand beat Oracle Team USA
Team New Zealand lead the first-to-seven series 6-1

—

At Twitter:

.@JSpithill and @peteburling find themselves in very different positions following today's racing. #AmericasCup #ThereIsNoSecond pic.twitter.com/YoKstgObj1

— America's Cup (@americascup) June 25, 2017

.@EmiratesTeamNZ take it home in Race 8, bringing us to match point in the America's Cup Match presented by Louis Vuitton. #AmericasCup pic.twitter.com/WSj1sX9jYM

— America's Cup (@americascup) June 25, 2017

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered inthe public interest.

*Image: 24/06/2017 – Bermuda (BDA) – 35th America’s Cup 2017 – 35th America’s Cup Match Presented by Louis Vuitton – © ACEA 2017 / Photo Sander van der Borch

Dunedin Midwinter Carnival 2017

### ODT Online Sat, 24 Jun 2017
Nocturnal creatures shine at carnival
By Vaughan Elder
The wild things came out to play in the Octagon tonight as luminous nocturnal creatures invaded for the Dunedin Midwinter Carnival. Thousands of people packed the Octagon and Stuart St for the annual event, which this year had the theme of Nocturnal Nature.
Read more

—

█ Photos via Dunedin News at Facebook [closed group]

█ Video via Dunedin News at Facebook

****

Meanwhile the true fauna of Bath Street looks on….

—

Post and images by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Vogel Street parking on a quiet Sunday afternoon #petroltheft

A colleague and I decided to go to the ‘street’ kitchen on Sunday afternoon. We parked in front of the back doors to Sammy’s. At the kitchen we ordered tea and coffee and talked for a couple of hours. In that time someone unseen by us siphoned off about half of what remained in the petrol tank of my companion’s specially modified vehicle. Whoever did the job didn’t put the fuel flap down carefully before exit.

Naturally, some dusting to do…. was it an opportunistic one-off, or ?

We shall see. A few weird things going on lately. The driver and owner of the vehicle has only had it for about 6 days; they’re monitoring fuel consumption as well as other things in their daily life quite carefully just now.

Then too, there’s someone acting weirdly about town, who has an expired licence (not talking driver’s licence). Check this out at the Justice website. They coffee at Marbecks (Wall Street mall) despite protestations they do not.

Just putting it out there.

Small world.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Council says “bag it” —we can help with that

Although, there’s no indication they like carbon monoxide (CO).
A useful part of the atmosphere in the circumstances.

****

STICK ‘EDUCATION’ UP THE PROVERBIAL

At Facebook:

The Dunedin City Council is keen to “educate all users to ensure enjoyment of our reserves and beaches”.

### ODT Online Fri, 9 June 2017
New horse dung rule pleases, riles
By Shawn McAvinue
Horse droppings must be cleaned from Dunedin tracks by riders but they can remain on footpaths and roads, a new bylaw states. A community board head says the new rules are a “step in the right direction”, but a horseman reckons the bylaw is “ridiculous”. Dunedin City Council recreation and planning facilities manager…said under the recently adopted Reserves and Beaches Bylaw, horse owners were expected to remove horse droppings from  or near access tracks as a courtesy to other users. The bylaw allowed for enforcement, [they] said. […] Council transport group manager Richard Saunders said  under the council’s Roading Bylaw owners were not required to clean up if their horse left droppings on a public road or footpath. The council received few complaints about the issue, he said. […] Horseman Keith Roberts (69), of Berwick, said he had ridden around New Zealand four times on his horse Zara and had never picked up her droppings. The bylaw would not change his behaviour, he said. “Never.”
Read more

TIME TO CLEAN OUT THE STABLE

—

Related Posts and Comments:
● 30.5.17 The Boil Over : DCC and Freedom Camping, Reserves and Beaches bylaws
● 13.5.17 Condition of Warrington Domain screwed by DCC lack of enforcement #CampingControlBylaw23
● 9.4.17 DCC obfuscates : Open slather for freedom campers at Warrington
● 16.3.17 WE have the information, unreasonable delay providing it #LGOIMA
● 15.2.17 Warrington : DCC dictates loss of community’s grassed recreation reserve to freeloaders
8.2.17 Hands Off Enjoyment of OUR Beaches #DCC
● 6.2.17 Uncontrolled freedom camping at Warrington Domain this weekend —DCC ‘hell model’ [no enforcement]
● 1.2.17 “Fake news” from DCC boffins & Community Board re freedom camping at Warrington Domain #TheBlight
10.2.16 Dunedin freedom camping #DCC #enforcement
16.12.14 DCC: Freedom Camping issues
7.12.09 Coastal protection zones

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

ALL THESE THINGS BELONG ON BEACHES

Burt Munro Challenge [southlandexpress.co.nz]

[slohorsenews.net]

“We Shall Fight on the Beaches” –Winston Churchill, 4 June 1940

Stadiums, in particular the FB Aurora Delta Stadium at Dunedin

Olympiastadion München, opened 26 May 1972

Received from Gurglars
Thu, 8 Jun 2017 at 2:11 p.m.

Bayern Munich bought out TSV 1860 Munich, their 50% joint venture partners, for €11 million. The stadium cost €360 million and originally seated 80,000 pax.

This is despite the Stadium being used weekly for matches for Bayern and TS Munchen, and six World Cup games being played at the stadium.

█ Wikipedia: Olympiastadion (Munich)

What this tells us is that stadiums are worthless once built – are not assets, but liabilities.

If they are fully owned (no debt) and receipts go to the stadium owners then they can be profitable, but only if the owner is also the user. Thus the only hope is for the Highlanders/Otago to own the stadium.

The DCC have demonstrated that all they can rack up is more debt, more bills and more losses.

[ends]

****

Fat chance of Otago Rugby taking over the stadium while it continues to be subsidised by DVML – the true cost of which is not made public. ORFU is now making profits but declines to pay back the ratepayers for the ‘simple things’, like black tie dinners held at the stadium in recent times. God knows what we’re paying for while Mr Davies sits atop his rugby goal post roost, clucking inanely, looking down at the pretty (untouchable) grass.

The prima donna approach is a False Economy, but not for dullards and professional rugby thugs.

Rip up the grass, put in articial turf, and let the Otago stadium be used by more codes / more sports people.

****

“It is a little naive to think because it is raining outside and there is water on the facilities, you can just come inside.” –Terry Davies

### ODT Online Thu, 8 Jun 2017
Unrealistic to have club sport at stadium – Davies
By Adrian Seconi
The chances of playing club sport under the roof at Forsyth Barr Stadium without an advanced booking are virtually nil, Dunedin Venues chief executive Terry Davies says. The issue came up in mid-April when the Dunedin City Council closed all its grounds due to poor weather. The Dunedin Rugby Metropolitan Council was reluctant to cancel round five of premier rugby and had hoped to play on the sand-based surfaces at Hancock Park and Kettle Park and possibly under the roof at Forsyth Barr Stadium. However, the stadium was ruled out because of scheduled maintenance. The issue came up again last month when grotty weather forced more cancellations, although premier rugby went ahead as planned. Davies said the idea club sport could be played at Forsyth Barr Stadium because of poor weather was naive. […] “The stadium was fundamentally built to deliver a real economic impact for the city. We have a number of major contracts in place with the professional rugby bodies … and there are other major events that we need to look after. On that basis we run quite a detailed maintenance schedule right through to the year it ensure we can deliver. The last thing we want to do is have a facility that is [not looking its best].”
Read more

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Ed Sheeran at Dunedin (3 concerts) March 2018

Ed Sheeran, oil painting by Belfast based artist Colin Davidson
[thesun.co.uk | press association]

### The Sun 3 May 2017, 12:25 AM Updated: 4 May 2017, 12:13 AM
Ed Ringer: Chart-topper Ed Sheeran immortalised in painting unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery
By Ben Leo
Chart-topping Ed Sheeran is top of the arts too as he stands next to the National Portrait Gallery’s new painting of him. The London venue already has a photograph of the music star on display and has now acquired his first portrait. Ed, 26, posed for three hours for sketches and photos for Colin Davidson’s oil painting after the Irish artist met the musician’s art historian dad John. The artist said : “When painting a portrait I am looking for the moment when the person is almost unaware of me being there and I feel I got it with Ed.
Read more

—

Ed Sheeran Published on Feb 23, 2017
Ed Sheeran – Castle On The Hill & Shape Of You feat. Stormzy [Live from the Brit Awards 2017]
Album ÷.

Ed Sheeran will play three concerts in Dunedin next year.

### ODT Online Mon, 5 Jun 2017
Legal risks in hosting fans, adviser warns
By Chris Morris
Dunedin homeowners hoping for an Airbnb windfall by hosting fans of Ed Sheeran and the British and Irish Lions are being urged to consider the legal risks. The city will throw its doors open to thousands of travelling fans when the Lions take on the Highlanders on June 13 and when pop superstar Ed Sheeran arrives for the first of three concerts in March next year. And, with Dunedin’s commercial accommodation already straining under the pressure, many of those visiting the city would turn to websites such as Airbnb to find a house or room to rent. But the peer-to-peer accommodation service’s rapid rise was not without legal risks, and homeowners needed to be aware of them […] Since the arrival of the new Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, anyone using a site such as Airbnb to rent out their property was considered a “PCBU” – a “person conducting a business or an undertaking”. That meant they had to comply with the requirements of the new legislation, or face a potential Worksafe prosecution if their negligence led to a guest being injured or killed…
Read more

Related Posts and Comments:
8.1.17 Ed and Elton, backroads
16.5.15 cool rough video —boy’s own

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Wharf Hotel and the former Gregg’s Coffee Factory, Fryatt St

Today Otago Daily Times columnist Dave Cannan kindly provided lift-off for a little social history project that’s dear to my heart.

At Facebook:

The call for information also appears at page 2 of today’s print and digital editions of the newspaper and at the ODT Facebook page.

We need STORIES – can you help?

Dave and I will be sharing information for publication.

We will take any stories people have, from any era – people can write a couple of paragraphs only if they want (email The Wash), or phone Dave with details.

I welcome a catchup with people hosting larger stories and more complex memories.

Contacts for Dave Cannan:
phone: (03) 479 3519
email: thewash@odt.co.nz
tweet: @thewashodt
http://www.facebook.com/thewashodt

The photograph of the ‘Glenlora’ at Dunedin Wharf was taken circa the 1890s. Glenlora was an iron barque of 764 tons, built in 1864 in Liverpool. Owned by Shaw Savill Line, the ship brought several thousands of immigrants to New Zealand between 1874 and 1895. Photographer: David Alexander De Maus, 1847-1925. D.A. Maus Collection – Alexander Turnbull Library.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post os offered in the public interest.

Anne Elliot, too soon

It is Anne Elliot’s funeral on Monday morning at Middlemarch Community Hall.

The energising, intellectual and thoughtful Anne, and her community minded salt-of-the-earth husband Bales Elliot, have been my good friends and associates since Stop The Stadium committee days. Anne was one of the troopers, someone who wrote to the Otago Daily Times protesting the stadium build, and commenting at What if? Dunedin with gravitas.

It has been a ‘country treat’, over recent years, to turn up in the company of friends to Larchgrove Farm – to enjoy the friendship and hospitality of Anne, Bales and son Scott at their historic farmstead. Joining their wider friendship circle in chatter, laughs and broad conversation – with sumptuous farm catering supported by foodie ‘bring a plates’ – to co-celebrate family occasions and milestones. The country life.

Anne hails from Denmark. She grew up in a town nearly 100 km from Copenhagen. A blessed area of the world which seemed to deeply inflect her love of design, exactnesses, and particularity of choice in most aspects of life and enquiry.

Bales and Anne travelled extensively overseas together. Their horizons at all times broad and robust. More recently Anne was happy to chance travel through remote parts to reach family and friends in Scandinavia, by strategic pathmaking and self monitoring.

I deeply admired Anne’s ability to challenge herself in the attempt to stay ahead of medical issues as they presented. She grilled health practitioners. She trawled the net sagely. Although, when last I saw Anne at Otago Hospice and told her she looked remarkably bright (she was), she said she felt better for taking her medications! (Ah-ha, I thought). She enjoyed her short stays for respite care at the Hospice, typically texting a couple of days before her arrival in Dunedin to invite me along for “one of our long chats”. Shortness of breath meant we carefully paced wide-ranging discussion with small snacks and the odd glass of Church Road, one of Anne’s favourite drinkables.

I really loved Anne’s bravery and determination. These qualities, of course, were present in abundance from the time she and I first met – way before oxygen became short. I liked how she made everyone welcome; she was discerning when people acted stupidly and unfairly. Anne was analytical, busy/razor minded, forward thinking, entrepreneurial, and a follower and buyer of latest things ‘Apple’. She was always well turned out. Poised. An in-joke between us, she often lamented she wasn’t learned in budgeting or finance, or didn’t quite know committee business procedure. She would rack my brains! Anne knew to involve fellow conspirators. I’ve been useful here and there when Anne was pushing achievements for her district – or lacked immediate connection with experts of various kinds locally and nationally.

Anne was ‘antistadium’. But more so, she was a kind-hearted, infectious, observant woman and gifted scholar. After all, god loves a plotter and a schemer! A bee in the bonnet…

Tomorrow morning I meet with Anne’s family and friends to say goodbye at Middlemarch in this chilly late part of autumn. 1100 hours.

Clear roads.

ODT 25.5.17 (page 27)

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Profligate behaviour : MYTH paraded as fact…… just like Aurora Energy’s propaganda campaign

Council infrastructure and networks committee chairwoman Cr Kate Wilson said last night the project would go ahead “regardless”. There was funding for three years, she said, and the fourth year’s funding would be part of next year’s long-term plan, and the one after that. The project was needed for safety reasons to prevent vehicles driving into the harbour and climate change making the road undriveable. (ODT) *Emphasis by whatifdunedin

Yeah right.

### ODT Online Fri, 26 May 2017
Botched cycleway estimate short by $13m
By David Loughrey
A bungled Dunedin City Council cost estimate to complete safety improvements and a cycle/walkway on Otago Peninsula has left the project more than $13 million short. The council announced yesterday an estimate for the project on Portobello Rd and Harington Point Rd that includes a cycle/walkway from Taiaroa Head to the city had risen from $20 million to $49 million. The earlier estimate, drawn up  in 2011, did not include parts of the cycleway to be built, land that had to be bought and a contingency fund to cover unforeseen expenses. […] Despite the cost rise, the council will start construction this year, with a shared cycle/walkway design.
Read more

****

Powerlines at sunset [garp.com]

Meanwhile WE will be paying for our Otago power network TWICE, at a crippling cost to business and residential power consumers well into the future —thanks to Dunedin City Council’s unsatisfactory governance of the companies Aurora Energy / Delta Utility Services and Dunedin City Holdings and, above all, the Council’s unfettered use of public funds to realise the dream of the Tartan Mafia and Professional Rugby to build the now frequently empty and under-utilised Forsyth Barr Stadium. (three concerts by Ed Sheeran in highly doubtful acoustic conditions inside ‘the roof’ does not a Christmas make).

All this because the Council conveniently fails to ensure it covers the infrastructural basics (in this instance: the safe, secure and continuous supply of electricity) – affordably – for the static if bearly stable City of Dunedin, and the sparcely populated Otago region in the mode of fast pumping growth. (There are simply too few permanent ratepayers to uphold ‘big bloated dreams’ and money siphoning on the rates take).

The Council did not ensure that Aurora Energy / Delta Utility Services were sufficiently well structured to Avoid profligate spending, making subvention payments to the stadium companies, or borrowing to pay dividends to the Council. (Probably the least of it).

There have been YEARS of dangerous neglect, embellishing the lack of repair and upgrade to the Community of Otago’s electricity network.

The Council is not well enough controlled (corporate and financial oversight) in order to Avoid its own profligate spending —so to protect, support and upgrade Otago’s power network as the solid basis for regional economic development and SAFE living —with CERTAINTY and SECURITY OF SUPPLY.

Instead, The People will now be plunged into further debt by the circus wheel of local body politicians and the morally thin and rather malevolent boards of directors (masters of spin) controlling the companies.

It’s time the People of Dunedin and Otago took control of their power infrastructure. Resolving, if they will, to adopt a different ownership and delivery model – one option is to form a democratically elected Community Power Trust to own and oversee the network; this is a sound regional model that is proven to work in other jurisdictions, with all due care.

WE have to Safeguard our future.
Not leave decision-making to unvetted members of the Tartan Mafia.
Especially not those in thrall to the likes of Gordon Stewart and his ilk (a vague reference to Delta’s speculative dealings at Yaldhurst, Christchurch – Delta is presently in a discovery process via an action brought to the Christchurch High Court by Caveators claiming Constructive Fraud).

DO NOT sell the ‘fragments remaining’ of the Otago Power Network (as bleated by some in power who can’t/won’t maintain a local body balance sheet – like you trust them, already?!) – to overseas corporates who will hike power prices disastrously to satisfy their shareholders.

Proceed carefully, OTAGO.

ASK QUESTIONS. RESEARCH. DO YOUR SUMS.
DON’T BE TOLD WHAT TO DO. ACT RESPONSIBLY FOR THE FUTURE PROSPERITY OF YOUR KITH AND KIN.
DO NOT PLACE FAITH IN OLD SPIN MAESTERS AND THEIR DEPUTIES.

We’ve seen them all before and have the new $1+ BILLION ‘invoice’ from Aurora Energy to prove it. Yes, we thought we had already paid over that amount in electricity and lines dues.

The suited ones bringing the clamour are looking after themselves – not US, not OUR COMMUNITY.

This is now a ransom.

The UGLY sister companies remain joined at the hip : Delta is Aurora Energy’s “preferred contractor”. And Steve is new, so don’t blame him! ….Really?

****

[propaganda – Aurora Energy]

After facing unrelenting pressure to up its game, Aurora Energy says it has stepped up to the challenge.

Sat, 27 May 2017
Dawn of a new Aurora era
By Vaughan Elder
Aurora chairman Steve Thompson said it had been under the “spotlight and the heat lamp” since accusations broke last October that it was endangering the public and workers by leaving its network, and in particular power poles, to deteriorate. That pressure turned ugly at times and workers had been verbally abused, including while out doing their supermarket shopping. Mr Thompson blamed the abuse on what he described as unfair criticism and media coverage. But Mr Thompson said in the face of adversity, Aurora and its sister company Delta had achieved a “hell of a lot” in a short space of time. The two companies were well on their way to splitting up in a divorce which Mr Thompson said would cost money in the short-term but reap huge benefits in the long-term. Aurora was also mid-way through an ambitious accelerated pole replacement programme and this week announced a $720million plan to upgrade its ageing network.
….Mr Thompson said its actions should help renew the public’s faith in both companies, but emphasised he believed that faith had been unfairly shaken by what he described as over-the-top criticism in the past seven months. He said safety concerns about the 2910 red-tagged poles across Dunedin, Central Otago and Queenstown Lakes had been overblown. At the same time, Delta and Aurora’s efforts to confront the problem, both before and after the story broke in October, had been under-reported, he said.
….Despite his anger at the way Aurora had been treated by critics and in the Otago Daily Times, he was under no illusion the network was in top shape, saying it was the second oldest network in New Zealand and acknowledged major work was needed to improve it in the next 10 years. But he would not be drawn on whether the situation had come about as a result of decades of underinvestment, which has been one of the main criticisms levelled at Aurora since October. He said he was not in a position to comment given he only started midway through last year.
Read more

CRITICAL ABHORRENCE FOR TOP CHAPS IN THE AURORA / DELTA / DCHL ‘EXECUTIVE’ (PAST AND PRESENT) WILL CONTINUE UNABATED IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE UNTIL THEY AND THEIR FRIENDS ARE OUSTED AND MADE ANSWERABLE TO HIGHER AUTHORITIES.

Otago people must busy themselves.
Time for formal inquiries. Time to REMODEL.

—

Related Post and Coments:
24.5.17 SCANDAL : Aurora Energy Ltd set to burden Otago ratepayers and residents with massive rates increases

█ For more, enter the terms *aurora*, delta*, *epic fraud*, *poles*, *healey* or *dchl* in the search box at right.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

thoughts and faces #loosematerial

My father [never a follower of the FedUp Farmers, as he deemed them; always the campaigner for removal of farm subsidies, to enhance production and market competition] had ‘stock’ phrases with which to judge the faces of female adversaries, those with little brain or spine in politics, pretenders. One adept phrase that sticks in my mind is “like a horse eating thistles” —so I look on the following with my tinted lens, and laugh, rurally (ruefully). No one target.

—

On 19 May @StuFleming tweeted: “Spend $200k, revenue projections of $2.4M to others, 10% margin yields say $240k net”
[minus ODT news photo of face]

As ratepayer not involved in tourism or hospo, I’m wondering what to spend my windfall from Trenz on. Travel? Balclutha or Hampden? https://t.co/kau4b3aDSB

— T. Optional (@TomBoyOptional) May 20, 2017

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Rather bleak. pic.twitter.com/dI41cnqk0u

— Chris (@opetheater) May 20, 2017

—

[DUD ‘money hype’ typically depends on false multipliers, anechoic silences, and arrogant self-belief —this (yes) bleak statement applies across a broad range of proposed deals and associated marketing detritus in the city, especially to events, conferences, sport, hospitality and accommodation, and even the re-use (Not conservation) of truly rare and precious instances of historic heritage] Here’s to all the fricking horses out there, including hypocritical colleagues and friends with blinkers like demo balls prepared to squeeze the last dollar and pass us to Hell. Anyway, back to “the business”…. cargo cult tourism. The wider effects of tourism are like those of dairying. Too many eggs in one basket and everybody (I mean, everybody) ends up doing it badly —killing Our Place for generations. Greed, like endorphins, like a running addiction, binds them up. They think they’re bright, they think they’re enablers (read risk takers/investors centred on their own gains only), they think they’re entrepreneurs, better than others (but because I for one will tell you things you don’t want to hear, you’ll say “I’ll ring you tomorrow”, that silence again) but they’re just funneled, tunneled sheepybaas – doing it wrong. Like cows, deer, Chinese gooseberries (Kiwifruit!), wines, stadiums….. or ‘getting a room’ behind the poorly remembered, heavily made-up, Disney’d facade of our city and nationhood. The worst kind didn’t, or didn’t bother to, ‘grow up’ here. They get desperate, create mess, import other yes men. Ring you like nothing happened, their exploits —not to ask deeply madly who and how you really are.

### ODT Online Sat, 20 May 2017
Trenz prompts high aspirations
By David Loughrey
Next year’s Trenz conference in Dunedin is set to cost ratepayers $200,000, but the long-term pay-off should run well into the millions.
The Dunedin City Council will next week be given an idea of the costs to the city of hosting the conference from May 7 to 10, and also the estimated benefits. The city learned last week it would host the tourism industry event next year, bringing up to 1200 international travel and tourism buyers, media and New Zealand tourism operators to Dunedin. It will be the first time the event, run by Tourism Industry Aotearoa (TIA), has come to Dunedin and the first time it has been hosted outside Auckland, Rotorua, Christchurch or Queenstown since it began in the 1960s. Trenz is an opportunity for New Zealand tourism operators to sell their product to buyers, effectively overseas travel agents who put together itineraries for overseas tourists. Attracting more than 350 buyers to experience the tourism products on offer here is considered a huge coup. On average, each buyer sends 4000 visitors a year to New Zealand, totalling 1.5 million. It comes as figures show New Zealand’s tourism market is expected to continue to grow strongly, topping $15 billion by 2023. Tourism contributes more than $690 million to Dunedin’s economy every year.
Read more

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South Islanders woke up to a snowy start this morning with the first Antarctic blast of winter https://t.co/AJsIxO5Pwe pic.twitter.com/0jBfYGEORq

— nzherald (@nzherald) May 19, 2017

—

Meanwhile, although we (‘our stock’ NZ) and the UK farm gate look pretty much the same……

‘Herdwick Shepherd’ aka James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) farms Herdwick sheep in the English Lake District. Author of bestselling memoir, The Shepherd’s Life:

Still cold up on the fells pic.twitter.com/VsFBL9yJnX

— James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) May 19, 2017

Best thing this week… pic.twitter.com/CKD0DJtAxj

— James Rebanks (@herdyshepherd1) May 19, 2017

### ODT Online Saturday, 20 May 2017
OE to Britain set to get tougher
Prime Minister Bill English says the Conservative Party’s new plans to clamp down on immigration will sting New Zealanders wanting to live in the United Kingdom, including on the traditional OE, but there is little he can do until Brexit is completed. The British party’s election manifesto includes plans to drastically cut net migration from 273,000 to less than 100,000 by targeting students and those on working visas. It proposes cutting the number of skilled migrants to get visas, higher levies on employers who take on migrant workers and tripling the National Health Service immigration health surcharge from £200 to £600 ($NZ380 to $NZ1130) a year for those in the UK on visas of more than six months and 450 for international students. That surcharge increase will also affect those on the traditional OE, although there is no mention of scrapping the two-year youth mobility visa which allows young New Zealanders to get a two-year visa to work and travel in the United Kingdom. Mr English said the changes would affect those on their OE but they would have to grin and bear it until Brexit was completed. NZME.
Read more

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Super City mayor Phil Goff has a plan for getting money from tourists – it bears some similarity to that of the Mongrel Mob……

Amid talk of hotel taxes and tourist levies, Winston Aldworth says New Zealanders are missing a bigger opportunity https://t.co/oJNUiMesTL

— nzherald (@nzherald) May 19, 2017

### NZ Herald Thu, 18 May 2017
Winston Aldworth: Seeking the smart money
OPINION What do Phil Goff and the Mongrel Mob have in common? As hundreds of travel industry figures from all around the world gathered in Auckland for last week’s Trenz conference, one of the many topics up for discussion was the Auckland mayor’s enthusiasm for a hotel bed tax on visitors to the city. Meanwhile, up north at Ahipara on Ninety Mile Beach, three German tourists were approached by two local Mongrel Mob members who told them that they were on Maori land, and had to pay koha. They also told the tourists they’d be taking a few of their cigarettes. A tobacco tax, if you will. Perhaps their plan for putting heavy taxes on visitors was inspired by the Super City mayor. Goff’s bed tax is about as blunt an instrument as the Mob’s shakedown. “Look there’s a foreigner! Let’s get a couple of bucks off them.” The airport tax introduced by John Key a year ago is equally clumsy. It’s a travesty that these tariffs are the best we can come up with for making money out of tourism. Yes, other countries put dull levies on visitor arrivals, but that’s no reason to follow suit. We New Zealanders pride ourselves on being innovators, so let’s find innovative ways to get more money out of the tourism sector. Both Goff and Key were ministers in governments that did everything they could to remove tariffs from the dairy trade. Today, the best and brightest marketing wallahs of Goff’s inner circle are putting forward a plan no more sophisticated than one devised by two Mongrel Mob members standing on a Northland beach. I’m not against making money out of tourists — quite the opposite, in fact. I think it’s terrific that our country can be boosted by an industry that encourages us to care for our environment, celebrate the things that make our culture unique and spreads revenue quickly and efficiently to the regions. But how about instead of putting a dumb tax on the visitors, we upsell them? Take their money at the gate for sure, but give them something special in return.
Read more

Enough randomising. More rain and ice falls.

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

@whatifdunedin tracks the International Space Station #ISS

Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani), residing in Reggio Emilia, Italy, keeps his followers posted about the visibilty of the International Space Station and the composition of the crew aboard the spacecraft in orbit. His Twitter ID is a painting of Russian pioneer of space flight Yuri Gagarin, the first man to have done (12 April 1961) a space flight. Ignazio’s Twitter profile is a tribute to space exploration and the research to improve our quality of life.

🌏New Zealand from Space https://t.co/FFVCiNuQPX
🗓13 May 2017

🇳🇿South Island@RealLucyLawless @BenSRachinger @forestnymphmfc @whskr @UCNZ🌏 pic.twitter.com/zW1lSXdD0G

— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) May 14, 2017

🇳🇿Otago
🇳🇿Southland
The @Space_Station is visible to
the naked💥eye at 6:57 pm 🕖
everywhere [ if clouds allow ]

🌏@64by61 @whatifdunedin pic.twitter.com/lzooLvhKMR

— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) May 14, 2017

International Space Station
Current crew #Exp51

🇺🇸Jack Fischer
🇷🇺Fyodor Yurchikhin

🇪🇺🇫🇷T. Pesquet
🇺🇸P. Whitson [ CDR ]
🇷🇺O. Novitskiy pic.twitter.com/IBFvGD5UyO

— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) May 14, 2017

****

Dunedin-based astronomer and dark skies proponent Ian Griffin (@iangriffin) keeps an eagle eye out for happenings overhead, often with superb and astonishing camera results. To obtain these shots of the overhead pass Ian used a 9.25inch Celestron with a Sony A7S2 camera.

Woah! Tonight from Dunedin, @Space_Station is passing virtually overhead at 18:59. Remember to look up! #Dunedinisgreat

— Ian Griffin (@iangriffin) May 14, 2017

Hey look everyone. The @Space_Station passed over Dunedin & I shot some pics through my telescope. The details are cool! #space #astronomy pic.twitter.com/kEu6sCNlTP

— Ian Griffin (@iangriffin) May 15, 2017

Close up of the @Space_Station taken through my telescope tonight from #Dunedinnz #astronomy #Astrophotography pic.twitter.com/4H7MqkZVcr

— Ian Griffin (@iangriffin) May 15, 2017

****

Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) is NASA’s page for updates from the International Space Station, the world-class lab orbiting Earth 250 miles above. For the latest research, follow @ISS_Research.

The 1st spacewalk at station took place Dec. 7, 1998. The 200th spacewalk at station will take place Friday morning. https://t.co/ovJuuFaDPn pic.twitter.com/gaQ6Uq7K01

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 11, 2017

The first spacewalk at station took place on Dec. 7, 1998. Today's spacewalk with @AstroPeggy & @Astro2Fish will make 200 at station. pic.twitter.com/1Ga5K0vTPZ

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

Spacewalkers waiting for "Go" from Mission Control before entering airlock. pic.twitter.com/aMBN3Y3A5B

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@AstroPeggy and @Astro2Fish are in airlock with hatch closed. Depressurization has begun. pic.twitter.com/z9DnZ6HG2S

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@AstroFish begins his first spacewalk with @AstroPeggy who is on her ninth. Expected to last about 4 hours. https://t.co/ABuQAkBBBI pic.twitter.com/WV4c2lBb20

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@Astro2Fish rides the robotic arm toward @AstroPeggy to help remove and stow gear. https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jut pic.twitter.com/ErY5vheFFy

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@Astro2Fish and @AstroPeggy are installing a new avionics box this morning that powers and sends data to external science experiments. https://t.co/uYF2TglJTw

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

Spacewalkers finished installing avionics box. They move on to @AMSISS work which measured 100 billion cosmic rays. https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jut pic.twitter.com/4RS2b1fq53

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@Astro2Fish floats in microgravity while tethered to the station's Pressurized Mating Adapter-3. https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jut pic.twitter.com/OyqOsAlFoO

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@AstroPeggy and @Astro2Fish wrap up 200th station spacewalk at 1:21pm ET after 4 hours, 13 minutes. https://t.co/yuOTrZ4Jut pic.twitter.com/JRFSH0tNwF

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 12, 2017

.@AstroPeggy and @Astro2Fish spacewalked outside last week to install and swap space station hardware. #SpaceToGround pic.twitter.com/315oObPXab

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 15, 2017

The Exp 51 crew is exploring how living in space affects bone health and fluid shifts inside astronauts. https://t.co/oAMayA7LVN pic.twitter.com/U4hluwaIC5

— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) May 15, 2017

****

In other news….

Inmarsat-5 F4 Mission
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will deliver Inmarsat-5 F4, a commercial communications satellite, to a Geostationary Transfer Orbit (GTO). As the industry leader and pioneer of mobile satellite communications, Inmarsat has been powering global connectivity for more than three decades. SpaceX is targeting launch of Inmarsat-5 F4 from historic Launch Complex 39A (LC-39A) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The 49-minute launch window opens on Monday, May 15, at 7:21 p.m. EDT, or 23:21 UTC. A backup launch window opens on Tuesday, May 16, at 7:21 p.m. EDT, or 23:21 UTC.

⏱T -3 h.
🇺🇸Florida
🚀Rocket: #Falcon9 (1st stage no landing)
🛰Payload: #I5F4 Inmarsat https://t.co/jXuThNckhB

📑info: https://t.co/De5xXR5a8c pic.twitter.com/3HUYpfopkn

— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) May 15, 2017

⏱T -90 min.
🇺🇸Florida
🚀Rocket: #Falcon9 (1st stage no landing)

🛰Payload: #I5F4 by https://t.co/jXuThNckhB

📺LIVE TV https://t.co/ac6A21zSfU pic.twitter.com/1a4UQO3hmO

— Ignazio Magnani (@IgnazioMagnani) May 15, 2017

Quick video recap of Falcon 9 launch of Inmarsat-5 Flight 4 pic.twitter.com/W8eVUEsH6r

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 16, 2017

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Pike River realities surface . . .

At Twitter:

New Pike River mine footage 'extraordinary and alarming' https://t.co/znH2ARoJWt'

— RNZ News (@rnz_news) April 30, 2017

****

Video at ODT Online:

The father of one of the men killed in the Pike River mining disaster says the families have always believed the Government wasn’t telling the truth about mine safety.

Mon, 1 May 2017
ODT: Pike video shows men in mine after blast
The Government has long said high concentrations of methane inside the mine make it too risky to re-enter to retrieve the bodies of the 29 men killed in the November 2010 blast, because the gas could explode. But footage leaked to Newshub yesterday showed two Mines Rescue workers inside the mine three months after the explosion, with no gloves, apparently relaxed as they fashioned a makeshift cover for a robot out of cardboard and tape. The robot is seen to be steaming or smoking well inside the mine, but the workers do not panic – and nothing explodes. Bernie Monk, whose son Michael was killed in the November 2010 explosion in the West Coast coal mine, said the newly leaked footage did not come as a surprise. Cont/

****

At Twitter:

Never-before-seen footage from a robot inside Pike River shows men working, smoke or steam emitting from the robot https://t.co/4ST8LcktZc pic.twitter.com/cjo5rLWgxo

— Newshub Breaking (@NewshubBreaking) April 30, 2017

Incredible footage from inside Pike River's access tunnel from March 2011 showing two men inside + a smokey robot https://t.co/7VUmbPGsXq pic.twitter.com/8yKQKhvS51

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) April 30, 2017

This is the loader Russell Smith was driving when Pike River exploded. He was 1570m up mine's access tunnel https://t.co/7VUmbPGsXq pic.twitter.com/V7wIvAWHVe

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) April 30, 2017

Here's the raw new footage from inside Pike River's access tunnel, which shows two Mines Rescue staff calmly working https://t.co/RUw0tWuZ4o

— Newshub Politics (@NewshubPolitics) April 30, 2017

.@pmbillenglish says he didn't know about the existence of Pike River footage released by Newshub https://t.co/zQnuN02Szd

— Newshub (@NewshubNZ) April 30, 2017

.@RadioLIVENZ's @SAINSO: PM Bill English needs to grow a pair over Pike River https://t.co/dh88rP5DtZ pic.twitter.com/6QoQV6LHLK

— Newshub Features (@NewshubFeatures) April 30, 2017

****

nzherald.co.nz Uploaded on Nov 23, 2010
Raw video: Robot camera inside Pike River mine
First pictures from inside the Pike River mine which show the miner’s helmet and mine damage.

Business Leaders’ Health & Safety Forum Published on Oct 21, 2013
Case Study: Pike River
View the full case study here:
http://www.zeroharm.org.nz/leadership/case-studies/pike-river/

Graeme Axford Published on Oct 31, 2014
Pike River families believe photos show bodies
Friday 31 Oct 2014 8:06 p.m.
It is understood that a decision from Solid Energy on whether it will allow recovery teams to re-enter the drift of the Pike River mine is imminent. The drift is not the mine itself, but the two-kilometre tunnel that leads to the mine.
Families of the victims are desperate for a mission to collect evidence and to see if there are any bodies in the drift.
They say if Solid Energy won’t do it, they will. They say they know there are bodies in the mine, and tonight, with their blessing and for the first time, we can show you their evidence. Dean Dunbar, the father of lost miner Joseph Dunbar, spoke with Campbell Live producer Kate McCallum. Watch the full interview with Dean Dunbar.

Division of Humanities, University of Otago Published on Jul 4, 2016
███ Pike River – How could this happen in this day and age?
Colin Smith, Chairman on the Pike River Families Group Committee and the Pike River 29 Legacy Trust, talks about the Pike River disaster and asks ‘how could this happen in this day and age’? Find out why the Pike River Families have fought so hard and for so long. Colin Smith is a law graduate from the University of Otago and is a partner with the Greymouth Law Firm Hannan & Seddon.

RNZ Published on Jan 23, 2017
Pike River survivor Daniel Rockhouse believes it’s safe to enter: RNZ Checkpoint
Pike River mine survivor Daniel Rockhouse believes the mine’s drift is safe to enter, and is willing to be among the first party that goes in.

****

davedobbynmusic Published on Dec 15, 2014
Dave Dobbyn – This Love (Live Perfomance)
‘This Love’ by Dave Dobbyn with the Orpheus Choir of Wellington is a moving tribute to the 29 men who died in the Pike River Mine explosion.
The piece was first performed at a concert attended by members of the miners’ bereaved families and was recorded by Radio NZ Concert. The choral arrangement is by Mark Dorrell. Also performing are Wellington Young Voices, Mark Vanilau (piano), Jo Barus (bass), Ross Burge (drums) and Chris Clark (cornet). With special thanks to TVNZ and Satellite Media – taken from the TVNZ documentary ‘Dreams Lie Deeper’.

—

Related Post and Comments:
24.1.13 Pike River, Department of Internal Affairs #skippingthebusiness

—

Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

‘Big play’ —NZ to spend $53M at Expo 2020, Dubai UAE

[Source: Expo2020 Dubai]

The Government is about to launch a process within the creative sector of New Zealand to select the best team and ideas for the design and content.

### nzherald.co.nz 3:00 PM Sun, 23 Apr 2017
NZ to spend $53m on Dubai Expo
By Grant Bradley – Aviation, tourism and energy writer for Business Herald
The Government will spend $53 million showcasing New Zealand at Expo 2020 in Dubai in an attempt to boost trade in the region and beyond. Economic Development Minister Simon Bridges made the announcement in Dubai today. “It’s a unique and dynamic part of the world. For us this a relatively big play,” Bridges told the Herald. […] When Dubai bid for Expo 2020, its rulers said they would spend more than $10b on a 2 sq km site that will contain three thematic areas: opportunity, sustainability and mobility. New Zealand has been invited to participate in the sustainability precinct. […] While trade runs heavily in US favour, Bridges said the New Zealand pavilion would allow Kiwi businesses to highlight their innovative products and services and open doors to new export markets. New Zealand is close to completing a free trade agreement with the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC), which comprises Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. […] Bridges said participation at the Expo was a carefully calculated strategic investment. “Ultimately this is a pretty hard-headed investment for exporters and the economy. New Zealand being there is essential.” […] New Zealand had signed up early as an exhibitor and it would help its push “against the open door” of trade negotiations.
Read more

ArabianBusiness.com Arabic Published on Apr 3, 2017
Al Wasl Plaza during Expo 2020 Dubai – source :Expo 2020 Dubai
Al Wasl Plaza, the central hub of Expo 2020 Dubai

Expo2020 Dubai Published on Apr 5, 2017
Al Wasl Plaza

Show Me Dubai Published on Dec 7, 2016
8 Billion Dollars Dubai Expo 2020 Master Plan
Dubai’s theme for the Expo is Connecting Minds, Creating the Future. Its proposed schedule is from October 2020 until April 2021, the first Expo to run over two years stretching over UAE’s 49th National Day and touching on UAE’s 50th Jubilee year in 2021. Dubai’s Masterplan proposes a site on 438 hectares of land in Jebel Ali equidistant to the Dubai International Airport and Abu Dhabi International Airport. To support its theme of sustainability, the iconic structure that covers much of the site will have photovoltaic fabric that is planned to generate at least 50% of the Expo’s power on site. Dubai Expo 2020 expects to create 277,149 jobs between 2013 and 2021. 40% of the employment opportunities generated would be in the travel and tourism sector. Dubai Expo 2020 expects to attract 25 million unique visitors and up to 33 million visits over the six-month period. Courtesy: Expo2020 Dubai

█ Expo 2020 Dubai UAE [website]

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

One of the reasons I ❤ NYC

[economist.com]

Installed to celebrate International Women’s Day, the four-foot statue of a young girl staring down Wall Street’s “Charging Bull” was scheduled to be removed this weekend. But sculptor Kristen Visbal created both a symbol of the necessity of female leadership and a sensation. Crowds are flocking to pose with the statue; a petition calling for its permanent installation has attracted over 30,000 signatures. The mayor of New York City Bill de Blasio has said that in “standing up to fear, standing up to power”, the statue “spoke to the moment”. This week he announced that “Fearless Girl” will stay until March 2018. Boston-based investment firm State Street Global Advisors commissioned the statue.

The New York Times Published on Mar 8, 2017
Statue of Courageous Girl Faces Wall Street Bull | The New York Times
As many American women prepare to draw attention to their role in the workplace, a Wall Street firm on Tuesday put up a statue of a girl in front of Lower Manhattan’s bronze bull, fearlessly staring it down.

CNNMoney Published on Mar 8, 2017
State Street: Why we commissioned Wall St. ‘Fearless Girl’
CNNMoney’s Maggie Lake talks with State Street’s Lori Heinel about the importance of diversity on corporate boards and in leadership positions. “What more iconic symbol than to put a young girl as a symbol of women” facing off against The Bull.

****

From Twitter feed:

.@NYCMayor @BillDeBlasio Will Defend #FearlessGirl Statue Against #ChargingBull Sculptor https://t.co/6Xy5aCVSao via @DNAInfoNY @nickr15

— NYC ALL DAY 24/7 (@nycallday247) April 14, 2017

NYC mayor to 'Charging Bull' artist: 'Fearless Girl is staying put' https://t.co/T2zTMfgZP4 pic.twitter.com/t0NYKMgkQv

— WLWT.com (@WLWT) April 14, 2017

Unlike the Charging Bull, which has become a symbol of Wall Street, Fearless Girl is becoming a beacon for the fight against injustice.

— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 13, 2017

Fox News Published on Apr 14, 2017
‘Charging Bull’ vs ‘Fearless Girl’: Sculptor wants her gone
Sculptor of the New York City’s iconic ‘Charging Bull’ statue is demanding the ‘Fearless Girl’ statue be removed, claiming she is violating his legal rights

The artist behind the Charging Bull is charging NYC for violating his rights. https://t.co/rhMiCTqjpl

— Vogue Magazine (@voguemagazine) April 13, 2017

'Charging Bull' artist says NYC is violating his rights by installing 'Fearless Girl' without his permission. https://t.co/ssWOpD5WSb pic.twitter.com/zFBYQda9kN

— USA TODAY (@USATODAY) April 12, 2017

Who would have though that the artist who made the Wall Street charging bull statue was such a…capitalist. https://t.co/HXbRhhh514 pic.twitter.com/tAx5dupuKj

— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) April 13, 2017

The man who sculpted Wall Street's "Charging Bull" is accusing NYC of infringing on his artistic copyright with "Fearless Girl"'s placement. pic.twitter.com/5tjWlbn0lI

— Fusion (@Fusion) April 12, 2017

We wouldn't move the Charging Bull statue if it offended someone. The Fearless Girl is staying put. https://t.co/Qu7CSbrmQw

— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 12, 2017

It is perfectly symbolic that Arturo DiModica – who put up the Charging Bull in NYC WITHOUT PERMISSION – is offended by the Fearless Girl.

— Ian Dickerson (@RicardusIoannes) April 12, 2017

Men who don’t like women taking up space are exactly why we need the Fearless Girl. https://t.co/D2OZl4ituJ

— Bill de Blasio (@NYCMayor) April 12, 2017

"Charging Bull" sculptor accuses NYC of violating his legal rights by allowing "Fearless Girl" statue installation. https://t.co/tX1oee5IdH pic.twitter.com/xWQv1k4U0D

— ABC News (@ABC) April 12, 2017

Fearless Girl Statue Charging Bull Wall Street New York City – NYC Picture https://t.co/k8QI8zwajh pic.twitter.com/VfJoI6uoNg

— NYC Informer (@newyorkcityinfo) April 1, 2017

NYC's ‘Fearless Girl’ statue will continue to defiantly stare down Wall Street’s ‘Charging Bull’ until 2018: https://t.co/xQg0EoKtTE

— Gillian Rich (@IBD_GRich) March 28, 2017

'Fearless Girl' statue will stay face to face with Charging Bull through February 2018.#travel #fearlessgirl #NYC pic.twitter.com/6Ah4R6TDPh

— Newyorcanka (@Newyorcanka17) March 27, 2017

@Wemma24 Emma, Thanks for following. You’ll get daily news on NYC travel and tourism, bike news too, plus a photo.

Charging Bull pic.twitter.com/Lx91RJN1qn

— New York City Guide (@TourguideStan) March 24, 2017

Charging Bull creator fumes that #FearlessGirl statue is just an ‘advertising trick’ https://t.co/3IcbGdwepc @MakeMePermanent #NYC pic.twitter.com/hSNtHl8Iqp

— Lori Neuhardt (@LoriNeuhardt) March 22, 2017

Why McCann Dropped a Statue of a ‘Fearless Girl’ Next to Wall Street’s Charging Bull Overnight – Adweek #nyc https://t.co/cbP8qxAKUz

— Teresa Ciccarelli (@Teresa3c) March 12, 2017

First stop in NYC with Status of Women Minister @MaryamMonsef to see Fearless Girl on Wall Street facing down the charging bull pic.twitter.com/6GH4PsQrqC

— Terry Duguid (@TerryDuguid) March 12, 2017

On #InternationalWomensDay, State Street installed a statue of a Fearless Girl staring down the Charging Bull in NYC https://t.co/TbDg5oIh4q

— The ARTery (@WBURartery) March 9, 2017

NYC just got a little bit more awesome. New statue of defiant girl in front of Wall Street charging bull. https://t.co/dgWpPAr2EX pic.twitter.com/DcPAdoBtQo

— Jan Schaumann (@jschauma) March 8, 2017

New this week – facing the famous charging bull at NYC's Bowling Green, a statue of a 'Feisty Girl.' pic.twitter.com/5DBq9qdXc9

— Michael Li (@mcpli) March 8, 2017

****

CBS New York Published on Apr 12, 2017
Artistic Showdown Over ‘Fearless Girl’ Statue
CBS2’s Jessica Moore reports.

Associated Press Published on Mar 27, 2017
‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Stays Through Feb. 2018
New York City has decided that the globally popular statue of a young girl staring down Wall Street’s famous “Charging Bull” will remain in place through February 2018. (March 27)
The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats.

Storyful News Published on Mar 8, 2017
Ad Agency Puts ‘Fearless Girl’ Statue Opposite Wall Street’s Charging Bull
Courtesy: State Street Global Advisors/McCann

Dagbladet Published on Mar 7, 2017
Slik ble «Den flyktløse jenta» laget
KVINNEKAMPANJE: Det gigantiske reklamebyrået McCann oppfordrer mer enn 3500 selskaper – som SSGA investerer i på vegne av klienter -til å iverksette tiltak for å øke antall kvinner i styrene. Video: McCann

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

[storyful.com]

Dunedin homes face power blackout #Delta #Aurora

Updated post
Sat, 15 Apr 2017 at 2:15 p.m.

████ Reports of outages last night (Good Friday) at Leith Valley, Ross Creek and Mt Cargill area, and separate outages in Brighton and at Gladstone Road, Mosgiel. This during calm weather, following the last days of rain.

****

Fri, 14 Apr 2017
ODT: Dunedin power outage issue resolved
A fault in a high voltage switch resulted in a power outage affecting 446 Dunedin homes between 6.30pm and 10.10pm [Friday], in the Leith Valley, Ross Creek and Mt Cargill area. Delta operations and risk general manager John Campbell said lines crews had worked on the problem, isolated the fault and restored power by 10.10pm, and further work would be done to repair the switch.

****

At Facebook:

[whatifdunedin]

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Related Posts and Comments:
30.3.17 Famous Fat Bros’ Aurora/Delta news trickles in…. but can the sisters divorce
11.3.17 How Safe Are We/Our Businesses with the Corporate Disaster that’s Aurora, owned by DCC ? #reliability
16.12.16 Tim Hunter, NBR —Aurora/Delta, DCC and ComCom
12.11.16 Delta/Aurora : Current strategy to “fix on failure” [extreme neglect]
22.10.16 DCC struggles with Governance…. Delta/Aurora/DCHL in slipslidy mode
● 9.6.16 Aurora Energy Ltd warned by regulator

█ For more, enter the terms *aurora*, *delta*, *grady*, *poles*, *asset management plan*, *dchl*, *auditor-general*, *epicpolefail* or *epic fraud* in the search box at right.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

DCC obfuscates : Open slather for freedom campers at Warrington

According to the DCC (via LGOIMA) – [but make that the personnel manning desks at the department concerned; not the LGOIMA officials] – the survey results for freedom camping at Warrington Domain WILL NOT be available until a council or community board meeting this month.

The DCC response to my LGOIMA request (13 March) was:

[16 March] Official information request for 577864, KERR, FREEDOM CAMPING SURVEY
I refer to your official information request dated 13-March-2017 for a full copy of the survey results of the Warrington freedom camping survey. We have decided to refuse your request under section 17(d) of the Local Government Official Information and Meetings Act, as the information requested will soon be publically (sic) available. Staff are planning to present this as a report to either the Infrastructure Services and Networks committee on April 10, or the next meeting of the Waikouaiti Coast Community Board on April 19….

The agenda for April 10 does not contain the item.
An agenda is not yet available for April 19.

****

NO SURVEY FIGURES
because DCC’s busy with Other things like keeping Lids On, like managing COMPLETE RUBBISH such as the slant grab of public land for corporations that might build cheap leaky Chase-style apartment buildings (that look like hotels)(tall penile ones no longer allowed at CHC) or site the ‘Govt gold mine of revenue’, ACC (that can easily afford any Other property in town), on the best ancillary site to assist the Hospital rebuild; and for the developers of Mosgiel who Must Have an over-specified over-priced pool funded by ratepayers using the successful CST model that sent us all to Penury.

NO SURVEY FIGURES
because the pool site, road names (diversity!?!) and road stopping will be discussed at the meeting on 10 April (Infrastructure Services and Networks Committee); greenhouse gas emissions (Planning and Regulatory Committee meeting, 11 April); and ‘updates’ (glory be, more pressure to Spend rates) for the boondoggles Ara Toi, City of Literature and the Public Art Framework (Community and Culture Committee meeting, 11 April). In amongst this menu of outstanding nothingness, is the item South Dunedin Hub, surely another chance to Delay and Defund that.

Inestimable Joy. And no survey figures.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED to the city council under the present red-green fawning leadership with Corporation Christmas dangling on its mind.

Well, local body politics has ESCALATED on what it does best – supervising with maximum inefficiency, the major time-wasting DCC slushfund (The Bank Of Other People’s Money) using impractical, morally-superior soft-handed ‘councillors’ to push council staff agendas into play.
Piglets are expected to Roast the LTP.

Oui, monsieur. The free lunches, coffees outside The Fix, and council stipends are at an all-time A+ for deficiency and delinquency.

****

Then came a missive from The Star, via ODT this weekend. When all council bad timing and obfuscation had looked to succeed. There it was: NUMBERS.

At Facebook:

Deeply interested, I read further……

TRUCKLOADS…. HUNDREDS….
All down to DCC staff deciding before Christmas NOT TO ENFORCE the current Camping Control Bylaw 23. So to Keep Trouble out of Metropolitan Dunedin.
—Leaving Warrington residents and ratepayers to absorb the antisocial hours, the noise, the indiscriminate toileting and rubbish, the shell fishing defying bag limits, all the unlawful long-stayers, and the Total loss of proper access to their own village green, now rutted by tyre tracks.

Despicable.

DCC should be formally challenged on the lack of enforcement and lack of Health & Safety.

Dear god, don’t let the present threat of disease at Warrington Domain, poorly managed by DCC in the current conditions, involve Typhoid. The deskhuggers won’t cope.

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Related Posts and Comments:
● 16.3.17 WE have the information, unreasonable delay providing it #LGOIMA
● 15.2.17 Warrington : DCC dictates loss of community’s grassed recreation reserve to freeloaders
8.2.17 Hands Off Enjoyment of OUR Beaches #DCC
● 6.2.17 Uncontrolled freedom camping at Warrington Domain this weekend —DCC ‘hell model’ [no enforcement]
● 1.2.17 “Fake news” from DCC boffins & Community Board re freedom camping at Warrington Domain #TheBlight
10.2.16 Dunedin freedom camping #DCC #enforcement
16.12.14 DCC: Freedom Camping issues
7.12.09 Coastal protection zones

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

#RNZAFBlackFalcons performing over Dunedin’s St Kilda beach today

At Twitter:

The #RNZAFBlackFalcons will be performing over Christchurch and Dunedin today. Make sure you check them out. Send us your pics and videos 🛩 pic.twitter.com/BSqYcaiwqB

— Royal NZ Air Force (@NZAirForce) April 6, 2017

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[unfortunately Dunedin has fog and low cloud but we still Heard….. the #RNZAFBlackFalcons]

Photos received from Rose McRobie, maxing out her iPhone zoom:

█ https://www.facebook.com/RoyalNZAirForceBlackFalcons/

At Facebook:

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

ODT editor comments strongly #tick —Dunedin Hospital rebuild

Junior councillors should think carefully about how they appear in writing and how they might appear in publicity shots on Frederick St, as a band of politicos.

BRAVO to the ODT Editor:

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Wisely, this editorial had already put dogsbodies in their place:

### ODT Online Thu, 30 Mar 2017
Editorial: Hospital central to city’s needs
OPINION What a shame the Dunedin City Council is divided over its campaign to keep the city’s hospital in the central city. This is an issue which should unite Dunedin. The squabbling is distressing. The council has initiated an effort to keep the rebuilt hospital right in town, with three councillors, Lee Vandervis, Mike Lord and Doug Hall, voting against. Dunedin-based National-list MP Michael Woodhouse waded in late last week, implying the campaign was a front for the Labour Party […] There are two fundamental issues. First, on the siting of the hospital, and second on whether the council should campaign on that. As as been pointed out strongly on this newspaper’s opinion page by two distinguished Dunedin residents, Sir David Skegg (a former University of Otago vice-chancellor) and Emeritus Prof David Jones (a former university medical division head), close links between the medical school and the hospital are vital.
Read more

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DCC’s ‘Dunedin Hospital SOS’ flyer and Facebook campaign cost Ratepayers $7,102 (excl GST).

[click to enlarge]

DCC says 55,000 campaign flyers were printed, with 50,000 supposedly delivered to households (however, thickish piles of flyers have been found by cleaners about town —gathering dust in corporate office tearooms and reception areas)….

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ODT 25.3.17 (page 1) – tweaked by whatifdunedin

### ODT Online Sat, 25 Mar 2017
Woodhouse blasts DCC
By Eileen Goodwin
National list MP Michael Woodhouse has lashed out at the Dunedin City Council over its hospital rebuild campaign, implying it is a front for the Labour Party. And Mr Woodhouse said the council’s stance was “confusing” — on the one hand it wants a central city rebuild, but it granted the Accident Compensation Corporation the right to consider buying the Frederick St car park. ACC has a 12-month timeframe to look at development options for the site. […] Mr Woodhouse is also ACC Minister, and he made it clear he was speaking as a local MP.
Read more

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Related Posts and Comments:
● 27.3.17 Site Notice #DunedinHospital
● 26.2.17 Dunedin Hospital Redevelopment
● 6.2.17 Let the Ombudsman recommend for democracy at SDHB
● 24.1.17 SDHB/Govt : Physio Pool GRIEF
● 9.1.17 Audit NZ admonishes commissioner Grant and SDHB #Health
● 18.12.16 DCC set to take away CBD car parks without Economic Impact research
20.11.16 Delta at Dunedin Hospital #worseluck
7.11.16 SDHB #FAILS with Healthcare Communication and Governance
3.9.16 SDHB ‘food’ : Our eyes glaze over . . . .
23.8.16 Win! to DCC candidate Paul Pope #DunedinHospital
22.6.16 SDHB Commissioners speed-bleed health system
1.5.16 Hospital food according to Gurglars
23.12.15 SDHB underfunded, no bandage
3.11.15 SDHB will ‘takeaway’ more than freshly cooked meals and a head chef
30.10.15 Dunedin Hospital #despair
● 17.6.15 Southern District Health Board sacked !!!
9.6.15 Southern District Health Board
16.4.15 Talk of replacing Southern District Health Board with commissioner
21.8.14 Dirty pool? #SDHB #University
6.8.14 Otago Therapeutic Pool at Dunedin Hospital
1.5.14 Dunedin Hospital buildings SORRY STATE
14.1.14 DCC: Hospital area parking changes #cyclelanes
5.12.13 Swann case: ODHB/SDHB and friends
3.8.12 Extraordinary editorials

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.

Town Belt Traverse 2017

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

This post is offered in the public interest.