Only a month until Christmas; where has the year gone? All better in ‘25 hasn’t quite worked out the way it was promised, but anyway we live in the most beautiful country in the world without the ravages of war or famine, so for that we should be thankful.

I would like to congratulate all the councillors who have been voted on to the Auckland council from our area. I would also like to congratulate all the local board members who have been voted on to our local boards, although it’s a really sad indictment of the system to see that less than 30% of eligible voters voted. Therefore, the people who didn’t vote can’t moan about what’s going on around the area. I definitely voted but sadly only a few of the people I voted for made it; good people like Danielle Grant who failed in her bid for Auckland Council and Mike Single who failed in his bid for Devonport-Takapuna Local Board.
I would now like to see all these people who were voted in make good on all the promises they made to get themselves elected. I expect see Lake Road fixed to 100% in the next couple of years, I would like to see all our beaches 100% clean and I would like to see our sewerage and storm water running to 100% efficiency. There is a lot to do so hopefully this left leaning council will have the ability to undertake all of their promises. It’s all very well to promise these things to get yourself elected but in the cold grey light of the morning, things become a little harder, so let’s watch this space.
I’m sure there has got to be a better method of local body voting than what’s currently in use. The younger generation aren’t used to filling in forms with a pen and putting it in a post box. They hardly know where the local post boxes are; in fact I don’t even know myself, as so many have been taken away recently. On that note, I see that recently NZ Post deliveries are being cut down to two days a week. I see also that a stamp to post a letter domestically is $2.90.
I happened to be out at Arkles Bay recently and had a bit of a walk along the beach prior to a site meeting. I noticed a couple of new New Zealanders walking along the beach with a couple of big buckets of periwinkles. There must have been close to 2,000 of these creatures in the buckets. I asked them what they were taking them for and they said it was for their dinner. I then asked them very politely to put them back, to which they obliged. No wonder our rocky shores are getting more and more barren. I noticed the same thing around Devonport. The rock pools that were previously alive with periwinkles, starfish and little shrimps are no longer there. They haven’t disappeared through an ecological problem; they have disappeared through a new New Zealander problem.
Recently I was up in Russell where I spend a bit of time. The main street of Russell had been decorated with parking items, like planter boxes, wooden barrels and rock gardens, virtually prohibiting locals from parking anywhere near the coffee shop, Four Square and numerous other local amenities. This experimental parking plan was supposed to be on a six-month trial period, but after a year it was still there with apparently no intentions by the council to remove it. People had dented their cars against it and run into it. All in all, according to so many locals, it was a failed experiment. But still no movement by the council to remove any of it. So early one Sunday morning in October a large group of locals took the law into their own hands and with trucks, fork hoists, diggers and manpower they removed all the experimental road calming items and placed them very gently in a council car park a couple of hundred meters away. I like to see that people power is still alive and well in this country.
At this time of the year, I would like to again thank the people at North Shore Hospital for the time I spent there during the past year. They are a wonderful bunch of dedicated workers; from the surgeons to the nurses, to the people who wake you in the middle of the night to take your blood pressure, to the lady that brings in a cup of tea at three o’clock and the lady that sweeps the floor. Absolutely incredible people from all over the world. I’d like to thank them all again for their service to our country, they are the true heroes, I believe.