Wet at last

Rain: We had a nice solid drizzle over the weekend. We were lucky as in the north they had flooding (almost Queensland style). It has now turned fine again.

Burnt Body: A woman was killed by being burnt to death near Huntly. My first instinct was that it was an Indian style killing and this has sadly proved correct.

Boys: Had them with us last night, Sunday as it is Wellington Anniversary Day today.
As usual all went well although we couldn't go to the park as it didn't fine up till late this afternoon.

Last week Kipp started riding his bike without the trainer wheels. Sarah phoned us and we went around to watch him show off his new skill.



Ricky Gervais: Has upset the Yanks at his hosting of the Golden Globes as they thought his jokes inappropriate and in bad taste as he got stuck into a few celebrities. It seems most of the celebrities weren't worried and listening to some of the jokes I couldn't see what all the fuss was about.

However in today's paper they printed the reason (never shown on the US originated TV news) from the UK based Sunday Times. It was his ending. After thanking the crowd for coming he said
" and thank you God for making me an atheist".

As the Golden Globes committee said, they had thousands of complaints from their affiliate stations and ' only a Brit would be naive enough to flip off God in a family orientated show on the sabbath'.

I think that pathetic statement speaks for itself.

More USA: Glenn Beck is a host or something on Fox TV in the US. Fox news is part of our Sky TV package and I would think I have watched 5 minutes in total over the past 5 years - that is all any normal human being could stand. It is rubbish. They all have crazy ideas by our standards (questioning Obama's birth place, he is a Socialist etc) .

Beck is one of their most popular people. Below on the left is Jared Lee Loughner who shot the US Congresswoman and on the right is Glen Beck. Separated at birth?.





Name suppression again: A 'celebrity' asked for name suppression for what was a pretty innocuous act when during an argument with his wife in the street he sat on their car bonnet. He asked for name suppression and got it and everybody wondered who it was. Now he has revealed himself who he was but if he had done nothing it would have blown over in 2 days. With the Internet rightly or wrongly those days have gone.

Still Sunny and other matters of less importance

Sunny: Still nice and warm and sunny.

Not so sunny in Brisbane where it is a wet tragedy; a tragedy that is actually worse than the Christchurch earthquake.

USA: Nor is it sunny in the USA where the political rhetoric may have led to another shooting although it is pretty clear that the shooter is a madman.

But the real problem there is as usual, guns - or rather, the easy access to them.

I could go on forever but more Americans were killed by guns between 1979 and 1997 than died in all of America’s foreign wars since Independence. Around 30,000 people a year are killed in one way or another, murder, suicide, accident, by one of the almost 300 million guns in America—almost one for every man woman and child.

The tragedy is that gun control is moving in the wrong direction. The Clinton-era ban on assault weapons expired in 2004 and, to his discredit, Obama has done nothing to try to revive it. In 2008 the Supreme Court struck down Washington, DC’s ban on handguns, and in 2010 Chicago’s went the same way; others are bound to follow.

They are mad so I never have any sympathy for the killings. It serves them right.

Obama has been a real disappointment. How they can call him a 'socialist' is beyond me as he has just reverted to the usual recent US President type. I think he has been bought.

We watched Michael Moore's film 'Capitalism :A love story' the other night.

Moore must be taken with a great deal of scepticism, however he certainly brings up that America has more than its fair share of ratbags. What I can't understand is why the voters don't use their power to get rid of the idiots.

On a lighter note as part of the music in the film he had a Tony Babino singing the song of the workers, The Internationale. I thought it was a great version so tried to find it which I did on YouTube. The idiocy of the copyright 'system' is that it is not available if it is audio only but if accompanied by pictures it is.

This is further heightened when a n US Professor said the US Patent Office is so bad 'you could patent a stick'. Really thought one bloke. So he took up the challenge and succeeded. It was only when it came to light what he had done was the Patent cancelling. !!

They are a strange lot when they continually go back to what Washington or Jefferson would have thought or done. As if NASA cares what Isaac Newton would have thought. They were different times. We never think what Hobson would have thought - well most of us don't. A certain group continue to live in the past.

Children: The killing continues - and without any thought whatsover we know what group the killers come from.

MMP: I see the polls now have it neck and neck with FPP. I hope it strengthens. If we revert to the undemocratic FPP we then get what we deserve.

Pike River: The Police have announced they will not try to recover the bodies. Of course I believe when you are dead you are dead so it doesn't worry me in the least. In fact the opposite - why should the taxpayer continue to fund a lost cause. The Police Commissioner summed it up when he said we should concentrate on the living.

And as for all the help they are getting. The fund to help the families is now over $7 million.

Boys: Boys:

We will be having the boys tomorrow night.

Weather

Flooding at Caboolture

Flooding along Morayfield Road

Flooding at Morayfield Shopping Centre

Flooded Morayfield Shopping Centre

Morayfield Shopping Centre from the other end

Morayfield near Caboolture

Rain: Not here but in Queensland. It has been good here with sunny days. In fact we could do with some rain. But over where my brother and sister-in-law live in Caboolture it is raining tragedy with at least 12 people dead in the State and probably over 50 more missing.

Luckily they are OK where they are but here are some pictures she emailed us. I would think the flooding is worse than the Christchurch earthquake on a physical assets scale. After a quake many items can be rescued (photos, computers etc) but water really destroys things.

Insurance

Grrrr: We had a problem with our shower after Christine fell. We saw a leak and at first thought it was the from the original installation but the plumber saw it was due to a crack from the fall.

So we made a claim and it was approved. This was last October and now after all this time it has been completed - no thanks to the insurance company IAG who we are with through the BNZ. They have been a problem from day one.

At the start as we heard nothing in response to our letter sending in the quote. So we phoned them and found they had misplaced our letter; then said we didn't need an assessor then said we did; then said they would pay on the quote then said they would need an invoice and now the plumber has complained that he still hasn't been paid notwithstanding our sending the Invoice in on the 14 December.

They say the reason they haven't paid is the P O Box we sent it to is incorrect (Sales Section not Claims Section) although nowhere do they say the Box number on their invoice is not the one you make claims to. This morning they said the correct Box number is in the Policy Document. It isn't.

What I find unbelievable is the person I spoke to this morning seemed to think if it was sent to the so called wrong Box number then the Sales people just ignore it. Anybody with half a brain would have sent it on to the correct Section and advised us accordingly.

As it happens this afternoon I received the latest Policy Document and it would seem it is still wrong. Anyway I have emailed the BNZ to complain and we will see what happens.

Its only $$$$

CEO Salaries: In a global meltdown the CEO's of the worlds companies are certainly not melting.

In the USA - 30 years ago CEO salaries were 42 times the average workers - in 2001, 531 times and now probably nearing 800.

Australia; 17 times the average in 1993 and 50 times in 2008.

In the UK CEO salaries have risen 250% in the past decade - this in a time when company balance sheets have generally gone backwards. And the US has just given tax cuts to those on the highest income.

Meantime in Canada - guess what the story is the same. By about mid-afternoon on 3 January the every one of the 100 best-paid CEO's their will have already earned the equivalent of an average full-time Canadian salary.

In NZ they say ours haven't been as blatant although the top paid executive in the country (at Westpac) gets 100 times the average Westpac employee.

Why do we waste our time

Madness: The N Z Herald had a brilliant article about our Children, Young Persons and their Families (CYPF) Act, 1989. It reports that an assumption written into the Act is that parents and others don't set out to harm their children; and that there will be people in the wider family who are normal and able to step into the breech. Yeah right!

"It's crap, to be honest" says one Social Worker. And we all know that to be true. Well 98% of us know that putting kids with the Whanua, however distant, is madness.

Commonly, families seen by CYPF's had no furniture in their houses - "just a blanket for the kids to share" - no books, no food. Yet they would be able to be able to avail themselves of the services of the best legal aid lawyers to deluge social workers with paperwork when their kids - aka as their welfare payments - were removed.

The Act works on the assumption that families were best kept together, no matter what. There is the belief that there would be normal, sane relatives that could take the child. But again and again, this proved to be madness.

But that hasn't penetrated those who have these stupid and dangerous beliefs.

"We spent hours and thousands and thousands of tax payer dollars at family group conferences, with reports drafted in from counsellors, psychiatrists, Maori elders, extended family members and the like. There would be so many reports, all talking about how the mother was 'working on her issues', how the aunty was 'involved with gangs but trying to turn her life around' and that kind of thing. Whoever's story was the most convincing was the one going home with the child."

It will never be put right as the PC brigade are in charge.