I’ve campaigned in every general election since 96 and most AKL local govt elections of the last 15 years. I also campaigned in student elections & internal Alliance elections where most face to face options weren’t available eg door knocking. There are many ways to campaign...
... some involve getting in someone’s bubble but most don’t. Door knocking, large meetings and leafleting are out in L3, but can be managed in L2 (and with some imagination actually you could come up w replacements in L3). Campaigning thru phone, email, social media, radio...
... broadcast TV, YouTube, news and other websites, street corners (spaced out w speaker), hoardings, posters, direct mail can all continue in L3, and most even in L4. No doubt there are new ways that will emerge too. I don’t think the argument for delay based on...
... inability to campaign washes atm. The decision should be based on whether or not the machinery of the election (voting booths, advance voting, distributing and counting, scrutineering etc) can be done safely, imho. Face to face is most effective (research tells us)...
... but it’s not the only way. In all my campaigning since 1996 I don’t think I ever knocked on a door until 2002. Some parties don’t door knock at all, universally or in some seats. FIN
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I know it can feel like all we (NZ) did was delay things. But quite apart from considering all the nice things we were able to have in the last two years by deferring death & sickness, we also gained a lot of ground that will decrease death & sickness in the coming weeks… 1/n
For a start we are more vaxxed and boosted than ever before, and the science tells us that does make a difference with omicron - those who catch COVID with some vax are much less likely to end up in hospital or die. The vaxxed are also less likely to infect others eg less… 2/n
… severe symptoms like coughing, sneezing, and for a shorter period, means less virus being spread than from those who get sicker. There are cases now of household contacts in vaxxed houses who aren’t catching it off an infected housemate. Also because we have better… 3/n
I used to run fundraising second hand book sales for @CityVisionNZ. This was also a recycling effort, plus providing cheap books. What was intended to be my final sale was crashed by Covid and I had thousands of books stored downstairs at my house; they needed to go! 2/n
At the start of 2021 I began getting the boxes ready to start dropping off to the big Rotary etc sites. I managed a couple of car loads but then I broke my wrist and I couldn't drive or lift boxes for ages. By the time I could it was August 2021 & we were back in lockdown. 3/n
I worked in retail at a number of different shops part time from about 1992-2000. A lot of that time was at Whitcoulls, at what I can see now was probably it’s most successful period. I remember they did a massive staff survey and discovered...
A) staff paid under (the then) minimum wage. I was on a high rate of $7.90 so you can imagine how low that was. B) staff employed at a younger age than company policy allowed C) Many shop staff were underpaid for the role they were in. D) Lots of arbitrary pay arrangements...
So they did a huge overhaul of the pay scales. There was no collective agreement - I never met another union member the whole time I worked there (about five years all up). But they came up with this pretty promising pay system where each role had a range and it was clear...
Part of the problem with the continuing investment in Enormous Roading Projects is the huge lead in times for these projects vs smaller safety, active transport or PT ones. They get contracted further out, have huge sunk costs before you even get to that, so v hard to stop. 1/
Whereas smaller projects, like say a pedestrian crossing for a school on a busy road, only get contracted a short time out, have relatively low cost in terms of design, consultation etc. Much more vulnerable to delay that becomes deferral that becomes never. 2/
These smaller projects also generally have much much lower profiles in the community - pissing off a school with 200 kids is lower risk than pissing off a whole suburb or town or region, who have been expecting delivery. This applies to both the politicians and the staff 3/
I am not a religious person, but how anyone can look at groups like Mt Roskill Evangelical Fellowship, going through this awful disease in their midst, worried and scared, and not think There But For The Grace Of X Go I. Have some compassion and kindness please.
And I have heard that a lot of them are doing it really tough at the moment. They are getting a lot of hate from outside the community, when they are already going through a terrible time. You don't need to add to it.
Some of them will probably die. Others will have to live with life long disability. That's a lot to deal with already. Remember "people are the solution"? Shame doesn't help, in fact it harms and puts people off getting help, tests, that can protect us all.
I'm thinking about the challenge for AKL, as a city/region, of operating in and out of L3 for the next few years. How do we effectively operate libraries, water systems, housing (dealing w homelessness, new builds, WOF, retro fitting and more), park networks, transport? 1/
Some of our normal income streams will be unavailable, hard hit, by both level changes and the loss of international tourism, so how do we replace that? More green jobs is an obv step forward, but how to pay for that work, opex, capex? 2/
So not just what do we support but what do we shift away from - what do we de-prioritise and how can we make sure that doesn't reduce money in the local economy, but instead uses local multiplier effect to full advantage nefconsulting.com/our-services/e… 3/