Posts by Matthew Poole
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you should vote for us because we saved you from higher taxes.
Which ties into this editorial in this morning's Granny. True courage would be admitting that the only way to avoid saddling the next two generations with exorbitant debt is to reverse the tax cuts. That would take real guts, but of course we'll never see it happen. The only politicians who've got the brains to admit that we cannot be a low-tax country with high levels of public services are Act, and their solution is to gut the public service.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again, we have to have a discussion, as a country, about whether we want to be a country with high levels of public services or a country with low taxes. We cannot be both, much as both major parties have been trying to pretend otherwise, and as a member of one of the generations that's going to be paying for the current debt for the majority of my life I'm getting heartily pissed off at constantly having to blink away the politician-placed wool. -
I doubt it. For about 2/3 of the population, the only way the government could go wrong electorally would be to throw too much money at Auckland.
Ah, but Kyle, 1/3 of the population is a voting bloc that's perfectly capable of tossing the inestimable Messrs Key and Hide out on their well-padded behinds. Auckland all on its own is quite able to determine the composition of any future government, with or without the connivance of the rest of the country.
And would "throw[ing] too much money at Auckland" include Joyce's pet Bridge to Nowhere - aka the Puhoi-Wellsford Motorway Extension Project? Please tell me it would! -
Just to get back to ACC, this article has a wonderful (for values of wonderful that equate to "not in the least") quote from Key: "need to be convinced that there were benefits both to the Government and the private sector".
What about the public, John? What about the workers? You know, those awful, horrible people who actually use the cover that ACC provides. What about them?
Given that the workers' account is the only part of ACC that's self-funding, we're yet again seeing the "privatise the profits, socialise the losses" mentality at work. Hat-tip to my brother for pointing that bit out. Strip out the bit that pays its own way, and leave the taxpayer to prop up the unprofitable parts. Fucking typical.
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Gio, they were all out of industrial-size metaphorical blenders when I went into Hardly Normal the other day, so I had to make do with the household-size variety from Blond and Blond.
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Oh, I'd also like to say that getting Joyce rattled is a splendid benefit of this unexpected political unity on the part of Auckland's leadership. Hell, I even think that Banks makes some very reasonable, supportable statements in the article.
I'm really hoping that it's Auckland transport that'll be the hammer that knocks the gloss off National's honeymoon, but I'm beyond holding my breath about the electorate's ability to digest and be outraged about any information that doesn't affirm Key's messianic status.
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You do put your finger on a crucial point - much transport design is very narrow-focussed, for example looking at shoving bypasses through without considering either alternatives or the overall urban pattern and habitation - as Prenderghastly did here in Wellington.
Is this a peculiarly NZ thing, or is it more universal? NZ seems to suffer greatly from a tremendous lack of holistic transport thinking at the political level, as witnessed by the complete shock from many sides that Banks, Brown and Lee are all on the same page about completing the through-line out of Britomart.
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Why get rid of the present bridge? It is not falling down.
Yet. Metal fatigue.
How much difference would it make if the clip-ons could be removed, and automotive traffic routed through a tunnel? Is the gradient on the current bridge within the capabilities of a rail solution?
Just thinking about ways to utilise the existing structure as part of a fully multi-modal transport solution. -
Was I the only one who read the post and articles and instantly thought "We can forget the multi-modal crossing, for reasons of 'cost constraints', for as long as Joyce has his fingers on the purse strings"?
As far as the bridge height goes, my hazy recollection of the datum clearance below the current Harbour Bridge is that it's 37 metres. I'm sure somebody knows for certain, but I can't figure it out from what's available on Google. And given that it's 14 years since I last studied a maritime chart for the area I wouldn't trust my memory. So a replacement structure would need to allow similar levels of clearance, which I don't see would necessitate significantly lesser gradients in order to be useful for non-automotive transport. The bigger issue is shielding non-motorised traffic from the winds.
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On the topic of "motorcyclists v. bicyclists", no lesser authority than the LTSA says that the number of fatalities for these modes of transport, YTD, is 37 and 7 respectively. I'll see those hysterical motorcyclists their "unfair" treatment of cyclists and raise them a "fuck you, you're in far more danger than we are".
Not to mention, of course, that fully a third of motorcycle fatalities don't involve another vehicle. Given that it's estimated than fewer than 10% of MVCs are the result of mechanical failure (I think it's estimated as around 7%), that means that, statistically, motorcyclists riding in a manner that's less than perfectly safe has killed more of them this year than the total number of cyclists killed.
Their case is not aided by the kind of bullshit seen in this article, where we have comments like:
He also said the argument that ACC did not look at blame, just the cost did not stack up as they did not target cyclists.
Mr Garrett said in 2008, citing Transport Ministry figures, there were 1022 accidents involving cyclists and 38 deaths. For motorcyclists the figures were 1400 and 50 respectively.
I'd love to know where he got those numbers, because they're absolute crap. What "the Transport Ministry" actually says about cyclist crashes is that in no year since 1984 have more than 31 cyclists been killed, and in 2008 there were 895 cyclist injuries and 10 fatalities. Is this a case of someone plucking numbers out of their rectum in the safe knowledge that "quoting" an authority such as the MoT will ensure no journalist actually back-checks the figures?
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Beat me to it, Russell. Certainly understandable why the police were playing their cards rather close to their chest with that one; trying to avoid the very reaction which has been so under discussion in this thread.
It also explains how things went from "mystery Asian woman" to "possibility of abduction" in a very short space of time. Nothing whatsoever to do with veiled racism, and everything to do with information developed during the investigation but withheld from the media.