Posts by Russell Brown
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Here we are. A rare surviving screenshot of x-Ville. I've looked for this image several times and this little gif is all there was.
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Hard News: The Web, in reply to ange wither,
that took me back to “e-world”, an apple based alternative to AOL (simulation here http://www.remember-eworld.de). It was exciting hearing the gardle doodle thwang thwang of the modem, and into an online community. I used to facilitate feminist and queer conversations in women online worldwide (WOW), met some lovely people. Not sure when, maybe 95. Cost a lot. I still have the little e-world disk.
Yes, I remember eWorld. It was painfully slow, but it was actually my first experience of getting source data on a current news story – that being the trial of OJ Simpson. The Court TV channel provided transcripts, the lot. It was very good.
The interesting thing is that Xtra’s original “x-Ville” homepage was pretty much a rip of eWorld.
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Hard News: Friday Music: Both sides of…, in reply to bob daktari,
both perfect for the home computer mixologist or them that play out to the elderly, these are possibly not youth friendly – though both are idiot and violence free
Nice! I've got the original vinyl of both of these.
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Hard News: The Web, in reply to Grant McDougall,
I remember in about ’96 or ’97, in their “what’s hot / what’s not” column (or whatever it was called) Metro rated as hot “Ask Jeeves – the search engine with grunt”.
Lame! Not really a search engine and certainly not as good as Alta Vista, which was already in wide use at the time.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to jh,
I wouldn’t call a 20 year period misleading? The stat’s myth buster seems like misinformation (deliberate)?
No, I don’t think the DoS is in the habit of publishing deliberate misinformation. But the numbers you cited are very strongly influenced by historical immigration laws and business conditions that no longer apply. They can’t be used to generalise about current migration rates and they'll look quite different as the earlier years drop out of the 20-year period.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to jh,
That figure came from here:
80% of our population growth in the last couple of decades has been the net inflow of non NZ citizens .Okay, fair enough, true for that period, but a little misleading. Those numbers are strongly influenced by years like 2002, with a net inflow of 38,000 – which was driven by high outbound migration and a boom in the export education market (students studying for longer than a year are counted as PLT arrivals). But three years later the net migration increase had fallen to only 7000. In most years, natural increase accounts for a majority of population growth.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to jh,
Really?
Yes, really:
To a great extent, future Aucklanders will come from current Aucklanders – our kids, their kids and their kids. About 60 per cent of Auckland’s future population growth will come from births in our current population. Consider this: one-third of all children that live in New Zealand, live in Auckland. In addition, people aged under 25 make up 40 per cent of Auckland’s population. That’s a lot of young people in our city. Many of these will go on to have kids of their own, contributing to Auckland’s growth.
The other 40 per cent of Auckland’s projected population growth will come from other parts of New Zealand and from overseas immigration. Total immigration numbers for all of New Zealand are set by central government, and a large number of immigrants will choose to settle in Auckland due to the availability of services, cultural activities, jobs and business opportunities.
Furthermore, the group you seem to be most worried about -- Auckland's Asian population -- actually has a lower birth rate than the Pasifika, European or Maori communities.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to jh,
What about the number of infill houses and the size of gardens?
Infill has been has been driven by baby-boomers, often in suburbs where existing Pacific immigrant populations have been displaced. You don't see a lot of it in Howick.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to BenWilson,
But a bigger contributor would seem to be rising incomes. Subsistence farming is more likely to be a lifestyle choice than a function of poverty these days.
Garden centres had a boom when the GCC hit around 2008.
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Hard News: Diverse Auckland: are we…, in reply to jh,
80% of population growth over the last 20 years has come from offshore. NZ used to be the Quarter Acre Half Gallon Pavlova Paradise. Location determines the value of land (around jobs and infrastructure). Population pressures have reduced the size of sections. Kind of obvious?
No, it’s not obvious at all. Because your figure is false.
From the Department of Statistics’ “mythbusters” section:
This myth is busted.
New Zealand’s net migration balance continues to be volatile. In recent decades, it has ranged from a peak net gain of 43,000 permanent and long-term migrants (in 2003) to a net loss of 44,000 (in 1979). Periods of sustained net migration gains have been interspersed with periods when more people left New Zealand than arrived.
In contrast, New Zealand’s natural increase has remained between 25,000 and 35,000 for most years since 1973. So, while net migration usually contributes to New Zealand’s population growth, the main contribution in most years is from natural increase. Since 1970, natural increase has contributed about four-fifths of New Zealand’s population growth, and net migration the remaining one-fifth.
It’s also a nonsense given that the large majority of people even in Auckland, where most immigration is concentrated, continue to live in in low-rise suburban housing – the large majority of which was not built in the past 20 years. The idea that we’ve suddenly stopped gardening and keeping chickens because sections have shrunk is demonstrably wrong. Apart from anything else, home vegetable gardens have been on the rise in recent years.
Also, the forecast increase of one million in Auckland’s population in the next 30 years is predicted to be largely composed of natural increase and internal migration. Not immigration.
I get that you don’t like immigration or multiculturalism, but it’s starting to seem that you’re looking for rationalisations for that view.