We have seen instances of people posting vacation pictures on social media (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter etc) while they’ve been on the vacations.  This advertises your absence to every denizen of cyberspace, and they include thieves and burglars.  Wait till you are back before posting such pictures.

We also recommend caution when telling businesses you are away too; not all their employees may be trustworthy.

We mentioned the legal loophole by which some businesses avoid paying tax on their profits simply by registering themselves as a charity in an earlier post.

We wanted to know how widespread this is, and asked for the details stated of the Charities Services of the Internal Affairs Dept.

This is required by the Charities Act to investigate “Serious Wrongdoing” as defined. A business that registers simply to avoid paying tax is not in this definition, however, the entity needs to declare that one of its objectives is one of those stated in Section 5 — and by implication it actually needs to make good on that objective, to some extent anyway.

We intend to refer the failure of the Charities Services Manager to go into these matters in the reply to the Ombudsman, although it is obvious that just from only having investigated 96 out of nearly 28,000 registered charities, it is seriously under-resourced.

While the present government has substantially reduced the number of public servants to save state expenditure and we concur with that generally, when it comes to tax avoidance it is false economy as the government should be rejecting these sham registrations and collecting tax from the businesses concerned.

Like a lot of legislation, the Act clearly needs toughening, too.

Click for the big version. Note that horses will not be allowed between Mazengarb Road and Kiwi/Raumati Road in Paraparaumu.

Guy Burns, Raumati/Paraparaumu Community Board Deputy Chair, is surprised and disappointed Mayor Gurunathan decided to use his casting vote, at the 15 December Council meeting, to reject a recommendation from the Raumati Paraparaumu Community Board to keep the 50 year old MacLean Park pond full of water over the summer period.

“It’s a brave and reckless decision to ignore the community — it was the community who lobbied our Community Board to keep the pond filled over the summer months when MacLean Park is packed with holiday makers and visitors.

“The pond has been sitting unfilled for nearly 6 months after Council discovered it was leaking larger amounts of water after contractors undertook repair and maintenance work in mid-2015.

“The current saga of the MacLean Park is a woeful and depressing tale of ineptitude and poor management, with no accountability of ratepayer’s money, regarding the $85,000 spent in the last two years on maintenance.

“I call upon the Mayor to reflect on his casting vote and consider what the community is saying.”

The council’s announcement at the time is here

From the Waikanae Community Patrol Christmas newsletter.

There has been attention raised recently about fake news stories on social media — particularly Facebook — which are solely creations to influence opinion.

However, manufactured accounts appear on mainstream news channels as well: the video above is about fake news stories being broadcast at present about eastern Aleppo in Syria, all of which are designed to make the Russians look bad, when in fact the various Islamic extremist rebel groups backed by the CIA, Saudia Arabia and Qatar are the villains.  The most notorious news channels for distorted and biased news are Al Jazeera, CNN, Fox News and, regrettably, the BBC which at one time was considered reliably truthful.

Close to home, we are poorly served for news, too.  We don’t watch TV One News and haven’t for a long time.  Newshub (TV3) is a little better, but not a lot.  Both are only interested in short sound bites and in-depth reporting is almost a thing of the past. Radio NZ isn’t too bad.

In Kapiti the two local newspapers are there to get advertising and don’t rely at all on subscribers as all copies are distributed free.  Both the Kapiti News and Kapiti Observer are content to report verbatim media releases from the council (Dougherty’s ‘communications team’) and even worse, property developers, both of which require investigative journalism but don’t get it.  Hence the continuing role for independent news websites and blogs like ours.

Update

Clearly the off-duty guard who assassinated the Russian ambassador in Ankara, Turkey, today was influenced by the false reports. Who benefits from them?  The arms dealers who supplied the rebels backed by the CIA certainly do — and nine of the top 10 arms manufacturers in the USA gave huge amounts to Hillary Clinton’s presidential election campaign.

This is exactly the reply we expected — neither the KCDC nor the GWRC wants these projects, so the central government isn’t helping.

The underpass needs to be raised at council by the Waikanae ward councilor, and it would have been if Geoffrey had been elected.  Waikanae east people need to wait another three years for that.

Simon Bridges’s reply on the Otaki railway electrification differs, however, from the reply given by former GWRC Kapiti seat councilor Nigel Wilson that the central government wasn’t interested in this. The new GRWC Kapiti councilor, Penny Gaylor, needs to take this up.

For some of us in Kapiti, the Horowhenua tension between the power of the Mayor to select the deputy and right of councillors to vote to remove a deputy and vote in one of their choice, is watched with interest.

The comment from Kerry Bolton makes one wonder what it is that Ross Campbell might or might not have done in comparison with Kapiti’s new Deputy Mayor, Janet Holborow.

Mayor Fayen’s quoted primary reason for appointment of Campbell was because he was the only councilor in the previous three years “who gave me the time of day”.

In Kapiti, the elected Mayor has offered the explanation to Dr Bolton and his wife that he appointed Holborow as deputy mayor because he “did not want to be stabbed in the back”. For the Mayor to say he appointed his deputy for that reason should surely make people think a bit more about the integrity of those they vote for.

My request of Mayor Gurunathan is for him to clarify the basis on which he appointed his current deputy from his comment to Kerry Bolton:

1) what was it about Holborow’s integrity that led him to believe that he was at risk of being stabbed in the back?

and

2) knowing this, why did he then go on and appoint her deputy mayor?

Info and more pics