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Many years ago, more than I care to admit, I managed to convince my seniors in the military to allow me to do a non-trade relevant course, as a Unit Physical Training Instructor. I think in hindsight it was probably not that hard a “sell”, after all it was likely to result in me being way too tired and beaten down to be of any bother to them for the duration. · One of the first lessons I’d learned came under the title “Mindset” and was broadly…

For interested homeowners now represents a good time to explore your options around selling. The lockdown period has forced people to examine their current living arrangements and given people time to reflect. Buyer activity has been forceful, and I don’t feel we will experience a true winter market this year round if anything a delayed one. Since level 2 buyers have come out in full force! We are finding a lot of properties are selling with…

BUY VOUCHERS TO SUPPORT LOCAL BUSINESSES IN PAPAKURA · Now we have a fabulous offer for you all! · How about buying a $20.00 or more voucher from a local business in Papakura and we will give you an extra $5.00 voucher to spend. · Now that’s a good deal for sure. · Head to www.livepapakura.co.nz to see which stores are accepting these vouchers and support and love local businesses today. · WELCOME TO NEW BUSINESSES INTO PAPAKURA: · We…

For a few weeks prior to our country’s General Election we, the public, have the usual experience of over-zealous candidates seeking our attention and support. This year the election is scheduled for mid-September. Watch the political class falling over each other promising you the earth and attempting to lure your vote. However, on the day after the election, and safely back in their seats in Parliament, these characters mostly forget about…

In the middle of May, the Government announced its Budget for the next financial year. New Zealand has never seen anything remotely like it. It made clear the Government’s intention to spend vast sums of money in an attempt to protect New Zealanders from the economic shock caused by the coronavirus and the Government’s draconian measures to deal with it. Last month, I suggested that the Government had over-reacted to the virus, stampeded by a…

No one can say with confidence what our COVID-9 world is going to look like over the next 12 to 24 months. The rules and models of the old world no longer hold. It is this uncertainty itself that adds great stress, overlaying the fear of specific scenarios. Times like these can bring out true leaders but also false prophets. Trying to distinguish between them is much easier in retrospect than at the time. · All great leaders instil confidence…

He was one of the most respected writers and poets of the Beat generation alongside his friends, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac. He was unconventional and championed for gay rights at a time when homosexuality acts were criminal in every state and embodied counter culture thinking too with his views on drugs, hostility to bureaucracy and economic materialism. Allen Ginsberg left his mark in the world with his unusual formatted poetry and…

It’s safe to assume most New Zealanders understood this as meaning we have the potential for the virus to be gone, out of here, see you later, because elimination generally implies “the complete removal or destruction of something”. Also, the Covid-19 website says: “Our goal is to eliminate Covid-19 from New Zealand, so that we can live and work free from this disease.” However, during Monday’s announcement about the move to alert level three,…

I had a crappy day the other day, quite literally. The macerator pump for our toilet and greywater system chose Saturday morning to put itself into Coronavirus lockdown, so I spent the day lying on my belly in a two-and-a-half-footby-Very-Long tunnel under the building, headlight torch on, up to my elbows in the stuff that toilet macerator pumps deal with. I felt like one of my Welsh coal mining ancestors, and, having grown up with septic…

Perhaps it is dangerous to write about such a fast-moving situation as the Covid-19 pandemic when what I write may not be published for 10 days or more, but at time of writing my strong impression is that the public believe that the Government has done a remarkably good job of suppressing, perhaps even eliminating, the spread of Covid-19 in New Zealand, and that they deserve warm applause. I believe the public has been conned. · To begin with,…