I usually avoid Rudman's piece like the plague as he irritates me like mad. But you always get to see what he is on about as he has scored prime real estate on page two. Although I cannot agree with most of what he has to say - as usual - he does serve some function this morning by highlighting the level of interference the men with clipboards have gained into our lives. He uses as an example the Auckland Council, but I am certain it is the same up and down the land. The amount of bureaucracy that we have allowed to spring up to surround bloody trees is mind boggling. Consents to prune a pohutakawa (but ensure that the pruner is acting on behalf of the correct authority depending on whether the tree's canopy overhangs Council or private property) is usual fare. Rudman then says there is a glaring gap in local legislation because there is no regulation governing the planting of trees and saplings which may then grow into protected objects (>6m for natives, >8m for exotics etc. etc.) later down the track. Give me strength.
If you thought Comrade Carter ws my least favourite denizen of Wellington then I am sorry you were mislead. Keith Locke is in a league of his own. The Green's Foreign Policy wallah is a shocker. He holds the sort of political views most of even the lefties of the world grew out of forty years ago. He tells us that the police have proven themselves to be unworthy of the public's trust by accidentally getting some pepper spray on a small girl and a couple of pregnant mums. Therefore, no 50,000 volts for plod. Get back in your cave, Keith.
Two vastly differing stances on the WTO on the Comments page. Mike Moore (who remember was a Prime Minister not from the National Party) arguing the sensible and pragmatic view that without proper world trading patterns development stops and then the new co-leader of the Greens (whose name I have mercifully forgotten) telling us that trade is evil and has been since the days of muskets and mirrors. Cites some nonsense about Antigua and internet casinos as 'evidence' for his warped view of the world. Go and join Keith in the cave.
The septics look to be getting ready for a right royal battle over, in particualr, car emissions. There are big, no make that humungous, amounts of money involved here and lawyers are going to be in the market for some serious gamefishing battlewagons 'ere long I would venture.
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