Climate Change - the NEW Religion  

Wednesday, March 24, 2010


Stuff Scientology, ditch Destiny Church (it’s a cult anyway) and kick Kabbalah into touch; there’s a new religion in town called Climate Change.

Followers of this religion believe that the world is warming and unless something is done the planet is doomed - their Zealots are convinced man is to blame.

The Climate-changers, like most other religions, base their beliefs on faith - there is no definitive proof, although they do differ in one respect. Most religions base their belief on teachings and documents handed down over centuries; not so the Climate-changers, they ignore the fact that the planet has had 500 million years of climate and just focus on distorted data gleaned from the last few decades.

The prophets of Climate Change are scientists using false data and dodgy models to justify their existence and need for research grants. These prophets hoodwink gullible politicians (remember Al Gore anyone?) into believing what they say is gospel. The media then do what they do best which is to spread the unsubstantiated “facts” to the ignorant public.

Greenies by nature are just fuckwits and will follow any cause contrary to common sense. They also appear to have a dislike (apart from washing, skin and hair care) of mankind. As far as they are concerned WE caused Climate Change – bullshit!

Do not be sheep and blindly follow the ignorant. Do not listen to the greenies or politicians, if you are in school do not believe your teachers and certainly do not believe the media. Do some research on the subject and make up your own mind.

Have a look at Joanne Nova and her Skeptic's Handbook and the new Skeptic's Handbook II for common sense facts.

This is what the Redneck believes:

  1. Climate Change has been occurring since the earth was born.
  2. The planet does not need saving, it can look after itself – the same cannot be said for mankind however.
  3. The planet has been hotter before and colder before.
  4. The planet will be hotter in the future and colder in the future.
  5. Global warming is not happening at the moment – the reverse is true.
  6. There is Yin and Yang – there maybe droughts in Australia but it is flooding in Europe. The Arctic ice may be melting but the Antarctic ice is increasing.
  7. There has been more carbon in the atmosphere before.
  8. Global temperature records have been taken for only 150 years of 500 million.
  9. Past climate models have proven to be inaccurate.
  10. Weather cannot be accurately forecast for next week let alone for the next century.


Of course the Redneck could be completely wrong; God may be an old man with a long white beard (like Gandalf the white) sitting on a cloud, our cows could be the reincarnation of long departed relatives, one of our doves could be uncle Bob and the planet could be on course for man-made destruction. I just don’t believe it!

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Earth Hour – What a Waste of Time!  

Monday, March 15, 2010

This morning, as every morning, the radio alarm clock jolted me into life with the on-air ramblings of Corbett, Jesse and Joe from More FM. I usually catch the end of the 6 am news bulletin then intermittently doze and wake until I finally crawl out of bed at 6:40 following the latest Hollywood gossip from Joe. This morning my slumber was broken by an advertisement for Earth Hour - suddenly adrenalin kicked in and I sat up saying “Not this bullshit again”!

Earth Hour is a greenie event organized by WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature, or depending on what country you are in, World Wildlife Fund). Annually on the last Saturday of March they want everyone to turn off lights and appliances for one hour between 8:30 and 9:30 pm to raise awareness of “Climate Change”. What a load of rubbish!

Their website makes this statement: “Earth Hour 2010 will continue to be a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community. A call to stand up, to show leadership and to be responsible for our future”. Again I say what a load of rubbish!

Turning off the lights is just a gimmick; it will make no difference except save a few cents in your power bill. It is just a publicity stunt for WWF and an excuse for the Sydney Morning Herald to print a few more column inches and ego trip (The Sydney Morning Herald conceived this daft event with WWF in 2007).

Greenie organizations like WWF and Greenpeace start with well intentioned ideas but wind up “shooting themselves in the foot” by making daft, exaggerated and sometimes untrue statements to bolster their cause and financial coffers.

Greenpeace started “saving whales” and now are just a bunch of publicity seeking vandals. WWF wanted to save the rainforests from destruction, a worthy cause which I support, but now have jumped onto the “Climate Change” bandwagon. Ironically WWF have been criticized for promoting Palm Oil as “sustainable” even though Palm Oil Plantations are established on cleared rainforests – WTF!

Coming back to Earth Hour – it’s pointless. It’s not as though the Space Station is going to beam back pictures of Earth when the lights go out. Just in case there are some space photos, I will be making my own protest to the futility of the event by turning on an outside security light for the hour. If there is a solitary light shining up from Auckland, it will show the residence of the only person in the area with a brain – the Waitakere Redneck.

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Rust Never Sleeps  

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Rust Never Sleeps is the name of an album by Neil Young and Crazy Horse - music legends from my youth, 1979 to be exact. It also should be one of life’s mottos like “shit happens” or “nothings certain but death and taxes”. Regardless of what you do, any painted steel object will eventually succumb to rust with it starting in some hidden corner, and by the time it is noticed the damage has been done.

Having a large property we require various vehicles and implements to enable its upkeep – all of which have to be stored outside which exposes them to Auckland’s humid, and I suspect due to the fact we are on a narrow part of the island, salt laden air. Gradually over the last 12 years or so this equipment has been slowly but surely rusting away.

The Suzuki Jeep - before things started falling off.

One of our first vehicles was a Suzuki 4WD Jeep which was required to transport us to and from the lower paddocks. The Jeep, which admittedly had rust to start, is now basically just a chassis on wheels. First the floor rusted out, then the roof rusted and fell off, then the doors fell off followed by the sides soon after. It is now on “borrowed time” as the whole front end is loose including the main cross member supporting the steering column – when that goes, look out!! Oh I almost forgot to mention, the brakes crapped out years ago!


The Suzuki Jeep today - still going...just!

Another vital vehicle is our Ford 4WD tractor. We bought this from a fellow “lifestyle block” owner about 10 years ago in a very rusty state - he had left it sitting unused in a paddock for a year or more. Once I got it home considerable time and expense was spent cleaning, de-rusting, priming and painting. I even fabricated a new bonnet. Well all this was a big waste of fucking time – it’s rusty again!


The Slasher - slowly succumbing to rust.

The slasher which clears gorse and “tops” the grass in the paddocks has rusted through. While out mowing bits drop onto the revolving blades then fly up and whack me on the back of the head – ouch! I have now tied up the loose metal away from the blades with fencing wire as a temporary remedy. I was going to rebuild the slasher once the barn was built but that has taken so long and it is still not finished – the sneaky rust has “beaten me to the punch”.

The latest victim to this metal cancer is the Pajero. As mentioned in a previous post we have finally got the thing running and were hopeful that it would pass a Warrant of Fitness – ha, ha, dream on! Apart from silly things like the sun visor not working properly, one of the two number plate bulbs not working, the reversing light bulb not working, the left CV joint boot requiring replacing , the “last nail in the coffin” was RUST!

The Pajero floor rusted through.

View from the underside.

Mrs Redneck (unlike me) loves the Pajero as it is handy for shopping and collecting hay so I decided to have a go at repairing the rust which was in the front floor on the passenger’s side. I did not hold out too much hope as I no longer have a gas welding set, only a big 3-phase arc welder (called a stick welder these days). I had plenty of steel sheet left over from the tractor bonnet repair and found a handful of small electrodes. After removing a piece of the floor, fashioning up a replacement piece and winding the welder to its lowest setting (40~60 amps) I commenced the task. Now I knew it would be hard – welding thin sheet with a stick welder and doing a good job is almost impossible, but what-the-hey, I had all weekend.

The roughly welded patch.

Upon removing the mudguard - surprise, suprise, more rust!

Too much bloody rust!!!

After the first couple of welds it became apparent that the rust had spread further than anticipated so my “patch” had to be extended further up the side of the vehicle. I then removed the mudguard and wheel to gain access to the underside of the repair in case any welding was required in that location. After brushing off the mud – low and behold, more rust, too much rust to be precise. I decided to “abandon ship” as I would be just wasting my time trying to repair holes in such an awkward position with my limited resources. The Pajero will just have to stay on the property and be the successor to the Suzuki Jeep.

We will probably “sneak down” to the local gas station for refuelling and may pop to the post box or even the library – so shush, don’t tell anybody!

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China has the right idea – shoot them!  

Monday, March 08, 2010

China does not waste any time on low-life murderers and drug dealers – they just shoot them! After reading the latest exploits of Bailey Junior Kurariki I wish New Zealand would follow suit. This Maori brat is just a waste of space, constantly getting into trouble, only to be let off by our “soft-cock” Court system.

Kurariki was only 12 years old when he was convicted of the senseless manslaughter of pizza delivery man Michael Choy in 2002. He was jailed for just 7 years which is a crime in itself and on release he claimed to have “found God” – well, unless there is a “God of Arseholes”, that proved to be a load of shit!

Looks can be deceiving - this is a 12-year-old killer

Since his release he has been charged with assaulting a prison officer, assaulting his girlfriend, wilful damage and committing an indecent act. Also there have been two charges of indecent assault and four charges of breaching parole. He also spat on, and shoved photographers while leaving Court.


The latest charges of indecency occurred when he exposed himself and masturbated in front of two female NZ Herald reporters while he was being interviewed by them in the kitchen of his mother’s house – what a wanker! As a parting shot he is alleged to have groped the reporters before they managed to flee the house. All of this happened while Kurariki’s mother, who is ill from the effects of cancer treatment, was in another room.

I can’t for the life of me, see why anyone let alone two women, would want to be alone with this mongrel. Even more of mystery is why such a completely worthless excuse of a human being is allowed to continue with his behaviour.

A bullet does not cost much.

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Beauty, Drugs and the Beast.  

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

What makes attractive young women fall for drug-dealing scumbags? Come to think of it why, time and time again, we see beautiful women on the arm of some ugly dropkick of a partner – what they have that us normal blokes do not have. Is it money, flash car, flash home, big penis – or all of the above?
In New Zealand the criteria appears to be Headhunters Gang affiliation, drugs and crime. I’m not sure whether a big “willy” has any clout – being a dickhead certainly does.

Millie and her boob-groping monkey.

First of all we had the sad case of pretty model Millie Elder. Millie appeared to have it all, good looks and a wealthy father who loved her. She stuffs this up by getting involved in drugs and hooks up with Connor Morris the son of a “patched” Headhunters Gang member. She has been in court so often for methamphetamine charges she may as well be on the end of a bungey cord. Every time her father steps in to help she basically craps on him and goes back to drugs – what a looser.

Anna Ngo.

Last week we had the case of model and former Auckland rugby cheerleader Anna Ngo being found guilty of supplying methamphetamine. She is 36 years old and now faces a long jail term with a maximum of life. In fact knowing the NZ Court system she will probably get a longer sentence than a murderer – certainly more than a violent rapist. And guess what - her current boyfriend is “patched” Headhunters gang member Joseph Hill.

If I was not married I would be straight down to the tattoo parlour for a few ugly Maori or Islander designs then I’ll just pop around to the local Headhunters lair and say: “Sign me up”!

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On the road again…….the Pajero’s on the road again….  

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Well not quite legally anyway, we still have to get a warrant of fitness and registration, but at least the bloody thing is running.

Shit it must be two years since the crapheap started making the clunking sound signalling impending doom for the engine – we took it off the road and let it sit ever since.

In my younger days I liked nothing better than to spend hours under the bonnet tinkering away or lying on my back wrestling with the transmission - oil and shit dripping into my face. Why throw money at girls when there was a Mini to do up. Now older, married and hopefully wiser I can’t be bothered with the frustration of being a D.I.Y mechanic – hey I may as well pay someone else to do it!
This is especially true for the Pajero as it is a frustrating filthy beast to work on. So what do we do, we call on our mad neighbour to do the job for us… well we bought it from him in the first place – it’s his baby.

I was sure one of the big-end bearings had gone but after wiggling the crankshaft pulley I deduced that it must have been the main bearing. The neighbour waltzed over and informed us that the crankshaft is broken – “Bullshit the engine is still running OK” I said. After giving it another good wiggle myself I tended to agree – it was too sloppy to be just a bearing.

Broken crank - just after the first big-end.

A period of time went by while the neighbour kept his eye out for a second-hand block at pick-a-part (local wrecker of choice). Eventually one was found and the day finally came for the old engine to come out. And buggar me, he was right; the crank had broken after the first big-end. I still can’t get over the fact that the bloody thing ran with such a mortal injury. The crank was replaced and after shelling out $1,000 or so for bearings, seals, gaskets, oil, hydraulic fluid plus a battery she was ready to go.

How did it run - beats me!

After a few test drives up and down the street Mrs Redneck noticed oil pissing out from the bottom of the engine and as our mad neighbour was nowhere to be seen, the heap of shit was parked up once again.

Christmas came and went and Mrs Redneck was anxious to get the Pajero on the road especially after spending so much on it. The neighbour was conspicuous by his absence so last weekend I relented and parked the beast on the back lawn while running the engine to try and see where the leak was coming from. There was no easy way to do it; I had to lie under the engine to locate the problem. It turned out to be a pipe connecting the oil pump – the bolt was tight but it was not sealing. After removal I could see that the oil seals were old so they were replaced – there were heaps of bits left over from the gasket set we purchased! And that was it – she is now running quieter and no more drips.

There was one other task I had to do and that was to fashion an external rear view mirror from parts at hand as Mrs Redneck refuses to drive without one. The previous mirror was bitten off and chewed up by one of our cows – I kid you not – they love plastic and the glass must give added texture. Eventually a mirror was constructed by screwing a smaller left-hand intact mirror inside the casing of the broken one. I bodged up a base to attach to the ball on the end of the original stalk and Bobs-your-uncle we have a working mirror.

The mirror-in-a-mirror.

Next stop a warrant of fitness – I wonder what we will be pulled up on. It had better not be expensive or involve me on by back under the thing or I may drive it over the nearest cliff!

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Sweet 16, Never mind the kissing, I’m sailing around the world!  

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Most 16 year old girls today probably have boyfriends, cruise the malls, spend hours on the phone and are constantly texting not so for Jessica Watson and Abby Sunderland – they are busy sailing nonstop around the world all alone except for the communication between them and their land based support crew thousands of miles away – oh and the thousands following their every move via their blogs and Facebook pages.

Jessica Watson

Abby Sunderland

Why on earth would the Redneck be interested in a couple of chicks in a boat anyway? Well that is a rather long story but basically I have been a “closet sailor” for many, many years.

When I was young, like 8 or so, my Grandfather lived in a pine clad valley near Upper Hutt called Pinehaven. I learnt that Francis Chichester who was a famous aviator and yachtsman of the time planted the trees prior to the Great Depression – that name stuck in my head and when a little older I read one of his books about circumnavigating the globe in his boat the Gipsy Moth IV.

Many years later New Zealand became involved in the Whitbread Round the World yacht race. It was 1981 and Peter Blake was skippering Ceramco while Digby Taylor skippered Outward Bound. Ceramco was leading until the mast fell down and they had to limp to their next stop under “jury rig” – it was a fascinating saga at the time - real man vs. the elements stuff! Both published a book of their exploits and I bought both of them. Peter Blake’s book was the best as it was set out like a diary so each day was documented with lots of photographs – there was never a dull moment.

In 1987 New Zealand participated in the Americas cup being sailed off Freemantle Australia. Our 12 metre yachts were fast and revolutionary - they were dubbed the “plastic fantastics”. The races were televised and exciting – I was glued to the TV at all hours! This Americas Cup campaign was the seed for New Zealand’s later and successful attempt to wrest the cup from the Americans.

Around this period I decided I was going to build my own yacht so I purchased plans for a Roberts 45’ and several boat building books, it became a life-long dream of mine. Oh the recklessness of youth!! Where was I going to build it? Where was the money to build it? After looking at a few sites it was put in “the too hard basket” – maybe in a few years….

In 1988 while working in Port Moresby the yachting bug hit again. The local watering hole was the Port Moresby Yacht Club and several of the expats owned a boat of some sort – the Aussies were fishing mad. One day the company’s sales manager came into my office with a photograph of a yacht for sale at Loloata Island – the owner was “going finish” (local term for employment contract completed) and wanted a quick sale. I had a look and was taken for a sail – oh heaven! Unfortunately reality soon set in as I could not get the finance. So it was back to my dreams (dreams are free they say).

I met Mrs Redneck and the rest is history. The ironic part of this story is I still have the plans, I now have the money, and I now have 13 acres of land on which to build it. Trouble is, apart from convincing Mrs Redneck to part with considerable $$$$ for the project I would be an old age pensioner by the time it would be built – it would have to remain a dream so we will spend our hard-earned money elsewhere.

So all I can do now is follow the exploits of the young Jessica and Abby – living their dream. Thank God for blogs, YouTube and Facebook – I don’t have to wait for their books to come out.

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Blog Rises From The Dead  

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Well it’s almost a year since my last post and in keeping with Easter I have decided to raise my blog from the dead. Why haven’t you blogged for so long I hear you say – well, in a nutshell, I couldn’t be fucked! Well strictly speaking that is not true, yes I was lazy, but I had other things to occupy myself with like Playstation 3 and Facebook. My gaming and social networking experiences will be covered in later posts.

What has happened in the last 12 months? I will catch up in future posts but in summary:

I’m still building the bloody barn.
The Pajero is only just running again.
My Nana (featured in a previous post) passed away – 100 years old, not a bad innings.
Purchased a Playstation 3 (slim) and a home theatre system.
Joined Facebook.
Still can’t do anything with our land – I’m bloody angry about that.
The neighbours (on either side) has pissed us off – big time!

I’ve checked to see if my blog links, likes and dislikes are still relevant and consequently made a few changes. The likes and dislikes are basically the same – Vanessa Hudgens is still hot (her photo graces my work computer as wallpaper). I made several changes to my links as I am interested in the bullshit called “global warming” or “climate change”. I have added links to Jessica Watson and Abby Sunderland, two 16yr old girls doing a solo circumnavigation of the world by yacht – I will do a post about this later.

That’s about it for this post – time to open another beer (it’s bloody hot).

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Hey Microsoft Where's The Scanner Wizard?  

Monday, March 02, 2009

Don’t you just hate it when you sit down to do something you’ve done many times before only to find the feature is no longer available in a later version of the same Microsoft product?

Microsoft dicked-around with the perfectly good spreadsheet that was Excel 2003 and came up with the dreaded ribbon menu in Excel 2007. Ok, as it turned out, the ribbon menu is quite cool once you get the hang of it, what really pissed me off is all the little things I liked (and used often in my job) no longer worked. Recording macros to find the correct visual basic code syntax no longer worked, except for the most basic operations, which I could figure out anyway. Drawing shapes on the worksheet is now a nightmare. I always have to remember to save the workbook in the correct format so my clients with the older version can read. Grrrrrr!!

The latest niggle, and the reason for this post, is: “Microsoft what the fuck have you done with the printer and scanner wizard”?

I have some old black and white photographs of my late mother and father (not late, alive and kicking) taken during their younger days together with wedding pictures. Also included are wedding photographs of some of my close relatives. Unfortunately some bright-spark left them all in a box under a house for years and they are badly damaged by mould – some have been destroyed. I have taken it upon myself to restore what’s left, before they are lost forever. The idea is to scan them into the computer then get a photo-lab to print them so I can rearrange in an album for posterity.

I decided to do the scanning via my laptop as Vista has a better photo viewing program than XP (easier to enlarge & you can “grab” with the mouse to position on the screen). I hauled out the old Mustek from the redundant computer bits pile and plugged it in – no go, too old, no driver updates available, oh buggar! I threw it back on the pile and got the Brother “jack of all trades and master of none” (prints a page a week, scans ok, faxes – sends ok but again prints a page a week) from the office and plugged it in. The laptop then sprang into life searching for all the necessary drivers. Once it told me that the scanner was in fact kosher I grabbed the first photo, wiped off a layer of mould with a damp sponge, placed it in the scanner, clicked on the big Microsoft “start” button on the bottom left of the laptop screen and perused the menu structure for the “printer and scanner wizard”. Where has it gone? I ran into the office, fired up the computer (running XP), clicked “start” and sure enough there it was under “Accessories”. I got more exercise by running back into the house and re-checking the laptop start menu under “Accessories” – it was not there W.T.F!

A Google search confirmed that it is no longer there. You have to import the image through Windows “Photo Gallery” – tried it and it sucks! I found the scanner wizard component of this program by hunting through the Windows directory and placed a shortcut on the desktop – tried it and it sucks! The older version on XP is far more versatile – I won’t go into detail just believe me it is a million times more user friendly.

I will now take the photos to the office, scan into the PC running XP, save to a flash drive and finally load into the laptop where I can manipulate and touch-up to my heart’s desire!

Why do Microsoft, time and time again, screw with us!
Have they heard of “If it ‘aint broke don’t fix it”?
Have they heard of “Backward Compatibility”?
Can I charge them for wasting my time – or can they be fined for just being “fuckwits”.

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Nana's 100th Birthday  

Saturday, February 28, 2009

After the doom and gloom following the Environment Court decision it was great to have something to celebrate for a change – my nana turned 100 and we had a 6 day break in Wellington for the celebration.

Her birthday, on Wednesday the 18th of February, was to be celebrated with an official “afternoon tea” function held at the Cashmere Home Johnsonville, where she has resided for the past four years. On the following Saturday there was to be another “family only” celebration at the Rest Home for those that could not make it on the Wednesday – not everyone is self-employed and of course there are great-grandchildren at school to consider. Following this second “afternoon tea” nana was shouting the family to dinner at the Paikakariki Fishermans Table Restaurant. My Aunty Shirley offered to “put us up” for the duration so we decided to drive down on Tuesday and return on the following Sunday.

My Aunt lives in Paraparaumu which is less than an hour North of Wellington City and only a ½ hour or so from the Rest Home so it was perfect – the trip was regarded not so much as a holiday but a chance to catch up with relatives from my mother’s side of the family (whom I miss) and to celebrate the occasion. Any sightseeing was secondary.

I usually enjoy driving to Wellington and make good time – it wasn’t to be on this occasion due to bloody road works.
We left home at 6am without breakfast as I intended to stop at McDonalds Tokoroa for a pit stop and McMuffin. Well, our stomachs rumbled way before then; in fact we were hungry after an hour on the road so pulled into McDonalds Hamilton where we had our McMuffin’s, hash browns and their damn fine hot coffee.
The next stop was at a rest area on the side of the road running around the Western side of lake Taupo where we had coffee from our thermos and a couple of pieces of quiche to quieten our stomachs until lunchtime. I always take this road to Wellington, it may be long and boring but there is very little traffic and you can drive consistently fast – a good place to make up time.
Lunch consisted of greasy takeaways from an Asian Restaurant in Taihape. The fried, battered fish, sausage and potato fritters was devoured at another rest stop on the side of the road 15 minutes South of Taihape but not before being stuck in more bloody road works.
The rest of the trip was uneventful as time seems to pass quickly once you get beyond Hunterville; in fact once you reach Bulls you are good as there.

9 hours after leaving Auckland we were finally relaxing at Aunty Shirley’s place catching up with the news and familiarising ourselves with the names of my cousins and their offspring. We would be able to hitch a ride with her to the Cashmere Home and the Saturday dinner as she had purchased a brand-new Honda a couple of years ago – it’s a four door red something-or-other as opposed to our two door Honda Prelude.

Redneck congratulates nana on her 100th.

On Wednesday afternoon we arrived at the Cashmere Home where they had a singer performing all the old favourite songs to a group of residents in one of the lounges. We waited and listened outside – nana had not been wheeled in yet (everyone is pushed around on la-z-boys with wheels). The local Member of Parliament and leader of the United Future Party, Peter Dunne, turned up and waited with us for the guest of honour to arrive. I was very impressed with him turning up, unlike the papers, and could not get over how much younger he looks in real life – he is a year older than me and doesn’t look it. Maybe they get free facials in Parliament!

Not enough room for all the candles.

Nana was wheeled in to the lounge where we all took turns for a quick greeting prior to the festivities. She looked frail (understandable considering), but I think the nurses got carried away with decking her out in a lei, a flower behind her ear and the overly red lipstick. The sing-a-long continued for a while – nana even joined in for a couple of songs. Speeches were made and Peter Dunne presented her with birthday cards from the Queen, the Prime Minister, the Governor General, the Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Minister for Senior Citizens (that’s a new one on me – didn’t know we had one). Afternoon tea, cake, sandwiches and sausage rolls were then served.

The Hon. Peter Dunne presents the cards.

A funny thing happened – I think we pissed the Rest Home people off by partially hijacking their ceremony. They served nana and the residents in the lounge then told us “able bodied yobbo’s” to help ourselves to refreshments in the hallway – nobody budged an inch! We were reminded several times that “TEA AND REFRESHMENTS ARE IN THE HALLWAY”. Still nobody moved we were just too interested in talking to each other. All of a sudden a trolley-load of food gets shoved into our midst followed by a curt “HELP YOURSELF”! Guess what, nobody moved. In desperation the Rest Home staff started passing around food and even gave us all a glass of sparkling grape juice – hilarious!

Birthday card from Her Majesty The Queen.

I must say that the Home is very depressing due to the condition of their residents which appear to be stroke or alchizmers suffers. Nana is 100 and she was the liveliest one there so her biggest problem is finding someone to talk to – there is little mental stimulation. The nursing staff are usually too busy so she has to make do with word puzzle books which are photocopied to a larger size for her to read.

I will write about our time elsewhere in Wellington in another post as this one is getting rather long.

The Saturday afternoon celebration was held in a smaller private lounge in the Home where nana could see all the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren in one place. This side of the family are not great breeders as there were only 16 of us plus one friend and one “partner”. Maybe we don’t produce because we use up “earth time” by living extra long lives – I hope so.

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Screwed by the Environment Court  

For us, Friday the 23rd of January 2009 will go down in history as “Black Friday” as the Environment Court screwed us in their decision on the Swanson Structure Plan. Judge Jackson and his minions “went down the green path” stomping on the rights of the poor rate-paying landowner in the process. I have awarded him top place in the left sidebar (titled “Who & What I Dislike”).

Some Environment Court decisions appear to be “personal” with the Judge’s views carrying considerable weight. I wonder how we would have fared if the original Judge sought was appointed (he presided over the “Peat Decision”) instead of being stuck with a Wally from the South Island.

The greenies and wankers from the Waitakere Protection Society have won their battle and I can picture them now emerging from their mud and cow dung huts high in the ranges, wearing their eco-friendly hemp clothes, banging on hollow logs and tambourines in ecstasy over the decision.

The decision was the absolute “worst case scenario” for us. In fact never in a million years did I think it would be so tough – I will endeavour to explain:

I thought that the Swanson Structure Plan went to the Court for a ruling on whether it goes ahead or not. I did not expect the Court to draw up a completely new plan. The SSP involved additional lots on 170-odd properties and the Council, following the “Absolum Report”, supported the plan with reduced lot numbers i.e. no one was going to miss out, but some properties had their lot allocation reduced. The case was further complicated by landowners who did not get an allocation under the SSP taking their requests separately to the Court.

It should have been a yes/no decision but with all the bullshit flying around, the court case has dithered for four frigging years – unbelievable!

We found out about the decision indirectly by email – there will be a total of 52 potential lots, less than half of the number supported by Council which is significantly less than the number sought by landowners. It appears that only the successful landowners get a copy of the report. The unlucky have to trundle around to the Council to view or pay them for a copy – we were a paying member of the group taking the case to court so I would have assumed that we are entitled to a copy. Oh well, never mind, think of the trees saved!

The thing that irks us the most is the fact that our neighbour was given an allocation even though he has an existing minor dwelling – he will be able to have a total of three dwellings on his property. When I read that any new dwelling on his property has to be hidden be topography not trees i.e. house hidden by hill, the “penny dropped” – the Judge did not want any new houses to be seen! A trip to Council and consequent viewing of the decision document confirmed this. We could not have an extra lot as it could be seen by golfers on a private golf club – give me strength! I wonder if the Judge plays there, oh no, that’s right, he’s a South Island wanker.

Our property was one of a few that had a detailed analysis submitted by a landscape architect which although acknowledged by the Judge it carried no weight. The most annoying comment he made was that he conceded that the ground was crap and may revert back to scrub which would not be a bad thing as this will encourage the re-growth of native vegetation. This translates to “I don’t give a fuck about the 13 years you have spent removing gorse, blackberry and fighting the spread of wild ginger and pennyroyal. I want 10 acres of your land to revert to bush and be untouched. You may however remain living in your little two bedroom barn-house by the road on the narrowest portion of the property”.

We are not property developers. All I wanted was to build our “dream home” and pool with a view and enjoy life and ultimately retirement. We are not allowed to do this so we will eventually move – preferably out of New Zealand or at least out of Waitakere as the place is beginning to disgust me.

The “lucky landowners” have a lot of work to do as they did not escape Judge Jackson’s decision lightly, here are some of his requirements:

Hide house by topography (no views allowed!).
14 Properties have to form a public walkway through their land by registered right of way.
Several properties have to plant an “urban fence” i.e. a 20 metre wide planting along their boundary.
Someone has to plant a 30 metre strip of native bush.
In some cases stock has to be removed.
If the dwelling cannot be built out of sight then the allocation is lost – you are then “compensated” by not having to plant as much – whoop-de-doo!!!

This whole saga is a farce and as I said before we have been screwed, screwed big time. The more I think about it the angrier I get – what a fucked-up country (world?) we live in, run by morons, pandering to an even moronic minority.
WE DO NOT OWN OUR PROPERTY, WE HAVE NO RIGHTS, WE ARE JUST PAYING THE COUNCIL FOR THE RIGHT TO BE CARETAKERS OF THE LAND.
THE SAYING “A MANS HOME IS HIS CASTLE “IS NOW REDUNDANT.

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Regrassing The Bank  

Friday, February 06, 2009

After finally clearing away all the excavated clay and “fine-tuning” the slope with a spade it was time to replace the turf. Unfortunately due to a run of hot weather the saved grass was somewhat “worse for wear” and was more like yellow-brown fluffy rocks instead of pliable green grassy sections of turf.

I used as much as I could but probably lost about 30% due to the weather. Fortunately the grass is Kikuyu, which is very hardy, so the remaining should recover and green up OK. The “bald” patches will grow over in time as the stems spread along the ground. Also this species of grass is ideal for my bank as it will form a dense blanket which should stifle any chance of erosion.

The dry and steep un-grassed portion of the bank was very slippery which I discovered to my peril. Due to the heat, one day I decided to dispense with the usual gumboots and wear sandshoes – big mistake! One minute I was standing, the next instant I was sitting on my arse. It took a second to catch my breath and boy did my lower back hurt. That was it, no more work for a while.

Luckily the jolt on my arse did not do any major damage – just sore muscles which recovered after a few days. By this time the holidays were over and I was back at my desk job so the injury happened at the right time – I would have been pissed off if the fall occurred earlier.




Saturday 24th Jan:
The completed building platform with some grass on the bank.

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Murdurous Black Bastards  

I know I’ve gone on before (previous post) about the violent nature of the Maori race but it’s out of control. Can’t something be done about it?

There has been a spate of killings lately probably all executed by Maori. I have no proof yet but one can put two and two together when the perpetrator is a gang member or you see their features on the evening news.

Thanks to the NZ Herald I finally saw the youth who, with a baseball bat, bashed to death and then sexually assaulted Karen Aim - sure enough he was a Maori. For those that don’t know, Karen was a 26 year old bubbly and popular tourist from Scotland whose life was cut short by this arsehole who, as it turns out, had previously bashed another girl - with a rock for good measure. The boy was only 15 years old at the time so this sort of brutality must be in the blood.

The Killer and Karen.

While I’m at it the Maori mongrels who murdered Nia Glassie were sentenced last week with two of them getting life – although being New Zealand this means they would probably be out in 18 years or so.

Nia and the evil family.

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Israel vs Hamas  

Apart from Obama there was one other overseas news event that caught my attention during my January blogging hiatus and that was the Middle East conflict.

Now I would be the first to admit that I know buggar-all about Middle East politics but one thing is for sure if someone spent several weeks firing missiles at me I would eventually say: “Enough is enough”!

Basically, as I saw it, Palestinian militants smuggle weapons into Gaza via a network of tunnels and fire them into Israel where they indiscriminately kill and maim innocent civilians. After a few weeks Israel gets pissed off with this and retaliates by blasting shit out of the Palestinian tunnels and anything belonging to the militant group Hamas.

The world got in an uproar over the Israeli retaliation – well as far as I was concerned they were justified, although they probably could have ended things a bit quicker. As soon as “innocent” Palestinian civilians started dying the TV media got into full swing showing all the carnage – especially women and children. Israel was condemned for “indiscriminate” killing but where was the media during the earlier missile attacks on Israel? Also you must remember that Gaza is a small densely-populated strip of land so there cannot be any form of attack without harming innocents. I have read of Hamas strongholds being situated alongside schools, hospitals and the like – sounds like “human shields” to me.

The world saw demonstrations and the accompanying violence which is prevalent these days. Whatever happened to peaceful demonstrations? Rioting does nothing for your cause – you just look like ignorant rabble!

As I said earlier I’m no expert but it appears that most Governments support Israel with the Palestinians and Hamas being the “bad guys” so I tend to sympathise with Israel in this conflict. This “bad guy” image was further reinforced by Hamas firing more rockets during the ceasefire and the report in today’s newspaper of Hamas taking UN humanitarian aid by armed force – way to go Hamas! How do you expect the world to provide aid when you do this?

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Battering The Slopes  

Now that the barn platform has been dug down to more or less the correct level it’s time to batter the slopes so I do not require a retaining wall. A good rule of thumb appears to be 2:1 (or is that 1:2 I’m not sure which way around it goes); basically for every unit vertically you go two units horizontally. As my cut height is up to one metre I will have to start the slope two metres from the edge – shit still a lot of digging is required!

I thought cutting the slopes would be easy, just set the grader blade on a sharp angle and away you go – WRONG! The offset from the tractor is not enough. This combined with the large amount of “play” in the grader blade / tractor connections caused the rear wheels to rub against the bank preventing the blade to get a decent “bite”.

Perseverance and sheer “bloody-mindedness” enabled me to demolish a small portion of the bank to form a ramp which I could then reverse up and drive back down slowly eating away along the bank as I went. Of course I made a mess and consequently lost sight of the original cut line – nothing is easy!

After a few days and countless trailer loads of clay the bank was sufficiently battered and ready for re-grassing. I was unable to maintain the 2:1 rule due to a layer of rock-hard black clay – the grader blade either bounces over it or digs in and rips out a large chunk forming a crater – best to leave it alone.

A check of the barn set out showed that the base of the batter had “eaten “into my platform by 100mm or so – no problem I’ll just move the barn over. Wait a minute Jim what about the existing drain and driveway! Oops I forgot that moving the barn over will reduce the width of the drive and it may also clash with and existing cesspit.

After some measuring and head scratching (enlarging my bald spot) I determined that there would be a 60mm clearance to the cesspit and that the drive would be wide enough – maybe not enough for my brother who usually manages to hit something when he reverses out.



Friday 9th Jan:
Battering the slopes.

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