Linda Thomas, of Wainuiomata, commandeered her brother-in-law's truck for three trips to Christchurch once to deliver supplies and twice to help people move.

Linda Thomas wishes she had done more to help the people of Christchurch after the February earthquake, but she did more than most.

The 53-year-old, from Wainuiomata, who works at the Interislander ferry terminal in Wellington, gathered a truckload of supplies from her neighbourhood and drove south to deliver aid to the stricken city days after the killer shake.

"I was on my rostered days off, I had four of them in a row and I didn't really want to sit at home for four days watching everything on television," she said. "I wanted to do something."

She spent a day and a half knocking on doors in her neighbourhood, asking for donations and gathering a mountain of tinned food.

She collected water containers from her work, to be filled with water for washing, then she filled more containers with 1000 litres of Petone's artesian water.

She picked up 40 loaves of bread donated by Quality Bakers, 50 one-litre containers of long-life milk, and 1000 plastic bags from Waiwhetu Distributors.

When contacted by The Dominion Post this week, an emotional Ms Thomas said she wouldn't hesitate to do it all again.

"Now and again when I think back, it still brings a tear to my eye to see the people in the situation that they were in," she said.

"I don't like to see people in hardship. I don't like to see anyone suffering."

She remembered vividly the elderly Aranui residents she visited, who were struggling to cope without power, food or water. "When I saw the devastation down there, I just wished I had a bigger truck.

"They were shocked ... that the first person to come to help them was someone from Wellington and not from Christchurch.

"The most touching part was seeing the gratitude in people's eyes. It was just amazing. They were just so thankful that someone thought of them. I'll never forget it. It was a real eye-opener."

She thanked everyone who gave and helped her deliver aid. "My neighbours were really generous."

Civil Defence boss regrets shortcomings in services

Civil Defence director John Hamilton, who was given sweeping powers to manage the response to the earthquake, says he has been determined to implement lessons learned from the tragedy.

He was Civil Defence's national controller from February 23 till April 30, when the response was handed over to the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority.

The Wellington-based Mr Hamilton, 58, was educated in Christchurch and said he now felt a deeper emotional connection with the city.

"There was sort of an overwhelming sadness for the situation that the Christchurch residents found themselves in."

Mr Hamilton believes the initial response was successful overall, though he has frustrations in hindsight. "There are quite a large number of issues and lessons which we can draw from the experience. It is overwhelming. The scale of the thing is so big that it kind of overpowers you.

"I'm frustrated with our inability to plan and deliver some of the services that the community were crying out for. We were probably a bit short in having the community more deeply involved in the response operations."

Families' hopes a tug at the heart

For Jim Stuart-Black, the hardest part of leading the search and rescue effort after the quake was facing up to the families of those who lost their lives.

As the Fire Service's director of special operations, Mr Stuart-Black, who lives in Wellington, was based in Christchurch's Latimer Square and became the face of the Urban Search and Rescue effort as he led more than 300 team members from more than seven countries.

He stayed in Christchurch until his help was needed in Japan after its magnitude 9.0 earthquake and tsunami on March 11. There he led a 52-strong team searching for survivors in coastal towns.

Mr Stuart-Black, 37, said he was proud of the work of his team in Christchurch, though facing up to the expectations of those hoping their loved ones would be found alive was a low point.

"I met with the families most days and I'm really pleased as an organisation we were able to ... but it was very, very tough. There is an expectation on all the families' faces and unfortunately so often we were dealing with bad news.

"We have all got families and many of us have children and it is hard not to put yourself in the shoes of the families."

Over the past year, the quake has never been far from his mind. "I still continue to do my job and my private life continues. I'm very fortunate in that sense, it's just one of those things that drifts in and out of your consciousness.

"When I'm in Christchurch for work or in a personal capacity, I'm very aware of what happened down there. It is seldom far from the forefront of your thinking."

The moment that has stuck with him most is the two-minute silence held on the one-week anniversary of the earthquake. "I was by the art gallery at the time and there was the karakia and the two-minute silence ... that was a powerful moment."

Copyright © 2012, Television New Zealand Limited. Breaking and Daily News, Sport & Weather | TV ONE, TV2 | Ondemand

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Christchurch mercy dash woman: I wish I'd done more

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SHANGQIU, China (Reuters) - Liu Tao knows he will never be rich enough to own one of the luxury apartments in Beijing that he has been paid to decorate for more than a decade, but he's saving hard so that in another 10 years he'll have enough for a home with indoor plumbing.

Like many of the 158 million rural migrant workers whose annual pilgrimages to city factories have fuelled China's economic ascent, Liu has seen his pay and living standards rise steadily, but he still isn't the free-spending consumer the country's leaders urgently want him to be.

"I need to save up to take care of the kids and I've got the old people to look after," the 37-year-old father of three told Reuters, standing in the unheated, sparsely furnished main room of his house in Zhoulou village, about an hour's drive from Shangqiu in Henan province, southwest of Beijing.

Liu's main spending constraint is not earning power.

His 3,000-4,000 yuan ($75-635) per month is well above the average migrant pay of 2,049 yuan charted by statistics -- but a permit system (hukou) that denies millions of officially rural residents access to social services in cities where they work.

"If you go to the big cities and you see all the tower blocks and tall buildings, they've been built by migrant laborers, but we don't see any of the benefits. The government needs to make sure more of that wealth is shared with migrant laborers," Liu said.

It's a vital message for a Chinese leadership anxious to turn a nation of savers into spenders and rebalance the world's second biggest economy towards its huge domestic market. That would cut dependence on external demand jolted by financial crises twice in three years, with current trends pointing to the slowest year of economic expansion in a decade.

Stability and steady growth are core to the Communist Party's justification for more than 60 years of one-party rule, making it acutely sensitive to anything that could dislodge it. But the leadership has yet to show the will to grasp a reform that some of its own economic advisers say is crucial.

The 600 million people China has lifted out of rural poverty by 30 years of development remain far from urban affluence. Inequality soars beside skyscrapers and dollar billionaires and IMF data show that consumption as a share of disposable income has plunged 20 percentage points in the last decade.

With city dwellers topping 50 percent of the population for the first time last year, it signals that Beijing cannot unlock the potential of urbanization unless it reforms the hukou system to turn migration into permanent city settlement.

Access to schools, hospitals and other services is allocated by hukou, keeping them out of reach of migrant workers.

"The hukou system is preventing the arrival of the Lewis turning point," said Yukon Huang, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former student of Nobel-prize winning economist, Arthur Lewis, whose theory of economic development is a focus for investors and policymakers.

It postulates that once all excess labor in a developing economy has been absorbed into the workforce, further capital accumulation delivers self-sustaining wage and economic growth.

ELUSIVE SWEET SPOT

It's a sweet spot eluding Beijing, despite having turned its top companies into global leaders in terms of market share and profits, and amassing the largest store of foreign wealth on the planet at $3.18 trillion -- much of it the last 10 years.

Migrants have barely had a sniff of the riches, although they produce most of the economy's value added growth in the 200 million jobs they fill in the externally-focused factory sector.

The 95 million people of Henan province -- roughly the population of G7 members Canada and Britain combined -- generated per capita GDP of $3,600 in 2010 as some of China's most active migrant workers. It was barely a tenth of those G7 counterparts.

Wages have risen -- in double digits for years and by 21.2 percent in 2011, government statistics show. But so has saving.

Savings rates of between 30 and 70 percent were the outer ranges of a straw poll of workers in villages near Shangqiu and outside train and bus stations as people queued to get back to the factories after annual trips home for the Lunar New Year.

China officially has 80 trillion yuan on deposit at banks, with analysts estimating roughly the same amount exists under mattresses, confounding economic orthodoxy that says higher wages in the hands of the poor translate smoothly into spending.

"That's not the way we think," said Zhu Sheng, wrestling with the decision of whether to leave her young son with her parents in the Henan countryside and return to the Beijing telecommunications factory where she has worked for five years. She is reluctant to take much lower paid work locally.

"Migrant workers save a lot, that's true. We have to keep saving because we have to take of the kids and the old folks. I can't say how much I'd need to earn not to have to worry about saving," Zhu said.

"In the countryside we have televisions and washing machines already. I wouldn't want to buy another or just replace them unless I had to."

Zhu used a government rebate scheme to buy a new twin tub washing machine last year, spending about 600 yuan.

Her 2-1/2-year old boy was playing in the machine, watched over by his grandmother, in the courtyard outside the entrance to the open, unheated room in which Zhu was seated -- framed portrait of Mao Zedong, founder of Communist China, on the table beside her, with posters of reformist leader Deng Xiaoping and other leaders since then on the facing wall.

Zhu and many others like her save for housing, education and medical bills in the hope of a brighter future.

TOO WORRIED TO SPEND

Signs of those hopes are on display in the brown wheat and corn fields speckled with grave mounts. The most recent ones are festooned with colored paper models of new homes, cars and household goods -- symbols of the prosperity older farmers can only dream of for their afterlife and that of their children.

Research by the OECD Development Centre concludes that urbanization China-style confers only half the benefits it should -- improving income, but constraining consumption.

Factors like inflation also erode willingness to spend.

While most will readily agree that living standards are higher than they were a decade ago, they are far from well-off and feel the pinch of price rises acutely.

The annual rate of inflation hit a three-year high of 6.5 percent last July, exceeded the government's 4 percent target in every month of last year and was still above it in January 2012.

But that still understates the pain felt by rural residents who spend about 40 percent of household income on food, the average price of which rose by 11.8 percent in 2011.

Lorry driver Chen Qingguo estimates that it costs about 10,000 yuan a year to keep his 10-year old daughter fed, clothed, housed and schooled in the village where she and her two-year-old brother are left in the care of grandparents.

Employment contracts providing accommodation and food also inhibit spending. Living in dormitories offers few incentives to acquire goods or spend beyond occasional trips to nearby towns.

"My life's in the factory," said Li Jie, 30, who was heading to a Qingdao tyre factory on the east coast to earn 6,000 yuan a month at production line piece rates and up to 8,000 yuan if he works fast and hard.

Residency rights, or at least access in cities to medical benefits, would be a big help in unlocking migrant savings.

It would magnify the impact of urbanization unfolding across

interior provinces. Analysts at HSBC believe this process will turn China's 31 provinces from the equivalent of poor, Third World countries into places generating wealth like a union of second-tier developed and top-tier developing nations by 2020.

"For sustained growth, the most important source is continuous technological innovation and structural transformation," said World Bank chief economist Justin Lin, who believes China can follow an unprecedented 30 years of 9 percent-plus average growth with another 20 years at 8 percent.

Failure to pursue further fundamental economic restructuring could see it unravel. Get it right and China could grow and create jobs almost regardless of the external environment.

Foreign-funded firms employ about 40 million directly, while economists reckon that China creates about 10,500 jobs for every $100 million of goods it exports.

Total exports of $1.9 trillion in 2011 imply 200 million workers owed their livelihoods to foreign demand, about a quarter of all the people employed in China.

Without reform, that dependence will remain unbroken and the

rate of development will merely absorb the influx from the countryside. In 2011, some 21 million people -- roughly the population of Australia -- become urban wage-earners.

ECONOMIC WILDCARD

But that dynamic is the wildcard that some investors believe will keep growth ticking. It is already creating shortages of workers and raising wages outside major manufacturing towns.

As China accelerates development inland, closer to the homes of many migrants, it may be possible for them to find jobs in districts where they are officially registered.

In Shangqiu -- capital of China's Shang Dynasty in the second millennium BC -- recruitment agency worker Chen Xiaowei has seen no sign of a slowdown in demand for experienced staff.

"There's going to be a shortage of workers here again this year. People still prefer to work elsewhere for better pay, but the government is still attracting businesses here too. So the shortfall of workers is going to grow and that means the pay gap is going to have to close," he said.

"Things have already changed in recent years. We're catching up with the more prosperous parts of Henan, but we're not there yet."

(Editing by Ron Popeski)

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China's urban migrants hold key to domestic demand

LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwire -02/20/12)- Currys and PC World have exclusively teamed up with HP to launch the new HP Folio 13-1000ea Ultrabook. Available to buy from Currys and PC World - experts in laptop computing - exclusively for the next three months in-store and online, the HP Folio 13-1000ea is one of the new highly responsive Ultrabooks which are less than an inch thick and enjoy a fast boot up time.

Priced at GBP 899.99 and weighing less than 1.5kg, the Folio13-1000ea is just 18mm thick, and with a five hour battery life makes for perfect light-weight portable computing.

The 13.3" HD LED screen, which coupled with the Intel HD 3000 graphics and built-in Altec Lansing speakers, provides a fantastic and immersive audio visual experience whether surfing the web or watching the latest Hollywood blockbuster.

The new Folio 13-1000ea has a powerful 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5-2467M processor and 4GB of RAM that makes for great power and performance, you can therefore be sure that multi-tasking will be made fast and easy, added to this there is a 128GB SSD hard drive for your storage needs. The Solid State Drive (SSD) is a great addition to the new HP Folio 13-1000ea as it accesses data faster, consumes less power, provides a longer battery life, produces less heat and is far quieter than a hard disk drive (HDD).

Ultra-thin and yet stacked with features, the Folio 13-1000ea has an impressive array of connection options with USB 2.0 and 3.0, WiFi, Bluetooth and Gigabit Ethernet. It's also easy to connect to other multi-media devices with full size HDMI, 3.5mm jack ports and a multi-format digital media card reader.

Mark Slater, Category Director for Computing at Currys and PC World, comments: "The next generation of laptop computing has arrived in store at Currys and PC World. We are expecting the new category of Ultrabooks, in particular the HP Folio 13-1000ea, to become one of our best-selling range of computing products."

For more information on the range of Ultrabooks available to buy at Currys and PC World, log on to http://www.pcworld.co.uk/gbuk/ultrabooks-978-commercial.html or http://www.currys.co.uk/gbuk/ultrabooks-781-commercial.html.

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Currys and PC World are part of Dixons Retail plc, a specialist electrical retailer and services company which sells consumer electronics, personal computers, photographic equipment, communication products and domestic appliances. With over 1,200 stores and online services spanning 28 countries, Dixons is widely acknowledged as one of Europe's leading specialist electrical retailing groups. Dixons employs over 38,000 people and provides adequate training to ensure their personnel can provide top customer service on products ranging from televisions to ovens, washing machines and fridges.

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HP Folio 13-1000ea Ultrabook Available Exclusively at Currys and PC World

Statistics are expected to reveal that our salaries are rising more than price increases, in contrast to people's perceptions.

WE SHOULD be feeling wealthier, but economists and retailers predict it still won't be enough to encourage us to start spending again any time soon.

Wage figures on Wednesday are expected to show that salaries rose on average between 3.5 per cent to 4 per cent last year, more than the price increase on the things we buy. The data is likely to reflect continued strong wage growth in the resources, electricity, gas and water services industries, and in areas such as wholesale trade and construction.

The weakest wage growth is tipped to be in the sectors that did it tough last year and are still struggling: retail, accommodation and food services. But even in those industries, wages are expected to have matched the annual rate of price inflation of 3.1 per cent.

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CommSec has calculated that over the past four years, average wages increased 21.5 per cent, while prices rose 12 per cent. That's some serious extra spending power.

Yet we continue to save, we continue to pay down debt, and when we do shop we look for bargains. Consumer sentiment readings indicate we are still feeling relatively down about our lot, despite last week's bounce.

This is strange because, according to CommSec chief economist Craig James, many goods have never been cheaper - mainly because of the strong Australian dollar.

"Cars are at their most affordable in 35 years, while toasters, kettles, dishwashers, fridges and washing machines posted their biggest price drop in 40 years in the December quarter," he says.

So what gives? Macquarie Bank senior economist Brian Redican believes there are two things at play - wealth has been declining for people in the property and equity markets, while for households generally other costs, such as electricity, water, council rates and petrol, have been increasing substantially.

"Many households are seeing big cost rises that are not necessarily reflected in the CPI," he says. "With the continued uncertainty in the labour market, it's going to be a tough slog for retailers in 2012."

Besa Deda, chief economist at St George Bank, says the negative headlines surrounding Europe and the global economy are having an impact.

"Relative to the rest of the world, we are in a reasonably good position, but we just don't feel it," Ms Deda says. "That's why we are showing selective caution - the retail spending numbers are weak, but household consumption is still rising at a moderate pace."

Mr James says expenses such as home internet access, mobile phones and pay TV used to be discretionary but are now considered essential.

"Basically, we have found new uses for our money," he says. "We should be feeling wealthy but unfortunately it's the way people work - when anything is going up, we know about it in a big way but when it's going down, we take less notice.

"We've got bread and milk at $1. Supermarket price wars in meat, fresh fruit and seafood - in terms of food there are some good bargains on offer. But we notice it much more when the electricity bill goes up, when council rates go up and the price of petrol."

That's why Mr Redican says it will need some sort of circuit breaker to turn things around and get people spending again.

"A sharp fall in the Australian dollar will take a lot of the pressure off a lot of companies, and further cuts in interest rates would make everyone feel a lot happier," he says. "But it's hard to see either of those happening soon."

The big retailers are not feeling it yet. Margy Osmond, chief executive of the Australian National Retailers Association, says that the extension of the January sales were a sign that people were still not spending. "Retail is heading into the slowest quarter traditionally for the sector and with the Reserve Bank unlikely to move on the cash rate any time soon, there is little light at the end of the tunnel for the sector in the short term," she says. "Any growth in the sector is likely to be some way off and may not occur until well into the second half of 2012."

Mr James says the latest round of job cuts is only making it worse for consumer sentiment.

"A number of major companies are reassessing their strategy and are cutting jobs - this is not the sort of environment to go out there and spend like no tomorrow."

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Getting wealthier, feeling poorer

The city may have to return more than $2 million it collected from property owners in Golden Hill and South Park after a San Diego County Superior Court judge invalidated a special maintenance district that was formed in 2007.

The Greater Golden Hill Maintenance Assessment District will be dissolved after Judge Richard Whitney signed an order Feb. 9 to confirm a state appeals court ruling. The state 4th District Court of Appeal ruled Sept. 22 in favor of property owners challenging the district, which levied higher taxes in exchange for increased services such as litter removal, sidewalk sweeping, power washing, landscaping services, graffiti removal and trail and canyon beautification.

A maintenance district is a legal mechanism by which property owners can vote to assess themselves to pay for and receive services above and beyond what the city normally provides.

Golden Hill Neighborhood Association Secretary-Treasurer John Kroll said the city has assessed $476,000 a year from property owners over the last five years, a sum that adds up to $2.38 million. City officials could not confirm that figure.

“I’m very pleased with the decision,” Kroll said. “Now is the time for the City Council to retract their error and refund the $2 million they’ve collected from us.”

The city formed the district in August 2007 with the goal of providing improvements for the benefit of the properties in the district. However, property owners immediately challenged it.

When maintenance districts are formed, the voting is weighted based on the assessment that will be charged to an individual property. Part of the district included sections of Balboa Park, and property owners successfully argued that the weight assigned to city-owned land was improperly inflated.

The Golden Hill Neighborhood Association claimed the district would have otherwise been defeated.

Councilman Todd Gloria said Wednesday that the City Council moved toward shutting down the district in closed-session meetings and will not appeal.

However, residents may not see all their money returned because some of it has been spent, he said.

“There’s a disagreement over what should be refunded because services were rendered,” Gloria said. “People supplied these services and were paid. We’re going to do what the law requires us to do. We will do everything that we are required. We will work to make sure that everything the court has ordered is done.”

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Golden Hill maintenance district to dissolve

POSTED: 10:50 pm EST February 14, 2012
UPDATED: 7:33 am EST February 15, 2012

PITTSBURGH -- Residents at a community meeting on the Southside Tuesday night said they're sick of revelers partying and leaving messes behind."You feel like you're a prisoner in your own house," said Southside resident Rob Frank. "Everybody that lives here can probably say the same thing."The homeowners said they don't want to pay for extra security and cleanup."I think the burden of this is being put on the wrong people," one resident said. "It shouldn't be put on the homeowners. I'm not the one peeing in front of my house at night. I'm not the one tearing the bushes out of my yard at night.""It's always scary to think about paying more money," said neighborhood outreach coordinator Susie Puskar. "Realistically, the city isn't going to be able to do any more for the Southside. The Southside has already achieved a certain level of success, and at this point, if people want to see more services, they need to be able to have that control themselves."The residents at the meeting came up with a plan of action called the Southside Improvement District.Property owners, both residential and commercial, would pay an annual fee to receive regular security, litter cleanup, power washing and other services.The fees would be based on the total assessed value of the properties, but they wouldn't be more than $480 annually for residential property owners. Copyright 2012 by WTAE. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Community Meets About Mess On Southside