Diversity, Multiculturalism shunted aside in Councils CBD “Quick Win”
Wellington City Council’s scheme to turn the capital’s restaurant and entertainment district into a car-free zone was sprung on business proprietors there in the middle of the Covid–19 series of alerts.
Traders in the Courtenay Place district have united under their SOS (save our street) banner and are stating bluntly that the car ban will put them out of business.
Businesses in the area now believe that the council’s ambition to implement the scheme so rapidly meant that the time was similarly compressed for the multi-racial restaurant proprietors to learn about it.
The restaurant and entertainment district proprietors speak more than a dozen different homeland languages.
Council notification pamphlets were stuffed under doors. With English prevailing as only a second language many proprietors failed to understand the implications of the car-free scheme. Call-back numbers were overloaded and again lack of English was a problem.
The car-free inner city leg of which the Courtenay Place entertainment district is part is cited by the council as the “quick win” segment of the wider Lets Get Wellington Moving scheme.
Proprietors there say that comprehending the council’s officialese was a problem, as in the instance of the true meaning of “re-purposed” side streets.
These are exactly the streets that the traders require for re-supplying them and which thus need vehicular access. Especially if the frontage is to be turned into a mall.
A number of the traders in this district recall what happened the last time a car-free zone was proclaimed in the area.
This was the Manners Street mall. It was subsequently restored as a thoroughfare.
But not before the department store James Smiths went out of business in the aftermath of the mall installation.
LGWM is a joint venture between Wellington City Council, Greater Wellington Regional Council, and the New Zealand Transport Agency.
Businesses in the area believe that the car-free scheme for the capital’s downtown commercial artery and thus the “quick win” proclamation had much to do with an official survey centred on interest groups such as cycling clubs.
Wellington City Council and the Wellington Regional Council are both territorial local authorities that declared a “Climate Emergency.”
Traders believe that the sponsors of the car-free scheme were and still are determined to identify a problem that does not in fact exist—congestion.
They point out that the streets and the pavements are as busy as they should be in a capital city CBD.
They believe that the real constant congestion will come when vehicles are unable to transit the CBD main routes and instead have to thread their way through residential streets.
They cite as the major existing problem the back- ups caused by the bottleneck centred on the Basin Reserve and which continues to intensify following the blocking at the planning stage of an engineering solution in the form of the second Mt Victoria tunnel.
Promoters of the Lets Get Wellington Moving scheme claim it is all about moving more people with fewer vehicles.
SOS claims though that a large number of bus stops will vanish in the overall car purge.
This in turn will compound an access problem caused by the elimination of 100s of car parks along the main commercial artery, along with the disappearance of parking in the “re-purposed” side streets.
SOS believes that omitted from all this is the existence of the Courtenay Place entertainment district as a virtual 24 hour trading zone which by definition smooths out peak time congestion incurred by the capital’s eight hour office working day.
Faced now with the reality as opposed to the abstract concept of diversity, inclusion, multiculturalism the Wellington City Council will now have to adjust to the procedures applied in other multi racial cities when abrupt, radical town planning change is imminent.
Interpreters will have to be engaged and the council itself assured that all the business proprietors in the entertainment and restaurant district understand what is about to take place.
The random stuffing of pamphlets through doors and entranceways is one indicator how the practical application of multicultural administration now needs to be embedded in the Wellington City Council, in place of its much-publicised and vaunted theoretical emphasis on social equity.
Without being hampered by the need to translate the Wellington City Council’s information hand-outs the Wellington Chamber of Commerce meanwhile is similarly mobilising its members over the car-free zone scheduled for the other end of the commercial route which is the capital’s shopping boulevard stretch sometimes known as the Golden Mile.
In total this route scheduled to be purged of cars is a clearly-defined 2.3 kilometre arterial serpentine stretch of the inner city starting at the gates of Parliament adjacent to Lambton Quay, running up Lower Willis Street, and through the entertainment district of Courtenay Place, ending at the Embassy Theatre, famed for its association with Sir Peter Jackson’s Hobbit saga. .
One contention is that the pedestrian pavements along the 2.3 kilometre route are already as wide if not wider than those of the Ginza, Fifth Avenue, or Oxford Street
The inner Wellington car-free conversion is one part of the Let’s Get Wellington Moving programme budgeted at $6.4 billion which extends from the Ngauranga Gorge in the north to Miramar in the south.
Privy Councillor looks like a Lord, sounds like a Lord
Winston Peters is already a considerable distance along the honorifics track that leads to the summit of attainment in the Commonwealth which is the House of Lords which is where you get true respect.
The Rt Hon. Winston Peters PC looks like a lord, sounds like one. He merely has to be elevated there on the recommendation of a friendly Prime Minister.
Too old? He is younger than United States president elect Jo Biden. He is in his prime by House of Lords age standards.
And yet…and yet…certain tumblers need to fall into place for this unlocking of the House of Lords portcullis. Here are some of them.
The Labour government must endure a drop in popularity.
The National Party meanwhile must sense a lift in its popularity. But not enough to swing it into the treasury benches. Not by itself.
Enough to persuade it though to open up a hidden political party front in the form of a scale-tipping coalition party partner.
Step forward now, dragged, as it will be said, out of retirement, Winston Raymond Peters PC.
All is forgiven. He rallies now his dispersed forces by clearly enunciating policies for the common people.
He sets sail into this last glorious career sunset. His compass is adjusted to keep him well clear on this voyage of the rocks such as those represented by the cultural elites with their perilously submerged global ambitions of the type evoking distrust among his old base.
Sails are trimmed. The Winston Winning party re-connects with the salt of the earth electors, shoals of them. It floats across the line. It quickly coalesces with the National Party to form a doable majority….a government.
Now for the monarchist Mr Peters to collect on this notional arrangement. It is known that the Palace is in full support of the ennoblement of its old ally.
It is but a short hop from Wellington to Westminster for the new life peer Lord Peters of Northland. No need for a by-election. Someone on the Winston Winning list simply slips in to fill his slot
There is just one other pre-requisite to open this last yet golden door of opportunity for the constant campaigner.
It is that the ACT party declares that it will not coalesce with National under any circumstances or at any time. Not ever.
It is now that the National Party might just see in Mr Peters the rallying point of the required potential coalition partner party.
A few months ago at the general election his followers slipped out of the Peters net and swum away nobody is still quite sure exactly where.
Except that it was not back to the National Party, their original home.
As he flails away at his Northland fishing waters this is the demographic that Mr Peters might just be invited to re-catch and then this time replace it securely back into the National Party keep net.
Then onward and upward to his reward which is on the cross benches of the House of Lords.
Safely removed from meddling in party politics, as his National Party coalition partners might see it…... a world away, in fact.
Mr Peters in his revolving door political career might from time to time have considered returning to the law and there taking silk, becoming a Queens Councillor, a QC.
Now Winston Peters armed already with the office of Privy Councillor and thus technically already an adviser to Her Majesty is so primed under this chain of possibilities to shoulder the ermine of the House of Lords.
Sophisticated multinational persuasion techniques are unseen by New Zealanders including Federated Farmers
The climate industry in a cruel assertion of its power now seeks to ensure that funds scheduled for post Covid recovery are instead diverted to the climate change industry itself.
This means that funds badly needed already in New Zealand will be substantially disbursed overseas and for no practical return to New Zealand taxpayers.
The display of the climate industry’s power is such that the organisations tasked with countering such demands are mute.
None dare say for example that the money thus diverted could and should be used for the benefit of families who have had surgical treatment delayed through the crisis.
Or to alleviate the chronic shortage of housing caused by Covid 19 as returning New Zealanders put unparalleled demands on an already strained availability of accommodation.
Neither does anyone in authority dare to point out that these Covid -19 problems inevitably fall on the very people that a Labour government is sworn to protect—the poor.
Only Federated Farmers now has the status to block the momentum of the urban-based climate business.
Federated Farmers without knowing it has been deliberately targeted by the climate business in a sophisticated marketing exercise designed to soften it up.
It has been told that the pending carbon budget, as it is officially known, will be a shocking one.
The climate industry intends for there to be levied some damaging though not “shocking” impositions and thus grateful farmers will be so relieved that they will even praise the climate industry for its forbearance and moderation.
Another advanced marketing trick used by the climate sector is to portray the image that its many operatives are in their jobs through their devotion to public welfare.
In fact these urban practitioners are on high-ranked public service level remuneration packages.
Their job is to keep the pressure up on the taxpayer to keep funding them.
The exaggerated display of righteousness is another marketing tactic disguised in the industry’s sincerity-dripping publicly related narrative centred on the devoutness of its cause.
Only Federated Farmers among still-respected New Zealand institutions can present a united front in the face of this determined presentation of urban piety of purpose.
The National Party has found itself consistently wrong footed by these manipulators of its supporters loyalty.
The Labour government has found the business so useful that it has become part of it.
Industries which originate in North America, as this one does, always find New Zealand a stand-out receptive ground.
There is for example the jargon which the target market which means most New Zealanders only partially understand.
Yet they are afraid to appear out-of-touch by admitting their lack of familiarity with the industry’s dictionary of new and modified words.
Then there is the climate industry’s claiming of the moral high ground which is another straight out lift from the multinational selling methods play book.
It means that buying will improve you and the world at large.
Now we have the reference sale technique. Celebrities such as Prince Charles are referred to as buyers, with the inference that they must be right.
A corporate technique known as client management is also used.
It is designed to hold the sale and the buyer securely in place and make sure that they resolutely stay with the product, in this case the climate deal.
This can be seen in the many publicly-funded inducements to those showing signs of straying that they better stay with it and stay on message. Those who do stray find their public funding unavailable or cut off.
Federated Farmers is not immune to this aspect of the climate industry.
But it is better placed than any other institution to stall the climate industry, at least until the Covid crisis has passed, and then been paid off.
Multinationals demonstrate their moral conscience through well-publicised good works such as sponsorships.
In the climate business this high mindedness takes the form of its already privileged operatives conveying the impression of self-sacrifice and that personal reward is the last thing on their minds.
Marketing it is said can sell anything and the scheme to divert critically-needed Covid recovery money from those who need it in New Zealand and hand it to the North American-driven climate industry proves it.
Diplomatic intervention only solution to interminable Dotcom Four process
Eight years of intensive court house toing and froing failed to dent the Dotcom extradition process and merely reinforces the only possible resolution to the case, a political one in which it is declared moot.
This will end the present public expense in which cohorts of lawyers of varying hourly billing firepower tramp through courtrooms of varying status and show every sign of continuing to do so into the foreseeable future.
A moot declaration is straightforward and starts with the incoming United States ambassador who must be apprised of a basic New Zealand political fact which is the existence of the FBI case as the elephant in the caucus room of the Labour government.
The Labour government’s brand is kindness.
How kind is it to forcibly return for incarceration in United States gaols a quartet of family men who after years of intensive investigation may even have rendered substantial benefit to the nation which invited them in?
Impenetrable clouds of words emanating from all those involved in protracting the case to date have created an emissions overload camouflaging the political rawness of the Dotcom drama.
The Dotcom Four were encouraged to base themselves in New Zealand under an official policy known as technology transfer.
In this concept the mechanics and the marketing of the original Megaupload would rub off on the local specialists and engender in institutions as a whole an appreciation and respect for the possibilities of information technology.
Hovering over the whole episode then and now is this.
If the Dotcom Four believed that they were involved in anything illegal why did they allocate their servers to Virginia when they must have known that New Zealand had a bilateral extradition treaty with the United States?
Plenty of opportunity to establish the immense server capability in say Scandinavia where no such treaties exist, and where there would have been no danger of the servers being unplugged in the first place.
In the world of cloud computing eight years is a lifetime.
The Dotcom case has about it the aura of a dispute centred on horse drawn carriages extending into the era of the motor vehicle.
The underpinning contention of the Dotcom Four is that Megauplod was a celestial version of the three dimensional storage warehouse which rents out space on demand.
How did they know what was being stored in their space any more than the owner of a concrete warehouse with space to hire knows exactly what its users are filling its space with?
The determination of the FBI to imprison the Dotcom Four extends to the RICO washing up clause which threw a racketeering blanket over them meaning that once in the United States there is truly no escape for the Four.
Now with the avuncular Joe Biden installed in the Oval Office the Labour government can test this new Morning in America in ridding itself of one of its greatest identifiable pending embarrassments.
This is corralling into a Federal Bureau of Investigation chartered Con Air a quartet of technologists who did for New Zealand exactly what they said they would do.
They generated jobs out of thin air and in doing so transferred the comprehension of the infinite possibilities of technology.
Without diplomatic intervention there remains only the outcome of the infinite cost to the taxpayer of an infinitely protractible vista of courtrooms, each one more costly to the taxpayer than the one before.
Watch the documentary Kim Dotcom: Caught in the Web.
Palace of the Alhambra, Spain
By: Charles Nathaniel Worsley (1862-1923)
From the collection of Sir Heaton Rhodes
Oil on canvas - 118cm x 162cm
Valued $12,000 - $18,000
Offers invited over $9,000
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242
Mount Egmont with Lake
By: John Philemon Backhouse (1845-1908)
Oil on Sea Shell - 13cm x 14cm
Valued $2,000-$3,000
Offers invited over $1,500
Contact: Henry Newrick – (+64 ) 27 471 2242