Workin' 9 to 5

I don’t know how many times during the weekend and evenings I have driven along Northland highways undergoing road reconstruction.

Various stretches of road, according to the signs, will take months, often years to complete.

I couldn’t help but draw a comparison a few weekends ago when I saw heavy machinery working during the weekend on a Pakaraka kiwifruit development site, and then drove through

people don’t follow social distancing, or people go to work when they’re sick, it won’t work. And it won’t work anywhere in the world, so we are placing trust in our system, but we are also placing trust in our team of five million.”

We’re glad Jacinda Ardern is finally taking a balanced approach to Covid-19. But it’s a pity she’s balancing it with her re-election campaign and not the needs of small businesses

Leader, Act

Waipapa, where machinery was sitting idle.

No doubt there was someone cracking the whip on the private development site. But because the other involves the NZTA, nobody was cracking the whip. Why would they? The poor old taxpayer or ratepayer will pick up the tab.

And what do we get in return? Costly budget blow-outs and roads that need fixing within a year (sometimes days) after the job’s done.

these problems already.

Apart from utilising sites ideal for wind and solar generation, we have not gotten into tidal-generated power. Wellington is ideally suited, beside Cook Strait with strong, regular currents ideal for driving a turbine.

I also commend the Rt Hon Winston Peters for his vision of aquaculture. We have seen a dismal approach by successive governments to bringing aquaculture out of the dark ages and make the industry not just employment for thousands, but a major export industry.

Incentives to explore diversity in all forms of farming, and subsidies to assist the development of products, especially in the current situation, do not seem to be of interest to our leaders in a time when our country is functioning well in the time of global pandemic.

Our airlines would surely love the business of supplying the world with our great products.

No wonder our productivity levels are so low and the costs of road construction (invariably substandard in the North) are so high. These construction companies should be named and shamed.

It’s time this newspaper took a few pics of the idle machinery parked along the edges of our roads and started asking a few pointed questions.

Kerikeri

Kaitaia and the number of students who drove under the influence of marijuana rose by 260 per cent.

Monitor Cannabis Uruguay 2018 reported that the annual prevalence of use in Uruguay increased by 50 per cent in the 15-64 age group (overall), predominantly among the 15-18s and 19-24s.

The number of people 15 and over in Canada who reported using cannabis in the past three months rose from 14 per cent (2018, prelegalisation) to 18 per cent (2019, postlegalisation).

The Christchurch Health and Development Study found that the use of cannabis was associated with increased risks of educational delay, welfare dependence, psychotic symptoms, major depression, motor vehicle accidents, tobacco use, other illicit drug use and respiratory impairment (Michael Daly, Stuff, January 18, 2019).

Does this evidence look like “reduced harm?” Vote with care, and remember that medicinal cannabis is already legalised.

RD1 Mangonui is take over its news services such as TV, radio and newspapers. They can then impose on the vanquished nation their propaganda and what it is that they want the population to hear.

This has happened in this country. under our watch and under our noses, so that in the end we end up believing a lie. As Adolf Hitler once said, “If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough it will be believed.” If you don’t believe me, just watch or listen to some of our news broadcasts and ask yourself, is this the only side to the argument? If all you hear constantly is one side, then ask yourself why. Remember, there are always two sides to every story.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall once wrote. “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

Wake up New Zealand! Source both sides of a story before deciding what you believe. Don’t let someone else give you just one side of the argument and tell you that this is what you should believe. Delve a little deeper. You invariably find that their truth may not be your truth.

Kaitaia