Season's Greetings Old Friend.

What a bloody Pig's Ear Council Officials (abetted by Police) made of today's protest at the Historic (Hysteric) 'Grand Opening' of the latest Mayoral Folly.
The protesters were making an impassioned 'Last-Stand'.
Why not let the pictures be taken, the Television Paparazzi drink their fill and leave them to it?!

I have every confidence they would have decided they'd made their point and moved on by early afternoon.

This would have left the Bourgeoisie to their ritual back-slapping and congratulatory "..Yoicks!...Gadzooks!...I say!! Well done!!" and the deed would be done. No nastiness, no arresting of perfectly upstanding people and no exercise in Police harassment necessary.
But NO!!
Some gentially-challenged official with a personal power deficit had to complain to the Police. After-all, lying down is tantamount to willfull destruction n'est pas?
What WOULD have been useful was someone with a portable jack-hammer creating a trench accross the 'Hell Highway', making a REAL mark and a show of Wellington Residential Ratepayer Power to those megalomaniacs on Council.
It's probably all they understand.

Seditious?! So be it!!

I for one am heartily sick of the Mad-Wife and sometime Cook playing Monopoly with Resident's money!

Happy New Year.

Sharpie

A few things to think about before Xmas 2006- Another week in the Capital

With the recent fall in oil prices many residents of greater Wellington got back into their cars and clogged up the motorways during peak times. The nearly completed bypass got a new name. The Regional Council missed a window of opportunity for transport mode shift, while local and and regional councillors sat on their hands during the fuel shock.

Peak Oil proponents had been warning of of the coming crisis. Public transport failed to deliver a suitable alternative and with the oil price dropping the public voted with their feet and got back into their cars. Even the use of the humble bicycle has fallen! People feel it is just too dangerous with inconsiderate motorists-shame.

You can't blame commuters not wanting to stand for twenty minutes after a long day in trains built in Eastern Europe in the 1960s. After all, the reinforcement of social status by motor vehicle manufacturers and oil companies for the best part of a hundred years has locked us in a behavioural iron box.

That brings me to another more pressing issue that we appear unable to address in the hierarchy of inconvenient truths that are emerging in the popular culture, and begrudgingly in the media, in sufficient doses of confusion to bewilder ordinary folk. I'm talking about the problem of global dimming that has come about by carbon admissions. If you want to know more about this serious sequence of unattended events just type global dimming into Google and get educated about what a mess we are now in.

You would think that local government and government would be able to do what the rest of us are able to do just by sitting at our laptops for a few minutes and thinking. It appears there is a problem that prevents even that when it comes to administrating our public affairs. I suppose it can be rationalised by a Tofflerism, namely that we are still in the grip of "second wave institutions"(1). Added to that is the fact that we are all carbon based junkies driven by consumer vampires.

At Friday's Strategy and Policy Committee, myself and Councillors Ritchie and Ruben, tried to get Wellington City Council to fund the legal costs of a group of conservationists with their Environment Court appeal against Council's Consent for a Fish Zoo and cafe at Te Rae kai hau Point. However, BMW driving little blue penguin saving Councillor Ahipene-Mercer and Green Councillor Wade Brown would have nothing to do with it. Ahipene-Mercer launched a vitriolic attack on us for wanting to protect the rights of opponents of the destruction of Te Rae Kai hau Point. Councillors Wade-Brown and Ahipene Mercer prefer to support the commercialisation of this natural heritage. God save us from the Greens.
*The Third Wave /Alvin Toffler
Cheers
Bryan Pepperell

A week in the Capital's politics

Wellington Civic Centre Nov 2006
This week saw the installing of a new leader of
the National Party and a new line up of the opposition
front bench. John Keys made some timely symbolic
changes to National party policy, not the
least being the recognition of an inconvenient truth
for the purpose of popular consumption. All this simply
mirrors the changes of the U.K. conservative party's
shift to a centre green rhetoric.

In the meantime Wellington City Council took a breath
from Peak oil thinking, with some relief, that a fall in oil
prices allowed the inconvenient truth to drop beneath the
radar. That left Councillors to get on with driving their BMWs ,
Mercedes, Jaguars and 4x4s without any tinges of guilt.
By the week's end oil prices had risen again, leaving our city fathers
and mothers with a sense of deeply shallow unease . Considering
that our elected representatives of popular culture find comfort in
such behaviour, everything was running true to form.

Far from the pressing concerns of popular culture, which is so readily
promoted by the media with its mixed messages of unfettered
consumption and establishment blues, the Residents Coalition held
a series of public meetings for concerned ratepayers to air their greviences.
In Newtown top of the annoyance list was the proposed fish zoo
and cafe pretending to be a Marine Education Centre, but
unceremoniously debunked for what it is, a commercial venture
on our coastal natural heritage.

Last week the issue at the Aro Street Community hall was
the switch of business rates onto the residents rates bill.
Coalition members believe that how we rate our city should be at
the heart of any discussion aimed at achieving a fair and just society.







Newtown , St.Annes Hall
The Resient's Coalition public meeting Nov 30