Both long pass their used by dates. In Luigis case his voters are dying off the old the grumpy the losers.

But alas as ipredict has it he may be the king maker come 2014. At 69yrs he could hold the balance of power. God defend NZ

I am in a minority here but the issue is not drinking beer. It is doing it through a bong. You do it through a bong for one reason – to drink it so quickly you get drunk. When you chair a large public health entity that has to deal with the impact of binge drinking, then it is a bad look.

Again, drinking beer is not the issue. It is the use of a bong.

In New Zealand, it is vital to get back from deficit into surplus – and not by just raising taxes to fund the unsustainable spending.

More wishful thinking from DPF.

What have English and Key done about it? The dreadful pair haven’t reformed the economy or the public service, are spending like drunken sailors and borrowing to cover.

National, the party of fiscal responsibilty and prudence….yeah right.

Because the Greens and others steadfastly campaign against the one thing which could massively lower the cost of land, and hence housing.

I must have been asleep when the “Greens and others” were in charge of urban planning. Who is calling the shots now? Have the Greens joined the Nats in coalition and I haven’t noticed?

I would also comment that the “Greens and others” (I love the open-ended deflection approach to the blame game) campaign against a wide selection of policies of many organisations and just get run over, so I’m curious as to why DPF sees fit to lay blame for the housing debacle at the door of the aforementioned “Greens and others”.

Personally I regard making housing in Auckland more affordable as far more important than trying to force people out of their cars.

Any evidentiary basis for this, DPF?. On the other hand, there is lots of evidence that people will willingly desert their cars with smart urban planning and efficient, affordable public transport.

So, would you ever consider the possibility that you may be just plain wrong? As you often are.

It has nothing to do with his ability to do his job. Complete crap.

The problem with Auckland is that it spread beyond the infrastructure’s capability to support the increased traffic. Decades of under investment has meant an inefficient network. All the arguments over roads vs. rail are not addressing this main problem, because it is very difficult to play ‘catch up’. The road network was never envisioned to take the volumes of cars it now takes, and public transport via a rail network was never envisioned as necessary as cars once upon a time were not as cheap and prevalent as they are now.

The whole network needs masses of investment, which is happening, but the rate of development is limited to the ability of city’s contractors to build (without inflating prices too much), and the ability of ratepayers to pay. The other aspect not looked into is how much is spent building and maintaining roads, and yet very very little is invested on R&D to design and use materials better for making roads cheaper over the long term. NZ road engineers use positively primitive empirical methods to design roads based on foreign data from the 1970′s, and there is no incentive for private companies to undertake R&D to develop better techniques and get better value for money for the taxpayer/ ratepayer.

Increasing the sprawl will not solve the problem of where another million people will live over the next 50 years. There must *also* be intensification of housing near transport hubs. This needs the public transport network to be a viable and indeed preferable means of daily transport for the average Aucklander. Housing and transport (+ other infrastructure such as sewerage and water supply) are part of the same issue.

Fringe housing also costs the taxpayer huge amounts in indirect subsidies for private land developers. Why should the taxpayer have to pick up the cost of new schools, roads, public transport (if any) and other infrastructure when developers will pocket the profits? And what happens when petrol hits $2.50, $3.00, $3.50 a litre and up and it becomes economically unviable slums for low paid workers to try and commute from from these distant suburbs?

[DPF: We actually have the lowest interest rates in 40 years at the moment. That is not the issue. Also I'd point out that artifically low credit is what helped lead to the global financial crisis, so I'm not so sure repeating that again is a great idea]

“It’s a real moral jihad;

it would be smacking, not just resisting any change to the abortion laws, it’s tightening the abortion law, it’s anti-prostitution, you name it, the whole suite of agenda items.”

These health boards are out of control with PC nonsense.

But we have allowed our society to be subordinated to this shite.

Media ,a bunch of hypocrites. Every one is entitled to have a private life though……….even carpet cleaners…hahahahaha

Is it really their fault – or does the fault lie with people who either put that legislation in place or who refuse to do anything practicable to change it?

Still, I can see why that might present a terrible political problem. If one frets about the photo of a beer-bong imbibing health official then it must be truly horrifying to contemplate a picture of JK adding one more shovelful of aggregate on top of a concrete and asphalt Gaia coffin stretching from Albany to the Bombay Hills.

…”the solution is for the government to build high quality, low cost housing near public transport hubs”….

Seems to me that something like this was tried in the 50′s & 60′s. From memory it was called state housing & has resulted in graffiti covered slums such as seen in South Auckland, Porirua & the Hutt Valley.

Any other suggestions?

Unfortunately the planning rules prevent high-density building in built-up areas too. Not to mention the portion of the population who has an instinctive hatred of anything that is not a “house” on a 1/4 acre section (even if somebody else is living in it).

I think that the author, despite moving to NY and following the Yankees, must still be a Cubs fan in the deepest recesses of his heart – his very, very hurt and angry heart:

I’m a Roman, and to me, the expanse between Waveland and Addison on Chicago’s North Side is Carthage. The struts and concessions, the catwalk where the late broadcaster Harry Caray once greeted me with all the fluid liquidity of an animatronic Disneyland pirate – Hello, Cubs fan! – the ramps that ascend like a ziggurat to heaven – it’s a false heaven – the bases, trestles, ivy, wooden seats and bleachers, the towering center-field scoreboard – all of it must be ripped out and carried away like the holy artifacts were carried out of the temple in Jerusalem, heaped in a pile and burned.

Then the ground itself must be salted, made barren, covered with a housing project, say, a Stalinist monolith, so never again will a shrine arise on that haunted block. As it was with Moses, the followers and fans, though they search, shall never find its bones.

I feel his pain!