Clearly, John Key hasn’t had enough of that buzz you get from pissing off a whole city. Fresh from labelling Wellington “a dying city”, he’s now decided that the suffering of Cantabrians is actually just a succession of “micro-level hard-luck stories”. That sounds to me like reducing suffering to a column in a spreadsheet, which is about as good as it gets for some of the people down here (as the leaking of the EQC spreadsheet so clearly demonstrated). But hey – maybe the rest of the country is out of compassion, and is sick of having to “go without” so that people in Christchurch can have flash new things like roads without potholes and water pumped right to the house.
“Micro-level hard-luck stories” might be the most mathematical of the government’s descriptions of the situation down here, but it’s not the first attempt. Much of Gerry Brownlee’s time seems to be spent coming up with new and creative ways to avoid saying that there is a housing crisis in Christchurch. When Nick Smith was appointed housing minister, one of his first actions was to ensure us that the situation was “a challenge, not a crisis.” I’m half-expecting Paula Bennett to come down and tell us that houses move in and out of crisis on a weekly basis. It seems to be one part denying there is a problem, one part Thatcherite “there is no society, just a bunch of people living in cold, TC3 houses” ideology.
But aside from the ideology – or lack of – which I’m always going to disagree with, they seem to be missing a trick. It was the budget this week, as you probably all know. The two areas of the economy that are currently seeing growth are the Auckland property market and the Christchurch rebuild. Now, the first is a bubble which that terribly left-wing organisation the IMF has recently warned us about, whilst the latter has barely started to get going. Outside of million-dollar bungalows, the rebuild is the best chance for growth in the economy, for finding jobs for Kiwis, for teaching our young people new skills, for making innovative decisions around contraction, housing and transport. It’s starting to make a difference to the government’s books, and yet if you look around town, there is very little to show for it.
The international consensus around austerity is starting to break down. In the New Zealand context, we have two areas of growth; a property bubble, and an investment in rebuilding and infrastructure. The rebuild is starting to pick up speed, finally, after more than two years; and yet it is still being pretty badly handled. What if it was being done competently, with a architectural contests, a focus on rehousing the displaced, a Minister that would stand up to the insurance companies? Well, then we might have an example of the positive role that an active government can have on a society and an economy, and for John Key’s National, that clearly isn’t a good look.
What happened to the Insurance money ? After the Napier earthquake a special earthquake fund was set up for possible disasters in the Shaky Isles. It’s what we do, we have earthquakes. Right. A small proportion of every persons household and contents insurance went into this targeted fund and over the years billions must have been stashed away and re-insured overseas for growth an ready for use if another tragedy occurs. When State Insurance was privatised in the 90’s, what happened to this money ? I am still asking……where to look, who to ask ? I sure would like to know rather than listening to Key blaming the climbing deficit on Christchurch.
Money does not exist.
It used to be a claim on a lump of gold. Then the banksters worked out they could issue a lot more pieces of paper than the actual number of lumps of gold, and charge interest on the pieces of paper issued.
After that they decided they didn’t need to have lumps of gold to issue paper, so they began issuing bits of paper with no lumps of gold to back them.
And after that they decided that storing computer digits and issuing computer digits cost them less than storing and issuing bits of paper, so they did away with most of the bits of paper. Issuing computer digits and charging interest on them is good business.
Bought-and-paid-for politicians went along with every scam the banksters came up with, of course.
When you follow Thatcher and don’t believe in society, you can only ever have micro-level hard luck stories. It’s exactly the thinking that makes an unemployed person a problem, but never unemployment. It also makes Fletchers Randian giants of commerce rather than suckers of the state mammaries. Tories are incredibly consistent and we must forever be vigilant and refuse to acknowledge that the world they define exists except in their selfish imaginations. Acknowledgement is acceptance.
The current level of CO2 in the atmosphere corresponds to oceans about 25 metres above their current level.
The Earth is playing catch-up with the CO2 emissions humanity has generated and put into the atmosphere over the past half century or so.
Just how quickly sea levels will rise is still open to debate but you can be certain it will between five times as fast and one hundred times as fast as any politician will admit to. And then get a lot faster.
Napier (other than The Hill) will be largely gone by 2030, and most of Christchurch around the same time.
Fortunately for politicians, most people are ignorant, stupid and stubborn, so politicians can get away with ‘murder’.
.
Collapse come one person at a time, one family at a time, one community at a time, one nation at a time.
Already ‘gone’:
Greece
Cyprus
Spain
Italy
Portugal
Slovenia
Ireland
Egypt…..
About to go:
Japan
France
Britain
Netherlands……
A little further down the line:
Germany
US
Canada
Australia
NZ
China….
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