Posts by Tom Beard
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As soon as the ARC made its decision, it seemed inevitable. In fact, it almost seems carefully designed to save face for as many players as possible:
ACC: let's go for the waterfront site. Oh, not that waterfront site: another one.
ARC: oh no you don't, we need that for the port!
Mallard: Oh well, Aucklanders can't decide, so it's back to dowdy old Eden Park. We would have wanted the wonderful, iconic, visionary waterfront site, but it's up to you.
Mallard (to self): phew, that was close! We almost had to follow through with it.
I still believe that a CBD-edge site should have been chosen if at all possible, but it looks like it never would have been a goer from an engineering or financial point of view.
can we spend the leftover $500M on public transport then?
Amen! Or more accurately: Yeah right.
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What "motorwayed environment"?
How about this one for a start?
We don't need any more stadiums in Auckland
And we definitely don't need any more Albanys.
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Ten or fifteen minutes away from their cluttered mess of a city would have them at Albany where the stadium offers pleasant views of bush clad hills while waiting for a game to commence.... Motorway access from North or South, and plenty of parking space makes the North Harbour stadium very accessible.
It's that sort of thinking (sprawling out away from the "cluttered" city towards the big open views, with plenty of motorway access and parking space) that's turned Auckland into the hopelessly placeless, scattered, car-obsessed disaster that it is. How pleasant it is to live in a "cluttered mess" of a city where people can walk from work to the Stadium to the bars and then home.
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I got 7, which is just slightly better than random. On the tax-write-off bits, he's even more prgamatic than I thought: almost towards the "picking winners" end rather than the "tax cuts everywhere" end.
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Yes, Tom, and imagine if Helen Clark appinted as Foreign Affairs Minister a man ...
You don't have to tell me how crazy that seems! :-)
I was just pointing out that it's tricky for any party or stable coalition to cover a wide enough spectrum to get elected these days. National tested the waters by going from centre-right to fairly solidly right, thus succesfully defining themselves as a conservative party while outflanking Act and sucking up some of the conservative Christian vote. It was almost enough to get elected, but they drove away enough centrists (and economically dry but socially liberal voters) not to win. If they go centre-right again, then to cover the further right end of the spectrum, they wil have to rely on a motley collection of small parties who could easily self destruct. Not that that couldn't happen to the left...
And my remark about Graham Capill wasn't a reference to the CHP per se, just to suggest that small extremist parties are vulnerable to the peccadilloes of individuals. That's not to say that all of the Christian right are kiddly fiddlers...
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"[Key] may then lose the more extreme elements whose ears pricked up at Brash's dog-whistles."
But (and I'm not sure Dr Brash ever grasped this) those votes go to your coalition partners while you pick up center votes off your main opponent.
Yes, if they can form a coalition, and if those coalition parties can get across the threshold, and if the prospect of a coalition with them doesn't scare off the moderate voters, and if they don't lose credibility through the actions of their politicians. Imagine if National had had to rely on Christian Heritage as a coalition partner!
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Key seems far more electable to fence-sitting voters as far as I can see?
But he may then lose the more extreme elements whose ears pricked up at Brash's dog-whistles. Bill English just seemed too reasonable and moderate to give National a recognisable point of difference, which is what Brash gave them. But then he went too far for the middle ground.
Which raises the question: is it possible to attract both? If National slides back to the middle, will the smaller parties on the right pick up the pieces and surge ahead? For example, Act stops dancing around on the fringes and gets the pseudo-libertarian populist vote; and/or Destiny or United Future solidify the religious conservative vote?
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Probably old news by now, but: Don's gone.
Bad news for Labour?
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Russell's right: NH makes as much sense as Porirua would have done.
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i'm picking a mass dump of emails from an employee sick of the sexual harassment.
now there's a conspiracy theory with legs.
Now, now, Che. You're straying into the gutter of private life innuendo. Next thing you know, someone will mention the Whalerider.