Written By: - Date published: 12:03 pm, March 16th, 2011 - 16 comments
This week’s Sunday Star-Times was full of stories about unaffordable food, housing and fuel affecting the country’s urban dwellers, nowhere more so than in Auckland. Meanwhile the shortage of housing after the earthquake promises huge rent and house price hikes for Christchurch, assuming the locals don’t flee and push up house prices elsewhere.
Written By: - Date published: 7:03 am, March 16th, 2011 - 65 comments
I don’t think that anyone who has been paying attention to events in Christchurch could seriously have expected the city to host a major sporting event like the RWC within a few short months. So why is John Key the last person left in the country who is denying the obvious?
Written By: - Date published: 12:04 am, March 16th, 2011 - 123 comments
There’s been increasing concern over the past week or two that not only has the government failed to communicate its plan for the Christchurch recovery, it doesn’t actually have one, and isn’t particularly worried about getting one. Yesterday in the House, Labour took Key to task on this important issue. And he was found terribly wanting.
Written By: - Date published: 4:27 pm, March 15th, 2011 - 12 comments
Sometimes we take comments here and put them up as posts. Here’s one from long time contributor vto.
Written By: - Date published: 5:33 pm, March 14th, 2011 - 18 comments
Forty two Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) workers left New Zealand this morning for Japan. Straight off the back of three hard weeks in the rubble of Christchurch, they are flying in to help out with an even bigger disaster.
Written By: - Date published: 12:05 am, March 14th, 2011 - 81 comments
Stung by Earthquake Recovery Minister Gerry Brownlee’s admission that the eastern suburbs were neglected after the Christchurch Earthquake, John Key is redoubling his efforts: “For the first few days, I stuck my head down and got on with designing the emergency benefit policy but, winter’s approaching, so the people need me to return to my strengths.”
Written By: - Date published: 12:10 pm, March 11th, 2011 - 13 comments
Apparently Christchurch Labour MPs will be putting out their bulletin daily. Here’s the second update from Clayton Cosgrove (Waimakariri), Ruth Dyson (Port Hills), Lianne Dalziel (Christchurch East) and Brendon Burns (Christchurch Central). In future you can get to them here.
Written By: - Date published: 7:22 am, March 11th, 2011 - 125 comments
Mayor Bob Parker has described landlords hiking rents in Christchurch as “looting by another name”. I think the majority of us would feel as Parker does — it seems simply wrong to exploit people for profit in a time of tragedy. But look around. It’s just unregulated capitalism in action. There’s an awful lot of it about.
Written By: - Date published: 12:31 pm, March 10th, 2011 - 22 comments
The Labour Party’s Christchurch electorate MPs are today starting a regular bulletin designed to keep people in their electorates and media informed about what is happening at grass roots level in their electorates.
Written By: - Date published: 12:00 pm, March 10th, 2011 - 66 comments
Facing a housing shortage in Auckland now and a massive rebuilding programme in Christchurch to come, the Government has announced the biggest public building initiative since World War 2. Thousands of unemployed young people will be paid to train as apprentices in building trades and contribute to their country’s future.
Written By: - Date published: 12:50 pm, March 9th, 2011 - 59 comments
John Key and Gerry Brownlee are the two most powerful men in the country right now. In their actions and in their words they hold the hopes of tens of thousands of people whose lives have been turned upside down and the future of a major city. We really need these men to do a good job. So, this Laurel and Hardy impersonation has to stop.
Written By: - Date published: 6:12 pm, March 8th, 2011 - 136 comments
Key has been caught out bullshitting about the earthquake again.
This time about how many houses will have to be destroyed.
With so much uncertainty surrounding the quake and its aftermath already that’s not good enough.
Key needs to show some leadership.
Written By: - Date published: 9:19 pm, March 7th, 2011 - 52 comments
ChrisH submitted this incredibly knowledgeable and well-researched post on the rebuilding of Christchurch a few days ago. The announcement that large parts now lower-lying eastern suburbs will be abandoned lends more strength to his call for a visionary urban plan for the new, more resilient Christchurch. And Phil Goff has the history to present it.
Written By: - Date published: 3:43 pm, March 7th, 2011 - 18 comments
More bad news for Gerry Brownlee today. No Right Turn has had confirmation that Gerry Brownlee makes his ‘policy’ up as he goes without seeking competent advice. This must be more than slightly terrifying to the people of Christchurch because Brownlee is currently their dictator by legislation in the rebuilding effort. His bulldozing ineptness is not just confined to buildings but is endemic to everything he does.
Written By: - Date published: 1:50 pm, March 7th, 2011 - 115 comments
John Key and Gerry Brownlee made extremely foolish comments attacking the coronal staff trying to identify the dead and about knocking down all the historic buildings. Now, they’re lying about those statements. This crisis is too big for this childish bullshit. John, you need to be a real leader, not a naughty schoolboy lying to cover your mistakes.
Written By: - Date published: 7:40 am, March 7th, 2011 - 61 comments
The government has a fair bit on its plate right now, like the Christchurch quake, and the hammering that ordinary folk are getting from the cost of living. So its reassuring to know that the PM’s office has its eye on the ball. It’s all over the “important issues”…
Written By: - Date published: 8:08 am, March 6th, 2011 - 108 comments
Gerry Brownlee thinks that most of Christchurch’s heritage buildings should be bowled tomorrow. I wonder what Christchurch thinks of Gerry Brownlee.
Written By: - Date published: 1:44 pm, March 5th, 2011 - 74 comments
Resources for the poor, eastern Christchurch suburbs have been lacking but everyone accepts things are stretched. Key did himself no favours trying to PR paper over real cracks. Helicoptering in to Bexley, talking to some hand-picked locals, and making excuses the whole time didn’t look good. For instance, portaloos have only recently arrived in suburbs …
Written By: - Date published: 12:12 pm, March 5th, 2011 - 24 comments
3065 people have already claimed the special benefit for people left unemployed due to the Christchurch earthquake. Once that payment expires in a few weeks they’ll be on the dole, if they’re eligible. The quake killed and did physical damage in seconds but, without action, it will keep strangling the economy and taking jobs for …
Written By: - Date published: 1:36 pm, March 4th, 2011 - 53 comments
Sometimes black humour is the only way to cope. These are doing the rounds…
Written By: - Date published: 10:30 am, March 4th, 2011 - 4 comments
I know that the thoughts of the whole country are with those in Christchurch, especially the family and friends of the dead and missing. And the thanks of the whole country are with the rescue teams and other workers, who have done everything humanly possible in very dangerous circumstances. Thank you all.
Written By: - Date published: 12:45 pm, March 3rd, 2011 - 68 comments
We’ve heard figures of $20 billion damage from the Christchurch quakes, $5 billion uninsured for the government to cover. Now, Key has given an estimate of the lost economic output this year – $12 billion, 6% of GDP. He says that will mean $5 billion less government revenue – a hole the size of the defence and law and order budgets combined. updated
Written By: - Date published: 10:45 am, March 3rd, 2011 - 57 comments
Farrar says it’s ‘ghastly’ to discuss how to pay for rebuilding Christchurch, since the obvious answer is by reversing the tax cuts rich people like him have pocketed. Well, I think how the poor eastern suburbs of Christchurch have been ignored is ghastly. Fortunately, resilient communities are organising themselves, without government.
Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, March 3rd, 2011 - 46 comments
As the long haul gets under way in Christchurch there are going to be many flash points for conflict. One of the first to emerge is the tension between landlords and tenants, as the following selection of articles makes clear.
Written By: - Date published: 9:34 pm, March 2nd, 2011 - 76 comments
English on Working for Families cuts: “around 1,000 families earning over $100,000 receive WFF, and payments to those families total only $1.1 million … Taking higher-income families out of WFF saves very little money …
In this uncertain economic climate, we want to give all families certainty about their incomes”
Written By: - Date published: 4:21 pm, March 2nd, 2011 - 43 comments
It’s 2am and, like many people in Christchurch, I am not sleeping too well just now. But at least we now have power, so I can use the time productively. My personal history of the past week will have to wait. It may be interesting to some, but it’s not important right now. What’s important is what is is NOT happening adequately in the acute post-quake period, because the official response is dwarfed by the size of the problem.
Written By: - Date published: 12:20 pm, March 1st, 2011 - 42 comments
The government’s wage subsidy and universal redundancy for quake-affected workers is a start. But with 750 red-stickered buildings in the CBD alone and 200+ jobs already lost, it is just a start. The private sector won’t rebuild without demand, that will have to be supplied by the government upping its spending, and that needs to be paid for.
Written By: - Date published: 11:00 am, March 1st, 2011 - 26 comments
Christchurch has been called “Victorian planning at its most remarkable”. It needs to be rebuilt in a style that retains or even amplifies as much of its formerly cosy, reassuring character as possible, for the sake of the tourism industry, the locals, and its cultural legacy. Germany’s Freiburg is a useful example of restoring a city to former glory.
Written By: - Date published: 6:53 am, March 1st, 2011 - 24 comments
Today at 12:51 pm marks exactly one week since the earthquake struck, and probably around 300 people lost their lives. PM John Key has called on the country to observe 2 minutes silence, starting at that time, to honour the victims of the quake.
Written By: - Date published: 12:32 pm, February 28th, 2011 - 92 comments
Unless a leader is horribly neglectful in the wake of a disaster, like Bush after Katrina, I don’t think there is any grounds to criticise them for the immediate disaster response, which is largely out of their hands anyway. But the policy response that follows is a legitimate topic for political debate. And I’m worried about Key’s.
Written By: - Date published: 11:33 am, February 28th, 2011 - 3 comments
They are doing pretty well on restoring the power. With the exception of some small outlying areas, along the strike line and the CBD most of the city has power again as you can see from this chart. At a guess it will probably take some time on the major remaining areas simply because these are the areas that had the most vertical acceleration during the quake.
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