Although, I confess, we did sometimes behave quite badly as a household. In the happiest of ways.

I am not going to name the individual involved, but when I worked with Lesley in the 90s, we were sharing flatting horror stories, and she vividly described the pile of moldy dishes they found under a certain tenants bed when that person moved out.

Vividly described. Like a tale from 'Nam, told around a campfire.

Farrar has lately been at pains to point out that young, left leaning voters tend not to vote. National have been softening in the polls, and I have no doubt that the internal line is that it is nothing to worry about.

The National Party don't have an alternative vision for Auckland. They lost face when the super city voted for Len Brown, but more than anything they are focussed on the next election at this point. These anti-unitary meetings are being framed as a grassroots rebellion, and are being thrown raw meat from Wellington. When your voter base is agitated, and is self organising and compiling mailing lists, you play to that.

It is horrifying that at the core of policy and strategy is the appreciation that 'having Auckland gets its comeuppance' is going to play well with your wider electorate. I am so glad that we have cool hands like Gerry Brownlee at the tiller, who would never stoop as low as that.