Posts by Sacha
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Watched Top Gear last night then?
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I am interested in who the 17% of non-connected New Zealanders are. Digital divide still alive and well.
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One of the near-unconscious checks you do when deciding whether it's safe to step out into the road is to listen and see if you can hear anything.
...the electric engine is very stealth, and people kept stepping out in front of him without looking.
Big issue for blind people - seriously.
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I don't think "well it's all just opinion in the end" is such a clever answer.
Unless it was during one of the bits where my eyes glazed over, I don't think anyone actually claimed that, did they?
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Back to the new "supercity" CCOs, Rod Oram outlines the new Council's impotence over them, deliberately engineered by this scumbag government.
So, the CCOs will jump into this power vacuum, boots and all. Each will seek to maximise its power and influence. Expect, for example, Auckland Transport to create its own strategy and policy team. Each CCO will maximise its opportunities under the plans inherited from the old councils and operational until the new council devises new ones.
Imagine, for example, the chaos on a particular stretch of waterfront: The waterfront CCO might want more green housing; the economic development CCO more boat-building; the major facilities CCO a sports stadium; the property CCO quick profits from council land sales; the transport CCO more land for the next harbour crossing; Watercare more networked stormwater and sewage treatment for new developments rather than local processing wanted by the waterfront agency to tout its sustainability credentials; and the investment CCO refusing to give up more port land to make this happen.
Meanwhile, the council is trying to devise a spatial plan to lift Auckland's growth and sustainability to a whole new level. But it lacks the resources, powers or skills to do that because they largely reside in the CCOs. And it lacks power to pull the CCOs together in the common cause of Auckland's progress.
The government could stop this disaster happening by drastically amending its third Auckland governance bill to give the council: much stronger powers and resources to set strategy; real control over the CCOs; and flexibility to change CCOs by making them publicly owned companies rather than locking in their functions by making some of them statutory entities (such as Auckland Transport) or trusts.
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History of cheese (streaming 21mins) from yesterday's This Way Up show on Radio NZ. Mentions paneer.
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All the "drag race" example shows is that you need a very tightly-defined context before you can make firm pronouncements about what "best" means.
There's no such consensus about movies - which I believe is what was being discussed before this thread veered into such a yawnfest.
Black-or-whiters being absolutist about relativism is mighty tedious many decades after the death of unchallenged modernism. Considerably more sophistication (and humanity) shown elsewhere here than either end of that old spectrum.
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Barnes, I'll be over for my royalty presently..
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Recordari, interested in your impressions of the Nathan Haines and Hollie Smith albums