“How do you know when a politician is lying?” The mayoral edition.

Q: How do you know when a politician is lying?
A: Their lips are moving.

Latest example, John Banks.  The Minister for Rhyming Slang.

CLAIM, John Banks: “I am probably the only mayor in Auckland to have contained rates within council's rate of inflation every year I have been in office.”

FACT:
Rates have risen 5.1 per cent, 2 per cent and 1.9 per cent during his term …  [and] council debt [increased ] from $322 million to $867 million. He also voted to raise $12 million in bus lane and parking fines over this term...

His main opponent in the battle to control Auckland’s new super-sized bureaucracy is no better.

CLAIM, Len Brown: Rates bills will increase by no more than the rate of inflation during my first term as Manukau mayor (election promise, 2007).

FACT:
Rates have increased by 4.9 per cent, 4.8 per cent and 3.9 per cent this term…

So one has racked up nearly one billion dollars in debt while talking about containing costs, and the other just hasn’t got a clue. Would you give either of these two fuckwits the steam off your used credit card?  Let alone the keys to the biggest bureaucracy Auckland has even seen? Thanks to Rodney Hide however and to the Local Government Act that gives them virtually open slather to sate their egos with our money and property, come November, you will have.

PS: Look forward to a huge jump in rates next year, whatever happens, especially in Manukau, Papakura, North Shore, and Waitakere where “rates increases of 100 per cent or more” are “a real possibility” in order to pay for the profligacy of John Banks’s council. Thanks again, Rodney hide.