Hard News: Going Underground
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I hope someone pointed out to him that YOU CAN'T WALK ON THE MOTORWAY IN NEW ZEALAND! Whether it's above or below ground.
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With tunnels, there's a special section dedicated to walkers and cyclists. It's called "above".And I'd like to point out that it's also illegal to cycle on a motorway in NZ. So we already have a large network of areas where you can't legally walk or cycle, and I'd certainly expect any tunnels to be included in that. I suppose that you could always put a footpath/cycleway at the side of the tunnel (as happens in the Mt Vic tunnel in Wellington) - it'd be absolutely vile to go through (as the Mt Vic tunnel is), but you could do it if you were really worried about walkers/cyclists.
Of course, the real point here is that a tunnel would siphon some of the motorists off the aboveground route, making it safer to walk/cycle. So in that sense maybe he should be agitating for the tunnel, in order to get increased walking/cycling rates.
The Champs Elysee is actually rather boring compared to the mazes of old alleys in places like the Marais
Yeah, but can you imagine the final stage of the Tour de France being held through the Marais? Carnage. And not even with good camera angles.
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Oh, also: I notice that Daily Show episodes are freely available on iTunes. Are they blocked as well?
I can't see them on iTunes, and aren't they a paid download anyway?
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On topic:
Daily Show and Colbert are both still watchable as individual clips (go to 'Videos' on the respective sites dailyshow.com and colbertreport.com), just not as full shows. A pain, but fair enough - hope that doesn't change.Off topic:
Russell, really enjoy Media7 but I only watch it as podcasts on my iPod - the last two weeks the iTunes feed has only provided 30 or 15 second samples of each segment of the show.I'm sure they're available elsewhere on YouTube and ondemand but I just don't watch content that way and suspect there are others in my boat too. Any chance this can be corrected??
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Ben - I just noticed on www.thedailyshow.com that there was a banner for free iTunes downloads of episodes.
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It's strange how only the "Full episode" video's are unviewable but if you go through the Videos link at the top of the site you can watch all the segments individually.
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Leaving Weller 'nuff alone...
it's time to strap on yer Buckler
up there above the Foxton Straits...Start the News of the World here
Rusty, Boy about Town that you are, it augurs well that you invoke those Woking class heroes The Jam in today's augering title, Going Underground . They had much to offer on Aucklanders' Private Hell of living In the City, a Strange Town, sadly It's too Bad when Bricks and Mortar and All Mod Cons become The Bitterest Pill to swallow, a Funeral Pyre, and a Wasteland , When the Planners Dream Goes Wrong *After all This is the Modern World and even the Man in the Corner Shop knows that Sound Affects when you all live, Thick as Thieves , In the Crowd and will want to get Away from the Numbers and Burning Sky of a A Town Called Malice ...
As one reads more beLaboured puns about the Mt Albert bile lection it probably won't matter if it becomes a pocket full of Pretty Green or is cast to the minions of Key, Mr CLean , and his English Rose and who will care Just Who is the 5 o'clock Hero when the roads are gridlocked.
The Ring Roads Rule When You're Young !!
And The Gift is just to Dig the New Breed of Saturday's Kids scrabbling around Down in the Tube Station at Midnight looking for their Precious
I guess we'll just have to wait for the Super City Style Council to sort it all out...
that's all folks
That's Entertainment_PS:
*witness the lyrics to
"THE PLANNERS DREAM GOES WRONG"Letting loose the lunatics - wasn't the greatest of ideas
Giving them plans and money to squander -
Should have been the worst of our fears
The dream life luxury living was a pleasant No. 10 whim,
But somewhere down the line of production
They left out human beingsThey were gonna build communities
It was going to be pie in the sky -
But the piss stench hallways and broken down lifts
Say the planners dream went wrong...see the rest of the lyrics at:
Planned Insanity -
Oh, also: I notice that Daily Show episodes are freely available on iTunes. Are they blocked as well?
What do you mean freely? I thought they were 3 dollars a pop, did they remove that? Don't have itunes myself to check but I'd download it in a flash it if was the case.
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Oh dear. Di-carpal tunnel syndrome. ANd molested under the harbour whilst strolling illegally on a motorway, not for me! Won't be there. And as for the new road network being around for hundreds of years, well, I would have thought future proofing said network by incorporating rail would have made sense. But that's another story.
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And then there's a panel on the art market in a recession,
So now would be a good time to plug the NZ Affordable Art Show which has pumped nearly $3 million back to 100s of artists over the last few years.
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"Open roads are generally frightening places to even drive through – shades of JFK spring too readily to mind."
ROTFLMFAO
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Giovanni - banner ad top-rightish: http://www.thedailyshow.com/
It may actually just be a single download I suppose, don't have iTunes on this puter to check-a-check it out.
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If I beat this guy to death with a history textbook, I have the full support of all here, right?
It would seem more appropriate to stab him in the eyes with a couple of ice age era knitting needles. But whatever you have close to hand
I suppose that you could always put a footpath/cycleway at the side of the tunnel (as happens in the Mt Vic tunnel in Wellington) - it'd be absolutely vile to go through (as the Mt Vic tunnel is), but you could do it if you were really worried about walkers/cyclists.
The Mt Vic tunnel cycleway certainly makes a bit of sense, it's a 50KM zone and it's the only quick and easy way to ride from one side to the other.
Motorway tunnel on the other hand will be a much faster speed limit, which cyclists won't benefit from (at least us mere mortals), and there will be roads/cycleways above ground, which, while not quite as efficient as a motorway, won't be horrific for getting from A to B.
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It may actually just be a single download I suppose
First one's always free, bro.
there will be roads/cycleways above ground, which, while not quite as efficient as a motorway, won't be horrific for getting from A to B.
Personally, I cycle around the bays - an extra 2k each way on my commute, exposed to the full force of Wellington's wind - rather than ride through the Mt Vic tunnel twice a day. I'm astonished that anyone does it, frankly.
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Curiously enough, Transit NZ's proposal does consider the interests of walkers and cyclists:
Supporting public transport, walking and cycling
The Waterview Connection project will take business freight and other through traffic off local roads:freeing them up for improved public transport services and time reducing 'rat running' on residential streets
The design caters for the future expansion of the Avondale Southdown rail line and its electrification.Existing pedestrian and cycle links will be retained.
At the southern end, the Mt Roskill cycleway (under construction) will be extended to connect with Richardson Road
Extending Maioro St to connect to Stoddard Rd will provide a new pedestrian ( and vehicle)connection between New Windsor and Mt Roskill / Wesley areas of Auckland.
There's also a map of the project area and the interchange design
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First one's always free, bro.
Heh. Just try it out, a little Johnny Stewart never hurt anyone one time huh?
It's obviously a widespread decision given this post has gotten to 31 pages already
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Personally, I cycle around the bays - an extra 2k each way on my commute, exposed to the full force of Wellington's wind - rather than ride through the Mt Vic tunnel twice a day. I'm astonished that anyone does it, frankly.
I've often wondered about this as a quandary for planners trying to provide for cyclists: the idea is that the easier you make it the more people are likely to cycle, but once they actually become proper keen cyclists they'll likely just do it the hard way instead on purpose.
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No comment required.
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Imagine I buy a (leased) pub for $80k. The stock and fixtures are worth $30k, and I put $20k in the bank as working capital. The pub thus has tangible assets of $50k. It makes $5k a year. Am I making 10% (return on assets) or 5% (return on my $100k investment)?
Both, depending on which of these different measures you are interested in. But I maintain that profitability of the business is conventionally measured as the return on the assets employed on the business - 10%. The fact that you paid too much for the business is neither here nor there if the question is whether it is a profitable business. The goodwill you paid to the vendor is not used by the business in any way.
Your inverse P/E, the yield on the share to an investor, is an interesting measure, but it doesn't tell us about the inherent properties of the business, only how currrent market participants view its prospects. It's relevant if we are contemplating investing in a business, but it doesn't tell us how well the business exploits the resources available to it. To the extent that this is "profitability", it's the profitability of the business you undertake in purchasing shares - a secondary sort of thing compared to the underlying asset.
Keeping your example, suppose I paid $110000 for an otherwise identical pub. I would say both pubs are equally profitable pub operations, but I just happened to make a worse deal, and as an investor, you are running a more profitable investment operation than me. It's on this basis that I want to compare banks with, say, clothing retail or gold mining and say that banks are a relatively profitable sort of business given the risks involved.
If we want to discuss the profitability of pubs, we should use return on assets employed by the pub; if we want to discuss the profitability of our respective investment operations, then we should use the return on the total we paid for the pubs.
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Leaving Weller 'nuff alone...
Remember, Shout to the top !
Weller done Mr Dalziel ;) -
the idea is that the easier you make it the more people are likely to cycle, but once they actually become proper keen cyclists they'll likely just do it the hard way instead on purpose.
Well, I'd say that it's good to encourage people to become regular cyclists, but not all regular cyclists have to become keen cyclists. In Wellington at the moment, anyone willing to brave the traffic is likely to be a keen cyclist, and may want to do it the hard way because it's as much about exercise as transport. But in a truly bike-friendly city it would be more than just the lycra brigade that cycle to work or the shops: in the same way that most people who walk to work don't wear tramping boots, it would be nice if people could bike in suits or frocks.
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Suppose then Stephen, that instead of buying said pub, I found a space, negotiated a lease, fitted it out (at a cost of $30,000), and built up custom through marketing and tolerating losses. In total, that involved sinking $50k into the business, plus the aforementioned $50k for assets and working capital.
What's my return then?
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Re the daily Show.
There may be some doubt about who is responsible for the blackout.Let's assume the reasons you gave are right (it's seems kind of odd that content licensees all over the world requested that you shut down access in their respective countries at the same time, but anyway)...
As I was reading the comments I was surprised by the number of countries complaining at the same time.
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Well, I'd say that it's good to encourage people to become regular cyclists, but not all regular cyclists have to become keen cyclists. In Wellington at the moment, anyone willing to brave the traffic is likely to be a keen cyclist, and may want to do it the hard way because it's as much about exercise as transport...
I've found it precisely the same here in Auckland of course, and I agree with the rest of your post - we're a long way from the tipping point to true bike-friendliness, where regular use of bike provision breeds further provision and thus further demand, and so on.
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John,
Re Owen McShame and his merry bunch let us all be clear that he is a sort of 21st Century
King Canute and his cohorts are the 21st Century version of the Flat Earth Society.From their website,
The Centre for Resource Manangement Studies Trust
The Centre for Resource Management Studies consists of a small executive office, under the direction of Owen McShane, which works with specialists in their fields to promote the objectives of the Trust which funds the activities of the Centre.
The present Trustees are Don Brash (Chairman), Noel Lane (Deputy Chairman), Sir Roger Douglas, Dick Quax, Alan Gibbs and Owen McShane, the Director of the Centre. We have already established a panel of engineers, architects, scientists and economists who are willing to provide expert advice to the Centre.
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Accounting sleight of hand, Rich: your $50k of losses and marketing aren't part of your original outlay, but ongoing opex. Whether accumlated spending on branding and goodwill should be counted on the books as an asset is a matter of debate, a debate that you can have when you come to sell the pub. I would say that only in rare cases, eg CocaCola, is it worth counting, and certainly not if we are trying to establish whether one kind of business earns outsize profits compared to another.
By your logic, the more the share price falls, the more profitable the business becomes. That makes sense from the vantage point of prospective owners, but the underlying operation is the same as always.
I reckon that banks make a lot off the little they employ. Whether owners paid a lot or a little for their stake in the bank operation matters not a jot to me. I imagine it matters to them, but I don't care about the profitability of their investment decisions, I care about the outsized profits the bank makes on its assets.
Honestly, we're arguing at cross purposes here, I think. Yes, the amount earned by a bank compared to the current cost of buying a bank is an interesting measure. It tells us how people currently assess the value of banks. Granted. Agreed. I just don't think it's relevant in assessing the qualities underlying operation, which are reasonably static compared to market opinion.
In fact, the comparatively high prices offered for Aus bank shares in recent years reflect the belief that the underlying operation is profitable and low-risk. The reason other operators don't marshal their money and get into that business is the onerous barriers to entry in the Aus market.
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