Monthly Archives: May 2017

Tim Walker’s Prisoner

Paremoremo prison malcontent Arthur Taylor is at it again, this time lobbying to bring the Power of the Vote to New Zealand’s incarcerated.

It is generally understood that if a person commits an act deemed by society to be ‘unlawful’, society must then do its best to remove that person from society – say, by sending that person to prison – primarily based on that person’s refusal to conform to the laws, the rules and regulations set by that society…

Arthur Taylor is someone who does not typically conform to our established ‘rules of society’ – who, on account of his ability to constantly find fault with, thus bring lawsuits upon, the system under which he is currently being held at our Government’s (taxpayer’s) expense, must be the most costly prisoner New Zealand Corrections has ever entertained – and is someone who is doing his ongoing best to cost the taxpayer still more money by dragging through the judicial system yet another of his ‘jailhouse grievances’.

…Through a person’s decision to not conform to the laws, the rules and regulations of an established society, obviously, implicitly, that person has accepted that they must forego many of the rights otherwise promoted by their – now ostensibly rejected – ‘society’…

60-year-old Taylor has for 38 of the past 40 years been a guest of Paremoremo, where he has for the duration of his stay been causing his outspoken, loutishly ignorant yet pretentiously intellectual, variety of domestic unrest; all the while wasting Corrections’ and Government time and money which, while neither were rightfully his to waste in the first place as a democracy of the New Zealand Government, Paremoremo Correctional Facility is beholden to provide.

…Arthur Taylor happens to be one such, supposedly free-thinking, quintessentially idealistic sophist who, as a result of his lifetime dedicated to establishment-spurning, ill-conformity and downright lawlessness, has spent the majority of his adulthood under incarceration, where his most recent source of upset is regarding his fellow prisoners’ right to vote while in prison…

Renowned with some kind of misguided affection as the ‘Jailhouse Lawyer’, the extent of Mr Taylor’s consumption of Police resources spans 152 convictions including bank robbery, burglary, fraud, and drugs charges – that’s without taking into account the twelve occasions he has escaped Police custody (more recently finding freedom alongside double-murderer Graham Burton) hence the additional costs incurred throughout each of those recaptures – surely painting this slimy cretin as one of New Zealand’s greatest liabilities.

…When did someone decide that jailed prisoners – with all their ‘lack of concern for society’, with their inexplicable ‘will to devastate and destroy life’, with their astonishing ‘deficits in empathy’, with their totally ‘self-centred and self-serving demeanours’, with their weak, selfish and utterly gutless ‘compulsion above any and all else for self-preservation’ – when did someone decide that these deplorable urchins ought to have the same benefits and liberties; the same rights as the nation’s law-abiding?…

Arthur Taylor is without question New Zealand Corrections’ single biggest consumer of resources – while not officially documented the total financial cost of accommodating/subduing/pandering to this creature’s demands must reach well into the tens of millions – yet this travesty of a citizen only ever demands more from his homeland.

…The Vote in New Zealand’s democracy is a privilege which has been set essentially by our people, in order to ultimately benefit the good folk comprising our society…

He has already taken so much from New Zealand society – he has outright exploited, and is in the process of further exploiting, our nation’s system of democracy – also indirectly the people who make our society great; certainly the only thing Arthur Taylor now deserves is less of our time and indeed, much less of our attention.

…Failure to recognise, to uphold the basis of New Zealand society is to relinquish the right to be a part of, to elect who stands for, or to make any decision about, that society.

Assuredly, the only thing Arthur Taylor, anyone surrounding Arthur Taylor, or anyone sharing Arthur Taylor’s views, deserves, is less.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by A R Seoul

Photography by Paul Yer Heading

 

 

Tim Walker’s Smoke V

The ACT party is pushing an initiative that would see a portion of Government tobacco tax used to increase safety around New Zealand’s cigarette retailers.

Disgracefully, Auckland dairy owners are still having their livelihoods torn apart at the hands of petty criminals, who no doubt perceive these – typically Indian – convenience store operators as ‘easy targets’ or ‘an easy way to get some quick cash’…

This audacious spate of ‘petty’ lawlessness – where intruders enter a shop, scare/beat the attendant into submission then help themselves to cash/cigarettes – has for some time been an issue across New Zealand, and particularly the Auckland region (see, Tim Walker’s Thug II, III, IV, and V) yet inexplicably, it is not an issue that appears to have ever been properly addressed.

…Last month multiple attacks were carried out on Auckland dairies, with several more in the month before that, but with the severity of a number of these attacks resulting in the hospitalisation of the shop’s proprietor or other on-duty staff member…

It’s the ACT party who have finally stood up and demanded an end to this ridiculous run of lawlessness; they want part of the Government’s allocation of tobacco tax to be used in helping those people who, despite providing such a fine service for our communities, are being abused by select groups in those same communities.

…Either the New Zealand Police Force don’t consider the security of our humble dairy owners a priority or – perhaps the feeling is that the juvenile street thugs who are being talked into perpetrating these acts (often gang prospects acting under instruction from older gang members) just aren’t worth their time because Police have so many more important crimes to manage such as busting otherwise good folk for smoking weed – there is simply too little policing available to make any kind of notable difference to this cause…

ACT maintain that some of New Zealand’s tobacco tax revenue should be used to fund additional policing around these problem areas, and/or go towards implementation of the self-service cigarette machines historically used in pubs and bars, which would certainly remove a good deal of the onus from, thus making life a lot less dangerous for, these mortally endangered shop keepers.

…Given that dairy owners are effectively risking their lives to sell goods that ultimately – after subtracting the wholesale cost of the product then taking away the percentage of what’s left that must go into lining the Government’s pocket – earns the aforementioned retailer a decidedly miniscule profit, the New Zealand Government must surely feel some responsibility towards ensuring the safety of their tobacco vendors…

In under a decade the cost of a pack of cigarettes has more than doubled (in taxation) while the number of Kiwi smokers has reduced by less than 10 percent therefore, given that in 2012 smokers paid the Government $1 billion in taxes while costing the Government $1.1 billion in healthcare (see, Tim Walker and the Future of Smoking), by 2017, obviously our Government is taking a hefty profit.

…Regarding the comparison of ‘danger incurred’ against ‘profits gained’, for a family man hoping to see his kids grow up in Auckland, such is the lack of incentive to even sell cigarettes anymore that a number of Auckland dairies are now boasting signage, ‘Cigarettes Are Not Sold Here’, in the hope that by removing themselves from the cigarette trade they might avoid the related scourge of these Devil Sticks…

The New Zealand Government has for years effectively been using service stations and dairies in order to reap massive gains in tobacco tax; surely then that Government is implicitly obligated to provide protection to those who deal in this product, on their behalf..?

…It’s a fact that alcohol ultimately costs the nation (see, Tim Walker’s Smoke IV), as it seems that alcohol duty has always been insufficient to cover the exponentially increased cost of special event, and general weekend nightlife, policing, also the ACC cost stemming from alcohol-induced violence (that’s street and domestic), as well as the crime that booze inspires, and that’s without even touching on the healthcare side of it (liver disease etc); yet smokers have only ever had their various ‘related illnesses’ and the Government has always made damn sure that they have covered themselves financially for that aspect, thus to the point: assuredly, there is tobacco-related money in the Government stash for additional security outside dairies…

As a country are we honestly prepared to stand by while this kind of, supposedly petty, offending continues to take place right in front of our faces; do we seriously find it acceptable that peoples’ livelihoods, these people’s lives, are being ravaged and destroyed by shitheaded gangs of delinquent thugs?

…Perhaps more to the point though, do we actually not care about the wellbeing of one of our country’s most valuable resources – New Zealand’s vast populous of working migrants – do we truly have so little respect for these fine men and women?

The ACT party cares; they are determined to do what it takes to tap into this Government cache of tobacco tax for the safety, for the protection and for the wellbeing of New Zealand’s Indian dairy owners.

Respect.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Indie Anne Wurka

Photography by D Savra Spect

Tim Walker’s Building II

The fact is that Auckland house prices have for years been rising at a speed disproportionate to that of other New Zealand cities; the belief is that this inexorable pricing increase is rendering housing in Auckland ‘unaffordable’.

At what point did the majority of (Auckland) Kiwi adults start upholding the belief – perhaps after leaving home at a young age then whiling away an early adulthood producing not much of substance but while renting an overpriced city flat and surrounded by a cohort of like-minded imbeciles thus likely spending the bulk of any income on a frivolous array of questionable purchases as well as of course, rent – that after going through that youthful ‘insipid’ phase where a delinquent will make every effort to exert on life as little effort as possible yet still expect to reap gains similar to that of those who have put in the hard hours while also enjoying the novelty of a lifestyle of uninhibited excess coupled with minimal responsibility and maximal sloth resulting in optimal squalor, when did they seriously start upholding the belief that they ought to be able to simply step out of the aforementioned juvenile existence, and straight up into ownership of their own home?…

Given that the minimum deposit for a house across much of Auckland region is 20 percent of the house’s entire value, and given further that the median house price sits at somewhere around $1 million, generally, that’s maybe $200 grand a buyer needs to have available if they wish to engage the purchase of a home.

…A remarkable young woman appeared on the News the other night in a fine example of – in fact it must have been very much akin to what people used to do back in the days before everything was required to happen ‘instantaneously’, ‘right now’, ‘immediately’, ‘at this second’, ‘without delay’ or, ‘without any real planning or effort needed on my part’, and indeed – what sensible folk surely still do when they prepare to enter the housing market…

Realistically, for a first home buyer at least, one would expect the total house price to be significantly less than $1 million and ideally (but not invariably), a housing novice would first enlist the support and/or financial backing of a currently home-owning family member or such.

…The above, extremely mature, brilliant young lady demonstrated a fine example of what today’s New Zealand is so clearly lacking as, still only in her teenage years, she casually explained how she was proud to be ‘well on the way’ to becoming an Auckland property-owner, courtesy of the fact that she had ‘started saving for a house when she was 15’…

Obviously the best way to accumulate that elusive first house deposit is over time, as opposed to all at once, yet in this modern age where the art of planning, organisation or, dare I say it, forward thinking, seems to have dissipated along with our rapidly diminishing attention spans, the whole ‘over time’ thing is not a concept that many of us feel we should ever have to entertain.

…“Get off yours butts and build more houses,” is the Opposition’s frightfully short-sighted rebuttal, in the face of public nagging regarding Auckland’s high house prices/housing crisis in general; but obviously, in order to build more houses more land must first be made available and in order to provide more land the city of Auckland must continue to expand out over its fringes thereby potentially encroaching on valuable agricultural land currently needed to produce the nation’s crops (see, Tim Walker’s Sprawl), which is another (wholly informative and rather boring) issue altogether…

The main issue is in fact the issue hidden beneath the issue that these northern folk are so readily bemoaning; it’s not so much ‘high house prices’ caused by ‘the housing shortage’ which is making houses ‘unaffordable’ for most people; oh no, it’s that ‘most people’ appear to lack the foresight, the dedication, the maturity, the basic sense or indeed, the brainpower to comprehend the premise of building one’s savings over time in order to begin the purchasing process of their very first home.

…Also interviewed on the News the other night was a young couple who, when asked “…do you own a house in Auckland?” replied, “Fortunately we do, but we’re selling it and moving south…” (where they will likely find themselves occupying a freehold home, also having a great deal of expendable cash in their pockets); yet many people stuck in Auckland complaining about ‘the cost of living’, ‘having no job’, ‘having no home’ or perhaps even, ‘no foreseeable future’, don’t seem to realise that there is (almost) a whole other country out there, and it’s one hell of a lot less expensive to occupy than this so-called Auckland Super City…

I started saving for a house when I was 16 years’ old and still living under my parents’ roof; at the time it made sense to me to do it that way, and making further economical sense four years’ after that, was buying my first home when I was 20, in Canterbury.

…Times have changed a lot in past years admittedly, but the principle by which life is lived has not: ‘Nothing worth having ever comes easy’ – despite the prevalence of opinion that life ought to be just that.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Byan D House

Photography by Sam Weir-Else

 

 

 

Tim Walker’s Pike

I sympathise with the families of the men lost in the Pike River Mine disaster of November 2010.

The New Zealand Government has since then maintained the stance that the ‘Pike River Mine is not to be entered’, on the grounds that to do so would place in peril the lives of a potential recovery team…

A recent video witnessed by a number of the families involved – past footage of several men inside the mine entrance tending to a robot designed to more deeply explore the mineshaft – has caused uproar among this bereaved mining community, implicitly delivering the understanding that the mineshaft in question is, and perhaps always was, quite able to be entered.

…Following the initial explosion on that fateful day – resulting in the deaths of all 29 men inside – along with the succession of explosions throughout the ensuing months, geotechnical engineers deemed that due to the dangerously high concentration of methane gas the air quality inside the mine was of an ‘unsafe standard’, and seemingly that is unchanged today…

The families of the lost miners ultimately want the ‘bodies’ of their loved ones returned to them, and this recent footage has sparked new debate over the legitimacy of claims the mine is ‘not safe to enter’.

…For the first few months after the Pike River Mine explosions the decision to delay mine re-entry was understandably undisputed, and it wasn’t until many more uneventful months had passed that the families of those lost began to push in earnest for a recovery expedition…

Despite the video the Government’s position remains firm: air quality inside the mineshaft makes it unsafe for people to enter.

…Almost seven years after the fact, having seen no attempt at recovery of the men’s remains and with none in the forecast, for it to then transpire that there have in fact been souls inside the mine, with all their living and their breathing, must inspire if nothing else, a great deal of uncertainty…

The families are vehement in their opinions they should have been told about the existence of this, supposedly secret, mineshaft footage; Prime Minister Bill English is similarly adamant in his response, “The footage is no secret and of most, or all of it, you actually were.”

…The families deny the Government’s claim that ‘they were made aware of these videos some years ago but maybe they just forgot about it’, and have renewed their efforts to ‘see justice done’…

The families have since reiterated their demands that the ‘bodies’ of their loved ones be retrieved from the mine.

…PM English is standing his ground, undoubtedly maintaining a philosophy something akin to, ‘Regarding the recovery of any human remains in the mineshaft, so long as a geotechnical team inform me there is so much as the slightest modicum of risk to life inside that mineshaft, there shall be no re-entry – the families affected by this terrible tragedy have already lost their sons and their husbands to that mine, how do you think they’d feel if the names of more men joined the list of the dead, particularly while they were involved in the task of trying to gather the remains of those dead?’

Interestingly: ‘Goodwill and compassion notwithstanding a nation’s governing body is under no obligation to share with its public documents or footage that it deems to be sensitive or private unless it pertains directly to the lives of those involved.’

Regardless, and as much as I do sympathise with the families’ plight, the lives of the 29 deceased miners will be eternally remembered in New Zealand history and – as was more or less forecast in a statement by the mine’s owner, Solid Energy, in the months following the tragedy, in 2011 – the remains of those lost are likely to forever be entombed inside the Pike River Mine, which will become, solely, a burial site.

Given the circumstances, is that such an awful outcome?

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Fawl N Minors

Photography by Wrest N Peece

 

 

Tim Walker’s Double VI

New Zealand state-owned enterprise, Landcorp, has sold 1400 hectares of Fiordland land to Chinese buyers, for an undisclosed amount.

News of the transaction has caused outrage across the area, with Te Anau residents in disbelief that their neighbouring sheep and beef farm should be sold to Chinese businessmen, rather than to a local farmer…

A Southland farmer did offer to pay approximately $8.5 million for the aforementioned Jericho Station, but was seemingly priced out of the deal.

…The details surrounding this particular sale of Government/taxpayer land are highly reminiscent of a proposed deal almost two years’ earlier which, if I recall, in all its ostensibly xenophobic wisdom, the New Zealand Government prevented from taking place…

Given Landcorp is an SOE thus ultimately owned by the people, regarding the sale of Fiordland’s Jericho Station, Chief Executive Steve Carden’s primary focus was apparently on ‘getting the best deal for the taxpayer’.

…Roughly ten times the size at almost 14 thousand hectares and valued at over $70 million, Lochinver Station went on the market in 2015 and, similar to the recently sold Jericho Station, was quickly snapped up by a group of Chinese investors; the main difference though is that where Jericho was sold by, in 2015 the sale of Lochinver Station was halted by the New Zealand Government…

Mr Carden maintained: “We want to make sure that we are giving local buyers every opportunity we can to make a competitive bid and we work with local buyers quite significantly on that to help them – but once the process is finished we need to make the best decision for the business.”

…Back in 2015 the level of cash flow throughout New Zealand was scarcely conducive to the purchase of farms, let alone farms worth over $70 million; for Lochinver Station’s owner/s to have a prospective buyer for their farm, and furthermore willing to pay the asking price, must have been a near perfect outcome…

Federated Farmers evidently share the sentiments of Mr Carden, claiming: “Landcorp is a commercial operation so it has every right to sell a farm to whoever they want, but within the constraints of the Overseas Investment Office.”

…Personally, to sell a New Zealand farm to overseas investors, given that the majority of required labour, farm equipment, stock and supplies, as well as living costs and other expenses, will logically be sourced from New Zealand anyway, meaning that most farm-related expenditure will end up going right back into the New Zealand economy, where in fact the only things likely to be sent abroad are whatever profits the farm yields, which if I know farming is generally only a fragmented percentage of a farm’s entire turnover – although admittedly this elusive ‘profit margin’ does only occur in the good years – therefore as much negative hype as it caused in its day, overseas interest in our farms never was as bad as our conveniently uninformed thus typically ignorant malcontents liked to make out because unless these ‘overseas investors’ physically disassembled and actually took the farm back to their own land, they never were really taking ownership of New Zealand land to begin with…

This overtly hypocritical move by the Government seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the nation’s resident team of protesters but be assured, this is one of the finest examples of Political Double Standards seen in recent New Zealand history.

…Jericho (sold recently) and Lochinver (2015 sale halted) Stations are both expansive farming operations dealing primarily in sheep and beef; yet does the fact that Jericho spans just a portion of the area that Lochinver covered make it exempt from the National ruling of years gone by – or has that ruling suddenly changed?…

In 2015 the infamy of ‘Asset Sales’ – where New Zealand-owned institutions were being sold by the National party to other countries in order to turn over some quick cash – was doing its best to vilify our Government; understandable then at that time National probably saw the opportunity to stop another international sale (particularly one involving private as opposed to Government ownership that henceforth would not directly benefit them), namely Lochinver Station, as a way to claw back some credibility.

…Whatever the case a few months after the sale was quashed in 2015, Lochinver Station did go on to sell to a private New Zealand buyer and although, like Jericho, it was for an ‘undisclosed amount’, thanks largely to Government intervention, I am doubtful that it would have been for anywhere near the asking price.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Polly T Call

Photography by Hypo Crute