While I was in conversation with an engineer friend at New World near the fish department, he recalled a column I wrote many years ago about a by-road linking the Harbour Bridge and the central peninsular area at Belmont. My concept was to make a main route down Bayswater Avenue from Belmont virtually to Sir Peter Blake Parade, bypassing the marina on the northern side. From there, there would be an elevated two- or four-lane road built on concrete piles above Shoal Bay linking into the Harbour Bridge area near the Northcote motorway roundabout. This could either be constructed elevated or by building a causeway which would be slightly elevated in the middle to allow boats under. So basically, travelling north, you could sweep off near the old toll plaza, sweep across the motorway onto the elevated road right down into Bayswater Avenue. The people of Bayswater probably wouldn’t like this concept, but if you do anything in this country, someone is going to complain. Coming from Belmont, you would drive down Bayswater Avenue onto the roadway, which would be just south of the hotel at the end of Bayswater Avenue, onto the elevated roadway that would sweep, taking traffic south onto the Harbour Bridge or north onto the Northcote roundabout area. This concept would sort Lake Road out once and for all. Elevated roadways are seen right throughout the world, including the Florida Keys. I cannot understand why it couldn’t work in this situation.

While we are talking about roadways, I’m led to believe that the Penlink construction is running well behind schedule. That is the piece of road linking the central Whangaparāoa area to the northern motorway. I also believe this is only a one-lane each way piece of infrastructure. It seems crazy to go to all this work without building for the future, that is, a two-way piece of infrastructure. I know this piece of roading had been in the works for many, many years, and finally it is getting done, which is a good thing, but whether one-way each way is the way to go... I don’t think so.

Here’s one for you: Kainga Ora (formerly Housing New Zealand) in the last few months has been selling off a bunch of their houses throughout Auckland. A good friend of mine bought one as a first home. Using her KiwiSaver, minimal savings that she had and after much deliberation with her bank, she managed to scrape enough money together to put a tender in for the purchase of a small two-bedroom house on its own site (freehold, not cross lease). The effort and drama she went through to put the funds together was extraordinary, so good on her. These houses are sold in the ‘as is where is’ form; therefore, there is no comeback to Kainga Ora if there are any problems. Due diligence was done by my friend, including the discovery of a leaking tile roof which had been an ongoing problem for the previous tenant. On moving in, she received a huge water bill from Watercare. She disputed this bill, but as Watercare do in their own wonderful manner, they just kept sending her bills. After the first couple of weeks, she called a plumber in. The plumber discovered there was a constant leak in the toilet, very hard to detect for an elderly person, but 24 hours a day the water bill was racking up. When the plumber went under the house, which was a very small crawl space of only two feet, he discovered that neither the bathroom nor the kitchen waste water was connected to any of the cesspits on the outside; it was all running straight under the house. So, the previous Kainga Ora tenant had been living with their waste water (not the toilet water but kitchen and bathroom water) flowing straight out of the house and into the ground below them. Also, once my friend moved into the house, she discovered that the heat pump was not connected – just installed but never working.

So, the government tells us to get rental accommodation up to healthy homes standards while all along, their houses are far, far away from being healthy homes at all. This one particular property that the former tenant lived in had a leak from broken tiles on the roof, the heat pump not working and both the shower, hand basin and kitchen sink all flowing into the ground underneath the house. So, make something out of that one if you like.

I’ve really enjoyed the football World Cup over the last couple of months. An extraordinary level of top sports played in extraordinarily wonderful stadiums, filled to the brim with spectators. Oh, so nice to follow and get positive news of instead of the normal sadness that goes on around the world, i.e. the Ukrainian war and the Middle East conflicts. I so love sports at the top level, and that certainly was it.