Mosgiel development decision ‘concerning’
WE should all be extremely alarmed by recent development projects and plans for cities sprawling on to fertile land.
Dunedin’s Taieri Plain is an example, with a decision by the Environment Court — of all places — to overturn local planning to allow conversion of more flat land to housing. This was proclaimed as a frontpage good news story, but is actually a deeply concerning outcome.
The Plain is the most productive area for food growing in the city and should not be built over. How are we to feed the population when there is less energy available for transport as fossil fuels are phased out, and most food will have to be grown locally? Soils suitable for food production are limited and food production is becoming dangerously localised to a small number of sites, increasing risk of failure due to local weather events.
Keep the fertile soils for food growing and any new housing on the hills.
Seniors Climate Action Network
Small business support
SMEs (small, medium enterprises) make up 97% of all businesses in
New Zealand. They are the backbone of the country existing in every city, town and in rural areas and they keep the country going .
Every day we see and hear about sectors struggling to find workers.
Talking with other businesses across New Zealand they ALL state the awful situation of trying to find new staff and as we have experienced we hire staff at the living wage and lose them in short order. The unemployment figure is bandied about by Government at somewhere in the 3.4–3.8%, or 94,000 people. But then check the numbers on jobseeker benefits and it is found they are 6.1% at approx 188,000 people.
So once again the Government plays cute by quoting only the unemployed figure. Add these figures together and there are 9.9% — 282,000 people unemployed. No wonder we cannot find staff. Now they tell us that we should be hiring more New Zealanders, but ‘‘guess what’’ they aren’t there. It has been three years since our business achieved a full staff complement with a continuous revolving door of trial staff who fail or just don’t come back to work.
We need some honesty from the Government about its strategy to fix this crisis hitting SMEs
Cartoonists
Napier
SINCE the 1960s readers of, originally The Evening Star and then the Otago Daily Times have been well served by such brilliant political cartoonists as Sid Scales, Garrick Tremain and now Yeo. All three displayed the same qualities. They were/are not only exceptional caricaturists but were able to see the news for the quirks and ironies that existed within and to portray them with cartoons that were appreciated far and wide. They often hit the nail on the head, all done with subtlety and humour.
Many of us looked forward to each day’s cartoon and we still do. It is what they produce that we enjoy and in no way should we be critical of what they did not say or draw. We do control their creativity.
Even medieval despot kings allowed the court jester to state the obvious even if it was taking the mickey. They didn’t shoot the messenger and neither should we. I appreciated the message of May 13 where Yeo has Countdown and New World declaring their new discounts were the least they could do, with the emphasis on ‘‘least’’ i.e., they could have done more. Very well expressed Yeo. May we have more.
Oamaru