The whole Hobbit thing has been great for my home town and I too am an advocate of it continuing to be filmed there. But there are other small people who are endangered in Matamata and I expect they will be asking for tax-payer hand-out to keep their multi-million industry and its associated jobs going.

I’m talking about the racing industry ( although it is of course true that those who work in the industry are not all small).

Thanks to this Government’s economic mismanagement, the racing industry is really struggling. And to make matters worse, the additional funding put in by Labour when Winston Peters was Minister of Racing was stripped away by National this racing season because the country couldn’t afford it.

What a slap in the face to that industry to see that suddenly, the country could afford it when Warner Bros rolled into town.

How come an American corporate entity deserves tax-payer subsidy, but a home-grown industry employing thousands year after year doesn’t?

And are there more deserving cases who could have done with the $33m without selling our independance as a country down the tubes, demanding changes to domestic law without seeking the opinions of New Zealanders via a select committee process?

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%.

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.

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?

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.

These two guys are delegates at Open Country Cheese. On the left is Lotao Aliimatafitafi and Dave te Iringa is on the right.

They, with the rest of their team have done a great job in building community support – though to be fair Talleys and the manager have helped a lot too.  

I can’t go into details on the current state of the dispute.  My briefing was confidential.

Lotao is a pretty recent employee. People who have been around rugby circles might remember him as a talented young front rower a few years back. He has been playing professional rugby in France for the last five years.

Dave is the guy that management accussed of breaking a van window with a rock. Their problem was that they supplied the Police with a video that showed Dave was rolling a smoke with two hands throughout the incident which looks like it was caused by a stone from a preceeding car. While some of my colleagues past and present might regard rolling a smoke as a worse thing to do it isn’t illegal.

Being delegates isn’t easy at the best of time. Leading during a lockout in a rural area is tough. Good work guys.

If it had been a union defying a court ruling like this we would be hearing volumes from the Minister of Labour, the Prime Minister, Employers’ organisations etc.

Just because there is a recess on there is no excuse to go on a stopwork yourself Kate.