26th Oct 2007

Two things occupying my mind while walking the dog today. The first to to with the Hurunui District Council and its' Draft Dog Control Policy and the second Environment Canterbury and its' election of Chairman. If there's one word that comes to mind which might link the two together, I would choose deceit, though in the case of the HDC, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt.

A couple of weeks ago a letter from the HDC arrived with an A4 double sided sheet using cartoon characters to briefly describe aspects of a proposed dog control policy and invited submission. The information presented was pretty sketchy and made general sense and like most people that I've spoken to since, I was ready to bin it and move on. An inner voice said "hang on!, remember the Vogon captain in the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy as he was about to destroy the Earth to make way for a super space highway". To the uninitiated, plans for the destruction of Earth had been available for inspection for thousands of years in the cellar of a building on some planet light years away. The HDC had copies of the draft policy in full if you cared to call into their office in Amberley (60kms away) or by downloading the file from their website (assuming you had an internet connection and one which ran faster than a snail). On checking, the file was 1mb in size so two hours later it finally found its' way to my computer. As usual, as with most bureaucratic processes, the devil was in the detail and what was not disclosed in the mailout was the extent of areas where they proposed to ban dogs completely. Whether this was left out on purpose.... I don't know, but if they had included those details, then I'm sure the submissions would have rolled in thick and fast. As I said..... deceit may be too strong a word.

The other news was that Sir Kerry Burke has achieved re-election to the post of chairman of Environment Canterbury by a vote of 7 to 6. Sir Kerry has been a contentious figure at the helm of the organisation and the voters chucked out many of his supporting councillors at the recent local body elections. He was widely tipped to be unseated from the chairmans post and a number of candidates campaigned on a pledge to vote for his rival Alec Neill. One of those was Bronwen Murray who, when the votes were tied 7 to 7 changed hers in favour of Burke. Her excuse for changing it was that she didn't want it decided on a coin toss.
It really sums up why the general populace despises politicians, that election promises have a life rated in milliseconds and that expediency over integrity always prevails. It's no wonder interest in the local body elections is waning when all those who bother to vote find themselves with tossers.

TC