The Daily Blog Open Mic – Saturday – 31st August 2019

1. This seems a gutsy response to vicissitudes (love that word the way it sounds is indicative of its meaning).
   Down south where they have been flooded a few times – they have linked braincells.
   Radionz
   New Zealand climate
   8:48 am today
   ‘Flax roots’ climate action leads to the first ‘climate safe house’

   Leith Huffadine, Digital Journalist leith.huffadine@rnz.co.nz
   The climate safe house
   Waitati is home to the Blueskin Resilient Communities Trust (BRCT).
   Its aim is “creating local climate solutions together”.
   Among its projects are a local power grid that allows residents to buy excess power from each other and a localised emergency response plan.
   But the one that’ll benefit Ms McCarthy is a project underway to create climate safe houses.

2. $2.6m concrete upgrade to Patuone Reserve walkway ‘just nuts’, critics say
   https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12263548

   You could probably buy 2 state houses, upgrade the path to a less wide path (why 2.5 m, totally out of scale in a wetland) n a material that is more environmental than concrete for the $2.6million dollars and still have money left over if there was not all the padding of council/COO contracts ….

   $2.5m when others spend $200k reflects the Auckland exorbitant rate for any sort of pathway/construction of which you can’t go anywhere now without a pavement being upgraded that could have lasted another 10 years, and all that CO2 emissions from the new concrete and landfill from the old concrete, and the disruption and environmental costs of unnecessary work just to spend budgets…

   “A submission in opposition to the Patuone upgrade from the Bayswater Environment Action Committee (BEAC) argued the track upgrade would “require the removal of an unspecified number of trees” and that concrete was a surface that “contributes to run off” and is “unsuitable for a conservation area”.

   BEAC’s Trish Deans said the $2.6m walkway quote was an “excessive amount”, and argued a substantially longer walkway along Rotorua’s Lake Okareka wetlands spanning 2km, and including 184m of boardwalk, was built for under $200,000.”

3. Unbelievable, this homeless artist was deliberately burnt to death in his tent, and shows that homelessness gets worse and worse.

   ‘Full-scale emergency’: musician burned in his tent highlights LA’s homeless crisis
   https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/29/los-angeles-homeless-tent-murder-darrell-fields

   It is a cop out to think that third party agencies are going to work, it just adds layers of bureaucracy that takes resources better spend directly on housing and people!

   Same with charities like Kidscan that take about 50% of all donations for themselves and apparently have about 3 million in the bank that is not being dispensed.

   the answer is the councils and government need to take responsibility for stopping homelessness and ensuring that they have appropriate social policies and fund directly from their departments, not making it harder for people with poor laws and other laws that increase poverty.

4. About excessive expenditure by Council, sometimes it is from grandiose ideas (they do this overseas!) or because of their ineffective management. Kevin Milne from Fair Go was in London when he was young. He writes in his autobiography ;The Life and Times of a Brown Paper Bag’.

   He writes that he was working for one division of the Camden Borough Council sorting out ‘plumbing problems of council flat owners’. But there was a racket going. ‘I was paid for 44 hours a week, plus overtime for Saturday morning, my working day ran from only eight in the morning till midday. At lunchtime, I went home and all the plumbers took off to do private jobs. Half the money the plumbers earned from the private jobs (for folk who should have got their repairs done free) went back to the foreman, who kept half and sent the rest to someone at HQ so he didn’t send more work than could be done in a morning. No wonder the poor council flat owners had to wait months if they wanted to get their leaky taps fixed for free.’

   So the problems we have with having a living standard satisfactory for a reasonably enjoyable life can strike us from above, beside us and below us. Part of the problem is the culture in management of having to be a ‘change agent’ and to ‘leave their mark’ on their area of control before they move on.

5. The attitude of this female journalist in the UK is indicative of the reason for the avoidance of females that the item writes about. Being fair-minded women is not in fashion at present – this is one of a number of moral outrages that have rolled out in western society, resulting in concentrated negative outpourings. I wonder how long this one will continue before it settles down to drawing up reasonable guidelines for acceptable behaviour between genders, and between different levels of power in entities.
   https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/29/men-women-workplace-study-harassment-harvard-metoo

6. Boris Johnson is talking about coming out – but what will the transmogrification end in? Or should the word be metamorphosis? Kafka would be bemused.
   https://www.theguardian.com/politics/video/2019/aug/30/boris-johnson-suggests-prorogation-will-help-negotiate-brexit-deal-with-eu-video

7. National are sending out more false trash spreading another toxic word that because we haven’t heard from Winston for days the nasty Nat’s are at it again, suggesting Winston is dead!!!!!!
   Sorry you nasty Nat’s, our beloved Winston is having a joint replacement from an old sports injury apparently, and the surgeon has ordered him to stay off his feet while the joint replacement settles in we have be advised.
   ‘Our warrior from the north’ is well very much well and alive and will be fighting fit don’t worry folks.

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