Posts by Howard Edwards
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Polity: Labour and the Greens in a tree..., in reply to izogi,
+1
Or more correctly
1+(1+(1+(1+ ....)) .....)
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The president of Horticulture NZ was interviewed on Morning Report today and said that if this happens then the price of vegetables would go through the roof and we would have to import them from China. It seems that Pukekohe's unique soil and climate combination means that it is the only place in NZ where leafy greens and other vegetables can be harvested in the spring months.
Increasing the price of fresh vegetables at a time when those at the bottom of the economic heap are having enough difficulty making good nutritional food choices would seem to be madness - but of course this government and its cronies have always been at war with Public Health. See this recent piece by John Roughan in the Herald for example.
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Re landbanking - I live in Coatesville not far beyond the urban boundary (yes the rest of us are still here even though Kim.com has moved into the Viaduct Basin) and for many years now real estate agents have advertised small blocks of land around here as "Attention landbankers!", "Landbankers Ahoy!" etc. There will plenty of speculators rubbing their hands with glee at the thought of central govt clobbering the Auckland Council into abolishing the urban boundary.
And let's not forget some of the reasons why AC is not keen on abolishing the boundary. They have little or no control over the major infrastructure required to support urban sprawl, namely better roads, improved (read: subsidised until viable) public transport links, new schools - the list goes on and on. If only local and central governments could work together for once (yeah right!)
(Personally I would be quite happy if words such as landbanking and landbankers were banned from real estate advertising in Auckland - why pick on Wicked Campers when real estate advertising also encourages immoral behaviour?)
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Hard News: Crowded houses, in reply to Russell Brown,
Stopped at the traffic lights last week I noticed that the van next to me was owned by a plumbing company called "Continuous Spouting".
I wonder if Messrs Hosking, Williams, Henry and Smith have invested in a new business venture?
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to st ephen,
Cameron "Salter" and "anecdata" - I love both of these!
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Speaker: Talking past each other:…, in reply to Tim Darlington,
Well here are a couple of potential jumps over some of those hurdles.
The price of milk was fairly constant in NZ until 1976 when it started rising steadily until 1990. Here's an article summarising the price of milk in NZ over time.
The first McDonalds opened in NZ in 1976, which made sugary drinks and desserts an integral part of the fast food experience - before that NZ only had fish and chip shops and hamburger shops where there were no desserts and the fizzy drinks were in a fridge at the back of the store.
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I have a copy of Their Satanic Majesties Request (bought in Australia in 1968 when my parents took a naive 15 year old for his first trip outside NZ) and I'm pretty sure it's a 3D cover too. I'll have to ask my son to dig it out as he is now keeper of my LP collection.
I always thought it was nice how they returned the favor from the cover of Sergeant Pepper (the Shirley Temple doll with "Welcome The Rolling Stones Good Guys" on its shirt) by putting the Beatles heads in among the flowers.
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An interesting and well-balanced article by Brian Fallow in today's Business Herald explores the UBI and how it might be introduced in NZ. Fallow is one of the few business journalists around that doesn't seem to have been captured by any particular ideology, is capable of thinking sensibly and doing research, and is allowed to publish his stuff without being subject to brainless editing.
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Speaker: The real problem with the ‘Kiwimeter’, in reply to Geoff Lealand,
Geoff - please point your students to Andrew Gelman's recent blog post about reporting published research - or at least quote him where he says:
Journalists who are writing about quantitative research should not hold the default belief that a published analysis is correct.
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I realise that a lot of people on this forum are cyclists, so I'd be interested in your reactions to the new cycling regulations proposed for New South Wales, and in particular the one that requires cyclists to maintain a 1m distance between themselves and pedestrians. My wife and I recently spent a much of a long weekend in Taupo walking on the shared cycle/pedestrian track around the lake shore, and we were continually startled by cyclists passing close by us from behind at speed with little or no warning. Some cyclists used their bells to warn us which was great, but not all bells are loud enough (I'm hearing impaired), and our dog freaked out at the number of times this happened. It would have been nice if the shared pathway had been made wider, but with cyclists in total charge of the overtaking manoeuvre the best we could hope for was for them to give us as wide a berth as possible.