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Thursday, May 23, 2013

Auckland to Bluff yacht race - minding what we say

Chairwoman Timms is being accused today, of attempting to influence ratepayer opinion in the framing of the issue when calling for public submissions on the issue. The organiser of the proposed yacht race says the chairwoman has couched the question to ratepayers in such a way as to dissuade them from supporting the race, or words to that effect. He's got a very good point. I asked the same question in the ES boardroom when it was presented to the council.
Of greater interest to me, was the last paragraph of the Southland Times report, where Olivia Taylor-Peebles writes,
"Ms Timms said she would not be voting in favour of the grant."

Surely that's a clear instance of pre-determination which would require the ES chairwoman to absent herself from the debate over the A2B yacht race, and the vote on any aspect of the council's involvement with it as well?

Just saying.

#rubyoncue

*Update - Ms Timms is saying she was misquoted and is demanding a retraction from The Southland Times. Some may wonder, looking back at some of her previous claims to the media (Hi, I'm Ruby) about the veracity of this latest claim.

7 comments:

JayWontdart said...

"Farming" or "framing"?

robertguyton said...

Thanks, Jordan. Farming's been on my mind a lot lately, especially last night at the 'RMA' public meeting. I thought the presentations there were excellent and I heard alarm bells ringing throughout the evening. You?

paulinem said...

Actually I agree with her attitude I think money on this boat race is a waste of money with little benefit to Southland but a lot of clods etc to a few Southlanders. I am sure their are more worthy causes than this boat race to be supported by ES.

robertguyton said...

Whether her position is right or not, Pauline, is not the issue. She's supposed to be fair and balanced in her approach. That said, she says she didn't say that. What to think, what to think :-)

JayWontdart said...

Interesting alright, but I was interested in flagging down the Riverton chap to thank him for pulling all that green string out of the water, and hammering in a "no dumping string!" sign! We were looking forward to signing him up as a lead soymilk distributer throughout Southland! :-)

Think we saw you going out just a hundred metres ahead of us. I could have released the Jen (shes completed an Ironman triathlon, I'm more of a tin boy myself) but thought it was better to let you off the hook than to badger you outside Subway at 10pm :-)

robertguyton said...

Phew! I was, til now, completely unaware of how close I came to being Jenned. No more angling for me!!

The Masked Avenger said...

Missed this till now - as one of Olivia's supervisors I can categorically state she did make a mistake in the story and as it said in the Times the next day, the chair did actually say she would not be voting.