To an extent, choice isn't a huge feature of our housing market. That will certainly change eventually if theres a big increase in supply, but therell be a lot of poorly thought out stuff in the housing stock to get to that point

He says ugly buildings, implying what they look like aesthetically from the outside, but he actually seems to be talking about designing apartments to actually be functional to live in, which I agree with. It gets even more important the smaller the size I reckon

There's a huge difference between ones done by private developers and kainga ora/kiwibuild imo. The former are more often investment units to extract tenant wages first and foremost. Storage, building amenities, light etc all non considerations. People I know in kiwibuild apartments love them.

The rest of what he says is the same old garbage and speaks to the risks of the govts approach. If nimby councils reject density around transport hubs as theyll be able to do under this, theyll push lower density sprawl further out and it'll be worse and more expensive for everyone.

Yeah like I said, "better things aren't possible" fatalism.

I didn't say I don't consider roads as critical infrastucture, I specifically said "mega roads", i.e new multi lane motorways that are a waste of money because they will encourage more driving, more sprawl and make traffic even worse in the long run (and I imagine local roads will deteriorate as they did the last time this happened).

Three waters, the ferries, state housing, public transport are all better options right now that are woefully underfunded and in fact actively sabotaged by this govt.

The "we don't have the density" argument is often pulled out against funding public transport and it's unfounded. We're one of the most urbanised countries in the world. We could absolutely build more PT if we chose to, we've had far more extensive networks in the past than what we currently do.

Overall, saying what's happening is a symptom is just an attempt to claim what's happening right now is inevitable imo. Different choices can be made that would be far less damaging, they'd be positive even and actually address the underlying problems you highlight instead of this "better things aren't possible" fatalism.

Oh, is that the sound of a free market correction?

I get where you're coming from, Retail NZ and the sector they represent (which is not all retailers of course) always come off as incredibly self absorbed and uncaring imo, particularly when they comment on employment stuff. Bunch of small business tyrants.

But that lets the govt off the hook a bit I think. A lot of the article is Wellington focused, and talks about the link to the job cuts in the public sector and the way that's been done. They've actively cratered things on top of a downturn that was already happening.

Terribly, with a layer of sneering smugness to boot. The austerity justifciations are national party spin, swallowed whole. The govt is throwing billions to landlords and mega roads while cutting funding for public housing, critical infrastructure and even fucking food banks at a time of record demand for them.

They're also dumping costs onto households by cranking up user charges and abandoning councils to pay for decades of infrastructure underinvestment.

So no, they've chosen to loot and plunder.

Oh that's a pain, yeah there's a bit of a mix of places where you have to confirm the surcharge on the machine and others that just have a sign and you get automatically charged for credit/contactless.

It's all a bit of a mess and I can see that could lead some to just go back to cash, although there'll be other reasons I'm sure

I don't use a lot of cash, but I like to keep some on me cause it comes in handy every so often.

I am switching back more and more to eftpos over my credit card though, as so many places are either not accepting credit cards and/or contactless, or adding the extra charge that irks me (yes, I do blame the banks/payment providers for that, not the businesses).

"Hey guys, so I just did a bit of returning off screen and made 10,000 death star ships"

Asshole government making life harder and costing the health system more money in the long term.

Yes I think so, that rings a bell. Something like that would be cool, I downloaded beeper earlier to give it a go and it immediately wants an email and privacy policy and I assume collects data on what clients you use and so on.

Something like pigdin that's just a front end that doesn't phone home anywhere or collect your data and you just log in through it would be awesome.

Right I see, could be useful if you're constantly switching between conversations on multiple platforms I guess. Which come to think of it I am. I only have the Instagram app because typing goes nuts when I try to message on their web interface.

Way back when I was running Ubuntu (like over a decade ago) there were a chat application that would combine Facebook chat, MSN (lol) and a bunch of others and it was very handy to have it right there on the desktop.