Posts by Hebe
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Sister Mary Gearchange,
No mind: you have happily reminded me of the A4 hand-written Goldfish (eagerly sought after on publication days). Sister Mary made an impression: I remembered some of these, particularly SMG revving up at the lights and on an inclined plane.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/funnypolynomial/sets/72157594326861802/ -
The Gordons: I saw them lots. UV lights that made whites glow and made me throw up, without fail.
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I’d like to say I can remember but it’s more smudges of the many punk gigs in the Ballroom, Topp Twins and engineers puking in the amphitheatre, the small room at the end of the corridor by the Shelley, the upstairs caf, the upstairs common room, the subterranean toilets, and lying among the daisies on the riverbank in the sun. And the stairs: always meeting people on the stairs and going somewhere unintended.
Often, especially in my last year at UC, I would walk through the Student Union to get to class, and never make it over the bridge. The world in there was quite enough to be getting on with.
Sister Mary Gearchange: good lord, you have risen.
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Up Front: So Farewell Then, UCSA, in reply to Russell Brown,
and also a Toy Love show in which Chris Knox appeared to nibble on a broken light bulb
Not sure he ate it.
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Speaker: 11 ways the Opposition has…, in reply to Rob Stowell,
Thanks Barnaby. You’ve encapsulated so much frustration and sadness.
Agree. You’ve wrestled a monster that so many of us have tried to articulate in various ways over the last five years. Labour did have a credible, and very good policy for Chrischurch, and promoted it heavily until a month out from the last election.
Then it disappeared from view, not helped by the party shafting one of those tireless MPs, Ruth Dyson, by sacking her from the earthquake spokesmanship on the day John Key gave his major campaign speech in Chch. Lead-footed is a kind assessment of that move; internal Labour warfare was what was inferred down here.
The absurd idea that every Labour portfolio-holder would include Christchurch issues in their brief was widely noted and deeply resented by Christchurch voters. It was the tipping point for voters trying to decide who would be reliable.
@Katharine Moody: Your comments illustrate perfectly why Chch voters settled for “the Devil you know” when it came to the party vote. Voters went for local MPs who had performed well for their electorates – for example Nicky Wagner in Chch Central. We all know who works for us, and Brownlee and Wagner certainly look after their electorate’s parish work, as do Williams, Dyson, Woods.
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Speaker: The government's Rules…, in reply to Sofie Bribiesca,
They covered it on TV recently
Yeah it’s endless. From people dealing with botched repairs of first-round earthquake repairs, to others still fighting EQC assessments after five years, to those trying to get their insurers to come up with an adequate repair strategy. Thousands of houses.
Then those who don’t know their repairs are going to fail – and many foundation patches will fail. The land is still moving and settling post-quakes, and that is expected, so houses are settling too.
Fascinating facts-to-me department: the Bridge of Remembrance is being repaired, it has had 27-metre piles put in to stabilise. And a house by our river is being built with two-metre high foundations!
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The problems with self-certified and exempt building work, which this year are becoming even more evident with an MBIE survey a few months ago. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/10441327/Cheap-fixes-devaluing-thousands-of-homes
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Speaker: The government's Rules…, in reply to Ian Dalziel,
Thanks Ian: or even the website with fancy new FAQs
http://www.yeswecan.org.nz/ -
So many things wrong with all of this. From my perspective as a parent, the barriers to assessment (cost, geographical, waiting lists, special conditions) are multiple and mean only the most severe cases are even recognised as perhaps needing assessment, let alone being able to access it.
The systemic underfunding acts as a deterrent and minimises the number of children being assessed, let alone getting the assistance they need.
Auditory Processing Disorder has been farmed out into a separate working group, which is infuriating given my son is unable to even access full assessment in Christchurch. The Canterbury DHB is legally meant to provide assessment for APD, but it does not. When he is fully assesssed (in Auckland), he will not qualify for equipment - which comes from the Ministry of Education via his school - because he has no other learning or behavioural disorder: one debilitating condition alone is not enough.
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Chipping in with a whinge from the carpers of shakeytown: foundations and u blanket consent exemptions for Fletcher's EQR for structural building work has been a howling success.
It is all going so swimmingly that Dr Duncan Webb, a partner of Christchurch law firm Lane Neave, has prepared a petition seeking a Royal Commission into defective earthquake repairs. He'll be presenting it to Parliament and we're seeking 10,000 physical signatures.
Please help: print it, sign it, collect a few signatures and scan it and send back to Duncan. Or even post it!
I'll assemble a few vile stories tomorrow if anyone is interested.