NZ Mine Safety

"Peter Whittall opens mine safety consulting business" headline on Yahoo.co.nz Are we or is Peter Whittall crazy? This is putting the lunatic in charge of the asylum! Here is the former chief executive of Pike River Coal where 29 men lost their lives in November 2010. This is the person ultimately responsible for the running of Pike River and under whose oversight the safety concerns raised by workers was ignored. Okay, there is no law against him setting up a company but for heaven's sake let us hope that all the people he tries to consult with and for are made aware of his past disaster rate. I seriously hope he makes his involvement in the Pike River disaster clear in his company prospectus. But let us not leave the NZ Government without blame. Their own labour department, who are in charge of safety in the workplace did zero to ensure the Pike River mine was operated in a safe manner.

NZ Totalitarian Regime

The heading is perhaps a bit strong but the refusal of visas to the MV Rena crew being kept in NZ awaiting further charges and trial is very reminiscent of states like Iran, Saudi Arabia and the like. Here we have two crew members who in all honesty did a stupid thing and grounded their ship. That caused some inconvenience to locals who had to clean up the beaches and it killed some wild life. In the greater scheme of things, big deal! The captain and the navigation officer were arrested the grounding, charged under the Maritime Transport Act for "operating a vessel in a manner causing unnecessary danger or risk". Charges carry a maximum penalty of up to 12 months in prison or a fine up to $10,000. They were also charged under the Resources Management Act for the "discharge of harmful substances from ships or offshore installations", carrying a maximum penalty of a $300,000, or two years' imprisonment, and $10,000 for every day the offending continues. Last month, the captain faced four fresh charges, and the navigation officer faced three more after it emerged that they had allegedly altered the ship's documents in the wake of the grounding. While all that seems very clear and not disputable, why stop their spouses from visiting them? NZ immigration said as a general rule a visitor's visa would not automatically be granted to the spouse of a person facing court action, simply for the purpose of visiting that person. When other countries do this NZers in general think this is disgraceful and I for one think the NZ Government is acting in a disgraceful manner in this instance. In comparison we have the owner operators of Pike River, operating a mine in a dangerous manner killing 29 men, no one is being detained, all those responsible are free to come and go as they please. The NZ Government official responsible for overseeing safety standards goes scot-free, he should at least face civil proceeding for not carrying out his official responsibility in a proper manner and the government should be held liable for not ensuring that their departments are working to a world class level. The head of the government department responsible for work place safety should most definitely lose his job for negligence. The management of the mine should be facing manslaughter charges for ignoring warnings from staff regarding safety in the mine and the worker who claimed he was intimidated by management should also be charges with actions or in his case none action likely to cause death or serious injury for being too lily livered to stand up to management and not calling the miners out of the mine until the safety process, procedures and equipment etc was in place. When you compare these two cases it becomes evident that the Government through its agencies places greater importance on a bit of sand and a few sea birds than it does on the loss of life through its own inaction. If that isn't the case then perhaps it is because the crew members from the MV Rena are from the Philippines and are foreign nationals, somewhat racist I think! Perhaps the heading should be 'NZ Racist Regime'.

Another Blog

Two posts in one day! This is not a real post as such, just to inform anyone who reads this blog that I have a second blog about life on a lifestyle section, not many posts and really just getting into developing that into what I hope will be of interest to those who have purchased a lifestyle block or are perhaps considering it. It may help people decide if that is what they want to do or some ideas of what to do with the one you currently live on. I know I am always looking for new ideas and ways to make lifestyle block management easier and also to make it add to the cost of running it. So here is the link to the lifestyle block blog. Please take a look and offer me some ideas on how to make it better.

Christmas Closedown

We are into December, half way through and everything is focused on Christmas and the New Year and of course, here in New Zealand it is the holiday season. I don't know about other Southern Hemisphere countries but in New Zealand the main focus is the summer holiday. On National Radio the other day there was a member of the afternoon show guest panel who mentioned one of his pet hates and I must say I can agree with him. In November we celebrate Guy Fawkes night with fireworks and such like. Why on earth New Zealand celebrates Guy Fawkes I have no idea, there isn't a revolutionary or anarchistic tendency to be found anywhere, but still it is an excuse to let off a few fireworks. In years past fireworks were on sale for quite a period of time before and after Guy Fawkes night but due to pressure groups this got restricted to 4 days before and including Guy Fawkes night. Now back to the Christmas pet hate. The guest speaker mentioned how the New Zealand public have taken to that quite well so we should ban the use of the word Christmas until the 1st of December. That way we wouldn't be assaulted by a barrage of advertising for Christmas from all those money grabbing people who have turned a Christian festival into the largest retail festival of the year. I'm inclined to agree with this speaker. We even have supposed intelligent people saying that the real meaning of Christmas is giving. What? I thought it was all about the birth of Jesus, nothing more, nothing less. Having said that only Christians should be interested in the event, not every Tom, Dick or Harry from every religion there is. If we look back further then the Christmas story is one invented by the church to replace the Mid Winter festivals of old and the Northern and Southern hemispheres would have celebrated that at the appropriate time. That is what we need to get back to. Let the Christians celebrate Christmas and the birth of Jesus. Do not make that an excuse for excessive spending that has nothing at all to do with the religious festival. That would make more sense for all of mankind. With Christmas being mid summer in the southern hemisphere everything occurs together. The Christmas event flows on into the annual holiday season and that in effect means that after late January the working people must work for 11 months before the next long break from work. In New Zealand we also have anniversary days. These are public holidays that belong to a region, for example Wellington Anniversary, Auckland Anniversary etc and these are Mondayized days to create a long weekend and celebrate the anniversary of that particular location. There are 12 of these in total, so if you worked around the country you could find on an extra 12 days of the year that the region you were in was in effect closed! My thought is to do away with the anniversary day, combine them all together by legislation and create a two week break in July for all workers as an entitlement. In the Northern Hemisphere, take Britain for example, you get 25 days annual leave and most large places of work, factories, government departments etc generally either close or run a skeleton staff over the two weeks surrounding Christmas and New Year. Then in the summer months workers take their annual leave. This means that the working public get two good breaks per year with the intervening months broken up with Easter and some sort of solstice public holiday at the opposite end of the year. This is a much more sensible arrangement. So back to Christmas. Turn it back into the religious festival it is supposed to be. Ban all retail outlets and other money grabbing organizations pushing Christmas as a time for wasting large amounts of money and food and bring in a defined break in July for the New Zealand worker. Let's get back to the original celebrations that we have renamed to fit in with "Christian" festivals. Mid Winter, Spring Equinox, Mid Summer, Autumnal Equinox and these would be appropriate to the hemisphere in which you live. Not all the world is Christian, in fact most of it isn't, so why on earth turn the birth of Jesus into such a huge world wide event. The answer to that is corporate greed from all those operating in the retail sector and suppliers to it.

The Voters Have Chosen

Thankfully the New Zealand voters voted wisely with their party vote in last Saturdays general election and basically voted to keep Don Brash out of parliament. The man who said "I'm leader for the next three years not matter what!" was in fact lying again, he resigned immediately. Good thing too. With Don Brash it is a bit like to old country and western song lyric, "Why did you believe me when I told you that I love you when you know I've been a liar all my life". So it is back with a National government for the next 3 years with a slim 2 seat majority. Good old Winston Peters made it back into parliament and got a respectable 6.8 percent of the total vote. At least we should get some colorful debate and no doubt the slow leak of some scandal or other he has managed to uncover. As for the rest it is Act with one seat, that result shows that any vote for Act was a wasted vote. Let us hope he gets kicked out next time around unless Act can do something to justify its continued existence as a political party. Peter Dunne and United Future will surely disappear when he steps down in the not too distant future. I'm sure he will do another 3 years but who knows after that. The Maori vote went down, that's the usual price for supporting another party to form a government. The perception from a lot of your voters tends to reflect the strong feelings people have against your larger coalition partner rather than what you may have achieved by supporting that coalition. Along with that was the split that the stupid Hone Harawira. He managed to get himself voted into parliament but that is all. Now we can look forward to seeing how the mix in parliament manage to conduct the affairs of the country for three years. One thing I think we can safely say is that for the majority of people we will all be poorer with the ever increasing burden that government puts onto the resident population. I'd love to be wrong on that!

Too FAT to Fly

A US Airways passenger claims he was forced to stand for seven hours during a flight because the obese man next to him was overflowing into his seat. Arthur Berkowitz told consumer website elliott.org he had to stand for most of the US Airways seven-hour flight from Alaska to Philadelphia, and could not buckle his seat belt during take-off and landing. The snippet above comes from Yahoo Travel. The airline says that the man did not have to stand, very unreasonable since his own seat was partially taken over by the passenger next to him. With the epidemic of obesity around it is about time that airlines and other passenger services that have limited size seats started charging passengers by size and weight. That would be an incentive for fat folk to slim down, particularly if they travel a lot. Let's face it, if you want to send a parcel it is usually costed on a size / weight formula. Why should smaller people pay as much as large ones? A plane full of small people would use less fuel, could fit more people on, it's a win all round. Airlines could have flight categories, fat flights, normal flights and small flights, each plane fitted out to suit the target group and priced accordingly. Fat people have a larger carbon footprint and should be made to pay for it in these carbon credit times! It would have been nice if the flight staff had given up one of their small seats to the passenger affected by his fat fellow flyer, after all it was their mistake in not assessing that this passenger would need two seat. They could have put the fat man in the cargo hold, after all it was only a seven hour flight and his fat would have kept him warm, plus he would have had a seven hour fasting diet. Perhaps it is about time that airlines had fewer, bigger seats in some areas to accommodate larger people so that we could all fly in comfort. We all pay enough for a comfortable passage!

Tea Cup Cop Out

Justice Helen Winkelmann,the ultimate fence sitter. Today she declined to rule on whether a conversation between John Banks and John Key in a Newmarket cafe was public or private. She claimed that a ruling might prejudice a police investigation and therefore has almost ensured that the contents of the conversation will not be made public. What a lily livered decision! Judges are supposed to set precedents by their rulings and in this case could have saved further tax payer dollars being spent by police on a pathetic case. On top of that we have a weak set of media editors unwilling to 'publish and be damned'. What are we paying these weak kneed judges to do? Here we have a highly payed professional, justice Helen Winkelmann, supposedly one of the best from the legal profession, unable to make a simple ruling that if you are in a public place be very careful if you want to have a private conversation. It's a bit like the fools you see around the place shouting down their cell phones saying 'don't listen, this is a private conversation'. If that was the case then take it somewhere private. The whole decision is really a none decision. You cannot expect privacy in a cafe dining area. If John Key and John Banks think you can then they are much too misguided to run the country and represent thousands of voters in their electorates. Let's be frank, our supposedly best leaders and minds are woefully inadequate.