to be in the city

As always, something that went wrong in Auckland was blamed on the RMA, which as the PM points out isn't fair. It's also not fair to place incredibly large power pylons near peoples homes, no matter how rich they are. I live nowhere near South Auckland, but every time I drive along the southern motorway, I see the massive plylons flanking residential houses and - after I'm over the shock of their ugliness - wonder about cancer rates in those areas, and others near pylons and substations. I agree that we need to spend money, but let's not blame the RMA on doing what it was supposed to do - protect the citizens of this country from harm. I'm sure if the government was to decide the quickest and cheapest way to ensure power supply into Auckland's CBD was to plonk 100KV lines through Remuera, those braying over the last few day's wouldn't be happy.

Though all of this, I had the misfortune to both be subject to diving without traffic lights, and a full days work - the power was still on in the North Shore. Relief, however, came when the generators went down at the company that hosts all of our data (that is, public drives and network applications reliant on databases) , there was nothing to do but surf the net, despite DSL being down in parts of the city with power.