I can’t be the only one who wishes Air New Zealand would just tell me where the lifejackets and emergency exits are. While I applaud the creative effort, I find their onboard safety videos tedious – mostly because I don’t buy into the whole All-Blacks-and-Lord-of-the-Rings thing. Earlier this month, I was treated to the latest in the series. While most of the previous editions have reflected New Zealand popular culture, this one features some very odd camerawork and two Americans waxing about God’s creation. If that doesn't resonate with you, maybe it's not supposed to.
I started writing this post in early September. Then I got busy, put my pen down, and didn’t pick it up again until Labour Weekend. That’s longer than it took Winston Peters to decide which party to favour with a coalition agreement. Fortunately, I don’t rely on writing to pay the bills. Unfortunately, not getting around to thinking work is a familiar predicament in my day job, too.
I watched the Valley the other day — Stuff’s piece on New Zealand’s involvement in Afghanistan. I was reluctant. But I’d run out of Game of Thrones episodes, and I needed something to do while dinner cooked. How far can you believe what someone said they saw? And is a cover up the most plausible explanation of events?
I think the first time I saw a Tesla was in Hong Kong a couple of months ago. It took me a second look and some mental rummaging to work out what it was. Oslo swarms with them. There, one in three new cars plugs into a wall socket. Norway’s government has announced plans to be carbon-neutral by 2030. What's more surprising is that they seem to be serious about it.
The limits of my language mean the limits of my world. I remember our classics teacher saying that in sixth form. I think he was admonishing someone, in his usual, understated way, for using expletives instead of adjectives. It was only decades later that I learned that the source of the quote wasn’t some long-dead Roman but a more recently dead Austrian.
I think the first time I saw a Tesla was in Hong Kong a couple of months ago. It took me a second look and some mental rummaging to work out what it was. Oslo swarms with them. There, one in three new cars plugs into a wall socket. Norway’s government has announced plans to be carbon-neutral by 2030. What's more surprising is that they seem to be serious about it.
Collaborative decision making, we are encouraged to believe, is the way of the future – at least as far as environmental management is concerned. Environmental issues are by their nature fractious; traditional planning approaches have often proven long-winded, divisive, and not particularly effective. The promise of something better is understandably alluring.
At the end of May, I left late autumn behind to spend a few weeks of late spring / early summer in the UK and Scandinavia. The visit coincided with a series on television called Springwatch: four nights a week for three weeks you can watch swallows hatching and hares loping around. Apparently it's something of an institution. There's Autumnwatch and Winterwatch, too. Which I guess feature squirrels gathering acorns and rooks looking cold, respectively.
Water quality remains a hot topic. When the Government released its latest report on the state of fresh water, Forest & Bird immediately called for a ban on increases to dairy herds. Because we all know the problem is dirty dairying, right? It's been all over the news for the past decade, and someone finally just needs to do something about it. Right?
Horizons Regional Council has been roundly criticised by the Environment Court for its implementation of the One Plan (its regional plan governing, among other things, the effects of intensive farming on water quality). Whatever the rights and wrongs of Horizons’ course of action, the case illustrates some of the difficulties with the resource-management system.
