Subscribe to RSSLen’s Christmas Wish
This is Mayor Brown’s Christmas card.
It took me a few seconds to register the words on the front.
All I want for Christmas is a city rail loop.
Don’t you love him! It’s cheeky and he consistently remains on message.
Somehow I can’t imagine either Banksy or SJ sending such a card!!
Seasons Greetings to you to Mayor and your team. And may your wish soon come true.
22 Comments
I wonder if Jon Key, Steven Joyce and Bill English got one?
It is great to have people in high places who actually think, and are not insane (insanity= doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results…Sound familiar at all, Mr Joyce?)
I hope he’s still intent on Auckland paying for it ourselves, because it looks like thats the only way we’re going to get it within 7 years… looking forward to some sort of announcement from him next year.
And all I want for Christmas is my rates bill not to go up by 4.9%
Cool
I like a mayor who remains committed to achieving what he was elected for - unlike Banks who would have quietly gone completely quiet about the tunnel by now and would be touting puford instead.
It’s a shame he has to beg.
Come November 2011 and he mightn’t have to.
@Matt The polls give no evidence of anything other than Labour being completely demolished
AKT, a week is a long time in politics. And if Goff gets rolled during the holidays we might see a very different Labour contesting the election.
I wouldn’t call National invincible. They’re vulnerable on several points, if Labour can actually muster a real opposition. What would be terrifying would be National getting an outright majority and being able to do everything they want without having to consult other parties. Then we’d really be in strife.
National do not need to drop horribly to lose the next election - all they need is for any or some of the following things to happen:
- Lose some seats (not a landslide loss, just enough to be crucial - ome Aucklanders pissed off about their attitude, anyone?)
- ACT not getting back in (some Aucklanders pissed off about their attitude, anyone?)
- the Greens getting a good showing (Kiwis happy with their performance and pissed off about National’s attitude, anyone?)
- Maori Party falling out with National (pissed off about National’s attitude)
A lot of “if”s, but National is not invulnerable next year, even if their ratings remain reasonable, and Labour remains a bit anemic.
Love the Christmas card - wonder what Steven Joyce’s would look like? “All I want for Christmas is a positive BCR” maybe?
Karl, given that three of the four Auckland seats that swung to National at the last election (Central, Waitakere, Maungakiekie) are served by rail, and rail’s getting a shafting from National, it wouldn’t take much for them to revert. Waitakere and Maungakiekie are areas that’re traditionally working class, with people who’ve been hit hard by the economic situation. In neither case was the swing convincing, nor in Waitakere, in all cases National’s margin being 2% or thereabouts.
like the picture of rail-track looping the CBD!
This guy really has no idea how he is going to fund this project does he, he has resorted to begging in a christmas card which really shows me how desperate he is.
Eric, you’d be begging too if the primary recipients of the monetary benefits of a project you initiated suddenly said they weren’t going to stump up a penny.
But he knew from before he even got elected that the government were reluctant to stump up the money. If I were him I would have at least sorted out someway of funding it(such as proposing that the puhoi wellestord is fully tolled and the money from that is put into the loop).
God bless Len Brown.
I am now convinced that the polls are in some weird reversed phase at the moment.
No matter how dire this government runs things, no matter how poorly the economy does, or how out of date their policies are or in fact how few cogent policies they do have the more popular they get.
Eric, he can’t toll a road that’s run by Transit. It doesn’t work like that.
Also, I’d like to see you whip up an unknown number of billions of dollars in the space of a few months while also running a major city and campaigning for a new job.
Why the hell does funding have to be finalised now, anyway? It’s going to take years to build the tunnel, so funding can take years to materialise.
But Matt he said he could do that in fact he said that he wanted the tunnel under construction by the time his first term is over. I didn’t say that he could force the road to be tolled I just said he should propose and try to push it forward (it would also speed up the puhoi wellsford as well). He’s the one who is expected to perform on this since this is what he was campaigning, he has put all this on himself even though he knew that the government was reluctant to fund it but didn’t have a plan to provide funding also we knew that he was running for mayor for well over a year so he had all that time to work out a plan and pushing for major motorways to be funded through self-funding bonds so that the money is put towards public transport isn’t a bad idea ( that was Colin Craig’s idea)
@AKT, are they the same polls which were predicting a tight race between Banks and Brown?
@come get some No. TV3′s final political poll of the year. The TV3 poll is the one that was the most accurate in the 2008 election.
The % vote and seats are:
National 55.5%, 68 (+10)
Labour 31.2%, 39 (-4)
Greens 7.3%, 9 (nc)
Maori 1.7%, 5 (nc)
ACT 1.3%, 2 (-3)
United 0.1%, 1 (nc)
The thought of National getting an outright majority is too scary for words.
Well for the majority of the country it obviously isn’t too scary for words.
Eric, cause-and-effect aren’t concepts familiar to much of the electorate. They’ll vote for National, and then complain when their cost-of-living increase, public services get cut, and more of our assets are flogged for a song.
That an outright majority would leave National free to pursue any policy it desires without any moderation doesn’t quite register with most voters.
Well if they don’t like what national does then they will vote them out, simple as that (don’t you just love democracy). Frankly I wouldn’t mind a National majority because it means that they are not brought to their knees by parties that only have three percent of the vote and can get through their own policies. Also since when was cutting public services and selling assets a bad thing? I can think of a few services that could be cut (Working for families being one). Also privatisation of assets can cause them to be more efficient (except of course the railways!) through competition, this then frees up money that could be spent on other things (CBD Loop anyone?)