Skip to main content
Tag

John Key

More roads? Less pollution – I don’t think so.

By urban design

It’s no irony that at the moment when John Key is supposedly at a Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen: City of Cyclists, that the government is poised to increase road building – a 4-lane road from Levin to Wellington – via Transmission Gully or otherwise.  While Key is fluffing around on the other side of the planet (moving from supporting specified targets for reduction to a more general “political” statement), back home the government is trying hard to waste the planet we’ve got.  Aren’t we meant to be trying to reduce our impact on the environment? Read More

Pared to the core – Local Body Councils on a Hiding to nothing

By News, RANTING

First they let him loose on the dance floor, then Super-Auckland, and now the rest of us – does this man know no humility…?

Rodney Hide is set to Tango all over Local Body law in order to reduce them to core services – such as public health and safety, and rubbish collection. Here is the official report from this morning’s Herald.co.nz article (although a fuller media account of the proposals can be found here):

The Cabinet has signed off on Mr Hide’s request for the Department of Internal Affairs to review local government law, including the removal of the requirement for councils to deliver on “community outcomes” such as social, environmental and cultural “wellbeing” which Mr Hide said pushed councils into providing services well beyond their core roles.

Read More