The blue-green millennial sister blog to The Spinoff – Transport Blog – has reared up and attacked dear old Mike Lee again.
In the blue green year zero mentality, all lefties who did some good in the past must be wiped aside as the first user pays generation changes the mantra from ‘we, we, we’ to ‘me, me, me’.
Blue Green millennials don’t want a distribution of wealth for everybody to succeed, they want a distribution of wealth for them to succeed.
For example, the Unitary Plan campaign on The Spinoff won’t help one poor person locked in poverty to get a house, but it will help young trendy blue greeners to buy into the property market.
Charming.
Likewise on Transport Blog, their push is for the gentrification of public transport so those in the wealthier suburbs can park their Prius and take public transport for the aesthetics of environmentalism.They have zero interest in free public transport so the poor and students can catch public transport because then they would have to sit next to smelly poor people.
You can’t get Blue Greeners out of their Prius if they have to sit next to smelly workers.
Like The Spinoff, it always helps to know who is actually paying the bills here, and Transport Blog seems very much in the thrall of Auckland Transport – they whose corruption knows no bounds – so there was an official information act request a couple of months ago to actually check if Auckland Transport have paid any of the lead bloggers on Transport Blog any money.
Turns out yes…
…so let’s take what Transport Blog have to say with a huge grain of Auckland Transport salt shall we?
When a dedicated and passionate lefty like Mike Lee who has fought for public transport longer than Transport Blog has been alive can be denigrated by Hipster arseholes like The Spinoff who back an ultra right neoliberal hawk like Bill fucking Ralston, you can see the full force of neoliberalisms 30 year hold on our country.
There has always been this quiet hope with Gen Xers (my generation who are cynical towards all authority) that Millennials would spark a revolution and join us on the front line towards a better society. The Spinoff and Transport Blog lay bare that hope. The first user pays generation wants change, not for the benefit of all, but for themselves.
Gen Xers will have to continue pushing against Boomer privilege AND Millennial FOMO if we want this City to be liveable for all Aucklanders, not just the hip and swanky.
So I was right? The unitary plan is a racist decision and not a forward thinking/future proofing plan.
Nothing makes since especially this democratic capitalism style planing. Are we that shit scared of communism that we refuse to design plans and implement them on a 3/5/10 year cycle like China or Russia does.
Are we so committed to incrementalism as a consequence.
The government is going to spend 76 billion and this is the best we can come up with. This isn’t a report card it is an epitaph
Smug bastards aren’t they Martyn.
Rich pricks reek slime as these do so we just need to follow the money trail back to ——– those in Government using taxpayers funds to dangle carrots in front of these creeps.
One thing’s for sure, these blue-greeners are not Green party people. There is a strong progressive sentiment in the Green membership and people like The Spin Off, Generation Zero and now the Transport Blog are letting the side down in the green movement. These publications are undermining it for instance by completely ignoring and undervaluing the importance of dealing with inequality, otherwise we can’t even begin to genuinely deal with climate change (just as Naomi Klein argues).
Thanks for this, I have always noted the clear bias and pro Auckland Council post writing on transportblog. I have noted some planners working for Council, and others working for Council, do often enough comment there.
Also has there been a lot of apparent collaboration with Auckland Transport, at least in promoting public transport, which in itself does not need to be a bad thing, but when there are such payments for such services or whatever you may call it, then it becomes a bit worrying.
Transportblog joined the pro Unitary Plan fan brigade, welcoming the recommendations by the “independent” hearing panel the government had appointed. It was stuff in there that would make an ACT Party member get a sweet climax, and it worried me how Council then voted for most without actually scrutinising the details in the Plan.
We here we are, this shows us how things are working, and how some act almost like sock puppets for vested interest holding organisations, it seems.
Generation Zero, the up and coming future professionals, who love the flair of living in middle to up-market, stylish apartments, which some of them may have seen in the more flash parts of global cities during their OE, they have also fallen for the same Plan.
Let us not forget how they work, and that Committee for Auckland, that is behind much of what comes to fruition in Auckland, they make proposals, they lobby, they massage and pay too, I bet, for whatever bit of a perk here or there.
Business dictates where the journey goes, mostly big business, and they have the cash and power and connections to the establishment in the local body administration.
It was all thought out to be that way, and we dumb citizens get every three year post in the box, to fill out and return, to vote for some candidates, most of whom are also tied in well in that whole web of interests.
http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership
http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/members
http://www.committeeforauckland.co.nz/membership/membership-categories-benefits
Many of these were also major submitters, and some also sent their “expert advisors” to present submissions and advice and evidence on the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan. They in the end dominated the whole “hearing” process.
NO wonder participation in local body elections stays so low, most have given up on this kind of fake democracy.
$41k is probably about 7 days work on Reynolds’ rates.
Who knows how much undeclared work AT has paid as well. According to the court case, corruption is rampant at AT and a part of their company culture.
I thought transportblog guys were independent from auckland transport. If you were paid by auckland transport to undertake work, naturally one could become biased. Protect the hand that feeds you?
Are the bloggers at transportblog also connected or write for the spin off or work with the youff at generation 0?
I’ve never seen Auckland Transport Blog support the “gentrification of public transport”. There are not many gentry on the buses I catch. In general, the Transport Blog provides valuable information on public transport systems and potentials for Auckland, which is why it has a big readership. It is perfectly ok to criticise a Spinoff writer for preferring Bill Ralston over Mike Lee in the Auckland local body elections, but I would advise against using terms like “arseholes”. Spinoff is doing some useful things, like the Table Talk political discussions it is organising jointly with Laila Harre’s Ika restaurant.
I agree that terms like “arseholes” and so will not help, I am concerned though how certain online forums take such an uncritical view on the Unitary Plan and what is in it, and blindly support it, eventhough the “independent”, government appointed panel, threw out affordability provisions, leaving it all to the market.
How damned “progressive” is that, we may as well hand it over the the ACT Party to run then.
This ignorance of so many on “the left” I find highly disturbing, also dismissing concerns of long time activists like the ones from the Tamaki Housing and Glen Innes groups, who have stiffly opposed the developer and business friendly Auckland Unitary Plan.
We have NO united front here, that is on the left of centre, it appears urban liberals (mostly to do well professionals and also “aged” ones) have joined the neoliberals on their agenda, to promote growth for growth’s sake and intensification and development, no matter what character of neighbourhoods may be destroyed. I am seriously concerned about what is going on.
I agree with you 100% Mike of Auckland.
The left need to try to unite and I too was shocked at how uncritical may leftie blogs were about the unitary plan. It’s a Fucking ACT manifesto for Fucks sake. If you put the Property council with the Fucked up TPPA lawyer up provisions, cancel democracy, you probably get 6000 pages of unitary plan.
Does not surprise me that corrupt Auckland Transport has been paying Patrick Reynolds and Matt Lawie for work.
But Martyn is off base on attacking people who use hybrid cars. Do you want to save the environment or not? Attacking hybrid cars is the sort of thing Spinoff would do as a sort of sneering hipster sarcasm.
Should we all drive aging Holdens for the petrol miles instead?
Lets face it, unless AT is reformed from the top down, we are never getting 1st world public rail transport in this country. And transport blog has done itself a disservice (or shown it’s true colours) by giving the council a free ride on unitary plan and AT on their appalling transport and corruption.
Did anyone notice Matt L and Patrick Reynolds have been absolutely silient over the corruption case in the courts? I understand one of the team on the transportblog website even attended the “long lunches” with the accused. Perhaps that is why they are playing silient, or Auckland Transport have told them not to mention it?
At least the Stuff and the Herald have made mention of the case.
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