Connecting Citizens Who Care
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Contact Peter at wheeler@inspire.net.nz
16 26th April 2007
This Week: 1. ANZAC parade: 2. May Day Concert: 3. Submission numbers: 4. Takaro the forgotten Ward:
1. Dawn parade was on the agenda again this year. Along with old army friends I ambled the distance from the RSA to the Square where among the upright railway lines I stood and watched the dawn arrive. I served in Malaysia in the early sixties in a force of around one thousand. Most of us were young and active service for us was three months in the bush patrolling and three months out. It was for me my first big OE and I learned lots of lessons. Some good, some not so good. I was never in any great danger. I learned a lot about teamwork and looking after each other. I was slim and trim and as fit as a buck-rabbit unlike today when I’m not so trim and slim and the buck rabbit never. Being in the Square and being in memory mode, I thought not only of servicemen and wars and the loss of life. I also thought of today here in Palmerston North and how this very Square altered at a huge and ongoing cost is meant to be now safe for our citizens. I remember reading how the ‘Safe City’ Trust is up in arms over its cut in funding for its private patrolling of the Square and the CBD. Now during this ANZAC day no protection is needed for the Square, I mean who is going to attack the population celebrating ANZAC day? But surely the Safe City Trust must have expected a cut in funding [and a large one] once the changes in the Square were put in place. After all they supported the huge amount of public relations spin that was pumped out daily by the tight eight councillors and the top management of the council staff. You may remember some of the claims. A rape a week, a bashing a day, theft on a grand scale, lack of police and all those criminals hidden behind all those nasty trees and the council battleship building just waiting the chance to leap out and commit crimes of mass destruction. The Square was painted to be a New Zealand version of Iraq. The facts of course told a different story, sexual assaults one or two a year at most. Spin often comes back and bites your bum and in this case it has done just that. No one is suggesting that crime on our streets or in our homes isn't a problem but the measures taken to combat that problem needed to be realistic and affordable in real people terms. Do you known that with the money being spent on the Square we could have paid ten policemen to patrol the Square every night for the next hundred years…and still have money left over. Then we could have kept our funding up to organisations that seek to combat the problems at their source, groups like the Youth One Stop Shop, Highbury Whanau Centre and the Adult Learning Centre. But alas we brought the spin spat out by twisted tongues and are now paying the price in massive rate increases and declining support for community groups. At ANZAC parades the term ‘Least we forget’ is spoken with feeling and powerful emotion. How true those words are both in the sense used by those remembering those whom died or fought on our behalf. But we need to use them too when we remember what some councillors have enacted in the past. At least in this case we can do something about it and vote them out…
2. The May Day Concert is with us again, just as ANZAC day creates an opportunity to remember those who fought on our behalf, May Day allows us to celebrate those who without doubt fought for and created our working conditions. It could be said that ANZAC day and the events it represents ensured us the rights to live the kind of life we desire, free from wars and dictatorships. The forty-hour week and freedom from economic depression and organised slavery and the application of a ‘fair days pay for a fair days work’ has been an ongoing battle over the years. The enemies of greed and manipulation of workers rights seems always present for even today here in Palmerston North it still rears its ugly head. The lockout of workers by ‘Progressive Industries’ is a living and real example. On looking at history it seems that gains made by workers have in each case had to be fought for. The forty-hour week, meal breaks and tea and coffee. Wash up rooms, annual leave, holiday pay and other allowances have all been and are still being fought over. Management and owners all at one time or another thought the sky would fall in if these fundamental rights were allowed. Even today many of these battles of past years are being re-fought simply because greed has taken over. Not by the workers but by those who would manipulate the job market to their own ends? In Palmerston North at the Regent on Broadway various organisations come together to present a grand musical celebration to both the past and the future in honour of those working-class hero’s. The PN Community Arts Council, Creative Communities NZ, The Council of Trade Unions combine to present the May Day Concert at 7.30pm at the Regent Theatre on Broadway on Saturday the 5th of May 2007. Entry is by a gold coin donation.
3. I received the following email late on Friday the 20th of April 2007. ‘Hi Peter - thanks for your efforts to get your readers to make submissions. It's unfortunate that at 4.30pm yesterday the Council only got 153 submissions. I would suspect this is the lowest total recorded. Cheers. Thanks for that message and you may be correct about the numbers but you should remember that plan was not to receive many submissions, in fact the whole public call for submissions and the process set ensured a low turnout. Firstly council told the citizens that nothing of an important nature could be changed from that already approved in the ten-year plan. It really gave those making submissions no options. One was expected to agree with year two of the ten-year plan or to disagree with it. If you wanted changes outside of those suggested by council it would be a little like pis---g in the wind. Council could do nothing because all major programmes had already been agreed to. The concept of councillors accepting submissions with an open mind is pure rhetoric and is meaningless. The council also asked the citizens that should any of their suggestions be acceptable under this restricted process that they should suggest how they should be financed or which projects should be cut back. In all honesty how could this be done when all major projects have been approved? The future planned spending on the 25 million dollar City Heart project appears set in concrete if you will excuse the pun. The council has already spent the monies from the future possible sale of land even though no sale can take place because the land is still reserve…The forecasted rate-rise is already 9% and according to Clare Hadley will rise to double figures if land sales don’t go ahead. I know that many submissions are requesting more transparency and openness in the way council functions, they want monies promised for specific purposes safe guarded and used for those purposes. They want more honesty and less spin. One hundred and fifty three submissions seems like a good turn out to me considering the restrictive nature of the exercise which many accept as nothing more that a PR exercise. We should never forget those God like words of the council elder statesman Gordon Cruden, ‘It’s quality not quantity that counts’ said while disregarding twelve to eighteen hundred submissions against the Square make over. After going though that sham who would want to bother.
4. Councillor John Hornblow and Marilyn Craig were on the committee that was tasked with dishing out funding to various applicants. They never had enough cash, and this is understandable considering the spend up over the last five years, but cutting funding by half to the Highbury Whanau Centre was simply crazy after putting a half a million dollars into the project. . It’s programmes, includes the hugely popular Friday night touch rugby tournament and reached hundreds of teenagers and helped keep them constructively busy and out of trouble. These cuts were made in secret and finding out who did or said what is impossible. Cr. Wall, Dennison and Ian Cruden represent that neck of the woods, did they vote for this reduction? Did they argue on behalf of the Whanau Centre? If they did where is it recorded? Over the last three years I’ve not heard a word from Cr. Wall or Dennison about their Ward. In fact it could be said that they deny that their Ward Takaro even exists judged by their silence, they take the votes and the money and then seem to hide behind secret council meeting. If ever a Ward needed a clean sweep of most of it’s councillors Takaro is that Ward. Takaro has huge flooding problems, a shocking bus service, declining medical services. I hope that the search for a couple of good community minded candidates’ is successful and that these candidates are elected and can put Takaro on the map once again. I strongly recommend that citizens who live in Takaro attend the Awapuni Ward Committee meetings to air your concerns.
5. My God say’s "Peter that Mayor of yours is correct cutting funding to groups like The Highbury Whanau Centre and the Open Learning Centre is both stupid and short sighted". I can but agree…
Peter J Wheeler
Wheeler@inspire.net.nz
really?
click...
and, click...
puffshop
女子高生
Thinking...
Dreams...
Bodies
Money, money...it doesn't talk, it screams...
Feed the fowls?
Sleeping?
Got your Direction?
Skin?
Lonely?
Any enterprise needs workers...
Travelling?
Sleepy?
Wanna play Wii?
It was a night, just like any other night...
Did you tell me to stay cool until after school?
Going down to the station? Got your suitcase in your hand...
Call me...
I thought we could go to a film after the game...
Marianne Faithfull- As Tears Go By 1965
Rods?
Rolling Stones- Angie
女子高生
What is going on in the music scene?
Last Gasp Cafe 14...
Get up and go? Where to?
Gwen Stephani- The Great Escape...
Coffee? Orange juice only from 10.30, Dude...
Last Gasp Cafe 13...
I have GOT to lose weight...
Bob Dylan- Like a Rolling Stone 1966
SERIOUSLY, I HAVE to lose weight...
Requiem for Erika Ortiz :^: Broken Road
Have to DO something about my skin...
Pink Floyd: The Mind's Eye
who is buying?
Lady so Far :-: for Tyra Banks
better make some money...better call home...
C.C.Catch - Backseat of your Cadillac
puffshop
just then the computer started to play up...
Last Gasp Cafe 8
Good morning...
Jim Carrey - Standup Routine - Comedy Store (1996)
I've got this, like, really oily skin...
What was that?
Last Gasp Cafe 4...
Good deed done for the day... every day...like a roller coaster...
Last Gasp Cafe 15: Concert for Donnie Darko
I tried to lose weight in a New York minute and nearly got lost...
Last Gasp Cafe 2...
I went to bed with a book...
女子高生
To sleep perchance to...
Cheltenham is on...
BQ on B :-: Brazilian Queen on Beale St
The Lady was talking to Tee about opportunities on the net...
but Throg was dreaming about a back rub...
Throgmorton woke up and thought about an ipod...
Colin for Mark...
Chickenman woke up thinking about Bob Greene and Oprah...
Rolling Stones, Gimme Shelter(Pop Go the Sixties) 1969
I thought about my business opportunities...don't count your money till the dealings done...
Sweet Miss Jay- Angelina Jolie...
I attended to what was left of the business and did my Sporting Index chores...
I was bored so I called my business advisor on Dialaphone...
she mentioned Zwinky...
I was like,lol, what about Zylom...
Rolling Stones- Sympathy for the devil. Live in Rio 2006
things got serious and we talked about Finance Box Houses...
and Finance Box Student Loans...
Showbuzz rox she shouted...
I told her about Bonprix, classy? well yes...
don't forget Anona, Big Sun, Barstow, San Bernadino...and don't forget Yves...
we talked about lost souls we shared and she told me how we might find them on Reunion...
Voip? for sure I said...
then we climbed the Lending Tree together...
take a chance on Coral?
me, I'm lost in space...SATNAV for space cowboys like you, she murmured...
we played at the Red Casino...
we flew Siesta...
we met each other again on Yahoo Personal...
Dating?
just having fun on Gameplay actually...
we listened to Attic Jam...
we got right into The Hedrons...
and how about the new album from da Red Hot Chilli Peppers...
you can buy these with a Post Office Credit Card she told me over lunch...
and in the afternoon we flew away on HLX...
I noticed that she wore Nikes...
we booked a lovely place to stay through Cottages...
Radio Story aka The Story Continues...
she looked stunning in her Contessa gear...
Deftones at Taste of Chaos - RX Queen w/ Street Drum Corp
we listened in the dark to Beck...
she declared that she would vote for Hilary Clinton...
me, I want more of Mate-dating...
we discussed our bodies and Hoodia...
then she told me about another way to lose weight...
Phentrazine - Now Available Without a Prescription
me being more of a car person I clicked on Auto Loan...
Changing Chairs
she wanted money for other things so she clicked on Ocean Financial...
We both decided that discretion was the better part of valour and we looked at the Privacy Credit Card...
Sweet Killer Love
thought about Global Travel...
and looking good the French way...
U2 and Mary J Blige- One, Madison Square Garden 10-8-05
we talked a little about a career in Criminal Justice...
but what really got us going was the thought of a Bahamas Cruise- the Anna Nicole Smith Tour? Well...
I would like to thank those who have donated to Wheeler’s Corner, while I don’t know whom you are your assistance is humbly accepted and highly valued. Thank you. If any one else would like to donate the address is Wheeler’s Corner Access Triple Nine PO Box 4666 Palmerston North.
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