I’m so sick of quite a few of the things that consume our lives these days.

I’m sick of not being able to get people on the telephone if needed, of being on hold when you want to talk to someone. I’m sick of red cones, sick of faceless people at Auckland Council making dumb decisions that affect our lives forever. I’m really sick of the word “Covid”. I’m so sick of the constant chaos that is the road between Devonport and Takapuna. I’m so sick of political correctness everywhere we go in our lives. And, I’m really sick of people asking me if I want some feijoas.

I have at my home one of the oldest and largest feijoa trees in Devonport, which produces fruit every two years and drops feijoas as large as hand grenades that clutter my lawn every morning. People come and collect them, and jam and chutney and relish them, make crumbles with them and at times drop me back all sorts of feijoa creations they have toiled over. These usually go into the fridge, hardly ever touched and are disposed of in the next big fridge cleanout. I’ve gathered thousands of them up over the years, and put them down at the end of the road with a big sign saying “FREEJOAS”.  These get collected by enthusiastic dog walkers who bear them off to make some creation out of them. So, please, don’t ask me if I want any feijoas if you see me.  Don’t take offence from this; I’m happy to give them away but please don’t give me any feijoa related items back.

The Unitary Plan is really starting to show its ugliness around the streets of Belmont. Beautiful old houses are being demolished and being replaced by half a dozen 120 square metre units side by side, a huge development on the corner of Bardia Street, the huge retirement village in Ngataringa Road and many other planned projects dotted around the former Navy land at Hauraki and Bayswater. This will result in thousands more people being domiciled around the now-unspeakable Lake Road. All this is happening with no thought for the infrastructure of water, sewerage, stormwater, power and all the other services that are required for living in the city. These new townhouses have little to no parking, so people are parking on the streets, which are narrow, thus creating bottlenecks of traffic as people try to drive through residential streets to avoid Lake Road. Also, they are parking on grass verges, pavements and wherever they can. For every new townhouse there are at least two cars, if not more. Just do the maths, and work out what a bloody maelstrom we will be living in, in 5-10 years’ time. These older suburbs have narrow streets, built for horses and carts in the old days, not for cars parked on both sides and nowhere for emergency vehicles to get through. If your house burns down because the fire engines can’t get through, you’d be the first to moan. I just think we’re heading for a maelstrom at the moment.  We are being badly let down by our city fathers with no prior planning at all, I don’t know how they can sleep at night, with their big fat salaries, while Rome is burning.

A couple of months ago, the great Auckland Council said they had a secret plan for the construction of a new harbour crossing. Is the secret plan, no plan? Every time something happens to the Harbour Bridge we get an instant reaction from the city fathers, saying “We have a plan” but we never get to hear what this plan is. So please, would the city fathers be kind enough to tell us, what is the plan? It would be good to know.

Let’s talk about Watercare – I’m so sick of the propaganda and the countless thousands of dollars that Watercare must be spending on telling Aucklanders about saving water. Congratulating us on being able to save countless litres of water, like kindergarten children sitting on the mat. This is because their inability to plan ahead, and yes, coupled with dry weather, caused the problem. Have Watercare thought about how they are going to provide all these thousands of new dwellings with water?  When you plan to build a new house, each connection costs in the vicinity of $12,000 per new dwelling. So when they’ve paid themselves their big salaries, bought their smart vehicles, and paid for their PR spin, do you think they might think about the aging infrastructure for the storage and supply of our basic commodity that is fresh water.

This city’s inefficiencies are getting out of control. We live in a beautiful country, and Auckland is still a beautiful city but I look around at what is happening and I hate to see what is going on. Perhaps we need to stop, take a breath and get the ground work sorted before we carry on squashing more and more people in.