Month: August 2014

Poll of Polls update – 20 August 2014

·

I am keeping an eye on the central Elections seeming they dominate my Twitter feed as is at the moment. For me I am keeping a close eye on the “Government (or Economy) is heading in the right direction” numbers as they can give an insight to more deeper down feelings of the electorate.

Put it this way while some consider that particular aspect to the realm of Political Junkie or Wankery status, no government has survived rather long when that Right Direction number hits below 50 and sits that way for a sustained period.

For National’s sake that 7 point drop in that particular aspect better be the last…

jononatusch's avatarOccasionally Erudite Publications

The latest Roy Morgan poll has just been released. The polling window runs from 4 August to 17 August, meaning that been a quarter and a third of the polling was done following the release of Nicky Hager’s Dirty Politics book. We’ll need to wait for further polling before the real impact of the book and its fallout can be seen.

The results of the Roy Morgan will undoubtedly be somewhat of a disappointment for Labour and the Greens. National is up 2% to 48%, while on the left, Labour drops 2.5% to 27.5%, and the Greens drop 0.5% to 11.5%. That’s a 9% gap between National and a Labour/Greens bloc.

The big mover of the minor parties is NZ First, up 1.5% to 6.5%. That’s the highest they’ve been in the Roy Morgan since September 2013, and it’s the party’s second highest poll result this year from any of…

View original post 215 more words

Villages or Connected Communities?

·

A Question for Auckland

 

Stuart in his 100 Days Project (for Auckland) put up a thought provoke project that Auckland should consider.

It was:

An enlargement of that picture:

Source: https://twitter.com/HoughtonSd/status/502197120460259328/photo/1

 

Depending how you answer that question (Auckland? Connected Communities or (isolated) villages) is how you would react to wider schemes such as the Auckland Plan and the Proposed Auckland Unitary Plan.

 

In short those “villages” won’t lose their “feel” if they are interconnected with each other. In fact I would argue as a Geographer those villages rather than being isolated snow-globes would benefit highly from being interconnected with everyone else in Auckland. Put it this way we are seeing some villages stagnating if not dying right now. Being interconnected would go a long way in turning that around. It would also be helpful if Council was a bit more proactive outside the City Centre than it currently is. That said I have seen the 10 Spatial Priorities Plan from the draft Long Term Plan 2015-2025 discussions I think that warrants a sit down and flesh this out some more.

Mean time I see Luke has gotten his Walking in Manukau post published up on Transport Blog. Will be a very interesting read as TB don’t often come down to the South.