This is so awesome for a Funk covers band from Hamilton to be beating out all those other “big” names in music. New Zealanders must still have some taste!

And people should definately buy the album it is awesome.

Got to love the logic of Auckland politicians sometimes.

Mayor of Auckland City, John Banks today on the release of a report that suggests that Auckland’s Public Transport will not cope with the Rugby World Cup:

“$58 million was being spent on the Eden Park precinct and thousands were expected to walk from the central city well ahead of game kick-offs.” – NZ Herald

Google Maps suggests this is a 3.6km or 47 minute walk (see here). This is quite a long way, not to mention it is up a massive hill to the top of Queen Street, then over a series of major intersections that are not predistrian friendly then down a number of suburban roads. Quite basically the roads are not designed for the foot traffic that Mayor Banks suggests they could handle.

But coming back to the title of this post, walking is not public transport. What is more shocking is that the article where Mayor Banks is quoted also suggests that:

Nearly 2km of roadside parking had to be found around Eden Park for 130 buses and the entire fleet of 38 Auckland trains would be needed on match days.

If all the trains are being pressed into service to get people to Eden Park then how is any going about their daily lives meant to get about. Surely this should have been seen well in advance and more trains be ordered or borrowed or something!

It seems that now a year out from the Cup that there is a sudden realisation that Auckland is not ready for the cup. That either the waterfront stadium should have been built (at least there would be more and easier public transport to it), or North Harbour stadium should have been used. Sure North Harbour does not have train access but it has a dedicated bus way, and plenty of car parking. The closer that you get to the cup the more you realise that what a disaster it will be using Eden Park as the main game venue.

Who wants to start a little wager on how many days into the cup it will be before there is a signal failure at Newmarket or a massive meltdown with the train system that sees many hundreds late for a match?

I don’t normally bother to look at the spam that the AA sends out once a month but for some reason today I opened it.

A little bit down the page is this ad:

This is completely crazy that a government funded education institute is offering discounts to AA members. It just doesn’t seem right. In my opinion everyone should be paying the same for publicly education not given discounts for driving carbon polluting vehicles.

Now before someone screams that I did not check the fine print, here it is:

* ‘Qualifying Courses’ means each course made available to ‘Domestic Students’ for enrolment by the Polytechnic that is Government (EFTS) funded through the Polytechnic. For clarity, this excludes the ‘full fee’ and ‘trades training’ courses as defined by the Polytechnic and other courses that may already be subject to a special promotion as defined by the Polytechnic and at the Polytechnic’s discretion. For more information about qualifying courses call the Open Polytechnic on toll free 0508 650 200. Open Polytechnic’s $50.00 annual administration fee may apply.

I sure hope someone picks up on this. Most stupid thing I have seen in a long time.

BTW AA in NZ stands for Automobile Association (called AAA elsewhere), Not Alcoholics Anonymous

The sole power line to the entire Auckland region failed again this afternoon cutting power to around one million people. The only operating power station north of Hamilton is the Huntly coal fired station which cannot supply power to all of Auckland so Transpower cut power to all of Auckland except for essential services like hospitals, sewage and water supply.

However the reporting on both NZ Herald and Stuff reads quite funny:

Police say power has been restored to many of the 5000 Auckland homes left in the dark after a fire underneath power lines prompted mass power cuts from the Waikato to Northland and throughout Auckland this afternoon.

Now I am sure that there are more than 5000 homes in these areas:

Among the Auckland suburbs affected were Remuera, Ponsonby, Epsom, East Tamaki, Freemans Bay, Manukau, Mt Wellington, Newmarket, Onehunga, Birkdale, Beachhaven, Northcote, Glenfield, Manly, Helensville, Hauraki, Forest Hill, East Coast Road, Albany and Belmont.

In fact this image was posted on stuff.co.nz showing the extend of the outage:

The march this afternoon was great, massive turn out.

Greenpeace have now also posted some photos up. I am in the second row with the green text on white background 40% by 2020 sign.

Brain Rudman has a good column in the Herald today about the so called March for Democracy this Saturday.

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10609888

How humiliating to live in a country where $500,000 is being spent encouraging people to march up the main street of our biggest city demanding the right to beat their kids.

It could only happen in a country with one of the worst child murder rates in the developed world.

Instead of parading up Queen St this Saturday, waving their wooden spoons and looking for bottoms to belt, Colin Craig, the organiser and bankroller of this crassly named March for Democracy, and his supporters should be holding a candle for each abused child.

It is quite amazing that what is being dubed as the biggest protest march ever is about the right to smack a child. It just goes to show how sad a society we have become when the biggest issue facing us is the right to abuse and hit defenseless kids.

Despite this horrendous culture of abuse, Mr Craig will process up Queen St with his merry marchers to demand that their ancient right to smack their children be restored. Will the penny never drop that he’d be doing more for democracy – and the kids of New Zealand – if his $500,000 went into something as simple as parenting lessons – or support services – for at-risk young parents.

Exactly. If you want to really fight child abuse then put the money into programs that will sort the root cause of the issue. Not provocative and factually wrong tv ads.

The organiser of the ambiguously worded anti-smacking referendum of earlier this year, Larry Baldock, set the benchmark for hyperbole in September when he announced plans for yet another referendum, this one on whether or not such votes should be binding.

“If we do not seriously address these constitutional issues now, our children and grandchildren may be governed in a way our forebears never imagined possible when they resisted oppression on foreign battlefields to protect our liberty.”

This despite the fact that binding referendums have never been a part of the Westminster system of democracy our forebears fought to defend.

Also lurking in the wings is Steve Baron, who since 2003 – first under Voters’ Voice and now Better Democracy – has been campaigning for binding citizens-initiated referendums as a form of direct democracy.

He says he is marching on Saturday and “I hope others will join me and become the 6-8 per cent of society who become politically active, the political gladiators, the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference.”

Bob McCoskrie, national director of Family First, warns that the march is “not a one-off – it is part of a long term strategy to bring representative democracy back to New Zealand”. Like Mr Baldock, he’s got his political science confused. Binding citizens-initiated referendums, which is what this motley right-wing band are demanding, are anathema to the principles of representative democracy.

This form of government dates back to the 18th-century principle, advocated by Edmund Burke, that an MP is not in Parliament to act as his constituents’ delegate, but is elected to represent them, using his skills and best judgment to do what he thinks is best, for both country and the electors.

The development of disciplined political parties has somewhat watered this principle of MP independence down, but the system we have inherited and developed is still a far cry from the principle of mob rule that governance by binding citizens-initiated referendums promises.

The Royal Commission on the Electoral System 1986 decided that “in general, initiatives and referendums are blunt and crude devices … [that] would blur the lines of accountability and responsibility of Governments”.

They threaten the rights of minorities. In Switzerland, the land of cheese and binding referendums, binding referendums enabled a majority of men to deny women the basic right to vote until 1971.

Paradoxically, they also allow minorities to push their own hobby horses. Baron, of Better Democracy, in his rallying call for this Saturday’s march, appealed for “political gladiators … the select few who get off their backsides to make a difference”.

He puts this minority at 6-8 per cent.

6 – 8 percent is nothing more than mob rule. The rich elite with their ability to ensalve the working class. It sounds like the past. The past that the vast majority of New Zealanders do not want to go back to.

Okay the power has just been restored to my flat on Auckland’s North Shore after a cut lasting around exactly an hour and a half.

I am not grumpy about the cut, they are a fact of life.

What I am grumpy about is the fact that it is not a storm so the reasoning for the cut seems to be a little odd. At first my flatmates thought a car had hit a local power pole. But as we have found out the cut is to 280,000 customers in West Auckland, North Shore, and Northland. Which would mean upwards of 500,000+ people would be without power this morning. So why is the power out:

“Just after 8.00am this morning a circuit on the Otahuhu to Henderson 220 kV line tripped while the other circuit was out for maintenance, causing loss of supply for North Auckland and Northland.” – stuff.co.nz

Sound familar?

Lets think back to 2006:

“The 2006 Auckland Blackout refers to the massive electrical blackout in Auckland, the largest city in New Zealand, on 12 June 2006. It started at 8:30 am local time, with most areas of Auckland regaining power by 2:45 pm local time. It affected some 230,000 customers had an impact on at least 700,000 people in and around the city.

The immediate cause of the blackout was determined to be a grounding cable falling across a 110kV transmission line at the Otahuhu sub-station. This was caused by the failure of a corroded shackle, as the result of unusually high winds.^[1] This equipment is part of the national grid, owned and operated by Transpower.

Investigation of this incident found that maintenance of the electricity transmission system was not adequate and that this substation had major and minor design deficiencies.^{” –} 2006 Auckland Blackout

Which in turn sounds very familar to this:

The 1998 Auckland power crisis was a five-week-long power outage.

Almost all of downtown Auckland in New Zealand was supplied electricity by Mercury Energy via four power cables, two of them 40-year-old oil-filled cables that were past their replacement date. One of the cables failed on 20 January, possibly due to the unusually hot and dry conditions, another on 9 February. Due to the increased load from the failure of the first cables, the remaining two failed on 19 and 20 February, leaving about 20 city blocks (except parts of a few streets) without power. - 1998 Auckland power crisis

So in eleven years have we learnt or done anything to stop these incidents repeating? It seems not.

Gordon Campbell of Scoop calls the cuts: Anne Tolley’s 19th century approach to education

Remember National’s election promise to return New Zealand to the top half of the OECD tables? In government, its moves in education seem motivated more by a desire to return New Zealand to the golden age of Victorianism – when the three “R”s and a stern testing regime were seen to be all that a young lad or girl really needed.

From a New Zealand perspective, one aspect of the reaction to the Cambridge University report in Britain has been particularly interesting. There has been a striking level of support from the Conservative Party for the retention of an expert advisory service across the entire curriculum.The Tories are doing so not instead of a concentration on the teaching of reading and writing – but because they believe the broad-based approach actually makes the task of teaching reading and writing skills much more effective. Here for instance is the shadow Tory education Minister Michael Gove, writing in the British press earlier this week :

“A broad and demanding curriculum – far from undermining reading, writing and arithmetic – reinforces attainment in these core skills. “Perhaps Education Minister Anne Tolley should be talking more to her British counterpart. Or at least explaining why she and her Tory colleague are treating the evidence on teaching outcomes so differently.

Clearly, the decision to narrow the scope of the advisory service available to our teachers makes no educational sense. It is being done in the service of a national testing regime at primary level that also makes little educational sense. This is penny pinching and political rhetoric, at the expense of our children and their future. The money at stake – $10 million – is a fraction of the amount that the government is planning to spend on the Rugby World Cup. Well, the battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton. But an emphasis on winning at rugby – and a Victorian Age type of education system – will be of little use against the challenges we face from globalization.

And Catherine Delahunty at Frog Blog: The Three Rs”: Reduce, Regiment, and Ruin our public education system

It wasn’t much fun waking up this morning to the news that the Ministry of Education will no longer be providing advice to primary schools on arts, science, technology, or physical education – nothing in fact, except the “three Rs”: reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic. This latest assault on the public education system by the National Government is just plain stupid.

It also heralds the undoing of a robust curriculum. There is no educational justification for such a narrow focus, when all the evidence points to the importance of a holistic educational experience at primary school level.

The limitation of Ministry of Education support to literacy and numeracy is clearly to assist with the implementation of the new National Standards (which are due to be announced tomorrow, according to Education Minister Anne Tolley.

Presumably, the Minister thinks literacy and numeracy are not developed in parallel with the core subjects by subjects like art, science, and technology. Perhaps she hasn’t been visiting schools and seeing the interconnections between subjects in action like I have. She certainly hasn’t been listening to her counterpart in the British Tories, Conservative Education Spokesperson Michael Gove, who says

“a broad and demanding curriculum – far from undermining reading, writing and arithmetic – reinforces attainment in these core skills.”

You can drive a truck through her logic but I get the feeling that the Minister’s ideological advisers don’t care. They have a plan which involves selling the idea that the “three Rs” are somehow learned in little boxes taught separately from other topics, and that all children learn in exactly the same way.

Through this same cut, we have now lost all the Sustainability Advisors who survived, just, the cuts to the Enviroschools Budget earlier this year.

Under this Government, it seems that “three Rs” are now Reducing the curriculum, Regimenting the assessment processes, and Ruining opportunities for our children.

Check out this video of the water rushing out of the marina at Tutukaka in Northland.

Nothing serious may have happened, but that is scary.

Can you imagine the near orgasmic state of the civil defence leaders as their pagers or cell phones went off this morning.

All over the east coast of NZ bearded men in walk shorts and long socks would have leapt to attention full of self importance, their partners would have asked them if they had time for breakfast, “no, we have an emergency” would have been the well practised reply.

Thermos’s would have been hurriedly filled, cut sandwiches would have been cobbled together and high visibility vests and hard hats donned as they walked briskly (no sense in placing ones self in danger by running) to their Lada’s.

The drive to civil defence headquarters would have been made at just over the speed limit (102km per hour), headlights would have been blazing, the radio’s would be tuned to national radio looking for updates, and thoughts of “I live for this” would fill their heads, as they arrived at headquarters they would again walk briskly up the stairs before grabbing hold of their favourite clipboard.

One can almost see the disappointment on their faces when the news came in that the approaching tidal wave was only 1 meter in height.

Posted by Big Bruv at Kiwiblog (http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2009/09/tsunami_warning.html#comment-613162)

The herald reports today that DIY injuries are killing nearly 600 people a year in New Zealand: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10595342

That is nearly twice the road death toll, so I expect from next week to see an aggressive anti-DIY ad campaign on TV, the banning of all commercials for Mitre 10, Placemakers and Bunnings, and the introduction of a compulsory safety harness when hammering a nail into the wall.

While the tone of the article is serious and the message is clear people need to take better care when doing work, there is a humorous subtext to the article:

DIY handymen are costing hundreds of millions of dollars in medical bills by putting up wobbly scaffolds, touching live wires and shooting themselves in the hands and feet with nail guns.

The kitchen is the most dangerous room in the house in most parts of the country.

ACC will be targeting home handymen – among others – during safety week, which starts on Monday.

Lynn Theron, a doctor in Auckland City Hospital’s emergency department, said the most common household injury she had seen was people chopping their own fingers off while cooking. Burns were also another common injury in the kitchen.

Right I thought the home handyman lived in the shed down the back garden. Not the kitchen!

So the lesson of the story is it bad to stay at home cooking, doing so means you are doing DIY and that is evil. Go out and buy some take-out food tonight – it may just save your life.

It is interesting to read today that a person is challenging the fine they got for driving in a bus lane: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10595321

The $150 question of how far motorists can drive in a bus lane before making a turn goes to the Auckland District Court next week. Motorist John Foote says the law states it is the minimum distance necessary to safely make the manoeuvre. The Auckland City Council says 48m is a safe distance for a motor vehicle travelling at 50km/h. The council fines motorists $150 for travelling more than 50m in a bus lane. Mr Foote said this policy had resulted in the law being applied unlawfully and has sought a ruling.

Being a bit of a maths and science geek I decided to work out what is the minimum distance a car can stop in when traveling 50kmh. It turns out it is 24m if the car is in good shape, the road is dry, and the driver is fully aware (Stopping distances for cars – Road Safety Authority Rules of the Road) so say for instance it is a wet day this can affect things by a factor of two hence 2*24m = 48m. And this is the value that the Auckland City Council has set.

The major problem that I have with this is it is best case scenario maths. No consideration has been given to cars already stopped to turn within that 48m area, or the amount of distance required to change into the lane, or the fact that many cars travel faster than 50kmh, it may be the limit and the law but that does not mean people actually obey it. In the interests of safety it would be better to set it at a minimum of 65m which is the minimum distance at 60kmh on a wet day to stop.

None of this takes into account just how hard it is to judge precise distance when traveling at 50kmh or 13.8m/s while driving.

I hope the appeal succeeds, it is simply not safe with the number of factors involved to limit it at 48m. 100m would be a much more sensible solution.

I saw this image on the news tonight and at first I could see the funny side of it. The biggest problem however is we do not currently have combat troops in Afghanistan instead we have peace keepers and a reconstruction team. A New Zealand company’s logo and NZDF troops next to an American bomb is not a good look for a mainly pacifist nation.

FrogBlog has a good story on the other implications of the issue: http://blog.greens.org.nz/2009/09/04/no-limits-to-civilian-suffering-in-us-bombing/

On the weekend I headed to Christchurch for a short holiday. While there I went skiing at Porters Ski Area. Awesome is an understatement. It rocked. Beyond Rocked.

The road to Porters/Arthurs Pass

Looking up the right side of Porters from the base area.

Looking down from the top of T1 nice wide open slopes.

There were a few things that made Porters really special. The first was the atmosphere. Until 2007 it was a club field, and despite turning commercial it still has a really friendly feel to it. The second is the lack of people, because it has T-bars rather than chairs there are fewer people so you have more space to yourself. Finally the terrian just simply rocks. No dodging rocks or narrow runs. The beginners have plenty of space at the bottom of the field. The intermediates have some good runs down the 1km long T1 and there is expert terrain to die for. I didn’t get to go out on Big Mama because the vis was poor. But I did go down Bluff Face twice which was such an awesome experience. Would definitely rival my run down the waterfall at Turoa the other week.

The view from the top of Bluff Face

Me sitting comfortably at te top of Bluff Face laughing in the face of danger.

Bluff Face as seen from the base area. 38 degree slope. Pure awesomeness.

The 2008 2.4L Toyota Camery Rental Car I took up the mountain. A dream to drive.

The access road to Porters 6km of gravel. Was resonably wide and good, much shorter than the 15km Mt Hutt road

As I sit here and post these photos it makes me want to go again, it was that good. Next year I will go for a week (maybe – if I can afford it).

Finally this was a cool inscription at Christchurch Cathedral.

From the wonders of YouTube: