Posts by Sacha
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This should gladden hearts everywhere - government to set up all-powerful agency to manage quake recovery.
Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee told the Herald on Sunday the new centralised structure would "punch through the red tape" and co-ordinate work being done by other organisations.
"We need something that can move a lot faster than what we have been doing," Brownlee said. "That requires a lot of changes to these legal niceties."
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Now, it is the "immense" task of rebuilding the suburbs that Brownlee is determined to undertake - and he said it dwarfed the work needed in the city centre. He pledged to announce, by March 18, a new structure to speedily manage the rebuilding: "The business-as-usual approach is not going to work."
He said the process happening before the February 22 earthquake was not fast enough - and now the problem was 10 times the size.
Engineers and private sector construction managers have spoken critically of the approach adopted by Christchurch City Council, described as slow and bureaucratic. Labour MP Lianne Dalziel - whose electorate is among the hardest hit - was more blunt still. "I'm over the council. They're incompetent."
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Another link from that thread to a Herald story about local MP Lianne Dalziel living amidst the wreckage and speaking out.
But the problems Dalziel lists are echoed in dozens of interviews done by the Herald on Sunday in these ruined suburbs. There are kilometres of streets here where portable toilets have yet to arrive. Food is plentiful but it would make a dietician turn green; people soon tire of sausage sizzles when they become the staple diet, accompanied by a fine dusting of silt.
Dalziel says: "These people have waited before. The level of tolerance on this side of the city is not there. I knew what went wrong last time. They've actually let it happen again.
"The council is so stupid. Council treats everything as business as usual. Do you know how they allocated the portaloos? It was who rang their 0800 number the most. If you don't have power, phone ... how can you ring?
"Every time I speak out I get told I'm politicising things. I'm not apologising to anyone for speaking out."
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A commenter in the Standard's story about the eastern suburb response explains the mechanism for mis-allocating portaloos.
One point I heard made on the radio, (can’t remember who exactly was speaking, but they were CCC), was that the basic systems they run are driven by volume and quantity of complaints. They were saying that this system may have failed them in the eastern suburbs in this instance, because the level of complaints coming from there didn’t match with the need. This was in comparison to other suburbs was the direct implication. Obviously part of this was to do with the lack of power and what not.
That fits - it's why some suburbs in any city have better-maintained roads and footpaths if the trigger is complaints from residents who have the resources and know-how to speak up.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Keir Leslie,
we need to make sure it's the people of Christchurch that get to decide what their city looks like
Good luck with that
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Story about low price e-book successes for authors.
Not too long ago, we wrote about JA Konrath's claim that we had reached the tipping point with ebooks, where a decent self-published ebook author, who priced their books cheaply (generally under $4) could make a really good living, selling thousands of books per month. I still wasn't convinced that there were that many authors who could really do this, but we're starting to see more examples.
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John Armstrong examines some implications for the upcoming Budget.
With the Treasury now estimating the recessionary impact of the earthquake will slice some $5 billion off the tax take, English must grasp some big political nettles to satisfy the international credit rating agencies, while simultaneously avoiding throwing the nationwide economy into full-scale recession in an election year.
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National's restructuring of the state sector is ideologically driven. But that's been disguised by its argument that it is bolstering the frontline with extra staff to get better services from state agencies. This is being done by drastically reducing the number of "backroom" bureaucrats in Wellington.
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Then came the earthquake. With the offices of several Government departments damaged or destroyed, frontline officialdom in Christchurch simply could not function.
Suddenly, it has become patently clear why those Wellington-based public servants are so essential. The lights have burned late into the night in departmental head offices across the city. The Herculean, but largely invisible efforts by head office officials have underpinned what has, so far, largely been an effective and well co-ordinated response to getting Christchurch back on its feet.
No prizes for guessing who will be basking in this success, however.
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Heh - from the impolite tweets file:
ChCh: Keep some of your old buildings, I'd be more worried about Gerry Brownlee collapsing on me in an earthquake #eqnz
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Kyle Matthews,
I can't see anyone around here arguing that he's sending people to gulags, but that's only one meaning of the word.
True and I'm happy to try suitable alternatives. Suggestions?
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Given the circumstances, I stand by that as a fair characterisation of the Minister's buffoonery. Not as if a tabloid career beckons, either.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
Imminent threat to human life is an acceptable trump of heritage values
Agreed - but neither building owners nor media seemed to have received any communication that it was the case.