The Mike Hosking Breakfast Newstalk ZB

You'll likely know the name – and you'll definitely know the voice and the iconic songs.

The Grammy and Oscar-nominated rock band Counting Crows are back in New Zealand for the first time since 2015 as part of their Butter Miracle Tour - named after their latest album.

It all started in 1991 and has turned into seven studio albums, 20 million in record sales and being named one of the world's most pre-eminent live touring rock bands.

Their frontman is Adam Duritz who joined Mike Hosking.

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Wayne Brown has read the room right on this one.

He now has Vector on board. They claim the road cone chaos costs them $30 million a year and, on top of that, their maintenance and restoration work is delayed and that affects everyone who wants to turn a light on.

The support will grow. These are the very issues that make-or-break political careers.

Too much of today's debate is about worthy and, ultimately, pointless exercises - far reaching never-never sort of discussions that, in theory, are interesting or important or transformational but will, in reality, go nowhere.

The current Government bailing on the clunker car scheme is your classic example. When it was launched it was saving the planet and the importance could not be more profound.

By the time it was dumped last week it was too complicated to put in place and really wouldn't have made much of a difference anyway.

Political discourse, locally and nationally, is filled with this sort of time-wasting nonsense.

In the meantime, on the ground, in the real world, all we want to do is get to work or to the mall or to school for the pick-up.

It is hard to truly explain what a mess Auckland is because of traffic management. It is an onerous, rage inducing mess that must cost the city hundreds of millions in lost productivity.

It is a classic example of an idea wildly out of control and the clever politician sees it and seizes on it.

What makes Wayne Brown electable is this basic sort of, dare I suggest, good old-fashioned representation.

While most councillors argue over their lunches or e-bikes or cycle lanes or public transport, Wayne sees cones. And we see cones.

We see a sea of cones and we hate them. Not because you don’t need cones but because the power has gone to their heads. Because the obsession around traffic has gotten out of control. Because Auckland has been ground to a halt because of them.

When you need a metre, they take ten. The closures, the detours, the hold ups, the aggro, the honking, the delays and the accidents.

And then there's the cost - the cost of the cones and the cost of not doing business.

This is street level politics, literally and figuratively.

The luvvies in the media that hate Brown will hate this, because he's onto it.

Second terms and popular support are built on this sort of bricks and mortar stuff. Make people's lives easier and you get their vote.

It's never been hard. It's just that most of them can't see it.
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Concerns among Credit Suisse shareholders in the wake of its purchase by main rival UBS.

The $3.2-billion purchase has been driven by regulators, but normally shareholders would have a say in whether a takeover happens.

Credit Suisse's largest shareholder, Saudi National Bank, has lost more than US$1 billion from the purchase.

JMI Wealth Director Andrew Kelleher told Mike Hosking it raises an important question of what might happen in similar situations.

He says shareholders may start to think of cutting and running earlier and wonders if this will accelerate or exacerbate other issues.

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The world's first pay it forward Shopify app has just hit the market.

The app connects with a business’ Shopify sites and at the point of checkout customers can make a donation that goes to the chosen charities.

The app had been in the works since 2020 by the company GoGenerosity but has been launched three months earlier to help provide some relief to those impacted by the cyclones.

So far more than $1800 worth of donations have been raised.

GoGenerosity CEO Rohan McCloskey joined Mike Hosking.

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A nervous day for European share markets ahead of the first day of trading since the purchase of Credit Suisse.

Markets started the day sharply lower, but have recovered slightly, with the London Stock Exchange closing on around 0.9 percent.

In Switzerland, Credit Suisse's new owner UBS also closed on 1.5 percent higher.

Europe correspondent Catherine Field told Mike Hosking the central banks are adamant it's not a repeat of 2008.

She says the banks are saying it might look bad, and it's not good that UBS has had to take over Credit Suisse, but they're not in a recession.

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Fresh questions for the Prime Minister over how much access lobbyists have to the halls of power.

Official documents released to RNZ show Government departments are paying lobbyists hundreds of thousands of dollars for communications advice.

Documents also show Chris Hipkins' Chief of Staff, Andrew Kirton, was previously working for liquor firms to lobby ministers to water down the now scrapped container return scheme.

Hipkins told Mike Hosking anyone can seek a meeting with ministers, but admits some people, like Kirton, may have had an "in", because they know ministers personally.

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