If Aucklanders woke up, they would encourage the bridging of their harbour by wharf bosses

Alf has watched with profound fascination while Aucklanders have been raging against some wharf extensions.

Today he learns Auckland Council has responded by formally asking Ports of Auckland to halt construction of the extensions.

Mayor Len Brown told a council meeting the council chief executive, Stephen Town, has written a letter to Auckland Council Investments Ltd, the council body overseeing the port company.

The letter requests that this body encourage the port company to hold off the wharf extensions until a port study had been completed.

The study is expected to take about 12 months.

But this hasn’t mollifed some councillors.

Kapiti council took a hard line against old folk but is keen to okay a cycling club’s tree-lopping

Some mad bastards are running freely around the country after threatening to poison infant formula. But the  news media have been just as enthralled by the antics of some tossers with a powerful urge to protect  trees.

Alf is not sure what has happened today but overnight – as you can see here – the owners of the Titirangi sites where a kauri and a rimu were scheduled for removal have released an open letter saying the kauri  can stay.

This sounds like discrimination against rimu, but Alf – to be candid – couldn’t care less.

Accordingly he thinks Environment Minister Nick Smith is looking dangerously like a greenie for saying he hoped the kauri would be saved.

“I expressed to the [Auckland] mayor [Len Brown] a preference for the 200-year-old kauri to be spared, if at all possible, but that the Government respected the fact that it was a decision for the Auckland Council.”

This fuss led Alf to recall the appalling way an elderly couple in Kapiti were treated last year for doing the environment a favour and letting in more sun by lopping a few trees.

The bloody council fairly obviously knew it was being unreasonably bloody-minded by sending in the cops to help deal to the couple because it apologised while persisting with prosecuting them. 

Auckland communities are squealing for a bigger trough – and Maori want more for whanau ora

“The bloody Mayor wants to put us on short rations…”

Auckland mayor Len Brown – we learn from the NZ Herald today – has returned from a month-long overseas holiday to a budget revolt by local boards.

A letter signed by all 21 local boards in his so-called super city expresses frustration and anger at a mayoral budget proposal to slash $1.3 billion in spending on parks, community and lifestyle.

This looks (at first blush) like a good thing, if it eases the burden on ratepayers.

But Alf is inclined to suspect the mayor does not really intend to lighten the burden on ratepayers and probably has been obliged to propose these cuts so he can spend much too much public money on other grandiose projects.

There’s something awfully queer about the maths when three politicians are viewed as a queue

It’s not for Alf…but pinkos will enjoy Sydney’s Mardi Gras.

It looks like Stuff has dumped a load of bollocks on its hapless readers.

Its headline writer is telling us (and he, she or it must be struggling to keep a straight face) Politicians flock to Big Gay Out.

Stuff proceeds to say Auckland’s annual Big Gay Out plans to be more extravagant than usual –

and, being an election year, politicians are queuing up to attend.

Are they really?

Ah – now we know (and so does Len Brown) what happens when a mistress’s world falls apart

Gotta say it’s fascinating to learn what impulses kick in, when you lose an election.

This has never happened to your hard-working member for Eketahuna North, of course. It is a measure of his popularity and the voting public’s huge regard for him that he has galloped home by the proverbial country mile every time his name has been on a ballot paper.

The Labour sheila who stood against him at the last election perhaps had no expectation of winning. Hence her world did not fall apart when the inevitable happened and she was soundly defeated.

Not so in the case of the sheila at the centre of the Len Brown sex scandal.

Ethnic people seeking more political clout will be finding they lack something important – a treaty

Ha! The ethnic communities that want a decision-making role within the Auckland Council look likely to learn fast that they are not “indigenous” and therefore they are not special.

Maori – on the other hand – are indigenous, they are special, and therefore they are accorded rights which are denied the rest of us.

They have special representation that allows unelected appointees to sit on Auckland Council committees, among other arrangements that debase our democratic arrangements.

Bugger all that election stuff. Too hard.

If you are special you can play the race card.

It’s more than a mouthful but sign writers will do a brisk business as we adopt new Maori place names

How te reo can be enriching for sign writers…

What’s in a name?

Don’t ask Alf. Ask Auckland Mayor Len Brown.

The bugger has come out all warm and fuzzy in response to news that Rangitoto Island could be in for a name change.

Rangitoto is a word most of us can handle without too much trouble.

But why make things easy for the majority of the population when you can make them much more challenging?

And so Rangitoto may officially be known as Te Rangi-i-Tongia-a-Tamatekapua as part of the Crown’s deal to restore Maori ownership of volcanic cones and some Hauraki Gulf islands.

It’s also part of a growing fashion for favouring the complex over the easy.

Hamilton Mayor’s spending raises hackles – but Len Brown makes her look downright austere

Alf hesitated before railing either for or against the spending chalked up by Hamilton’s Mayor.

He is torn on this one, because he is somewhat fond of perks and recognises that if he fancies getting the same sorts of favours as the Mayor, which he regards as his due, then he shouldn’t be too critical.

But hey. Being a two-faced hypocrite is one of the perks that goes with being a politician – isn’t it?

Racial privilege is upheld by audit which fortifies Maori claims to more money for their trough

Further evidence of New Zealand’s peculiar willingness to spawn and nurture racially divisive governance arrangements is dished up by the NZ Herald today.

It reports on a funding row over Maori initiatives in Auckland.

And it quotes a source as saying the matter could end up in court, citing a draft report showing the Auckland Council is largely failing to meet statutory obligations to Maori.

These are statutory obligations to “Maori”, it should be noted. Not statutory obligations to New Zealanders, or citizens, or all of us.

This affirms that the Government must meet some obligations to one ethnic community that it does not have to meet for others.

It all stems – we don’t have to guess – from the ill-considered incorporation of so-called Treaty principles into various bits of legislation.

And it is all about who gets how much money.

Another bloody David goes politicking, but this one pushes for a bigger trough for Maori

Maori leaders in Auckland are giving us a further demonstration of their yearning for separateness.

The Maori Statutory Board, the ill-considered consequence of stuff-ups in setting up the Super City, wants $295 million over 10 years from Auckland ratepayers to advance Maori interests.

The Herald puts us in the picture about their push for more race-based funding today.