Posts by Walter Nicholls
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14 Green MPs sitting in the house (x3)
and if one Green MP should put a foot in mouth
there'll be 11 green MPs... -
It's got to the point where I've seriously considered that having two kids is too expensive. It's not just a 10% on a potentially million-dollar house, getting through University isn't exactly cheap either. My 15-year-old has already decided she'll never buy in Auckland.
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the blanket decision to ban vaping wherever smoking is banned isn't entirely logical:
I can't possibly agree. It's about not losing ground, which has taken decades to gain, granting the populace the right to clear (not saying clean <g>) air. We can choose not to smoke*, but we can't choose not to breathe. (* ignoring addiction for a moment). My children consider smoke-free environments normal and I'd like to keep it that way. That doesn't mean cafés and the like can't keep or even enlarge 'vaping permitted' areas ... but not on the bus, please.
[ Bit late to the party here because I didn't have my PA password reading on my phone yesterday]
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> OMG JACINDA’S SO POPULAR SHE SHOULD REALLY BE DEPUTY LEADER
> Because of course what Labour needs in election year is yet another leadership shakeup.And in the news this morning, Annette King has just resigned and Ardern the blessed successor.. cue the media frenzy
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Speaker: 2017: My mother and her hundred…, in reply to Russell Brown,
this one particularly made me me smile:
Me too - laughed out loud. Have had a particularly bad morning (getting nothing done) and this was the kind of relief I needed. Amazing how so few words can get across so much...
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Speaker: The light train to Roskill, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Also Dominion Rd is pretty much perfect for a light rail line, straight, mostly flat and wide enough - a really good place to start developing a light rail system
You mean, putting one back.
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I've always thought it was silly that guardians of unaccompanied minors don't get to carry some documentation. Given the paranoia that is airport security, it seems quite sensible that anyone without proof of their reason to be air side, should be rapidly escorted to an interview room.
Also, this may be being picky, but app use wasn't anything like as common two years ago as now. And might there be rules about what Government ministers are allowed to have installed on their phones? (Rules that are almost certainly not followed!).
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Up Front: Cui bono?, in reply to Emma Hart,
fares are increasing while the service degrades.
Off topic but this is happening with our children's school bus. The route isn't 'profitable' or something. The new price $2.90 a ride doesn't sound like much on its own, but for our family that is close $240-odd per month - this for a bus so old and crappy and leaky that the kids prefer to stand rather than sit on the wet uncomfortable seats. (For completeness: decile 10 high school in Auckland's North Shore, so hardly a ghetto).
I get this back on-topic by observing that services made free/low-cost for the deserving, do need appropriate funding to keep the service serviceable. -
Up Front: Cui bono?, in reply to Lilith __,
making public transport free for everyone would have enormous beneficial effects ... all the smiling old folks with their GoldCards<q> and wonder if I'm the only paying passenger.
Several gold card holders, even ones who still have cars, have said to me that this makes a huge difference to their independence, far far more than the (saved) cost of the bus ticket would seem to justify. All the same reasons would apply to the the sick/disabled, I'm sure - and make the difference to getting to job interviews or for that matter jobs, or not.
Of course they could just be smiling because they're not being asked constantly if they are still over 65.
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Hard News: Paths where we actually ride, in reply to Katy,
If we are to see any kind of meaningful uptake of bike-riding then a place needs to be made for us in the form of separated cycle paths.
And where places are made, cyclists clearly take them up as those statistics show(*). I regularly drive a car up Union St/PittSt around 5-5:30pm weekdays. Since December, nearly every time I go through the Union/Nelson St intersection, there is a group of cyclists waiting to cross from the top of the Nelson St cycle path over to, presumably, the start of the Lightpath. I get a kick every time I see it.
Motorists are just going to have to suck it up
Funnily, one intersection further up at Hobson St, I used to resent a point of the traffic light phase where I had a red light even though (if I had a green) I would not cross anyone's path. Frustrating grumpily at the wasted time (seconds :-) )
Now however there is a special 'cyclist' traffic light which goes green at that point. It means the cyclists have a chance to get out in front, uphill and through the narrow gap, before the lights change fully and two lanes of cars come thundering up their backsides. Now I love waiting there.The real problem is that a perceived majority of motorists see cyclists as interlopers; and do not have nice bikes they enjoy riding at other times. As more people start riding bikes around, that will normalise it, and also bike-ownership will surely rise.
( * ok, if the whole route works. I cycled Nelson St/Lightpath exactly once soon after it opened. But sadly it is no use to me in any of my regular commutes)