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National’s $62 billion budget hole
Written By: Mountain Tui – Date published: 1:19 pm, October 21st, 2025 – 10 comments
Categories: chris bishop, infrastructure – Tags: corruption, nzier, roads, roads of national significance, RONS
Yesterday Chris Luxon and Bishop announced their commitment to spend $1.2 billion to commence major works on “roads of national significance”. Their overall plans are much larger than that – equating to about $62 billion of roading plans without any funding sources under them.
On one road alone, the Northern Expressway, independent advice suggests the cost could easily double from $10 billion to $20 billion.
Yet this hasn’t stopped National, who have gone all in on the commencement –
https://thestandard.nz/nationals-62-billion-budget-hole/
Mountain Tui 2
22 October 2025 at 1:25 pm
Additional information:
Bishop is willing to spend billions on the Northern Expressway, without knowing the cost benefits… whilst his colleague, Nicola Noboats Willis, scrapped the costed iRex ferries which, in February 2023:
“The programme carried a benefit-cost ratio (BCR) of 4.4. In other words, the benefits of the $1.450 billion programme were quantified to represent a total economic benefit of $4.276 billion in economic, emissions, reliability, and resilience.”
So that information existed.
Bishop can’t produce his figures, and gets to walk away without accountability.
https://www.treasury.govt.nz/sites/default/files/2024-05/project-irex-4914527.pdf
Note: They did use NZIER above but as per article, it could be problematic and the benefit ratio just passes 1
This comment the details – so exciting. Of course that’s after reading just the first few lines. Now I’ll go and have a sit down and a cup of tea and a biscuit, and then read the rest. And have another biscuit, depending on the details, either one that helps digestion or a dog biscuit.
Thanks Jay11 you seem to specialise in some striking facts. One does feel the weight as it hits the brain. Keep it up, we can bear the pain, have to.
In 1938 some Jewish chlldren advertised themselves in UK newspaper Manchester Guardian as good youngsters with skills looking for jobs or fostering. The author’s family (has written book called I Seek a Kind Person). advertised as below:
I seek a kind person who will educate my intelligent Boy, aged 11, Viennese of good family. Borger, (and address Vienna 3.)
and
Fervent prayer in great distress – Who would give a Home to a grammar school scholar aged 13; healthy, clever, very musical. F.B.W., address Vienna 5.
This cropped up in so-called civilised societies, and shows that there is a breachable barrier protecting what are considered common and accepted values and rights that perhaps what we consider as set by law or convention and safe, have a shield no stronger than a meniscus.
I’m taking for granted that people know the reason for these parents wanting their children away. They were Jewish families who were aware of the menace that awaited them and wanted to give these children a chance of life so were begging Brit people to give them a home and future. There is a lot to know about WW2 1939-1945 that we never knew or have forgotten. The world we live in needs a clean but it could be so much better without too much difficulty.
1 September 1939 by WH Auden
,,,Exiled Thucydides* knew
All that a speech can say
About Democracy,
And what dictators do,
The elderly rubbish they talk
To an apathetic grave;
Analysed all in his book,
The enlightenment driven away,
The habit-forming pain,
Mismanagement and grief:
We must suffer them all again.
Into this neutral air
Where blind skyscrapers use
Their full height to proclaim
The strength of Collective Man,
Each language pours its vain
Competitive excuse:
But who can live for long
In an euphoric dream;
Out of the mirror they stare,
Imperialism’s face
And the international wrong…
,,,And no one exists alone;
Hunger allows no choice
To the citizen or the police;
We must love one another or die.
Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
https://poets.org/poem/september-1-1939
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides
And on history not remembered, repeated:
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2024/03/04/past-repeat/
(And a great image of a desert – so immense.)
No Kings!
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree….
Samuel Coleridge
As Samuel Coleridge noted; Kings rule by decree
Donald Trump is no exception
Donald Trump has decreed that a ‘Ball Room’ be built in his honour at the White House Paid for by donars seeking his favour, a place where assembled minions can be ordered to obediently stand in ranks, as fauning loyal retainers come to pay homage and seek influence.
Why not? After all, every King needs a throne room.
As well as a throne room, an Arc de Trump, a marble floor for the White House and a recently unveiled presdiential walk of fame with gold framed protraits of himself and 44 other presidents.
Critics, including a guest essayist for the New York Times, have called his Oval Office remodel a “Gilded Rococo Nightmare”.
The White House did not immediately respond on Wednesday to the BBC’s request for further comment.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7e8lv176go
…..And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Samuel Colreridge
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tjrG7CT3vIg
The Evil Genius of Fascist Design
YOUTUBE.COM
The Evil Genius of Fascist Design
Thanks for that Pat -, as I have done my Third + 3/4 Age stuff I have found that all the answers to the questions we might ask now, have been written or said perhaps centuries ago. And the minds that drive poetry, lyrics and music have to still and concentrate to communication to others, and so produce the fine thoughts using our protean language.
Warning long think-piece – I’ve put my thoughts down, pondered!
So perhaps we can seek in the artistic outputs for the different ways of doing and being, already thought up by authors so dedicated to telling their tales, that they might get up at 5am and write a thousand words before breakfast. Stir oneself seems to be the clarion call of my mind and I have been as somnolent as others except for the fact of my rebellious mind that pricks me to wonder, and to do something different. Perhaps now I come into my own as the saying goes.
I’ve just been reading a woman author of the North England genre, writing about Liverpool. It’s a family saga and covers the lives and deaths of the family men in World Wars 1 and 2 followed by the Korean War. Then her character wonders what life would have been like if all those educated, able men had not been killed off, if their skills and gifts could have been brought to the fore. The author writes of assistance from civilian women unrelated but compassionate, for two young men blind and deaf from the battlefield melee, ordinary soldiers for whom there seems less care by the Army authorities than given to officers, ‘the fortunes of war’ etc.
It seems we humans have an unacknowledged behavioural strain that can lead to egoistic, self-serving, machine and monument building with its attendant resource demands. Is this an example of the uncivilised or beyond-practical, over-civilised brain? The natives in the Amazon were killed like wild animals in an attempt to take the land they had for ever as theirs, murdered in two separate forays. The Enclosures of the Brit 1700s took the ordinary people’s Commons.
Yet the Concert program plays beautiful music from the 17th and 18th century quite often. Can we change our interests to living simply and well and concentrate on making music, and theatre? Let us reshape our minds and lives, regard the government as an instrument, a tool, a machine that has been useful but now needs to be superceded. (One of our problems is exactitude about the wrong things – we will spend time on the correctness of supercede or supersede when tragedies are happening outside the ivory towers of the eminent!) And we need to recognise our cleverness in the development of writing with a common alphabet to help in thinking and passing thoughts on, also money as a sort of oil for the working of society, that allows increased activity beyond the everyday jobs necessary for living. People have been clever enough to value the innovation and its dangers and talked about looking into the abyss; now is the time to ponder and see their point. I am surer with every new day and old response.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/576859/invasive-hornet-could-pose-serious-concern-for-honey-industry
…A leading player in New Zealand’s honey industry warned the potential arrival of the invasive yellow-legged hornet couldn’t come at a worse time.
Comvita Chief Executive Karl Gradon had a stark warning for the sector, that’s worth over $400 million of export earnings.
He said the industry was currently in a crisis due to a sustained oversupply of manuka and softening demands in luxury goods globally. Comvita has announced the sector was facing $104 million loss last year alone.
Gradon said an impact from the hornet species, like what’s been seen in Europe, would further slump the market.
He said there are 4000 beekeeping companies in New Zealand and to reduce that at a time when the sector is in crisis would be very concerning.
“We’ve seen three major beekeeping companies go into receivership last month alone and as a result, these continued losses just cannot be sustained,” he said….
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asian_hornet