Posts by Moz
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Hard News: Touching Waterview, in reply to Rich of Observationz,
I'm not sure of the politics, but in most of Oz google etc seem to have reasonably good access to PT information. They don't get trackwork in Sydney sometimes is the only thing I've really noticed (but I am an occasional user).
Also, Wellington has overloaded buses at peak times in the inner area
Sydney has that with trains. Albeit only on stations within easy cycling distance of the CBD and in areas where the council has built good bike infrastructure (I know not everyone can ride a bike to work). Oh, except where the state government has overridden council and removed said cycle infrastructure.
In response to rail overcrowding the right-wing state government is privatising some of the lines and the new operator has promised to run new trains more often. New, smaller trains... half the passenger capacity per train but 50% more often means 2/3rds the number of passengers per hour. For some reason we are not excited by this, plus we get "buses replace trains next 12 months" at some point, turning a 30 minute trip into town into 60-90 minutes depending on traffic.
The Sydney tunnel story you might like is that a PPP built new road tunnels under Sydney then went bankrupt, so the state government bought the tunnels cheap. That's how a PPP should work :)
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Hard News: Barclay and arrogance, in reply to maxy,
how can you hold these people to account if something like this happens?
It's very difficult and that's the point. With professional socialites like MPs it's superficially easier because they're either practicing being effortlessly interested and nice, or they already do so out of habit. One effect of that is of course that you feel obliged to reciprocate, by for example not making them look like an arsehole in public.
With other political creatures it can be easier - at one stage I used to see David Farrar socially, but it was difficult to maintain the pretence of civility in the presence of his forthright political assumptions. Viz, less that he was a craven National lackey, more that he overtly assumed that everyone in the group was an amoral sociopath primarily interested in power and money (and that not being such was a character defect). It made discussing even the weather difficult. Watching his behaviour now it appears that he may have got slightly better at concealing that beneath a veneer of civility, but on the other hand maybe not...
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It's worth looking at the various investigatory bodies around the world. One handy term is Independent Commission Against Corruption. NSW has one and it periodically makes findings that end up with politicians and their associates facing criminal charges. For that reason Australia doesn't have a federal one because the corruption is official and approved of (at least within parliament, which is what counts... although ... (damn, how do I get the image below the text?)
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Hard News: Touching Waterview, in reply to BenWilson,
It's strange that it doesn't really afflict public transport.
Induced demand works just fine for public transport, but the mechanism is the same as for powered mobility aids - people use it when it's more convenient, so anything that makes it more convenient will induce demand. Sadly much "public transport improvement" doesn't address convenience, being focused on making it cheaper or easier for the operators, or providing limited services to new areas.
What works, and is known to work work is "very 10 minutes, as much of the day as possible". If people can just wander down to the stop when they want to, knowing that a bus/train/rickshaw will be along soon and will take them where they want to go, that's convenience.
I'm curious to know how the mobile app revolution is affecting that convenience factor, because I can see how it would. Plug your destination into google maps and it says "if you leave in the next 8 minutes you can walk to {station} and the train will take you there at {time}". Convenience not through more trains or buses, but through knowing what is going on. My train-dependent housemates all live and die by the Sydney transport app, because that has live running times and knows about trackwork etc. Our kitchen is 12 minutes walk or 9 minutes panic away from the train station :)
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Hard News: Grenfell: a signal moment, in reply to Rebecca Gray,
architects hate building regulators so we have to keep tricking them into letting us get away with doing things differently".
I think it's important to remember that architecture is the art of drawing pretty pictures of buildings that might come to be, civil engineering is the practice of designing those buildings so they are safe (etc). Project Management is the torture of trying to get tradespeople to assemble what is on the plans despite the "active involvement" of the architect and owner. Then to take it apart and put something different in when the architect and owner agree to pay for that to be done.
There is a degree of cross-over, but having lived with an architect for 10 years now and listened to a lot of architects complain about a lot of things, 99% of their whining is about the appearance of the building and 1% about the structure. Commonly they hate restrictions that come from heritage listing, anything about colour, form or siting, and especially "fitting in with the existing houses". Give an architect complete freedom and they'll make Dr Seuss look conservative.
The practical restrictions they gripe about tend to be things like fire zones (in Australia), flood and earthquake requirements (what do you mean I can't build in the red zone?), much more than random engineering restrictions like fire-proofing.
(why yes, I *am* irritated by 10 years of this whining.Thank you for asking. I have made the exact point above on a number of occasions).
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I keep thinking that our rulers have forgotten the old adage: democracy is a better way to change governments than the guillotine.
As Corbyn shows, given an alternative the people will vote for it. In Aotearoa we see the opposite.
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https://newmatilda.com/2017/06/11/labour-real-winners-uk-election/ NM has gone to the dogs a bit lately, posting controversy for controversy's sake, but that's worthwhile IMO.
The Last Leg election special was kinda worth while. Not so much funny-haha as funy-omg, but interesting anyway. Watching the boys try not to be too hard on the female, muslim, Conservative MP was funny. Her response to the suggestion she might like to be PM was genuine and also a sad reflection the state of politics "hell no", but put very politely. With possibly a genuine undertone of "don't even joke about that, it could happen".
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to BenWilson,
Winning the election and becoming the actual government for the next 5 years would have been a far, far superior outcome.
See, I don't think that's one of the possibilities. I look at the Scottish Conservatives (who are already talking about a separate identity) , and I look at the PLP, and I look at the LibDems... and I think to myself "what a wonderful world".
I think a useful Labour win would have required a safe, outright Labour majority *and* would need to involve a bunch of brand new, recently elected for the first time, cabinet ministers because if Corbyn was reduced to re-installing the tired hacks who've opposed him, the same ones who refused to accept shadow positions, he'd be in the same shit as May is but without the media support. It's just a whole bunch of "maybe this" and "hopefully that" and "if they're really lucky", I just can't see it happening.
While it's nice to imagine that the MPs who supported Blair and still publicly pine for his return would swing behind the Corbyn political program wholeheartedly, I struggle. To also imagine that those tired hacks would be struck by inspiration and enjoy a simultaneous burst of competence unto brilliance that lasted for four years, boggles my mind. It's easier to imagine Alamein Kopu succeeding Paula Bennett and turning the social welfare system around. But yeah, maybe it could happen.
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Hard News: Interesting Britain!, in reply to Russell Brown,
I get that people want to celebrate the ideological victory, the reclaiming of the Labour Party etc, but the rather harsh fact is that Labour did not win the election
I think you have it backwards: winning the election would have been a disaster for Labour, but a close second and a Conservative Party in disarray is a very good outcome. There is nothing Labour could have done from government that would have kept the media and the mainstream from a relentless campaign against them that would make the internal Labour ructions look like a picnic.
For starters, what would count as a good outcome from the Brexit negotiations? How could anyone achieve that? What do you think the reaction would be to Labour failing to do so? (not to mention the varying incompatible definitions of "good outcome") Then there's Scotland and the banking crisis... good solutions to IndyRefII and London's banks leaving the EU in 3... 2... hahahaha.
What they have got instead is a Conservative government that is explicitly beholden to a fringe party with views more extreme than even UKIP. It's not a firm grasp on power, and it's very likely going to mean trying to compromise in opposite directions - the DUP are already demanding to dictate Brexit outcomes and I suspect they will regard that as a good start... it's not going to get better.
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I found this interesting. I wonder how widely it will be analysed cf ignored in the post-election coverage:
6) The Green party
They have taken a hit in vote share. Numbers in the north-east are down to the hundreds. This is because they took a moral decision to stand aside in some seats, campaign together in others, form non-aggression pacts across constituencies to prevent a Conservative landslide at any cost. The cost, to them as a party, has been pretty great. Typically, it will hit them in university towns, where their vote share was high for reason of a concentration of educated people, thinking about things. In Newcastle-upon-Tyne East, they were down nearly seven points. The very least the Labour party, and all of us, can do is to acknowledge that this was the result of decisive action on their part, and not just an unfortunate loss of interest in the environment.
