MANNERS MALL OPTIONS Revoke the pedestrian-only status to allow for a two-way bus route. (pictured) Keep the mall but ban vehicles turning right from Victoria St into Manners St. Make a two-way bus route via Mercer St, Wakefield St, lower Cuba St and Manners St east. Make a two-way bus route via Dixon St and upper Willis St. The proposed Manners Mall makeover is relatively uninteresting,…
Maximus
3 Min Read
The words on everyone’s lips seem to be “Is the recession over yet?” and yet no common answer seems to be forth-coming. Is it still going and are we still in it? Was it short lived and relatively benign, or is it more of an indication of fundamental structural failures within our modern banking model? Who knows? Who do we trust to know? If people couldn’t…
Maximus
3 Min Read
It’s interesting how conversations about value for money can get carried away, and once away, may never come back. As you may have noted, at Eye of the Fish we’ve got more worked up over the outrageous waste of tax-payers money that is the edifice called the Supreme Court (approx $50 million down the drain really) or the proposal for the National Library (which has made…
Maximus
2 Min Read
The joy and sense of fun that is the Wellington Waterfront never ceases to amaze me. Today in the local paper, an expose is made on a number of new / newly released projects for the waterfront, of which I just can’t ignore. Entitled, perhaps a little too zoomorphicaly, “Is that toilet a crayfish or an aardvark?“, the Dom Post unveils attention on a number of…
Maximus
1 Min Read
There’s a fair amount of non-stop hoo-hah going on about Auckland’s proposed “Super City” status, and it’s time we Wellingtonians started to fight back. Nonewithstanding the fact that Auckland is really barely a city at all, and more just a collection of shopping centres and some nice swimming beaches connected by motorways, Auckland is somehow perceived of by some misguided few as being a proper place…
Maximus
3 Min Read
For reasons that are unknown to me, the National-led government hates trees. As part of their “Stream-lining and Wholesale Destruction of the Urban Canopy Amendment Bill”, National are pushing through a somewhat ridiculous amendment to the RMA Bill. Basically, this week, the Nats will ram-rod through a number of amendments, including Clause 52 where it will allow people to cut down any trees they like, without…
Maximus
1 Min Read
There’s a certain charm about Trams that big brother Train just doesn’t have, even though they’re all related really. A couple of pictures, courtesy of one of our regular readers (and occasional commenters), shows us something that we’re missing: not only do Trams run happily in Barcelona, but they also run on a tufty green grass verge, and what’s more – they even have a station…
Maximus
2 Min Read
The subject of Manners Mall has not yet, it seems, gone away. The Council is still to hear oral submissions on Manners Mall, and one strong anti-abolition-of-Mall campaigner, Maria van der Meel, feels so strongly about it that she has set up a competition for Wellingtonians on that universal medium: Facebook. Sign the WCC petition Join the Facebook group “Save Manners Mall” The City is Ours…
Maximus
4 Min Read
We’re not huge fans of suburban living here at the Fish: something to do with the endless parades of naff housing, behoodied lowlife at the suburban shops, sullen teenage mothers pushing prams full of squealing brats, the sound of Masports mowing like a thousand angry crickets, and lastly but not least the lack of decent suburban facilities. If you want something more elaborate than an out…
Maximus
1 Min Read
Prodded into action by one of our many readers, who helpfully slipped us a set of the Resource Consent drawings, we’ve had a chance to look at the New World (“Project Rugby”) scheme that is due to clog up the Basin Reserve even more. Far be it for me to question anyone’s sanity, but why would anyone want to build a Supermarket right on the busiest…