Soulless city of Auckland

An Australian couple has upset Kiwis with an online expat guide which warns that Auckland is a "horrible soulless city" and its inhabitants are "hobbits" who cannot dress properly. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Well I have spent a bit of time to read that guy's blog. I'm not a serious traveller therefore I can only comment on Auckland. What that blogger blogged is indeed bit over the top,but most of the comments, although somewhat exaggerated, are also facts.

Auckland indeed lacks a bit of culture, that's how I feel at least. By "culture" I mean not just the presence of culture diversity, but ... how do I put this, a community that respect, cherish, and upholds "serious" culture (not just the culture of get drunk in a pub every Friday evening.) as one of the important life aspects.

What I was really surprised about is not the whines from this Aussie expat, but how Kiwis reacted toward those comments. I mean, it's just a blogger, like myself (possibly you as well), everyone is entitled to have, and publicly express he or she's opinion, and it is a fact of life that no matter how beautiful the Big Sister Helen or the land of Aotearoa is, it is not possible to win a 100% approval rate - that only happens in North Korea, even the Chinese parliament got more nay votes nowadays.

It's not even a news, there are more than a million blogs out there and I believe a fair amount of them is about New Zealand. Single this blogger out only means that 1) marks the new low of NZ journalism, 2) maybe the view of that blogger is not uncommon and there's a need to discuss it on a higher public forum.

So I was really surprised that many "serious" organisations, like Destination Rotorua or New Zealand beer brewery , treated the comments that seriously, even " took exception to an open letter on the site" ... oh I just see a short cut for bloggers who want to get famous. I actually quite liked the smell of Rotorua, but if I badmouth them once maybe I can generate a bit of traffic to my site as well, but I'll only do that after I put up Google Adsense:)

BTW, wonder where's the sense of humour, or it's just like the Nationalists can make fun on everyone else, but when others make fun of Nationalists, their feelings are hurt.

Section 92A dead

Finally we see common sense prevails.

Most of the us who stood up and against this copyright law is not anti-copyright, I respected copyright holders' rights whenever I can. However, protection of copyright involves a mutual respect, but I feel this Section 92A, promoted by copyright holders, deeply undermines my right.

Since they treat netizens guilty of violating their rights before convicted, I also got a nice name for what they did which caused a great outrage among netizens: "copyright terrorism".

So Section 92A is dead but it doesn't mean this country does not respect copright.  New copyright protection measures will restart from scratch, I hope the new law got more common sense in it.

TVNZ's real problem

The government.

TVNZ is not a fully funded state broadcaster like BBC domestic broadcasting because as a small nation, we probably cannot afford it. Therefore its channels carry adverts, and is exposed to the what Nats are usually proud to say "real business world" out there and needs to compete its way out.

Under the current economic situation, we see countless number of privately owned businesses experiencing significantly reduced profit, or even go into deficit. If you are an investor to a large corporation, you wouldn't expect your dividend to be as high as last year, or you may just get ready to sacrifise your dividend for a year to keep your investment safe.

So Why John Key, aka "the man with real economic sense"  is expecting a unrealistic dividend from TVNZ:

From the Crown's point of view we have $200 million invested in TVNZ, that's the equity in TVNZ, if we don't receive a return on that equity and we don't receive a dividend, that's less money the Crown has to pay for hospital beds, less money it has to pay its doctors and less money it has to pay its teachers.

Nice words, sounds sympathetic, but does it really mean anything? Last year TVNZ paid out $10 million to the government, don't tell me that our health and education system would fail for a shortfall of $10 million dollars.

As TVNZ is going to cut 90 employees, more pressure will be added to the dole queue. So what National government did is, forcing TVNZ to reduce costs by reduce amount of local made programmes (that's what state owned media is for, in my opinion) and axes kiwi jobs to meet government dividend demand so Mr Key can have more money to pay for hospital beds.

I hope those people who will lost their job could find a job soon otherwise the whole thing is just pointless - a large chunk of the few million dollars dividend will be used to pay the added dole queue anyway, when those people really should be working and contributing at least some value back to our society. Now you call that real business sense?

By the way, I remember this government was claiming itself dedicated to keep kiwi jobs.

It's very hard to believe there's no hidden agenda behind this movement.

Weird

Nobody likes to pay taxes, especially Aucklanders and the right. So what happens after government axes the Auckland regional fuel tax proposal? Well,railways have to be built, Auckland needs to move forward, we need to find that money somewhere, and here's how (via Beehive):

• replacing regional fuel taxes with smaller increases in national fuel excise and road user charges, which feed into the National Land Transport Fund
• confirming the government's commitment to Auckland rail electrification
• committing an additional $258 million of the government's capital allocation to land transport over the next two years
• amending the Government Policy Statement on Land Transport Funding to make more money available for state highway construction

I wonder how rural people, especially the nats would think of the first point. But it's a fair measure I have to admit, as the whole country can benefit from a well-funtioning Auckland.

So ... end of tree huggers?

Councils say they will not be able to stop people cutting down native bush and coastal pohutukawa in cities under planned changes to environment laws.

The Government wants to take away councils' power to stop trees over a certain size being chopped without permission. If the change goes ahead, landowners will be free to cut down any tree on their land unless it is listed in their council's district plan. (Via New Zealand Herald)

Oppositions to the councils' tree management claim that "it's their land so they should be able to do anything they like", but let's face it, it's no different than how a teenager feels like "I'm free and independent so I  can do what ever I want", we all get that kind of feeling during our adolescence time, most grow out of it, but sadly, some don't.

The basic principle of the Resource Management Act is the "effect based approach", as long as you can demonstrate that you can minimise the adverse effects on  environment, even a non-complying activity can get a go ahead.  I was a "tree hugger",which means that use trees as an excuse to stop development in quite a few cases,  in one case, a two storey new residential development is proposed on about two lots away from my friend's house, developer wants to chop down a 60m+ tree to provide an extra one or two parking spaces.

From my friend's  point of vew it's actually quite hard to see that tree, just the top part,  but I still criticized the development plan anyway because this is just too ridiculous. If development cannot get ahead without chopping down that tree I may just let it go, but such a tall tree for a mere parking space? Quite a lot of people still don't treat environment protection as part of citizens' responsibility, and think that as optional.

Property right was never absolute, before the current law system there were several common law principles existed, such as good neighbourliness, as long as you don't affect your neighbours' economic well-being then you should be fine. But we don't live in the beginning of the industrial age, we understand the value of our environment more than just a place to dump all our wastes for free.

Not a good one from National, I say, central government should minimise its influence on local government.

nine-day fortnight work plan released

In one sentence, Government will pay minimum wage of $12.5for up to 5 hours per day to employees who have taken an extra day off. For rest of the scheme:

• Will be available to businesses with more than 100 employees. There are about 1600 companies which fit this category and they employ 580,000 people.
• Will be available to businesses from March 27, 2009 through until December 31, 2010 - but only for up to a six month period within these dates.
• The government’s contribution will be paid direct to employers to give to the workers it has negotiated a voluntary agreement with to reduce work hours to a nine-day fortnight.
• Will be available to up to 10 employees for each averted redundancy.
• Will apply to employees who have been full-time for the two months preceding going into the scheme.
• Is anticipated to be picked up by between 20,000 and 25,000 workers, making the approximate cost $16 million to $20 million.

Overall I'm pretty happy about it, and I think it will be a way reduce redundancies in big companies. In a recession the most import thing to maintain is not just economic growth, but fundamentally, confidence. If employees are given the promise that they will not be made redundant, it will give them confidence, and they are more likely to spend rather than save for the unforeseeable future.

But I do have a mixed feeling about this. Employees are not responsible for the current economic situation, making them suffer should be the last resort to keep this economic going.  There are long suspicions that some employers are using economic recession as an excuse to carry out restructuring. I think this scheme should only be available for companies who are experiencing losses, not just a reduction of profits.   I can see the same greed which was responsible for the current situation, is still in the market. Companies should just accept a significantly reduced profit for now, rather let the same greed take over, dreaming of the high profits they've experienced in the last few years.

The scheme will only work if employers are welling to join it, but I don't think they are. As a employer,  how much can you save from this? Let's assume a company maximises its opportunity, put 10 employee who receives an average $20 wage and work 8 hours a day in this. So the calculation goes like:

13 x 10 x 20 x 8 = $20,800

For a 100 employees company, that's kind of nothing -  make one employee redundant saves more than this, and that size of businesses don't fail for short of 20,000 dollars.

Or maybe the whole thing is just another publicity stunt from John Key?