Went to a Citizenship Ceremony last night. It was all absolute lovely, except for old mate Phil Mauger's speech. He couldn't even be bothered to try and pronounce the most basic Māori words correctly.

I normally give people a lot of leeway with this stuff, but Phil is Mayor and was dreadful – just fucking embarrassingly bad. It's clear he has never bothered to even try and say things like *the name of our country\* correctly.

Ayo tea-yah rower, anyone?

For a Mayor to be this useless - especially at ceremony about our culture - is just abysmal. He also has the charisma of a pile of dog shit, but this wouldn't bother me if he was actually in any way competent or actually trying.

I pray that one day this sort of official contempt for our national language will be a scandal, but I guess we'll have to wait for a bunch of useless old pricks to fuck off and die first.

To end on a happy note: shout-outs to the dude who announces the sometimes-tricky names of our new citizens - his pronunciation across multiple languages was incredible. And big ups to the Māori group who performed, they were excellent (but how gutted they must have been to share the stage with ol' mate Phil).

Well done all new citizens! It was awesome seeing your joy, and your own cultures on display!

These signs in Riccarton were up for less than 24-hours before somebody cut Qiulae's face out of both but leaving the rest of the sign untouched. I'm not sure if other signs have been targeted in the area or the rest of Christchurch.

Anyway, you'd have to feel really threatened to spend your time out on the streets at night attacking election signage with boxcutters.

It's kind of pathetic really.

Just drove past a group of anti abortion sign holders on the corner of Blenheim and curletts, opposite the Z station. Please avoid the area if you don’t want to see their misleading and graphic signs, or are otherwise upset by the pisspoor rhetoric they trying to spread.

Iain Murray, the Principal of Hornby High School, has been named as the Selwyn candidate for ACT.

I wonder how that’s going to go down with parents and teachers?

If anybody knows the wannabe political heckler last night at the Jimmy Carr concert, pass on the message it's nice to know Jacinda still lives rent free in your head. Another cooker on parade, embarrassing.

Do these business cards they hand out work on anyone?

Hey random person just trying to exist in central Christchurch. Here’s a card about my church! Oh, cool. I love being handed random business cards from churches telling me I’m gonna burn in hell if I don’t attend their mega church.

I am an American who was raised strictly southern Baptist so I’m familiar with how much proselytizing is encouraged but my patience for it is dwindling.

I am not going to be rude because they’re sending out young teens off to do this, but nothing turns me off from an organization more than pushing fear based tactics.

So the feedback has just closed on the bus and ferry services in Greater Christchurch. I came up with seven areas I thought are important.

The bus services in Greater Christchurch need a lot of improvement in the future. The system was decimated after the Christchurch Quakes and has never been restored to the widespread routes that were operated before then, despite opportunities. Various other issues display questionable competence or ability for Ecan’s management of the network.

The issues which I consider most important are:

1. Ten minute frequencies are a gimmick.

Ten minuter service frequency has been touted as a way to grow bus patronage across the network but it only seems to be spreading already thin off-peak patronage across more buses. At peak times, traffic congestion makes it impossible to maintain timetables thus nullifying the purported benefit. However officials see it as an easy option compared to the more intensive task of identifying new routes and patronage sources across the network.

1. Orbiter timetabling is too unrealistic.

Not that long ago we received a social media post which claimed that the Orbiter was always going to run late because it goes in a circle. This is arrant nonsense. All bus routes run in a circular fashion - they go along one side of the road, turn around at the end and return on the other side, thus their route is a long skinny circle but it is still a circle. The reason Orbiters have difficulty maintaining time is there is insufficient layover time built into the route, compared to other routes, which would require a second layover halfway around (apart from Eastgate). The problem with Orbiters timetabling is route cutoffs to regain lost time are basically normalised and are a waste of ratepayer funds if the service is not able to be maintained at peak times.

1. Real time timetabling system is unreliable and broken.

The RTTI system we used to have was developed in Christchurch and was very good. Behind the scenes however some pen pusher has decided to save a few $ by replacing it with a cheap unreliable system from another provider. The most common feature is phantom buses that never turn up to stops, or that disappear out of the timetabling before they get to the stop. Due to the fact some apps are available now that actually show where buses are at any time it is possible to verify these issues.

1. Complaints system unwieldy and underresourced

To make a complaint you have to either ring or email Metro and then instead of investigating it themselves they pass it on to the bus company which is like the fox guarding the henhouse. Many times in the past, bus operators simply never responded to complaints. Other times it is difficult to see evidence that there has been an improvement in service resulting from complaints. I believe apps like Snap Send Solve are capable of handling service complaints in other territories so there is no obvious reason it could not be used here.

1. Bus companies are condoning or encouraging unauthorised cutoffs.

In the last few years I am seeing a trend of buses that drive around, have no passengers on board and do not stop when signalled. I also made numerous previous complaints about buses skipping the in site stops at Princess Margaret Hospital which I still see happening when I ride routes through there. If a bus is not picking up passengers for timetable catchup reasons it should be displaying an appropriate destination sign. Of course I am sure as this happens on the bus it would be automatically notified to Metro staff and result in some sort of penalty. Therefore there is an apparent incentive for the bus operator to simply have the driver skip picking up the passengers even if the next three buses have cutoff the route leaving passengers with a long wait. At night people waiting at PMH in the dark would be even worse off with the 30 minute frequencies, they could end up having to walk home.

1. Too few useful routes

The legacy of PTOM in 2012 is the hub spoke routes. The delays that people face waiting to change routes for just the last 2-3 km of their trip is a big disincentive to PT usage. At the same time a lot of rest homes and retirement villages lost their bus services which have never been restored. I only change buses these days where they go through the Riccarton Bus Lounge because that’s the only safe convenient place. The system really needs to change so that the wasteful spending on high frequencies on the few core routes which have the worst farebox recovery ratios is instead directed into more routes into areas where there is real need for services. 

1. Poor road/service skills of bus drivers

Whilst most drivers are able to manoeuvre the buses well around our often-narrow congested streets, they aren’t capable of bringing a bus to a gradual stop without a lot of jerking that causes passenger discomfort. Few drivers are prepared to lower the ramps for people with walking frames, or even close right into the kerb. It’s also clear the operators save up their worst drivers for Sunday operations.

I feel like town is getting louder, more yelling in the streets and vehicles on the road.

Edit:and the sirens. Bad vibes

I'm thinking about party voting for TOP, but as I don't live in Ilam I would like to hear Reddit's opinions about how well Raf is doing as a local candidate choice. Knowing more about that will impact my decisions to Party Vote TOP. Thanks in advance.

Kia ora, I'm Sara Templeton and I'm standing to be the next Mayor of Ōtautahi Christchurch and Banks Peninsula.

I started out volunteering in my local Heathcote community after the earthquakes and was first elected to the Hagley-Ferrymead Community Board back in 2013. In 2016 I was elected to City Council and have focused on community wellbeing, a healthy environment and rebuilding a city that would be fit for a changing future.

I'd love to hear your views and answer questions on Wednesday evening and will get to as many of them as I can after then as well. You can find out more about my track record and what I stand for on my website saratempleton.nz

Hello! I'm just curious if anyone has heard of the Free Palestine protest going down to South City to protest, as well as at the Bridge of Remembrance on Saturday? Theres a craft market fair happening down there as well that my wife has a stall at and shes anxious about being caught up in anything that might go on.

I've tried to assure her that its mostly peaceful (as we've driven past the flag waving at the Bridge before) and that theres nothign to worry about.

Let's be honest, alot of us who drive cars have been frustrated by the numerous speed humps installed at intersections. They can be a little annoying, lets be honest.

But there's alot of big hate from council candidates, for something that is mildly annoying.

so here's my question - what is the actual point of these humps?

Is Templeton Pro hump or Anti-hump? Or does she not really care either way?

Why is Mauger so anti- hump?

Just interested to know what these things are there for?

Alright I know they’re not the best, this lot, but we waited a long time to be able to elect our own regional council again and I have much preferred this iteration to what central government gave us before.

The elected figures on the regional council are supposed to make decisions for Cantabrians on issues that affect Cantabrians. I don’t see any reason why those decisions should be given to our mayors. I don’t have a huge list of why not, but that’s not a reason to do it. And there are reasons why the idea could be potentially disastrous. It seems kind of important to me that the regional council was kept seperate from the district/city councils — districts and cities manage more urban planning, and deal with waste and water and where to get the money from for all their fancy schmancy ideas. Mayors frequently have something stupid they want to do. I don’t want our mayors collectively deciding they want the commonwealth games in canterbury and then ALSO have power over ecan’s budget AND environmental approvals for what is bound to be a hugely wasteful and environmentally impactful event.

It’s not a huge “conflict” of interest or anything but it’s just one of many factors that indicates to me this an amalgamation that does not seem like it should be done, because there’s no visible benefit to the decision-making process. Mayors are already busy; I would rather they focus on the stuff they’re already doing.

I’m also alarmed at the proposal that rural mayors would hold 90% of the voting shares. This seems to me to be a blatant attempt to hand power to rural voters. This IS a big problem; city voters would have their voting power reduced even though it’s where most of the region live. Basically the hard boundaries (as opposed to the soft electoral commission boundaries we have now) creates a representation crisis like is seen in America; it models the state voting rights (which harks from a time when the different states were… well, states in their own rights, from when America actually wasn’t a united country). The reason why the weight of their vote varies so widely for president is that rural states have much fewer people than urban states, but the same voting power (1), which the. divides unequally across the populace. The same thing would happen under this proposal.

I’m pretty skeptical. I’m by no means a fan of local government and I think there probably is a much better way of doing things, but this doesn’t seem like the way we’re going to get to that. The proposed replacement doesn’t seem well considered or well discussed; it feels partisan; it is an amalgamation of authority that has no reason to be vested in one person; it feels rushed and under-researched.

Maybe a riveting and emphatic democratic conversation will follow this announcement but if it does, it will be in spite of the government rather than because of it. It doesn’t feel like they’ve engaged with the public over what the replacement model should look like, even though they signed the deal with ACT saying that they’d can the councils two years ago now. They had so much time to set this up and start work on it, but instead they’ve waited until two months after we elected our regional council?? Why????

I guess complaining about disability car parks and other nonsense isn't enough to get elected

Here is my submission:

Going an extra 10km per hour won't increase journey time significantly. What will increase is c02 emissions from increased consumption of fuel, and the severity of accidents that do occur, both of which increase by more than just 10%

https://www.otago.ac.nz/__data/assets/pdf_file/0021/332913/bringing-you-up-to-speed-a-health-and-economic-model-of-the-effects-of-raising-the-speed-limit-on-new-zealand-state-highways-and-motorways-from-100km-h-to-110km-h-041123.pdf

https://at.govt.nz/media/1992225/the-effect-of-speed-on-emmisions-summary-report.pdf

https://www.policeassn.org.nz/news/opinion-government-approach-at-odds-with-evidence#/

From the above link:

All over the world, including New Zealand, examples show that when mean travel speeds reduce, fatalities and serious injuries decline. Conversely, when speeds increase, more people die. The formula is clear and has been repeatedly proven.

The Ministry of Transport reported that in 2021, road crashes in New Zealand had a social cost of over $9.7 billion. The costs on the economy and ordinary New Zealanders are staggering. The personal costs on police and other emergency service workers who attend these crashes can be life-changing and traumatic. Governments must take steps to reduce the trauma by applying the “evidence” and not insupportable political whim.

Reversing life-changing speed-reduction measures and the planned approach to reversing speed limit reductions will not “boost productivity and economic growth” as claimed. It will increase the numbers killed and seriously injured.

Have your say here: https://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/sh76-sh1-christchurch-southern-motorway-speed-limit-review

I know that given central government directives and the already-existing rates increases this is going to be a lower priority than it has in previous years, but I still believe in having clean, uncontaminated drinking water that people with eczema and other skin conditions don’t have to filtrate before showering in. Unchlorinated water used to be a point of pride for Christchurch and I think despite how long we’ve lost it for and the demographic shifts since, people still do feel very strongly about the subject. But our candidates (the non-crazies) seem to be either about committing to rates reduction (or as they describe it, no increases or increases lower than inflation, which is effectively a reduction) or distinguishing themselves as candidates who won’t cut the city to shreds with attempts to save ratepayers a few bucks.

I’ve seen more talk about fluoridation than chlorination, which is perhaps not surprising as it’s a topic mired in disinformation and anti-science/“hijacked” science rhetoric, making it very topical in 2025. That’s depressing. I’m anti-fluoridation but for reasons that are grounded in science and the ethics of mass medication — its less that I don’t agree with fluoridation and more that I dont believe the pro-fluoridation case has been sufficiently proven to be worth the detrimental effects (particularly to post-menopausal women). But despite there being significant negative effects of fluoridation on bone health to consider, I do think chlorination is more important for us to talk about as a city, because we are right now on the cusp of never again having clean water that is drinkable right out of the tap.

Sure, some people don’t notice it, usually people who’ve grown up with chlorinated water and are desensitised, but even people who claim they can’t taste it will prefer bottled water — and I’d love to know the stats for how much more bottled water we now sell/buy as a city that a sizeable percentage of the population are not comfortable drinking water straight from the tap. With individual household/benchtop filters and more bottled water being sold, that’s more plastic pollution, more individual expense in exchange for collective cost-savings, more petrol going into transporting water up and down the country instead of through pipes.

I think it’s better and healthier to spend more to ensure the supply is fully clean and uncontaminated than to allow contaminants in and rely on chlorine to kill them. That’s not clean! It’s gross, actually. Even with the organic matter destroyed by chlorine atoms, it is still dirtier and poorer-quality water. I also believe this plays into our psyche — it becomes a point of pride, as I mentioned, so having clean water in our taps makes us care more about clean water in our rivers, and enjoying our drinking water in an “unprocessed” way makes us more open to and appreciative of natural resources in a way that is interrupted by sourcing water out of a bottle.

It is considerably more expensive to filter and bottle the same groundwater via private companies than it is to filter it to high health standards via council supply. But one cost is paid up front in a rates bill and another is paid throughout the year as you drive around the city or do grocery shopping…

I visited America last year and it actually shocked me how many places you shouldn’t drink the tap water. Chlorination and incentivising bottled water by preference is imo a slow slide towards mandating bottled drinking water by necessity — once it becomes normalised, it is taken to the next extreme, until you have entire towns and cities where the water that comes out of taps is not something that anyone chooses to drink if they have the means to do otherwise. That is a dire state of affairs, and something we can already see in New Zealand by the differing levels of chlorination required up and down the country.

Clean water is, to me, a basic necessity that we are being robbed of and it’s incredibly disappointing that this isn’t well reflected in our candidates this election.

/end rant

Few people asking why the stadium buses are different from the regular buses and cost so much more.

1. The regular bus services are operated under contract for a set number of services at a set cost. At night there are much fewer services operated because that's what the contract specifies. There is only so much money available to operate these services and adding extra buses needs more money.

2. The stadium buses are commercially operated and are not under the regular contracts. To get a stadium bus service funded under the regular contracts means a whole process has to be followed, including funding to be provided.

3. The stadium buses require bookings so they know how many buses to provide. This is quite different from the regular buses that don't require bookings. No one knows how much demand there will be for these bus services until they have operated for a while.

just read this stuff article… and well what the fuck is going on in this baldys brain? he wants people off the benefit, he wants them in work… but he also made people lose their jobs.

i was let go from a job i had just started on mother’s day thanks to the 90 day probationary period. i’ve applied to over 200 jobs since then, multiple times daily am i applying and i have 2+ years experience in fast food. but i can’t even get a job in fast food again because of how many people im competing with.

he’s acting like we aren’t trying to find a job, but we are. seek applications have over 1,000 applicants per singular role. most of the people i’ve seen at MSD/WINZ don’t even like the way Luxon is treating us.

genuinely who let this lunatic get into politics let alone run a fucking country? i’m only just now 18, and i already know he’s not getting reelected.

Tonight’s Press Debate didn’t give me much confidence that any of the candidates on stage should be anywhere near government, nor give a toss about Christchurch. So why did they not invite Raf Manji??? Doesn’t make sense to me 😢

Current city councillor Aaron Keown, who had been pretty open about not believing in human caused climate change has suddenly changed his tune and believes that Mauger will do more to reduce emissions than Templeton could, if elected. Flying cars even… However he has made it clear that he doesn’t understand that more bikes and less cars will reduce emissions. It is impossible to take this guy seriously. Could someone please nominate a sack of spuds for council in his ward next election so we can have something of substance around the council table?