Chch City Council creates its own reality

Suburbs dropped to lift water quality rating

The north-western suburbs have been hived off from the rest of Christchurch by the city council in a bid to improve its water-quality rating.

The move to separate suburbs such as Fendalton and Burnside means Christchurch has escaped a D grade for its drinking water.

New Ministry of Health figures measuring the risk of water contamination give a Da for the north-west of Christchurch and a Ba for the remainder of the city.

The whole of Christchurch had previously been a Ba, the highest grade it can receive without treatment.

The lowest grade is E and the highest is Aa.

Community and Public Health drinking-water assessor Judy Williamson said the council had changed its water grading boundaries when they were made aware of the Da rating.

"If you have got several reticulation zones, then the overall grading is a reflection of the lowest grade. Christchurch would have got a Da, so they (the council) re-registered the north-west as a completely separate community," she said.

The capital "D" was the grade for the water source and treatment plant and the small "a" referred to the water reticulation infrastructure and its management, Williamson said.

"If the population is greater than 10,000, the source and treatment should be `B' and distribution should be `a', so Christchurch is not getting there," she said.

We live in one of those NW 'bubs, but I haven't been able to find out where our water comes from. I'm sure it's perfectly fine. But that's not the point. If you're in Chch long enough, like say 24 hours, you'll hear someone rave about how 'Chch's water is the best in the world--they don't even need to treat it!'

There's also this persistent myth that the water is 40,000 years old. Maybe the Chch City Council can change the calendar to make that true, too.

It'll be interesting to see if anything comes from this. The NW is where most of the nice suburbs are and I doubt all the rich folks who live here are going to be pleased about this. But, on the other hand, it could be that people will prefer embracing the myth of pristine Chch tap water to facing the reality of having to treat it.

Nice to pick up right where you left off ...

These guys, not me.

I bet some people are already talking about the post-All Star Game collapse. ;)

Tickets booked ... May 31st

Prompted by the recent price increases in Air NZ's domestic flights and predictions that their int'l flights will soon follow, I've finally gotten off my duff and booked our return flight.

There's no way to get from NZ to Chicago at anything approaching a reasonable hour ... nevermind getting to Wisconsin. So we've decided to go a little easier on ourselves this time and we'll be spending the night in San Fran--in a room with a Bay view, no less, since who knows when we'll be there again. Then the next day we'll have a leisurely flight to Chicago.

On the way here we had 8 suitcases, 4 carryons, and 2 car seats. We're hoping to get it down to 3 suitcases, 2 carryons, and 1 car seat. (Evan's comes apart and can go into one of the suitcases.) That should make things a little less crazy.

We'll be doing the Grand Tour in reverse: A few days in Wisconsin, then on to Chris's house, then New York, where Debi and the boys will stay for a bit while I go on to CT and NH to get some minor details sorted--like buying a house.

F-U Helen Clark

Apparently, those Tibetan monks can't be trusted as much as the Chinese military.

"We don't know whether these protests started off peaceful. What we do know is there have been many reports of looting, arson and rioting. Anywhere in the world, that will get a response," Ms Clark said.

Yup. Well, f-u Helen Clark. I guess you wouldn't want to take a stand and ruin that free trade agreement you're going to sign next week, do you?

Inflation in New Zealand

In addition to the prediction that gas will hit $2 per litre here (which would make gas $6 USD per gallon), food prices are going up as well. Dairy, in particular, is through the roof.


From last night's TV One News report:

Two litres of Milk is 20% more expensive, than this time last year.

It was a $1.85 last year, now it sells for $2.22. [I personally haven't seen milk for $2.22 anywhere. It's on sale for $2.50 for 2 litres today; the regular price is $3.00.]

Cheese is up by 60%, and Butter 92% dearer.

Your total food bill works out to be 9% more expensive than 12 months ago.

And ASB's Chief Economist Nick Tuffley, believes life will only get dearer.

"We are going to continue over the next couple of years to face high inflation, food prices, energy prices such as petrol and electricity," he says.

Corruption and Exploitation in NZ

Revealed: Air New Zealand's Mile-High Pay Gap

Air New Zealand's Shanghai-based flight attendants are paid a quarter the salary of their NZ colleagues - less than the legal minimum wage here.

The Chinese attendants - who work side-by-side with New Zealanders on flights between Auckland and Shanghai - are also paid only a third of the allowances given to their Kiwi counterparts while they are working away from home.

[snip]

Air NZ, which is 76 per cent-owned by the Government, said last night that the Chinese crew were employed by a company in China, and it was unfair to compare the salaries.

[snip]

One Chinese air stewardess said her monthly base salary was $520 and she got an extra $4.30 for every hour of flight time. This totals much less than New Zealand's legal minimum wage of $11.25 an hour.

Air NZ said it did not have to pay the minimum wage because the staff were on secondment from a Chinese company, Fasco.

But each has a New Zealand work permit giving Air NZ as the employer.

"We were led to believe that we will be working for Air NZ, then after we are successful, they drop the bomb telling us we are to sign a contract with a Chinese company and will be employed under Chinese terms," one air stewardess said.

[snip]

The Department of Labour, which oversees immigration, said it was aware that Fasco was the employer of the Chinese staff, but would not say why Air NZ was shown as their employer on the permits.
[more]

So basically you have a government-owned business violating its own minimum wage and immigration laws. Frankly, it doesn't surprise me--the Chinese are the Mexicans of New Zealand. Progressive paradise my ass.

In New Zealand, life is cheap

Actually, it's worth about $5,000.

A 19 year-old drunk driver ran a stop sign while he was using his cell phone to send a text message. As a result, he killed an elderly couple who were on their way home from their 49th wedding anniversary party.

His sentence? Home detention for 9 months, 200 hours community service, and a lost license for 30 months. Oh, and he has to pay the family of the couple he killed $10,000 reparation.

WTF? No, seriously, WTF?

I don't think this kid's life should be ruined for all time. But he killed two people thanks to being double-plus-stupid. 200 hours of community service is about 5 hours per week during those 9 months. Maybe the 9 months at home playing Grand Turismo on the X-Box will make him a better drunk driver.

On edit: Debi reminded me that this story has had legs here in NZ not because the kids was drunk--which happens to be a common occurrence--but because he was texting. If you click through the link and read the story, you'll see that focus.

More crime in the city ... or not

From today's Press

'Lawless' boy racers shut down main road

Thousands of boy racers turned central Christchurch into the latest battlefield in the war against car hoons on the weekend.

Christchurch's Little Hagley and North Hagley Parks were yesterday littered with smashed glass and hundreds of discarded bottles after Harper Avenue was grid-locked by thousands of boy racers.

They were drawn to the city for the annual Fours and Rotary Autoshow at Westpac Stadium.

Boy-racer bans on the Oxford Terrace Strip and several streets on the city outskirts where they had previously gathered did nothing to stop the problem re-emerging on Harper Avenue.

Police said the scene was "lawless" with officers being attacked with thrown bottles and diesel poured on the road.

Hundreds of youths drinking along the park's main thoroughfare honked, yelled, performed burnouts and revved engines well into Sunday morning, making sleep impossible for residents and guests at nearby hotels.

Harper Avenue was closed for two hours while the crowd was dispersed and the road was cleaned of diesel.

There were no arrests but police said they had identified offenders and would be calling on them throughout the week.



American tourist Robert Moulton said he would be telling people back home in Portland, Maine, to "stay out of there (Christchurch)" after he had to change rooms in the middle of the night to sleep.

Moulton said he and his wife loved Hagley Park but while walking back to his hotel a group of boy-racer cars roared past, scaring them.

"They hung out the window and yelled profanities at us. I will not stay here again," Moulton said. "You're going to lose tourist dollars. Hooligans are running the city."

No reports about how many were dressed as Santa Claus.

Sausage Fest 2008!

Okay, I couldn't resist giving this post that title. ;)

A subject of recent discussion at one of the forums I frequent is the quality of sausages in New Zealand. The long and the short of it is that the Kiwis all believe that Heller's sausages are the best--and probably the best in the world.

I disagree, since they are made with at least 20% filler--wheat gluten, soya, or rice--and are artificially flavored. Their 'smoked' sausages contain only smoke flavor.

Now, I don't have a problem with anyone liking those particular sausages. Hell, they can eat the purple ones for all I care. There's no arguing matters of taste.

But what I find amazing is that Heller's brand are for all intents and purposes the only sausages you can find in the grocery stores here. Pak 'n' Save, the largest grocery store chain in Chch, with the largest square-foot area stores, have 12-foot long meat cases filled with nothing but Heller's sausages. And you'll find no other brand in their stores. Most of the other grocery stores follow suit.

I don't know if the grocery stores have exclusivity agreements with their suppliers, but that could explain why it's also nearly impossible to find Pepsi products anywhere. (Not that I care ... I haven't bought a Pepsi since I don't remember when.)

What this means is that the one company that makes hot dogs also makes bratwurst, breakfast sausages, 'Italian' sausages, chicken sausages, pork sausages, beef sausages ... so you can imagine what the quality and variety is really like. Frankly (no pun intended) they all suck in that way that all Doritos suck: fundamentally, there's nothing *wrong* with them, but don't try to fool us into thinking that different color artificial cheese makes one any different from the others.

It gives me appreciation for the way that grocery stores and the food supply chain works in the US. When you think about it, the American consumer should be faced with less choice than the NZ consumer; we should be like the future America depicted in Demolition Man, where all restaurants are Taco Bell. Instead, I can walk into Demoula's and find at least two different--and equally delicious--brands of Italian sausage. I can find any kind of hot dog I'd care to eat--or to feed to my dog, if I had one.

I don't really understand why the situation is as it is here in NZ. Perhaps they've allowed a few monopolies to go unchecked and run rampant over the consumer. Current dairy prices and the record-breaking profits of Frontera are evidence in favor of that argument. Or perhaps consumers here don't really care and they'll happily eat crap as long as it's award-winning crap.

"Pedestrians Give Way to Traffic"

I've written before about the dangers of being a pedestrian in NZ, but the sign we saw the other day takes the cake: "Pedestrians Give Way to Traffic."

I'm really trying to wrap my head around the attitude of drivers in NZ, especially with regard to pedestrians.

Two things have made this stick in my head over the past day or so. One happened yesterday as I watched yet another person stand in the median on a very busy city street, waiting for a gap in traffic to sprint across. I've learned not to stop, and I don't like that. I know if I do stop, the person won't know what to do; since Kiwis have been conditioned not to expect people to stop, when you do stop, they just stand there, dumbstruck. I also know that if I do stop, I'm likely to be rammed from behind or, even more dangerously, the driver approaching from the rear will swerve to the left and attempt to pass me in the bike lane on the shoulder--and potentially hit the pedestrian I've stopped for.

The other thing happened just this morning. As I walked Evan to school with Connor on my shoulders, we had to cross a street that makes a very sharp turn, making it hard to see any cars that could be approaching from that direction. As we got to the street, Evan stopped and looked both ways and began to cross. The road was clear, but I could see what he couldn't--a car coming around the corner. Now, he wasn't in any kind of danger. The car was far enough away and he would have gone quickly enough that he would have made it safely. But, I don't want him to learn to count on the car traveling the speed limit, so I held him back.

The woman driving the car must have seen him begin to cross the road, and probably hit the brakes. I assume she slowed down because as she passed us, she gunned the engine and sped off down the road.

I've found this to be fairly typical of Kiwi drivers. Pedestrians are not people, but obstacles. The common courtesy you expect to find when crossing the street or walking in a parking lot simply just does not exist here. Last week we were nearly run down by a woman in a minivan making a U-turn in the intersection we were crossing--which incidentally is right in front of the school. She was in such a hurry to drop off her kids, she nearly ran over mine. I regularly see people in parking lots back out of spots irrespective of the presence of pedestrians, swerve around pedestrians, or refuse to stop to let people cross--even stooped-over old men and women with baby carriages.

To cross a street, one must jaywalk. It is literally impossible to cross a street at an intersection if there is any traffic at all. Most intersections (away from the tourist areas, mind you) don't have cross walks painted on them, and drivers pull out into the intersecting road as far as they can, blocking crossing at the corners. If there's a line of cars, you either have to pick your way through them, thereby risking not being seen by cars turning into the intersection, or walk up the street several car lengths (at least). If you stand on the corner, even if there is a stop sign, most cars will not stop far enough back from the road to give you space to cross.

Part of the pedestrian problem is the lack of stop signs. Almost all intersections have 'Give Way' signs or no sign at all, which means 'give way.' The result of this is that drivers approaching intersections aren't looking at the intersection, but rather looking down the road to see if they can roll right through. (This is disconcerting as a driver too, since approaching intersections means looking for drivers who may be hoping to not have to stop. Very often drivers at those intersections will stop very suddenly, with their noses nearly in the travel lane.)

I'm not saying that you don't see this kind of thing in the US. I've crossed Central Avenue in Dover often enough to know that it's something you really don't want to do. I've seen people speed out of the school parking lot. But what is noticeably bad behavior in the US is noticeably common behavior here.

As a larger issue, I'm not really sure what this says about Kiwi culture. I'd like to be able to report that the lack of courtesy ends once they step out of their cars, but I'm not sure it does. People think nothing of standing and having a conversation in the middle of the aisle in the grocery store or in the middle of the sidewalk (in front of the crosswalk, no less, so that the dozen of us crossing the street in front of Evan's school had to walk around them). They budge in line, coming from the side, and if a new checkout opens, people will literally run from the end of the old line to be first in the new one. A handful of times I've waited for help from a cashier who couldn't be bothered to allow me to interrupt their personal conversation--not with a customer, mind you, but with one of their friends who stopped by to see them or call them at work.

Yes, I actually waited about 5 minutes at Blockbuster on day while the woman behind the counter had a personal phone conversation. From her side of the conversation, it was about how much partying the other person had done over the weekend. The kicker ... when she hung up she said to me, 'Sorry, that was the new owner.'

Ninety Days and Counting

Trying to make the most of the last few weeks here, but definitely looking forward to Famous Dave's ... a full rack of St. Louis style, naked, slathered in Devil's Spit, with green beans and cole slaw sides, a nice cold tall local beer, and some pecan pie for desert (if I have room).