Downright ugly

It’s exhausting on two fronts. The first is working hard to pay for an ever increasing rates burden and the second is reading how these rates are then squandered having to pander to the elites as they misuse the public consultation process to push their own narrow and unpopular agendas.

London County Council-style buildings are rare in New Zealand, because as we can see looking at the Gordon Wilson Flats, they are very ugly buildings. Postwar, Soviet hen houses built quickly over the ruins of bombed London is a style which screams cheap – not good, just cheap, housing.

Functionally the buildings were dogs in London and functionally they are dogs in New Zealand. The style is not people-friendly, and people only live in them because they have nowhere else to go. The hint is in the name of the design.

And yet, the same lobby group which paraded the view from the Victoria Tunnel as ‘iconic’ is at it again. When does the person in the street get to call an ugly building exactly what it is. An ugly building which is too expensive to repair. When do the elites stop forcing the council to spend our money going to court to defend common sense?

Are we to forever be beholden to the taste of these elites who use our rates to further their agendas without public consultation because they know best?