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The world's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 30th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

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Bullshit and bullying

10 Jun 2022

The sky here in Tokoroa was deep red this morning.

In fact, it was a morning unlike any I've ever seen before. Although it was heavily overcast and raining, everything around was monochrome, just varying shades of red.

To be honest, it was a beautiful sight and one I'd never seen before in my entire 69.5 years on the planet.

How coincidental that this was also the dawn of the next step in my seemingly endless battle with the South Waikato District Council. I think perhaps that they should see this blood-red sky as a portent of what's to come.

Yesterday, as regular readers will be aware, I attended a meeting of the SWDC to make the case for preserving the airfield tower, or at least selling it to me rather than spending thousands to have it demolished.

It's hardly rocket-science to work out which has the best outcome for the community and is also, coincidentally, the best fiscal result.

Of course, as regular readers will also know, this council does not allow fact, logic or sound reasoning interfere with their decision-making process.

"Your offer will not be accepted today" was the declaration of the Mayor.

However, this was not before all manner of skulduggery had been engaged in, as the council attempted to deflect the obvious public outrage at a report which recommended not only the demolition of the tower but a number of other buildings regularly used by community groups.

The first thing they tried was to remove the report from the agenda, thus pretending that there was now no problem at all and no need for public outrage.

I'm sorry but you can't just hide a report and then claim "there's nothing to see here" -- yet that's what they attempted to do.

You'll also see in the video below, they did not want the spotlight of public scrutiny cast on their actions yesterday. The new CE, of whom I had very high hopes, proved to be a massive disappointment by misrepresenting the provisions of the Privacy Act in a way that can only be seen as bullying.

Yes, its situation-normal at the SWDC.

Well I've had enough!

For too long I've wasted my time with these clowns and their hollow promises, failures to honour the promises they made to the community when running for election, their agregious money-wasting and their personality-based decision making.

They've picked a fight they really ought not have even considered engaging in.

Odds are that they're going to destroy the one thing that puts this little town on the world map -- "because it's you Bruce" -- not for any sound reason.

All will be revealed in an upcoming documentary video that I'm starting work on today.

There are so many skeletons in the SWDC's closet that my biggest problem will be trying to keep the video down to a reasonable length.

I've always wanted to make a good investigative documentary and now is my chance.

Watch the video below and you'll probably get a feel for my anger and frustration right now. I shall channel all that energy into showing the world how this council has failed on so many levels. Remembering that we have elections coming up in October, I really do wonder if these people know what they did yesterday by sidelining me, yet again.

How much easier it would have been to simply do the right thing for this community by selling that "written off" and "abandoned" tower to me for $1 and letting me spend my own money to restore it into something the community can be proud of.

Ah well, stay tuned, that sky is about to get a whole lot redder!

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