Hard News: Dear John
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WTF is this CMJ that has entered the frame wrt the motorway?
Central Motorway Junction, aka Spaghetti Junction.
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I'm sure the residents of Royal Oak, Mt Roskill, Hillsborough, Waterview, Avondale, New Windsor, Rosebank, New Lynn, Te Atatu and sundry other suburbs ...will be relieved to hear that they actually imagine that their suburbs are utilised as conduits for airport-bound traffic originating from throughout the isthmus north of Greenlane.
Well as a resident of New Windsor/Avondalewhose local park is going to be taken out by the new motorway, I know what I would prefer.
But residents of suburbs further east than me should not get too complacent - a motorway was once gazetted from the CBD to Mangere Bridge running somewhere to the east of Dominion Road. Let action-man Mr Joyce and his friends in the trucking lobby get to think resurrecting that is a good idea and you could be toast.
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Thanks, Matthew, for clearing up the CMJ puzzle for me. I've never heard it referred to as CMJ before.
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he's very good.
Funniest thing I've read this month. zere standards are dvopping Colonel.
But it was soon very clear that western capitalism, too, deprived of its old adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley.
Gikhail Morbachov
Thus do traders read the odds. He knew that the downside risk of re-opening the "smacking" debate....
There is no downside. As long as you're all debating the big issues, these cunts can funnel your taxes into the NZ murder of Afghanees with little more than a whisper of dissent.
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As for Goff, I'm less worried. I really think it is irrelevant what the polls say this year or the next. New Zealand voters have at best a 12 month memory and mostly closer to 6 months. There is no point in trying to win over voters now and Labour and Goff know that.
Boy, I remember hearing something similar until it was horribly clear that National was looking down the barrel of the worse election result in the party's history. For some strange reason, born to rule entitlement (or a naive belief in your monopoly on the Mandate of Heaven) doesn't go down well with voters.
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The RWC is shaping up to be a total shambles.
Matthew, I would bet my house and several limbs that there will be an early election, pre-World Cup. If the polls are good for National, then like Clark in 2002, Key will want to cash in (usual line: "media speculation ... bad for NZ inc ... end the uncertainty").
I agree with you about the RWC. Major sports events are a bad news magnet (see many Olympics passim): stories of unfinished construction will be a media staple for the next 2 years.
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CMJ is what Transit calls the Central Motorway Junction project, better known as spaghetti junction
http://cmi.transit.govt.nz/html/cmj/home.htm
It's got at least a seven year history of being referred to as that in all advertising of closures, lane changes and works being done. You may recognise the logo, even if you haven't heard it referred to that way before.
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Regarding Labour and Goff still being low in the polls, well, that's just how things go. National was low for years after Clark was elected, Labour was low for the first year of Bolger, National was low for Lange's first term.
Labour just need to be patient and wait it out, simple as that. Sooner or later, the public will tire of National, some Nat MP will make a big, unpalatable boo-boo, but who knows when.
As an aside, very interesting observation by Braunias yesterday regarding chewing the fat with civil servants : "a particular figure of contempt and loathing was foreign affairs minister Murray McCully".
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I would bet ...several limbs...
Afghan or kiwi?
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My perspective on Key's performance is limited by being on the other side of the Tasman. Still, I can see his appeal though I don't think it'll endure.
He's anything but insensible, but pulling out pragmatic solutions to solve Ministerial bungles is not the same as anticipating problems. Nor is it comparable to having a comprehensive approach to policy development. Both these were essential to Clark's Prime Ministership.
He's wedged on the ETS, he's left Smith to make a mess of ACC, Tolley's exposed in education... his is a government of just keeping things from going ... wrong... that's what third-term governments do, not first-term.
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On the upside, he does manage to secure a large number of photo ops with the ABs.
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I think the main reason the Rosebank alignment of SH20 was abandoned was because it had an estimated cost of around $3 billion, even more than the fully tunnelled version of Waterview. Plus, building a giant interchange on Pollen Island would have been pretty nasty from an environmental perspective.
I am sure the Road Transpot Forum will be dusting off the 1965 De Leuw Cather transport plan for Auckland as we speak. It would fit in nicely with the government's transport mentailty.
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motorway was once gazetted from the CBD to Mangere Bridge running somewhere to the east of Dominion Road. Let action-man Mr Joyce and his friends in the trucking lobby get to think resurrecting that is a good idea and you could be toast.
No, my present residence is still safe under such a plan. I'm far too close to the Southern to be at risk.
More seriously, the costs of such a project make it pretty much impossible that it would ever go ahead. If they think the Waterview link is expensive they'd all die of heart failure of the costs associated with buying and building right the way through a densely-populated area were calculated.hmm, actually, when I put it that way... ;)
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As for Goff, I'm less worried. I really think it is irrelevant what the polls say this year or the next. New Zealand voters have at best a 12 month memory and mostly closer to 6 months. There is no point in trying to win over voters now and Labour and Goff know that. What happens 12 months from the election is what matters and that's when Goff must shine. In many ways engineering the polls so that Goff is rising and Key falling from 12 to 6 months out is probably the ideal and hence paradoxically having Goff low in the polls now is probably a good thing.
This is, I think, to understate Key's and National's polling margin. There was a point, straight after the Mt Albert by-election, where Labour had momentum, but it went nowhere.
This isn't to say that the Labour Party itself is in a bad way -- it isn't. A number of long-term activists have given it a rest, but I get the impression that things are quite lively at the grassroots. And it's becoming clearer now where the fresh Parliamentary talent is -- Chauvel, for example, didn't seem to have his bearings in government, but he's bloody lively in Opposition.
But a good many voters will need to tire of National, or become uncomfortable with major policy changes, for Labour to come back into the picture. If it were to happen that quickly, of course, it would be bloody spectacular to watch. That's a long way to fall.
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We have a President.
No we don't - we've got a brand. John Key is a creature of MMP. Under MMP it's the party vote that counts and so MMP is all about the nation-wide campaign. In a nation wide campaign a presidential style leader is central to what is largely a branding battle. Look at how Key is described, or the questions pollsters ask. It is all like an ad agency pitch - he "connects". Dispite being a multi-millionaire who spends his holidays in a Hawaiian gated community he is "down to earth". "Reliable". "Trustworthy". These phrases are branding buzz words, not political policy differences. Key is hugely popular right now because everyone from the Herald down is besotted with brand Key to the point where the abuse of the house isn't a problem for, say, Colin Espiner because Colin is to busy writiing about how the taxpayer should buy his hero an aeroplane.
Key is popular because his brand is, right now, whatever you want it to be.
Goff conversely is unpopular because at the moment he has branded by his opponents in unflattering terms.
MMP is a great system for increasing diversity and making sure everyones vote counts. But it sucks when it comes to elections, because it has reduced them to Cadbury's vs. Whittakers.
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Matthew, I would bet my house and several limbs that there will be an early election, pre-World Cup.
Possibly, yes. But National are then stuck with putting it closer to a Budget that is likely to contain unpalatable truths, and also to a change-over in ACC that will have Labour trotting out hordes of small-business owners to talk about how much time they've had to spend dealing with the change, and how it's costing them far more than they'll save through lower premiums.
As I said, perfect storm. They've got a bad-news start to the year, with ACC and the Budget (I don't see any way for the Budget in '11 to be anything other than BAU, with no money available for any kind of lolly-scramble), and the RWC to book-end the year, smack on the (edit: absolute latest) end of the parliamentary term, likely with a nice gloss of cost-overruns, shambolic public transport, and probably a few stories about tourists getting robbed, raped or scammed on tickets. -
As for Goff, I'm less worried. I really think it is irrelevant what the polls say this year or the next. New Zealand voters have at best a 12 month memory and mostly closer to 6 months.
It all depends on if they are getting sound advice. It may be that the labour polling has picked up the negative perceptions of Goff and they are planning to re-launch him in 6-9 months...
Of course, Occam's razor doesn't leave me feeling optimistic.
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He's wedged on the ETS, he's left Smith to make a mess of ACC, Tolley's exposed in education...
And yet, these have yet to make a real impact on public opinion.
Even a basic rights issue like workplace breaks being rolled back doesn't seem to have found any purchase -- listening to Helen Kelly of the CTU try and explain the issue to Jim Mora and Graham Bell on The Panel last week was painful. Neither of them seemed to grasp what she was talking about.
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listening to Helen Kelly of the CTU try and explain the issue to Jim Mora and Graham Bell on The Panel last week was painful. Neither of them seemed to grasp what she was talking about.
You'd think that the concept of the right to a break being taken away, including the right to a toilet break, would be pretty simple to understand. I can't see what's complicated.
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For local govt junkies, the Auckland Transition Agency has released its draft structure for the new Council.
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You may recognise the logo, even if you haven't heard it referred to that way before.
If only spaghetti junction was as simple as the logo.
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John Key seems to be the velvet glove on the iron fist of neo-liberal fanaticism that drives many of the senior ministers in Key's cabinet.
The number of times Key has had to overturn or modify the intentions of his ministers is most interesting. I know people in the public service. When some Minister seems determined to take some hare-brained path into The Land of Stupid, appeals are made to Key via alternate channels....and very often the Rush to Dumb is kerbed....or softened.
It sounds like the way the Saudis do things: Appeals to the King as the last resort to overcome dumbness at lower levels.
I've wondered if they hard-liners won't just discard Key when they get to the meaty part of their rape-the-State-for-Crony-profits agenda.
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I agree with you about the RWC. Major sports events are a bad news magnet (see many Olympics passim): stories of unfinished construction will be a media staple for the next 2 years.
The Big Owe, anybody?
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MMP is a great system for increasing diversity and making sure everyones vote counts. But it sucks when it comes to elections, because it has reduced them to Cadbury's vs. Whittakers.
Are you in favour of a change to the system at all, Tom?
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This isn't to say that the Labour Party itself is in a bad way -- it isn't. A number of long-term activists have given it a rest, but I get the impression that things are quite lively at the grassroots.
Not necessarily a good thing. The grassroots level of the GOP is "quite lively" -- as well as bugshit crazy and shrinking faster than cotton candy in a monsoon. I wouldn't confuse Brownian motion with productive activity.
Labour just need to be patient and wait it out, simple as that. Sooner or later, the public will tire of National, some Nat MP will make a big, unpalatable boo-boo, but who knows when.
And here we go with the touching faith in the Mandate of Heaven as soon as the stupid peasants come to their senses... The problem with that delightfully metaphysical view of how electoral politics rolls is that it just isn't true. Still, convenient for freshly minted opposition politicians in deep denial that they might have been the architects of their own demise.
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