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.

 

How The West Was Lost – Architecture: Christchurch Rebuild.

An individualistic ethic that informs a society and its architecture will lead to cities that are ‘truthful’, prosperous, and exciting. Conformity, the individual bound by the prison of each other’s minds, will produce cities that are bland, creamy and homogenous. In microcosm it’s the difference between the free classical liberal society, built on the foundation of untrammelled property rights, and those societies that end up living behind razor wire.

The below atrocity happened in Christchurch just yesterday:

Christchurch property developer Antony Gough has slammed the city's Urban Design Panel for criticising his multimillion-dollar Terrace development plans and favouring the "bland, creamy [and] homogenous". 

The 17-strong panel of urban planners, designers and architects came under fire yesterday after its report suggested Gough's design for the former Oxford Tce Strip was flawed and lacked continuity.

However, a senior architect on the panel canned the colourfully attired developer's claims.

Who was that ‘senior architect’ and what was his problem with one of those inspiring people, so few in number, who is standing out as a hero of the rebuild, the damningly ‘colourfully attired’ Mr Gough?

 Panel member Jasper van der Lingen did not sit on the panel that discussed Gough's design but was still surprised by the criticism. 

… Van der Lingen, director of Sheppard & Rout, said buildings that formed the pleasant street scenes of Paris, New York and London were not all "wow".
 
Christchurch should save the spectacular designs, [snip]  for the major civic buildings.

Van der Lingen, you’ve missed your town planning calling, it was the Soviet Union, with its civic statues glorifying the state: we should strive for cities full of wow, not just civic buildings. And quite apart from that, this is Mr Gough’s own building, he’s taking the cost and the risk of it, so please, go away, it’s none of your damned business what he builds.

Campbell Live, Christchurch Rentals, Children, Dogs, Tattoos and Cannabis.

A theme of this blog is that we’re living in a semi-police-surveillance state (ie, welfare state), because people are emoting, not thinking about life, and Campbell Live’s piece on Christchurch last night was proof of this as well as the MSM emoting on issues again.

I would normally let The Cactus get the hate mail from the obligatory post below, but she must have missed the program.  Last night's show was centred on how a family would soon be out of their rental home, and couldn’t afford to find further accommodation in Christchurch, ostensibly due to the earthquakes. Let’s look at the family, objectively, with the reasoned eye of a landlord:

Dad had a low paying job  - security guard. (But, yes, at least had one).

Dad was covered in tattoos.

Mum and Dad had four, yes, four kids all under six, in my estimate.

Mum , Dad, and four kids own an Alsatian dog.

Mum and Dad haven’t been thinking.

Before the first child, get your career, or at least your own freehold home sorted so you control your destiny.  That’s the responsible thing. Four kids are hard on any property. And property ownership aside; why not just have the one child, and have the resources to give that child his or her best shot in life? Possibly two children still has a modicum of prudence, but four, in your circumstances: that was mental.

Dad, tattoos all over you like that, pretty much has destined you to low paying jobs, sorry. (See following).

And I love dogs, so let’s add to my dog ownership rules for the clueless: ‘you own a dog when you own a property’, end of; because if you own an Alsatian when you’re renting, you’ve just denied yourself ninety nine rental propositions out of every one hundred. Perhaps just buy guinea pigs, or rabbits until you own your own home.

Then the street group-shot in the piece of those complaining about Christchurch’s high rentals. I'm assuming the two women spoken to were solo mums - because it's impossible circa 2012 not to draw that conclusion anymore - with inestimable numbers of children, and yes, tattoos, everywhere, on those two women and pretty much the whole group. Good lord. Tattoos on fatty flesh overflowing pants, tattoos on hips, tattoos on tits, probably tattoos on kids, that whole fad has become so ridiculous.  When I see someone with tattoos visible all over them it tells me something:  this person’s not been thinking much, therefore, are they going to look after a landlord's property? And off topic now, plus call me reactionary, but I find tattoos aesthetically ugly: moreover, if tattoos and body piercings made people more interesting, then people with tattoos and body piercings would be more interesting. Though getting back to the Campbell Live piece, the opportunity costs of those tattoos, is how many weeks rental? And, of course, for the stereotype you’ve just bought into, vis a vis employment and rental opportunities - or rather, lack of: priceless, you'll probably never be able to afford to move beyond it.

Sorry, empathy for your children, not a lot of sympathy for the adults.

Footpiece: Re Campbell Live’s final piece on the crowd behaviour at the Sevens. Appalling, you won’t find me there. Here’s a thought, replace the vomit inducing booze culture with a cannabis culture, and the vibe at the Sevens would be great, no vomit, or angry young men and women widdling all over the carpark who can’t even stand straight. But no, Nanny State has arbitrarily - conspiracy theories about crony links to an alcohol lobby aside - decreed cannabis be illegal, even a humane medicinal use of it in hospices: it's a binge drinking, Neanderthal projectile vomiting, violent, alcohol culture we're to have. Crazy, but that's life in the Big State where you don't own your life no more, no more.

… Work time for me …

Christchurch Needs to Grow Up - School Closures

This morning NBR posted a piece on how the Advertising Standards Authority have found earthquake advertisements – showing what to do in the event of one - by Civil Defence were not insensitive to the children of Christchurch, after a complaint was made to that effect. I simply paste below my reply to that thread:

This is silly. As someone still with a house in Christchurch, but not living there any longer, my opinion is that some probably small, but vocal, section of the city is reverting to cry-babyhood. On the issue of school closures, for example, teachers and parents instead of teaching their (primary school) children in an adult fashion about the inevitable nature of change - that can be embraced for its positives - are feeding them inappropriate emotions on how to make a childish tantrum pay off politically via protest. On Campbell Live I saw one poor kid in my old primary school, Greenpark, worked up into tears: that was irresponsible.

Yes, there are lots of problems, and mainly in the way Government is squashing property rights within the CBD, and in how Government EQC interacts with insurers - we've given up having our house fixed for years - but regarding the school issue, the Cathedral issue, et al: some people in the city have to grow up, and teachers need to set a proper example to the children, of adult behaviour, rather than operating on the level of their students, John Minto or Sue Bradford. Plus if you want to keep your schools open, there is a solution: charter schools.

(Note it's the 'old issue' again: feeling on issues, rather than thinking them through. I will be posting the full piece on 'Feeling Our Way to the Police State, by not Thinking About It' soon.)

Update:

A nicely written op-ed on the Campbell Live reporting of this by John Roughan at Granny Herald.

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