Posts by Sacha
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
Uh, Steve provided Herald quotes including this one: "Gerry Brownlee says he did not realise how neglected the eastern suburbs of Christchurch have been."
As others have been saying, you can read this as a matter of competence, priorities or stretched resources without having to turn it into a referendum on character.
Having said which, one person has been given much power and all the responsibility that goes with it. I'm sure Brownlee welcomes the accountability and hardly needs defending from it.
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Comparative disaster responses across suburbs are heavily affected by their existing resources including social capital - and in this case things as basic as the absence of local supermarkets and transport.
I was reading something yesterday about travelling from Fendalton across towards Brighton and noticing the swept streets and privately-hired cherry pickers fixing homes give way to utter devastation.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
attributing it to callous indifference to the plebs on the part of Brownlee or anyone else is neither true nor fair
The quotes Steve provided support his case, don't they?
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OnPoint: On Price Gouging, in reply to Dismal Soyanz,
In this case, the oil companies want to be seen to be doing their bit for Christchurch.
Corporates are still run by people, and they do often want to do the right thing rather than just maximise profit at all costs (or even making PR calculations about future goodwill). I wouldn't want to be too cynical about motivations. Small businesses particularly are a crucial part of all our communities and they'll be essential for rebuilding to succeed.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Matthew Poole,
snap
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to BenWilson,
sprawling suburban design is actually very disaster friendly
Not when it comes to restoring spread-out networks and services like water, wastewater, roading, power and phone, sadly. Going to take ages to fix all that. Higher-density usually means more concentrated work can restore function (although it also means more damage from adjacent buildings as we saw).
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
And there are thousands who'd rather like a hot shower, clean laundry and a bowel movement that doesn't have to be co-ordinated with the rest of the street stat.
All of which should be do-able without knee-jerk relaxing of planning standards for the cbd.
The suburbs have their own challenges. Rapid construction of some core shared services in each neighbourhood might help with the next weeks and months.
Or mass urgent relocation to vacant housing in less-affected areas like the Western suburbs. Some have suggested government agencies take up any undamaged private sector housing stock immediately and sort out money transfers later. We know from the September quake that residential building damage assessments are not fast and people need to live in the meantime.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Steve Barnes,
Perhaps the Herald could use its resources to put together a Daily supplement
There are local rags doing a sterling job in the region (and printers who need the work), but stronger distribution and targeted informative content probably need to be added. And a non-tech feedback mechanism.
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Hard News: What Now?, in reply to Emma Hart,
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Hard News: Mind Blending, in reply to Stephen Judd,
Or his tats at least