Posts by BenWilson
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I think his appearance on TV3 the other night showed he wasn't that comfortable in front of a camera
Yeah, I got a distinct impression he was used to public speaking to crowds, he had the kind of gestural movements and the roving eye you get in competent podium speaker, whereas Banks was like your standard newsreader, still and direct at the camera.
But Brown wasn't too bad either. His body didn't move around, which is common mistake, and he was trying to keep his gestures tight, seemed fond of the clenched fist. Symbol of strength I guess, I thought it was almost OTT obvious as a visual comeback to the accusation of weakness "I'M weak? Put up your dukes, little Johnny!". I expect him to get better every time he's on TV.
He did nicely seize the initiative quite a few times in the debate to interrupt the longer Banks spiels.
I'm seeing him as a fighter, and that's what's needed against the Banks machine. Banks is highly composed and professional, but he has got many chinks in his armor, his much more extreme past will always be exploitable, and Brown only needs a couple of little slips, angry outbursts, bad taste jokes, a careless dogwhistle, to get the run of the battle.
Both candidates need to learn to memorize speeches too. A one minute speech only takes about ten minutes to get word perfect.
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But I think a good mayor is one who knows transport inside out, and can get involved in the details.
Well they better if it's basically the only issue they're campaigning on.
I agree about the bang for buck with buses, too. We've spent all this money on roads, we might as well be using them in the best ways. It's a matter of selling to car users that more people in buses is better for them (which it certainly is), whilst still allowing the car to be an excellent option, probably the best option for even a majority. Once people can see that those kind of decisions are as much no-brainers as putting lines on the road to say which direction you can drive, then they buy into it. And the buses just start looking better and better. Once I finally clicked, my whole attitude to buses changed - I didn't see them as annoying domineering enemies any more, potential challengers for my road space. Letting the bus go first is like letting in 30 cars for the price of 2. The karma is huge.
I'm still working on my attitude to trucks, though. And couriers can bite me.
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We don't generally disagree Ben, I just think the lack of extensive and permanent transport lanes is an impediment to mass use of buses
Certainly I don't disagree with extensive transport lanes, although permanent seems overkill, and unnecessarily mean to people who want, for instance, to park on the street at night when there are no buses anyway. It also seems inefficient somewhere like the bridge, which can easily enough switch its lane usage around to fit with overall traffic flow.
These things are all true, however if you have the choice of driving or taking public transport, I think the public transport option is best when it is also quicker.
Best for a lot of people anyway. It's never going to be desirable to anyone who has to carry a lot of stuff, or works somewhere that's actually not in the city but they have to suffer city traffic, or uses the vehicle in their work, or works funny hours, or has some disability.
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Elitist? I'm thinking back to the sozzled crowds of ozzie yobbos that thronged Albert Park ... or the hordes of Italian boy racers that would hoon around my window every time Ferrari won (I did practically live on Lygon St, within 200m of about 100 Italian restaurants). But yeah, practically there's no place for it here.
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Ben, I actually think this is a big deal. For me, buses lose their appeal if they're not at least as fast, if not faster than cars.
Buses have other advantages, don't forget. You don't have to park the buggers. That matters if you're going to the city all day. Also, you don't have to own them, nor learn how to drive them.
But I don't like being on them myself. Spent way too many hours on them as a schoolboy, as I went to school across town. Hence learning to drive as soon as was humanly possible, stealing back about 2 hours every day of my life (and nearly losing it a few times).
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I sense the scorching heat emanating from the event horizon of the copyright thread. Must...pull...up....now....
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My fear is that we're now moving away from that into a space where that isn't the case, and the population who can run any program will fall. I don't want to see a world where programming freedom is something that happened between 1980 and 2020.
I guess you hate gaming consoles then?
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Don, you think Apple is that dangerous? They're really not that big, powerful or pervasive. I don't feel throttled by them because I don't use them, with the one annoying exception of Quicktime. They can't control and restrict how I interact with technology - the best they can do is encourage me to try it their way for some $.
Russell is allowed to like them, and say so, without being complicit in a dangerous conspiracy to control the internet. They are an innovative force, and they manage this by what really seems to outrage you, the fact that they can actually profit from software and the internet.
Perhaps the founding fathers of the internet would be outraged. I don't care, I never swore any blood oath to them. They are not Gods. The world moves on, the internet moves on, and interaction with technology moves on. I'm happy Apple have a little piece of it, because they make some good gear, which I tend to get the trickle down effects of.
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All I know is the air stinks in the city.
You're making me wish I didn't delete (as I do with most of what I write these days), my spiel about how people thinking Auckland has bad traffic are cut from the same cloth that sees the place as "The Big Smoke". Try Bangkok, before you get too bitter. Big smoke is when you can't see the top of buildings, when your snot is always black, and if you don't cover your face when you're riding, you end up blackened with soot. Yes, OK, there's more pollution here than in Morrinsville, but this IS a city, you know.
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Only if you live in a suburb that has quick access to another one, plenty of people cross all over town for work and then during the day a bunch of them drive all over town in search of the elusive dollar.
Hence my asking about the average. Standard deviation would also be interesting, given that the range can be from zero (like me) to, well, who knows? I've met guys who had to regularly do intercity commutes. I spent 6 months commuting 150km a day to one job in Victoria, sometimes doing 400km several times in a week between milk factory sites. But that's a statistical outlier.
I do take your point that people who are in work that involves driving all over the place very much need to be taken account of in transport planning. But it's pretty hard to plan for random. That's just a 'basic overall capacity' concern, and everything that improves transport will help with it, every person in a bus or train is not in the way of that tradesman's van heading across town to a site.
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