Local Bodies

Ron Jager, Chairman of Shell New Zealand had a lengthy opinion piece in today's Southland Times (no link), where he claimed that natural gas has a bright future in New Zealand. Jager talks about his love for the New Zealand environment and the need to halve our green house gas emissions so that we can "avoid the impact of climate change". He explains how natural gas burns more cleanly than other fossil fuel and there is such an abundance of the stuff that we have around 250 years of supply (based on current consumption). Of course the Maui A platform, off the coast of Taranaki, has been operating without incident since 1979 and it is easy to think that continuing to extract gas from other sites won't be an issue either. There may be an abundance of natural gas but the process of extracting it will no longer be as straight forward as Maui A. The next generation of gas extraction in New Zealand won't be from shallow sea platforms, but deep sea drilling in the Grea

The terrorism threat is mounting in New Zealand, the Prime Minister claims there are up to 40 people here who are capable of repeating the sort of action tragically experienced in Sydney. New Zealand's terrorist threat has has been upgraded from very low to low. Legislation has been passed under urgency to provide greater powers to the SIS to allow surveillance without a warrant for 24 hours. The threat of the Islamic State is seen to be greater than any terror organisation existing in the Middle East prior to this. The Government has put all its energies into protecting us from the danger of IS related activities and the increased surveillance capacity will hopefully protect us in our new low risk environment. There have been 3 deaths in New Zealand over the past 60 years because of terrorist acts and they all occurred over 30 years ago. Two perpetrators were New Zealanders and the other was a friendly state. In 1982 a local "Punk Rock" anarchist blew himself up

From the North to the South, in fine weather and foul, Tim Groser and his Government got the bums up from New Zealanders. The nationwide Heads in the Sand protest today provided a physical expression of our concern that climate change deserved greater attention. Our Government Ministers need to get their heads out of the sand on this issue. Waiheke Mission Bay West Auckland Browns Bay Taranaki Wellington  Nelson Motueka Christchurch Dunedin Invercargill Fossil fuels are destroying our future! This Government is committing ecocide!

The Southland Times described a report from the New Zealand Initiative  (NZI) claiming mining was the key to rural prosperity. Although listing a range of extractable minerals this appallingly ignorant report strongly supports coal and lignite mining as the road to rural prosperity. The New Zealand Initiative is being disingenuous in its claims that mining will benefit rural communities. There are very few mining communities in New Zealand that are prosperous and the nature of extractive industries is that they have a finite life and generally cause negative social and environmental outcomes . In using Australia as an example of the benefits of mining The NZI ignores the damage caused to Australia's rural communities. Australian farmers are leading the protests against coal mining and fracking with the Lock the Gate movement. The well researched document Jobs after Coal explains the social and environmental consequences of coal mining and its chequered history as an indus

Invercargill provides a good snapshot of New Zealand society. We are a city of around 51,000 people and have a breadth of industries to support our local economy. Within our wider province we have an aluminium smelter , New Zealand's largest dairy factory , a number of exporting manufacturers  and the region earns about 12% of our national export income with only 3% of the population. We also have a highly successful tertiary institution in the Southern Institute of Technology (SIT) that pulls in overseas students and provides a wide range of courses to lift the qualifications and skills of our local workforce. Venture Southland is proactive in promoting the region and leading research and development to grow a more sustainable local economy. We are also ethnically diverse with growing Maori and Pasifica populations and many immigrant workers. We have an unemployment rate that is similar to the national average of just above 5%. I recently wrote a post about inequality an

John the Don Head of Dark Ops ( Jason Ede )  The Hit Man ( Cameron Slater , father John Slater ) Corporate operative  ( Carrick Graham , father Doug Graham  ) One of the family ( Judith Collins ) Slater was then asked what he would do about Collins' resignation. He said: "I always give back double" and "Judith always gives back double" You don't mess with the family!