The New Zealand Taxpayers’ Union is calling on the Chief Executive of Timaru District Council to explain what his staff actually do, given that so much of their work is outsourced.
According to a report published in The Timaru Herald yesterday, Timaru District Council spent $34 million on 214 consultants between 2018 and 2022.
Taxpayers’ Union spokesman Josh Van Veen said, “It is particularly concerning to see that the CEO alone spent $700,000 on consultants for his office.”
“That would pay the annual rates bill for more than 300 households in the district,” Mr. Van Veen said.
The 2022 Ratepayer Report found that of the staff at Timaru District Council, 42 are paid more than $100,000 per annum.
“What do these people do, given that so much of the Council’s work is outsourced to private contractors?” [Exactly the same question needs to be asked of KCDC —Eds]
Russians now understand that they are war with the U.S. and its NATO stooges and Ukrainian proxies. From Ted Snider at antiwar.com: As early as the end of April, Russia’s view of the war may already have begun evolving from seeing it as a regional war to seeing it as a wider war with the […]
According to Associated Press, an official with the Tauron Arena in Krakow, where Waters was scheduled to perform two concerts in April, said they would no longer take place.
“Roger Waters’ manager decided to withdraw … without giving any reason,” Lukasz Pytko from Tauron Arena Krakow said Saturday in comments carried by Polish media outlets.
The website for Waters’ This Is Not a Drill concert tour unlisted the Krakow concerts previously scheduled for 21-22 April.
City councillors in Krakow were expected to vote next week on a proposal to name Waters as a persona non grata, expressing “indignation” over the musician’s stance on the war in Ukraine.
Waters wrote an open letter to Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska early this month in which he blamed “extreme nationalists” in Ukraine for having “set your country on the path to this disastrous war.” He also criticised the West for supplying Ukraine with weapons, blaming Washington in particular.
Waters has also criticized NATO, accusing it of provoking Russia.
In case you think Roger Waters is a (far) right winger as Leftists will claim, he has also been a sharp critic of Israel’s approach to Palestinians. He has also called Biden a war criminal, correctly in our view,
Ukrainian neo-nazi nationalists have not responded well, they regard Zelensky in the same way most Labourites regard Jacinda. According to this article, the Ukrainian fanatics have created a hitlist known as Mirotvorets, or “Peacekeeper,” twice before. The first time was in this article about internet censorship, and the second time was when a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl, Faina Savenkova, was added to the list for publicly speaking out against Kiev’s bloody war on Russian-speaking civilians in the eastern part of Ukraine, a region known as the Donbass.
Mirotvorets is a database which lists thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.” Their personal information is published, such as the addresses of their homes, their phone numbers and bank account numbers; anything that can help them be easily located. When the people on this list are murdered, like Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, “LIQUIDATED,” written in Ukrainian, is stamped across their picture in big red letters.
In the lead up to the local body elections a Christchurch City Council “meet the candidates” meeting divided the candidates into vaxxed and unvaxxed by telling the vaccinated candidates to identify themselves by standing up. Their tactic divided the room. No doubt their completely unacceptable and discriminatory goal was to alienate the candidates who were not vaccinated.
It appears that the Christchurch City Council is actively attempting to put people off voting for unvaccinated candidates. This is not an impartial stance and could be viewed as election tampering.
The good news is that the reaction from the locals who were in the meeting was not what the council expected.
And if you think that the Christchurch City Council should be shamed for this behaviour, share this video widely.
It is worrying to see an effort by a council to reduce the chances of candidates who do not parrot the Labour Government narrative.
In Wellington, Mayoral candidate Barbara McKenzie has encountered a similar environment of coercion and lack of ethics, quote:
“Two meetings I have attended here in Wellington asked “Do you have any association, or affiliation, with any organisation or group whose intent is to make NZ ungovernable?”. First time was at Island Bay (my very first meeting ….) and came from the residents association itself. When I answered “no” I was jeered at by the Green rent-a-crowd. Second time I said something like “yes, me and Tariana Turia” and funnily enough, no jeering …
One meeting did the “if you’re vaccinated, stand up” thing. Another asked the same, yes or no. So I was able to answer that I’d been vaccinated for all sorts but given Pfizer’s dreadful record for fraud and injury I wouldn’t buy a toothbrush from them.
Two candidates are in the habit of introducing themselves with “I’m such and such and fully vaccinated”.
The person asking the vaccinated to stand at the Christchurch public meeting was allegedly John Sellwood, a Christchurch communications professional.
Clearly the rights of the unvaccinated to choose are not respected in NZ. Neither is their privacy. Unbelievable!
What a contrast to the person presently in the White House. Reagan along with Gorbachev saw the huge danger of nuclear war, brought about an end to the Iron Curtain and the Cold War, eliminated a whole class of nuclear weapons and achieved a major reduction in stockpiles, and were committed to peace between the superpowers.
Here is an example of a private company going over the top in reaction to radical Leftist objection to someone’s opinion expressed on Social Media. We saw this last year with Lee Williams, then of Christchurch. While we don’t agree with the opinion expressed in this case, the issue is whether someone should be allowed to be treated this way for expressing it.A good test case is coming.
Last month, after posting a comment on Facebook, a Bluebird Sales Manager, Evelyn, was fired from her role. Bluebird publically accused her of racism and announced she had been “removed” from her job. The comment was made by Evelyn in her own time, in a purely personal capacity, with no reference to her job or her employer.
What was this grievous post? In response to Whittaker’s Chocolate releasing their Miraka Kirimi (Milk Chocolate) block celebrating Māori Language Week, she posted this (I’m sure you understand why she wants her last name hidden, given the pressure she’s already under):
While we wouldn’t know it from the way the word is thrown around so trivially, to accuse some of racism is actually very serious.
Evelyn is not racist against Māori (or against any other race). Where she grew up in Northland, she comfortably did daily life with Māori. Her views about te reo may or may not be shared by other Kiwis, but that is not the same as racism.
This is a common tactic by those who want to silence others they disagree with. Rather than addressing their arguments, or disputing their claims, they attack the person. Name-calling and accusations lobbed at their opponents suit these would-be-censors better than any reasoned debate. This is “cancel culture” at its worst.
In an expletive-laden post on Tiktok, a self-proclaimed social media influencer — https://www.tiktok.com/@iamsiiam?l — responded to Evelyn’s comments, who he calls ‘this hussy’ claiming ‘I am not a violent person, but some of these people need to be pissed on…’
This was the same Tiktok user who Bluebird responded to within a day of Evelyn posting, confirming they had removed her from her duties and were ‘investigating’ the situation.
The ‘investigation’ only lasted two days. I say ‘investigation’ because, up until the last 2 hours, they did this without consulting Evelyn, hearing her perspective, discussing with her why she made the post or what she meant, or referencing a code of conduct she had supposedly broken. [It probably consisted of an e-mail to their NZ lawyers asking if they could fire someone because of Leftist complaints. —Eds] At this meeting, before Evelyn had a chance to give her side, she was told she was going to be “held to account”. She was fired a few hours after the meeting.
Later in the week, the self-proclaimed social media influencer that Bluebird engaged with began to post about Evelyn’s teenage daughter, trying to drag Evelyn’s family into the controversy.
Allow me to make this clear. The issue is not whether Whittaker’s is allowed to advertise in te reo; of course they can. This isn’t about whether te reo is being pushed on people, or whether public outlets should use it; it’s an official language.
This is about one thing: whether an employer should be able to dismiss an employee for a personal opinion expressed outside of work. This isn’t about Evelyn’s particular speech, it’s about the fact that she has the right to express her opinion on this issue, or any other, without having to bear in mind the orthodoxies of censorious critics.
The lawyer we approached to help represent Evelyn keeps this front and center: ‘New Zealanders are entitled to exercise the right to free speech. This is true even if that involves expressing an opinion that is controversial, and if even the person who expressed the opinion later changes their view.’
That is why we are supporting Evelyn in taking a personal grievance against Bluebird, challenging these censorious actions. Unfortunately, it costs thousands of dollars to challenge decisions like this.
Traditional trade unions succeeded in fighting for employees’ rights to an 8-hour work day, showing that an employer doesn’t have the right to demand an employee’s entire day. But today, when employees are being dismissed for personal opinions, these unions are nowhere to be seen.
The Free Speech Union only exists because our tens of thousands of supporters like you believe with us that free speech is worth fighting for, worth investing in.
We’ve stood for the censored before and won. With your help, we’ll help Evelyn win too.
Jonathan Ayling Spokesperson Free Speech Union www.fsu.nz
SeanPlunket interviews Petousis Harris on the rollout of the injection including possible adverse events in terms of warning the public.
Q … “Do you think the new risk [of Myocarditis] was adequately conveyed to the public and to medical practitioners who were administering the vaccine?”
Reply … “No, I don’t”
This is really interesting because at the rollout of the injection, the FDA had already placed on their website a long list of possible side effects, very few of which were listed on the NZ Health site, indeed when posted to social media this FDA list was removed. See this article on topic […]
