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The cost of cladding

 

RE: OCs will be forced to fix dodgy cladding. Surely this is tripe? What is the point in having standards and building regulations in place where architects, builders, councils, developers, etc are required to ensure these regulations are met? Being part of an OC group, I believe that it’s time to take on this one-sided decision and join in a class action against it. We pay enough in rates and taxes now with little protection provided by the state government and councils without having to fork out more to cover their lack of enforcing regulations. Brian Kelly Montague Towers   Keep Miles St clean My name is Boris. My wife Zina and I live on Miles St in Southbank. We have a serious problem with garbage in our area. Across the road there is a low-rise building at 175 Sturt St. There are a number of businesses there. They generate a lot of rubbish, which they put into big industrial bins. More often than not these bins are not closed properly so all sorts of rubbish flies all over the place and a lot of it ends up in our front garden and on our driveway. Those bins are left sitting outside 175 Sturt St for days on end. Lately we had a number of windy days so Miles St was covered in an extra layer of rubbish. On one occasion a bin drifted across Miles St and ended up in our driveway. My wife could not get in. In a few days there was another incident – in the evening the wind pushed a bin across Miles St and it hit our car, which was parked outside. Zina and I approached some people working at 175 Sturt St to find out who is in charge of rubbish removal. They sent us to their landlord – Wood Property Partners. We spoke to them and emailed them trying to understand what is going on and who is responsible for the damage to our car. They replied that there were strong winds and they recommended me to talk to our OC management. They also replied that they are not going to be responsible for damage to our car and recommended me to approach our insurance company. What sort of response is that? There is still a lot of rubbish everywhere. Recently Melbourne Art Fair was only a stone’s throw away from Miles St. I saw a number of people going along pointing to piles of rubbish and taking photos. It is a shame for Southbank and Melbourne. I also lodged a complaint with City of Melbourne. however, so far, I have not noticed any improvements. Please find attached a number of photos I took recently including a big bin sitting in our driveway and damage to our car. My wife and I are no longer spring chickens and it is difficult for us to clean someone else’s garbage. Our neighbour is in the same boat regarding garbage coming from across the road. Boris Berezin   An alternative view As a member of an ALP faction - the Kim Beazley Snr faction or “The cream of the working class faction – I just love watching a good old factional fight between other ALP factions, even more so if it’s an internal factional fight where the waste matter really flies, and the stakes are high - a seat in parliament.  Nowadays, there is no discernible difference between the ALP factions. They exist only as grubby job-creation schemes for those within the factions who would, metaphorically speaking, kill their own mother to become an MP and from there a millionaire, then later, if you are smart, a multi-millionaire and, if even smarter, a multi-millionaire plus working for the top end of town.  As sure as night follows day Comrade Michael Danby, the Member for Israel obliged and organised just such a bun fight when he organised a Labor Unity (LU) faction meeting at the Caulfield RSL on July 19 to select his replacement as the Member for Melbourne Ports / Macnamara, now that he was forced to retire at the next election by Labor heavies. One source claims it was the Vic ALP Administrative Committee. Michael, I understand, wanted to continue to boost his super pay-out. Danby’s intention was to anoint Nick Dyrenfurth, a fellow Mt Scopus student, as the next MP for Macnamara and to make it extremely hard for a female candidate, in this case, Ms Delahuntly, a popular former local mayor. Danby sent the invitations on his parliamentary letterhead to 138 LU faction (80 per cent male) members out of the 530 ALP (real members plus LU stacks) members in Melbourne Ports / Macnamara.   The other male candidate was Josh Burns, a former Danby staffer, who now works for the Socialist Left-beholden Premier, “Dan the Man” Andrews.   Lo and behold, to Danby’s horror, enter Nicollo de Machiavelli. A text message was sent out to non-LU faction members requesting that they come to the preselection meeting mentioned above and that the event would be hosted by M. Danby. No one seems to know who sent the text but clearly an ALP member who has access to the local ALP membership list.    At the start of the meeting there were about 35 LU faction members in the meeting room with 45 non-faction members being physically barred from trying to get in. We all called out “shame” when the door opened to let someone in or out. After that we mostly went down stairs to have a “cleansing ale” or three with all the candidates – but not Michael, coming down later to talk to non-LU faction members. The first vote was, I’m told, Josh 55, Nick 37, Mary 16. The meeting ended at 8.30, to Michael’s horror, with Josh Burns eventually winning 61 - 49 on Ms Delahuntly’s preferences.   The number of attendees increasing during the night after frantic phone calls to LU members to “turn up” and vote. Ms Delahuntly has accused Danby of trying to misrepresent the electorate with a “vote” of what a select group (male dominated Labor Unity) thought. She has not been permitted to see the voting list even though she is a LU faction member, such is the distrust between the hard-right LU supporters and general LU faction members. Supporters of Ms Delahuntly have raised concerns that Mr Burns’s preselection would represent a serious blow to the party’s (and Shorten’s) affirmative action policies or initiatives.  Less than a week later Josh received the nod from the ALP National Executive which meant that 53 LU members in Macnamara have won over nearly 500 other ALP members (real members plus stacks) in Macnamara, who once again, have no say in proceedings.  From memory, Labor had problems in staffing the polling booths at the last federal election in 2013, which is surprising given the claimed ALP membership. Marcus “The Comrade” L’Estrange

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