We set off around midnight and the weather seemed perfect – no wind, and a clear night. The Southern Cross and Milky Way Galaxy were prominent in the sky.

It was however very cold. Going uphill with so many layers of gear on is exhausting work, especially when you have much less oxygen to breathe compared to normal.

The main challenge is to climb around 950 metres to Gilmans Point. Then after that it is a further 60 metres or so to Stella Point at 5,739 and finally Uhuru Peak at 5,895 metres – around 1,200 metres up from Kibo Hut.

The track to Gilmans is incredibly tough. First of all you can’t see it. You just follow the person in front of you. You can vaguely see some ridgelines but don’t know how far away they are. After a couple of hours of trekking, we had no idea how much more we had to go. We had been told six hours is normal, but our guide had said it may take seven and a half hours to Gilmans.

The path is steep. It is a 4 km track which rises 1 km vertically. So for every four metres of track, you go up one metre approx. There are basically no flat sections, or even gentle zig zag slopes. It is just relentlessly upwards.

To make it harder, some parts of the route go over scree. That nasty stuff where you slide back 80% of the step you take.

We take a 10 to 20 second breather around every eight minutes or so (Basma is counting to 300 slowly in Arabic between pauses) and every 45 minutes or so we do a proper stop where we sit down and have some food.

After three hours or so we seem to still be leagues away from the top. We need to not only get to Gilmans, but then to the peak, and then descend 2,000 metres or so to Horombo Hut – all of which is a good eight to nine hours on top of the time it takes to get to Gilmans.

I’m on the verge of quitting half a dozen times. The reduced oxygen and five lawyers of clothes is exhausting. And even with so many layers, you’re still cold. But so long as the others keep going, I’m determined to. I do make a mental note though to learn to say no, the next time someone asks me to do anything which involves going over 4,000 metres above sea level – unless a plane is involved.

The mountain side looks like a series of fireflies with torch lights both above and below us.

I’m most fearing three things which would force me down. Around 3 am the sky clouded over and the rain may be a matter of when, not if. Trudging up in the rain for hours on end would be too much. Likewise if the wind picked up, it would get too cold. Luckily neither were eventuating yet.

My other fear was when the altitude sickness I had in the Himalayas would strike. I had headaches for around seven days, and that was ascending just 500 metres a day, while this was double that. It previously struck around 3,800 metres and we were now over 5,000 metres.  The altitude training I did with Altitude Inc paid off. I mumble thanks in my head to Hayden Wilson for recommending them, and to their director Bronwyn for arranging a portable unit I could use in my apartment right up until I left Wellington.

The pauses are becoming far more common now. For a while we were doing 10 seconds trekking, 10 seconds pause as we started to fade. It was still pitch dark, and we had no idea what the time was, and how much further to go. A guide said he thought we had around an hour to go to Gilmans.

Suddenly ten minutes later we come across a sign. We think it must be a sign to tell us how far to get to Gilmans, but we are at Gilmans. It’s around 5,30 am – we even got there before the sunset.

Much hugging and high fiving follows. The biggest emotion is relief. All four of us have made it to the top ridge of Kibo. We’re not at the summit, but we are at the point where the National Park will recognise you as having climbed/trekked Kilimanjaro.

It is still dark, so we decide to go to Stella to see the sunrise. Basma has had problems with her jacket and gloves and is freezing, so she decides (wisely) to start going down a bit before we make Stella.

The path to Stella is not too bad, after the huge climb. It is mainly through snow and takes around half an hour to get there. There is no sunrise to be seen though as it is totally clouded in. It’s cold and miserable.

We decide to head onto the summit. In theory it is a 200 metre ascent (from Gillmans to Uhuru) over a 2 km track so only a 1 in 10 rise. However this is arguably the most exhausting part. We’ve been ascending for over seven hours and our pace is slow. Even the smallest rise exhausts us. Hell, even getting your water bottle from your pack is exhausting. And the water is mainly frozen solid.

There is a great companionship though. Those on their way down from Uhuru give you support and say not far to go, They high fist bump you and say you can do it – even though many are strangers. But the time stretches on and on, and we can’t see more than a score of metres ahead, so can’t tell how far to go.

Finally around 7.15 am we make the summit. Trekkers and guides hug. It is freezing so we do a few quick photos. There are no beautiful sights to see, but nothing can detract from having made it. It hasn’t snowed (yet) but my scarf has frosted over, and I’m told there is ice on my eye lashes. So yes the smiles are rather forced!

Bruce and Chris have both tramped and a lot, and are very fit. They agree that the section from Stella to Uhuru was a b**ch. We have no energy left, but staying put is not an option, so we start the trek back down.

We get back to Gilman’s and it is now light enough for a photo.

Then something cool happens. The cloud lifts for around 60 seconds and we get a view of Mawenzi.

We also can see some glaciers a short way from where we are.

Now it’s time to head back down. The clouds below look like crashing waves.

The trek down to Kibo Hut is faster than the trek up, but still painful and exhausting. With three pairs of socks on, my toes are pushed up against my boot tips as we descend. I routinely let out yells of pain as my big toes get mashed. When I finally get to a hut, I discover that the blood and bruising on the toe is so much, that I may need to get the nail removed.

A fair potion of the way down is scree, and you can almost ski on this for a rapid descent. But doing so is incredibly exhausting and the descent takes around three and a half hours from Uhuru.

As we descend, and can now see, we’re amazed at how much territory we covered coming up. We decide that the reasons they send us up at night, is because if you could see the full distance you had to climb, you’d give up early on. The path down keeps stretching further and further.

We have a couple of breaks on the way down and then around 11 am get back to Kibo Hut – 11 hours after we left. The cloud got so thick we could only see the hut once we were 20 metres from it. In some ways the descent was more unpleasant than the ascent.

I’m freezing and jump into my sleeping bag. I appear to have some mild hypothermia as I’m shivering even in several layers of clothes, a thermal liner and a sleeping bag. Even with my Down Jacket on, I’m shivering. The problem is you lose the heat from moving, once you stop.

We learnt the rangers decided to take Basma down by gurney as she was so exhausted. She’s not alone. A total of five trekkers out of around 30 in total were evacuated by staff due to exhaustion, sickness or hypothermia.

I seriously can’t face around three hours of trekking down to Horombo Hut and consider spending the night at Kibo. But I drag myself out of my sleeping bag, grab a quick lunch (beef stew, yum) and around 1 pm we start off on another 1,000 metre descent.

The flat saddle area is pretty manageable, but the final hour is spent going down the lower track to Horombo, and it is a steep track, full of boulders and rocks like on a rover bed. It makes the decent more exhausting, and damages my toes a bit more. We get a mixture of snow, hail and rain on the way down.

With relief we hit Horombo Hut around 4 pm. We’ve been trekking for around 20 of the last 32 hours. An early dinner and we hit the hut to crash.

We’re all coughing quite a bit – presumably from the cold. Hopefully not something worse. I feel a bit feverish and take my temperature and find it elevated.  And of course our muscles are aching. My last thought as we go to sleep is that I’ll be detained at the NZ border for sure as an Ebola suspect – coming back from Africa with a fever, a cough and barely able to stand up.

My other thought is that no matter how much pain was involved, a huge sense of satisfaction to have made it. I do tell Chris B though that he shouldn’t invite me to whatever stupid idea he has for his 50th birthday 🙂

The Herald reports:

Auckland mayor Len Brown says the council will not put any ratepayer cash into building or running an international convention centre.

He told the Weekend Herald yesterday that there would be no money for the SkyCity convention centre in a new 10-year budget.

On this issue I am with the Mayor. Sky City has got their regulatory concessions in return for building a convention centre for $405 million. If they say they now can’t do it for that, then it is better to not have it happen, than have ratepayers or taxpayers subsidise it.

Today is the 50^th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill.

Recently on a trip to the UK, a friend and I visited Blenheim Palace, seat of the Duke of Marlborough and the place where Winston Churchill was actually born (although the then Duke of Marlborough was his uncle). There is a remarkable museum honouring the various military successes of Churchill’s great (five times) grandfather and 1^st Duke of Marlborough John Churchill. Indeed John Churchill’s success at defeating the French at the Battle of Walcourt and various successful campaigns in the War of Spanish Succession led to King William persuading Parliament to appropriate funds to build the splendid Blenheim Palace just north of Oxford.

A separate but more modest museum on the site contained a variety of fascinating memorabilia from the life of Winston Churchill – items that are unique to this museum. To me the standout was a rather obscure item and yet one that went to the heart of why Churchill was later to prevail in the Battle of Britain. It was a school exercise book that was confiscated from Churchill by a teacher at Harrow when he was only 13. The reason for the confiscation was because Churchill spent time in the classroom recreating (by way of military style sketch diagrams) many of the famous battles his illustrious ancestor had won. Churchill had memorized the details of all these battles and recreated them for his class mates!

Like many sons of aristocrats, Churchill lived and breathed all aspects of war from celebrating the various famous British military victories to his arduous training at Sandhurst, his participation in the Battle of Omdurman in the Sudan in 1898 (the last horse mounted charge undertaken by a British Calvary regiment in battle), his capture and escape as a war correspondent in the Boer War and of course his ignominious role in the fateful Gallipoli campaign as First Lord of the Admiralty in Lloyd George’s Cabinet. All of these experiences prepared Churchill for his most revered role – that as the victorious wartime Prime Minister of Britain.

There is one remarkable and little know incident in this much studied role that to me illustrates the essence of Churchill. He assumed the Prime Ministership from the hapless Chamberlain at possibly one of the lowest points of the war for Britain. Just days later, almost 400,000 soldiers of the British Army had to be hurriedly and desperately evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk by the Royal Navy and a flotilla of almost 800 private vessels which plied the English Channel over 4 days rescuing the core of the army (that had previously failed to prevent the fall of France) from certain capture or annihilation.

As Hitler amassed an invasion force of over 500,000 troops and the necessary invasion barges, a few in the British government thought that a German invasion and victory was imminent and began secret backchannel negotiations with the Germans. This effort was led by high profile Cabinet member Viscount Halifax the then Foreign Secretary. Churchill, upon discovering these efforts, engaged in a war of memos with those favourable to negotiation as well as other members of the inner War Cabinet. After three days of heated debate in the War Cabinet, Churchill vowed to head off and terminate these efforts without delay and decided to confront Halifax at the first meeting of the full Cabinet he held as PM on the evening of the 28^th of May 1940.

Churchill’s impassioned plea on this subject was recalled by Hugh Dalton, Minister of Economic Warfare: “I have thought carefully in these last days whether it was part of my duty to consider entering into negotiations with That Man. But it was idle to think that, if we tried to make peace now, we should get better terms than if we fought it out. The Germans would demand our naval bases, and much else. We should become a slave state, though a British Government which would be Hitler’s puppet would be set up…” Churchill apparently paused and looked directly at Halifax and said “If this long island story of ours is to end at last, let it end only when each one of us lies choking in his own blood upon the ground.” 

Churchill’s belligerent and defiant challenge to the waverers in his Cabinet and his fighting words had an immediate and electrifying effect. Not only was any talk of potential surrender stopped dead in its tracks but Churchill recalls in his diary: “Quite a number seemed to jump up from the table and come running to my chair, shouting and patting me on the back…It fell to me in these coming days and months to express their sentiments on suitable occasions. This I was able to do because they were mine also. There was a white glow, overpowering, sublime, which ran through our Island from end to end.”

Churchill went on soon after this fateful meeting to deliver the series of famous speeches in the House of Commons that rallied the nation behind the war effort for the crucial Battle of Britain that lay ahead:

1 – “Blood Toil Tears and Sweat”: 13^th May 1940

2 – “We shall Never Surrender”:  4^th June 1940

3 – “This was their finest hour”: 18^th June 1940

I’ve spoken to my various English relatives (some now deceased) about how they felt about the imminent threat of German invasion at that time. All were unanimous in describing that they felt utterly reassured by the demeanor of Churchill who seemed to never countenance defeat.

Let us honour this great indomitable leader and the pivotal role he played in the defeat of Nazi Germany and may we never forget the various lessons in courage, clarity and devotion to purpose that Churchill taught us.

Day 4 is when it starts to get more challenging with both the cold and the altitude. The terrains gets a bit like Tongariro.

There is however still some brightness.

Day 4 is a six hour hike over 10 kms, rising from 3,705 metres to 4,730 metres.  That is 2.87 kms higher than where we started.

The saddle stretches on for ages and ages. We got both rain and hail at various intervals. Having to put on wet weather gear heats you up and slows you down, but the moment we took it off, it would start raining again!

Bruce would feed the crows and this particular crow was not into sharing. Rather than just take a couple of pieces of bread, he went around grabbing every piece he could until he had almost 10 chunks in his beak!

Basma trying to be a crow.

The saddle is a gentle uphill. The final hour is a demanding steep slog. You’re really noticing the lack of oxygen on the uphill. At this height it is 11.5% oxygen compared to 21% at sea level.

Our chief guide Simon on the right.

Kibo Hut ahead. No A frames here. Just one big stone building with four bunk rooms sleeping around 15 each.

Bruce at the official sign. It was near freezing here and no one went outside except to go to the toilet. As we had all been taking Diamox to help with the altitude, and drinking four litres a a day, it is fair to say we were going a lot!

Day 4 is almost a combined day with Day 5. You only sleep for around four hours from 7 pm to 11 pm before making the final ascent to the summit. From 8 am on Day 4 to 8 am on Day 5 you are on you feet for around 18 hours.

We had a huge dish of pasta to car up at 6 pm, and then crashed. Didn’t really sleep much, and around 9 pm the wind started howling. This was not a great sign. Even with perfect weather, it will be below freezing on the ascent. High winds would be a killer.

Luckily they died down around 11 pm, when we got up.

Before dinner you have a final gear check, and set it all up next to your bunk so you can quickly get into it. I was wearing 26 different items of clothing (we joked about how long it would take to play strip poker!. To make the ascent I had:

• Boots
• Socks (6, 3 pairs)
• Underwear
• Long Johns x 2
• Ski Trousers
• Waterproof Overtrousers
• Merino Tops x 3
• Fleece Jacket
• Waterproof Jacket
• Scarf
• Gloves
• Mittens
• Balaclava

Also of course walking poles, sunglasses (for way down) and headlamp.

We stumbled outside at midnightish for Day 5 and the final ascent. Sore and tried from Day 4, but adrenaline kicking in.

Tim Montgomerie interviewed John Key for The Times.

On his own blog, He makes 10 observations about John Key:

1. Upwardly mobile
2. No surprises
3. No security in standing still
4. Controlled immigration is a good thing
5. Patriotic
6. A sensible green
7. Balanced ticket
8. Polls, not pundits
9. Selfie conservatism
10. Global leadership

Last year Slate published this diagram using smilies to show the state of relationships in Middle Eastern politics.

Some of these relationships may have changed in light of more recent events but assuming for a moment that they’re reasonably accurate as shown.

• Everyone but Iraq have more enemies than friends.
• ISIS and Al-Quida not surprisingly don’t have any friends.
• The Palestinian Authority seem for whatever ever reason to have a lot of complex relationships.
• The Israel – USA relationship is probably a friendly relationship that has got a bit complicated bearing in mind the squabble about Netanyahu being invited to address a joint session of the US Congress by Boehner. The White House have accordingly got their knickers in a knot.
• Saudia Arabia don’t have an oversupply of friends.

I must add that some countries like Yemen and Jordan haven’t been included.

The Herald reports:

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists says Earth is now closer to human-caused doomsday than it has been in more than 30 years because of global warming and nuclear weaponry. But other experts say that’s much too gloomy.

The US advocacy group founded by the creators of the atomic bomb moved their famed “Doomsday Clock” ahead two minutes today. It said the world is now three minutes from a catastrophic midnight, instead of five minutes.

In the 1970s and the 1980s the Doomsday Clock has relevance. At times the world came close to a superpower conflict that could have destroyed the planet. When I was 15 I recall a survey that around half the people my age thought the world could end in our lifetimes. Today I doubt 1% think that.

Claiming we are at the same risk of extinction as during the cold war is nuts.

They justify this by saying they now include climate change. They are the Atomic Scientists!

“The fact that the Doomsday clock-setters changed their definition of ‘doomsday’ shows how profoundly the world has changed – they have to find a new source of doom because global thermonuclear war is now so unlikely,” Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker wrote in an email.

Exactly.

John Drinnan reports:

According to Howson, Nielsen statistics show Concert reaches 5 per cent of New Zealand listeners.

Concert costs about $5 million, so those listeners are in a privileged position.

Some people believe that as a public station Concert does a brilliant job on a remarkably small budget.

I don’t see in today’s age there is a need for taxpayers to fund a station such as Concert FM.

I do accept the case for National Radio, as that is about making sure we have in depth coverage of New Zealand news and current affairs.

But Concert FM plays basically German classical music. Now I happen to quite like my Mozart, but you don’t need a $5 million station for New Zealanders to be able to listen to it. Almost every piece of classical music in history is available for free and can be streamed, made into playlists and the like.

This is the playlist for Friday:

• Wagner
• Mozart
• Schubert
• Beethoven
• Mendelssohn
• Marais
• Bach
• Hayden
• Verdi
• Gershwin

etc etc. Why not get rid of Concert FM and put the money saved into beefing up National Radio?

Day 3 is a rest or more correctly an acclimatization day. We still did a five hour trek today, so it wasn’t very restful! Had a late wake up of 7 am!

Lots of those strange trees around camp.

We hiked up what they call the Upper Route towards Mawenzi.

These are the Zebra Rocks.

The natural colouring of the rocks is quite fascinating.

We decided to carry on up towards the ridgeline.

And got up to around 4,300 metres after three and a half hours. We’d been told the whole up and down would take three hours so were slightly grumpy.

Not as many of these here as in Nepal, but still a fair few Buddhists have been through.

A view down from the ridgeline. It started to cloud in going down, and then it rained. Luckily you always have the wet weather gear in the day pack, so a quick change for the final part of the descent back to Horombo.

Doing an acclimatization day was a very good idea. There seemed to be a lot more altitude sickness with groups that didn’t do it.

The weather stayed overcast, rainy and cold for the rest of the day. We had an early 6 pm dinner and then went to bed around 7 pm, as the two hardest days were to follow.

The Herald reports:

Greens co-leader Metiria Turei launched a stinging attack on John Key in his absence at Ratana today, saying his view of New Zealand’s history was “warped, outrageous and deeply offensive”.

I remind readers of the Green Party Values:

Engage respectfully, without personal attacks

TVNZ reports:

Mr Key will today have private meetings with representatives from Ireland, Sweden and Luxembourg – but even a Prime Minister needs to let off some steam.

ONE News Europe correspondent Jessica Mutch snapped the PM mid-snowfight with his chief of staff, Wayne Eagleson.

I’m sure that isn’t in the job description!

NewstalkZB reports that it is not all snowball fights:

John Key is in demand at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

He’s attending the annual gathering in Switzerland for the first time.

One News reporter Jessica Mutch told Newstalk ZB’s Mike Hosking Mr Key is a man in demand in Davos.

“He has been a target, or a little bit of a superstar at this conference, just because of how well our economy is doing at the moment. He has been asked to speak, particularly about our connection with Asia.”

I’m so pleased we didn’t throw it all away to have a Labour-Green-NZ First-Mana-Internet Government.

Roy Morgan have released the first poll of 2015. National is up 6% to 52% – exactly double Labour and 15% ahead of Labour/Greens combined.

Of importance is that 67% of respondents said NZ is heading in the right direction and only 23% in the wrong direction.

This is an incredibly strong position to be in at the start of one’s third term.

If we look at the first poll of 2006, in Labour’s third term, Labour were actually 2% behind National.

Despite the positive publicity in the media for Little, he has yet to make a difference to Labour’s polls.

We got up on Day 2 at 6.30 am for breakfast. This crow was keen to join us inside.

Once again the weather was looking good.

So off we set. In the background you can see Kibo on the left (our target) and Mawenzi.

Today we rise 990 metres, but are still low enough down to have some great greenery.

Day 2 is around an 11 km trek, which isn’t huge, but the vertical gain of a km means it takes a good six and a half hours going slow.

At the lunch stop, there are always hungry grows.

An example of the plant life.

And another. Quite beautiful.

A zoom shot of Kibo as we get close to it.

These trees were very common from 3000 to 4000 metres are are quite spectacular.

Approaching Horombo Hut around 3 pm.

And we’re there. We’re now at 3,720 metres above sea level. For comparison the top of Mt Cook is 3,724 metres. During the day it is warm here, but once the sun goes down, gets pretty cold and you need a couple of layers to keep warm.

Business NZ reports:

Expansion in the manufacturing sector lifted during the last month of 2014, according to the latest BNZ – BusinessNZ Performance of Manufacturing Index (PMI).

The seasonally adjusted PMI for December was 57.7(a PMI reading above 50.0 indicates that manufacturing is generally expanding; below 50.0 that it is declining).  This was 2.1 points higher than November, and a positive end to the year for the sector. 

When will Labour declare the crisis to be ended?

The Dom Post reported:

Tagging the foyer of the court housing a judge known for his loathing of taggers is not the smartest thing to do.

It’s an observation Adam Kelliher might have been considering as he spent last night in a prison cell after appearing before Judge Tony Adeane in Napier District Court yesterday.

The duty solicitor for the day, James Rainger, could be seen flinching as Kelliher, 20, was called before the judge.

I bet he was.

The judge replied: “With the greatest of respect, I disagree with your submissions, as you might expect.

“Anyone who comes in and graffitis this courthouse is going to get short shrift. Anyone who graffitis anything around Hawke’s Bay is going to get that. You do it here, then you’re really leading with your chin.”

He remanded Kelliher in custody overnight to be sentenced today.

An angry Kelliher was led from the dock and could be heard banging on his cell door for the next half an hour.

Oh, poor diddums.

In 2008, Adeane gained renown when he took a hard line on taggers, giving a series of offenders a taste of prison. At the time he said taggers were making Hastings look like a North American slum, and he rejected suggestions graffiti was art or culture.

Graffiti crime in the district halved after he took his tough stance.

Can we clone him?

The Herald reports:

Household rates could rise by 7.6 per cent this year if the city adopts a motorway toll of $2 or a regional fuel tax to tackle the city’s transport challenges.

The Auckland Council today releases a draft 10-year budget for public consultation, which includes some difficult choices on the costs and services of the Super City.

Among the options are paying less for transport and getting less, or a scheme involving a motorway toll or a fuel tax to raise $300 million a year to fill a $12 billion transport funding gap over 30 years.

The council is considering a targeted rate this year until revenue from tolls, a fuel tax or higher rates is in place by about 2018.

In the meantime, about $1.7 billion of $3.4 billion of additional transport projects over the next 10 years will be funded by debt.

Council finance officer Matthew Walker said the targeted rate would collect $30 million this year, the equivalent of a 2 per cent rise in rates, to fund the revenue shortfall.

This would raise the overall rates increase from 3.5 per cent to 5.5 per cent.

Household rates would increase on average from 5.6 per cent to 7.6 per cent.

The Council is out of control with its spending. Time for a team to stand for Council who will pledge to keep rates rises down, and resign if they fail to do so.

A short while after I got back from the Himalayas, a mate (Chris) told me he wanted to summit Mt Kilimanjaro for his 40th birthday and asked if I wanted to give it a go also. After a few minutes thought (longer than usual for me) I said yes, and the planning started. We were joined by Bruce and Basma, colleagues and friends of Chris and I.

We decided to do the Marangu route and here we are looking cheerful at the Marangu gate which is 1,860 metres above sea level. In four days (plus an acclimatization day) we needed to ascend over 4,000 metres until we hopefully make the summit at almost 6 kms (5,895 metres) above sea level.

The summit is the highest point in four continents – there is no piece of land higher in Africa, Europe, Oceania or Antarctica. And while it is not a technical climb, but a trek, it is difficult.  The success rate is estimated to be between 30% and 75% depending on days taken. The combination of the steep rate of ascent and the height make it something you don’t attempt lightly, even though the first couple of days are relatively easy. The death rate is estimated to be 3 to 7 people a year.

Almost all of the first day is in the bush, which looks quite similar at times to NZ bush.

However they had monkeys!

We had been advised to take it slowly the first two days, as that helps with acclimatization. So we did the 8 kms and 850 metre ascent in around five easy hours. It was warm and sunny.

Once we got there we did an extra quick side walk, where we were lucky to see some white backed monkeys. The photo quality is poor as my normal 24x zoom camera had died on the trip, and I had a cheap 5x zoom replacement only.

Mt Kilimanjaro has craters all over the place, and this one was 15 minutes walk from the Mandara Hut.

Mandara Hut is actually a collection of A frames. They are not large as each A frame is split into two halves, each sleeping four. They do the job.

Had dinner around 6.30 pm and we crashed around 9.30 pm after a few rounds of cards. A good start to the trek. We’re all happy.

Nick Smith announced earlier this week:

Dr Smith today also released an independent report by Motu Economic and Public Policy Research – commissioned by the Treasury and the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment – into the impacts of planning rules, regulations, uncertainty and delay in residential property development.
 
The report concludes that the RMA is adding an extra $30,000 to the cost of an apartment, an extra $15,000 to the cost of a home, and that it is reducing the capacity of housing development by 22 per cent.
 
“This report is consistent with the conclusions of the Productivity Commission and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development in highlighting the high administrative burden of our system of environmental regulations, but also adds new information by estimating the actual cost of its flaws. It indicates that over the last decade, the RMA has added $30 billion to the cost of building and reduced new housing stock by 40,000 homes,” Dr Smith says.

So the time has come to make significant changes I hope.

Dr Smith outlined ten major changes the Government would be including in its second phase of reforms in 2015:

• Add natural hazards
• Recognise urban planning
• Prioritise housing affordability
• Acknowledge importance of infrastructure
• Greater weight to property rights
• National planning templates
• Speed up plan-making
• Encouraging collaborative resolution
• Strengthening national tools
• Internet for simplicity and speed

Pleasing to see that so far there has been support from the Auckland Council and Local Government NZ for the changes.

The question will be whether they will do enough. The greater weight to property rights and prioritisation of housing affordability look the most promising.

Introduction

This discusses the problem of despite increased spending by the US government it isn’t stemming the flow of federal cybersecurity breaches.

The Federal Information Security Management Act 2002

This act is commonly known as FISMA. Eli Dourado and Andrea Castillo from the Mercatus Center – George Mason University in Washington DC have released a report on the effectiveness of FISMA. The authors helpfully explain the intent of the act.

FISMA was intended to strengthen federal IT systems by requiring agency leaders to develop and implement information security protections with the guidance of offices such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). In addition to authorizing the sums necessary for agencies to invest in cybersecurity technologies and infrastructure, FISMA compels agencies to proactively assess and reduce systematic risks, actively train personnel to meet and improve information security standards, improve cybersecurity risk reporting and information sharing capabilities, and develop contingency plans to respond to cyber-breaches.

The report also has data showing spending from 2006 to 2013 under FISMA. Note that the calculation methodology changed in 2013. This partially explains the lower figure. Also the dollar figures are in billions (green bars).

So the US  Federal Government has spent $US78.8 billion on FISMA between 2006 – 2013 but despite throwing more money at the problem the number of security incidents has increased 1012%.

Personal Information

Another important problem is the issue of security incidents involving personal information. The next chart reveals that 38% of reported security incidents involved personal information breaches.

This increase is far from ideal and is what concerns libertarians and privacy advocates.

Scope of the problem

So what are underlying problems at the heart of these issues? According to the United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) there is a lot of work to do.

Illustrating the extent to which weaknesses continue to affect the 24 major federal agencies, in fiscal year 2013, inspectors general at 21 of the 24 agencies cited information security as a major management challenge for their agency, and 18 agencies reported that information security control deficiencies were either a material weakness or significant deficiency in internal controls over financial reporting in fiscal year 2013. These weaknesses show that information security continues to be a major challenge for federal agencies, putting federal systems and the information they contain.

Comment

Cybersecurity is a serious concern for governments worldwide and the issues the USA is having in getting the right balance between passing sound law that can be administered and monitored properly whilst balancing privacy concerns is a major challenge. Add to this the mindboggling technical issues that IT and cyber security experts have to deal with there aren’t easy answers. This isn’t policy making for the faint hearted.

To be bi-partisan about this there is enough blame to go around as the problems started before Barack Obama became president. That doesn’t mean his administration is blameless either. The number of security incidents has increased enormously since 2009. Dourado and Castillo do express concerns about President Obama’s proposal of extending the same cyber security policies that aren’t currently working properly in the US public sector to the private sector (Executive Order #13636: Cybersecurity Framework). As they correctly observe  the US Federal Government should get its own house in order regarding cyber security before trying to tell others what to do.