Mrs MacDoctor and I have just had a relaxing week in Vanuatu, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Internet access was painfully slow, so there has been no blogging for more than a week and not much news about New Zealand. I see that I have not missed much, just another unexciting budget from Bill English. [...]

The Mayor of Auckland, Len Brown announced sweeping changes to the unitary plan for Auckland, made in response to widespread opposition to the plan to build high density high-rise apartments in many areas of Auckland. “We have taken on board the reasonable objections of those who say that the proposed high density housing will be [...]

The Rena has finally actually split in two after several weeks of being reported by the media as “splitting”. Apart from the temporary sudden increase in debris from the ship, this may actually be a good thing, in the long run. The MacDoctor has been told that it may be possible to float the back [...]

Talking about the death toll from the February killer quake in Christchurch, Professor Mike Ardagh reckons that there will be a number of others who will have died from the quake who are not yet part of this toll. He is thinking mainly of those who succumbed to complications from their injuries or died as [...]

Yesterday, John Roughan’s column in the Herald was about the people of Christchurch and their need to know “the worst they might face”. He draws his story from the reluctance of the GNS to make comments about the possibility of further strong earthquakes even though they knew there was good scientific evidence that there would [...]

At Red Alert, David Cunliffe blogs that he thinks that National is being deceptive about New Zealand’s international debt problem. It is slightly worrying that Mr Cunliffe (who is Labour’s financial spokesperson and is therefore supposed to be financially literate) thinks this, because there is no doubt that Standard and Poor is very concerned about [...]

ABC News has a cool, yet horrifying series of images showing satellite views of Christchurch before and after the quake. They are horrifying because they show the extent of the damage well, but they are also in a cool rollover format which makes it easy to compare the before and after pictures. Add a Comment

The MacDoctor has noted that Cactus Kate is somewhat irritated by the people at the Standard, notably one Marty G. She writes: “I’m really pissed off that politics has come into the Christchurch earthquake so quickly”. (Quote from Marty G) Really? You are having a laff? The whole post titled “The Shock Doctrine” was political [...]

I see that Grey District mayor, Tony Kokshoorn, is pleading that Pike River be turned into an open cast mine. Surely a mining engineer has told him that this is impossible – at least, it is impossible according to many of the commentators who shouted down my post about the real cause of the Pike [...]

Nick Smith has just sensibly announced that he will extend the target date for air quality standards out from 2013 to 2020. Predictably, Labour are ranting about people dying because of the delay in implementing the standards. The Idiot at No Right Turn is even calling Nick Smith a murderer! Apparently Mr. Smith is going [...]