Posts by Joe Wylie
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Attacking him directly is fruitless
That was the conventional wisdom about Muldoon as long as Rowling was opposition leader.
tying him to the dummies and villains he has for mates has promise.
As long as he's able to get away with it Brownlee revels in the dangerous despot role, and projects his instability as an asset. When he openly boasts of the stresses associated with playing earthquake recovery czar it elicits a kind of sympathy, rather than providing an opportunity for Labour to question his fitness for the role.
Yet he's demonstrably vulnerable, as we saw when he abjectly caved in when faced with a touch of civil disobedience over mining in national parks. In a TV interview about just what potential mineral riches might be out there he mentioned "rare earths". When asked what those might be the response was a good ol' boy "Hurr hurr hurr", to the effect of "how the hell would I be expected to know that". Labour seemed unable to touch him, but a sudden surge in spontaneous public disquiet brought him up short.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to JordanTCarter,
Does anyone know any particular reason why my idea's unworkable?
Jordan, it's a great idea. It just rather beggars belief that the main opposition party wasn't aggressively pushing this as a condition of voting for Brownlee's emergency powers. When you have people in the Christchurch building industry calling for a similar form of government intervention to resolve the insurance impasse, aren't you simply addressing half of the problem?
Perhaps we should be grateful that there's any creative thought being applied. More power to you and best wishes.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Russell Brown,
. . . it was completely unrealistic that the receptionist at a medical clinic would have the latest Mac, but it did look cool.
It was the receptionist's Apple //c at a pretentiously overdecorated Auckland dental practice that fatally undermined my trust and drove me to seek treatment elsewhere. This was at the time when the thing had been obsolete for about 5 years, they'd obviously chosen it because it "looked cool". Much like whoever lumbered Roy Scheider with one in 1984's godawful 2010.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Sacha,
. . . or senior MP as part of a coherent and planned campaign
Who cares about coherence and campaigning when there's the chance of a bit of bike racing with your favourite fruitloop.
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Hard News: Steve, 1999, in reply to Paul Campbell,
(BTW Apple also brought CD-roms, firewire, and of course mice and real graphical displays - these were other technologies that Apple pioneered and brought to the general PC market)
Don't know if I've somehow misread that, but my recollection is that Macs rather conspicuously lacked CD-roms for some months after they'd become a standard offer on generic Windows/DOS boxes. They didn't appear until late '93, the year Photoshop stopped being a Mac-only app.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Rich Lock,
Why is the opposition not all over this like stink on the shit that it is?
Beats me, apart from most of the damage having occurred in Labour-held electorates. When your MP happens to be Brendon Burns, Lianne Dalziel, Clayton Cosgrove or Ruth Dyson, any representation on your part can be handily dismissed as "playing politics". If Brownlee senses the need to appear temporarily statesmanlike there are a couple of listers who'll pick up the slack.
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It's now more than three weeks since the demolition crew who'd begun work on the 17-storey Clarendon Tower were laid off at short notice because of a failure to secure insurance cover.
On a more minor level, a company with 29 employees made a claim for a week's lost production due to clean-up following the February quake. Two weeks later their insurance company decided that, as most of their work was sourced from overseas on a contract-by-contract basis, they could make up the shortfall by building it into their charges over the coming year. When asked what was the point of having this type of cover they were told that it was "your choice".
The Avonside Blog makes the interesting point that the Queensland Floods Commission of Inquiry specifically addresses the issue of insurance in some detail, while such concerns are outside the narrow terms of reference of the Royal Commission sitting in Christchurch:
These Australian areas of review have great relevance to our New Zealand situation, and are needed here, with the one difference of including EQC as an insurer for the purpose of the reviews. There ought not be much resistance to the idea as a large part of the insurance offered in New Zealand is from Australian based companies who must be used to being reviewed by now.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to merc,
I'd really like to know what CERA actually do on a daily basis.
In Brownlee's case his priority is ministering to those whose interests he is now plainly shown to represent. Despite the rapidly snowballing obviousness that Christchurch's "rebuild" is stalled by a venal and dysfunctional insurance industry, Gerry Brownlee said a temporary Government-backed insurance scheme was not "on the table".
Brownlee was keeping in close touch with insurance companies and making sure they had the most up-to-date seismic information. It was hoped the companies would re-enter the market after a period of seismic stability.
The Jordan Carter scheme to contain land profiteering is an obvious non-starter as long as the Philistine Fuck (I'm being kind here) wields imperial powers.
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Stephen Judd,
. . . September 5 Cabinet meeting in Chch.
"At the the Copthorne Hotel - 449 Memorial Avenue (near Christchurch Airport)."
What a Bunch of cop(thorne)ulators. Like holding a cabinet meeting at the Mangere Grand Chancellor, and claiming you'd done it in Auckland. .
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Southerly: Tower Insurance Have Some Bad…, in reply to Biobbs,
Reading through the comments on that article... Jesus wept. What have we become, a country of psychotic looneytarians? Just have to hang on to the knowledge (hope?) that people in the comments sections of Stuff articles are not representative of the NZ population as a whole.
It can be depressing, so many miserable self-absorbed bastards. Howevah, from the comments on this recent piece on Arie Smith-Voorkamp, you'd be forgiven for assuming that his case was hopeless. Short memories, short attention spans and, courtesy of Stuff's comment facility, always a new bucket to vomit into.