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.
Tag Archives: Auckland
Less representation is a good thing? Yeah right!
David Farrar at Kiwiblog this morning posts that under the new structure for the Auckland council the total number of elected representatives drops from 258 to 147 and then proceeds to say “I’d say 111 less Councillors etc is a good start!”.
How is it that less representation is good?
Currently with 258 democratically elected representatives across the region there is one representative for every 5,426 people (from a population of 1,400,000 people). With only 147 elected representatives this drops to one representative for every 9,523 people.
However, what is worse is the drop in the number of councilors from 109 to 20. In other words from one councilor per 12,844 people to one per 70,000 people.
That is a massive drop in representation.
Community boards simply do not cut the mustard when it comes to representation. The reality is community boards are designed to feed a majority view into the council. However it is only a view, and only a majority one. They are essentially nothing more than people with good intentions who unfortunately will have the majority of their good views railroaded by the superiority of the much more powerful council. This is hardly good democracy.
The call for one united Auckland council was primarily focused around reducing bureaucracy rather than mucking about with the representative democracy. It is unfortunate that the National Government has overrun this process and turned it into a farce by playing politics with the biggest city in New Zealand. Pathetic.
Auckland Power Cut another case of Déjà vu of Déjà vu
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.
I support the bus drivers.
The Herald is reporting that the Bus Drivers lock out in Auckland could last days:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10601944
The lockout followed the drivers issuing the company with a work-to-rule notice.
It is important to note that the Bus Drivers are not on strike, they have been locked out because they gave a work to rule notice which is perfectly legal.
“The drivers have given the unions instruction that we are not to withdraw the work to rule notice unless there is a settlement.”
He said that meant the ball was in the company’s court.
“They will find it very hard to get the drivers back to work now that they have locked them out.”
Yup pretty good way to piss off all your workers, playing hardball is not a good approach in industrial relations.
He also accused the unions of having no interest in resolving the issue responsibly.
He said it could be resolved very simply by the unions lifting their notice of strike action.
Mr Froggatt said the drivers were not on strike as a notice of a work to rule was not strike action.
NZ Bus are clearly in the wrong here. Work to rule would see the buses still running.
Auckland Regional Council said yesterday it may impose a financial penalty on NZ Bus for withdrawing services.
Auckland Regional Council chairman Mike Lee said the approximate figure of $150,000 should not be paid to the company today.
“This is equivalent to a boss’s strike. When workers go on strike, they don’t get paid and neither should NZ Bus when it deliberately locks out workers and therefore the travelling public,” Mr Lee said.
Perfect way to put it. It is the boss’s who have created the “strike” not the employees so good response from the regional council.
Tsunami Tidal Surge at Long Bay
This evening I went up to Long Bay at the high tide to see the disturbed water at high tide, I was not disappointed.
New HD Video Camera Test: Long Bay
I picked up a High Def Video Camera duty free when I came back into NZ on Saturday.
So on Sunday I took it for a test run walking from Long Bay to the Okura River and back.
The great thing about the camera is it is full 1080 HD. The bad thing is it stores the videos in AVCHD format which is near impossible to edit with free editors at the moment.
The video below has been edited in Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD Trial, it is USD $40 ($55 NZD) so I will probably buy it so I can edit movies in the future. The footage itself is pretty rushed together, I have pretty much cut each clip into 2 – 6sec chunks and put them together, it was a test of the camera rather than trying to film anything spectacular. The best thing about the video though is the penguins up at the Okura River.
Enjoy.
Now this is a waste of Money.
http://newstalkzb.co.nz/newsdetail1.asp?storyID=163700
The ‘h’ debate is spreading to Auckland.
Western Bay community board chairman Bruce Kilmister is keen to change the spelling Wanganui Ave in Herne Bay. He says a poll of residents would be a good start.
Mr Kilmister says if the street has been incorrectly named for the last one hundred years, now is the time to put it right.
Auckland City mayor John Banks says he has not considered a change of spelling for Wanganui Ave but supports the poll idea.
2 thoughts on this:
a) The council which campaigned on cutting ridiculous spending is spending ridiculously.
b) Surely there are much more pressing things in the city then the spelling of a street name, that may or may not be spelt correctly.
Just leave it as it is, and stop trying to create an issue where there isn’t one.
Charging for Parking until 10pm.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10595137
Free after-hours parking on central Auckland streets is likely to be rolled back as pay-and-display charges are extended until 10 each night.
The council’s parking services group says growing numbers of inner-city residents are monopolising free spaces all night, making it harder for others to reach restaurants, cinemas and bars in the evenings.
A six-month trial will start within a week in several streets around the eastern side of Viaduct Harbour, where parking is under pressure because of the area’s mix of bars, restaurants and apartment buildings.
I can’t see this working very well. It appears as a cunning scheme by the council to try and raise money, however it will do so at the downturn of patrons etc visiting the bars and restaurants. Instead they will stay at home until later, having longer home drinking sessions and will end up coming into town already tipsy and possibly over the drink driving limit, and when they get into town they will probably spend less money because of the amount they have already consumed.
As for residents taking the spots. That fails a number of tests, the first is where do they park the rest of the time? Do they go around in circles from the time the meters start to the time they start work, and repeat at the end of the work day? Are they able to park for free at their work? Do they work in town? If they do why do they need a car if they both work and live in town? If they don’t work in town why do they live there? It makes no sense and I think the council is blaming things on a non-existent problem.
Scratch the surface and this appears to be little more than a cunning but flawed plan to make money. It is bound for failure.
Satellite, Star or Planet?… It’s Jupiter
I ended up going to be very late last night thanks to assignments.
But the one positive thing to come of going to bed late was the fullness of the moon. I got a few photos of it and then noticed a very bright object to its right.
At first I thought it may be a satellite and I tried to zoom up on it to get some good shots, most of them turned out blurred or weird because of the lack of light and long exposure time, but I did get a few good ones.
Panasonic DMC-FZ5 1/8s f/8.0 ISO: 100 12x Optical Zoom
At this point I began to notice the odd colors coming off it, still convinced it was some form of satellite I zoomed up onto the digital zoom and changed the settings to TIFF format and ISO 400
At this point I was thinking okay I have some really bright star, maybe Mars.
It wasn’t until this morning I decided to look up a star map. And what do you know?
Star Map for 00:00 Sep 3 2009 NZST, Look right next to the moon.
So off to the star dome website we go for confirmation.
http://www.ectoolset.com/func/Newsdetails.asp?sid=440&id=10033
Another planet visible at this time is Jupiter. High in the sky to the east, Jupiter is the brightest thing in the evening sky apart from the Moon, making it easily noticeable. A small telescope or good binoculars will reveal some or all of Jupiter’s four largest moons, named the Galilean moons after their 17th century discoverer, Galileo.
You can see the moons too? Okay time for some image correction, Increasing the shadows on the picture and we have a moon there (with a green tinge).
Moon on top of planet
And I am loving the red-shift too.
Update the moon will be IO and it is green in real life it is not a camera trick http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_%28moon%29
Beach Toxin Issue Gets Serious
This morning the Herald is reporting that the beach toxins affecting the Auckland Harbour could kill a human in an hour:
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10591214&pnum=0
Experts have added a grim warning to the poison beach scare in Auckland, saying the toxin that killed dogs is deadly enough to paralyse humans in seconds and kill them within an hour.
Test results have shown that tetrodotoxin, a poison found in puffer fish, is responsible for the deaths of two dogs, birds and sealife on Auckland beaches.
Touching a dead animal on the beach could be enough to endanger human life, said Cawthron Institute algae specialist Paul McNabb.
He said that warnings for people to keep away from beaches were not extreme, because of the effects the toxins had on humans.
“People can die from this,” Mr McNabb said.
“If you put a slug in your mouth, you’d be vomiting and your entire body would be tingling.
“Within minutes you’d be paralysed. Your heart and lungs would shut down and you’d be dead within the hour.
“Or if you touched it and it was all over your hands and you went and ate a sandwich …”
Mr McNabb said anyone who came down with symptoms including vomiting and drowsiness, after being at a beach, should see a doctor.
This is bad news for the City of Sails, I would be avoiding going near the beaches or the sea at the moment, and avoid eating anything seafood caught in the Hauraki Gulf until this situation is under control.
