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6:00 am, July 4th, 2026 - 40 comments
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Open mike is your post.
For announcements, general discussion, whatever you choose.
The usual rules of good behaviour apply (see the Policy).
Step up to the mike …
https://www.stuff.co.nz/home-property/361001802/planning-experts-accuse-helen-clark-nimbyism-over-her-opposition-auckland-housing-plan
Clark the nimby, not surprised really after her vanity attack on south island farms back in the day that she'd say fuck you to people needing house in central Auckland
Chris Bishop points the Blue finger at Helen Clark.
Very rare to hear anyone from this National Government blaming someone from Labour for … well, anything at all!
Clark and her local community have been very consistent over multiple decades, particularly over the impact of the ever expanding Eden Park, which is one of the worst town planning anomalies in New Zealand.
Bishop is just an asshat with little to show for his time in office either in housing or in transport.
Clark and her neighbourhood have also been battling Auckland Council and central government together.
If Auckland Council is so policy-determined to get high densities along Dominion Road when ordinary citizens have owned and enjoyed their houses there for decades, then Auckland Council should put its money where its mouth is, invoke the Public Works Act, and buy them out and develop them to the scale they want.
Instead, Auckland Council over a quarter of a century has just fucked around with scheme after scheme to "improve" the broader residential margins around Dominion Road and Walters Road, and its transport efficiency, and actually achieved next to nothing.
Sure for the casual unthinking leftie or Nat grunt, any resistance to change looks like a conservative kick, but it would be very, very easy for Helen Clark to go through year upon year and millions and millions of dollars wasted.
And that waste also falls upon the previous Labour Government and its light rail scheme that also entailed promises of vast redevelopment of land close to Dominion Road, very very little of which was actually achieved.
Sometimes a citizen actually defending their rights is itself actually worth defending, and this is one of those times.
They do not need to buy out the houses (that is for public works). Once there is density in the plan developers will make their own bids to existing landowners.
Any area with PT, bus or train, can handle the density.
The constraint on density is storm water run off capacity. This requires some spacing.
Thus not all of Dominion Road, half and half
bw – Do you have a full and better reason for running down Clark's objection to Auckland housing plan? Your comment sounds like an addled brain fart.
What do you think she is right about and wrong in full please. Attacking of policies and people as automatic targets for hoarded hostility is not helpful. We must use our mental energies to see off the really dangerous dogs – watch their eyes and their ears carefully and you will know what to be on guard about. Some you throw a stick for and some take a stick to.
What vanity attack was that?
At least the Right are honest about their NIMBYism……
How about Centrists – honest, or dishonest? Who wants to be called a NIMBY?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIMBY#Origin_and_history
Geopolitics will be hit by the warp factor sometime soon: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/5-reasons-us-aircraft-carriers-are-more-vulnerable-ever-210201
So far so good for Trump, but his cowboyism is now a target in the strait. His point-man here wishes for an aircraft-carrier visit, wistfully.
Since Ak has long been a nuke target for the Russians due to the Devonport Naval Base, a rw govt with spine could indulge the yanks with no security downside.
The window on the world opened by the CFR: https://www.cfr.org/articles/where-does-american-strategy-go-from-here
That multidimensional triad preserves US hegemony. We need no further evidence that metapattern 3 is driving thought at the top level of geopolitics, but you can always reach for the slogan of the French Revolution (Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité) or the triad that drives money flow (unit of account, exchange, mutual value).
CFR's intellectual initiative onsite acquires heft via links to 6 essays. Use of 6 in optionality tends to facilitate organic and organisational stuff. Parts cohere, configure, as natural influencers in continual rapport with the whole. Such is operational holism as per Deep Green. They then hit the viewer with a heptad: The Future of Regional Relations.
Following we get a second hexad: The Future of Geoeconomics. Anyone into the future of the global economy is likely to get a few clues, I expect. Then they do a tetrad on The Future of Great Power Rivalry. Such relative constraint is refreshing – 4 tends to systematise thought so we get a more schematic scenario that simplifies into overview.
So well-done to the Ivy Leaguers for their applied neopythagorean framing. Bet it was done subliminally! Nevertheless, a reward for discerning readers via nudge theory…
You don't have to blindly defend all "lefties" all the time mercurio .
That's true, bwaghorn but you will, I hope, agree that I didn't indicate support for what Helen Clark is saying, I merely pointed at a well-recognised habit shown repeatedly and invariably by the members of this National-led/mis-led Government, to blame Labour and her stars, for everything under the sun.
Ad however, makes a strong case for looking more deeply into the heated attack you mounted 🙂
Thiel vs Pope update: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/07/02/us/peter-thiel-aspen-pope-china-ai-cec
His pope as commie agent scenario is infotaining enough to get mimetic traction yet the Antichrist in Rome may scale up cultural impact further. Folks with an inner sceptic will proclaim he's not really there – pragmatists will respond that we'd have to go there with the right detection device to empirically test the thesis. I'll remain agnostic till then.
Bob the pope is busy.
https://www.npr.org/2026/07/02/g-s1-131791/what-to-know-about-the-society-of-st-pius-x-the-schismatic-group-excommunicated-by-the-pope
Reasons to Vote ….Labour/Green November '26 : #….
And is he a good fit for NZFist ? Well IMO he ticks the denier/conspiracist/racist/asshole checklist….so, absolutely.
Ditch the pricks November '26 !
Laws is a putrid bladder of bile.
He will see himself as Winston's heir already.
The Matua (the other one, Shane) might have other ideas? Hopefully some ugly (well, uglier : ) infighting to come….
On Laws….he has an already confirmed cooker base in Waitaki. Santana Supporters……
Bishop is an arsehat.
Not sure what dominion rd has to do with it, i avoid Auckland.
Eden park should be demoshed and a multi use covered stadium should be down the water front near britomart.
Character homes my arse , land hungry inefficient to heat and cool heaps of snobbery.
Pull them all down except a museum piece or two.
"A mosh pit is an energetic, self-contained zone near the front of a stage at rock, punk, or metal concerts where fans voluntarily push, shove, and bump into one another. It functions as a safe, cathartic release of energy, not a place meant for actual violence."
Yeah, demosh Eden Park. Who needs a "a safe, cathartic release of energy,"??
push, shove, and bump into one another
An interactive triad also seen in Brownian motion, thus further mass evidence of biodiversity as praxis. Ideologists could seize upon this remarkable correlation any day now, eh? As for the notion that public venues ought to be used to lower mass energy levels and provide mass exhibitions of entropy simultaneously, I'm sceptical.
Not that it ain't a good idea. More that fads aren't often trans-generational, so mass-marketing the thing will be very tricky. For those seeking a profit, I mean.
Pray tell, what do punk or metal concerts have to do with Eden Park?
Mosh pits, in my experience, are always better under a roof. Usually in a smaller venue.
Mosh pits, I'm my experience, are always better not touched with a ten-foot pole.
TBF, that sounds like a lack of experience. If it's not for you it's not for you.
The first 40 seconds of this shows the current habit in some audiences, albeit without a roof. A big hole is made then it closes. Quickly.
https://youtu.be/8A8s9gx9pGM?si=_GgXnfachlSgZszC
I’ve been in the pit for Janes Addiction, Primus, Tool, QOTSA, Viagra Boys and Nirvana. All safe, if boisterous, spaces. The degree of care for each other is genuinely high.
Again what does it have to do with Eden Park?
Edit, ahh I see, a typo in wags comment.
That's it!
Dominion Road is the arterial that runs closest to Helen Clark's part of Mt Eden, then there's Eden Park, then Sandringham Road. Walters Road connects the two roads and goes beside Eden Park.
You might want to look up the development zones that Helen Clark s concerned about.
Clowning on the global stage: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2026/7/1/the-iran-talks-expose-the-collapse-of-us-diplomacy
File this under capitalist dreams are fun. Reality, otoh, involves sovereignty and law. We ain't there yet. Still, Trump declared his intent awhile back so good to see his servants are complying. Maybe he'll force Netanyahu into submission, to grant the US part of the coastline and maybe a military base…
Further ro the discussion this week on Russian threats to Nato countries. Poland thinks there is a feint by Putin in Poland or other bordering counties coming up, to test nato's response.
"Latvian media reported in June that its intelligence services had warned Moscow was planning military provocations in the region, or in Poland.
Lithuania's ambassador to Nato said on Thursday that Russia was more likely to resort to hybrid warfare – such as missile or drone incursions – than a conventional military attack".
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj0gp88q4l4o?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss
Fucking ghouls want to kill us.
/
The Pike River disaster was meant to transform workplace safety in New Zealand.
Fifteen years on, journalist Rebecca Macfie says that consensus is unravelling – and the country is forgetting the lessons that cost 29 men their lives.
For a time after the Pike River disaster, it seemed that a new political consensus had emerged.
Parties of both left and right agreed change was needed to make sure no worker would again go to work uncertain whether they would make it home at the end of the day.
But just 15 years later, those lessons are being actively forgotten.
This week, the coalition government's Health and Safety at Work Amendment Bill passed its third reading in Parliament, removing full health and safety protections for an estimated quarter or more of New Zealand workers.
[…]
https://www.publicinterest.nz/fifteen-years-after-pike-river-new-zealand-is-dismantling-the-reforms-it-inspired/
I've just finished Macfie's excellent book and, not surprisingly, was left appalled, sad and frustrated.
Time and time again, money, forecasts and the 'market' were given a higher priority than worker safety.
It is a sorry tale of neo-liberalism:
The gutting of the state's capacity to inspect and oversee workplaces. One inspector for 1000 sites.
Global partners wanting more than their pound of flesh for their investment.
A distressing amount of those killed were sub-contracors.
DOC's corporate model leaving them blind to what was going on.
Then along comes this Joany-Come-Lately, little idea of hard day's labour, spouting rubbish about education over consequence. Every single rule that Pike River Coal (and NZ Oil and Gas) ignored or breached was written in workers blood, no need for more lessons there.
Ghoul for hire does what she's told to do.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/VoteGreens/posts/3129353963919104/
Lucy Hamilton
@lucyham.bsky.social
The propaganda is full time. That is the point of Atlas Network partners including, unofficially, the Murdoch array of platforms. This letter explained the model. The point of The Australian (and interlinked AFR) is to keep the top end focused on their same goals. Same worldview.
https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:svtoa36j2obowkx5ngo76hx2/bafkreig2rpapnbbbkohjlhyuaoypvsoxduhw6kknpefyqluo44yxpmzd7e
https://bsky.app/profile/lucyham.bsky.social/post/3mprub42vgc2a
Spc
Clark's pushing of tenure review, where lease holders got title of the high value land and paid fortunes to give up the hills so trampers could wander through wilding pine pig and deer infested park land
I’m may be able to have people run rings around in a debate, but wealthy lefties don’t mind density and mines and farming just not in the private elysium .
That tenure review process was bad (neoliberal dumbfuckery), but let's not forget that farmers got to own freehold land that had that point belonged to the crown. It was a wholesale land transfer to people who were often already wealthy, in exchange for the crown retaining some conservation land that would no longer be farmed/grazed.
I don't know how many farmers had to pay large sums in that, my understanding is there was often a straight swap.
Oh I havnt forgotten it was stupid beyond belief but you can't blame farmers for taking a windfall of epic proportion s
lol, true. I like Clark, especially in her older years 😈, but she wasn't perfect and did some damage while PM
The high-and-mighty high-country farmers creamed it big time because they hold significant influence over right-wing politicians.
EOS.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/farming/3356552/Farmers-deny-rip-off-over-tenure-review-land-deals
The big windfall came from selling the newly acquired titles at a huge markup from what the government valued it at, during the review process
Clark let cullan do his magic and kept us out of stupid wars , so not all bad
Ann Brower (academic) investigated this rip-off: https://www.stuff.co.nz/opinion/110626162/ending-the-tragedy-of-high-country-land-sales
Her book details the devious way in which public land was gifted to the rural squatocracy: see "Who Owns the High Country?" (2008).
Farmers in McKenzie country made huge profits by on-selling land they freeholded. I wonder if the IRD taxed them on the gains, or did it back off cos it was scared of controversy.
HTll …from your Link. (And yes, I followed all this from years back…a surefire rort for some)
And of course FedFarm running justification…
And again…..Its not them…its the Councils fault !
Some other Links to Prof Ann Brower's work if interested…
You can't blame people for taking an opportunity given to them buy piss poor government actions