A lecture and an interview set the two opposing camps against each other. The lecture I attended was the keynote address at this year’s Dwell on Design show in Los […]
Battling Capitalism
David Trubridge advocates war on capitalism, declaring environmentalism and capitalism to face a “direct head-to-head confrontation”. He’s run out of patience with “light greens”, who he sees as “getting nowhere”. […]
Fallen arches
Ronald McDonald trudged slowly along the side of the road. There were no footpaths along this stretch of roadway. Just long-grass verges and open drains. He was perspiring in the […]
Hawke’s Bay … stuck in the past or looking to our future?
We are already one region – we just need to start acting like it.
Hastings hosts entertainment extravaganza
Visit Hastings in September and there’ll be no doubt you’re in a vibrant Pacific city. The Hawke’s Bay Opera House precinct will hum with the National Waiata Music Awards on […]
The Buzz of Bees
For my first column for BayBuzz it only seems fitting to write about NZ beekeeping. Can you remember a time when bees weren’t in the news? Where have they gone? […]
Are Napier’s health care needs met?
The closing of Napier’s hospital in 1998 was one of the most contentious events in Napier’s history.
The forgotten half
I’ve been doing some reading while travelling recently – and annoying the heck out of the unfortunate people randomly seated next to me by Air New Zealand. Affirmative exclamations, air […]
Question: How does Hawke’s Bay work?
Answer: It doesn’t. And so we sit at or near the bottom of the ladder in virtually every measure of economic and social health in New Zealand. There’s a group […]
Writer & Filmmaker Peter Wells
During the months of December 1871 and January 1872, Kereopa Te Rau was brought to Napier, put on trial for the murder of the Reverend Volkner and hanged. These were […]
Sustainability gives trading advantage
That’s the conclusion of a recent poll of the general public conducted for the New Zealand Business Council for Sustainable Development. Responses to two questions have been released (media release […]
Inter-city rivalry gets naked
Inter-city rivalry burst into naked view last week as Hastings and Napier battled for shares of the Rugby World Cup prostitution trade, which national media has reported will explode during […]
Where regional councils fear to tread
Over the weekend, the Green Party issued its plan for freshwater clean-up throughout New Zealand. You can download it here. The plan – Cleaning up New Zealand’s rivers – is […]
And then there was one!
Last Friday the stakeholders group on which I serve was informed by the Regional Council that the Central Hawke’s Bay water storage scheme was now down to one potentially viable […]
Collision course on Tukituki
The Regional Council and the CHB District Council are determined to put themselves on a collision course with environmentalists with regard to cleaning up the Tukituki. Since December 2006 the […]
Key’s welfare reform
John Key’s speech over the weekend to his party’s conference makes for interesting reading, from both a political and substantive perspective. You can read it here. First, the political … […]
“Tearing each other apart”
That’s how Napier Council CEO Neil Taylor characterises the process that Lawrence Yule has proposed to investigate alternative governance arrangements for Hawke’s Bay. In a remarkably intemperate ‘report’ to his […]
Mayor Yule’s appeal
Last Wednesday, Mayor Lawrence Yule sent a personal letter to his fellow mayors in the region, HBRC chair Fenton Wilson, and each of the councillors who populate local government in […]
National’s water policy panned
The highly regarded, science-based Cawthron Institute has issued a sharply critical report, prepared for Fish & Game, on the Government’s National Policy Statement (NPS) on Freshwater Management, which took effect […]