Statement from Wellington Mayor Tory WhanauToday I met with Councillors to further discuss our Long-Term Plan amendment in the lead up to official deliberations on 21 November. I remain committed to working effectively and constructively with Councillors to find a solution to our insurance risk following the decision to not sell our airport shares. That includes looking at increasing our debt headroom, so we are better placed…
wellington
Say what you like about Bishop (and I do), but he is fast. Very fast in fact, and not really caring about the ethics or the details, he has announced a massive Fast Track List of proposed projects from around the country, but especially aimed at around Auckland of course. Masses and masses of housing projects, and roads, up there, but of course we are interested…
There’s been a lot of talk about the death of Wellington ever since John Key opened his cat-flap back in 2013. “Wellington is dying” he said, but facing a media backlash, he promptly back-tracked and did an about-face, instead claiming that central Gov did not know how to help make it better. Since then we have had the conundrum of multiple left-leaning Mayors leading an ostensibly…
The time is ripe – the end is near. Gradually, slowly, the Independent Commissioners are releasing their Reports onto the interwebbies, and very slowly, a sleepy group of Wellingtonians are reading them. So many words, expensive words, produced at a rate of thousands of dollars per hour. It is a select group, as in reality so few people really give a toss, and yet in time,…
A quick link in here for anyone that is interested but as yet have not seen: The SpinOff has announced a War for Wellington, which is doing everything that we here at the Eye of the Fish should have been doing (but of course, he gets paid for his work, but I don’t). It is brilliant, and you should go have a look at it now….
I was really puzzled by the article in the Dom Post in the weekend featuring local architect Angela Foster claiming that Wellington was an “expensive and constipated drain hole that can’t get moving” – and saying, like John Key did a decade ago, that “Wellington was dying”. It appears that she is comparing Wellington to Melbourne – and that we come off very much second best….
While it is sad to see the mighty Queen City of Auckland brought to its knees over some rain, it is nice not to have Aucklanders constantly be rude about Wellington weather. And also: note that none of us down here are making fun of them up there, knowing full well that, there but for the grace of God, go us. But first up, something to…
Transport Minister Michael Wood blindsided Wellington this morning, with an announcement – and a definite decision – that Wellington is going to get Light Rail to Island Bay, a resolution to the Basin Reserve, and a new tunnel in a big diagonal from the Basin to the far end of Haitaitai, right under Mt Victoria. I’m overjoyed and excited, not just for the solution but also…
I really could not care less about the name change proposal from Victoria University, Wellington. Corporate rebranding are foolish things, undertaken by PR firms who may not really have a full understanding of the issues. Telecom changing it’s name to Spark seemed puerile and pathetic at the time, with it only just starting to be accepted several years later. But the proposal from Vic seems odd…
Front page article on the Dominion Post today, faithfully reporting that there is a good chance that Wellington may indeed have a chance at getting a light rail system. That’s quite amazing – not that we have a chance, but that the DomPost hasn’t immediately been sneering about it. Maybe they have a different attitude to it now that Celia has gone. But what is even…