Things councils don’t do

You can’t always blame it on the Council.

Submissions to the Waitakere City Council’s 2004/05 Annual Plan sometimes ask for a little more than even this progressive Council can deliver.

Waitakere can’t enlarge the roller coaster at Rainbow’s End for several reasons. One is that Rainbow’s end is operated by a business, not a Council and in any event, it’s at Manukau City.

Furthermore, as the Council doesn’t determine what kind of legitimate businesses people should establish, it has no control over many butcher’s shops there are in the city, that sell horsemeat for human consumption – even though horsemeat is apparently “on the menu in 5-Star hotels in Paris (France)”.

A request for “more windows on the train because it’s stuffy inside” will be referred to Connex which runs the trains.

For those who want to make more suggestions, submissions on Waitakere’s annual plan close at 5pm on May 13.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>