Life’s could-have-beens

  A Mastodon post about my mayoral campaign policies. No, I didn’t foresee a global pandemic as such (though I certainly was on Twitter perplexed at why the WHO had not declared COVID-19 a global emergency in January 2020), but I did feel there was insufficient resilience in our economy and wanted to advance ideas […]

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We’ve been here before: foreign-owned media run another piece supporting an asset sale

Clilly4/Creative Commons I see there’s an opinion piece in Stuff from the Chamber of Commerce saying the Wellington City Council should sell its stake in Wellington Airport, because it doesn’t bring in that much (NZ$12 million per annum), and because Auckland’s selling theirs.    It’s not too dissimilar to calls for the Council to sell […]

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A familiar call after two mayoral campaigns on Wellington’s knowledge economy

The latest Victoria University study, expressing that there is a shortage of creative people, sounds very familiar.    Dr Richard Norman highlights in a Fairfax Press editorial that knowledge economy companies are ‘struggling to capitalise on opportunities for growth because of limited local talent …    ‘Many of these companies are well-seasoned and high-earning—a third […]

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The flyover: every option now heard

Embarcadero Waterfront, photographed by Ricardo Martins/CC BY 2.0.   I was consistent about the Basin Reserve flyover in my campaign. Yes, I agreed we needed improvements to the area. But no, spending millions on it—it did not matter whether it was from taxes or rates at the end of the day, because that still meant […]

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The graffiti issue

One voter says, ‘Hi, when I show people around Wellington I feel really ashamed of how our beautiful city has been covered in graffiti.’ And she is right. So what can we do?    I responded in an email: You are right, and believe it or not, $500,000 of our rates are going toward the […]

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Mind the gap

People have rightly asked me my positions on transport, the environment, the Basin Reserve flyover, and libraries.    These weren’t put in my manifesto in April 2013 because I expected that candidates (whomever they might be—since only Dr Keith Johnson had declared then) would have largely the same views on them. I was wrong.   […]

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Chromium remains buggy; and I get charged twice for parking (thrice if you count my rates)

I am happy to say that Firefox 4 Release Candidate 1 is working smoothly with no crashes to date. It reminds me of, well, Firefox 3·0, before Mozilla started doing weird things to it and we had the multiple-crashing 3·5 and 3·6. Let’s hope this situation lasts.    Meanwhile, the bugs I reported to the […]

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By all means, enforce parking, but it’s not a licence to write fiction

Today was a good reminder why we cannot trust a foreign company to look after our parking, and why things need to be brought back under council control.    Parking enforcement is not about profit. Karen was unduly issued with a parking ticket in a P5 space after hours. And I received one today. You […]

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Making free wifi pay—at no cost to ratepayers

With the first billboard going up in town, I’ve been asked about whether my free wifi programme will cost ratepayers.    In a word, no. The wifi programme will be supported by selling the space on the home page.    Upkeep of such a service, and I am looking at several alternatives, is in the […]

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It’s time to consider open source

Certain media are reporting the city’s [debt] in the $200 million–$300 million mark but our outside-council research reveals this is a very conservative estimate. It’s likely to be more.    Regardless of whether it’s $200 million or half an (American) billion (scary just saying it), any deficit that’s nine digits long can’t be good for […]

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