Local Bodies

My two bin composting system The Covid-19 pandemic has forced many households to look at how they can operate more sustainably and reduce the need to venture outside the safety of their home "bubble". During my last visit to a local garden centre before Level 4, I was pleasantly surprised that there had been great demand for vegetable plants. Obviously growing food at home was seen as an essential element of  lock down self-sufficiency. It is great to see more people wishing to grow their own food, as it such a rewarding thing to do. Food that is harvested fresh from a home garden has so many advantages compared to supermarket bought produce: You know where it has come from  The food miles or carbon foot print needed to get it to you are minimal You can grow produce that is not common in supermarkets (gooseberries, rhubarb, heritage varieties...) Fully ripened, freshly harvested produce tastes so much better than store bought More health giving nutrients are con...

The winter grazing issue is becoming a highly-sensitised one that I hope will not become so politicised that it delays solutions and results in the suicides of some very stressed farmers. Winter grazing has hit the headlines after a  determined campaign, including the release of a video  of some very common scenes around the country at this time of year. It recorded many examples of poorly managed grazing causing discomfort and stress to stock and graphically demonstrating the environmental degradation that this method causes. The campaign helped to motivate the Agriculture Minister Damien O'Connor into announcing the formation of a task force to respond to the issues around the practice. There has been some politically questionable responses to the campaign and the Minister's announcement and most especially from Clutha Southland MP Hamish Walker. He described the taskforce as "more money down the drain" and unfortunately related the conditions of  winter...

The Green Part has been accused of lack of transparency in two recent situations. The first was the claimed media lockdown during Green's annual conference and the second was Julie Ann Genter's refusal to release a letter she had sent to Phil Twyford. I do get frustrated when journalist's succumb to emotive reporting and do not apply due diligence to ensure balance and logic. The majority of the 2019 conference was dominated by the Party's Annual General Meeting, this involved some substantial remits and election of officers, including all leadership positions. I have attended Green Party AGM's for the last fourteen years and can't remember one that allowed a media presence. This was not an unprecedented "lock down" but standard practice, as it is for many other organisations that enforce member only restrictions. James Shaw's concerns about balanced reporting of our conferences are completely valid from my experience. I have noted that ...

The teacher strike has a back story that should not be dismissed or ignored. This is much more than two of our larger unions (NZEI and PPTA) flexing their collective muscles just to get a pay rise. As a retired teacher and past member of NZEI's Executive I know how much it takes to push our teachers into strike action, in its 136 year history this has occurred only a handful of times. I recently left teaching myself after over 30 years of service in a range of roles that included special needs and five years as a deputy principal. Lack of resourcing, little government recognition, very long hours (60-70 per week) and stress caused me to pursue political solutions. The steady decay of our world-leading public education system began with the neoliberal Tomorrow's Schools model and culminated with relentless attacks from the last National Government. I listed much that has been inflicted on our education system over the past decade in this widely viewed and circulated  blog ...

(fire, California) Some time ago Jeanette Fitzsimons described our action on climate change like a car driving rapidly to a precipice while the occupants argue about whether they should maybe change down a gear. If we are to continue with this analogy I would say that the cliff edge is now very visible, the car is still in top gear and we have only a slight chance of stopping in time if we hit the brakes now. 350.org named itself after the parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere that was considered a safe level. At the time the organisation was formed in 2008 that level had not been reached, but five years later we passed 400 ppm . It's not as though we haven't had ample warning, there has been scientific consensus for decades and even Margaret Thatcher was making speeches on climate change thirty years ago. The evidence of rapid climate change is constantly in our faces. We are globally experiencing extreme weather events on a far more regular basis and t he ...