Posts by Joshua Arbury
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Ah... beaten by KathrynB and Simon Armstrong, but I definitely think it should be:
As-salāmu ʿalaykum
The response from the Muslim community to the terrible events of March 15 was humbling and meant such a horrible act actually brought us together as a country much more than dividing us - which was the goal.
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What about "Coalition"?
For two reasons:
1) The first true MMP coalition government has held up better than most people expected.
2) NZ First's obsession with calling is a coalition government, instead of a "Labour led" government.
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There's some good detail on next steps for improving cycling in Auckland here:
https://at.govt.nz/media/1974191/item114-auckland-cycling-programme-for-investmentfinal.pdf
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It seems to me that housing really is the elephant in the room. A lot of things are in real terms much cheaper than they used to be, especially electronics. But housing is wayyyyyy more expensive, buying (in particular) or renting.
The broad impacts of the country, and especially Auckland, building tens of thousands fewer homes than needed, for decades, seems massive.
Sort that out and maybe the rest follows.
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Really interesting post and discussion. Just a couple of comments from me:
1) In relation to the "abandoned lane" on the St Lukes overbridge, I still think that might end up being used once Waterview open. If you look around Auckland there are a number of situations where it seems like you need to drive "a bit diagonally" to get across an intersection. With two right-turn lanes onto the onramp I think with some clever road markings and signage this could still work. Note I don't have any information about this, just a "reckons".
2) In terms of how cycling is funded in Auckland, this is quite complicated at the moment. Generally if a cycleway is considered "part of a state highway upgrade" then NZTA will fund it 100%, otherwise at the moment its cost will generally be split three ways between the Council, NZTA and the Urban Cycleway Fund. All together, these funding sources are enabling over $200 million of cycling investment in Auckland over this three year period (2015-2018) which is a massive increase from what's happened before.
3) As someone who lives in Western Springs and frequently travels to Pt Chev (partner's family live there) I personally look forward to much safer cycling options in the area :)
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Excellent article. I got to know David not longer after he became an MP, probably through Waterview Connection stuff. He was always keen to listen and learn and I do think he would have been a terrific PM.
He also said to me once (probably around 2010) that he found being an MP quite strange and seemed concerned he was not nearly doing enough to make the world better, like he had been previously.
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There are obviously lots of parallels between this and Brexit. They are characterised as people voting for "change" but in my mind they are actually voting against change - they want to turn back the clock.
The most important word in Trump's slogan was "again". A profound desire to return to the past. This is the combination of many different fears about how the world is changing:
- Ethnic changes
- Cultural liberalism
- Loss of decent "blue collar" jobs to overseas or to technologyThis new political divide of nostalgism/progressivism plays out in ways that cross current party and political lines. It's why Labour loses votes to NZ First, it's the fundamental argument behind whether people are happy for Auckland to grow.
I'm terms of the "median voter" theory, thankfully NZ is far less culturally divided than the US. So I think it's still relevant. But so is having inspirational leadership. How many of those 6 million Obama voters who didn't vote for Hillary made their choice because she just didn't inspire them?
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Speaker: The light train to Roskill, in reply to Russell Brown,
One criticism I did see of Labour’s announcement (from Hirini Kaa, but there will be others) was that it’s yet more infrastructure for the isthmus, and none for the South.
Do remember though that while the City Rail Link is located in the city centre, it is the west (in particular) and south that benefit from it the most through shorter journey times, enabled increased frequencies etc.
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I thought the plagiarism was nothing compared to the rick-rolling, which seemed obvious evidence of sabotage.
How does that fit into our conspiracy theories?
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Really good article. Isn't the key point here that both sides need to recognise there's a trade-off here between their views which can't be avoided. So we need to discuss and debate the extent to which we are willing to make trade-offs.
When it comes to tobacco it seems like society has made this trade-off in such a way that's broadly accepted - although it took a long time. This required massive research but also using that research cleverly and not avoiding tricky liberty trade-off discussions.
We should be asking questions around the extent to which we would see gains for any restrictions so we can balance those up.