Fibre optics

have just exited the lift to enter my office and shared Otis's finest with two chaps from Fletcher's Construction. They are employed doing some internal rennovations on the Farm's HQ and were carrying a sheet of GIB. They were both wearing hard hats and wearing day-glo vests. Why? I am surprised they (and me ) were not required to wear safety harnesses as the lift was capable of going to the tenth floor. I felt so much safer getting out at the eighth.

I was actually thinking of bureacracy when I stumbled upon this example thereof. What are the essentials of life? Water? Yup. Working sanitation? Yup. Electricity? Won't go there. Broad band interent? How would we know as we can't get anything approaching it in the Peoples Republic of Aoteorao but I could not imagine a reasonable life with out the even lobotomised version that Ihug offers. Thank God, therefore, that I do not live in Blockhouse Bay. The denizens of this fine suburb not ten minutes from Auckland's CBD apparently have to make do with the cyberspace equivalent of men standing on volcanic cones waving semaphore flags. Telecom, God bless them, say they have to replace the copper wiring. We have to believe them. This will be done with a fibre optic number that will cost $2 million. We have to believe them. They cannot start this work until December because of 'consent issues. We definitely believe them. Why can consent to run a cable take over six months? I am not a cabling engineer but even I know you don't hang nice sexy fibre optic cables off power poles. You put them underground. Who are going to object? Moles? Earthworms? No, the bureacrats must have their unnecessary slice of the action.

They have their supporters in the highest of places as well. Nick Smith (a rather scruffy member of the opposition with a bit of a credibilty problem) had an antibureacrat bill shouted down in the Nut House yesterday. The main throwers of spanners were the sitting Politburo. Nick wanted all building consents that were not processed in twenty days to be issued free of charge. Shock horror you can't do that cry the men with the clipboards (or rather their paymasters) because the cost of the late consents will have to be met by the rate payers. There you have it in one. Totally the wrong answer. A deeply ingrained wrong paradigm. The real answer, of course, is that we will see to it that all consents are issued within twenty days and there will be no late consents to cost anybody anything. There is no hope.

Everybody's favorite dental nurse deigned to speak to the masses yesterday. All monies collected from road user charges and petrol tax will be diverted from the consolidated fund and be directed at 'transport issues'. Looks good (we'll ignore the tax on the fuel that goes in the Yamaha HPDI shall we). Loads of dosh for more roads to drive the supercharged V8 down. Yum yum. I think not. The devil is in the detail. She did not say that the money will go into roading, it will go into 'transport issues'. These changes come into effect in July next year. There is to be an election next year. There will be a curb on electoral spending for this election. The Labour government has increasing the use of public transport to achieve that well known crock, carbon nuetrality, as one of its main election planks. You could justify an expensive advertising campaign about this time next year promoting alternate forms of transport as 'transport issues' fundable from petrol tax.

Conspiracy theorist - Moi?

Tweet