Posts by Mark Graham
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But there are resources available for consumers - Building Guide, for one. But people have to choose to seek them out...
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I publish www.buildingguide.co.nz. I read Steve's posts with interest. He clearly believes himself to be a good builder (and he may well be) but he highlights the interesting thing around Master Builders which is that you don't have to be a builder to join. The Licensed Builder scheme on the other hand requires a minimum of skill levels to qualify, but there are poor builders who qualify and then it will take years to weed them out. And that's after the whole thing was dumbed down.
In the meantime we have a resurgent sector that saw a mass departure of skilled workers following the GFC, so we have less skilled workers, many of whom don't really care about quality workmanship, building too many houses and with many more yet to come on stream as the SHAs develop.
There's a lot more, but it's a bloody mess and the deregulation/laissez faire approach by National is now seeing a repeat situation of the structures that led to the Leaky Homes fiasco. Which, by the way, is far from being resolved and which we are still building. And John Gray does a shitload of amazingly good work trying to help desperate people through really really shitty situations they find themselves in because of poor rules, poor oversight by councils, poor design and, yes, bad bloody builders.
And why on earth would we trust Paula Bennett to know anything about building. At all?
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Micro payments. Micro Payments. Micro payments.
When the fuck will the big publishers start sorting out micropayments so the little guys can tag along?
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Well at least we know what some of her TV3 colleagues feel… http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/72030240/mediaworks-staff-turn-on-scout-rachel-glucinas-new-gossip-site
lovely….
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How do Mediaworks' bosses feel about her using their new toy to promote nonsense gossip about their main competitor's star attraction? Just asking...
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As someone I read recently put it, Serco are incentivised to reduce costs. If we really wanted private enterprise to do things well, incentivise them around the recidivism rate and see what happens...
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Happening all over. Tuned into Story for the first time last night only to find a plug for the hideousness that is The Edge (both in terms of music and personality) being given a plug (during radio ratings week, of course), for it's supremely awful marriage before you meet promotion.
We're fucked.
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Being a publisher is a bugger. FB and Google are parasitical in their approach - they rely on publishers (Google more than FB but that's changing) to supply content but siphon off badly needed revenue. That model ultimately ends up with the parasite killing its 'host'.
I wonder what the digi-generation will read and PR agencies will use to try to promote their clients once publishers have disappeared.
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I concur: We are not past hearing about Christchurch but many of us who don't live there feel powerless to do anything. (I imagine many who live there feel the same way - in a rather more visceral way). The question is: what can we do to help?
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Data from hougarden.com traffic indicates an enormous interest from NZ domiciled Chinese. Stats from BNZ indicate numbers of overseas buyers relatively small and Chinese overseas buyers only portion of that.