News that the bloated wing of Auckland Council’s Events Clique have blown half a million on a nonsense rebranding exercise to bring even more bloody tourists to our already over stretched and broken infrastructure while Kiwi’s live in cars is just fucking breathtaking.
How about we rebrand ourselves – ‘Auckland – Unfunded Growth Uber Alles’
Ateed does a good job of funding free events in our Parks, an ok job of growing Auckland’s cultural scene and a poor job of supporting anything East, South or West but if they want to be able to keep their Culture Crown and the obscene amount of budget to be able to piss away $500 000 on wankathons, they need to start becoming as corrupt as Auckland Transport.
Auckland Transport, the barely accountable Council Controlled Organisation that isn’t actually under any control, is the master of providing poor public transport services while keeping the Hipsters happy enough to ensure social media is Auckland Transport abuse free.
181 staff at Auckland Transport are paid OVER $100 000, with around 1000 staff , they almost have 20% paid over $100 000. It ain’t the long suffering bus drivers getting that kind of money, it’s old boys networks riddled with corruption.
Auckland Transport built a giant pink cycle way from Grey Lynn to the central city for Christ’s sake, you can’t write satire like that.
Meanwhile the working classes who pay a disproportionate amount of their pay on transport have a bus service and train service that is still in the 1970s alongside a motorway system clogged to standstill,.
This gentrification of public transport has been able to occur via blue-green millennial sites like Transport Blog turning the environmental pretensions of the middle classes into the number one aesthetic for public transport while removing the poor off that public transport.
You won’t get out of your electric car and take the bus if you have to sit next to someone smelly.
Ateed need to hook up with a blog like TheSpinOff to be able to marinate their events enough to make it look like they are doing something when they’re really pissing away money on mutual appreciation hug circles with their corporate darlings in the advertising industry.
Auckland Transport paid Patrick Reynold’s from Transport Blog over $40 000 for his photographic services. Who knows how much that influences the positive slant Auckland Transport enjoy from that site? Patrick has offered to be on Auckland Transport’s Board now they’ve managed to kill off Mike Lee, so I’m sure we can all rely and trust a blog who has such a warm commercial relationship with the organisation they’ll be over seeing
Now that’s what I call over site.
And while we are talking about bloody Auckland Transport – how appalling is their vandalism of K Rd?
Rather than keep to the community spirit of that street, they are gentrifying it and once again it’s bloody cycle ways so blue-greens can bike through to the city from the trendy burbs.
We should be preserving the vibe of Krd rather than more gentrification. The road should become a boulevard from Queen street down with no cars at all! AT’s usual crap and empty consultation process is as meaningless as their process was when deciding to gut the bus services to Grey Lynn.
They’ve already decided on their sterile Mall garbage look which will date like a pair of 1980s shoulder pads while pushing out all the things that make K rd unique.
What’s interesting about these artist impressions?
…they’re all bloody white and nothing screams white middle class privilege quite like a cycle lane.
The forces of gentrification and their media allies at the expense of the working poor are the very ingredients that made Trump and Brexit happen.
ATEED, Brett O’Riley are in the pockets of the NZ Corporate monsters. From the Architecture companies like those on the Ak Design Panel who decide what will be planned and budgeted for by themselves and then guess what? They decide which one of their company’s wins the contract(s). 10’s of millions of dollars worth.Ugly designs that do not capture Kiwiana/cultural significance and the uniqueness of Tamaki Makaurau. Instead some boring, grey stone boxlike european featureless bullshit CAD design.
Tourists come to NZ to see NZ, not europe where they’ve come to escape from?
http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/EN/ratesbuildingproperty/PreapplicationAdvice/urbandesignpanel/Documents/panellistsbio2014-2016.pdf
Look,$12m for a 75m temporary walkway for the tourism,shipping companies decided by Panuku aka Ak Development. A $35m f..kup in Onehunga, that’ll be destroyed by NZTA new build of roading because some overqualified minion didn’t think to look at their plans??
They’re all out of control and some bloodletting needs to happen.
Not to mention Brett’s (ATEED)willingness to cough up ratepayers money to fund a boxing fight?? Luckily Phil jumped on that quickly only to discover the expensive $500k 5 wordfest by Ngati Whatua O that Ngarimu McBlair is trying to back out of.
As well as this and more. ATEED fund the National party’s propaganda dinner feasts paid for by the ratepayers which are held at the Sheraton Hotel & other expensive venues.
its a wrought and has to be stopped.
Middle aged hipsters and their bloody bikes.
That’s why the cool kids ride skate boards.
Auckland: The Place where Many Desire a Place.
What about “Heart of the City” an organisation that works in partnership with Ateed… check them out at (I kid you not) hotcity.co.nz.
Their “Hearts of the City artworks” make me want to spew.
Flox has become bourgeois wallpaper.
You’re being invaded by ‘ Rolleston. Town of the future.’ Hahhahahaahhaa ahaha . The rise of the Pink ‘N’ Clean-ers.
The perfect little white wife and the perfect little white kids all wearing nice safe little helmets while peddling safely along in perfect order and all smiling away on a sunny day. Aaahhh . Makes me want to vomit.
But alas. That’s the direction of evolution. A perfect world. All insured, mortgaged, career path’d. They want you to be just like them…
I was in Phnom Penh Cambodia about twenty years ago. Bedlam! You could buy hand guns, herion, and trantulas as a snack. It was unbelieveably risky, raw and fabulous. The third floor of the Paris Hotel where I stayed was a brothel for soldiers who all had machine guns leaning about. Phnom Penh was filthy , desperate and dangerous but most importantly ALIVE ! The town had about 3 million people but only five street lights it seemed. It had huge pot holes and an entire night populace that’d take over from the day populace and continue on. Sadly, those days are gone. In came the money and out went the humans.
Safety first. Remember that.
A strange outlook. You can still buy deepfried insects. The guns have gone but sadly the drugs haven’t.
“In came the money and out went the humans”
Really.
There are still plenty of humans earning an average wage of between 50 and 100 US dollars a month – yes USD are what comes out of ATM machines.
This isn’t enough to live on.
Corruption is still rife and there is no real rule of law.
I would have thought that your politics would have wanted more for these people who have been through so much.
Do not ask me for details, but I have ample evidence of Auckland Council and their CCOs to be CORRUPT.
ATEED is just another snouts-in-the-trough organization dedicated to bringing about rapid multi-metre sea level rise (plus massive inundation, of course), widespread starvation and mayhem, and rendering the Earth largely uninhabitable in a few decades via the burning of fossil and the commensurate CO2 emissions. (Atmospheric CO2 now 404 ppm and rising fast).
It’s starting to get interesting with only 8.633 million km2 of Arctic ice versus average of 10.844 million km2 and ice melting instead of forming!
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/charctic-interactive-sea-ice-graph/
Someone will hit the PANIC BUTTON soon. But it won’t be any of the fuckwits and self-serving liars at ATEED.
I agree with Bomber that the appearance of collusion between Auckland Transport and Transport Blog is concerning, although there is a deeper issue there of why we’re relying on a blog for oversight in the first place, instead of properly funded publicly-owned journalism. The currying of favour is always a potential concern with a blog run by one unfunded voluteer (oops that’s me too).
Not sure why it’s currently so cool to bash cycle lanes though. Enabling people to live closer to where they work and making it easier for them to bike to work (or skateboard, or any other human-powered, wheeled transport) is a key part of the alternative to car culture. Nobody who supports cycle facilities is denying that public transport is important too, especially for longer journeys, but it needs to be electrified (buses as well as cars) to really be part of the transition away from oil dependence.
Spot on!! – including get rid of the fucking road and go European style with central boulevards.
No 2, has anyone else noticed that there are so many retail spaces to let around the city? Not sure if it their gigantic rents being asked or the fact that fewer people can afford to buy anything anymore or that the current wannabe business owners can’t operate a business. The rest of the spaces are increasingly being occupied by the same stores and franchise chains (probably some global tax dodge anyway) .. not sure how hipster the franchise ST would look in 5 years. AT need to add Pita pit, Max and cotton on into their renders to make it look like more realistic and a carbon copy of every other city in the world – or at least an extension of Queen ST.
No 3, as being presently shown by the success of transport blog and Chloe, the new way to accelerate your career is to start a blog and then cash in on it to new pastures… to the board of AT to the seats of parliament. The world is your oyster.
Time to cash in Bomber. sarc. With some good reviews of John Key prior to the election and turning a blind eye to corruption and injustice you too could be one of those white families whizzing about on your bikes in K rd to your trendy Ockham apartment in Grey Lynn and cursing the riff raft workers commuting in from South and North West Auckland and causing congestion!
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