Hard News: Transferring wealth to Wellington
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But who actually thinks that the issue is between us and the good folk of Wellington city? I think the meaning is well established in this context, and quite clear.
Eh, some people really do seem to think that -- the arts and culcha thing above f'rinstance.
It does annoy me, and I don't even live in Wellington.
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Welli does very well out of hosting our government (per capita) - but that has nothing to do with Auckland's current local governance changes.
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Surely everyone knows and understands it's a reference to central government? Just as "Washington" is in the US?
With the right context, yes, it is obvious. What context does a headline/title have? That requires reading the article below, which never mentions Wellington.
To reiterate my earlier point, Wellington isn't a stand-alone capital city like Washington or Canberra. It's NZ's third largest city and there's plenty that goes on here that doesn't involve the Beehive.
Please be clever, not lazy.
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And again, ARTA's budget is what proportion of the total transport expenditure by Auckland's current local authorities?
Sacha: Dodging the question there. Nobody elected the board of ARTA, and you can be as smart-arsed as you like but it's expenditure -- and income from the ARC and NZTA) are not petty cash.
If you really want to argue that "democracy" has been raped, murdered and thrown in a ditch then I'd respectfully suggest you don't re-write reality while you're about it.
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O sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats!
But it's Ok when James K Baxter says it, right? He must have been there on a particularly bad day, as this does seem a little OTT, even for literary purposes.
Can we at least agree that our transgressions are well short of this?
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Craig, ARTA is beholden to our District Plan, which is created via a democratic process. The proposed CCO will not be. Can you see a potential problem with this arrangement ?
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Is "==" some "C" thing that I've missed again?
I'm not sure where I got it from now. But it should be taken to mean 'equivalent'.
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Is "==" some "C" thing that I've missed again?
I'm not sure where I got it from now. But it should be taken to mean 'equivalent'.
Ah, you're using it as a lazy way of typing "≡".
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Off topic, but just wondering - why the good folk of Chch are quite happy to accept that their city is snobby and packed to the gunwhales with serial murderers and wannabe Third Reichers, while Dunedinites only claim to fame is a non-university inhabited by student alcoholic couchburners, and North Palmerstonians and Hamiltrons accept that they are indistinguishable from the cabbages of Sto Lat?
And we won't go into the provinces...
No complaints from any of them. Why are Wellington/Auckland so precious about their image? -
No complaints from any of them.
Sounds like you've missed a couple of choice Christchurch threads.
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Off topic, but just wondering - why the good folk of Chch are quite happy to accept that their city is snobby and packed to the gunwhales with serial murderers and wannabe Third Reichers, while Dunedinites only claim to fame is a non-university inhabited by student alcoholic couchburners, and North Palmerstonians and Hamiltrons accept that they are indistinguishable from the cabbages of Sto Lat?
And we won't go into the provinces...
No complaints from any of them. Why are Wellington/Auckland so precious about their image?Don't stop there, Leopold. You forgot to add that Whanganui is a ghost town presided over by an attention-seeking Glenn Beck wannabe, Tauranga's for old people and Rotorua smells bad. What else? Invercargill's cold? Nelson's full of Poms?
Get a grip.
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I'm not sure where I got it from now. But it should be taken to mean 'equivalent'.
You get into the specifics of programming notation and symbolic logic with this if you try and dig too deep on this, but the "colloquial" interpretation of these symbols is as follows:
"=" indicates simple identity between two things
"==" indicates that what is true for one side of the symbol is also true for the other (the literal meaning of "equivalence".)Of course, if you've ever been subjected to a symbolic logic course you'll immediately understand that the two definitions are exactly the same, but I really don't want to be retyping my "logic of identity" essays...
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Sacha: Dodging the question there. Nobody elected the board of ARTA, and you can be as smart-arsed as you like but it's expenditure -- and income from the ARC and NZTA) are not petty cash.
And it's not more than half the region's total rates bill, either.
If you really want to argue that "democracy" has been raped, murdered and thrown in a ditch then I'd respectfully suggest you don't re-write reality while you're about it.
Lurid metaphors aside, ARTA is not the same thing at all as the proposed Transport CCO.
ARTA is explicitly controlled and owned by the ARC. It is required by its founding legislation to implement the ARC's regional transport strategy. Neither of those things can be said about the Transport CCO.
As Rod Oram put it:
It is certain, though, that most of the skills and staff to devise those plans and turn them into strategy will be in the CCO, not the council. This means the CCO will not simply be the deliverer of council strategy, as the government portrays it, but rather a semi-autonomous organisation with considerable power to dictate what transport we get. Under the current system, Auckland Regional Transport Authority, a statutory entity created by parliament, works to a land transport strategy set by Auckland Regional Council. It has vastly fewer powers and a much smaller budget than the new CCO will have.
Repeatedly bringing up ARTA doesn't change the reality of what's being done in the third Bill. It is wrong, it is undemocratic, and it is highly likely to be dysfunctional.
That's the reality.
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O sterile whore of a thousand bureaucrats!
But it's Ok when James K Baxter says it, right? He must have been there on a particularly bad day, as this does seem a little OTT, even for literary purposes.
OTT? You should see Baxter's Ode to Auckland!
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you still look to me like an elephant’s arsehole
surrounded by blue-black haemorrhoids
Yip, I'd say Auckland wins that one. Funny, I remember a different side of Baxter.
Do you think anyone will notice if we try morphing this thread into a poetry one? Politics shmolitics! -
Bill Manhire has a poem titled "Wellington" as well. I have the book at home and I can't find it online, but there's a line about "the boys from Muldoon Real Estate breaking somebody's arm" ...
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OTT? You should see Baxter's Ode to Auckland!
Heh. Love that.
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With the right context, yes, it is obvious. What context does a headline/title have? That requires reading the article below, which never mentions Wellington.
To reiterate my earlier point, Wellington isn't a stand-alone capital city like Washington or Canberra. It's NZ's third largest city and there's plenty that goes on here that doesn't involve the Beehive.
Please be clever, not lazy.
Awww ...
In the long duel between the interests of central government and Auckland government, the word "Wellington" has been repeatedly used to mean central government.
It's the same with the current scrap. When Super City opponents repeatedly use the phrase "controlled from Wellington", for example, they're not talking about Wellingtonians, they're talking about the government.
That's the context, honest. It only seems odd to you because you're in Wellington.
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"Controlled from Wellington" is not quite the same as "controlled by Wellington". The former implies some sort of organisation based in Wellington that exerts control; the latter implies that the city itself, and by extension, the people who live there, are exerting control. The latter phrase is what's upsetting the people who live in Wellington who are are neither part of, nor support, the control-exerting entity.
And (stretching some vague shards of memory here, because I've never worked on Phil of Language, and I certainly didn't do any of that post-modern dreck), surely even if you intend to say something with one meaning (controlled from Wellington) but a large part of your audience hears a different meaning (controlled by Wellington), then your communicative intention has failed, and you may need to find a different form of words in order to convey your exact meaning (which I assume is "controlled from Wellington" because you wouldn't want to be mean to all the lovely people from Wellington who participate in this community).
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OTT? You should see Baxter's Ode to Auckland!
I like the version that starts with
"Auckland, you great arsehole,
There are some things I like about you,
And some things I cannot like..." -
3410,
When Super City opponents repeatedly use the phrase "controlled from Wellington", for example, they're not talking about Wellingtonians, they're talking about the government.
Also, the whole Supercity debate is about local (ie Auckland) government.
To talk about "Wellington" is, for Aucklanders, to avoid the confusion between both uses of the word "government".
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"Controlled from Wellington" is not quite the same as "controlled by Wellington".
I'm not sure there's that big a difference, but I didn't say "controlled by Wellington".
I said that "the government wants [CCOs] to run 75% of services in the new city," but the ACC may be trying to "scare Wellington into a rethink."
In successive paragraphs. Is the meaning really not absolutely evident there?
And if it's okay to say "controlled from Wellington" -- and it will be understood as a reference to government -- why is saying that tax revenue goes "to Wellington" a potential slur on Wellingtonians?
You'll note I'm not indulging in any inter-city sniping here. I just think my use of the word "Wellington" was unexceptional in context.
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why is saying that tax revenue goes "to Wellington" a potential slur on Wellingtonians?
Because the city, Wellington, doesn't get the money. Central government gets it. The implication is that all those Wellingtonians are sitting there with their hands out, waiting for Aucklanders to give them money that they (Wellingtonians) can spend as they wish.
People living in Wellington, and the Wellington City Council, won't get any of the money, other than through the regular distributive functions of central government, and everyone in the country, not just Wellingtonians, is eligible to receive those, provided they meet the relevant criteria (like not being a sole parent with a youngest child aged six or over).
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Because the city, Wellington, doesn't get the money. Central government gets it. The implication is that all those Wellingtonians are sitting there with their hands out, waiting for Aucklanders to give them money that they (Wellingtonians) can spend as they wish.
Whose implication? Where? I assure you, I was implying nothing of the kind, and I don't think you can point to anything in the original post or subsequent discussion that suggests otherwise.
We seem to be having a debate about something I don't believe anyone truly thinks I either meant or said. Pointing out what I did say, or noting many similar references in the same context doesn't seem to have helped. Is there anything else I could do?
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Titled it, "Giving money to the government", not "Transferring wealth to Wellington", given that Wellington and the residents of Wellington, of whom I am, alas, not one, won't get a penny.
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