Horowhenua lake owner arrested by Police

Police interrupt ceremony by arresting Otaki candidate

An Independent candidate in this year’s elections was arrested and led away in handcuffs at an Armistice Day commemoration attended by the Minister of Internal Affairs Nathan Guy yesterday.

Otaki candidate, Phil Taueki is a Foxton RSA member who was attending a ceremony on the Foxton RSA premises with his partner Cr Anne Hunt when Police Officer John May tapped him on the shoulder and asked him outside.  As Mr Taueki was leaving, four other police officers arrived and arrested him for a breach of his bail conditions.

Mrs Hunt says the police claimed that he had given only twenty-three and a half hours notice that he would be attending a function attended by Horowhenua’s Mayor Brendan Duffy rather than the required twenty-four hours.

The police ordered a journalist covering the event not to take photographs.

Mr Taueki’s lawyer, Steven Price is currently out of the country and was unable to represent him for yesterday’s appearance in the Levin District Court.

Mr Taueki had applied for a variation of his bail conditions to ensure that he would be able to address campaign meetings if the Mayor also attended.

Mr Taueki is facing several charges including criminal harassment after making six phone calls to the Mayor over a three-day period.

The police has sought a bail condition demanding that Mr Taueki must leave as soon as he becomes aware that Mr Duffy is present at any meeting or public event.

In the Levin District Court the day beforehand, Mr Taueki had argued that this condition would not allow him to attend the Armistice Day commemoration  which Cr Hunt was obliged to attend in her capacity as a Foxton RSA committee member.

He told the court that he was concerned that Cr Hunt had been subjected to a confrontation  involving Mr Duffy a week before she was due to give evidence in another matter. Although she had reported this incident to the police, no action had been taken.

During the hearing, he advised the Crown Prosecutor Simon Chamberlain that it was his intention to attend the Armistice Day commemorations at the Foxton RSA.

However, Thursday’s hearing had been delayed until 12.30pm which meant that he was unable to give the full twenty-four hour notice that he intended to accompany Mrs Hunt to this commemoration on the Foxton RSA premises.

Earlier this year, four police officers had visited Mr Taueki’s home at 1am to arrest him on a charge of wilful trespass. This charge was dismissed on the grounds that the trespass notice was invalid. Lake Trustee chairman Dr Jonathan Procter who issued the trespass notice, admitted that he was not an owner of the property, nor could he prove that he was acting as an agent for the owners. However, for eight weeks the bail conditions prevented him from returning to his home on his own property.

He has also been trespassed from the Horowhenua District Council for a two-year period.

Mr Taueki is taking the Horowhenua District Court to court to stop Levin’s stormwater draining into Lake Horowhenua which is privately-owned.

Mr Taueki who is a direct descendent of Tauheke who signed the Treaty of Waitangi on behalf of Mua-Upoko, says he is heartened by the response he is getting on the campaign trail as he describes what he believes to be the most blatant violation of the Treaty of Waitangi in recent history.

Despite the fact that Mua-Upoko has always owned Lake Horowhenua, the Crown removed all ownership rights by passing a law placing control of the lake in the hands of a domain board appointed by the Minister. Since then the lake has deteriorated to such an extent that it now ranked one of the worst lakes in the country.

Mr Taueki says that he was not surprised by his latest arrest, due to comments Mr Guy had made to his campaign manager after a candidates’ meeting last Tuesday.

And although he was forced to spend several hours in a police cell on Armistice Day, he is philosophical, considering this latest incident to be part of an ongoing campaign of harassment by the police, the local council and politicians ever since he returned to New Zealand to champion the rights of his iwi. In his campaign manifesto, he says that if you don’t stand up for your rights, it is inevitable that you will lose them.

However, he says that his arrest at an RSA premises on Armistice Day shows a distinct lack of respect for the rights and freedoms that New Zealand servicemen fought to preserve.

For further information, phone Mr Taueki on 367 3872 or e-mail him on philtaueki@gmail.com

Alan Alach Hero



Anne Tolley NZ Minister of Education, Villain? 



Hero or Villain…local educator makes world news.

When did it become acceptable to publicly attack educators dedicated to fighting for the welfare of children? Isn’t this supposed to be our charge?

Yet, with the onslaught of corporate driven education policies, educators are now coerced into tossing the welfare of children aside in order to advocate for the well being of multi billion dollars companies and the legislators who front them. 

Alan Alach is a long standing educator in New Zealand who has also been an active contributing member to the United Opt Out movement . He advocated for our international outreach segment of the website. Why…because he sees the writing on the wall .

He sees the destructive nature of the educational policies being forced on educators in his own country. He and New Zealand are not alone. Back here in the good ‘ol USA, his story should resonate soundly with us.

Alan was “reprimanded” by the Education Ministry of New Zealand for his outspoken opposition to the standards being imposed upon students. Part of this attack was the accusation that he was using the school where he works as a "political soapbox." He is accused of spending time blogging when he should be attending to so-called day-to-day activities. We, the educators who advocate for opting out of high stakes testing understand that one of the key elements to bringing the public back into public education is changing the narrative that the corporate-led policy makers have so deftly co-opted. It would be negligible of Alan to act like so many others and simply stick his head in the sand. He is not writing about shoe shopping folks. He is researching and writing about education policy in an effort to advocate for his teachers and students.

Such accusations ignore the reality that all educational work is political-to ignore the fact that the standards and common core themselves are a huge political and economic football is either naïve, or worse, deliberate-why is when the left speak out its political but when the right wing free- marketeers push their agenda it’s just “business as usual?” Because that’s the nature of hegemony and dominant discourse-to makes one’s agenda “invisible.” Alan’s work exposes the education reform for what it is: Politics for the rich and powerful, as usual.

We all need to follow Alan’s courageous lead and to announce loudly that the Emperor has no clothes. The high stakes testing agenda and National Common Core being rolled out across America is grounded directly in the pockets of the corporate reformers who have much to gain politically and financially from the implementation of these policies.

Secretly behind closed doors, I hear teachers and teacher-educators alike expressing their opposition to new teacher evaluations, to new standards, to new testing policies; everything the latest reform measures have forced upon them. That’s because they see every day, on the frontlines, the negative effects these measures are having on their profession and the children they serve. But if you ask them publicly how they feel … you hear crickets.

Educators are understandably afraid. Why? Look what happened to Alan. But rather than reinforcing our collective silence, we should be uniting. Don’t let Alan’s courage be in vain. Phil Cullen of Australia (a Member of the Order of Australia- a sort of Aussie knighthood-for services to education) writes this letter to the editor in response to the article that led the attack on Alan’s work (shown in its entirety here):

The article by Jessica Button on 4 November suggested that the education minister was displeased with the principal of Hokowhitu School for alleged injudicious remarks on a blog site.  Mr Alach is an ebullient critic of national standards. He seems to think that they constitute a confining process that constricts and lowers overall curriculum standards; and which does nothing to promote purposeful achievements in reading, writing and mathematics. As a practicing school person, he is worried overall about the effects that politicking for corporate benediction has on children’s focus on learning.

Mind control of schooling and the use of officers to bring schools into line is pandemic. Mr Alach’s blog vocabulary indicates that he does not like it being used in New Zealand. Australia certainly uses forms of Gestapo-ism; but I will not be called to account for saying that.  When Joh was king in Queensland and I was a state director of education, in charge of about 1200 primary schools, I was sometimes called to account by school principals and nasty names were used. I felt aggrieved, of course. However, when at times I checked the accuser, it was often a principal who knew a thing or two. As far as school leadership was concerned, we did not have many Alachs. There were some, and although they doubted my parentage at times, I learned to give way, especially to the Alachs. On reflection I do wish that there were more Allan Alachs in our work-force; brave state-employed, good school operators unafraid to be critical; reminding superordinates that they don’t know everything.

Some advice for Ms Tolley: “Young lady, part of your job requirements is to eat crow. Do it and just spit out the feathers; not seek revenge.”

Phil Cullen A.M.

Former Q’ld State Director

Occupy the Department of Education in Washington DC March 30th-April 1st. It’s our time to stand up and speak out.

I am sorry, but the way in which Ms Tolley has insisted that National Standards be foisted on, slapped over, whacked into and shoved through our primary school curriculum leaves me in no doubt whatesoever that this is simply round one of a grueling fight to wrest Public Education from the embrace of Education Professionals and put it firmly in the grip of commercial interests.  

The support offered to schools? Think this: a man beats his wife then supports her by giving her an icepack and saying "Get on with it". 

Andrew Salisbury

BA, DipTch, PGDipEd

A Moving account from Occupy Wall St

Finding Freedom in Handcuffs

Monday 7 November 2011

by: Chris Hedges, Truthdig | Op-Ed

An Occupy Wall Street demonstrator is detained by police while others march nearby, in New York, October 14, 2011. (Photo: Robert Stolarik / The New York Times)

Editor’s note: Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges, an activist, an author and a member of a reporting team that won a 2002 Pulitzer Prize, wrote this article after he was released from custody following his arrest last Thursday. He and about 15 other participants in the Occupy Wall Street movement were detained as they protested outside the global headquarters of Goldman Sachs in lower Manhattan.

Faces appeared to me moments before the New York City police arrested us Thursday in front of Goldman Sachs. They were not the faces of the smug Goldman Sachs employees, who peered at us through the revolving glass doors and lobby windows, a pathetic collection of middle-aged fraternity and sorority members.

They were not the faces of the blue-uniformed police with their dangling cords of white and black plastic handcuffs, or the thuggish Goldman Sachs security personnel, whose buzz cuts and dead eyes reminded me of the East German secret police, the Stasi. They were not the faces of the demonstrators around me, the ones with massive student debts and no jobs, the ones whose broken dreams weigh them down like a cross, the ones whose anger and betrayal triggered the street demonstrations and occupations for justice. They were not the faces of the onlookers—the construction workers, who seemed cheered by the march on Goldman Sachs, or the suited businessmen who did not. They were faraway faces. They were the faces of children dying. They were tiny, confused, bewildered faces I had seen in the southern Sudan, Gaza and the slums of Brazzaville, Nairobi, Cairo and Delhi and the wars I covered. They were faces with large, glassy eyes, above bloated bellies. They were the small faces of children convulsed by the ravages of starvation and disease.

I carry these faces. They do not leave me. I look at my own children and cannot forget them, these other children who never had a chance. War brings with it a host of horrors, including famine, but the worst is always the human detritus that war and famine leave behind, the small, frail bodies whose tangled limbs and vacant eyes condemn us all. The wealthy and the powerful, the ones behind the glass at Goldman Sachs, laughed and snapped pictures of us as if we were a brief and odd lunchtime diversion from commodities trading, from hoarding and profit, from this collective sickness of money worship, as if we were creatures in a cage, which in fact we soon were.

A glass tower filled with people carefully selected for the polish and self-assurance that come with having been formed in institutions of privilege, whose primary attributes are a lack of consciousness, a penchant for deception and an incapacity for empathy or remorse. The curious onlookers behind the windows and we, arms locked in a circle on the concrete outside, did not speak the same language. Profit. Globalization. War. National security. These are the words they use to justify the snuffing out of tiny lives, acts of radical evil. Goldman Sachs’ commodities index is the most heavily traded in the world. Those who trade it have, by buying up and hoarding commodities futures, doubled and tripled the costs of wheat, rice and corn. Hundreds of millions of poor across the globe are going hungry to feed this mania for profit. The technical jargon, learned in business schools and on trading floors, effectively mask the reality of what is happening—murder. These are words designed to make systems operate, even systems of death, with a cold neutrality. Peace, love and all sane affirmative speech in temples like Goldman Sachs are, as W.H. Auden understood, “soiled, profaned, debased to a horrid mechanical screech.”

We seemed to have lost, at least until the advent of the Occupy Wall Street movement, not only all personal responsibility but all capacity for personal judgment. Corporate culture absolves all of responsibility. This is part of its appeal. It relieves all from moral choice. There is an unequivocal acceptance of ruling principles such as unregulated capitalism and globalization as a kind of natural law. The steady march of corporate capitalism requires a passive acceptance of new laws and demolished regulations, of bailouts in the trillions of dollars and the systematic looting of public funds, of lies and deceit. The corporate culture, epitomized by Goldman Sachs, has seeped into our classrooms, our newsrooms, our entertainment systems and our consciousness. This corporate culture has stripped us of the right to express ourselves outside of the narrowly accepted confines of the established political order. It has turned us into compliant consumers. We are forced to surrender our voice. These corporate machines, like fraternities and sororities, also haze new recruits in company rituals, force them to adopt an unrelenting cheerfulness, a childish optimism and obsequiousness to authority. These corporate rituals, bolstered by retreats and training seminars, by grueling days that sometimes end with initiates curled up under their desks to sleep, ensure that only the most morally supine remain. The strong and independent are weeded out early so only the unquestioning advance upward. Corporate culture serves a faceless system. It is, as Hannah Arendt writes, “the rule of nobody and for this very reason perhaps the least human and most cruel form of rulership.”

Our political class, and its courtiers on the airwaves, insists that if we refuse to comply, if we step outside of the Democratic Party, if we rebel, we will make things worse. This game of accepting the lesser evil enables the steady erosion of justice and corporate plundering. It enables corporations to harvest the nation and finally the global economy, reconfiguring the world into neofeudalism, one of masters and serfs. This game goes on until there is hardly any action carried out by the power elite that is not a crime. It goes on until corporate predators, who long ago decided the nation and the planet were not worth salvaging, seize the last drops of wealth. It goes on until moral acts, such as calling for those inside the corporate headquarters of Goldman Sachs to be tried, see you jailed, and the crimes of financial fraud and perjury are upheld as lawful and rewarded by the courts, the U.S. Treasury and the Congress. And all this is done so a handful of rapacious, immoral plutocrats like Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs who sucks down about $250,000 a day and who lied to the U.S. Congress as well as his investors and the public, can use their dirty money to retreat into their own Forbidden City or Versailles while their underlings, basking in the arrogance of power, snap amusing photos of the rabble outside their gates being hauled away by the police and company goons.

It is vital that the occupation movements direct attention away from their encampments and tent cities, beset with the usual problems of hastily formed open societies where no one is turned away. Attention must be directed through street protests, civil disobedience and occupations toward the institutions that are carrying out the assaults against the 99 percent. Banks, insurance companies, courts where families are being foreclosed from their homes, city offices that put these homes up for auction, schools, libraries and firehouses that are being closed, and corporations such as General Electric that funnel taxpayer dollars into useless weapons systems and do not pay taxes, as well as propaganda outlets such as the New York Post and its evil twin, Fox News, which have unleashed a vicious propaganda war against us, all need to be targeted, shut down and occupied. Goldman Sachs is the poster child of all that is wrong with global capitalism, but there are many other companies whose degradation and destruction of human life are no less egregious.

It is always the respectable classes, the polished Ivy League graduates, the prep school boys and girls who grew up in Greenwich, Conn., or Short Hills, N.J., who are the most susceptible to evil. To be intelligent, as many are at least in a narrow, analytical way, is morally neutral. These respectable citizens are inculcated in their elitist enclaves with “values” and “norms,” including pious acts of charity used to justify their privilege, and a belief in the innate goodness of American power. They are trained to pay deference to systems of authority. They are taught to believe in their own goodness, unable to see or comprehend—and are perhaps indifferent to—the cruelty inflicted on others by the exclusive systems they serve. And as norms mutate and change, as the world is steadily transformed by corporate forces into one of a small cabal of predators and a vast herd of human prey, these elites seamlessly replace one set of “values” with another. These elites obey the rules. They make the system work. And they are rewarded for this. In return, they do not question.

Those who resist—the doubters, outcasts, renegades, skeptics and rebels—rarely come from the elite. They ask different questions. They seek something else—a life of meaning. They have grasped Immanuel Kant’s dictum, “If justice perishes, human life on Earth has lost its meaning.” And in their search they come to the conclusion that, as Socrates said, it is better to suffer wrong than to do wrong. This conclusion is rational, yet cannot be rationally defended. It makes a leap into the moral, which is beyond rational thought. It refuses to place a monetary value on human life. It acknowledges human life, indeed all life, as sacred. And this is why, as Arendt points out, the only morally reliable people when the chips are down are not those who say “this is wrong,” or “this should not be done,” but those who say “I can’t.”

“The greatest evildoers are those who don’t remember because they have never given thought to the matter, and, without remembrance, nothing can hold them back,” Arendt writes. “For human beings, thinking of past matters means moving in the dimension of depth, striking roots and thus stabilizing ourselves, so as not to be swept away by whatever may occur—the Zeitgeist or History or simple temptation. The greatest evil is not radical, it has no roots, and because it has no roots it has no limitations, it can go to unthinkable extremes and sweep over the whole world.”

There are streaks in my lungs, traces of the tuberculosis that I picked up around hundreds of dying Sudanese during the famine I covered as a foreign correspondent. I was strong and privileged and fought off the disease. They were not and did not. The bodies, most of them children, were dumped into hastily dug mass graves. The scars I carry within me are the whispers of these dead. They are the faint marks of those who never had a chance to become men or women, to fall in love and have children of their own. I carried these scars to the doors of Goldman Sachs. I had returned to living. Those whose last breaths had marked my lungs had not. I placed myself at the feet of these commodity traders to call for justice because the dead, and those who are dying in slums and refugee camps across the planet, could not make this journey. I see their faces. They haunt me in the day and come to me in the dark. They force me to remember. They make me choose sides. As the metal handcuffs were fastened around my wrists I thought of them, as I often think of them, and I said to myself: “Free at last. Free at last. Thank God almighty I am free at last.”

Palmerston North Kids are suffering...

The report below was published today the figures it contains were before the huge increase in unemployment took place under the present government. At the last election John Key stated that fixing child poverty would be a prime objective...while the figures are shocking they are even more-so today after three years of cutting taxes for the 1% and ignoring the 99%. It is not hard to see why the Occupy groups are starting up.

Palmerston North's kids are not OK

About one-quarter of them live in poverty, and in 2010, there was the equivalent of almost one child abuse alert for every four children.

Poverty, ill-health and abuse are three big dangers that emerge from a children's profile compiled by Palmerston North City Council policy analyst Julie Macdonald for the council's community wellbeing committee meeting today.

Children aged up to 14 make up one-fifth of the city's population, and although they are affected in some way by all council decisions, there is no special provision that ensures their views always influence decision-making.

Protection from neglect and abuse, family income and employment, and housing affordability and security are identified in the report as crucial for the city's children's future wellbeing.

There were 15,700 children aged up to 14 living in Palmerston North in 2006, a figure projected to be growing towards 16,400 by 2021.

And last year, there were 4270 notifications of possible abuse to Child, Youth and Family in the Manawatu region for children and young people aged up to 17.

While the figures are not out of kilter with national reporting, the profile finds it is "a significant level of abuse and neglect".

On the poverty front, 22.5 per cent of the city's children were living in low-income households in 2006.

The figures pre-date the international recession and rise in unemployment.

At the same time 19.1 per cent of the city's total population was on low incomes, showing that children are more likely than adults to be poor.

"The number of children living in low-income households is important because low incomes are associated with lower educational attainment and poorer health," said Ms Macdonald.

More Palmerston North children identify as Maori (27 per cent) compared to the population overall, with 16 per cent Maori.

While as a group, the city's children are no more likely than the national average to be admitted to hospital, that rate is higher among 10 to 14-year-olds.

Ashhurst, Kelvin Grove and Cloverlea have the highest proportion of children living in their communities. [From the Manawatu Standard by Janie Rankin Monday 7^th Nov 2011]

The Biggest Question you face...



The choice is yours on the 26th of  November 2011

 The biggest question facing NZ today is simple, “Do we continue down the track of believing the crap dished out by the government in defence of the wealthy, or do we believe in our own eyes as we look around our communities”.

Goff called Key a liar and the media say that’s not on, well I beg to differ…since Key is a liar what’s wrong with saying so. He lied over GST, he lied over a cap on the public service, he lied over what our SAS are doing in Afghanistan, so he is a liar, there is no question about that and that is a fact.  

The Manawatu Standard published a weekend splash about Goff and Key and it was about as balanced as my left foot, they covered fully Goff’s working life but when it came to Key they left out his working life and his working life was built on producing nothing other than collecting fees and bonuses from handling money.

As we all know those working near the top of the finance industry both here and overseas, are now shaking in their boots as their victims start to fight back. Over one million citizens in the US have closed their bank accounts with companies Key used to work for in just the last month alone.

No matter what spin you put on it the Nats are for the rich, their tax changes prove that point, their main selling point…They have laid-off thousands of public service workers and driven hundreds or thousands overseas.

Right now people the world over are trying to break the chains and create a more equal world. Naturally they are starting in their own backyards, We are the same, why should we bail out the private and corporate CEO’s, because nearly all our debt is private debt.

in the US the Occupy Movement has become unstoppable, they asked citizens to close their bank accounts with the corrupt big banks and a million people did so in the first three weeks. Credit Unions and community banks are being swamped by new depositors.



McKelvie, farmer or banker? 

 The Greek people have told their Government, NO MORE, they want those that caused the problems to pay their fair share, they are sick of bailing out the greedy.

The Nats want us to sell our assets to save private and corporate failures.

So what can you do? Firstly don’t vote National or Act, if you do then be prepared to get more of the same…unemployment, bailing out corporates and poorly run companies, and having our assets sold off.

McKelvie the Mayor of Manawatu District is a clear example of this misuse of the peoples money, he gifts land to the Manfield Trust, they mismanage those funds, and then McKelvie using ratepayers money buys back the debt…how stupid is that. And this is the guy selected by the Nats for the safe seat of Rangitikei…what’s next…

Who should you vote for? That’s over to you to select from the remaining parties contesting the election. Just remember Key never got rich by caring about the unemployed, poor, solo Moms. He got rich by making the rich richer and the clear evidence was his gift to the rich with a thousand dollar a week tax cut, while increasing GST to pay for that gift. It was a gift no matter how you look at it.

A Tale of a Solo Mom...



Could Paula Benett be this woman?



Being male I have no idea what it means to be a solo mum and never having been on the DPB I don’t understand that situation either but I feel for people in that predicament. The Nats have a real thing about the DPB and benefits, which is odd when you consider some of their backgrounds. Of course the biggest problem for many single parents are public attitudes of condemnation. Not all religions condemn solo mums and fully understand that it takes two to create a baby and are not interested in allocating blame. This story is based on fact. And happened some where near where you live.

Peter Wheeler 2011

 I Accuse:

A Short Story

Peter J Wheeler

"When you wish upon a star,

 Makes no difference who you are.

 When you wish upon a star,

 Your dreams, come...True"         

The phone call was the last straw, The sand had slowly spilled from the top of the hourglass to the bottom, run its course, reached its bloody target. I was legitimately fed up.

A solo mum, a leech on society, an exhaustion of the national economy. No mean accomplishment being a solo mum. Just a habit some would say.

The allowances pruned so what money there is perpetually drifts away, slowly without prudence, a cent here a cent there. Still as the Minister of Social Welfare, better known as the Minister of diminishing allowances, says "Too many handouts are harmful and lead to too many children and a easy life. A certain French queen of a similar build and ilk once said "No bread, eat cake" so the people removed her brainless head from her well sustained shoulders. Conceivably that destiny awaits the minister, here's anticipating.

Ever had a baby out of wedlock, charming word don't you think, wedlock, guess who is locked in, wedlock what a word. The pains are matching you know, still hurts like hell. The water still bursts forth, blood still flows. When you take that insignificant innocent hunk of flesh into your arms, and love and hate it at the same time. Hate the suffering, love the harvest.

Naturally you never confess the hate and forcefully profess the love after all that's what your pressured to do.

Becoming a solo mum is the same as becoming an espoused mum. Well in most respects, it’s later that the actual fun starts. Sometimes you’re called a sex machine, like an over used bank deposit box. The born agains of course see you as the rancor of their weird revengeful God, the arch enemy of the straight laced bible married nice Christian girl who in private, consumes gin and prays her husband drops dead soon. Or the born again warlord who preaches no sex but blows his wastewater once a week in a motel room. The pro-life male protesters who are so vocal and judgmental when a women selects any other course of action. Holy, Righteous, Holy whatever.

Of course you can be the sort of solo mum who deceives, you know, husband away at sea, in the military and overseas. But sooner or later they find out and write notes or ring you up. Men are as bad as women too, will you marry me oh, you've got a baby, lets just have sex...A ready made family brings out the best in men, like hell. Who invented marriage anyway must have been a man. Come to think of it, it was a man.

Still my child gave me life, a cause for living, not particularly because I love children, but because of the entire dick heads who said I'd never manage. Fat lot they knew.

"I accuse," the caller had said, I bloody well accuse! Really it's a load of crap, but it got to me. It really did. "I accuse" he just kept repeating it, over and over again. I didn't recognise the voice but it was male. But I failed to recognise the voice. It truly got to me ate into my very guts. For hours I could think of nothing but that voice. I tried to analyze it, put it into an age category, by race, creed even but I floundered in my effort.

An hour or two later the phone rang again, as it happened I was standing by the front window which offers a clear view of the local telephone box. I saw this little short guy enter the box, then heard my phone ring. This time the call was more than "I accuse" for it developed into that sick stuff, you know, God would get me paraphernalia...hell and all that... As I listened I extended the cord as far as I could. By half kneeling down and looking under the blind I could see he was still on the phone.

I told him to stuff off, to stick the phone in a certain tight and dark place, and watched his reaction. He held the phone away from his ear. I banged the phone down after calling him a specific name associated with solo mums children. As I watched he left the phone booth, it confirmed my assumption, this guy was a nut case, a real nut case, and no doubt confirmed his mis-guided view that solo mums are foul mouthed.

The flat was small, well not even a flat actually, more like a bed-sit in size and shape. It was all I could afford; you don't get a great deal on the DPB. David that's my baby needed feeding so that's what I did. It would have been about an hour later when the phone rang again... I picked up the receiver it was him again. I thought quickly, I told him I'd be back in a minute or two because I had to tuck the baby in. I ran to the back door and picked up the brick, zipped out the back gate, around the corner in a flash.

There he was in the phone box; I rushed up and threw the brick! I saw it crash through the glass and connect about head height.

Got him, three cheers. Take that for solo mums' the world over. Try this for size you nut case. Shove this up your rear end!

I swiveled around and dashed inside, this time via the front, slamming the door.I walked slowly and proudly toward the phone to replace the dangling receiver.Then I heard the voice, "Are you there, I accuse, I accuse,

Oh! No wrong again.

Politics the week that was



He appears.......He fails to 



The opening shots have been fired and the parties have come out fighting, well some have.

·         Labour fired the first shots by introducing a change in the Age of entitlement for national super; gee did that cause a stir.

·         National continued with its John Key for God fan club by putting his grinning image on all its bill-boards, in many respects it was a bit of a Gaddafi show from a few years back…you know the leader is everything…most dictatorships use that style of presentation, you know statues, 60 foot images plenty of flags etc.

·         Winston Peter’s burst back onto the scene with a blast from the past about national super but was generally free from attacking Maori and Asians, the big question is will he stand in a electoral seat and if so which one!

·         The Greens move steadily forward with a balance of sound social and environmental policy mix. Each passing day sees them drift further and further from the John Key party and closer and closer to the Labour Party.

·         The Act party has drifted off into space and their leader is all on his own, if you want to see Don Brash just look at the moon on a clear night and you might catch him in orbit on a broom.

·         The Maori Party has become the party for Maori Elite and the,

·         Mana Party the party for the working Maori and in fact workers in general.

Super award winning director Sir Peter Jackson; gave a series of photo opportunities to John Key in payment for his vital assistance in both keeping the filming of the hobbits in NZ and the increasing of grants to the film industry and especially Warner Brothers. All in all Sir Peter felt that the millions donated by the Key government and the industrial law changes via the public purse was just the sort of investment needed during these difficult financial times. Sir Peter went on to point out that his new film production “The Lovely Key” his sequel to ‘The Lovely Bones’…was in honour of guess who…its about how a small boy went from living in a State house to owning the whole Street.

On morning report [Monday] Phil Goff was interviewed, John Key refused to appear as he prone to do. This gave Phil Goff free reign to state his case; he called John Key a liar more than once and put labours case very forcibly.   

Occupy news and letter to Australian PM

Hi Peter, thanks for your update on the Occupy Wellington protest and what it stands for, it is time the world had some positive change, and with the information age of the internet, perhaps this movement has a chance to make real change. Will there be an occupy Palmerston North movement, that square could definitely house a few hundred, although there are still only a few toilets open all hours. C'mon palmie, show the world you are hurting too! Cheers 

An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Australia

From the General Assembly of Occupy Auckland, New Zealand

In Session, the 24th Day of October, 2011

Madam Prime Minister,

Respectfully, we the assembled citizens, residents and supporters of the Auckland Occupation wish to convey to you our deepest disappointment in the recent repression by Australian police of the peaceful demonstrators in Melbourne’s

City Square

and Sydney's

Martin Place

.

We have watched with dismay as our fellow Occupiers have been treated as criminals, being assaulted in ways that are by any estimation excessive, given the peaceful nature of their protest. Regretfully, we consider these actions to be contrary to our understanding of your national character as Australians.

We call upon you to assert your authority as Prime Minister of Australia to protect and defend the Democratic Rights of your Citizens and Residents, particularly the inalienable rights of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Assembly.

We ask you to call a Moratorium on all further repressive assaults and evictions.

We ask you also to bring to account those in authority who have perpetrated these excesses so as to reassure the Global Community that Australia respects all International Conventions pertaining to Human Rights.

Furthermore, we the General Assembly of the Occupation of Auckland would bring to your attention the excellent cooperation which exists between us, the Auckland City Council and the New Zealand Police, in the hope that this may serve as a model of good relations between Occupiers and Authorities. We respectfully suggest that these exemplary professionals may be of some considerable assistance to you during this difficult time…

Most humbly,

The General Assembly of Occupy Auckland

Eavesdropper Rugby World Cup Final

Practice makes a AB

Palmerston North and NZ has now come down to earth, the flag waving and cheering is all over, and we won the world cup, not by a landslide as most predicted but by a single point. Our local newspapers will now have to print some real news.

On Sunday night at Eden Park John K and Murray Mc were overheard while having a deep and meaningful conversation in the VIP lounge. Naturally it wasn’t about poverty or the unemployed or even the latest down grade or the stuff up over the Rena episode. No it was about, ‘What if’…we lose the final.

“Murray said John, ‘If we lose then the millions we’ve spent on staging the world cup has been totally wasted’.

“Come on John cheer-up’, said wee Murray, just keep up your smile I’m sure the AB’s will hold on for victory and you won’t need to present the cup to the French, but if you do, just remember to change the script and don’t shout ‘Go the mighty All Blacks’, you have practiced your speech haven’t you?

“Oh yes, I had had one last practice in front of the mirror at half-time and I must admit I sounded really smooth”, said John as he practiced yet again his smile.

“And you’ll remember what Steven Joyce said, and don’t try to speak French when you say how sorry you are for them losing the final” and please, please don’t smile at that moment”, said Murray very seriously.

“Right no French or Maori, I’ve got that firmly fixed in my ‘what not to do list’ from Steven, said John as he turned to Murray and asked if his tie was straight.

Murray adjusted John’s tie as the Eden Park crowd erupted in delight as the final whistle blew for full-time. The noise was overwhelming and any further eavesdropping was impossible.

And so the saga ended and after decades the cup was ours. John and Murray headed off to the field to bask in the glory and above the roar of the crowd Johns last words were, “I must remember not to speak French or Maori”, as he practiced his grin one last time. Amen…said my God as she headed off to help out with the Turkish earthquake.

PS: It has just been made public that the running of the cup cost, 400 million dollars yes folks 400 million dollars! [the NZRU lost 38 million, the government spent 26 million directly and the rest went to fund high level visitors, business programmes and the tax and rate payers spent 350 million on stadiums and facilities] Manawatu Standard Tuesday 25^th October 2011]

Murray McCully the Minister in charge of the RWC said he was pleased that the costs were as they were and hailed this massive financial loss as 'a triumph...

McKelvie: Possible Minister of Bale-outs



Ian McKelvie Nat's sleep walker in Rangitikei does behind doors deal. 



The Mayor of Manawatu District [Ian McKelvie, pictured] has done a secret backroom deal with the cash strapped and financially miss-managed Manfield Park Trust. He plans to buy back land gifted to the MPT by the good people of Rangitikei. The impression abroad is that he wants this embarrassing episode [stuff-up] tucked away before he ‘sleep walks’ his way into Parliament in the fading footprints of the out going MP Simon Power now head of private banking for Australian owned Westpac, our government’s own banker.

Beat that for jobs for the boys…Just how much of your rate payers money he is willing to spend to pull the big spending MPT is as yet unknown but there is a sense of urgency rumbling in Fielding as McKelvie prepares to enter into his hundred and fifty thousand plus job gifted to him by the National Party in Rangitikei. I’ve no doubt that he will be laughing all the way to the bank as will Simon Power if you will excuse the pun.

According to the Manawatu Standard, McKelvie said “that the council had decided to negotiate with the MPT”…yeah, yeah. Just like their negotiations over selling off large hunks of the Manawatu District council to Palmerston North to ease his self-imposed massive debt. It’s standard Nat’s type policy; sell off other people’s assets to pay for your own foolishness of backing a poorly organised and controlled Trust board.

We can only hope that if the Nats are elected that they sit Mr. McKelvie on the back benches well away from any thing financial. Maybe they could make him Minister of bale-outs after the MPT episode he is well practiced for the staring role. Based on his record maybe the Nat’s could make him Minister of Local Government asset sales, this may allow the Nats to double his salary…while laughing behind his back…who knows. If you lived in the Rangitikei electorate would you want this person representing you?

The 99% percent movement arrives in Kiwi Land

When does a protest become a movement? One answer is when it fails to recognise whole existing political structures. The 99% percent movement is just that. While it started in some respects in the United States it is spreading across the globe, including NZ.

The people who are attaching themselves to this movement have much in common in both an economic and social sense. The present political groupings would like to co-opt them to join their particular ideology, The National Party, Labour Party, Act etc but they won’t join, why you may ask…simply because those political groupings have failed to uphold the values that once existed. Countries, cities are governed not by people but by economic control. Take the Labour Party for example, once it stood for protecting those who individually couldn’t protect themselves…then along came Roger Douglas, Richard Prebble who ripped off the system for financial gain for the few. So people turned to the National Party who did exactly the same by cutting tax for the wealthy and supporting massive pollution to continue and they too carried on down the path of individual wealth creation for a few as against the greater good.

Rip off artists, so-called financial whiz-kids or just plain crooks became heroes, they were knighted, wined and dined, and individual enterprise and greed was rewarded and became the norm.

Microsoft’s Bill Gates earns one hundred and fifty dollars [US] per second, yes not per minute or hour but each second. What that means is if Bill Gates was walking down the Street and saw a hundred dollar note on the foot path it wouldn’t be worth his while to bend down and pick it up.

Now New Zealand may not have a Bill Gates but we do have his equivalent. And they virtually pay no tax. They were the guys that brought for a song; the BNZ, our Railways and Air NZ and then ran them into the ground. The close connection between international and local corporates and political figures made both political parties corrupt and therefore deaf to social considerations…and the gap between the rich and poor raced to new heights. NZ has the dishonor of having the largest wealth gap in the OECD.

The 99% are now connecting the dots and the picture they are creating is not a pretty one for it reeks or corruption and the misuse of democratic, financial and justice processes. Just look around and you’ll see the evidence: CEO salaries and bonus have risen at an express rate while wages have remained or declined, many have been paid millions in bonuses just days before their companies went broke or received a government bale out or were sacked. Huge roading contractors have made millions from the backs of tax payers once the Ministry of Works and other public owned organisations were sold off and they brought up state assets at bargain-bin prices and we knighted them too! Movers of money have been paid billions in bonuses simply for finding credit for others. We even made our rugby players professionals and roped them into the corporate network. The rugby union Inc ran at a $40 million dollar loss during the world cup so that the corporates could feel good, while club rugby is disappearing at a rapid rate.

The 99% don’t want to take over political parties; they want to change the system totally. They don’t give one iota about converting the political leadership from smiling public relation machines mouthing a few well developed corporate slogans. They simply want fairness and that means different things to different members of the 99%. You could say they want justice but not the justice the political parties dish out but genuine social justice based on concepts long forgotten by political parties. They ask real questions that deserve answers: for example.

·    Why do we have people living in poverty, and yet the government spends hundreds of  millions on navel ships and the military to fight other peoples wars.

·    How can our PM instantly spend four million on an entertainment centre in down town Auckland for a two day party or piss-up while people can’t get the medicines they urgently need?

·    Why do we spend billions on holiday highways instead of public transport?

·    Why, are two hundred thousand children now living below the poverty line?

·    Why is the minimum wage so low that you can’t live on it?

These are just some of the questions we need to think about leading up to the election on the 26^th November. My feeling is that we have to send a clear message one, that states that we are sick of being ripped off, sick of paying for big business failures, sick of hearing bull-sh-t promises. We have to stop being sucked into the pig mire of greed, greed and more of the same failed dribble as expounded by our corporate owned newspapers via spin-doctors and self-interested groups like behind the scenes manipulators. In no way am I telling you who to vote for, but I will suggest who you shouldn’t vote for. Below is a second opinion from Dr. Campbell Jones.

Dr Campbell Jones is senior lecturer in sociology at Auckland University.

OPINION: This weekend in about 950 cities around the world, a global movement of occupations rose in solidarity with the occupation at Wall Street in New York that began on 17 September.

On Saturday, there were occupations in six cities across New Zealand, with 3000 marching up

Queen St

to hold a General Assembly in

Aotea Square

in central Auckland. More than 50 tents housing at least 100 demonstrators have been set up, along with a kitchen, media centre, waste disposal and a welcome table. Occupations still hold in Wellington, Christchurch, Dunedin, Invercargill and New Plymouth.

It is easy to make hasty evaluations of these occupations. Indeed, many have been quick to dismiss the occupations as a confused rag-bag of left-wing, social and environmental causes.

It has been said that there is no clear message and no concrete demands from this movement that gleefully refuses to have any leaders or representatives. For many, then, this movement just makes no sense.

So what is this movement about? In part, the answer is quite simple. The Occupy Wall Street movement targeted the centre of financial power in the United States and indeed the world. In this sense "Wall Street" symbolises finance, the banking and financial services sector. So let there be no mistake - these occupations are opposed to the economic power of finance capital.

The global occupations also stress that finance capital and the banking industry are made possible by specific legal and governmental arrangements. They are aware that for at least 30 years governments throughout the world, under pressure from partisan pressure groups, have encouraged the rise of finance in an effort for capital to find ever more profitable homes. Occupiers are concerned that after the series of financial crises beginning in 2008, governments and institutions such as the International Monetary Fund have chosen to rescue banks and finance companies while imposing austerity measures on pretty much everyone else.

The Occupy movement is, however, not only about economic and political forces, but equally about ideas. It objects not only to the remarkable inequalities between and within countries, but also challenges the ideas that have up until now sought to justify those inequalities.

The movement is fighting the idea that unregulated capitalism somehow benefits everyone, and argues instead that it is a system involving systematic inequality that principally serves the interests of a small elite.

Against today's reigning economic, political and ideological constellation, the Occupy movement asserts the rights of the overwhelming majority. Hence the slogan of the global movement: "We are the 99%".

MANY people in New Zealand value equality: and think of this country as being egalitarian. The blunt reality, however, is that New Zealand has become one of the most unequal societies in the world, and is in the process of becoming increasingly so. Last week, Dame Anne Salmond called for a change of heart in our country, racked as it is with social and economic inequality.

Ad Feedback A change of heart would, however, require changing the ways that we think. It would involve changing how we think about the 151 individuals in this country whose wealth expanded by $7 billion this year, while at the same time real incomes fell for almost everyone else. It would involve changing how we think about rising poverty and social deprivation. Such a change of thinking would enable us to see how 1 per cent can do very well indeed, while austerity and crisis are the fate of 99 per cent.

This movement is saying "enough is enough". It is challenging systems of economic and political elitism and the ideologies that have for so long sought to justify inequality. Earlier this year, Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz identified the dangers of an economic system run "by the 1 per cent, for the 1 per cent".

For some, it will take a while to understand what this movement is about, or what kind of change might result. Clearly, a wholesale transformation of the global financial system is on the cards. At the same time, the movement is actively deploying alternative models of democratic decision-making, with general assemblies involving collective deliberation and consensus decision- making. It is also making a range of timely and potentially lasting proposals for a transformation in the way that we think about participation in society.

These occupations therefore issue a call for journalists and politicians to listen carefully and to think again.

It calls on us all to acknowledge the stark inequalities that have arisen, and the specific processes through which a remarkably small elite benefits from our current systems of finance, political decision-making and ideas.

In this growing and increasingly articulate movement, frustration at the injustices of the present motivates the call for serious change, the magnitude of which we have not been able to imagine for some time.

 

Dr Campbell Jones is senior lecturer in sociology at Auckland University.

- The Dominion Post