Posts by Christopher Dempsey
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That video was awsome (sorry for the use of an overworked word)... it's just so amazing, and well, thought provoking in a way I hadn't been before. Thankyou Blair.
Living in Auckland it's hard to get a handle on what Chch was all about, but like Bart, Chimney Book gave me a glimpse...
I'm struggling to express how Chimney Book affected me...
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Busytown: Sons for the Return Home, in reply to Ross Mason,
how do I enroll the kids in school? answer: find a school, bowl on up and talk to the principle
Yep, those principles are very handy when talking to the principal.
And a whole lot of better and more exciting galaxies to stare at down here too!!! With unpolluted, light free (nearly) skies!!
Wearing elected rep hat: Unfortunately light pollution hasn't really figured much in Council planning/capital works etc. I'm working on it though. Doffing hat.
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For me coming back to NZ, the weirdest and unexpectedest thing was to feel homesick, when I’d supposedly come home. That left me in a transient grey space for at least 2 years.
Moving back after 6 years away was a shock. I was in a very awful and weird headspace for two years.
I guess the advice I’d give is to think of it not as “returning home”, but rather moving to a totally new country that you’ve never lived before. Eventually, though, you’ll wake up one day and it will feel like home again.
And if someone had told me that in that two years I would have hugged them. The dissonance between the 'home' of the mind and the 'home' of the real world Aotearoa NZ was just something weird.
One piece of advice – allow yourselves a year (at least) to get used to being back in NZ. Stranger in a strange land and all that.
Two at a minimum. And the feelings you feel will be entirely and wholly natural so go with them.
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Good point. The best strategy for dealing with National might be to ignore Key altogether. To neither ask nor answer any questions to or from him, addressing them always to the people who are technically responsible for everything, the ministers. And the questions should probably not come from Goff either, since he lacks charisma, but rather from the shadow of each minister.
I note from regular posts to Red Alert, that the Labour team seem to do follow this strategy, at least inside Parliament, according to their verbatim cut and pastes from Hansard. Mostly because John Key isn't present three quarters of the time so you can't question him. Hansard however shows that Nactional Ministers rarely rise above petty politicking and arrant disdain for anyone not belong to the National Party.
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Great - got my tickets - looking forward to it!
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Sacha,
Without losing sight of those opportunities, I'd welcome us focusing for now on the spirit of celebration that has been so obvious throughout the country, and being great hosts for our treasured visitors. That's something all the cultures and people that make up this wonderful place have in common. We deserve leaders who reflect that to the world.
Hear Hear!
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I've heard that people who organised and got to where they wanted to go in good time actually got there. The problems occurred when, you know, us Aucklanders, the majority, think, oh, I'll just jump on the 5pm train and I'll be sweet. In the case of one AB player's Mum, she wasn't.
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Sorry for the late arrival to the conversation...
Napoleon personally designed his officer’s uniforms, just sayin’.
OMGoodness. Last night at Shed 10 someone in the know was telling me that Napoleon chose the colour of the uniforms. I thought tosh! that's micromanagement to the nth degree and ridiculously stupid. It seems not.
Do they have any idea what this will cost? As noted, there are ships booked to dock on those wharves with maybe over a billion dollars of cargo in the next five weeks.
They'll have to be rescheduled, port users compensated, freight trucked from Wellington and Tauranga, compensation paid, workers paid to sit idle.
Wearing my elected rep hat: Not much. Cooks Wharf piles can't support much more than a thousand parked cars or so, so at most, all that will happen is that the cars will be delayed for a few days or so. Hardly an imposition.
If the ABs win good and get to the semis or finals, then Cooks wharf will be bought into play. Presumably at the same time as a ferocious southerly is whipping through there.
However, he and the Councillors share responsibility for not adequately verifying the assurances they were fed by the staff who report to them and to the CCO Boards largely appointed by the govt.
But hang on, how does an elected representative verify what his/her highly paid, experten officials are telling them? isn't that what you have the bloody officials for?
Still wearing my hat: Yes. That's why we pay them huge amounts of money. However, we do know that officers are not infallible, so we can and do 'square' them when we know what we are being told just doesn't ring true. In a way, Elected Reps are a check on officers analysis mostly.
Getting contestable advice from other experts is a challenge for anyone in a governance role.
Short answer - we can't. Hard to do in a small country where the professional elite knows everyone else. This can be a problem.
Joshua Arbury reports in his usual comprehensive fashion after attending the committee meeting.
While I wasn't able to be at this meeting, I also understand that ATEED emphasised that they were planning for everything to do within 'their' footprint, which holds around 50K, and did not plan anything for numbers outside of their 'footprint'.
Ummm, who plans like this? Particularly when you get easily 50-70k up Q St protesting a government and 200k at the Christmas show in the Domain?
Doffing said hat and speaking in personal capacity;
I get that there are elements in Auckland Transport and the Council who have ideological issues with the current framework, but they really need to get the fuck over it and stop treating Veolia like the enemy.
There are two issues here. Firstly, operational staff. They have borne the brunt of some anger. Secondly, there is management, who get paid presumably handsomely for doing on the face of it, very little. Ensuring there is strong communications on the platform / within carriages, or ensuring staff are supported and motivated seem to be missing from management tasks. In summary, the enemy is Veolia management. Particularly when I suspect they are taking the fat end of a $35m 'management fee' paid by ratepayers to run the trains.
I checked out Queen’s Wharf last night. Nothing about it inspired me to go back. The place was cold and soul-less, serving all drinks in plastic cups from an extremely limited selection (no spirits!) in a big barn with rugby playing at rock concert volumes on large screens. Food was available from kiosks if you like to eat standing up. There was a huge amount of empty space. It felt like a car parking lot. Actually, from the lines painted on the ground, I’m pretty sure it was a parking lot.
I went searching for a bar that would actually be nice to sit down and have a drink in. It took 1 min to find one. I tried a few others. My conclusion is that Auckland has surplus capacity for serving drinks with the TV on, and it will not be at all long before every visitor discovers this and bypasses Heineken Central.
I've been twice, the last time yesterday evening to watch the Canada vs Tonga game (which, NOT being a rugby fan, was inspired watching in complete contrast to the plodding Argentina vs England game). Both times the place was relaxed and had a certain low key buzz I found. The major stumbling block is the lack of seating. The younger amongst the crowd yesterday evening simple sat on the floor. Otherwise I enjoyed myself. It is a booze barn, but with loads of space and loads of tellys everywhere the place was, well, relaxed. As for the noise, our group could chat away, but that was during the game itself. I haven't been when there has been music on, but I imagine it would fairly echo around the place if turned up loud.
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Hard News: The Minister's Brain Has Exploded, in reply to Tom Semmens,
John Armstrong appears to have written his column in the Herald whilst wanking over a picture of John Key.
And
I wouldn’t put it that way, but yes, that’s a ridiculous column. Armstrong might need to get out of the Thorndon Bubble occasionally.
Ridiculous enough to go to the Press Council?
Armstrong has developed, as you point out, a besotted and unrequited admiration for Key to the extent that he publicly displays tendencies to engage in activities usually reserved for one's private moments. The Press Council would, I imagine, decline to investigate such activities; distasteful writing, appalling it may be, isn't grounds for a complaint.
One fears for Mr Armstrong; what happens when Smile'n'Wave gets bored and decides to leave politics?
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The documentary on Punks seems to be a winner I thought when I heard the introduction… “… when the Sex Pistols vomited their way to punk stardom…”.