Budget 2013

The government's budget is being presented in the House by Bill English. His prophesised sacred surplus by 2014/15 is being bashed into shape. Updates are coming through:

Stuff:
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LATEST: Finance Minister Bill English's fifth Budget carries a kick with sweeping reforms targeting soaring house prices. [...]
English has this afternoon unveiled the Budget which promised the Government would make a $75 million surplus in 2014/15.
[...]
He named Meridian Energy as the next state-owned company to be sold.
[...]
Meanwhile, reducing the housing bubble and curbing rising poverty were key focuses of the Budget.
New legislation will be introduced to tackle housing affordability by giving central government more control over the consenting process.
The bill was expected to be rushed into Parliament this week and have a shortened select committee hearing.
Government also agreed to a memorandum of understanding which allows the Reserve Bank Governor to put pressure on banks to crack down on excessive lending in the housing market.
A number of initiatives to help low-income families were announced including extending income-related rents to non-government housing and consideration of zero or no-interest loans.
A reduction in ACC levies was the only sweetener offered for middle New Zealand.
--

 Highlights so far: Nick Smith was apoplectic at Labour over the ACC levies and blamed them when he hiked them up. Now they are coming down shouldn't we blame him for having over-reacted in the same way he said that Labour had under-reacted?

The use of urgency to ram through bills is going to apply to housing:
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"This legislation is an immediate and short-term response to housing pressures in areas facing severe housing affordability problems," Smith said, adding that the first area should be designated in Auckland later this year. Once passed, the legislation would see a streamlined consenting process in special housing areas agreed between councils and Government.
While it would prefer "to partner with councils", Smith made it clear that where agreement cannot be reached, the Government could take over.
"If an accord cannot be reached in an area of severe housing unaffordability, the Government can intervene by establishing special housing areas and issuing consents for developments."
[...]
The new legislation was designed to "free up land and speed up provision of housing in areas where housing is least affordable" English told reporters today.
The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MOBIE) has been given $7.2 million over four years to fund the initiative.
Smith said the emergency measure would allow time for broader changes to the Resource Management Act to take effect.
--

Immigration demand is the cause of the housing shortage so stemming that would be a better answer than chucking out the resource consent process when they think it is inconvenient. The property developers will be celebrating.  $7.2m needed by Wellington to make houses get built in Auckland? Sounds like the bureacracy is clipping the ticket. And with private developers having the red tape cut for them it wouldn't be a National budget if there wasn't also red tape being wrapped around the social sector:
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The Government is also trialling a housing "warrant of fitness" (WOF), although it will initially apply only to Housing New Zealand properties and later social housing providers, with no commitment to applying it to rental accommodation generally.
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The positive aspect in the housing announcement - possibly the only one:
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Other changes announced today include the introduction of the Social Housing Reform Bill which will extend income-related rents to community house providers such as the Salvation Army.
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This is consistent - so that's good to put these social housing tenants on the same wicket as state houses. Good for the tenants anyway. However the huge gap between a beneficiary in a state house paying only a quarter of their income in rent and the typical beneficiary in the big cities as private rental tenants paying half or more of their income in rent is severely unequal. Beneficiaries certainly are not being treated fairly in this situation - the state house ones are the lucky few, everyone else is up shit creek sans paddle.  Labour didn't fix it, the Nats sure won't. The Nats version of fairness is to lower the plane, though, not raise it. They want to review all state house tenancies, predicting there will be 3000 evictions! Unlucky bastards. Reality land and is going to be a hell of a lot tougher than La-la land. Also sounding positive, if vague, on the housing front:
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* A memorandum of understanding with Reserve Bank for measures to curb accelerating house prices and avoid fuelling boom-bust cycles in wider economy.
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Send a memo. Solve house price inflation and the boom-bust economic cycle by sending a memo? If it is this easy you wonder why some other government at an earlier point hadn't sent off a memo to the Reserve Bank.

And this struck me as slightly ironic:
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Government to use bulk purchasing power to buy cheaper whiteware for beneficiaries.
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Isn't this another rung on the ladder of dependency? Are they going to offer cheap cars too on the same rationale? This is not what I would expect from the anti-nanny Nats. Here the Nats were in hysterics claiming the Labour-Green policy of a government buyer of electricity on the consumers' behalf was communism, and now: a government buyer of electrical appliances. Confusing. Hopefully a good deal for everyone, but confusing coming from National. Being the Nats, I wonder if this is really just a bit of corporate welfare for one of their mates (retailers or manufacturers).

The budget is just too much to digest in one post. More later.

---
UPDATE 3:50PM: Where is that money from the sale of public assets going again? It's not to pay off debt. The government can't pay off debt as to their mind that independence from money-lenders may destroy capitalism.  No, the funds from selling off the electricity companies goes to private projects to enrich the  already wealthy establishment classes... like this:

Nats:
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Budget 2013 has confirmed $80 million in funding for regional irrigation projects, Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy says.
[...]
The $80 million funding was announced in January and comes from the Government’s Future Investment Fund, using proceeds from the share offer programme. In total, the Government has signalled plans to invest up to $400 million in regional irrigation schemes to encourage third-party capital investment.
A new Crown company will be established on 1 July to act as a bridging investor for irrigation projects. This will involve short-term, minority investments to help kick-start these regional projects.
--

Crony capitalism is another term for it.

MMP status quo

The MMP review seems to have been for nought.

Judith Collins:
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Justice Minister Judith Collins says the fact that political parties cannot agree makes it impossible to make any changes to our MMP voting system.
“Opposition parties have said the Government is deliberately ignoring the recommendations of the Electoral Commission. This is simply not true – all parties have their own agendas and have selected which recommendations they will support, and which they won’t.
“All parties in Parliament are responsible to the public on the Electoral Commission’s review of MMP.
“I have consulted with all those parties, and there is absolutely no consensus, or even a majority, across Parliament.
--

Consensus hasn't always been the hallmark of electoral legislation now or in the past so there is a more credible answer.  Because National's support parties, Act and United Future, game the coat-tailing rule to their (and National's) advantage the Nats have no incentive to abolish that provision or alter the threshold limit that many people regard as prohibitively high. It is a cop-out and all of those submissions and the entire exercise of review might as well have been shitcanned to start with.

 NZ Herald: John Armstrong fumes:
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That rationale is just a little too convenient, however. When it comes to consensus, National is the one which refused to budge in its opposition to arguably the commission's most important and most controversial finding - that the anomalous, outdated one-seat threshold under which minor party list candidates can coat-tail into Parliament on the back of a MP winning an electorate seat should be abolished.[...]Such a stance is totally indefensible. But it is also completely understandable.
--

The system as it is has seen the Nats in government after three of the last six MMP elections, so we shouldn't be surprised they have concluded they may only have something to lose by tinkering. That means we are stuck with a 5% threshold and the coat-tailing. While this keeps the life-raft afloat for Act and United Future on the right, it also keeps the Mana waka above the waterline too, so this is a calculated risk by the Nats.

What a pity. The threshold is the cause of the unfairness and wasted votes. If there was only one aspect that should have been dealt with it's the threshold.

Pratfall

The media - and bloggers - put a lot of time and effort over the last week or so into destroying Aaron Gilmore's political career, so it was somewhat amusing to find that the denoument of the hate campaign - the resignation - was so utterly anti-climactical. It was as anti-climactical as his political contribution was underwhelming. But the one left with egg on their face, or maybe wine on their tie is a better metaphor, is the National Party - not haughty Gilmore.

NZ Herald:
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Disgraced National Party list MP Aaron Gilmore has moved to spare the Government further embarrassment during a critical week by announcing his resignation last night.
Two weeks after reports emerged of him abusing and threatening a waiter at a Hanmer Springs hotel during a boozy night out, Mr Gilmore said he would step down.
[...]
Mr Gilmore said that staying on in Parliament would "only serve to cause my loved ones more upset, and cause me undeserved further stress".
--

"Undeserved" - that really says it all. As an audition for MP least likely to be missed from parliament, Gilmore has aced this one.

That the Nats couldn't get their shit together and deal with the inevitable resignation a week ago demonstrates poor organisation. To have the PM in the House saying he hasn't talked with Gilmore - when he is sitting up the back - is such a weak look. Key's claims he couldn't do anything as leader was a particularly pathetic admission he has no power over his own caucus. Key's "I'm comfortable" line might work for some things, but internal management of the government's numbers isn't just the whip's job it is ultimately the leader's - especially when list MPs are involved (where the leader would be expected to have some swing over these appointments - as Helen Clark clearly had over Labour's list).

This could have ended with significantly less ignominy for all concerned had things been dealt with earlier as competent party bosses would have. I can't help but think the sideways moves and re-jigs in the PM's office recently are an attempt to remedy this drift and disorder behind the scenes. They have a big caucus that is difficult to control at the edges - as Bolger had after the 1990 election - but unlike that ministry this one has a very thin majority and cannot tolerate black sheep wandering off.

As for Gilmore's replacement off the list, Claudette Hauiti, she has not impressed despite the CV. Going from her appearances on Tumeke blogger emeritus, Mr Bradbury's 'Citizen A' TV panel show she is a second-rate flunky whose No. 63 placing was for a good reason. If anyone has the time to go through the footage perhaps a montage of all the appalled and exasperated facial expressions and retorts from Chris Trotter as he respondes to the dumb-arse things Hauiti says would be a laugh.

NZ Herald:
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Former Maori broadcaster Claudette Hauiti, next in line to take over from Aaron Gilmore, is in a civil union and raising a child with her partner.
She has publicly admitted she "ticks all the boxes" on National's representation scale.
The party's general manager, Greg Hamilton, confirmed last night Ms Hauiti would be asked by the Electoral Commission to enter Parliament.
"She's the next on our list ... she'll need to make a decision on whether she would want to do that."
Ms Hauiti, who is 63rd on the party's list of 75, has a 5-year-old daughter, Manawa, with her partner, Nadine Hauiti-Mau.
The couple plan to marry next year.
A former producer, Ms Hauiti founded TV and film production company Front of the Box Productions in 1993 and has worked mainly in Maori and Pasifika media.
--

You know you are getting to the bottom of the National list when you get to lesbian Maori.

As for Gilmore, Stuff: reports he's preparing a form of political self-immolation:
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Disgraced MP Aaron Gilmore has been threatening 'utu' on those who effected his downfall ahead of his valedictory speech in Parliament tomorrow.
After resigning from Parliament last night, Gilmore is understood to have sent at least four people text messages advising them to learn the meaning of ''utu''.
[...]
Gilmore, the National party's lowest-ranked list MP, was privately said to be seething last night, and party members are anxious about what he might say in a valedictory speech planned for tomorrow.
[...]
Gilmore was due to talk to party president Peter Goodfellow by phone yesterday afternoon, and Goodfellow wanted a meeting in Wellington today.
However, The Press understands the party drafted in fixer and political consultant Simon Lusk to persuade Gilmore to go.
--

A man at the bottom of the barrel wanting to buy a scrap with someone already in the mud:

This could be fun. Go hard.

UPDATE 3:00pm

 

TV Review: Harry

My TV review for The Daily Blog is posted up over there. A positive one, for once.

Spy bills

I'm watching Phil Goff in parliament tearing shreds off the National government's spying legislation they are rushing through. The Nats have nothing to say. The latest knee-jerk reaction to the government finding out their spying was unlawful is to change the laws to make it all legal. The NZ Police and the government's 'intelligence community' - as laughable as that may sound - are using the Nat's conservative and authoritarian instincts to pass laws designed for themselves to do as they please without consequence.

These bills validate intrusive and prejudicial measures they have been employing already or contemplating all along. indeed the local security establishment have been considerably emboldened by the Dotcom overkill, instead of responding with any meaningful self-examination that should have been warranted following such a humiliating series of botches. And as these laws for the assistance of and/or at the insistence of the US are being rammed through parliament in Wellington I see the Attorneys-General of the white Anglosphere are gathered in Auckland today by either Masonic manifestation or cosmic coincidence. NZ is everyone's little bitch. Everyone knows it but the little bitch. NZ is a made-up country sitting on stolen land run on borrowed people, borrowed money and borrowed time. The apparatus of monitoring and suppressing dissent to maintain this order needs upgrading to industrial standards.

Two parallel bills are going through a truncated process: a telecommunications interception bill that Goff has outlined is fascist with wide and undefined powers of the GCSB and penalties for telcos who wont co-operate. The telcos were not consulted. The other bill, the GCSB and Related Legislation Amendment Bill, has all sorts of patches to justify the poor practices of the past. [that bill was passed 59-61 earlier.] It will be open-slather domestic spying on pretty much anyone and probably everyone. This is nasty, but the mainstream media have ignored it or backed it in editorials.

Sadly and shamefully NZ First and the Maori Party have just voted for it. [That's what I thought I heard, haven't checked the record. They did not vote for the earlier bill according to the NZ Herald]

Dear fucktard, I'm sorry you don't recognise my greatness...

Why is this obnoxious Tory buffoon still an MP? How desperately do the Nats think they need this dolt? Gilmore is a personification of all the worst stereotypes of the Young Nat - with no redeeming features - and as such he must be harming the perception of the party.

NZ Herald:
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The key witness to National MP Aaron Gilmore's actions in a Hanmer hotel says he is certain about his account of the incident despite the MP rejecting nearly all of the allegations about his behaviour.
Mr Gilmore offered a heartfelt apology for his dispute with hotel staff yesterday while challenging most of the details published about it.
The 59th-placed list MP was at first contrite, then defensive in his first public appearance since he was accused of abusing a waiter who had refused to sell him a bottle of wine after a dinner with his partner and friends last week.
He admitted to being rude and arrogant and accepted he may have been a bully: "If there was a dickhead that night it was me."
--

People are starting to think that 59 is his IQ rather than his list placing - despite the PM's typically nonchalant assurance that deep down (and it must be in the Earth's mantle somewhere) he's very bright. He's very something, but it ain't bright.

His performance at his press conference yesterday veered off contrition once the necessary self-pitying public blubbing was done. He stuck to his "I was rude and arrogant" line rigidly. Problem is in answering the media he displayed all the rudeness and arrogance he just admitted was disgraceful. If it wasn't a collosal fatal train wreck it was at least a nasty derailment with someone in intensive care.

He avoided some of the crucial questions at the press conference, has the witness still at odds over the facts (see below), and because the PM was mentioned, or invoked, in the drunken exchange Key's wrath would be warranted should Gilmore be caught out. After hearing Gilmore's fraying explanation yesterday that is a possibility.

ZB reporting this txt conversation between Gilmore and Riches:
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Andrew Riches: What's all this group stuff? You directly threatened to have the guy Fired and said the prime ministers office would be contacting his employer the next day. The girls were gone by that stage and I was just standing there. Stop trying to imply we did something.
Aaron Gilmore: FFS the batman claims the group were racist and that I was escorted from the hotel.
AR: What's the batman?
AG: Barman
AR: What? That's ridiculous, we were lovely to him. I also never recall you calling anyone a dickhead
AR: I didn't write that note because I thought we were boisterous, I wrote it because you told the guy he was being fired, said the pm would be involved and I didn't want the poor guy to worry about his job
AG: I know. They are trying to make it seem bigger than that. Its bullshit. ive taken the blame and apologised. Just say nothing.
AR: You didn't take the blame. You blamed the rest of your group when the girls weren't even in the same room
AG: I did the fucktard said I was not the only one drink and i was carried out of the bar. I said that I was rude but he claims others were too. It's not worth the argument.
AR: Well the herald just called ad informed me they have heard you mentioned the prime ministers office ad threatened to get them involved
--

If the barman makes a statement backing up Riches version then it could be over for Gilmore. Add the txt messages above and the case looks open and shut.

Gilmore implies he was somehow sober when all this occured - that is patently false and contradictory to his other statements. They are the sorts of things people say when they were too drunk to really remember the details, but not drunk enough to have forgotten the whole night. They are the sorts of things said to preserve one's job and keep in good with the boss.

Well the boss is piss weak if he's willing to put up with this shit from such a boorish non-entity. Key implied that if Gilmore had brought the office of PM into it then he would be out. How tenable is that position now? A stronger leader than Key would have got the whips to have a word - or done it personally: "Look, you are an embarrassment and a dead duck and you won't get on the list next time and you know it. So, here's the deal: resign as an MP now (for the official reason of fibbing to the PM) and be at least credited with doing 'the right and honourable' thing. Wait 6 months and we'll give you a patronage position somewhere we need stacking like the Human Rights Commission." That would have been smart management by National.

But that resignation isn't happening because Gilmore is a smarmy prick standing to pick up $200k+ in MP's salary between now and the next election, and John Key and the Nats are more nervous about what an alienated loose canon would do to their tight majority. The net cost is they must wear the sleaze.

And no sooner had I written that...

NZ Herald:
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Prime Minister John Key has sent a clear message to MP Aaron Gilmore to resign, referring the case to the party president.
Mr Key also said he found it difficult to reconcile the version of events Mr Gilmore had given him about a night at the Heritage Hotel in Hanmer Springs with text messages from Mr Gilmore which had subsequently been released.
A referral to the president is the first step of expelling an MP from caucus - but Mr Key said he did not expect to move to expel him because it was a long process and it might be quicker to wait until the next election.
However, he made it clear he wanted Mr Gilmore to resign, saying he could not force a list MP to quit Parliament and had not asked Mr Gilmore to resign directly: "But given the pressure he's been under and the questions he has been unable to answer to the media, I would have thought it was self-explanatory for him to come forward if that's what he wants to do."
He said text messages that had since been provided to his office were hard to reconcile with the version of events Mr Gilmore had provided him with. "I find it very difficult to reconcile, and I find it very difficult to get a straight answer quite frankly."
--

Key and his advisers have come to their senses... slowly. Still messy though - doing it through the media instead of talking directly to one another to sort this out. This is poor political management, but they can't let it drift while Gilmore digs a deeper hole with the media providing the equipment. Looks like Key and the party bosses now have enough to hang him.

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Mr Gilmore said this morning he had sent his own version of the text exchange to Mr Key's office. However Mr Key said "I find [the texts] difficult to reconcile with the version of events Mr Gilmore gave my office. I said at the time, if I found it difficult to reconcile those events I'd treat it as an serious matter."
He said he could not pre-judge what the party would do, but he expected them to take it into account in the list ranking.
"No party leader can force a list member out of Parliament. Even if we were to try and sack him out of caucus, that is a long drawn-out and quite painful and expensive process. But he is 59th out of 59, he has no portfolio responsibilities, he's a list member of Parliament and I have expressed my real concerns to the President."
--

Referendum close

The citizen's-initiated referendum to oppose the National government's asset privatisation policy hasn't quite made it across the petition threshold. This will be disappointing to the organisers - to have to scramble around for the next two months to get the remaining signatures. However much the Mighty River Power sell-off is a done deal, there will be more on the block and this will keep the electorate focused on the issue. As an attempt to try to convert widespread popular opposition into something tangible a referendum is the best method.

 NZ Herald:
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Parliament's Clerk of the House Mary Harris this afternoon said she had certified that the petition had lapsed because she could not be sure minimum number of signatures required by law had been met.
The petition needed the signatures of 10 per cent of voters to succeed which the Electoral Commission said worked out to 308,753.
But Ms Harris said that following a counting and sampling and checking process she found the petition was short by about 16,500 valid signatures.
The organisers of the petition presented it to Parliament in March claiming they had 393,000 signatures.
But Ms Harris this afternoon said some of the signatories could not be found on the electoral roll, "either because they were not enrolled or because the identifying information they supplied was insufficient or illegible".
"Some duplicate signatures were also identified."
Ms Harris said legislation allowed the organisers a further two months to collect additional signatures. Grey Power national president and Keep Our Assets coalition spokesman Roy Reid said the coalition was committed to finishing the job.
--

The problem I have with the referendum isn't the organisation, it is not that it isn't binding, or that it may come too late to save the first traunche of state companies, but the wording of the referendum question itself:
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Do you support the Government selling up to 49% of Meridian Energy, Mighty River Power, Genisis Power, Solid Energy and Air New Zealand?
--

Two major issues: Firstly, the question should be posed as a positive, rather than asking your supporters to cast a no vote. Secondly, the question is too complicated with percentages and names of companies. The question is a dog's breakfast, it really is. Whoever designed the question must have been a Tory. Asking people if they want to retain full public ownership of state assets would have been a better way to approach it.

Undermining Waihi

NZ Herald:
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Consent has been granted for an underground gold mine under a residential part of Waihi, Radio New Zealand reported.
Mining company Newmont Waihi Gold has been granted consent for the Correnso Underground Mine, New Zealand's first mine directly below a residential area.
Conditions include restrictions on the magnitude and number of blasts.
[...]
Green MP Catherine Delahunty said those affected by the mine in Waihi would be devastated by the decision.
[...]
"Already there have been effects from the Favona and Trio mines, but they weren't directly under people's houses. Now it's direct."
She acknowledged those who worked at the mine would be pleased with the decision, but said "the people affected by the mine will be devastated".
Ms Delahunty said Waihi was an economically vulnerable community, despite the millions of dollars of gold that have been mined from it.
--
When I heard this had been consented I was stunned. Mining under a residential area!? With all the problems of subsidence, pollution and nuisance in the past it still seems gold counts for more in any equation.

Waihi is a mining town - the huge Martha pit is visible from the main road - so I guess people's expectations are already low. If it wasn't for the look of the people and the English language signage it could be mistaken for somewhere in the Andes or Africa the way the miners cottages go all the way to the edge of the hole. If it was anywhere else the opposition would win, but mining in Waihi - like their toxic tailings - will be around for a very long time.

The map shows the proposed mine area is basically all the east of Waihi township. It goes under private and public property (my bolding below). How the hell does that work? The report says a lot of the housing under the project was built in the 1970s and 80s. You do have to wonder what sort of planning was operating back then to let residential development occur around ore deposits - which at that point would have been mined for a century. Or did they assume in their plan that mining would have come to an end by now?  The rule seems to be as long as they think there is gold in the ground humans will try to get it out - it doesn't matter how improbable and difficult the location.

The report:
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Waihi Gold Company Ltd (trading as Newmont Waihi Gold (NWG)) is the owner and operator of

the Martha Mine, an open pit mining operation located more-or-less in the middle of Waihi township within 100m of the main street through the town. NWG also owns and operates the Favona Mine, an underground mine in the vicinity of the process plant several kilometres east of the Waihi township, and is currently developing the Trio Underground Mine which is located under Union Hill about halfway between the existing process plant and the Martha open pit.

[...]

This resource consent application seeks to provide for underground mining within a defined project area, termed the ‘Golden Link Project Area’ (refer Figure 1). The Golden Link Project Area incorporates the Correnso ore body.

[...]
A limited duration for the land use consent of 20 years is sought[...]

The Correnso Underground Mine is almost centred within Area L of the Golden Link Project Area and is predominantly below private property and public roads in the eastern part of Waihi

 Township (refer Figure 3). As far as possible, access drives including those from Favona and Trio as well as the vent drive to the SFA follow public roads. As noted previously, the orebody itself is
 located between 130m and 430m below ground surface, however the top of the mine is 157m
 from the surface based on current mine design and the majority of mining activity occurs at a depth of 270m – 350m below ground surface.--

Is the Hauraki District Council going to get any royalties from the gold taken under Morgan Park, Banks St. Reserve and the town's streets etc?

TV Review: Kharmic fruit of the Yewtree

My TV review for The Daily Blog is posted up over there.

When thick meets rude

Pulling the "I'll have you fired! Don't you know who I am!?" routine doesn't work for backbench list MPs because outside of their tight booze-soaked bubble of flunkies, freebies and fulminations from leather chairs, in the real world it is the waiter that has more credibility and social standing. In NZ the waiter will also stand a greater chance of having the MP fired than the reverse.

 Simply obnoxious.

NZ Herald:
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National Christchurch list MP Aaron Gilmore threatened use his influence with Prime Minister John Key's office to have a waiter at a Hanmer Springs hotel sacked after the man took issue with Mr Gilmore's "disgusting'' behaviour, it is claimed.
Mr Gilmore this morning issued two apologies for the "boisterous'' behaviour of his group of four at the Heritage Hanmer Springs on Saturday night.
Those apologies came after one of his dining companions, Christchurch lawyer Andrew Riches confirmed he'd left a note at the hotel the following morning apologising for Mr Gilmore's behaviour.
Mr Gilmore allegedly called the waiter a "dickhead'' when he refused him more wine and gave him his business card saying something like "Don't you know who I am? I'm an important politician'', The Press reported today.
It has also been suggested this morning that Mr Gilmore told the waiter he would tell the Prime Minister's office about the waiter's behaviour and have him sacked.
--

OK, these incidents happen occasionally and Tories acting like pricks - Jonathan Coleman's cigar run-in comes to mind - are to be expected from time to time; but it is the response from Gilmore that risks doing more damage. He's apologising... for the group, not for anything he did per se.

Aaron Gilmore's press release:
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Press Release: New Zealand National PartyAaron Gilmore
National Party MP

Media Statement2 May 2013MP Aaron Gilmore apologisesNational List MP Aaron Gilmore is this morning apologising to staff and patrons at the Heritage Hotel Hanmer Springs following a dinner he attended there on Saturday 27 April.“As a group of diners our behaviour was at times boisterous and I sincerely apologise for any offence this may have caused any staff and/or patrons,” Mr Gilmore said.“I intend to convey my apologies on behalf of the group to hotel staff, and understand that Members of Parliament should uphold, and be seen to uphold, the highest of standards at all times.“On this occasion I believe as a group, our behaviour fell short of this mark, and I should have recognised this at the time.“I also plan to pass my apologies on to the Prime Minister for failing to meet the standards I believe National MPs should uphold.”ENDS
--

 How courageous and dignified to have taken collective responsibility for his whole group. That's really manning up.

NZ Herald:
--
Mr Riches also said he was disappointed that Mr Gilmore had apologised for his group's behaviour when it was "absolutely'' his own behaviour that was in question."It's a shame because I thought this could just lie, he could apologise and that would be the end of it, but to sort of blame everyone else!''
He told the Herald that two of the four in Mr Gilmore's group had left by the time of the incident.
"It was because most of the group had already left, he was cut off service, he did the old, "do you know who I am, I'm an MP''.
"I thought it was just disgusting.''
Mr Gilmore initially denied the claims but this morning issued an apology via Twitter and a later press [...].
--

Nothing says a heart-felt sorry like a message on Twitter. National may have enjoyed getting to almost 48% at the general election, but they have can't be too over-joyed to wear the sorts of dolts coming in at the end of the list. It's a shallow barrel of talent the Nats are scraping. 

WWW 0.0

The first website has been resurrected at CERN. No usual things like a navigation bar, but what can you expect from the very first one? Please note there are no cat pics.

 NZ Herald:
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The world's first web page will be dragged out of cyberspace and restored for Internet browsers as part of a project to celebrate 20 years of the Web.
The European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) said it had begun recreating the website that launched that World Wide Web, as well as the hardware that made the groundbreaking technology possible.
--

There are reports... and then there are reports. The concepts, technology (and even the budget)outlining the creation of the internet in 1990 seems modest and clear - the results 23 years later are anything but. --

Introduction

The current incompatibilities of the platforms and tools make it impossible to access existing information through a common interface, leading to waste of time, frustration and obsolete answers to simple data lookup. There is a potential large benefit from the integration of a variety of systems in a way which allows a user to follow links pointing from one piece of information to another one. This forming of a web of information nodes rather than a hierarchical tree or an ordered list is the basic concept behind HyperText.
[...]
A program which provides access to the hypertext world we call a browser. When starting a hypertext browser on your workstation, you will first be presented with a hypertext page which is personal to you : your personal notes, if you like. A hypertext page has pieces of text which refer to other texts. Such references are highlighted and can be selected with a mouse (on dumb terminals, they would appear in a numbered list and selection would be done by entering a number). When you select a reference, the browser presents you with the text which is referenced: you have made the browser follow a hypertext link :
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The texts are linked together in a way that one can go from one concept to another to find the information one wants. The network of links is called a web .
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