Posts by Paul Campbell
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to Matthew Poole,
And Auckland has, historically, had a very limited "suck at the sav" in terms of spending. Very, very limited, relative to population. For the regions to get all bitchy because Auckland is now getting infrastructure spending that's been stifled for decades is, unsurprisingly, ignorant and selfish. No wonder they vote National.
you may think that - here in Dunedin we've been waiting for them to finish building a road out of town that doesn't go through city streets, an actual motorway, it might just happen next year, 40 years since they started it
Meanwhile - our post office is shutting down, cross town mail which used to go overnight now gets sorted in Christchurch, takes 3 days now, the Immigration dept shut down and left, the Ag research station is going, every few months the govt shuts down something else here, but the media is full of giant tunneling machines in Auckland, and how wonderful rich their people's houses are .... we keep getting told that we in the rest of NZ need Auckland to be a "world class city" for us to get ahead when we see stuff being taken away, jobs and people moving there at our expense.
I understand that Auckland has its problems, and they do need to be addressed - but mostly I'm trying to explain why outside of Auckland people may not quite see it the way you do - it's not just that we're jealous of Auckland, at the moment people really think that Auckland is being developed at our expense - really we need a more holistic approach to development than "there's votes in Auckland, but those people in Dunedin always vote Labour ...."
Oh yeah and there's that whole "TV is full of ads for things in Auckland" thing - look we have to put up with that inane Auckland Glass ad with the jarring smashing window in our living rooms every night - an ad for something we cannot buy - do we really want to know about another rug sale in Ponsonby, a car sales yard in Takapuna? again you probably don't notice it but you're daily flaunting your stuff in our living rooms - bunch of rich fucking capitalists showing off, not the kiwi way at all
(again please take this with the appropriate grain of salt, I'm really only mildly annoyed [except for the glass ad, that's really really annoying])
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Hard News: Housing: the Feudal Model, in reply to James Bremner,
What would you do to reduce demand? Stop new people coming to Auckland? How do you legally do that? Stop Aucklanders having children?
(tongue in cheekily) maybe nothing - many of the rest of us have this general feeling that at the moment our cities and infrastructure are being starved to feed Auckland - National want the votes - for example limiting loans for first time home buyers all over the country just to cool the Auckland property market isn't really fair to the rest of us - it's a big blunt stick to do something that ought to be surgically local.
I heard someone the other night suggesting that Auckland should be "left to stew in its own juices" to encourage economic and population growth elsewhere, it seems a bit overboard to me but a lot of Auckland's problems are geographical, it's built on an impossible isthmus, of course there are transportation problems - while you might get short term fixes, short of filling in the harbours, those issues will always be there slowly eating up lovely old neighbourhoods with motorways.
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Having lived in Northern California with a local elected MUD I have to comment on how distorted the damn things become, ours was continuing to allow hookups to well connected developers long past the point where they had a reliable year on year water supply - it reached the point where they were restricting our showers so that the rich people over the hill living in a semi-desert environment could water their lawns and golf courses
Someone has to be able to say "no - if we hook you up we wont be able to supply every one else in dry years - so we wont" - and that someone has to represent the people who will go without, not the developers
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Here's the wikileaks link
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Hard News: Narcissists and bullies, in reply to Emma Hart,
So why does it seem crazier to ask someone if they want to have sex with you than to try to deduce it from their clothes?
+1 indeed
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yeah exactly
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let's not also forget "supplying alcohol to a minor"
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Hard News: Friday Music: I like your old…, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Laurie Anderson's short but sweetly heart-breaking obit for her husband.
Yes that's the obit I was pointing to above - the image that accompanied the original was great:
http://www.easthamptonstar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/400xY/loureed.jpg
The editor, a friend, of the small town paper that appeared in is struggling to keep his paper's website alive at the moment -
And it's back - Lou Reed tai-chi master may not be the one you remember ....
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And then there's this http://www.easthamptonstar.com/Obituaries/20131031/Lou-Reed Laurie Anderson's personal obit in the local paper (currently being slashdotted, you may have to wait a while)