SOME BEAUTIFULLY PREPARED HOLIDAY READING

I’ve just had a week doing important government research with my surfboard in Rarotonga, well actually we had a holiday to celebrate the fact that one of the houses we are building in Kerikeri got a permit from the FNDC Building Permit Prevention Division. It was such a shock that we needed a week off to get over it and the permit only took, er… well ages.

Just before I left my beloved Northland, I was given a packet containing what I was told would be interesting reading. On opening I discovered a beautifully printed set of five volumes of text and lovely colour photos of various views of the Far North including one of my home in Mangonui. There were sepia photos of a model couple on beaches and in cafes used as back drops to a series of tables of depressing statistics such as our continuing 9th place in unemployment rates.

This gorgeous set of volumes turns out to be the FNDC Long Term Community Something-or-other Plan (LTCCP), a door stop of truly heroic magnitude, right up there with the Royal Commission on Social Policy. A number of countries don’t spend as much on the print quality of their banknotes as this document, and on reading it one immediately came to the conclusion that we will be missing out on a fair bit of tar seal to pay for it.

I doubt if many of you have read it so over the next few months as I resolutely plough through it, I will summarise bits. I only managed volume one over the break and this is entitled Our Community, but I couldn’t help thinking it should have been called Expensive Drivel. It is written in the style of a blue sky “Janet and John” school reader and has enough meaningless one liners to allow me to quote a different one weekly for years.

In essence the whole of volume 1 can be summed up as follows:- FNDC will consult with our people, both Pakeha and Maori to do better in providing roads, water supply, sewerage and storm-water management.

I can just see some spin-meister will tell us that the government made the council do it. Yeah right! Just like they make themselves pay for pledge cards! It could all be on one sheet of black and white paper with the money saved going on stuff we can actually use.