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Greg Bond

@docgregb.bsky.social
154 followers 224 following 525 posts

Squeaky wheel. Still not right. Immigrant / tauiwi. 🩺 🚲 ☕️ 🚉 🏙️ 📍Pōneke, Aotearoa NZ

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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
A story of a systemic failure, by an uncaring edifice, to protect pedestrians by simply allowing them more time to cross a wide road. The ‘car-brained’ prioritising the flow of vehicles over people’s safety - by the local council in this case - ought to be considered wilfully negligent.
Text from the linked article about a dangerous intersection in Napier, NZ.
There is a section of text which I have highlighted - it is a quote from a person discussing their and the community’s long-voiced concerns about safety at the intersection and the local council’s response. 
The quote reads “They were told that it would just impact the flow of traffic so they couldn’t do anything”.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 01/10/2026
Few (more) thoughts about Vancouver. 1. Apartments, everywhere ✅ ✅ ✅ 2. Heritage areas well kept / repurposed (e.g. Granville Is.) - an indoor market should be a no-brainer (hi Wellington). 3. The Seawall bike + pedestrian path is great (for Wgtn this is what Shelley Bay - Scorching Bay should be).
Buildings of the Granville Island Public Market, with trees in the foreground.A very narrow old building, with a pedestrianised area and road crossing with bicycle symbols painted on it in the foreground. Night time view of Vancouver city centre cityscape, in the foreground is its Olympic cauldron.A young girl on a bicycle (the author’s daughter) riding along a bicycle path which is adjacent but seperate from a pedestrian path. The pedestrian path is atop a seawall with the sea on the right. To the left of the bicycle path is dense forest.
In the background is a suspension bridge over the sea inlet and hills on the horizon.
There is no motor vehicle visible or audible at this point.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Mini holiday in Vancouver BC, Canada (first time). Good vibes. Skytrain from airport to city centre was easy & fast (AKL / NZ, please: build mass transit). Late afternoon walk along waterfront to Stanley Park, then trolley bus (remember these Wellington?) home. Looking fwd to the rest of the week.
Picture taken from the back window of a Skytrain in Vancouver BC, Canada View with the left of the picture showing a verdant mixed forest, the right showing the cityscape of Vancouver. There is water and boats in the foreground Cityscape and boats. Vancouver BC, Canada A trolley bus waiting at a bus terminus surrounded by tall trees.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Not to diminish the content of the original post, but surely the more important thing this map shows is that the entire country of New Zealand was busy walking out of the Tasman Sea.
Another shonky map. Instead of best cartographic practice (omitting the mythical country of New Zealand altogether), it has weirdly placed NZ to the south of Western Australia - an altogether inferior location because it shows up on a map.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 18/09/2026
Love a wee train-race on the way home. 📍Wellington, NZ
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 17/09/2026
@theguardian.com No, I will not sign in just to look at your homepage. You (& your affiliates) already hoover up enough of my data as it is. Quit enshittifying things.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 14/09/2026
Good day for a 🚲 ride down from the Uppermost Hutt back to Pōneke. The harbourside section was stunning as usual. On the day that Auckland’s CRL opened, it was good to be reminded that it is at least possible to build good, people-friendly stuff in NZ - not just big highways.
A signpost for bike routes with “Lower Hutt 21km” on one of the signs.A new bridge over Te Awa Kairangi / Hutt River  with a walking and cycling path on one side and a very large water pipe on the other side A shared vision pedestrian and cycling path beside Te Whanganui-a-Tara / Wellington harbour. There is a seating area facing the sea in the foreground.A freight train locomotive passing the photographer on the railway line which runs parallel to the shared walking and cycling path.
City Rail Link this is not.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 08/09/2026
Going to go with a wild guess here and say ‘Anything But Reduce Them’. Because the rules of The Market are that when demand is high prices must rise to suppress demand. And when demand drops off a cliff, prices must rise to suppress shareholders’ rage at a lower dividend.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
You cery deliberately crashed the NZ economy destroying the very jobs they need you catastrophic clowns. And now you want to punish them for leaving this place to find appropriate work for their hard-earned qualifications. Shameful politics. www.rnz.co.nz/news/politic...
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 23/08/2026
Ute not required
A cargo bike with a piece of timber lashed to the side of it
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 19/08/2026
Tories having a sook about the bad democratic choices of their neighbours again? And to affirm that political point the PM admitted he struggles to cross a narrow cycle lane (doesn’t he take a crown limo anyway?). Lots of power, lots of money. Yet nobody wants to vote for them. I wonder why?
A quote from a National Party meeting. Someone asking a question of the prime minister.
“The question is, our conservative voices have got a lot of power, a lot of intelligence, and a lot of money. Yet we do nothing to help conservative voices combat Labour and Greens. So why doesn’t National help conservatives, not necessarily stand for city council, but help the people who are opposing Labour and National, I mean Labour and Greens?”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 16/08/2026
Some wildly optimistic timings for the Johnsonville line seen on the platform shelter at Khandallah. I’d love to do Wellington to Crofton Downs in 3 minutes - though the speeds up the sinewy Ngaio gorge & through the tunnels would be insane.
A window sticker on a platform shelter building purporting to show journey time times between train stations on a local railway line in Wellington, NZ.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 03/08/2026
Busy backyard bird cafe today
A sparrow perched on a bird feeding deviceTwo bird feeding devices - a nectar feeder and a seed feeder - hanging from a tree. There is a tūī on the nectar feeder and two sparrows on the seed feeder.A tūī bird perched on a nectar feeder.A tūī perched on a nectar feeder. It’s perched in such a way as to resemble a reversed letter C.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Didn’t get round to posting earlier, but it was a (ice-coated) cracker of a morning for a ride up to child-care & on to work. One wee quibble though: no wind meant that all the ICE-powered cars were spewing their fumes in lingering, dense, cough-inducing clouds. Sooner we decarbonise the better.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 13/07/2026
Just because I don’t yet have a beanstalk does not mean that the can of magic beans I purchased for myself will never grow one. And thanks to Mr. Seymour’s patented Red-Tape Reduction recipe we’ll see magic beanstalks, sorry - supermarkets - popping up all over the country… any day now!
A picture of a can of cannellini beans on a cupboard shelf
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 10/07/2026
Starting to have heretical thoughts about where you can and cannot beat on a good day. (I’m trying to convince myself that it’s pure luck + latitude that the weather and vibes are like 900% better than we’ve had in Welly lately).
Cityscape of Auckland with a marina in the foreground, on a sunny blue sky day.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Sure, let’s do that. It’s certainly worth a try. Seeing as repeatedly doing the exact opposite doesn’t seem to be the working out too well.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Totally agree. Sure it’s not every parent’s cup of tea, but IMO it’s amongst the best playgrounds anywhere. Was a highlight for my two kids when we lived there: they’d ask to go to ‘the rocks’ as a detour from the ‘boring’ casino-lined riverbank (the youngest being 2 when we first started going).
A small girl (author’s daughter) climbing a large boulder with hand grips in a playground in Melbourne, Australia. Note that the surrounding ground is made of a soft spongy material.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
Today’s almost exclusively bike/shared-path adventure around the harbour (Welly Stn - Thorndon Quay - Hutt Rd - Te Ara Tupua - Petone Foreshore - Tupua Horo Nuku - Eastbourne. Some old sections (looking at you Hutt Rd / Waione Bridge / Port Rd / Days Bay) should be upgraded. The new paths are fab.
Screenshot of a map with a blue line indicating the bike route around Wellington harbour from Wellington station to Eastbourne.A section of Tupua Horo Nuku, the Eastern Bays cycleway (it’s also sea defences protecting the road!) looking around a bay with a boat shed above the water. Bush clad slopes in the background.Matiu / Somes Island in Wellington harbour on a clear morning.A view of the city of Wellington in the distance across the harbour from the suburb of Eastbourne.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 22/06/2026
I see reactionary councillors are at it again today in the never ending campaign to make our streets & workers less safe. Unless that’s a toddler’s play spade for scale, the hole pictured is not - in any sane version of the universe - a ‘small hole’. I think the technical term is a “truck tipper”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 21/05/2026
Tell me again who has ‘won the Lotto’?
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Few thoughts on Te Ara Tupua. 1. Really well designed & fun to ride (even with small kids). 2. The older paths along Hutt Road & up the Ngauranga gorge really need upgrading. A link across Petone Esplanade to Jackson St needed too. 3. Finally: toilets + a shelter at Ngauranga (for bus users too).
View of a coastline towards hills and a distant city (Wellington, NZ) taken from a bridge over a railway line in the foreground.View of a cycle and pedestrian path stretching into the distance under a cloudy sky, beside a harbour.View of a cycle and pedestrian path with a railway line alongside. A train is on the railway line. On the other side of the path is the sea.A wide view of a coastline, with a cycle and pedestrian path along the top of the sea wall, and a railway line then highway running alongside.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
It’s really good! Te Ara Tupua path - between Wellington and Petone.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Can ride here with both kids: the older one way ahead and the little one still gaining her confidence. Point being: give people good, safe - fun even - options to get around.
Small child (author’s child) riding on their bike on a wide new bike path beside a railway line on one side and the sea on the other side.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Can’t do this on State Highway 2
A child (the author’s kid) riding their bicycle on a cycle path bridge. The path is newly opened, linking Wellington and Petone in New Zealand, and replaces the non-option of riding with kids on a 100km/h 4-lane highway.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 09/05/2026
$3/kg pick your own apples (lots of varieties) at Molewood orchard if you’re in / passing through Greytown. Weekends only until 1st of June, per their website. Great way to while away ½ - 1 hour, esp with kids in tow: and cheaper than the supermarket too.
Rows of apple trees, laden with ripe apples, in an orchard with a grass path between them.Apples in a bucketA variety of apples in a sink with water to wash them.A hand drawn schematic map of an orchard detailing all the varieties of apples to pick
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 06/05/2026
Something to look forward to in a few weeks then 🚶‍♂️ 🚲 www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/te-... (May newsletter)
Screenshot of Te Ara Tupua newsletter advising it is opening on Saturday 16 May. Includes a photo of a bike and pedestrian path running alongside a harbour, under blue skies.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 02/05/2026
Two contrasting things that popped up in my feed this evening: A universal Benefit that gave a leg-up for so many; now (of course) long gone. And a completely unnecessary Benefit that retired (before 1999) MPs continue to enjoy despite escalating costs. Glad we’ve got our priorities right.
Screenshot of a Bluesky post regarding the now long-defunct family benefit, a universal benefit which was paid to the main caregiver for child(ren) in a family - most often their mother.
The effect of which was to open up opportunities for those children. Screenshot of a Newsroom NZ article about the rising cost of a perk granted to retired MPs (stopped for any MP after 1999) that gives a 90% rebate on 12 domestic return flights per year and the equivalent of 1 international business class return flights from NZ to London per year.
Of course the only beneficiaries of this are people of a certain generation.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 22/04/2026
Finally managed to track down a copy in NZ - been looking forward to reading this for a while @thewaroncars.bsky.social The rubbish weather here’s the perfect excuse to get into it.
A book being held in my hand. It is yellow and white with the title “Life After Cars”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 03/03/2026
They just keep foisting the costs of their fossil-fuelled addictions on everyone: taxing our electric bills to import overpriced LNG & increasing fuel tax to pay for vastly over-specced roads most of us will never use. Meanwhile they insist individuals must pay for the mess caused by climate change.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 02/03/2026
I see we’ve skipped summer, and given up on autumn after just one day this year.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
This article nails it. I don’t think it’s well understood that a significant amount of a GP’s clinical admin is done at home, often in the evenings. Paid, protected time to do some of this in work-hours would be a game-changer. But the funding doesn’t exist for that. www.rnz.co.nz/news/on-the-...
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
Guessing the gift-wrapped train is an Auckland train which is very lost and not an early delivery of one of the new Wairarapa trains?
Two stationary trains, one with a layer of wrapping covering it.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 20/12/2025
Rotten luck. I’ve been lucky once when flying, and a few times from land (though in fairness, I did live in New Plymouth for a year a while ago).
A snow-capped mountain peak surrounded by lower cloud.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
My happier space is up the hills behind where we live. The views, whatever the weather, are always changing and always amazing, even just looking at my photos of them. If you need it, I hope you got to visit your happier space today.
View through a gap in the bush over the city of Wellington and the harbour Te Whanganui-a-Tara, taken from the upper slopes of Tarikākā / KaukauEvening view over hilly paddocks to a windfarm, the Cook Strait, and the outer parts of the Marlborough Sounds. The setting sun has created a colourful sky on the horizon.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 08/12/2025
Two buttons meme.
One button marked “make them work through more of the summer to boost ‘productivity’ “
The other marked “make them take all of the holidays at the same time so we can price gouge”
A finger hovers between the buttons.
In the lower picture is a man looking anxious and visibly sweating - captioned “NZ Business Owners”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 04/12/2025
Wellington’s new IKEA *sucks*. Too smøll.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
We can hope that they read to the bottom of the Police press release, & understand it too. Whether or not a journalist or talk-back host chooses to distinguish, or in bad faith doesn’t, is another matter entirely.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 01/12/2025
Fascinating RNZ Pacific article about the ruinous ripple effects of privatising PNG’s govt-run roads department. Reads like a parable for our times, and for our motu as well. How a World Bank funding condition in 1995 helped break Papua New Guinea's roads system www.rnz.co.nz/internationa...
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 30/11/2025
I’m confused by Watts’ assertion that the “the broader taxpayer [is] better off”, as if taxpayers are not also ratepayers too. It’s just deflecting blame onto local councils for the govt’s fiscal choices. Guess which assets will be considered ripe for privatisation when councils are impoverished?
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
Can’t beat Wellington…
View of Pōneke / Wellington and surrounding hills + sea, taken from the Skyline trail atop the hills forming the western boundary of the city. The weather is fine with high clouds. View from the Skyline trail in Pōneke / Wellington looking out to the west with Te Waipounamu / South Island in the distance over the sea.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 24/11/2025
So, for here’s how Black Friday works: 1). Kids water bottle: $14.99 2). Get a black sharpie and cross that price out. 3). Re-price at $20.99 (+40%) 4.) Sell in the Black Friday week “sale” as half-price ($10.50)* *Only if another item is purchased. Either way you have to spend more than $14.99.
Price label from a child’s water bottle with alterations as described in the post
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 23/11/2025
Once again begging that small cohort of people who struggle with it to figure out what a 1.5m gap looks like between the left side of their vehicle and a bike. And if there’s not enough room to pass, then wait like 5 seconds until there is. Please. www.nzta.govt.nz/roadcode/gen...
Screenshot from NZTA website about safe driving around cyclists - including the text “Give cyclists plenty of room when passing them - allow at least 1.5m between you and the cyclist if you can.
Wait for a clear space before passing a cyclist on a narrow road.”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Good work Kiwirail / Great Journeys of NZ: I’d love to make more climate-friendly travel choices! Shame that rail services between cities here are so darned infrequent (every second day Wellington to Auckland?!), slow, and incredibly expensive. So close to getting it.
Screenshot from a marketing email from
Great Journeys of New Zealand, showing a train pulled by a diesel locomotive on a railway line with overhead electrification crossing a viaduct, surrounded by verdant forest.Screenshot of text from marketing email from Great Journeys of New Zealand advertising their new carbon calculator tool (allowing you to compare emissions on rail journeys to other modes).
The majority of the text is unimportant, but highlights include suggestion of making “more climate-friendly choices”.
Ironically, there are very few train services in New Zealand, and they are very expensive to use, even compared to flying.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 18/11/2025
Apropos of discussions about @andrewlittlenz.bsky.social and WCC reviewing the Golden Mile upgrades. I’m in Waitohi Johnsonville Library - it’s a fantastic, public, space to be in. Lambton Quay & Courtney Place can also be made into fantastic (or at least better than now) spaces for people to be.
Interior photograph of Waitohi Johnsonville Library - a modern, bright and airy space.
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 17/11/2025
Looking forward to all our pro-parking councillors wholesale rejecting this proposal to turn Vivian Street into a motorway. After the business apocalypse apparently caused on Thorndon Quay for a cycle way, there can be no way they’d let this happen. Right? www.rnz.co.nz/news/nationa...
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Simplistic ideological fixes from Simeon again. All to avoid fixing underlying issues that create the demand. How do they think an arbitrary target will be met when there’s not the workforce capacity? And what do they think will happen to GPs not meeting targets & getting their funding cut?
Screenshot of Newsroom.co.nz opinion piece.
Alludes to the determinants of poor health being poverty & poor housing, but that the current government is ideologically opposed to addressing these.

URL: https://newsroom.co.nz/2025/11/14/health-minister-walks-alone-down-the-boulevard-of-broken-dreams
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
It’d sure be good if you did have to,* even if it was only a single digit % rate. And you should be proud to pay tax: it’s what stands between having a functioning country with services available for all and a corporate, user-pays, dystopia. *Being NZ, the answer is “no, but”, or ‘nahyeah’.
Screenshot of Radio New Zealand (RNZ) article titled “Will I have to pay tax if I give my kids $150k? - Ask Susan”
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Greg Bond @docgregb.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
On the one hand, yes - upgrade the crossings: it’s A Good Thing. But AIUI, there’s no proposal to raise the line speed. And, per Metlink’s website, there’s only going to be an additional 4, maybe 6 trains a day going to & from Palmy. I’m clearly an idiot, but I really don’t see the issue?
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