The cynic in me assumes that this is a deliberate ploy in the hopes that it will force councils to privatise their 3 water infrastructure. National & Act’s biggest problem with 3 Waters was that Iwi involvement was a major handbrake on further privatisation.
I moved from Wellington to Hastings which was in the middle of a massive pipe fix due to the fallout from the issues that impacted Havelock North’s water supply. I’ve heard rumours (not bothered to dig into it because not my council) that Napier City Council has held rate rises low for years on the back of not investing in their 3 waters infrastructure as well. So its not an individual council problem as much as a systemic issue for the whole of NZ. If only we had some kind of national plan to resolve it.
Any local government candidate claiming to be able to freeze rates rises, or cut rates has immediately lost my vote. Any national government candidate or party that is not arguing to overall increase the tax take will not gain my vote either.
Both local & national governments have claimed “surpluses” by running down infrastructure (apart from roads) and not investing in what used to be the future & what is now the present. And i’m sick of it.
Also; everybody moaning about rates rises now that voted to get rid of the 3 Waters solution to the problem, congratulations you donkeys!
I was thinking that - if it was a maul, it would have been. So why when its the only defender 5m out from a quick tap would it not also be?
(I dont think either should be penalty try + yellow - one or the other is sufficient punishment for mine).
Was a hell of a game though eh - good atmosphere, relatively evenly matched teams. I heard someone saying it was around a b/c level Scottish team with so many of the A-listers with the Lions; but it would be a struggle to call the Maori ABs even a C level NZ team at the moment. There’s a handful of starting SR players, 0 ABs squad members* and the reserve halfback wasn’t even in a SR squad this year.
In fact of the entire team the only SR starters I can think of were the two locks, TK Howden, Rivez Reihana and Bailyn Sullivan who was shunted out to right-wing as soon as Proctor came back from injury.
*Walker-Leawere was called in as injury cover for a week last year & TK Howden is close to knocking on the door.
Thing is though the anti-pedestrians care not a dot. My favourite local example is the one tiny bit of the Hastings CBD that has been cut off from cars between Market St & Russell St:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/39°38’29.2"S+176°50’33.9"E/@-39.641439,176.8420221,439m/
Its been closed to cars for ages; but even though there’s apparently not been any accidents from the way the rail travels through that park because the track is not blocked off it needs redevelopment to add a fence protecting people from trains.
And as soon as that was mooted some of the retailers in that one little block, despite being surrounded by parking every other side but that 75m stretch of Heretaunga St, started campaigning to allow cars back down it again. Because apparently having full blown parking lots 50m away from them its the lack of cars outside their door that’s impacted their trading (not global trading down turns, cost of living crises and covid pandemics).
If anything the parking behind the retail sections of Hastings is way better than the street parking anyway, there’s more spaces for differently abled people, and its way easier to get in & out of the masses of actual parking lots. If you travel further east along Heretaunga St there’s a section from Russell St to Hastings St that could also easily be pedestrianised too.
Its got loads of hospitality outlets, a fair bit of retail and crucially - is surrounded with car parking. Particularly in summer in the height of the fun seasons it would be a wonderful place to allow more al fresco dining and entertaining and events* but the naysayers will never let it happen.
*They run a few night festivals through summer with temporary road closures and they are very well attended.
Its double destruction, trash the environment, and throw away a bunch of capital on dead assets.
Lots of the various provider’s networks have central routing in Akl, Wgn & (sometimes) Chc. So everything lower north island hauling back to Courtney Place doesn’t surprise me. For a fault like this one to impact i’d guess that either some redundancy had already been lost prior to this failure, or for some other reason it didn’t failover in a predictable & non-impacting way. It happens.
AEW is also a smaller pond, albeit one with lots of fishes kicking their heels with not much to do, but its still easier to stand out when you get the opportunities.
She was definitely a good prospect, but was also very unproven, even with her AEW stint her career is very short so far.
It would make sense in the long run but a cost of billions would cover doing something rad like making a new line running something north though Linwood, Wainoni, North New Brighton, Marshland before joining back up around Belfast. A lot of that isn’t as unfeasible as it once was due to the emptying out from the earthquake near where it would need to link through.
I found an old article I read ages ago that talks more about the network:
https://talkingtransport.com/2018/11/22/flashback-when-christchurch-had-commuter-trains/
It looks like more of the paltforms have been removed than i’d hoped, but as I say they’re not particularly complicated bits of engineering if you have the land.
Why do you think this would be billions? The track is already there, though probably not enough is double tracked so over time that would have to be done, but the proposal is really just reinstating the passenger network that was slowly downgraded & then eventually cancelled from the early 50s to the mid 70s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_transport_in_Christchurch
There were a lot of stations, and i’d wager most of these the land & surrounds are still in Kiwirail’s ownership, they may only be platforms now or not even that but looking at satellite imagery some still exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christchurch_railway_stations
Christchurch’s rail network is probably more extensive than people think, because it is where the Main North & Main South lines join and the latter goes all the way through to Lyttleton. Its almost exclusively freight of course but the rails are all still there & are still being used.
So you’re looking at a new operational company to setup, some DE units, staff and then access rights to coordinate with freight & the other passenger services and building platforms; the latter don’t need to be fancy - most of Wellington’s are just concrete at the level of the carriage and a couple of shelters.
Its the same reason its not ludicrous to suggest passenger rail in Hawkes Bay as well - even though there hasn’t been passenger trains for a couple of decades most of the old stuff is still there in some form - and most importantly is still part of the rail corridor. You just need car parking, bike racks and some larger-than-bus shelters and then figure out a vehicle type you can run frequently enough with low enough staff costs.
External costs to the general populace while all the benefits are internalised? Almost like all the dairy farming coops reaming us on butter while shitting & pissing in our rivers so much you can’t swim without getting a rash.
Just a completely moronic take. Someone should explain to Jones that Tourism is worth nearly 5x to NZ GDP than mining is. Just like chicken farmers who did the bare minimum then got burnt when supermarket customers didn’t want their shitty eggs anymore if we trash our environmental reputation we might find that mining grows at the expense of tourism.
Yeah I think i’ll put Parliament TV on at 2pm today to see how it goes.
Unfortunately I can see Labour being gutless and not wanting to antagonise the racists by standing up against the overreach here. Hipkins has already hinted at it by saying he thinks the focus should be on debating pay equity & the budget.
In an unsurprising, but significant slip of the mask towards authoritarianism - Seymour’s been arguing in the media that the punishment should be 90 days.
We are now on the slippery slope where the party with a majority in Parliament can suspend their opposition whenever they want on a slim majority - ala Fiji.
The misinformation was in a segment on RNZ I think, not an official proceeding.
He’s got a very high pitched whistle, and he’s been subtly blowing it throughout his leadership of National.
In this case the Speaker is actually pushing back against the committee’s recommendations. There’s a really good write up from RNZ here: https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/561329/the-house-parliamentary-privileges-race-as-an-aggravating-factor
Its hard to say, typically takes a wee while for Kiwis to admit the mistake, or experience the buyers remorse of a National government. Plus with the trend amongst western liberal democracy towards authoritarianism, the massive funding gap between the two major parties and the inevitable disinformation shitstorm ramping up even more around election time on Facebook where seemingly so many morons learn about the world its very much a 50/50 even if this lot get even more unpopular.
Its been interesting reading some of the blow-back Vance took for her language. Willis herself was not happy with the “c word” being used, nor the depiction of her “girl-maths” as a derogatory assessment of her abilities as a finance minister.
Setting aside the language used, the intent of the assessment rings true to someone who knew of Willis when she was at University (and knows people who knew her well). She wasn’t a deep thinker then, and got ahead on connection and socialising with the right people more than anything else as far as we could see.
Nobody I know from back then has seen anything since that would change their opinion either. It seems pretty obvious to me that she’s in a position of decision making far in excess of her ability to reason and understand what she is doing, or the long term implications of it.
But like most of her prior “work” experience she’s ballooned in on the recommendation of well connected others, and mostly because she can be relied upon to unleash the magical thinking of the Atlas aligned fundamentalists.
Its hard, because they compete with Ireland, England etc - but Scotland definitely deserve a full tour, its been way too long.