Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Travesty of Government #EQC Christchurch Rebuild in a Single Letter.

 

On a recent episode of Campbell Live a woman from Christchurch memorably said that though the Christchurch earthquakes were a disaster, the rebuild has become a travesty. Yes. Below is a letter we received last week from the Earthquake Commission (EQC – for my non-New Zealand readers, this is the state entity through which all earthquake claims must be dealt in the first instance):

 

 Thank you for your email. I have made a note of the points in your email on your claim so this information will be taken into account when your quote is reviewed. I have also labelled your quote as urgent in the hope that this will speed things up for you. Unfortunately there is not much more that we can do in the meantime as there are currently a large number of quotes in the queue for review and many are in similar states of urgency. I apologise sincerely for the delay and assure you that we are working as quickly as possible.

 
Kind regards,

 
[Name]

 
[Name]| Claims Administrator | Opt Out Team | Earthquake Commission

 


Over three and a half years ago.

I’ll repeat that.

Over three and a half years ago our house in Diamond Harbour would have been a reasonably cheap fix out of the Christchurch earthquakes, and certainly under the EQC cap of $100,000. These many years later we now have pools of dirty water on the bottom floor which has become unliveable, carpets and timber framing sodden, and I suspect we may be well over cap to fix anymore - (which, perversely, would be great, as we could finally then make it out of this incompetent, Kafkaesque bottleneck created by government through EQC and be able to deal with our private insurer regarding our specific damage and hence requirements, toward getting something done other than pointless scoping reports. As you can see from the letter writer’s sign off, we are currently in the process of trying to ‘opt out’ of the Fletcher rebuild, but this is proving as impossible as getting Fletcher’s to actually rebuild any damned thing.)

There is no better example than this letter of the reason why the Central Business District which has been taken over by government CERA in Christchurch remains an un-rebuilt, lifeless hole, which may never recover to attract business back, while suburban Christchurch has taken off with a life, verve and vigour created from the spontaneous order of individuals and businesspeople going about getting their lives and businesses back relatively unfettered by local and central government busy-bodies. After over three and a half years EQC have not even solved the bureaucratic bottleneck around ‘urgent quotations’ in a queue, let alone the more routine ones. Plus any possibility of action after all this time is still down to 'hope'.

This is bullshit. I never paid insurance so I could be better off via a claim, only so I would be left in the same place/situation on the insured event happening as I was beforehand. What a distance between that and this ‘there is not much more we can do in the meantime’ because we have this long queue, almost four years after an event. I would never take such nonsense from a private firm, indeed, no private firm could stay in business with lack of service to this extent, however, with government we have no choice.

And that’s why I don’t want government running my life, or the city I live; which further explains my frustration from the knowledge there is still a very good chance a Left-centric government that believes in just the incompetency seen here will be voted in the general election coming September. Because regardless of the evidence, too many of us have become brainwashed into thinking the state knows best, it’ll look after us, and can miraculously provide solutions better than we ourselves can. And that bullshit is caused by the death of a former classical liberal ethic in New Zealand under the draconian enforcement of Western tax surveillance states, and the dependency which has been created for so many to the big brother busy body governance those states now represent.

 

2 comments:

  1. Mark

    Welcome to a city with tens of thousands of stories like that one. I have an uninsured rental house because my insurer Ansvar left town after the quake, and I'm still waiting for repairs over three years later so that we can get insurance from another provider.

    It's worse than that however, the original EQC assessment carried out by an Australian policeman and a retired baker decided that ours was 'the best they had seen' and we subsequently had a full and final settlement offer from EQC for $1,400.

    As internal doors were swinging open by themselves, aluminumim windows jammed, foundations and brickwork cracked, I commissioned and paid for an independent builder and also an engineers report. - According to them, the house is 'racked' or twisted on its foundations.

    I made a formal complaint to EQC and provided them with the independent reports - they sent out seven (yes seven) staff who poured over the property for a full afternoon, only to have their head man look me in the eye and say 'we believe it is all historical damage'.

    Nice.

    I eventually encouraged EQC to send out yet another team, this time they agreed that the damage was much more extensive and not historical damage. They went away, and I have heard nothing since despite numerous phone calls.

    We are in the queue, and without insurance.

    Now I'm a persistant soul so I know it will come good for us in the end, however you can be sure this will not be the case for everyone.

    The quality of repairs that have been completed is yet another story waiting to be told.



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    1. Hopeless isn't it. The leaking we've got, and getting worse, is from where the tanking system has seemingly failed (house built into a hill). Despite no leak until after the quakes, though not until about nine or so months after the February 2011 quake, EQC already mooting the issue of being historical so I expect we've got a bun fight as you have.

      You're still covered by EQC as you were insured? Hopefully the fix will be under the cap for you.

      Good luck!



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