Posts by Paul Campbell
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Hard News: The CRL and the nature of change, in reply to Bart Janssen,
Which is absolutely as it should be, it always costs more to put infrastructure in low population areas but it is necessary, hence you get that per capita differential.
Only to some extent - take the local hospital board here in Dunedin, it essentially provides service to the bottom 2/5s of the South Island - but it's reimbursed at the same per-capita rate as elsewhere - as a result it's essentially bankrupt, being run by the central government rather than a board (like ECAN we wont get a vote on their board this year) it's infrastructure is falling apart, when it rains it rains in operating theatres.
We've spent the terms of the past National governments with school closure, cutbacks in govt departments including wholesale defections, cross-town mail now gets sorted in Chch, all mail now takes 2 days longer, want to go down to the Dept of Immigration, drive to Chch, we closed that, no more immigrants for you .... live in a really poor part of town, can't afford a car .... oops we closed your kid's school, you'll have to drive them down the hill to the flat ...
Of course it's not helped by Dunedin always voting Labour, National doesn't see any upside spending money here, and no downside of cutting everything to the bone. But they will give us just enough money for over priced rugby stadiums so that our council can go into the most attrocious levels of debt - our rates have been compounding above inflation for 15 years now, sometimes by 10% a year - meanwhile we continue to subsidise for-profit rugby from our rates to the tune of millions a year. I don't see a government bailout for rugby world cup debt yet
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Hard News: The CRL and the nature of change, in reply to John Farrell,
Dean Mckenzie has his biases, too…
As does the ODT and its owners ....
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yes that was top of page 3 today, I think the general feeling down here is "we have to pay how much so that Auckland can take away more of our kids and our jobs?"
Of course I used to go to school on the train, but the govt took away all our commuter trains, and put the farmers (the regional council) in charge of the buses, they're not very keen on them.
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well that was part of what I was trying to say, but also I think we simply expect more from adults, which is really what the judge was likely trying to say ... but they are “Prominent New Zealanders” so I guess expectations start low
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Yes it's interesting how "prominent New Zealander" has now come to mean something quite different from what it means on face value.
All we need now is for someone to start a wikipedia page of "Prominent New Zealanders" ....
Mind you in this case the judge calling them 13yr old girls is probably unfair to 13-yr old girls.
Otago seems to have become a bit of a hotbed for this sort of SLAPP suit intended to silence an opponent - Dunedin's mayor was forced to apologise and pay court costs after suggesting that financial mismanagement might have something to do with the various ORFU near bankruptcies that left his council millions of dollars in the hole.
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here’s something a bit more modern from vaguely that same part of the world (rapping in Yakut and a little Russian)
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What I learned today: the actor who played Cat on Red Dwarf once sung backup vocals for Bowie
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I find MI insufferable some years and enjoy it others, I suspect it has more to do with me than them ... It is after all a fill in for the journalistic silly season
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Bowie Down Under (that other downunder)
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I was also at the '78 Christchurch show ... the echo was because some bozo had set up the stage directly facing the grandstand .... where we were it was terribly annoying ... though at one amazing point Bowie started to sing to/with the echo