I wish to confirm that I’ll be standing for Mayor in this years local body elections. I’m doing this because no-one else has stepped forward to make a stand and fight for the issues I believe are important and need to be addressed in this city. I am standing as a matter of principle and I intend to win.

The five main issues I’ll be campaigning for are,

1.I’ve been horrified by Mayor Moores call for a relentless increase in our cities rates for the next five years. This has happened even though our Council and it’s subsidiary Orion have recently received an extra half a billion dollars in windfall profits from the sale of Southpower and then Enerco. (i.e. $167 million from Southpower plus $330 million from Enerco equals $497 million.) During my stand for Mayor I’ll be demanding on behalf of the people of Christchurch an account of where all this money has gone to, and why?

2. Having as an independent City Councillor witnessed how incestuous party politics can become, even on a local body level, I will be advocating the introduction of a binding Local Body Referendum system for Christchurch. This will allow the people of this city to have the final say on all major spending projects and policy changes voted for by their Council. According to my calculations this could be done annually for as little as .50 cents per eligible voter. Such a system is used very successfully in other parts of the world and should lead to more responsibility in council spending and less squandering of our hard earned rates money, thus a dramatic lowering of our Cities rates, charges, fees and fines.

3. Because I believe party politics has no place in local body politics, I will be advocating a uniform salary structure for all elected Councillors. At present the existing party political pay structure allows certain selected Councillors to earn well over $95,000 a year. This is earned in allocated meeting fees, directorship fees, committee chair fees and free overseas trips, while other elected Councillors are paid as little as $30,000 a year for doing what is arguably a better job in representing the views of their constituents. I believe that being an elected representative is a social responsibility you take on as a civil duty, not because the party you joined needs another well paid bum in a seat to vote for it’s particular political agenda.

4. I am also standing for Mayor because I want to have an intelligent and meaningful debate with our current mayor, Garry Moore. Often, in the last three years when I’ve tried to raise important issues with this man I’ve either been ignored, had him mutter rude insults at me under his breath, had him pull funny faces at me from the Chair, or simply panic and hurry away claiming he had, “a more important meeting to attend to.”

5.Whilst I may have made a few mistakes in my life, in the last three years I’ve always honoured my election commitments and I’ve always stood up for what I’ve believed to be good for the people living in my Ward, and the city of Christchurch. Unlike some, I’ve never backed down from asking the hard questions and I’ve never been intimidated into sweeping problems under the carpet. As Mayor I’ll demand an open and honest Council free from back room deals and party political cover ups of incompetence. It’s time a few heads rolled.

I look forward to a good clean fight for the Mayoralty.

Yours truly,

Cr. Robin Booth

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Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>