Local Opinion

In my line of work “I have a dumb question” is usually followed by a great question that has a complicated answer. “How do volcanoes erupt?” is one of these, and really should be explained…

During an interview, Albert Einstein once said, “imagination is more important than knowledge”. Nobody could refute the fact that that our imagination is a massively potent faculty. It’s capable of producing both good or bad…

Gliding silently (and carefully) through our village the other day my mind turned to the advantages – or otherwise – of not depending on fossil fuels for vehicular propulsion. Yes, I have become one of…

One of the more disturbing aspects of natural life, I found as a child, was the fact that having overcome its prey, your average predator would simply begin to eat it. This practice is widespread…

For some time now I’ve had a backup idea, a column-writing safety net of sorts. That is to say with a blank screen in front of me, a rapidly approaching deadline, and no subject on…

The rain events we’ve experienced this summer have been hugely challenging for some parts of the country. Acknowledging that the Coromandel has suffered significant landslip damage due to saturated catchments, creating major issues with the…

Pressure is building up for a formal inquiry into bank profitability in New Zealand. Two things are driving this. First, the level of profits of the New Zealand banks is higher than in most other…

I watched with interest when a fake owl was placed on top of a building in Cambridge near my office in town. It was put there to frighten away pigeons who had colonised this high…

As you will have seen from my last two columns, I think it’s important to give you an idea of what your local Police are involved in and the good outcomes we achieve to keep…

Supervolcanoes are perhaps the megastar of volcano misinformation, they get the flashiest headlines designed to grab attention with little to no facts involved. During my eight years in the United States I spoke to a…