I haven’t written a blog for a while, mainly cause I’ve been too busy. Certainly not due to a lock of topics – if anything, there are probably too many. As I write, there is a geotech engineer outside my window, putting a big pole thing into the ground. He and a coworker have been digging holes in the concrete and the lawn all afternoon, hi-vis jackets protecting them from the rain. After what was the greatest summer I can recall, Christchurch has started to get cold, and fast. Many people still have drafty houses without chimneys. They’re less worried about finding money for shares in power companies, more worried about finding money for power bills. Judging by the letters to the paper, the comments on stuff articles, and the general bitching about how things going, the people are angry.
The big news was, of course, the EQC leaks. If it wasn’t for the GCSB fiasco, it would have been the biggest news in the country for the last wee while. First it was bad, then it got worse, then worser, and then someone decided to leak it. I don’t have a property to repair, so I don’t think I have any information in the spreadsheet, but I do think it’s hilarious what has happened. It simply would not have been this big a deal – and gathered enough public support for first Bryan Staples to go to the media, then secondly for EQC Truths to leak it – if the people of Christchurch were not just so damn sick of dealing with EQC. I linked to EQC Truths about two months ago. I’m not going to claim any role in the leak at all, but looking back at what I wrote about the site two months ago is kind of prescient; this simply wouldn’t have happened – it wouldn’t have needed to have happened – if it weren’t for the way that EQC are treating their “clients”. I don’t want to lay blame for the leak of the spreadsheet on the person who did; the blame lies with the organisation as a whole, from the Minister and the Chief Executive down. They should be explaining to the people of Christchurch, and of New Zealand, why we should put up with such a demonstrably inept organisation. Instead, Brownlee has skipped the country to pay homage at the funeral of his failed ideological master.
If you want an incredibly detailed, and depressing, recount of the ups and downs (and downs) of the Christchurch rebuild, then Eric Crampton has put together a great summary here. While I don’t agree with all of Crampton’s solutions to problems (he’s a low-tax, low-regulation economist by day, who described the ACT party as economically sensible) he’s done an admirable job of collecting the stories and the mood of the city over the last two years. I hope he keeps updating it.
Finally, Bryce Edwards included links to not one but two United Future bloggers in his round up today, with Pete George rambling on about something, and this piece by Andrew McMillan, Politician on the identity of the EQC Truths blogger. He seems to gone and done a forensic analysis of everything EQC Truths has ever written, to try and ruin any credibility he might have. Good to know that the United Future candidate for Timaru has so many things on his plate. The thing with EQC Truths is that people aren’t going to him because of what HE wrote, they’re going to him because he’s releasing what EQC wrote. McMillan can run his little crusade as much as he likes, but the horse has bolted.