RICH ENTITLEMENT

 I went for my first swim of the season today - two months later than I did last year.

We've had a strange Spring and early Summer here with many storms. Although it's been hot I don't like to swim after the rains because of the run-off from roads, farms and stormwater systems which tend to make the water a bit murky. Who knows what chemicals get washed out into the sea?

Today the water was clear. It was warm enough to get into easily but with a cool edge to be refreshing after playing tennis. There were no boats operating which is a bit strange for the time of year being already the holiday season but it was peaceful and pleasant. Long may it last. Luckily we don't have many millionaires living up here and hopefully will never have billionaires.

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On the way home from tennis I listened to Nikki Mandow, business commentator, talking to Kathryn Ryan on Nine To Noon. Nikki talked  about some Auckland protests where homeowners are fighting the council against regulations being relaxed to enable some rich(er) people to do what they bloody like and to hell with the rest of us. A by-product of the insane housing prices in the major cities and the explosion of wealth, with earnings imbalance for the top few percent of the population, is that there is now a bigger divide between the wealthy and the poor than ever before. The rich can buy what they want and, it seems that with the ability to pay high legal fees and to lobby government and council lawmakers, this can also include rights and privilege.

Nikki Mander talked about two current Auckland issues - the Ali Williams and Anna Mowbray Westmere helipad situation and a sand issue at Herne Bay beach.

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"Auckland Council doesn’t actually have any rules about people in the city putting helipads in their back gardens. There are rules about keeping chickens, and playing music, and how high off the ground you can put a water tank.

But there's nothing specifically related to helipads. Which seems odd, until you think that the council probably doesn’t have rules about people building a private nuclear power plant or digging a coal mine in the garden. Presumably back in the day when the unitary plan was put together, helicopters were something that landed at airports; the council probably reckoned they didn’t need to have specific guidelines about helicopters and urban gardens.

How things have changed."

         - Niki Mander 

Recently three other rich bastards people have been allowed to put in helipads on their Herne Bay (near Westmere) properties with two more in the planning stages. Waiheke has about 50 private helipads, ferrying locals and visitors to and from homes and vineyards. Ex All Black Ali Williams and billionaire Anna Mowbray want to build their helipad on their $24 million peninsular home in Westmere.

This is arrogance in the extreme. The Mowbrays (Anna and her brothers) own a mansion in Coatesville which is about an hours drive from Westmere but, being rich can't be fucked driving there like the peasants do. No, she wants to fly there from home in about 10 minutes. She probably wants to fly to Waiheke for lunch as well. Helicopters are extremely noisy machines and the motor and rotor sounds and the downdrafts are very disruptive. No wonder the neighbours, in a bloody built up suburb for fucks sake, are up in arms about this. I hope that they win their case and that the greedy council, pandering to the whims of rich 'A' listers see some common sense and close all of the loopholes.

The other issue Mowbray talked about was the Herne Bay beach situation where  some rich bastards people are acting entitled.

A while ago, Auckland council decided to re-sand the beach at Herne Bay for the benefit of locals and visitors to be able to swim and sunbathe. The sand came from the beach at  Pakiri an hour or so north of Auckland (which also caused some issues), but what no one thought about was a different and unintended consequence: that all that extra sand on the beach potentially gives the homeowners with beachfront properties a windfall addition to their land.

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Many Herne Bay (and other) coastal homeowners are allowed to claim, as part of their property, all the land down to what’s called the ‘Mean High Water Springs’ or MHWS. This is a measure based on the high water mark at the twice (lunar) monthly spring tide (also called a king tide), averaged over an 18.6 year tidal cycle. It can vary from year to year. It's  known as "riparian rights" – landowners whose title extends down to the water's edge, as measured by the mean high water springs mark.

But when the council put a whole lot of new sand on the beach this lifted the level of the beach by nearly a metre along the shoreline and 5 metres extra width, to “provide an all-tide dry beach for passive recreation” which was great for the general populace- the hoi polloi who had five more metres of dry sand all along the beach to sit on. Unfortunately though this meant that for beachfront homeowners – some of the more privileged Auckland property owners – the Mean High Water Springs mark is now further down the beach. So their properties now extend further onto the beach.

Initially this was just a paper-based windfall and nothing much changed for the public using the beach.
But now a  property developer  wants to build a boat shed on this new sand. What he describes in his application as a modest boat-shed is in fact to be a much more substantial building and will be the thin end of the wedge in regard to others following suit.  The beach created by the council for the public, using public funds will be just extra land for the homeowners to build on.

Herne Bay and other Auckland residents are protesting against this as well they might, as how much property and stuff do these rich bastards people want? Let's hope again that the Auckland Council shows some common sense unlike Robert and the Catholic Church.

Mind you, if the rich and entitled Aucklanders get their way with the increased use of helicopters and other carbon negative toys then global warming might claim back that beach.