Posts by Sacha
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Some of Mark Hotchin's sneaky wheeling and dealing described.
HANOVER FINANCE owners Mark Hotchin and Eric Watson are believed to have made a quick $20 million profit on the troubled Kawarau Falls resort development in Queenstown, before the first sod on the project was turned.
What will be even more galling to Hanover Finance's former mum and dad investors, is that it was their money which funded the quick-flick deal.
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British architect Norman Foster (responsible for the restoration of the Reichstag and creator of London's iconic 'gherkin' building amongst others) on what's needed to rebuild a shattered Christchurch:
What happens now is going to affect future generations for hundreds of years to come so it has to be blessed with wisdom. You have three commodities: time, money and creative energy, and creative energy is the most important resource of all. It's not how much money you have; it's not how much time you have; it's how wisely you use it.
There has to be a champion – someone who says "we want to make our city better than it was before", and then you need a design-led initiative. But you don't want to get bogged down into the greyness of a stupid committee where in the end it becomes nothing. You need strong leadership – ideally strong political leadership or strong design leadership backed up by a political commitment.
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Hard News: The Thread, It Is Open, in reply to BenWilson,
I can suggest one place to get midnight coffee from a friendly barista, but it's in the Chev. :)
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Hilary Stace,
Michael Laws' latest cruel rant
Ah, the irony of mascara boy chest-beating about black eyes. What a talkback natural.
Smith has Asperger's. Big deal. It was not severe enough for him to require care, nor for him not to be unaware that stealing was wrong. So he had a compulsion. Many people do. But they don't take advantage of others' misery or exploit a natural disaster to satisfy that compulsion.
In the end, justice has been done, blackened eye and all. Now let's similarly identify the other Christchurch looters and mete out similar justice.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to nzlemming,
held to account for our thoughts, rather than deeds
No one forced Goff to speak about it. He's a politician so what he says that he thinks does have some influence on people asssessing what the guy may do with their support. Isn't that what we do with pollies all the time?
And I'd argue that increasingly words *are* deeds, especially in politics with its systems to multiply, transmit and transform them into action.
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to 3410,
Character
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Hard News: About Arie, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
it’s not what I really want running through the mind of a man
True
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Nice suggestion on Te Standard of strengthening capacity of local schools to act as Civil Defense community rallying points.
A comment from a foreign national in Japan caught my attention last night. She was a language teacher in a school and remarked that she was in the safest possible building as schools in Japan have extra earthquake reinforcement, ie over and above the building code as it applies to other buildings.
Which got me thinking.
Why not retrofit school buildings in NZ to an extra-ordinary high standard and have them double up as emergency centers in the event of a natural disaster?
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anyway, enough about that. the thread, it is open
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Hard News: The Thread, It Is Open, in reply to Sacha,
(Actually, I did disengage once I realised what he was acting like - all is not lost)