Posts by Sacha
-
Thoughtful profile and interview with Mark Ford by Chris Barton (if only we could clone good journalists and editors who support them).
Suggest to him people are worried the CCOs won't talk to one another and he says: "You're being provocative. I'm not sure people are worried." He disagrees, too, that the CCOs will have no reason or incentive to engage with local boards.
"If I was a CCO chief executive, why wouldn't they? [The local boards] are my customers, my stakeholders. I can't see why I would want a silo because the risks are enormous if you don't co-operate."
Purely from a commercial point of view, Ford says there are lost of reasons why CCOs will talk to one another. "Why wouldn't I try and put a pipeline down a road about to be resealed as opposed to paying for reinstatement of that - it has huge commercial consequences."
Ford sees his job as making the legislation work as it stands. If there are concerns that the Auckland Council bill is taking the local out of local government he says: "Don't talk to me about that, talk to Rodney Hide or John Carter."
-
a lot of people involved in the process are starting to talk about how troubled they are by what they're seeing
I believe that's been true for some time - what's changed seems to be people are hearing it now.
-
Matthew, the tone has shifted recently - and submissions had closed before articles like the February one you link to made their way into print.
None of the implications are that surprising if you actually questioned smug pronouncements from those in power - but then our journos and their bosses seem to be a little out of practice at that.
-
Finlay McDonald joins the dots between road safety and public transport.
If traffic policy is about harm minimisation, then surely the obvious priority is putting fewer drivers and pedestrians in harm's way. And the simplest way to do that is to take as many vehicles, drivers and passengers as possible off the roads. And you do that by improving public transport.
Instead, we spend an inordinate amount of time and cash researching and improving ways to make cars safer, modify driver behaviour and crash-proof roads.
And Dyan, you'd like this bit:
There is now mounting international evidence that communities blessed with decent public transport systems are also the least obese. It stands to reason – just walking to and from train or bus stations to school and work is more exercise than your average car commuter gets.
In Auckland, the fat congeals in parts of town almost abandoned by public transport planners. Indeed, if advocates of better urban planning wanted to gain more traction they could join forces with the health lobby to make their case: a fitter population by design.
-
Does this make you (in precis) Chairman MAO?
Don't even ask what it makes him if he cracks up afterwards
-
Do you find you notice it in your students?
-
Do we even have neocons in NZ?
Neolibs, certainly
Neanderthals, check -
Lhaws seemed to handle the intrusion quite well. Now wondering if he simply expects everyone else to be as capable when he's dishing out crap?
Snap, kind of
-
I believe Iceland would welcome market champions with open arms
-
I guess the fear is that corresponding raising of tax on the wealthy will drive them away
To where? Expats have been coming home in droves, and not because of our headline tax rates.