Front page has a shock horror story revealing that if Auckland wants a second harbour crossing it will have to be paid for. The hideous notion of a toll with people who want to use a new flash bridge or burrow paying for the privilege is termed 'absolutely outrageous' by a member of the Kaipatiki local board. Although the Kaipatiki Local Board is hardly on a par with US House of Representatives in the world governance league I'm afraid this fool's view will have a similar impact on this matter as she is a) a wimmin and b) has a name which would indicate she is not a white middle age anglo saxon male. Give her a disability and strong evidence that she bats for the other side and its a shoe in - a nice shiny eight lane bridge over the harbour will fall out of the sky for no money 'cos some stupid woman from Birkenhead thinks it will be unfair for a piece of infrastructure to be provided in any other way.
This sort of attitude is hamstringing this country's progress. All this bloody sense of entitlement and fairness. Do we need a second harbour crossing? I haven't a clue. But there will be ways to determine whether we do. They will involve some clever chap doing all sorts of economic modelling and there will be an answer at the bottom of the page. We (the Auckland Council or Central Government - who cares?) will have to pay for this advice. If the advice is any good it won't be cheap - send the bill to the stupid woman in Kaipatiki. Then if we do need a bridge or tunnel just build the bloody thing. Sod the endangered newts and native ferns, get the big yellow machines in and get on with it. It will be eye wateringly expensive but thems the breaks. Why not pay for it with tolls? What is wrong with that? Silly woman says that people cannot imagine having to pay $60 week to cross the bridge to go to work. Idiot. Either move, get a new job, or, much more likely, use the existing bridge which will obviously remain as free to cross in the future as it is now. Infrastructure projects are bloody expensive. User pays ticks all the boxes to pay for them.
While we are speaking transport there is a stouch between the Auckland Transport chairman and central government. In a previous life the Transport bloke was chairman of some other Council and drew up a very spiffy (in his opinion) regional transport masterplan that stretched into the distant future with us all speeding round the region like the Jetsons. Central Transport minister has looked under the bed and found the cocoa tin less than overflowing with folding varieties and has told him in Auckland that, at $2.4 billion, plans for railways all over the show are not on. I suppose it could still be done if the silly woman from Kaipatiki pays $1500 for a return ticket from Birkenhead to Albany. But that is not going to happen as it is absolutely outrageous to pay $6 to cross a new harbour bridge that will also cost eight figures. The Auckland transport wallah labels this entirely sensible bit of pragmatism from Wellington as ' Government undermining city rail plans'. Well I should bloody well hope it is - that is what it was elected to do.
Where is Pseud's Corner when you need it? I had pretty much given up on the paper and was fast forward to 30 secs of trivia with Sideswipe and was distracted by a) a picture of a woman pushing a pram wearing hi viz track pants and, even more nauseatingly, b) a theatre review.
This piece of pretentious crap almost deserves reproducing in its entirety so you can get the full flavour of nausea that can be induced by the use of a word processing program. Janet McAllister is the author - just so you can be sure never to read anything else she writes.'This effective and moving one-woman play by Arthur Meek seems at first to be simple linear storytelling based on the diaries of the wife of New Zealand's first Chief Justice...'not a great start, but she's not even up to flying speed. 'But in the end its an angry sad reminder that "the colonialists didn't know any better" is a false defence for the Crown's appalling treatment of Maori' - Maori spelt with the funny thing over the 'o' so that it is an authentic representation of the language that never had a written form. A bit early in the day to have great waves of nausea pass over one especially so soon after the Black Doris plums. There are nine paragraphs of this drivel. Want some more? 'While she symbolically takes off her elaborate Victorian garb, she's taking off a cage she was never enamoured of anyway' All the better to walk around clad in a piece of bark presumably. 'The mighty (eh?) Auckland Theatre Company production is rather overwhelming for a chatty piece....'. 'Tony Rabbit's (seriously) monumental forest of metal ladders is set on sand within the confines of the stage - lighting turns them imprisoning or freeing by turn -and we hear John Gibsons' rythmical water, cutlery and tea-stirring sounds as appropriate'. It's unmitigated drivel written about a production that sounds a hundred times worse.
I bet Janet McAllister lives in Birkenhead and would think it impinges on her human rights to pay to cross a new bridge over the harbour.
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