Christine Fletcher - Auckland City Mayoral candidate

Banks Flip Flops Again

Mr Banks has done another flip flop on the earlier positions he has taken on solving Auckland’s traffic problems. It is now perfectly clear that he has achieved nothing since he was elected.

The announcement today is little more than a plan to get a plan.

When Mr Banks was elected, he accused me of playing with toy train sets. He dismissed rail as a credible transport option, including the plans for light rail up Queen Street then onto Mt Eden and the western suburbs (option 2).

One of the first acts of Bank’s council was to cancel the work on the light rail option. This means there will be years of delay to bring this option back on track again.

Now he is in favour of trains for the eastern corridor. Another Mayoral u turn -he is now supporting this proposal.

Yesterday he supported a multi million dollar tunnel under Parnell surfacing in Carlaw Park. Surprise, surprise, he has now dropped this too.

The biggest bombshell is that buses will not be given priority on his supposedly integrated public transport corridor because it will cost too much.
Instead we will get a four line “expressway” for cars.

The sort of spin we heard today confirms that Mayor Banks realises that he does not have the mandate or the funds to give us the integrated public transport network we need.-

The voters of Auckland City can now see through the spin of the emperor’s new clothes.

ENDS

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>