There are a few newish Taranaki/Tory Street apartments for sale presently. In particular the new Bellagiocomplex has a few people bailing out at what is probably a hefty discount to what they paid. This is when there’s a huge amount of apartment construction going on in this part of town.
If people are bailing out of the apartments now what will happen once purchasers of developments like the just started Soho apartments, which seemed aimed at investors, need to ask the bank to lend them the pre-credit crunch purchase price? I’m calling a Wellington apartment crash for 2009.
In what’s become a biennial event, the Far Right and Left are having another Labour Weekend protest and counter-protest.
This’ll be the first notable outing of Kyle Chapman’s Nationalist Alliance, which will no doubt prove just to be the same old collection of skinheads and white supremacists. On the other side the plain anti-racists will no doubt be accompanied by the masked anti-bypass/GE/Bush/deodorant crowd who’ll help things get messy.
Apparently, the Nationalist Alliance are expecting to gather 100 people for what they hope will move them beyond the politicle sideshows of their past efforts. That won’t happen.
3 News ran a rather analysis free report on Northland land dispute. While stating that the Crown Law Office is investigating farmer Allan Titford’s claims around problems with the sale of his land, the nature of these problems wasn’t clear.
In Wellington Central I’m backing Robertson (bought 25 at 80c) but think Franks is underpriced (bought 14 at 15c but have a sell order for 18.7c).
For the overall election outcome I’ve shorted both a National majority (50 at 23.41c) and National getting more than 48% (14 shares but an order to cover that should it reach 44c). Also I’ve bought Clark remaining PM (100 at 26c but selling for 30c, which tonight’s poll supports).
I’ve also lost 15c by misreading a bet on the OCR.
So if a regular Lotto Powerball ticket gives you ten ‘one in 38 million’ chances to win $30 million, then a $11 investment should give an average return of 86c in the dollar*. That’s a better return than you would have made on the NZX since the beginning of September.
*Ok there are the other divisions and the $30 million will get won by by second division winners if there’s not a first division winner but that maths is time consuming.
You can get a protest rent a crowd together for anything these days. The Wellington pro-pigeon lobby is a prime example – these people are pro-vermin, perhaps they’ll picket New World tomorrow for selling mouse traps. Were I to harass them at lunchtime the way a pigeon would they’d call the Police.
Pigeons are germ carrying, squawking, building soiling, shit machines that have no more place in the CBD than rats or any other creature that carpets public places with their excrement. The sooner the council gets on with culling pigeons the better.
With the real campaign having kicked off, the efforts of two minnow parties stood out for me.
RAM’s anti-GST on food petition, which leveraged their membership, is great grass roots organisation. This issue could have been picked up by any of the populist parties but only RAM put runs on the board with it. They should crack four figures voting results – a significant minnow achievement.
The Family Party clearly took on board the lessons of Destiny’s 2005 campaign. Their coherent, persistent and active campaign to win South Auckland seats has far exceeded minnows’ normal low standards.
While it’s been a busy time in 100 Word land recently, there was an interesting diversion in the back yard yesterday – our first Tui.
With the sanctuary and all the possum poisoning in the Town Belt during the past few years, Tuis seem to be a lot more common place in central Wellington. All we need now to see more native birds is more native trees for them to feed off. Perhaps the council could see the wisdom of planting something other than olive trees round Mt Vic and those new palm trees at the hospital are just silly – Wellington’s not Fiji!
