Local Opinion

What’s in a name?

Growing up as a kid, I’d hear my parents describing people who ‘had a good name.’ With a bit of maturity and understanding, awareness as to what it really meant to have a good name,…

A look at voting options

Waipā District Council is being driven by the mayor to consider reviewing the numerical membership at the board table.  And full marks to her for putting that matter up for discussion. This begs the next…

Call leads to arrest

Last weekend police were called to a male sleeping in a vehicle south of Cambridge in which drug utensils had been seen. Police found the drugs in clear view. The male was identified and found…

Running out of steam …

I was amazed recently to discover a photograph dated from the 1930s featuring an old steam locomotive barrelling across one of Waikato’s main streets in Hamilton City.  While aware to a degree how steam engines…

Banging the drum

Time flies, I am coming up to two years as a first term councillor and it has been an interesting and enlightening experience.  On one hand I have been very impressed by the many volunteers…

Policy at the crossroads

Monetary policy in New Zealand is at an interesting crossroads. The June quarter Cost Price Index (CPI) data on the surface looked positive. Overall, the CPI rose by 3.3 per cent in the year to…

The problem with ‘auto’

It has been another busy week in Cambridge and a foggy one. Frustratingly, we continue to have drivers not using their headlights in the fog, which is madness. If your headlights are set to auto,…

Zach’s timing is dead right

There is something about time travel which has always fascinated me and watching the St Peter’s School student-led movie The Case fed that interest. The 52-minute murder mystery film opens Friday at the school’s Thornton…

Communities and volcanoes

Much of my work in volcanology is around the intersection of communities and volcanoes. I have been spending a couple of weeks here in Tenerife leading a group of university students through an exercise that…

An idea to flag

Initially I was going to write about anthems – or to be more focussed, anthems declared by countries as national. National anthems are written and ‘performed’ as either (Collins) ‘rousing or uplifting songs identified with…

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