Life in the gondola lane
World's poorest apology, world's poorest PM, duopolies making us poor, and a chest full of medals
It’s a beautiful May morning and I’m out running with the rising sun and my heart is full, but elsewhere there is drizzle. So let’s begin there and make our way towards the golden light.
Good morning Simon Henry, corporate legend and unreconstructed 1970s bloke.
Let us behold your Apology of a Highly Efficient Person.
Man! You could really stay on top of life’s inbox when you communicate in this highly-focused and outcome-oriented manner.
Woman sought for position of spouse. Domestic duties, extension of lineage, social engagements etc. No timewasters pls.
To: Family
Re: Funeral
Sorry to see her go obviously. Regret cannot attend, have emergency board meeting re ludicrous PR problem.
Have transferred funds for flowers spelling MUM as requested. Pls send receipt.
Good morning to the good people of Doppelmayr, who propose a gondola to carry persons and bikes across the waters of the Waitematā. I know your work well, as a user of skis.
Please give me a moment now to figure out how to get down this slope. How might I reconcile being in favour of your facilities being strung across a mountain in a National Park, but hesitant about pylons and cables in a beautiful harbour?
My reasoning is as follows: it's a huge mountain and the pylons are dwarfed. It's not a huge harbour, pylons and cables strung across it could be altogether more intrusive and disappointing. But do please by all means put together some nice pictures, I accept my misgivings may be misguided.
Meanwhile, OMG Uncle Dave, asked mates this morning why this gondola and not your travelator you’ve been proposing for so ever long?
I have to say, that the whole bike bridge business has made me gun-shy of bold proposals. Futile to argue that $800 million would have been but a fraction of the billions you'd end up spending on any kind of cross-harbour vehicle/rail bridge or tunnel, better to deal with the here and now.
Here's my feeling for the here and now: the best thing we can do is normalise an abundance of biking the way they’ve managed to do so swiftly in Paris.
And the swiftest and easiest way to achieve that is to just use just one lane of the existing bridge for bikes the way it's worked in so many other cities. Vast instant capacity!
Then maybe one day when bikes are everywhere, the calls will come for fancier facilities and it will be absolutely no big deal.
And then I’ll be right here with my Travelator drawings.
Good morning Australia, Godspeed as you prepare to vote.
Here's some deeply satisfying work by James Ley about Australia’s absolute charlatan of a Prime Minister. Every line is a gem, here’s a taste.
He has never baulked at any hypocrisy, small or large. He speaks in order to make the very act of questioning him an exercise in futility, addressing no concrete reality beyond the immediate imperative to generate static. It is a form of anti-oratory: the rhetorical equivalent of avoiding an awkward conversation by starting up a leaf blower.
And here’s the voter’s guide the Murdoch media will never give you.
Good morning to our Supermarket Duopoly, possibly/probably subjecting us to duopolistic prices. We now have a Commerce Commission finding, but will we just stop here at a resigned what are you going to do shoulder shrug? Or is there something that can be done?
This work by Consumer says: YES.
Yes, the duopoly does indeed set prices higher than they could be.
Yes, there's a possibility we could remedy this at the wholesale level.
Well, let's try that, why don't we? You may feel like signing their petition. I did.
Good morning to the children who are our future. I don't know if it's universal, but most every reader I talk to tells me how much they like Thursday School Journal’s Ms Barry and Room 13 and I'm very glad you do.
Reader Sue Boyde alerted me to this lovely bit of work, and I liked it not only for clarifying something I have not been quite clear about, but also because this feels very much like the kind of thing that would get made in Room 13.
Well done, seven year old Eden!
Good morning to the seat of our constitutional monarchy, located at the absolute farthest possible remove from Aotearoa.
This spectacle prompts many thoughts, but above all this one: I wonder if I could lift my Zoom game with a fancier chair.
"This is an apology the snowflakes in Human Resources and Legal are making me write". But seriously, you wouldn't actually want to take a call from this guy even if he remembered to do so.
Never think those thrones look that comfortable to be honest, but Noblesse Oblige and all that I suppose. But go for it, you are a prince of sorts among men.
I'm sorry David, but the good burghers of AT have made it clear that the answer to every question is Anything But A Bike Lane.