Archive for July, 2008

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  Save Rotuma from fossil fuel dependency - by frog

  
  
  
  I have become used to daily reports in the press about fuel shortages all around the world. Asia in particular is suffering from acute diesel shortages in part because their electricity systems are inadequate and everyone is relying on generators to do business. This article, however, made me cringe. It seems the tiny Pacific island [...] read more
  July 24, 2008 9:14 am - 8 Comments
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  Parliamentary questions about Peters - by frog

  
  
  
  I thought it was funny, after all the outrage that circulated around the various Winston Peters donation scandals over the weekend, that in the end it was the Greens asking the toughest questions in Parliament today. Tim Selwyn at Tumeke! Described the half hour of questions this afternoon thus: Winston’s crew were up and down [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 8:16 pm - 11 Comments
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  A giant koru in the sky - by frog

  
  
  
   Blair for Mayor sent me this satellite weather photo from midday yesterday and asks how the sky knew it was Te Wiki o te Reo Maori – Maori language week? I think I’m sitting in the middle of and underneath that koru now and it’s not so Ä?taahua looking up at it as it is [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 3:17 pm - 3 Comments
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  The swimming hole - by frog

  
  
  
  Yesterday’s West Coast drinking water report segues neatly into today’s release of the proposed National Policy Statement (NPS) for freshwater management. By way of background to this document, Labour promised during the 2005 election campaign it would make rivers and lakes safe for swimming. As the NPS itself states currently only 60% of New Zealand’s [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 3:01 pm - 1 Comment
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  A mood for change - by frog

  
  
  
  Ah, nothing says a mood for change better than Peter Dunne. read more
  July 23, 2008 2:10 pm - 9 Comments
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  The water, like a witch’s oils, burnt green, and blue and white - by frog

  
  
  
  A public health report released on the West Coast yesterday found none of the region’s reticulated drinking water sources met official drinking standards. Nationwide, 15 per cent of water supplies failed to meet official drinking water standards but on the West Coast, not a single reticulated water source met official standards, which required a four-stage [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 2:03 pm - 1 Comment
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  Honey bees - by frog

  
  
  
  Over in the States honey bees are disappearing to a disease known as Colony Collapse Disorder. Basically it means bees just leave their hive and go to find somewhere to die. It’s all very Capt. Oates from Scott of the Antarctic. Anyway, it led multinational food producer Häagen-Daz to create the website mentioned at the [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 12:47 pm - 10 Comments
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  Buying your own state house - by frog

  
  
  
  It’s not often I agree with National on the issue of state housing but I reckon its policy as apparently described by Phil Heatley yesterday seems fairly sensible: Housing spokesman Phil Heatley told a Housing Institute seminar in Waitakere yesterday that National would give back to Housing New Zealand tenants the right to buy their [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 8:45 am - 22 Comments
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  Packing the plane - by frog

  
  
  
  The front page of the Dominion Post this morning is one of those ‘only in Wellington’ moments.  It seems the New Zealand Olympic team is taking a barista with them to Beijing. I imagine the conversation at the New Zealand Olympic Planning Cmmittee went something like this: Athletes? Check Coaches? Check Physiotherapists? Check Masseuses? Check [...] read more
  July 23, 2008 8:27 am - 7 Comments
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  Can broccoli cure cancer? - by frog

  
  
  
  I’ve spent quite a bit of time talking about the Greens’ food policies here in recent months.  Mostly when I do it is about the consumer rights to know and choose, the economic and environmental impacts of multinational industrial food versus locally grown and produced, and the need for people to have access to affordable [...] read more
  July 22, 2008 3:43 pm - 24 Comments
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  The Minister of Racing - by frog

  
  
  
  The news this morning that Winston Peters, the Minister of Racing, has been taking $150,000 in donations from a player in the racing industry is even more troubling than the Owen Glenn donation.  At least in that instance it seems one side of the party thought he was making a standard political donation and was [...] read more
  July 22, 2008 10:54 am - 23 Comments
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  The sandal debate - by frog

  
  
  
  A bruising political battle about the Greens has been raging over recent days in the letters pages of the Southland Times between P Clifford and Fulton Long.  Letters like these are to the comments section of frogblog in the same way that chess is to checkers.  We pick up the saga, part way through, with [...] read more
  July 22, 2008 10:41 am - 12 Comments
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  Honour - by frog

  
  
  
  Here’s the Prime Minister discussing Winston Peters’ donation from Owen Glenn on Morning Report this morning. “If we take Mr Peters at his word, and I must as an honourable member, and I take his lawyer at his word, then Mr Peters would not have been in the loop on the source of the funding.” [...] read more
  July 22, 2008 9:11 am - 4 Comments
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  Scottish accents - by frog

  
  
  
  Check out this video from another small green island nation surrounded by wind and waves – and perhaps sadly also for them, England. (I’m not sure, but I think that might also be a New Zealand apple playing a starring role at the end.) You’ll love the accents. read more
  July 22, 2008 8:38 am - 8 Comments
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  Tonga and Fiji - by frog

  
  
  
  Don’t you love today’s South Pacific news? The Prime Minister of Tonga is advising Fiji’s military coup leader Commodore Bainimarama, on democracy. Take this quote from Tonga’s Prime Minister, Hon. Dr Feleti Sevele in his role as the Pacific Islands Forum Chairman, “We also added that, if having taken all reasonable steps towards holding the [...] read more
  July 22, 2008 8:35 am - 2 Comments
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  The food rebellion - by frog

  
  
  
  The emergence of an activist food rebellion against an over processed western diet was the topic of Sunday Magazine’s cover story ‘The Art of Eating’ yesterday [off line].  Interestingly it had a short snippet on Sue Kedgley telling a story over dinner. Kedgley tells those of us sitting nearby of three Christchurch women who met [...] read more
  July 21, 2008 3:21 pm - 15 Comments
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  Aerial 1080 on the West Coast - by Metiria Turei

  
  
  
  West Coasters are fighting off a massive aerial 1080 drops over their homes and water supplies – you might have seen them on TV in the past few weeks. The drops is an Animal Health Board program for controlling Tb (by killing off possums, which are a Tb vector). I visited the Coast last week, [...] read more
  July 21, 2008 12:01 pm - 47 Comments
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  Exposed - by frog

  
  
  
  Trevor Loudon, New Zealand’s self proclaimed exposer of communist revolutionaries, has finally found a forum even less credible than his own blog in which to reveal the Green Party’s close links to Maori, Maoist, anarchist terrorism. Ian Wishart has given him 13 pages of investigate Magazine to warn the good people of New Zealand that [...] read more
  July 21, 2008 12:00 pm - 39 Comments
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  A wire from Washington - by frog

  
  
  
  08wire is back at it’s condescending best, now not only presuming to tell the Green Party why we should go into coalition with Labour (because Helen Clark likes to say the word’s ‘sustainability’ and ‘carbon neutral’ on a regular basis) but also presuming to tell us what portfolios we can have after the election (synopsis [...] read more
  July 21, 2008 10:25 am - 18 Comments
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  Dirty tricks - by frog

  
  
  
  Three more polls over the weekend (It’s funny how they are arrive in clusters, like shy school children on a bus, then all start chattering at once.) The Greens are plodding along lower than I’d like but in a much better position than they or other ‘small’ parties normally are at this stage in the [...] read more
  July 21, 2008 9:31 am - 11 Comments