vehiclesecurity.co.nz

On 8 July of last year, our son Q and his wife Liv bought a 1998 Toyota Caldina from a seller on Trade Me for $3,600. They were satisfied with the sale and the car and Q gave this positive feedback to the seller: ‘The car was exactly as described in the ad.  All sorted out in good time. Great trade. Thanks.’

Yesterday a repo man from Pacific Dawn Finance (formerly a division of South Canterbury Finance) arrived at the kids’ house to repossess the car. Q was out of town and Liv was alone in the house with our small grandson and our granddaughter, who is one year old today.

The repo man was extremely kind and helpful. He explained that around $7,000 was owed on the vehicle by a previous owner. He knew how upsetting this must be and offered to make Liv a cup of tea.

Liv rang Judy and me in great distress. I spoke to the repo man and asked if it would be possible to defer the repossession for 24 hours, so that Liv could at least make arrangements to borrow another vehicle to take our grandson to kindy and generally get around. He reluctantly agreed.

I think the details of this case should be known.  Read the rest of this entry »

 Bob McCoskrie: comfortable with the wooden spoon

Kenny Rodger - NZ Herald

Larry Baldock: even smacks his grandchildren

Photo: Mike Knott

 Garth McVicar: tent prisons and chain gangs

Now here’s my take on Western democracy. Once every three, four or five years, according to where you live, you get to vote for the political party you’d  like to run the country. Unless you’re a closed-minded bigot, it’s likely that you won’t approve of absolutely everything the party you voted for believes or intends to do, but you’ve got the good sense to understand that it’s a package you’re buying and not everything in it is going to please you. So you live with it and if, after those three, four or five years, you feel they’ve let you down, you vote for the other lot.

Meanwhile, a significant proportion of the voting public is lumbered with a government they didn’t want at all. But they live with that  too and start working to get their lot back in three, four or five years time. They don’t go around bitching that it wasn’t fair and if somebody doesn’t hold another election right away they’re going to hold their breath till they turn blue. Read the rest of this entry »

A year or so back I discovered  that my co-panellist that day on Jim Mora’s Afternoons programme on Radio New Zealand was to be Christine Rankin. I don’t think I’d met her before. It’s true that I had some pre-conceived and not very flattering ideas about her. But  my opinion of her had not always been negative.

I remember watching television news coverage of the case she took to the Employment Court in 2001 for unfair termination of her contract as CEO of WINZ by  the State Services Commission.  Much of the argument revolved around whether this effective sacking was politically motivated, but what captured my and the general public’s attention most were the extraordinary revelations about a conversation she had had with the Head of the Prime Minister’s Office, Mark Prebble. Read the rest of this entry »