tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post3096293655519204105..comments2024-03-29T00:44:42.046+13:00Comments on Bowalley Road: The Spirit Of The PhoenixChris Trotterhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comBlogger11125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-76760590183117671502011-03-01T01:11:25.420+13:002011-03-01T01:11:25.420+13:00from the headline Chris I thought you were going t...from the headline Chris I thought you were going to branch out into football and business commentary and opine on Terry Serepisos and the Phoenix?Cactus Katehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10136331420768264938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-78542786320223936762011-02-28T21:36:43.391+13:002011-02-28T21:36:43.391+13:00I assume you are talking about the Cathedral of th...I assume you are talking about the Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Barbadoes St...<br />Seriously Chris, I've just got the power back on after several days of hell & mud...here goes... <br />1.WHERE THE F*** ARE THE ARMY? I've seen 5 soldiers-all poncing round at cordons, behind which there's nobody walking!!!! Theres people all over who need heavy machinery & muscle to dig em out- Burnham camp is just down the road??????????????????????????????????????<br />2.LAZY NEWS MEDIA FOCUS ON JONKEY, FATASS & BOBARAZZI MAKES ME PUKE (the only able bodied 'men' who don't have blisters & sore backs round here).<br />Front page stories in Press have been a kick in the teeth for the eastside- who cares about the big cheeses, get the power on & help to dig us out!!!!!!!!!<br />I feel much better now!Shirleyboynoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-91824091961311753912011-02-27T16:07:49.239+13:002011-02-27T16:07:49.239+13:00I was interested to see that the modernist archite...I was interested to see that the modernist architect, Miles Warren, actually lived in a very traditional mansion in Governors Bay. If any of it is still standing after Tuesday, I'm sure he will re-build in the existing gothic style. So why shouldn't the other heritage buildings also be restored to their former glory?<br /><br />With regard to the rest of the CBD, no doubt commercial interests wil predominate. Isn't the irony of the ideological conditioning that lenders and rentiers will make a fortune, because the public authorities will not get access to credit (ie the Reserve Bank's money). Also, what hope for the State house suburbs, some of which were built with Reserve Bank credit, will these units be improved by the State? Why not start again north of the Waimakiriri?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-73856778920169209802011-02-26T14:29:36.049+13:002011-02-26T14:29:36.049+13:00So perhaps a re-embracing of that impatient energy...So perhaps a re-embracing of that impatient energy, entrepreneurial drive, and can-do individualism that built the city and designed and manufactured those magnificent engines of rescue would be a more appropriate dream to resurrect today--that same individualist dream that drove those men and women living of the steam age across the world to make a new home in a new world one-hundred and sixty years ago--than to summon up the grey, flaccid spirit that has done its best over the last hundred years to crush it.<br />.......<br />The problem is that Christchurch grew to a nice size about 30 years ago and then the entrepreneurial drive started cutting up sections and the ugly infill began. The entrepreneurs bought the government and managed to start a migration assisted realestate economy.<br />While airplanes bought relief teams and firengines tried to get to burning buildings the streets were clogged with cars. Chch has been unusually gridlocked lately. Oil is getting more and more expensive (although the oil age won't finish with oil as they can still squeeze something dirty out of the ground).<br /><br />It is time to question growth have we been growing to provide income for developers or is the real economy expanding?<br />This is a chance to rebuild a green city yet I haven't seen "bicycle" or "composting toilet" or "limits to growth" mentioned by the Green Party... I guess they just don't get it.jhnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-17690553326790832592011-02-26T11:49:06.438+13:002011-02-26T11:49:06.438+13:00The tragic earthquake that hit my birthplace has u...The tragic earthquake that hit my birthplace has upset me much more than I thought it would. I may be living in Auckland now but Christchurch is still dear to my heart. <br /><br />While I have been thinking of the people first and foremost, I also have been thinking about how Christchurch can be rebuilt, and how this can involve the local people to provide a sense of hope that their city can be repaired and things can be better.<br /><br />While London did remerge from the great fire with St Pauls - this was a lost opportunity from what could have been. Due to the complex demands of property owners, London was rebuilt on its medieval town plan, instead of the Baroque schemes of reinvention of Wren and John Evellyn. One wonders what London would have been like now had Wren or Evellyn been able to pull off a dramatic redesign - London would rival Paris and the former Italian city states for tourists seeking beauty. I also suspect this would have had a positive impact on lessening London's transport problems for the last 350 years.Joe Hendrenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09004777030451582118noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-39233830953362139312011-02-25T22:17:44.564+13:002011-02-25T22:17:44.564+13:00A cheap rhetorical suit accessorised by size-twent...A cheap rhetorical suit accessorised by size-twenty shoes, a red plastic nose and a raucous klaxon.<br /><br /><em>who produced those diggers, trucks ladders, hoists, gas-axes...?</em><br /><br />Not the pink-fingered lily-livered paper-shufflers who've bought the anglo world to its knees and to whose fellation you've dedicated your precious life, that's for sure.<br /><br />Workers built all those things, laddie; by the sweat of their brows, out of their innate drive for improvement, under leadership they accept as fair, just, and motivated by more than universally-reviled individual greed. <br /><br />No surprise at all that most of them were built in the People's Republic of China.<br /><br />Face it Bozo: you had a few short laughs, disracted Progression for a nano-second, but the neanderthal party's well and truly over. Prise open that shrivelled, clammy excuse for a heart or shuffle off the stage. <br /><br />akAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-41859574581447502032011-02-25T21:29:58.552+13:002011-02-25T21:29:58.552+13:00One obvious design imperative is to to build &quo...One obvious design imperative is to to build "new school" energy efficient buildings.SPCnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-78838812420182722402011-02-25T18:44:45.675+13:002011-02-25T18:44:45.675+13:00oh my God Chris you know all we need to know
do y...oh my God Chris you know all we need to know <br />do you dude,<br /> feel free to humiliate the lesser political, <br />you tell us Chris we are all eyes,<br />rise from the social ashes Chrispeterquixotehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15873112816453062068noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-20700195997382533762011-02-25T16:44:18.319+13:002011-02-25T16:44:18.319+13:00To: PC (a.k.a Richard McGrath)
Just go and read s...To: PC (a.k.a Richard McGrath)<br /><br />Just go and read some New Zealand history, PC. You'll discover that laissez-faire capitalism never really got off the ground here in New Zealand.<br /><br />From the NZ Company onwards, we've had a penchant for planning (and are all the better for it).<br /><br />Our ancestors, God bless 'em, were decent enough people to think about the country their children and grandchildren would grow up in. Who do you think made provision for the town belts and public parks of our major cities?<br /><br />You live in an ideological fantasyland, PC. A strange world where the worst totalitarian deformities of Eastern European socialism are somehow equated with the generous and far-sighted policies of New Zealand social-democracy.<br /><br />Only a person riddled with the cancers of rampant individualism and capitalist hyper-greed could characterise New Zealand's post-war boom years as "gray and flaccid". Proof - if further proof is needed - that libertarianism is nothing more than pathological egotism dressed-up in a cheap rhetorical suit.Chris Trotterhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09081613281183460899noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-24016234415237070142011-02-25T15:54:51.634+13:002011-02-25T15:54:51.634+13:00"This is no time to engage in petty politicki..."This is no time to engage in petty politicking..."<br /><br />Isn't saying <i>that</i> and then publishing <i>this</i> all across the mainstream media a bit like leaning over your neighbour's fence and starting off by saying "I"m not one to gossip, but ... "<br /><br />Anyway. <br /><br />It's odd, don't you think, Chris, that the impatient energy of nineteenth-century laissez-faire could conjure that graceful and splendidly organised city out of the Canterbury Plains in just eight years; whereas the early twentieth-century embrace of the "collective will" produced instead the lumpen urban prolixities of Pruitt Igoe, the Aylesbury Estate, Halle Neustadt and Karl Marx Allee; and the late twentieth-century embrace of TownPlanners Uber Alles has produced the paralysis you decry and the mundanity and mediocrity we all cry about.<br /><br />And who produced those diggers, trucks, ladders, jacks, hoists, gas axes, cutting equipment, listening devices, medicines and breathing equipment used in shifting all that rubble if not those very capitalists whose invisibility you all but assume (or wish for?). <br /><br />The hydraulic power used to move mountains of rubble wasn't produced by any sort of collective wishful thinking, but by impatient risk-taking entrepreneurs in the real competition of a rambunctious market.<br /><br />So perhaps a re-embracing of that impatient energy, entrepreneurial drive, and can-do individualism that built the city and designed and manufactured those magnificent engines of rescue would be a more appropriate dream to resurrect today--that same individualist dream that drove those men and women living of the steam age across the world to make a new home in a new world one-hundred and sixty years ago--than to summon up the grey, flaccid spirit that has done its best over the last hundred years to crush it.Peter Cresswellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10699845031503699181noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3753486518085091399.post-85103966566427728332011-02-25T15:14:57.185+13:002011-02-25T15:14:57.185+13:00Rebuilding concept: Coventry Cathedral. So much m...Rebuilding concept: Coventry Cathedral. So much more meaningful that it was rebuilt using the most modern design of the time, rather than a straight replica of what had been bombed.Matthew Hootonhttp://www.exceltium.comnoreply@blogger.com