Posts by Joe Wylie
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Chris Waugh,
surely we should be pricing water smarter to encourage dairying in areas like Waikato, Taranaki and Westland that are fairly well suited to it
That sounds nice in the abstract, but even high-rainfall Westland has had serious cases of dairy overstocking for some time now. The cowboys have pretty much penetrated everywhere. All Westland milk is processed at Hokitika. The large dairy factory at Karamea that opened in 1993 was mothballed later that decade when the giant Hokitika complex opened. Milk tankers travel the 234 kilometers South every day, over a road that still features a number of single-lane bridges. Given the West Coast weather bridges occasionally wash out, leading to long detours through the Buller Gorge.
The last time that I know of the Karamea factory being recommissioned was 14 years ago, when it ran for three months due to Hokitika not being able to meet capacity. Since then the main plant has been expanded, while Karamea is, as far as I know, still kept on standby.
-
Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Bart Janssen,
But the Sth Island still votes National, what can you do?
ECAN is no longer a democratically elected body.
-
Hard News: Climate, money and risk, in reply to Lilith __,
ignoring how dependent we are on grass and cows is not wise either
I can’t see where anyone is doing that Bart, this is a straw person.
Prior to 1970 you couldn't buy table margarine in NZ, and outside of the few specialty delicatessens olive oil was sold in tiny containers. To express an interest in any kind of alternative to the great yellow Fernleaf butter god was treated as some kind of economic treason. Today everyone has the freedom to make an informed choice to lessen or even eliminate their dependence on dairy.
Meanwhile in mid-and South Canterbury a vast amount of the old agricultural infrastructure is being demolished as shelter belts that took decades to establish are removed to make way for centre pivot irrigation. In the face of this kind of extractive and unsustainable goldrush it's a sick joke to be told to lie back and think of the economy.
-
Capture: Coast to Coast, in reply to Allan Moyle,
Ureure, aka beaded glasswort.
-
Capture: Spring Breaks, in reply to Jos,
I bring you Father Carrot, he will grant any Christmas wish apparently.
A giant parsnip sparks his eye,
Majestic as the Tree of Life;
He washes it and rubs it dry
And takes it in to his old wife -
'Look, Laura, would that be a fit?
The bastard has a flange on it!'Ballad of Calvary Street
- James K. Baxter -
Thanks Lilith, those are a treat for the eyeballs.
Congratulations ChrisW, love your stuff. -
Hard News: Awards and Rewards, in reply to Russell Brown,
Jimmy uploaded one of his very short videos yesterday.
:)
Don't stop making stuff. -
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Chris Waugh,
Rewi Alley, An Autobiography . . . He doesn’t give a date for this incident, but it would seem to be some time in 1917, as it happened when he was being shipped off to the First World War.
Great story Chris. Over 60 years later Hiwi Tauroa reported on his return from his 21-day visit to South Africa "If you're a black, you're subject to all of the laws of the country, but protected by none."
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to Russell Brown,
We often forget that the Kirk government did block a Springbok tour in 1973, after being presciently advised by the police that such a tour would “engender the greatest eruption of violence this country has ever known”.
No doubt the NZ police prescience was informed by the events surrounding the 1971 Springbok tour of Australia. While rugby union didn’t excite the Australian public to anything like the same degree that it did in NZ, the 1971 tour saw 5000 protesters in the streets of Melbourne, a gigantic effigy hung from the Sydney Harbour bridge, and Bjelke-Petersen’s infamous month-long state of emergency in Queensland. The anti-apartheid movement claimed a strategic victory when the upcoming tour of the South African cricket team was cancelled.
While the events of 1971 provided an eerie foretaste of what was to come a decade later in NZ, Bjelke-Petersen’s deliberate manipulation of social discord for electoral advantage more than probably inspired Muldoon. As the former Whitlam cabinet Minister Jim Cairns noted when comparing Muldoon and Bjelke-Peterson during a 1976 visit to NZ, there seemed to be an unhealthy interest in such people in this part of the world.
-
Hard News: Mandela, in reply to martinb,
Claims of Thatcher’s anti-apartheid stance made in the telegraph here:
And a generally respectful but rather less hagiographic account here.
Interesting that Thatcher was very much taken in by that smarmy old fraud Laurens van der Post. So was I, once upon a time.