Neil and I with half of the group painting the fence while the other half were inside doing different work.

On Tuesday night a van adorned with Labour stickers pulled up in Hamilton full of Young Labourites on their Clarion Tour. As Trevor and Grant said, they’re heading throughout the country (Orewa to Queenstown) doing community service. Some are on leave from work and others are on their Summer break from uni.

Point is, they’re doing good deeds and helping out the community groups that give so much to their local areas. These groups deserve the break and to know that we notice their efforts.

After a night of Sing Star (they let the local Labour MP win – good politics) we were at the Western Community Centre in Nawton. They painted fences, removed tagging and got items ready for the community noticeboard.

The Western Community Centre is an important fixture in Nawton. It’s a low socio-economic neighbourhood where families are struggling with extra GST costs, raised doctors fees and unaffordable increases in early childhood education fees.

I’ll have similar energy to Young Labour’s to win back Hamilton West because they need an MP and a Labour Government to stand up for them.

Thanks, Young Labour. I hear they were on the ferry to South Island this afternoon. You can follow them on facebook, twitter and at www.clariontour.co.nz.

only 12% felt they were any better off, 38% worse off and 33% unchanged. Some readers said John Key has lost their vote over the GST increase.

And just to show how out of touch those on big incomes are with reality, a partner of Deloitte Hamilton says people just had to “reprioritise.”

“You can choose whether or not to spend money and therefore pay tax,” he said.

Really? Choose not to buy groceries, pay the power bill, pay for petrol, pay the rent? This man has no idea that low and middle-income families spend all they earn on just getting by.

His out-of-touch comments reflect arrogant National Party thinking. Guess he must be in the 12% laughing at the expense of the other 88%.

Richard O’Brien, creator of the cult classic the Rocky Horror Show appears to have being granted residency in New Zealand, so Sue Moroney and I took a few minutes out in Hamilton today to celebrate with his alter-ego, Riff-Raff who has been immortalised by the city.

He has been granted an exception to policy, and while some people might have concerns, on the face of it seems reasonable. O’Brien lived in New Zealand for about 12 years during his adolesence and early twenties. He returned to NZ often as his parents remained here until they passed away a few years ago. His siblings still live here, and he owns property.

The Rocky Horror Show was a huge part of my growing up. Along with a group of friends we were kind of obsessed with the show, and to this day I can just about remember almost all the words (sad I know). We saw sit live a couple of times in the 80s with Rob Muldoon and Billy T James fulfilling the roles of the Narrator. I also remember a particularly boisterous screening of the film one Friday evening, that culminated in a mass confetti and water fight both inside and outside the theatre.

It is a total classic, and fantastic that it was written by a New Zealander. Richard O’Brien once said it was based on his experiences in Hamilton and Tauranga in the 1960s. Who knew they were that interesting….

First off, we had Anne Tolley taking the tertiary sector literally when they suggested she should take a “helicopter view” of the sector -she had them stump up for a costly ride in a chopper over Auckland.

Now, we have Steven Joyce telling the country that he would prefer fund helicopter trips for commuters between Hamilton and Auckland than to subsidise a passenger train service between the two cities.

He seemed to have borrowed Simon Power’s strategy of heavily inflating the cost to the taxpayer, so he could justify his idealogical postition against trains and for more and more roads. Joyce claimed the  train would cost $15-16,000 per trip which is complete rubbish.

Power used this tactic to try to justify the closing down of Hamilton’s successful trial youth justice facility, Te Hurihanga.

Maybe they just think people can’t do maths in Hamilton. Sonething of a miscalculation, if you excuse the pun.

When in Government, Labour was prepared to go down the PPP path, where it could be demonstrated that it made good economic and social sense. But it never did. And it still doesn’t.

The private sector wants its hands on this school building ownership so it can make a buck out of the taxpayer.

And while they make a buck out of it, education will lose out. Not to mention the loss of control by the school and lack of access to school properties by the community.

Its another bad plan from a Government that has already run out of ideas. It is now reduced to following failed models from other countries – a bit like national standards really.

 It has been a disaster in the UK and it will be here too.

Now, Hamilton’s National MPs say that “New Zealand is now a second world country and can only expect second world care and facilities.”

That’s what Tim MacIndoe and David Bennett told the Midland’s Region of the NZ Nurses’ Organisation when they visited them in Novemebr 2009.

Ruth Dyson sought leave to table the NZNO Newsletter containing the two MPs comments in Parliament today and it looked like she was about to get it. The Leader of the House didn’t object, nor any of their front bench.

However, from the murky depths of the National back bench an objection finally did emerge – from David Bennett.

Seems they think they can say one thing in Wellington and something else in Hamilton.

At the time, we were all stuck in Parliament on a Saturday debating the super city legislation under urgency. For a bit of light relief I convinced a number of my colleagues to put $5 each into a group bet on Solidarity. The proceeds from our well-timed winning bet were donated to the Labour campiagn in Mt Albert and David Shearer subsequently bolted in.

I put it all down to the the great “karma” Solidarity generated when he “bolted in” that day at Te Rapa.

Anyway, Soli kicked off his 2010 Melbourne Cup campaign (he didn’t make it in 08 or 09 but this could be his BIG year) at Tauranga on Saturday and he nearly won!

He came in second and was beaten by a short neck (that’s the margin, not the name of the horse).

But here’s the exciting bit – this race was all wrong for him.  It was run on a hard track over 1400m. To date, he’s been at his best on a soft track over 2100m.

Did I mention what a great name he has?

Essentially, the facility has been working with some of our young men who are the worst offenders and are on the pathway to a life of serious crime. It has had extrodinary success rates in the three years  of the programme’s pilot, with none of the graduates offending in the first 10 months since they completed the programme.

If you agree with us that this is a shortsighted decision, then you can fill out the petition launched by a local Hamilton woman, aimed at reversing the funding cut.

The petitioner came to my office in Hamilton to seek advice on how to go about doing a petition. When I asked her what her motivation was she said “I just think everyone deserves a second chance.”

She has had no involvement with the programme, but is a fair-minded Hamiltonian who thinks the decision stinks. I’m with her on that!

Te Hurihanga Petition

The NZ Transport Agency came to Hamilton yesterday to deliver the news that the Hamilton leg of the expressway is now not scheduled for completion until 2024. The problem is that the Nats made an election promise to complete the Waikato Expressway inside ten years – that is by 2018.

The other problem is that the Minister has reversed the order of construction so that the Hamilton by-pass comes last. That will create a bottleneck effect as the construction takes place to the north and the south of Hamilton first.

It means larger volumes of traffic will be delivered to congested Hamilton streets until 2024.

It looks like the Hamilton Government National MPs, David Bennett and Tim MacIndoe lack the influence and the ability to get their major election promise delivered.

Oddly enough, even though John Key used his speech to announce the Kopu Bridge replacement for the 11th time, the Waikato Expressway didn’t feature in his speech at all today. Hmmmmm………curious.

The meeting was hosted by the Campaign for Better Transport and the business case for the train service is well-established.

Unfortunately, Nanaia Mahuta and I are the only local MPs supporting the train service – the two National MPs told the meeting all the reasons it shouldn’t go ahead.

The National Party rhetoric goes something like this:

*Hamilton is too small to sustain the service;

*Hamilton should be grateful that it is getting funding for an expressway;

*Waikato Mayors just want the expressway completed in 10 years time instead;

* There is a private bus company that commuters could use.

Their arguments don’t stack up. Masterton and Palmerston North have passenger train services to Wellington and they are a lot smaller than Hamilton.

The expressway, when completed at a cost of $2b in 10 years time, will save 10 minutes on the journey to Auckland – that is until Waikato cars get to the Southern Motorways and sit in traffic jams for ages!

The Waikato Mayors have always argued for a balanced transport system for the region and they didn’t anticipate the Government was going to cut city public transport funding for Hamilton to fund the expressway as they have.

Oh duh… the buses to Auckland get caught in the traffic jams too.

I reckon the real reason David Bennett and Tim MacIndoe are talking the proposal down is they agree with the Don Brash Taskforce comissioned by John Key when it recommended the sale of state assets.

KiwiRail will be the first up for sale and they won’t want a whole lot of Hamilton commuters up in arms when they sell it off.