Viewed from Pehi Kupa Street.

Viewed along the railway from the station pedestrian crossing.

A message to that effect was received from the council this week.  As mentioned earlier, this has been put in place so that if the regular crossing, about 350 metres away, gets blocked by either a stationary train or an accident, then emergency vehicles have a means of crossing, but it will only be emergency vehicles.  Normally, it will be closed.

The council says 51% of the cost has been met by the NZTA. However, if the council had decided to do something about the long-talked-about Huia Street to Hadfields Road link-up a few years ago, it would have been unnecessary.

Rush is a Canadian band so the scenes may be of Toronto.  There are plenty of subdivisions in Waikanae now, as Wellington’s ever increasing population spreads northwards and those of the Maypole company and Waikanae North at least are boring.

An article on the Mainstream Media last weekend here suggests that the Reserve Bank will keep cutting the Official Cash Rate until it goes below zero — yes, you heard right.

“Odds are rising that some kind of significant economic hit will occur before the OCR is back to anything approaching historical norms,” ANZ strategist Sandeep Parekh wrote in a note from June, laying out the “unconventional” options the Reserve Bank could use next.

“These included cutting the benchmark official cash rate (OCR) to below zero, as well as buying government loans, council debt and even packages of mortgages, a tactic commonly known as printing money.”

The article states that Interest rates are at all time lows and are headed lower. The OCR is now down to 1.5% and is widely expected to be cut again in August.  By the end of the year it could be under 1%.

At present the official inflation rate is 1.5%, but everyone knows that real inflation for several things — particularly KCDC rates — is well up on that.  Retired people who rely on interest from savings to supplement the government pension will have to start dipping into those savings.

There are obvious consequences — one which we don’t want to see is the resurgence of the Dodgy Finance Company offering bigger interest on ultra risky deposits with them.  Another, perhaps more positive, may be people chasing equity investments in new productive enterprises; providing capital gain if not dividends.  Another consequence may be more elderly seeking part or full time jobs to get by.

Kapiti’s own concert series, Mulled Wine Concerts is renowned for bringing new and interesting works to audiences on the Kapiti Coast. On Sunday 11 August, they present an exciting group of local Wellington-area based musicians who perform as a quintet. They have chosen the name “A Piano in the Wind” to indicate that the quintet consists of four wind instruments and a pianist.

The players all perform regularly in Orchestra Wellington and the New Zealand  Symphony Orchestra. They will be performing the two most prominent quintets for piano and wind — the Mozart and Beethoven Quintets in E flat major. After its premiere in 1784, Mozart described the quintet to his father as the best thing he had written in his life. It is believed that Beethoven’s quintet may have been inspired by Mozart’s – being written in the same key and for the same instrumentation. these quintets are often paired together in a programme. Both works feature beautiful piano parts balanced against gorgeous melodies played on clarinet, oboe, French horn and bassoon.

Leader of the group, Merran Cooke notes that the programme will also include Chopin’s beautiful nocturne, Opus 46, No. 1 played by pianist Rachel Thompson which she describes as one of Chopin’s greatest emotional achievements and “a masterly expression of a great powerful grief”. The group will also present a more modern piece – George Gershwin’s “Three Preludes” transcribed for the quintet.

Concert-goers will experience an afternoon of great music in the lovely surroundings of the beachfront of Paekakariki, where the newly earthquake-strengthened Memorial Hall overlooks the sea and Kapiti Island. Truly an afternoon not to be missed!

Mulled Wine Concerts presents A Piano in the Wind

on Sunday 11 August, 2019

at

Paekakariki Memorial Hall, 96 The Parade, Paekakariki

Tickets: pre-sales (until Friday 9 August) $25 adults ($10 students under 14). Door sales
$30.

Online sales: marygow@gmail.com. Tel: 021 101 9609 or 04 902 2283.

Info: http://www.mulledwineconcerts.com, or like us on FaceBook: Mulled Wine Concerts.

Ticket outlets: Magpie Paremata, 99 Mana Esplanade; Darcy’s Fruit and Veges, 11 Beach Road, Paekakariki; Milk and Ginger, Raumati Beach; Moby Dickens, Paraparaumu Beach; La Chic Hair Designers, Kapiti Lights; Lovely Living, Waikanae.

You are warmly invited to the opening of two exhibitions at Mahara Gallery on Saturday 3 August from 5pm with special guest Susanna Shadbolt, Director of Aratoi – Wairarapa Museum of Art & History.

Kirsty Gardiner, Remnants, Remains. Developed and toured by Aratoi – Wairarapa Museum of Art & History.
Gillian Cronin, Through Female Eyes

Special events:

Whispers of Flight, Kirsty Gardiner.

Artist’s floortalk with Kirsty Gardiner
Wednesday 14 August
11 am – 12 noon

–The Maharanis of Hawa Mahal, Gillian Cronin

Artist’s floortalk with Gillian Cronin
Wednesday 21 August
11 am – 12 noon

Both exhibitions run 4 August to 15 September, 2019
Opening hours: Monday to Saturday 10 am to 4 pm, Sunday 1 to 4 pm. Free entry.

NOTE: This is the last week to see ‘making place for new ways: Matariki at Mahara’. Closing 4 pm Sunday 28 July.

We are closed for installation next week and reopen on 3 August 5 pm.

All welcome & free entry

The stormwater outfall pipes on Waikanae Beach need these:

Recently, officials from the Australian city of Kwinana introduced a new filtration system in the Henley Reserve. This method is remarkably simple and straightforward. Both the people and the local authorities have already seen the benefits of using it, and they’re very ‘proud’ of it.

This simple filtration system consists of a net that is installed on the outlet of a drainage pipe which serves to catch large debris and stop it from contaminating the environment.

The pipes are actually drainage water from the local residential areas, as well as water from the city’s many nature areas, and the waste and litter from these places can be devastating and damaging to the environment. Furthermore, this debris is regularly washed away by heavy rains, which drags it all down to the sewerage systems.

The local council began by installing two nets and were amazed at the results — the data suggests that their unique yet simple and effective filtration system managed to catch over 800 pounds [about 365 kg] of rubbish within only a few weeks.

Source with more photos.

By Carol Sawyer

Horizons Regional Council have a long history of being lax about 1080 poison going into their region’s landfills it seems.

I wrote the following in January 2017:

“George Robinson has worked in the pest control industry all his life. When he left the Manawatu/Wanganui (Horizons) Regional Council he had a gagging order put on him, but that time period is now up.

This is the story he told me:

They used to use (up to 2008-2009 that he knows of) 20% 1080 stock solution and dilute it to a field solution to put it on the green-dyed carrots, for rabbits. He said they had back packs and had it running down their arms, legs, backs… They used to find dead birds everywhere, blackbirds especially. They were told it all dissolved in water and broke down.

They had a big holding tank and the stock solution could be held for up to 7 or 8 years before it was no good, but a man from a waste removal transport company would come along and pump out the holding tank. He would take it down to the Palmerston North landfill and spread it all over the ground, driving round in a circle. George says this guy was a straight-up sort of chap who was amazed that he was given permission to do it.”

Also the 66 tonnes of 1080 poison baits, unused at Makarora, Mt Aspiring National Park, in 2015, ended up being trucked to a Manawatu-Wanganui region landfill according to an OIA response from DoC to Ray Thompson in February 2017 – an identical performance to the 16 tonne one in this recent Radio NZ report attached. 66 tonnes of 1080 baits contain enough pure 1080 to kill 1,414,286 x 70 kg people and poison another 1,414,286 people ( LD50 0.5 to 2 mg per kg bodywight, Negherbon)

If I hadn’t been alerted to a rumour about JJ Nolan’s Haast (Okuru) flood-damaged storage shed, and if Joel Lund had not then gone from Wanaka to Haast and bravely taken photographs of same with a good zoom lens (because we could not be sure until then which building it was, and needed proof – the HazChem sign) and undergone on-site interrogation while he was about it (!), and if Richard Healey had not done terrific captions and graphics plotting the old water courses in the area, and also calculated the size of the storage shed from the photographs, and if Kathy White hadn’t nudged me into sending an OIA request to Worksafe (I hate doing OIAs) which confirmed that flood-damaged bait was disposed of, and if David Haynes had not followed up with a more specific OIA request to the EPA which confirmed quantity, destination and method of disposal, this Radio NZ story would never have emerged.¹

The story in more detail is here:

These stories are almost always a joint effort and this is the true power of the anti-1080 movement. So much unacceptable carelessness and dangerous practice is hidden from the public by the Dept of Conservation. It is, frankly, disgusting behaviour. But… it is getting harder and harder for them to hide the truth!

The Radio NZ report audio file (3 min 37 secs) from 12 July 2019 is here

1. Organisations like Worksafe, DoC, OSPRI, EPA consistently use the full legal limit of 20 working days before responding, and more and more frequently are claiming a need for extensions of time. The flood happened in mid-March and it has taken four months to get even this small part of the story into the media – such are the holdups imposed on obtaining information which it is our legal right to have.