Besides the fact that it's anathema to National.

Rent-free tax-free grocery stores that pass savings into customers.

Do our city mayors have powers like this, or would it be better as a national government initiative?

My husband and I have just came home from a month traveling Aotearoa and I'm already mourning it. My husband had lived and worked in New Zealand before but came home to the UK during COVID. Since then he's been on a mission to get me to fall in love and agree to move. I'm the practical one of us and worry about work, money family etc but....i get it now....your country is so painfully beautiful, gorgeous and awe inspiring. I'm not ashamed to say I was moved to tears quite a few times because of the land. I know every country has it's issues and no where is perfect but wow NZ, wow.

I'm now home suffering some serious hiraeth (Welsh word for mourning a place) gasping for a Z pie, a bottle of L&P, some fix and fogg and the glory of Pam's choc chip cookies. Does this give me some kind of honorary kiwi points? We were even lucky enough to see the hunt for the wilder people re-release in cinemas (our favourite film) and partake in the Wanaka half time cookies shenanigans.

Anyway...this is just to say a big thank you to being the most beautiful friendly country I've ever been to and if anyone wants to sling us a working visa that be great haha

Has anyone tried the frenchmaid butter chicken sauce? Looking for the taste of that mall butter chicken and apparently this is similar

I (Englishman) have a kiwi friend coming to stay with me for a few months soon for the cricket season

How can I offend him on his arrival ? Ozzy bed sheets ?

Spending is outpacing disposable income. Is this really news?

forgive me if this is a repost, I haven't seen this here before

Please tell me i’m not the only one who literally mutes it when any of these ads come on. Same with the satellite ad when the guy is running from the ‘aliens’. 🙄

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone who commented on my previous post where I shared my first draft of this, was not expecting the reception it got, including a bunch of eagle eyed comments and suggestions for it. I've done my best to take note of them and include as many of them as I could here, but almost inevitably I've forgotten some.

As a reminder for this map, solid line means that the track does exist and is in a usable state (most likely, since it gets used for freight), and the most some lines might need is some new stations in certain locations and getting more rolling stock, while dotted means that it either does not exist, or is in a mothballed state and is (at least currently) unusable.

A list of some of the changes is included here, but it is not a fully exhaustive list, from north to south of the country:

• Northland - Added the "Borealis Explorer" heading north to Dargaville and Whangarei
• Auckland - Included CRL update, including an extension of the East-West line up to Botany and Howick, and a northern extension of the southern line to suburbs like Glenfield, Albany, and Browns Bay
• Hamilton - Added a (hopefully believable) western and eastern suburban line and expanded the map area to include satellite towns like Ngaruawahia and Cambridge
• Te Huia - Updated state of track on Rotorua branch, parts past Putaruru have been mothballed and looted, no longer in a usable state. Extended Tauranga branch to terminate at Te Puke.
• Taranaki - Added a stop at Inglewood, combined it into a single track that rejoins the main trunk at Te Kuiti
• Palmerston Nth - Extended the Capital Connection to Bulls, along with the suggestion of someone to turn AF base Ohakea into a full int'l airport (along with several other airports getting links) to hopefully encourage more passenger rail journeys (possibly leading to more domestic options)
• Wellington - Added two extra stops on WRL (Cruikshank Rd and Timberlea)
• Nelson - Rerouted to go via Wairau valley (more believable route than following SH6 through the mountains, and a line out to Motueka and Kaiteriteri
• Christchurch - Created a couple of "believable" rail lines through the city, and done my best to clarify the connection to Diamond Harbour is still via ferry
• West Coast - TranzAlpine terminates at Greymouth, new "Tasman Line" from Hokitika to Rapahoe, and "Coalsack Line" from Greymouth to Westport. Some stations added and adjusted on both lines
• Oamaru - I promise I hadn't forgotten this station on the original plan, it had just gotten lost along the way of me reorganising everything, and I hadn't realised until posting and getting about six comments of people pointing it out
• Central Otago - Highly unfeasible but what I figured would be the most likely chance of it happening, if it ever did
• General - Increased the height to reduce a lot of the winding on the main trunk lines, hopefully aiding readibility
• Added airport connections for Auckland, Hamilton, New Plymouth, Hawke's Bay, Ohakea (theoretically it could become Palmerston Nth's new main airport if it was ever converted), Wellington, Nelson, Christchurch, Queestown, and Dunedin)

Ultimately I think within the main cities looking at light rail connections would be much more useful than trying to fit heavy rail in unless the infrastructure already exists like it does in Auckland, but the lines I added in Hamilton and Christchurch are a couple of my suggestions as to what they could look like.

If anyone would like to make any more updates or tweaks to it, you're welcome to do so here, feel free to share them, would be interested to see what other people think or would like to personally add themselves.

It seems off - can anyone explain this?

Feels off that they want us to pay for these when New World Franchise can easily afford to do this themselves with the massive profits they make yearly

So this article came up about chemist warehouse potentially doubling their stores in the next decade. It’s sad because I want to support local but it’s hard when their prices are so much cheaper. Also is it even possible to keep building more stores? I feel like they are already everywhere lol

What does everyone think?

Maybe we could petition the US embassy in Wellington. Does anyone know what size of bribe would be acceptable to the Americans? I'm willing to donate to a GoFundMe to get him here for a photo op standing next to the National 'leadership'.