Posts by Sacha
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Maybe it's like offal or tripe or suchlike - nostalgic at safe distance for war's children.
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I read that the deep cultural need of Japan to kill whales dates only from WW2 when they were very short of food, and that there are huge whalemeat stockpiles now because not enough Japanese people are interested in eating it.
Norway and friends have stronger claims on grounds of custom, but there are other old habits that are globally out of fashion now - like slavery.
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Anyone amongst those who are actually (ostensibly) represented by the NZ govt, though?
Not this time - any potential "gains" are indirect through trade agreements and associated sucking up. Downsides much more obvious, including reputation damage like we've already suffered with these bozos in climate change and now with plans to dig up our national parks. Big and lasting trade and tourism implications.
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I mean, who even wants that?
Big daddy United States, of course - dangling a "free" trade agreement before all those impressionable boys in cabinet.
We must kill the whales to save them.
Yep. getting more than a bit embarrassing, this lot. -
I don't know what to make of that?
The word "suffer" was a clue - but really, I just want one of those machines (and I don't use a wheelchair).
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Yes, no doubt the appointees will similarly be "well known to Ministers". Daddy knows best.
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And those "No-ones" are the Councils we are fighting to keep.
Not on their own - where's the private sector, or government for that matter? Most of the urban Economic Development Agencies have dark fibre as a priority, but that hasn't necessarily been joined up with other services or the legal/regulatory implications of sharing ducting sorted out.
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That's great calling of Hide and Joyce's bluff about 'involving Auckland' in CCO appointments, with both rejecting Len Brown's proposed joint Councils panel.
Mr Hide said he did not agree with Mr Brown's suggestion, but planned to discuss the appointments with a range of people in Auckland before making recommendations to the Cabinet.
Mr Joyce reiterated his intention as Transport Minister to hold informal talks with mayors about the board appointments to Auckland Transport. He did not support the level of formality suggested by Mayor Brown.
Any guesses who Hide's "range of people" might be?
In that same story, local government expert David Wilson backs away from his earlier confidence about the proposed governance arrangements, noting where CCO relationships are positioned in the new Council structure designed by ATA and its corporate advisors.
Meanwhile, an academic has questioned whether the model for the Auckland Council to monitor the CCOs is sufficient to keep tabs on the large and complex organisations that he says are in danger of working as "silos" instead of in an integrated way.
David Wilson, director of the Institute of Public Policy at Auckland University of Technology, said the council committee overseeing CCOs would take its advice from a governance and monitoring unit based in the finance division.
"What that indicates to me is the 1980s contracting-out model where we have a performance agreement around financial outputs, whereas what we are trying to achieve is better outcomes in the long-run for Aucklanders."
Mr Wilson said the monitoring unit needed beefing up with specialist advice.
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no one has appeared to realise that ducting would be an excellent investment
Wonder if that might be improved with the proposed Auckland Transport CCO owning the boundary-to-boundary width of all the region's roading including berms and footpaths?
I understand multi-service ducting has similar issues to "fibre to the door" - the economic payoff comes mainly through the services delivered, not directly from the underlying infrastructure for whom there is no short-term "customer". Requires long-term ROI that our private sector seem allergic to, hence business advocates like Rod Drury suggesting nationalising the wholesale infrastructure and making it operate on a public good cost-plus basis.
Snap
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The big divide isn't around income or ethnicity, but age. Old folks are much less likely to use the internet than young people.
The report concludes that wealth is a factor in access and usage of broadband services, which is hardly surprising. It seems to show the second strongest correlation after age at first glance (eg: Fig 65).
However, one of the remaining fundamental divides is around disability - not that they bother measuring that. The word is not mentioned once in the WIP report.
We know that disability is strongly associated with age and with poverty (so the report's noted disadvantages apply). We also know the nature of digital barriers, about sites and services which exclude some people through inadequate design. Clearly still early days getting publicly-funded research to address that.