Keen to compost at home? Complete the survey on our website, and we’ll post you out a voucher for $40 off either a food scrap collection service, or a composting system from a participating retailer.
Did you know, on average half what we put in our rubbish bins in Kāpiti each week is food and garden waste? Our Love Your Compost campaign aims to change that.
Our spring (October/November) Love Your Compost workshops will be opening for registrations soon, so watch this space – we’ll update you when they’re open for registrations.
There have been several Wally Richards articles on compost — type “compost” in the search box above. —Eds
Following extensive community consultation and five years since the old Waikanae Library closed its doors due to poor maintenance, the full Kapiti Coast District Council was due to finally make a decision on the development stage this coming Thursday.
However, Waikanae Community Board chair Richard Mansell says the Council are about to stall the process yet again.
“The recommendation now is that they are ‘wanting to get more information’,” says Mr Mansell.
“The Board and Councillors were given an earlier version of the report two weeks ago, which recommended one of three options, and this was due to go to the Council asking for a decision – so work could finally begin.
“Somehow this request for action has been turned into another round of consultants’ reports,” Mr Mansell says.
He says it’s important to note that funding for the first option of the Waikanae Library project has already been allocated.
“I and the Waikanae Community Board are bitterly disappointed. This is manifestly unfair to Waikanae Library users, who have been waiting for years for this project to start. We’ve just had 5 weeks of extensive community engagement on this and we received resounding desire from our community to get on with it.
Mr Mansell says it will be seen as very disingenuous following all the consultation, the 53-page report that followed 5 weeks of community engagement, to now not make a decision on one of the three options presented to the community.
“On behalf of our community, the Waikanae Community Board are requesting an immediate start on Option 1 (to refurbish and extend the former library building) as this is required before any other Option is able to start,” says Mansell.
Options extensively consulted on with the community were: Option 1 – Refurbish and extend the former library building. Option 2 – Refurbish both the former library building and the temporary library building. Option 3 – Refurbish both the library buildings and extend the former library building.
“However, the Council Agenda now has this recommendation to be put before the Council this Thursday:” It is recommended that Council: A. Receive the report on the community engagement process. B. Note that the community engagement supports the development of a multi-functional space that becomes a social hub for the entire community. C. Note that community engagement confirms the project objectives and will inform detailed functional planning. D. Note the addition of option 4 for further analysis. E. Note that further analysis is required to inform advice on the potential to accommodate a larger development. F. Note that officers propose to report back on options and funding implications in October 2023.
Mr Mansell says further unnecessary and costly delays are unacceptable. “The public have told us what they want and it is deliverable if Council just gets on with it.”
If you’ve not heard of any of these people, neither have we. But it demonstrates that there are opportunities for bold (for want of a better word) people online.
from statistica.com
At the 2023 Streamy Awards which aired Sunday night on YouTube, content creator MrBeast a.k.a. Jimmy Donaldson won the main category Creator of the Year as well as the award for Best Collaboration (with Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson). The 25-year-old who grew up in North Carolina was the only winner taking home multiple awards, showing the resounding success he has had with his YouTube channel focused on over-the-top challenges (and the occasional grand gesture).
The latest release of Forbes’ list of the most successful internet creators lists Donaldson as the highest-earning of them all — at a yearly gross of $54 million. The MrBeast channel was also the second-most followed on YouTube as of August 2023 — up from rank 4 at the beginning of the year. In this time span, Donaldson has attracted attention for paying for operations making 1,000 blind people see and 1,000 deaf people hear.
YouTubers generally ranked high among the best-paid content creators. One aspect of this is sponsored posts as well as ads earning more if they are in a video format. According to Forbes, Donaldson is in fact capitalizing on this aspect. However, many creators who have earned millions as social media personalities have done so by outside business deals. Third-ranked Jake Paul who started out as a comedy and music creator on Vine and later YouTube has pivoted to boxing and merchandise sales. Rhett McLaughlin and Link Neal of channel Rhett & Link have branched out from YouTube sketch comedy and other entertainment content to live appearances and merch sales. Mark Edward Fischbach, known as Markiplier on YouTube, initially uploaded gaming videos, but now also earns most of his cash with, again, merch sales as well as podcast and TV deals.
Elliot Tebele might have come the longest way from posting memes on Tumblr to running a media company that includes notable Instagram accounts like FuckJerry, TV productions, consulting and even board games. Jerry Media has worked or is working with notables like Michael Bloomberg (during his 2020 presidential run), Seth Phillips (“Dude With Sign”) and the Instagram egg. Tebele’s brand Jaja Tequila is also bringing in money.
The highest-earning female content creator (at least in 2021) was Danielle Bregoli a.k.a. Bhad Bhabie, making her millions on OnlyFans — a platform with a straightforward monetizing strategy [a euphemism —Eds]. The 20-year-old actually started out as a meme herself, after a video clip and pictures of her 2016 appearance on TV show Dr. Phil went viral and made her the Cash-me-outside girl at just 13 years old. Bregoli built a sizable music career in the years that followed and has been cashing out on OnlyFans since turning 18 in March 2021. Alexandra Cooper of the Call Her Daddy podcast and TikTok’s biggest name Charli D’Amelio also make the top 10.
ACT’s momentum continues with it’s third consecutive rise in the 1News poll to 17 seats, and an ACT/National Government on 65 seats. Donations, crowds, and mood are matching the polls. If you are a Free Press reader, you are likely a core ACT supporter, thank you for helping us get this far.
End Maori Council Wards
No good ever came from dividing people by race. Māori representation on councils is roughly equivalent to the Māori population anyway, it is certainly far higher than Asian or Pacific representation. The logical conclusion of Māori council wards is that everyone should be segregated into race-based voting. That’s why on the weekend ACT announced it would change the Local Electoral Act to remove race-based council wards.
Not all Maori are the same
It shouldn’t need to be said, but here we are. One of the most odious assumptions behind Māori Council wards is that a Māori person can represent a Māori person better than a non-Māori person. That only makes sense if Māori people have more in common with each other than anyone else. As it happens, people from one hāpu do not always want to be represented by someone from another hāpu, even if they are both Māori. Then there’s the fact that individual Māori people can actually have different political views from other Māori and want to vote for different things.
Gesture Politics
Grant Robertson has increased the annual Government Budget by $56 billion. Now they are promising to reduce annual spending by $1 billion (sold as $4 billion, but that’s over four years). Any normal person would say they’ve increased Government spending by $55 billion. But saving $1 billion sounds better than spending $55 billion, so they put it that way. Ardern’s gesture politics live on.
Real Savings Indeed
The truth is that Robertson’s reckless spending (helped by Adrian Orr’s reckless money printing) has sucked the life out of real production in New Zealand. The IMF now forecasts that this country will have the second worst economic growth in the world next year, just edging out Equitorial Guinea. That’s why ACT’s Alternative Budget A time for truthis needed more each day. It would cut $35 billion worth of wasteful spending in four years. It would also leave taxpayers with some real change in their pockets, thanks to a $2,200 tax cut for someone on the average wage.
Desperate Man
When someone tries to be too hard to be one thing, it usually turns out they’re the other. Affable Chippie from the Hutt who loves a good sausage roll has always had a nasty streak. Now his polling batteries are low and, like a robotic vacuum cleaner, he returns to base.
Openly Negative Campaigning
There’s nothing new about negative campaigning. Politicians only have two basic options; vote for me because I’ll do good things for you or, vote for me because the other guy will do bad things to you. What’s extraordinary about Chris Hipkins’ promise to ‘fight back’ and attack the opposition, is that politicians going negative don’t usually admit it, let alone announce it.
Why not run on your record, Chris?
Hipkins’ and Labour’s problem, is they’ve done all the spending without getting the results. They’ve trashed the economy, public services, social cohesion, you name it, they’ve stuffed it. Unable to run on their own record, Labour are now cranking up the fear factory, just as they did in covid. We all need rid of these people so we can get back to the values that make this country work.
Some people have been cutting Tim Costley’s face out of his Otaki electorate hoardings, and while maltreatment is not unusual with election signs, the fact that the same thing has been reported in Wellington indicates a coordinated action by supporters of this government. They shouldn’t be surprised if their signs get the same treatment.
What is below-the-belt behaviour, however, is that some Leftist also vandalised Tim Costley’s car by jumping on/bashing the hood, a little Suzuki Swift, not an expensive SUV of the type Labour MPs drive. Fortunately, a panel-beater supporter saw the photo and got the repairs done gratis.
A lot of empire sycophancy hides behind the fact that it’s always permissible to retrospectively oppose US wars that already happened, but not the current one. It’s permitted now to say the destruction of Vietnam and Iraq and Libya were mistakes, for example, but if you said it at the time people would treat you like a monster and call you all kinds of names.
And it’s important to understand that this is still happening today. One day it will be permissible to say in mainstream circles that it was wrong for the US empire to deliberately provoke the war in Ukraine and keep it going as long as possible to bleed Russia, but it’s taboo to say that now, because the empire hasn’t yet accomplished all its goals in Ukraine.
They always act like the most recent interventionist disaster was the final one. They always act like the hawks may have been wrong all those other times but they’re not wrong now. And then when they’ve killed everyone they wanted to kill and grabbed everything they wanted to grab and there’s no possibility of losing anything they gained, it will suddenly become permissible to make the present disaster the final one while they assure us the next one is completely righteous.
❖ By far the most dangerous disinformation published on online platforms is the mainstream war propaganda that’s paved the way to mountains of human corpses throughout the global south, and now in Ukraine. But rather than being censored, it’s being loudly algorithmically amplified.
❖ US empire managers keep saying they need to move more and more war machinery to “challenge” China in the South China Sea, because China is behaving aggressively. Only a complete moron would believe this narrative [unfortunately they exist —Eds].
❖ Imagine how shitty and soul-sucking it would feel to have to be a mainstream news pundit. Having to treat presidential races like they’re real things that actually matter. Talking about partisan feuds between Democrats and Republicans like they’re consequential and relevant. Talking about the United States like it’s just a normal country in a world full of similar normal countries, participating in world events just like any other country, passively witnessing terrible things happening in other countries like it didn’t actively cause those terrible things to happen.
Your whole life would be dedicated to co-authoring a fiction — but a really boring, vapid, stupid fiction that everyone around you is pretending is real life. But you’d know it’s not real. On some level you’d know. There are only so many years you can closely observe the kayfabe performance of electoral politics where nothing ever changes without noticing that that seems to be a feature not a bug in the system. There’s only so long you can closely observe geopolitics before you notice that the US and its client states play a role in every major international conflict, and notice who benefits from this dynamic. The awareness that you’re giving your life to a lie would creep in and sit in the periphery of your awareness like a terrible memory of something that definitely happened but you don’t want to think about.
And on some level you’d be aware that you don’t have to do this anymore. On some level you’d be aware that you could turn around and start talking about how America’s real government works, about how the empire works, about how power actually moves on the world stage. Real things that actually matter. And you’d be aware on some level of how right this would feel, how freeing it would feel, how expansive it would feel.
But you’d also be aware that it would cost you everything. Your job. Your friends. Your social standing. Your carefully cultivated relationships with all the right kind of people. Your expensive house. Your fancy car. Your spouse. Your kids’ Ivy League educations. The respect of everyone you know.
And you look at the two options, and you weigh them out, and every day you pick the easy way. Every day you choose your own cowardice over truth. Every day you choose fear and fraudulence over courage and authenticity.
And you have to live like that every day of the rest of your life. Imagine how awful that would be. How gross and unfulfilling life would feel, every waking minute of every day, year after year, until you die.
It’s not a fate I would wish on anybody.
❖ You wanna know how fucking stupid Australians are? Australians are so fucking stupid they think the US empire is filling their country up with war machinery because it loves them and wants to protect them from the Chinese.
❖ So much empire apologia today is just people pretending not to understand what the word “provoked” means.
❖ The age of western domination has been defined by imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, narrative control, and dogshit mainstream culture manufactured in New York and Hollywood. Hopefully these things can be flushed out of human civilization along with western domination.
Didn’t NATO say that it was supporting ‘democracy’ in Ukraine? Why then won’t they support a Presidential election?
Ukrainian President Zelensky canceled the upcoming October Presidential election due to the conflict with Russia. That means that he will be in power until further notice, dragging his country into war and causing record numbers of casualties. Shouldn’t Ukrainians have the chance to vote him out, especially during war time not in spite of it? Now President Zelensky says that he will ‘consider’ putting on elections if the West pays him around $5 million. But that $5 million cannot take away from the money for weapons. He was very clear about that. He said that this is the approximate cost of of elections under martial law, which has been declared due to the conflict.
But he has also used martial law to shut down opposition media and religious organizations so how democratic do you think that election would be anyway?
Zelensky campaigned on an anti-corruption platform and that has not worked out for him. But even if Ukrainians know that their government is corrupt and their leader has dragged them into war, they have no alternative candidate to look to. No-one has come forward and, according to some, no one is likely to.
Kia ora katoa e hoa ma — Good morning, dear friends!
After a year’s work filming 1800 minutes of interviews and conducting a deep investigation into the NZ Covid issue, we are ready to release Episode One of the River of Lies: The New Zealand Scamdemic this week.
This documentary is a 3-part series representing a graduating program of data release to educate people about how the New Zealand Government has harmed the people of New Zealand with its covid response measures. It is not about rabbit holes or conspiracy theories. It is about research discipline, solid data — mostly their data, that condemns their behaviour: authoritarianism, arrogance, conflicts of interest, contradictions, propaganda and maleficence at best or criminal activity at the other end. All is revealed in a calm, data and evidence-driven way.
We are having a red carpet event at Rydges Hotel this Sunday for what will be a historic event. In my view, never before has an investigative documentary like this been needed to hold accountable those who have committed serious mistakes or crimes and give people a sense of peace that accountability is being sought and the issues are being exposed. But this is where YOU will have to assess the data for yourself and make up your own mind.
Episode one opens your eyes in a profound yet gentle way to help people see what has been so obvious to many of us but not discerned by many Kiwis.
The three episodes cover huge ground.
Episode 1 :- Examines and assesses the components of the Government’s covid-19 response plan and narrative; interviews and data that will amaze you.
Episode 2 :- Looks at the issue of the Covid Pfizer Comirnaty injection and the ‘vaccine’ issue in general: propaganda, conflicts of interest and evidence of untruthfulness from politicians, medical experts and mainstream media.
Episode 3 :- We take a deep dive into the dark world of Big Pharma and militarised medical companies, funding, corruption, connections and threads, ideology, propaganda and corrupt political, medical and academic sectors.
But firstly, we need your help to spread the message and to support this event.
I am delighted to announce that we have special guest speakers like Brenton Faithfull, Tiamara Williams and others at this event.
Please let Barbara Rasmussen know at ruakakaresources@gmail.com — If you would like to book a ticket, we can also offer group discounts.
Thank you very much for your support, and rest assured — ’The truth is coming’.
Latest trailer:
Nga mihi / Kind regards,
It’s not the only documentary on the Jacinda government’s malfeasance that has been made regarding Covidiocy, but looks to be the most thorough. With a bit of luck, many showings may persuade wavering voters not to vote for the Reds. —Eds
NZ is at the bottom of the OECD countries as far as finance is concerned. We used to be up near the top — then the Labour government of Comrade Jacinda came in and we have nose-dived for five years with all the stupid spending, especially on Wokeism and Neo-Marxist inspired nonsense.
