By: Larry Williams | Wednesday, May 23, 2012

A group of disgruntled Christchurch residents is looking at legal action against their insurance companies.

There has been a lack of communication from State and IAG Insurance.

Most have been waiting 15 months and feel their insurance companies are not acting in good faith with claims.

It appears there are many residents who are getting the run around from their insurance companies, particularly State and IAG.

This won't do their brands much good at all.

State and IAG run a serious risk of losing a lot of business.

If folk see insurance companies not honouring their contracts or hedging or going to the fine print, delaying action, they will lose business around the country.

If State and IAG don't address these issues, forget about any court action, there will be a run on these companies.

Not a good look.

THE BUDGET

Bill English says there will be "no deep dark secrets" in the budget. That is code for more of the same. Stock standard. Fiscally restrained.

There is a clear divide between what we will most likely see in the Government's budget and what opposition parties would do.

The opposition has already written it off.

Commentators like the left wing former UK Labour MP Brian Gould have already written it off.

They have all the answers and most of them can be sheeted back to borrow and spend.

They want nothing to do with austerity.

Fair enough, there is an argument for stimulus but essentially it means borrowing.

The opposition is now attacking this countries dismal growth, and it is awful at around 1.5%. It’s stuttering along. There is no sign of improvement.

The opposition blame the Government.

Well yes, they have to take it on the chin but to dismiss the world economic situation is just silly. No economist in their right mind would discount what’s going on around the world and in particular right now in Europe.

There is a bunch of things that the Government have chosen to leave for political reasons but you cannot ignore the impact of the global recession and the Christchurch earthquake.

SHANE JONES

Shane Jones' excuse for approving the Chinese man Liu's citizenship is that a Department of Internal Affairs official told him that he would be executed and have his organs harvested if he returned to China.

Oh well this explains everything then.

Jones has dodged questions for four years and when he's under the hammer he brings out this line about Liu being shot if he went back to China.

So who then was the DIA official ? Because it was the DIA who recommended to the Minister that the application be rejected.

In the application for citizenship presented to the Minister nowhere was the threat of execution mentioned. Not in the DIA material. Not in the letters of support from MPs. Not even Liu himself has used this as a reason  for citizenship as far as I can see. Now that seems kind of odd to me. Here's Jones saying he was going to be executed and nobody else was saying this at the time.

Indeed the DIA explicitly ruled out exceptional circumstances of a humanitarian or other nature relating to the applicant.

And how does this square with what Liu was saying?

The DIA case officer said in court that "When told he would not receive citizenship, he said he was 99 per cent sure he would". “He said he had a lot of support from members of Parliament … he was going to take them to China.”

It doesn't sound then that Liu was concerned about being shot when he got to China.

He also had residency, there was no indication he was going to be deported.

And here's the thing, and the most remarkable thing of all.

The DIA didn't actually know if Liu was the real deal, if he was Liu at all. They didn't know. Jones didn't know if he was Liu or a Yan or a Yong of a Chong or a Chang --he didn't know.

Is that like unbelievable or what?

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