Police national statistics for NZ last year showed a sharp increase in burglaries and thefts and Waikanae hasn’t been immune. We have had items stolen from us over the last decade, as has our closest neighbour, more than once, and there is a clear need to combat this problem.

In America you see posters in all major transport hubs and on trains that say, “If You See Something Say Something”. Although this is first and foremost a reference to terrorism, it applies to other crime, too.

The fact is that elements of nearly all crimes are witnessed by someone and citizens working together can not only help apprehend criminals but help prevent crimes.

Although opportunist theft — (smash), grab and run — is more likely in daylight hours, house/car break-in and enter burglars prefer the cloak of darkness. Motion sensor outside lights are an obvious way to deprive them of the darkness.

If you are not present to witness yourself, inexpensive security camera(s) can record the scene; see earlier posts.

The Waikanae Community Board should be taking a lead in this matter, but has yet to show interest and we doubt its present members are going to; however, you can foster Neighbourhood Watch yourself.

Here are some principles:

1. Recruit and organise as many neighbours as possible

The first step is talking to those who live nearby about starting a group.

2. Contact the police and schedule a meeting

Invite them to meet with your group at a time and place convenient for your group. It is essential for your group to work in collaboration with law enforcement because Neighbourhood Watch is a cooperative effort.

3. Discuss community concerns and develop an action plan

If law enforcement is unavailable to come to the first meeting you might want to have a meeting to discuss the concerns and issues in the neighbourhood. Your group should create a plan on how to work towards lessening the impact of the top 3 concerns of neighbours.

4. Create a communication plan

It is important to decide what type of communication will work for your watch group — social media is the most immediate and the Neighborly website is good, but periodic meetings will also be useful. The American publication on Advances in Technology Take Watch Groups to the Next Level is a guide to what resources are out there.

Neighbourhood Patrols

1. A neighbourhood patroller is vigilant, but is not a vigilante; you gather information, particularly in recorded audio-visual form, but avoid conflict.
2. You are not the Police -– if you inject yourself into a situation, you risk injury from the criminal(s) who may have weapons.
3. If a situation develops, you try to de-escalate it and quit to a safe distance. Only if you are prevented from leaving are you entitled to use force to defend yourself.
4. If you have to use force to subdue/apprehend someone, you are expected to use the minimum force necessary.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s website on neighborhood watch is here.

A pic taken in Shakopee, Minnesota and sent to us by a reader. There are some awful cowboy tree butchers out there (and we’ve witnessed some in the property renting business next to us), but this guy must be competing for the title of the king of them!

Arboriculture is a specialist field and if you need work like this done, get a knowledgeable professional who shows due care and takes due responsibility.

This was also buried in the Waikanae Community Board minutes for the May meeting.

A pay rise in itself isn’t remarkable, but what is remarkable is the size of it the members want — 30% — and the reasons given.

Did they not expect that they would be involved with these things?  In fact were they not things that they themselves identified when they stood for the WCB?

There are dozens of voluntary community activists in Waikanae who also are involved with these matters — Destination Waikanae and the Olde Waikanae Beach Preservation Society members, to name just a couple.

We daresay this blog — for which we get nothing — does more to inform people than the five WCB members do collectively.

We’ve had a few things to say about the unjustifiably massive pay that KCDC boss Dougherty gets, but the same applies at the other end, too.  We respectfully suggest to the WCB members that they should moderate their remuneration expectations.

It could have been taken any time in the first half of the 20th century, perhaps even later.

“The Right Incentive”

We’ve heard a lot from the Mayor & CEO talking about the need to change the ‘Culture’ within KCDC.

Maybe the ‘Executive Management’ just need the right inspiration that is beneficial to us all.

To demonstrate they are working in our best interest, and the community acknowledging great leadership & performance could see the top 10 salaries linked to the outcome of the rating requirement.

IE; A rate rise = a Salary Reduction by that percentage…….. Sounds Fair!

A rate decrease = a Salary increase by that percentage ………

So Great Performance, increased efficiency etc, get rewarded in a mutually beneficial bonus to our ‘Loyal , Hard working Staff’, that ON OUR BEHALF, administer OUR community.

One can imagine that the ‘Current, Needing to be Changed’ Culture would not take to the idea of an accountable, transparent remuneration structure.

So maybe it is up to us to decide our future at the polls, and wonder if any of our ‘Leadership’ candidates would have the intestinal fortitude, or Political will to exact such a radical yet undeniably fair change.

A Cynic would bet against it, but would be interesting to see how long it would take before rates started to fall, and we started referring to our Council as “Caring, Dynamic & Effective” (oh, sorry I forgot, that’s what they are already telling us!)

Kind Regards, and keep up the great work Waikanae Watch

Gary Hertnon

As contained in the booklet on the KCDC site these can summarised as ‘we only want to do as little as we can get away with’.

There is no allowance for an underpass to eliminate the Elizabeth Street level crossing, and in fact road width reductions proposed act to counter what will be needed for this.

Current SH1/Te Moana Road intersection

The northbound approach and southbound exit to this intersection on SH1 are shown as being reduced to one lane, presumably in anticipation of less traffic.  The space will be replaced with planting in the median.

The present quick turn-off without the need to wait at the traffic lights for those turning into Te Moana Road from the south is shown as being eliminated and replaced with a pedestrian area.

These assumptions could be valid, but with the Expressway now expected to open this December, the actual reduction in traffic will be observable then and we suggest waiting to see what it is.

Current SH1/Elizabeth Street intersection

This intersection should be eliminated with an underpass between the west and east sides of the railway line inside tunnels.  The two central lanes in the present SH1 north of this intersection need to be retained for the entrance/exit tunnels for traffic from/to the north for Elizabeth Street traffic.

The entrance and exit tunnels for traffic to/from the south for Elizabeth Street will need to start/end in the space between Elizabeth Street and the Te Moana Road intersection.

Current SH1/Ngaio Road intersection

The clear omission from this drawing is an approximately 60-metre-long pedestrian overbridge between the north-west side of the Ngaio Road intersection and the existing Park and Ride parking lot on the east side of the railway line. This should involve a combined stairway and elevator tower (for the mobility impaired) at each end, with a third central stairway/elevator tower to/from the platform of the train station. Pedestrians will thus be able to cross the railway line from the platform to the Park and Ride carpark and over the present SH1 to Ngaio Road.

From the drawing we are unsure what is being proposed for the space currently in front of Gasoline Ally Services (GAS) on the south-west side of this intersection.

Waikanae Town Centre transformation, other than the roads

We cannot identify from the information panel drawings what is being proposed here. It looks the same as what exists now

Landscaping materials

These are to a large extent a personal thing.  We have a preference for native trees when planting new ones, but as few are deciduous, low level winter sun needs may dictate deciduous exotic trees instead.  Colorful displays of flowering shrubs at different times of the year are to be preferred over ones which look the same year round.

Otherwise we are happy to trust what a professional landscaper will come up with.

This was buried in the minutes of the May WCB meeting, as contained in pdfs put on the KCDC website for last Tuesday’s WCB meeting:

Thus, including the $500 given to the winning artist, the cost of three signs is some $44,000.  It’s not stated where the three signs will be located — presumably two will be on what is presently SH1 close to where the existing signs are; so are they contemplating one on the local road from Peka Peka near the beach?

the hero of the Brexit campaign, Boris Johnson

Why did Britain vote for independence from the EU?  A few reasons as sent to us by a reader:

• Cadbury moved factory to Poland in 2011 with a EU grant.
• Ford Transit moved to Turkey in 2013 with a EU grant.
• Jaguar Land Rover has recently agreed to build a new plant in Slovakia with EU grant, owned by Tata, the same company who have trashed our steel works and emptied the workers’ pension funds.
• Peugeot closed its Ryton (was Rootes Group) plant and moved production to Slovakia with a EU grant.
• British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles to be built in SPAIN using SWEDISH steel at the request of the EU to support jobs in Spain with EU grant, rather than Wales.
• Dyson gone to Malaysia, with an EU loan.
• Crown closures, Bournemouth (was METAL BOX), gone to Poland with a EU grant, once employed 1,200.
• M&S manufacturing gone to the Far East with a EU loan.
• Hornby models gone. In fact all toys and models now gone from the UK along with the patents, all with with EU grants.
• Gillette gone to eastern Europe with a EU grant.
• Texas Instruments Greenock gone to Germany with a EU grant.
• Indesit at Bodelwyddan Wales gone with a EU grant.
• Sekisui Alveo said production at its Merthyr Tydfil Industrial Park foam plant will relocate production to Roermond in the Netherlands, with EU funding.
• Hoover Merthyr factory moved out of the UK to the Czech Republic and the Far East by Italian company Candy with EU backing.
• ICI integration into Holland’s AkzoNobel with a EU bank loan and within days of the merger, several factories in the UK, were closed, eliminating 3,500 jobs
• Boots sold to Italians Stefano Pessina who have based their HQ in Switzerland to avoid tax to the tune of £80 million a year, using an EU loan for the purchase.
• JDS Uniphase run by two Dutch men, bought up companies in the UK with £20 million in EU ‘regeneration’ grants, created a pollution nightmare and just closed it all down leaving 1,200 out of work and an environmental clean-up paid for by the UK taxpayer. They also raided the pension fund and drained it dry.
• UK airports are owned by a Spanish company.
• Scottish Power is owned by a Spanish company.
• Most London buses are run by Spanish and German companies.
• The Hinkley Point C nuclear power station to be built by French company EDF, part owned by the French government, using cheap Chinese steel that has catastrophically failed in other nuclear installations. Now EDF say the costs will be double or more and it will be very late even if it does come online.
• Swindon was once our producer of rail locomotives and rolling stock. Not any more, it’s Bombardier in Derby and due to their losses in the aviation market, that could see the end of the British railways manufacturing altogether even though Bombardier had EU grants to keep Derby going which they diverted to their loss-making aviation side in Canada.
• 39% of British invention patents have been passed to foreign companies, many of them in the EU The Mini cars that Cameron stood in front of as an example of British engineering, are built by BMW mostly in Holland and Austria. His campaign bus was made in Germany even though we have Plaxton, Optare, Bluebird, Dennis etc., in the UK. The bicycle for the Greens was made in the far east, not by Raleigh UK but then they are probably going to move to the Netherlands too as they have said recently.

Anyone who thinks the EU ha been good for British industry or any other business simply hasn’t paid attention to what has been systematically asset-stripped from the UK. Name one major technology company still running in the UK, and now we don’t even teach electronic technology for technicians any more, due to EU regulations.

I haven’t detailed our non-existent fishing industry the EU paid to destroy, nor the farmers being paid NOT to produce food they could sell for more than they get paid to do nothing, don’t even go there.

I haven’t mentioned what it costs us to be asset-stripped like this, nor have I mentioned immigration, nor the risk to our security if control of our armed forces is passed to Brussels or Germany.

Find something that’s gone the other way, I’ve looked and I just can’t. If you think the EU is a good idea:

1. You haven’t read the party manifesto of The European Peoples’ Party.

2. You haven’t had to deal with EU petty bureaucracy tearing your business down.

3. You don’t think it matters.

According to besthealthmag.ca, dogs can’t: “There’s no concern with dog-to-human, or human-to-dog, transmission,’ says Scott Weese, the Canada research chair in zoonotic diseases and an associate professor at the Ontario Veterinary College. Dogs get viruses from each other.”

But it says, “a cat can catch cold or flu from you. ‘The virus attaches to cells in the respiratory tract of felines similarly to how it does in humans,’ says Weese. He points to reports of H1N1 found in cats in the United States. Cats also get cat-to-cat viruses that are similar to a cold, but humans can’t catch those.”

However, that message is contradicted by pet360.com which states: “A cat can’t catch a human cold any more than you can catch distemper. The viruses that cause cat colds have no effect on humans and vice versa. Many times, everyone in a household, including the cat, will be sick with a cold at the same time, but such events are just coincidence. Cold viruses for both animals and humans are more prevalent and active during the winter season, and if both you and kitty are sick at the same time, consider it an opportunity for mutual commiseration through your misery.”

So which is correct?  We suggest that, whichever, avoid risks by taking your cat to have a flu injection by the vet.

The Code of Conduct Complaint heard within yesterday’s Kapiti Coast District Council’s meeting showcased on multiple levels ‘politics with a small p’ in action.

KCDC was, I believe, ‘pitch perfect’ in addressing this complaint within an open session. I applaud them for doing so.

Mayor Church from the Chair determinedly steered the proceedings towards a ‘no case to answer’ in terms of the boundaries of the relevant Code of Conduct, then ergo no apology nor censure required.

Commendably, the elected body defeated the Mayor’s first two objectives (10 [9?] votes to his 1) establishing their view that Councillor M. Scott’s behaviour both transgressed their Code of Conduct and that his apology should be forthcoming.

Articulate input from David Roil, Christopher Ruthe and Salima Padamsey clearly evidenced the value that rate paying members of the public attribute to integrity and natural justice.

The staunch integrity brought to the debate by Councillors David Scott (initiator of the complaint), Elliott, Gurunathan, Welsh and Bell held off the Mayor’s determination to ‘slam dunk’ both the process and the outcome.

I highly recommend Councillor Gurunathan’s incisive skills to any debating team looking for an additional member!

Councillors Ammundsen and Gaylor, ably abetted by Councillors Cardiff and Holborow, delivered (by way of a 1 vote majority) their farewell gift to the Mayor that defeated the motion that Councillor Michael Scott be censured.

Councillor Holborow’s apparent short term memory loss around an email that she had authored will, I predict, come back to haunt her.

Councillor Michael Scott has, in my view, placed himself centre stage in the forum of public opinion – a position achieved through his belligerent writing and his frequently observed abusive contempt towards both his elected colleagues and members of the rate paying public.

Margaret Stevenson-Wright

Waikanae ratepayer

In summary then:- the council voted unanimously (except for Mayor Church) that Michael Scott had breached the code and be required to apologize to the 13 recipients of his e-mail.

But the council voted by a majority of 1 not to ‘censure’ Michael Scott. [–Eds]