Posts by dc_red
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They are hideous. And add nothing but expense in most cases. We have a rather rude code word for them in our household.
Of course it helps not to leave a real name and phone number on an open home register unless you're genuinely interested in the place.
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Who is making all these highly precarious, speculative purchases?
Perhaps there's a lot of people who could afford the mortgage at 7% but not at 10%?
Perhaps there's a lot of people who could afford the mortgage when both partners worked, but now one isn't?
Perhaps there were a lot of people who were pressured into buying precisely because they heard and read about the rapid escalation and thought "it's now or never"?
Perhaps there were a lot of people sick of paying some landlord's mortgage for them?
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Yeah, I don't really recognize Simon Grigg's Auckland either. Apart from the crap cafe food.
I do know though that when one's been away for a good length of time, and made "home" somewhere else, the differences upon return can be quite stark, and it's possible to go through a strange, oscillating "I love it!" / "I hate it!" kind of phase.
When you actually return for 'good' you get the more balanced perspective that goes with living somewhere.
Sure, kiwis in general get stick about alcohol, and "not being able to socialize without getting drunk" ... I suspect we're worse than some societies, but better than others, in that respect.
Yeah, and it has been a nice summer.
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You certainly have quite the memory for alleged NIMBYism Craig - that story you linked to is 7 1/2 years old. It's halfway through primary school.
And the proposed development seemed so poorly conceived that even Rudman was moved to comment: "I'm as wet and soft-centred as they come, but I would have objected too." Objections are not always based on socio-economic prejudice.
You're right about one thing though: it would have been in the PM's backyard. Whereas Helensville is a long, long way from Key's backyard.
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But Small is prey to curious narratives too. "Politically it is obviously an attempt to counter the compassionate conservatism that is becoming a hallmark of John Key’s leadership," he writes. Um, is there some policy with that, or just a lot of soft press and photo-ops?
Sheesh, Russell, what more do you want from the man? Don't you remember he was nice to that small girl in that dodgy street in Phil Goff's electorate a while back?
And since then he's further advanced his compassionate and conservative credentials by, umm................
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I have another issue. Both Firefox and IE are installed on our work computers, but all settings are, um, set, and we can't install any plugins.
Once every year or so the powers that be deem us worthy of a few updates.
So, no ad blocker for me.
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Re: the evening news. One night last week (Weds perhaps), one of the news broadcasts had a report on "American weather" (a few tornadoes) by 6.06pm. The other lot covered the same story at 6:15 after the first ad break.
Yawn! They only have to produce ~20 minutes of non-sports news a night, I estimate, but somewhat-destructive-but-quite-normal weather on another continent was right up there apparently.
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A dirty sexy monkey would be funnier.
Surprised to see IE up over 50%!
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Congratulations Russell, hope it works out well.
I must say though that those two paragraphs in the Herald are complete and utter shit. They misrepresent Hard News (and perhaps PA more generally) as not just primarily political but also strongly partisan, misrepresent Kiwiblog as only "National-friendly", and the "but" suggests very strongly "don't worry, it won't only be this worthless Labour hack."
I don't see it so much as an "implication" that you got the show on partisan grounds, rather it's a more-or-less direct statement to that effect.
Some people thought the EFA wasn't a bad idea. Who knew?
On the topic of the Herald, I was planning to blog a bit about the Weekend Herald's Business liftout, with the first two pages devoted to repeating the whining of some big business tool that the "awesome, competitive private sector can't compete with the useless, worthless public sector for top managers."
Cry me a river.
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Steve - my point about private ownership was in response to claims and counter-claims about "who owns the beaches". Such as those sandy things that people like to lie on in summer, and walk across to go for a swim, or look at from their executive holiday homes.
Along about 30% of the coast there is no publicly-owned reserve (Queen's Chain) landward of the MHWSM, and indeed private title can extend seaward of this mark onto land occasionally, regularly, or in rare cases permanently, inundated by the sea.
Those parts of the beach below the MHWSM but above, say, the mean low water level can, presumably, be extremely valuable?