Spin cycle finally into 1st gear

Written By: - Date published: 11:30 am, November 11th, 2009 - 7 comments
Categories: brand key, cycleway, employment - Tags:

homer-cycleI’m all for cycle-ways but excuse me if I don’t get all silly over John Key knocking a post in the ground in Waikato and declaring his first cycle-way under way.

The reality is the Waikato River Trail was being built anyway. In fact, it is already over half built. So this $3 million isn’t actually creating anything that wouldn’t otherwise exist.

$3 million for 41km. Works out at basically $75,000 per km -$75 a metre. And this is on publicly-owned land, so there’s no cost of land purchase. I don’t see how Key’s going to make the other 2500 or so km of his national cycle way for $47 million. Like we said right at the start while the media were still swooning, Key’s claim was always a con, another PR stunt.

Speaking of cons, where are the jobs? Key promised the national cycle way would create 3,700 jobs to keep people working through the recession. Of course, the recession’s over and the cycle way money is still mostly in the bank rather than employing people.

If the Waikato River Trail is employing 3,700 people they sure stayed well hidden when the camera crews were there. All I saw were half a dozen council employees who were working on the trail before Key came along for his photo op and would have continued working there regardless.

Meanwhile, there are now quarter of a million jobless people in New Zealand*. That number has increased by 200 every day John Key has been Prime Minister.

In many ways, the national cycle way has become the archetypal policy of this government – over-promised, under-planned, PR first – reality second, and, finally, under-deliver. Still, the Clown-in-chief got his photo op. Mission accomplished.

*(‘jobless’ is a wider measure that includes both the ‘unemployed’ who are actively looking for work but haven’t found it and those who would take a job if there were any going but have largely given up looking so don’t count as ‘unemployed’).

7 comments on “Spin cycle finally into 1st gear ”

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  1. gobsmacked 1
    11 November 2009 at 11:52 am

    This was Hone’s real crime. He created an unofficial sideshow to distract from the official sideshow.

    He’d better not be hogging the headlines when Key goes to APEC tomorrow.

  2. So Bored 2
    11 November 2009 at 11:59 am

    Hail mighty St John, the man who is serendipitously saving us from the end of the oil age. Mmmmmm the autobahn, the interstate, spagetti junctions and now, wait for it….the cycleway. Hoooray!!!!!

  3. Daveski 3
    11 November 2009 at 12:48 pm

    Happily agree that the cycle way is a spin class of the top order.

    However, your comment about the number of people unemployed – while accurate – is likewise high class spin of its own. People are unemployed but the current % is not and is unlikely to reach the levels predicted here.

    Mind you, the continual attacks on Key from the Left are working well … for Key.

    • Bright Red 3.1
      11 November 2009 at 1:05 pm

      “Mind you, the continual attacks on Key from the Left are working well for Key”

      maybe we should abandon our principles and join the msm love-in instead?

  4. Tony Everitt 4
    12 November 2009 at 5:13 pm

    Get A Life Standard. John Key is doing a good job developing cycleways. Just in case you haven’t heard Tourism is New Zealand’s fastest growing industry of the last 3 decades creating tens of thousands of new jobs. See my blog http://www.greenbranz.org/?cat=20

    • snoozer 4.1
      12 November 2009 at 5:34 pm

      huh, I just checked out this guys’ blog, what a piece of crap.

      There’s no actual argument or even an opinion there, it’s just ‘my hero John says it’s cool so it must be cool, I love John Key, you should love John Key too, let’s all love John Key’

      probably a regular reader of the Trans-Tasman,

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