This situation is really bizarre, and its over-complexity is truly absurd. Organizing a large event is not rocket science, and the party central/transportation failures are a case of too many cooks spoiling the broth.

I am in Melbourne at the moment and watched the Storm play the the Knights at the new AAMI Stadium last sunday. There are 5 stadiums all directly next to each other (MCG, Olympic Park, Rod Laver Arena, AAMI Stadium and the Hisense Arena), serviced by the same train and tram stations. The Game finished at the same time as an AFL game at the MCG. Altogether around 70,000 sports fans spilled out of the two stadiums to catch the same trains and trams. Yet the entire crowd moved at a brisk pace, and we managed to catch the first train that came to station. If you were at the station 30 Minutes after the games finished, you wouldn't have known there had been two large events that day.

I have also been to the Australian Open, which would attract a similar sized crowd to what was at Party Central (if not more) and experienced no crowd issues. It is obvious that all the potential issues of having large crowds concentrated in once small area were dealt with at the planning stages, and that planning to cater for more people than might be expected is a safer option than hoping existing infrastructure will cope.

I don't know what it is about NZ governance in general, but it seems to be obsessed with a top heavy approach to every issue. Rather than simply identifying an issue and having clear and unequivocal delegation to one organisation responsible to deal with it, there seems to be an unspoken assumption that every time a new sub-issue is identified it needs to be dealt with by a different or new authority.

Also, what does it say about our democracy when accountability for such an epic cock-up is so diffuse that no-one can be truly held accountable? The people who are ultimately held responsible will inevitably be the result of political jockeying in the media. What a joke.

We had exactly the same problem in Ponsonby over the last month. Broadband was working but no landline. They even told us that we were connected even though we weren't. We were with telecom and and our line experienced a fault (supposedly "clumsy" contractors in our case as well). We figured telecom had disconected our phone line because we were using another provider for tolls. So we moved over to Orcon which we had been planning to do anyway. However our landline never came back on and we had to wait almost a week before Orcon could get a contractor out to sort out the fault and reconnect us. All up we were without a Landline for about 3 weeks.

We very much get the feeling that Telecom are doing their best to punish disloyal customers by sabotaging their services where possible.

My best Flying Nun moment lasted about 3 years while I was knocking around the music scene in Dunedin. Being a fledgling musician playing around town there never seemed to be a shortage of legends from the label floating around to have a chat with and glean a bit of earthy advice from. It was always encouraging to see that you can enjoy longevity in the industry without having to compromise on your vision.
I know a few will be reading this forum so: Thanks.

High points included being asked to play with the Chills by Martin Phillipps, Having an awesome drunken chat with Simon McLaren and the Straightjacket Fits reunion tour at Sammy's. Phwoar!!