Kiwiblog

This little screenshot has the red line showing the path you would take to go from GPK to the Council offices, as Mayor Williams did on Thursday. It is not a long distance – around 500 metres.

Now we already know that the Mayor could have used the toilets at GPK. We also know he could have accessed the Council building, and used their toilets, rather than urinate outside.

But what many may not know, is that he would have actually walked past a set of public toilets – where the thick green arrow is. According to locals, there is a tourist i-site at this location, with a public toilet.

So just 200 metres after passing perfectly good public toilets, the Mayor decides he needs to urinate outside his own Council building. This just makes it worse.

I note with amusement that the North Shore City Council website has a front page poll on whether there are enough liquor bans in public areas. Maybe they need a liquor ban within 500 metres of the Council offices!

I don’t personally support at large seats on the Auckland Council (mainly because they are impractical) but I also hate poll questions that are slanted, as two City Councils appear to have done.

Both Waitakere City Council and North Shore City Council comissioned a poll of local residents. They used Phoenix Research and Colmar Brunton respectively.  They both asked for agreement with this statement:

All of the councillors on the new Auckland Council should be elected by people in their local area (that is by Ward) rather than elected by people across the whole region (that is At Large)

First of all it is fascinating the question was identical in both cases. This suggests the clients dictated the question to the polling companies.

In each city 78% and 80% of respondents agreed with the statement.

But this is no surprise when you look at how it is worded. It appears to be giving people a choice between all Councillors elected by Wards and all Councillors elected at large.

It does not provide a clear option for what both the Royal Commission and the Government have proposed – that there be a mixture of wards seats and at large seats.

I absolutely guarantee you a question that asked a question providing three options of

1. All from wards
2. All from at large
3. A mixture of wards and at large

would get a massively different response. And I mean massively different.

Personally I would not have allowed a question so faulty in one of my polls. It is an absolutely loaded question that doesn’t provide a useful answer. Of course the media reported it as gospel.

Now again I stress I do not personally support at large seats and hope the Government reduces them in number, or does without them. But they should make that decision based on good advocacy and research – not on the basis of such faulty poll questions.

Whale Oil received this mystery fax. The sender though forgot the fax would identify it as coming from the North Shore City Council.

I am not sure that ratepayers in North Shore will be happy that Mayor Andrew Williams spent $1,343 of ratepayer money on 72 bottles of a “Stop Banks” wine label. That is an expensive joke.

It is also highly inappropriate for the ratepayers of North Shore to be funding what is basically a political campaign by Williams against Banks. Kudos to Whale Oil who broke this story. Whale has filed further OIA requests which may prove interesting. The Council said it would cost $480 to respond to his OIAs, but readers have already donated that amount. The power of the masses.