Posts by Sacha
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Unless of course if it's a Mallard.
lolnui
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lighthearted banter
Hey, I can spot and appreciate a tongue in a cheek. The rest is serious stuff. And some of us have never belonged to any party.
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before we do it with tourists, we might want to do it with some of the locals
Quite. We already have enough homegrown munters.
I'm confident the RWC planning is being handled very well, having met some of the imported experts hired for the job. They have previously worked on some large events you might recognise.. like the Sydney Olympics and Melbourne Commonwealth Games.
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finally a bit of honesty
the VRWC is famous for hiding in plain sight. :)
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Oversight? Who needs it that would just slow the one man down right?
That's an accurate summary of the core principle. Auckland (currently rated one of the top cities in the world to live in, remember) could "perform better" if only it were run as a business - by the same plonkers who brought you our woefully-governed corporate sector. Good business practices in the right place, I am fine with.
elected officials having the ability to influence/fire the officials that are nominally working under them
Nominal is the word, all right. The new Transport agency and its unelected secretive directors even gets the power to set bylaws for the Council.
implications wider than just Auckland politics
Oh yes, the same changes are coming your way, along with others to the Local Govt Act. If we tolerate this type of behaviour in the local government and infrastructure portfolios, it only encourages similar disrespect in others.
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Heh. It's all relative, Nick - as you note, just being a member makes you different than most of the readers here, let alone an active one in local body politics. Never even heard of any others.
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"No one is probably arguing necessarily that if someone uses a small amount of marijuana that that is necessarily of itself the end of the world," Mr Key said
Decisive chap, isn't he?
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when it all goes pear-shaped
The official fruit of the Republic o Devonport
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Must you be such a grinch about it?
Only about the money - just strikes me as typical dishonestly-pitched corporate welfare at everyone's expense.
I'm certainly up for a buzz in our town though. Especially if funds get channeled into supporting local performers and hosts.
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we'd still have elected politicians appointing directors. It's just that, if it's Brown, it's the "better" elected politician, or one on the "proper" side at least.
That's what this is really about - the Labour/Left crowd are shut out for a few years and don't like it.
Huge difference between a Minister appointing Directors and a democratically-elected Council to whom the CCO's are supposedly reporting doing so. Whoever wins the local election should have that power, not hand-picked toadies and Welli power-brokers.
snap, Russell
And forcing Auckland local electors to use FPP in 2013 as well as 2010 is hardly a level playing field when we know that voting system favours the right. That decision shuts us all out, and its a sign of desperation.