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Los Angeles prior to World War II was a bit of a joke; it was isolated and difficult to get to; it had Hollywood but not much else. If you research the 1930s golden age of Hollywood you will be hard pushed to find a single movie actually set in Los Angeles – even the movie moguls considered their own city a joke! San Francisco was the major California city, home to banking and corporate headquarters. San Diego was home to the naval base. Even during the war, troops exiting the US for the Pacific left from San Francisco. LA was on very few radar screens.
My father was born in 1934 in Glendale, California, a town at the southern end of the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles. In those pre-war years the Valley was mostly empty, consisting of orange groves, a few towns scattered along its southern edge, and Warner Bros.’ film studio in Burbank. He once said the Taieri Plains (where I live) south of Dunedin reminded him of the San Fernando Valley of his boyhood – lots of farms and market gardens, a couple of towns but basically empty.
Then along came the end of World War II and things changed quite significantly and rapidly. If you’re familiar with the Taieri Plains (roughly the same size as the San Fernando Valley) try to imagine an Auckland being built there in twenty years; that is what happened in the Valley. In two decades it went from orange groves to being the size of Auckland. How did this happen, you ask? Well, they just cracked on with it.
So imagine my hoots of laughter reading the silly rantings of Bryce Edwards on the BFD, shocked that three ministers will be able to fast-track economic development. One thing which struck me is how the left-wingers are judging everybody by their own standards with hand-wringing about “corruption”, “unbridled power”, doing the bidding of donors, and similar claims. Because some people accept bribes from Communist China and election funds from criminals they just assume everyone else is a crook too.
The hysteria of Rachel Brooking MP – who I didn’t realise until just now is the MP for Dunedin – is so funny it’s taken me nearly an hour just to write this sentence. Her concerns about New Zealand becoming a “banana republic” are hilarious. The Vice-Chancellor of the university in her own electorate bribed his employer with a $21 million handout to cover his salary, expenses, super, and bonuses for the duration of his new career – with her full support.
These people are judging others by their own low standards. The fact is we need twenty years worth of infrastructure projects, twenty years worth of new housing, and twenty years worth of many other projects and we need them by the end of this decade. There are plenty of businessmen happy to provide this if only they’re given the opportunity to do so. It is time to crack on with it.
All concerns about the Fast Track Approvals bill are either misplaced – or it really doesn’t matter because the end result is two decades overdue. It is time to act like adults; the one thing left-wingers simply cannot do.
