Mike Hosking
All over Auckland now, we are seeing the signs of resistance.
maintenance, and there would be a community car. Look it up, it’s worth watching. Now back at the Daisy building, to be fair to the developers if they can build a place and sell it to willing purchasers, then who am I to tell them what to do.
But the more important question, is did they build this because they thought it was a good idea, or did they build it because the council told them to, there is a big difference.
The developer operating on their own volition is meeting a potential demand
The developer doing it under council instruction is acquiescing to an ideological plan designed to force us into submission whether we like it or not.
And if it’s the council and their agenda that’s produced Daisy then we need to fight back.
All over Auckland now, we are seeing the signs of resistance.
The local businesses who are over the endless bus and bike lanes that prevent people getting access to their shops.
The lack of parking that prevents people getting to their shops, the ideological rubbish that’s being exposed around bike lanes and their usage.
From Devonport to Mt Eden there are protests and meetings involving people who have not, and quite sensibly will not, buy into the dogma that if only we get every car off the road, public transport and your scooter can fill the gap. It’s crap.
Even if people loved buses and trains, which they don’t, there aren’t enough of them or anywhere close.
People like convenience, people need to go from A to B . . . not from down the road from “A” to a good walk away from “B”.
Kids need dropping, errands need running, life needs to be conducted and for the vast majority of us that’s not possible on public transport.
So here’s your cold hard reality, when Daisy, or buildings like it get built and there are no car parks, the cars get put on the street and the street becomes full and the busi- nesses find it hard to get customers in the door.
You see by operating in a theoretical way you fail to deal with the truth, the facts, with real life.
The reality is the car is going nowhere.
Look at how many cars we have. Look at the sales of cars, they’re at record levels, why? Because we want and like cars, they suit our lives and the lives we choose to live.
And the council and the developers can poopoo it, they can argue the issues around cars till they’re old and grey, but the cars aren’t going away.
The trick to an argument, or an ideology, is to convince people of its sense and purpose. When it comes to driving cars out of the city, the argument is being lost, and increasingly badly. And that’s why you’re starting to see the meetings and the protests, because the theory — all the stuff they dreamed up on their council whiteboards and gleaned from their international brain washing conferences — doesn’t work, it’s not practical, and it’s sucking up increasing amounts of public money. The apartment I want has the view, the balcony, the storage facility and three car parks. If it doesn’t I’m not buying.