KEY POINTS:
Three weeks ago, Telecom's chief executive, Paul Reynolds, was singing the praises of "cabinetisation," his company's latest attempt to bring decent broadband services to his long-suffering customers.
In a puff piece in this paper, he said the 3500 roadside cabinets coming to our footpaths represent "one of the most significant infrastructure investments under way in New Zealand today".
That being the case, why was there no provision in the $1.4 billion project for a designer. Someone who could create a box that didn't look like something scavenged 30 years ago from the jumbo bin outside a Lada factory in old East Germany.
Indeed, so ugly and badly installed were the first half dozen of these showpiece cabinets that popped up in Pt Chevalier last week that, after the media hype died down, Auckland City Council officers called a halt until Telecom tidied up its act.
Unfortunately, under the Tele-communications Act, network operators can dig up footpaths and install as ugly a box as they like as of right, so any changes Auckland City can insist on are at best minor.
Pt Chevalier resident Warwick Smith sent me a picture of the catastrophe in Wakatipu St. Here, half the new concrete footpath is blocked by the green monstrosity and its protruding concrete pedestal. His wife, Judy, stands dwarfed by the metal box, as if waiting for Dr Who to emerge and transport her to a more civilised place.
One of these brutes would be bad enough, but more than 400 littering Auckland City footpaths and 3500 nationwide is a style crime against humanity.
We all want Telecom to start delivering the broadband service we pay for but don't receive, but not at any price. It's awful to think those heavy black cables in the sky we defeated a year or so back were not so bad after all.
Des Hughes, Auckland City manager, utility relations, says Telecom has agreed to cut back the protruding front section of the concrete base plates already installed to save pedestrians from tripping. To get the boxes below the 1.8m height limit of the new national environmental standards, he says future base plates will have to be inset into the pavement.
Telecom arrogantly rides rough-shod over the new council footpath policy which widened the pedestrian passageway from 1.5m to 1.8m so a pram or wheelchair could pass with comfort. Preferably, the boxes should go on the grass berm, if there is one. In this case there is a large one going begging.
On a happier note, I got many messages about New Zealand First deputy leader Peter Brown's attack on Asian immigration - none in support - although one did accuse me of being racist for referring to pasty-faced Euros. A few quotes:
From Kupa Hokianga: "I identify myself as Maori, I have a business in Japan and for five years in Korea. I speak Korean, have many Korean friends in NZ. They love NZ, their children with limited English soon become scholars at school, their contribution to NZ is unseen or unheard, the complex networks for commerce between NZ and Asia are reinforced daily. I hear regularly of Japanese language students who have returned to Japan and are advocating NZ.
"These people do more for NZ than all the 100 per cent advertising, delegations or Tradenz, and they do it willingly, unseen and unheard."
Rendy Sugiarto asks what level of integration will be enough for Mr Brown. "If a lot of Asians have tried to speak our Kiwi language, get local friends, get used to Kiwi way of living and still be called not integrating, then I can't think of anything else short of a nose job, eye surgery and skin whitening. Or should it be skin-browning to integrate with the 'real New Zealanders', the Maori? In this, even Mr Brown is not integrating."
Glenn Elliott says: "The Asian students should get a medal for saving Queen St. Before they came it was just badly dressed bogans bashing each other. Now everybody has lifted their standards and it was the Asians who led the way."
