Local Opinion

Smoothing the road

Right now on dairy farms around the country the first calves are being born, generally in the middle of the night. Farmers are managing crop rotations, wintering and new season budgets. They’re having conversations with…

Elections reflections

I’m currently on holiday in Europe. During our stay there have been two major elections in the United Kingdom and France. While both countries are democracies, their voting systems are very different – and so…

How you can help victims

I hope the school holidays are going well. I enjoyed a break away myself last week – we have definitely lucked out on the sunny winter weather for the first half of the holidays. In…

Words matter

I am sitting in Tenerife, a volcanic island with a very volcanically active past, chatting with linguist Dr Hannah Little from the UK about how people perceive risk. A linguist specialises in how our use…

Both ends of the age issue

Over the recent weekend I was pleasantly involved with the celebrations of a good friend. The reason for the festivities being his 80th birthday. Being a long-time resident in a retirement village such an event…

Saved by the light

I’ve never forgotten the account of a fishing village on the coast of Cornwall, facing potential disaster years ago. Although well accustomed to the force of prevailing south westerly winds blowing in from the Atlantic…

Tamihana and utu

Tarapipipi Te Waharoa was born in 1805 into a world where the principle of utu was first and foremost in how his people lived.  I should note here that the most well-known consequence of utu…

Rough times

I hope the school holidays are going well. To start off today, a topic that is coming to our attention on a regular basis is the presence of homeless and transient people sleeping in vehicles…

Time to go

I am about 18,000 km way from home alongside a lava flow that destroyed communities in 2021. Here in La Palma, in the Canary Islands off the coast of northern Africa, I am hearing very…

Setting sights on the future

Waikato District Council has just adopted its annual plan for the year ahead and has managed to drop the average general rates increase to 11.9 per cent from the 13.75  per cent first proposed. Guided…

1 11 12 13 14 15 74