Island Life: Go hard or go home
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you could even merge 4 and 5 - think of the benefits, happier cows and a new export revenue stream from "flavoured milk"
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There will be a massive dairy cleanup project to make our agri-business genuinely clean and green. Jobs. Exports. Rivers you can swim in.
That's the one I would go for. Did you get a reply from Federated Farmers?
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A lot of smart people are already working on No. 4. (Clean Milk)
What the dairy industry needs is widespread adoption of Denitrification Walls along water courses affected by runoff.
And creating artificial cattail (Raupo) swamps around effluent ponds to clean the groundwater and, as a bonus money-spinning enterprise, produce a starchy crop for ethanol production.
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Where can I sign up to join your party?
Just one proviso: Tom Beard has to be Minister in charge of moving the capital. We don't want to end up with a Milton Keynes or Brasilia.
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Oh come on Blenheim????
Working in the government should be hard and unpleasant and Blenheim already has plenty of development.
What you need to do is move the capital to Stewart island! It would be a much bigger jump in the local economy for the third island than it would for Blenheim.
And it would have the bonus of creating a very good reason to not sit around parliament having meetings and head back to your electorate as soon as you bloody well can.
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How about resurrecting the idea of the tunnel from devonport to the bottom of Queen street. Travelator and bike path in perspex tubes just like at Kelly Tarlton's.
It would cost lot's of money and be way cool. Of course you'd have to make the Waitamata a marine reserve to get any fish to look at :).
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When we recently crossed Cook Strait on the ferry, my son asked "Why don't they build a bridge ?".
Why not, indeed.
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just so long as they don't put the 2 ends on different tectonic plates
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If our
houses that are disintegrating from the inside out
and well as those that are disassembling from the outside in won't those whose houses haven't been tipped over complain theirs are off their peak..?
Move the capital from Wellington to Blenheim
(or tipped over until it no longer leaks? And you're suggesting Blenheim?): And Wellington becomes...
a) The National Disaster Practice City?
b) One big wind farm (once they make turbines strong enough)?
c) An urban accomodation environment for musicians to live when not touring?As for the
Sunday Paper edict
... I see what you did there: You're just thin-wedging for this, yes?
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Bill Ralston will be obliged to write his columns in the presence of a witness who will ensure that he spends at least fifteen uninterrupted minutes at the task.
But will he still get a dollar a word? Or should we get Obama to cap his pay like the bankers?
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3. No more cheap cars
We will ban second hand imports. Car owners will be compelled to spend money on cars the way they used to: on maintenance. Running good cars for longer will provide work for more tradespeople, and as if that's not reason enough, consider also that this could bring the curtain down on the boy racer sideshow.With the NZ$ having gone from about 85 or so yen last year to a current range of 45 to 48 yen to the dollar, the secondhand car market is probably very shaky already. Add the finance and employment situations into the mix and it is probably already nosediving...
but my suggestion would to be to modify your proposal by banning all used imports except for "kei cars" (minicars). These account for 33% of all passenger cars sold in Japan. Why not in NZ too?
Oh, and add a dollar to the price of petrol for good measure, but exempt motorbikes and kei cars. And use the revenue to fund public transport, cycling and pedestrian infrastructure.
so there.
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When we recently crossed Cook Strait on the ferry, my son asked "Why don't they build a bridge ?".
Why not, indeed.
So that's why my stats went apeshit... Cheers, Brent :-)
One thing of great import I didn't mention about a Cook Strait bridge. The power companies would definitely pitch in cash for an alternative to laying cables on the Cook Strait floor. Those things are hell to maintain.
For some reason, the image I have of this alleged bridge makes it look like barbed wire from a distance. Something to do with the silhouettes of wind turbines to power the mass dampers.
Or, if you're tuned for superloon thoughts, you could build a dam right across the strait. Imagine the power one could generate from the ocean height differential. That bright idea is sitting in the mad scientist box next to the power generator on White Island, which is powered by liquid hot magma.
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Or, if you're tuned for superloon thoughts, you could build a dam right across the strait. Imagine the power one could generate from the ocean height differential. That bright idea is sitting in the mad scientist box next to the power generator on White Island, which is powered by liquid hot magma.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
I've always liked your thinking.
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That bright idea is sitting in the mad scientist box next to the power generator on White Island, which is powered by liquid hot magma.
One step better: generate Auckland's electricity from its own volcanic field. Geothermal-powered subways!
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Pursuant to Section 92a of the Copyright Act, I must declare that the bridge idea came from Emperor Norton I, via Neil Gaiman, the dam from reading about the Suez Canal, and the liquid hot magma from Austin Powers. Sorry about breaching all that copyright. Hope they don't disconnect you.
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Hmmm crossing the cook strait
and
NZ home of bungy
Oh it's so obvious
Horizontal Cook strait bungy!
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On a slightly less loony note
I've always wondered just how much energy is wasted in Gyms.
Why don't we sponsor some NZ enterprise to develop a line of exercise machines that capture all that energy and feed it back into the national grid.
You could go one step further and require all those receiving the unemployment benefit to spend 30 minutes a day generating power.
Two benefits in one, improve the health of the unemployed and produced valuable energy.
And then we could franchise it worldwide.
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Why don't we sponsor some NZ enterprise to develop a line of exercise machines that capture all that energy and feed it back into the national grid.
You could go one step further and require all those receiving the unemployment benefit to spend 30 minutes a day generating power.
A long toime ago, the MED discovered & dismantled the water turbine my mad (in a good way) uncle built under the bridge the carried his driveway over a small stream... the turbine heated the hot water cylinder in his home.
Undeterred, and still concerned about the price of power, he wired an old exercycle up to a dynamo, and insisted his teenage children cycle for 20 minutes before entering the shower.
He was ahead of his time.
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On the subject of stealth power generation from energy that would otherwise be wasted - why not? If people can power a nightclub from the dancers' energy or run a railway station on commuter's footsteps, there's surely no reason not to. Imagine having some of these installed in Courtney Place on a Saturday night.
I'm ahead of my time. I use a bicycle-based power generation system to commute to and from work. I call it "riding my bicycle to work". Sign up for the Bike Wise Battle now, kids!
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Now where talking. I have a humble proposition, here
With the right people wielding the whips we could probably get people to pay for the privilege.
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Horizontal Cook strait bungy!
Sounds like a Garth McVicar cure for violent crime; catapault the guilty into the sea with a giant slingshot. That'll teach 'em.
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Twang 'em high.
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Is that a bungy or a wedgie?
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Sounds like a Garth McVicar cure for violent crime; catapault the guilty into the sea with a giant slingshot. That'll teach 'em.
Typical leftie - soft on crime. Catapaultin's too good for them.
They should be forced to walk out into the cold, unforgiving ocean using their own energy. Whatever energy they might have from the single bowl of half-cooked oats they're allotted each day, that is.
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Just what did the vengeful McVicar do with his life before becoming 'sensible' about sentencing?
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