How tiresome.  The dogmatism that characterised the anti-bypass campaigns has reappeared unchanged for changes around the Basin Reserve.

There are a few newish Taranaki/Tory Street apartments for sale presently.  In particular the new Bellagio complex 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.

Having made a few predictions, I’ve backed myself on iPredict. 

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.

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.

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!

Today’s DominionPost trotted out the old anti-inner city bypass line that communities have been divided.

Is there really anyone who’s found themselves cut off from another part of town by the bypass?  Can people really be that bad at crossing the road?  I’ve found Cuba St, in particular, more pedestrian friendly since the bypass opened.

Indeed, does the Dom have any basis for the claim that there have been any communities divided by the bypass or was this a journalist just too lazy to do more than regurgitate a slogan?

100 Word Blog set out on its first deliberate attempt at photo journalism today.  I thought I’d have a look at the Republic of New Zealand Party’s flag burning on my way to get lunch at Chilli Jam.

Unfortunately there were no flags burnt or otherwise outside Government House.  Perhaps, they meant the other Government House in Auckland.   Surely you wouldn’t go to all the trouble of putting out a press release and then not following through.

The other part of my outing was much more successful.  The rice burger with pork with a side of pan-fried dumplings were great! 

Wellingtonians should have received their voting papers for the STV vs FPP referendum. 

I’ll be voting for STV. 

Ultimately STV favours candidate/s that are more popular with the electorate overall.  FPP can let through the least popular candidate if votes amongst the more popular candidates are split.  STV also means voting for your preferred candidate still matters, even if they have no chance, as your vote will still likely influence the outcome. 

The best argument against STV is that it’s too complicated.  It is true that at the last WCC elections anyone who couldn’t count to 10 was stuffed.

I received one of my first pieces of junk mail for the upcoming election.  What struck me was, as you can see, how motherhood and apple pie the slogans on it were.

These could be slogans for the majority of the candidates standing.  The worst thing about this stuff is that the candidate using it is smart enough to have come up with something much better. 

Which candidate? Click here (although you if you’re able to be fooled by the wonders of Microsoft Paint you may be a little confused )

With Che setting up his website on how to be a tight-wad, I thought I’d celebrate a decade of gluttony.  A habit I’ve acquired is collecting restaurant’s and cafe’s business cards.  It can be handy when someone asks for a recommendation and the pile of cards serves as a memory prompt.   Today’s count (I was trying to tidy up but became waylaid) totalled 168 cards for Wellington alone – I’ve maybe another 80ish from elsewhere.

Click for fullsize.