Thursday 7 March 2013

What's on this weekend?

Saturday 9 March
Culture Galore
Noon – 4pm
Ray Blank Park, Maidstone Road
Cancelled if wet
Free

Experience the world and celebrate cultural diversity! Be entertained by more than 50 cultural performances and demonstrations, a huge variety of ethnic foods, art and crafts for sale and fun activities for the whole family. Children's activities including Amac Bungy, bouncy castles, stone- and soap-carving, origami, face-painting, Plains FM recording booth and more. BYO rug or chairs and make a day of it. Limited parking is available. Listen to Plains FM and Newstalk ZB for cancellation notice.

Sunday 10 March
Sunday Bandstand
Noon – 1.30pm
Free

Canterbury Caledonian Royal Stewart and Balmoral Pipe Bands
will be playing at
Daffodil Lawn, Botanic Gardens

Woolston Concert Brass will be playing at
Scarborough Reserve, Sumner

Ingham Lazy Sundays: Mandy Pickering
Archery Lawn, Botanic Gardens
3pm–4.30pm
Free

Radius provides 'instrumental fire for your soul' with Harry Harrison drawing on his Scottish roots and immersion in Americana, as the 'Celtic Cowboy' of Aotearoa on guitar, dobro and banjo. Justine S evokes sonic sounds using voice, alto saxophone and flute, creating cross-cultural streams from around the globe. Together their infectious rhythms and soulful melodies interweave, producing a richly-textured instrumental wonder.

Farewell to the Godwits (Kuaka)
From 4pm
Southshore Spit Reserve, South New Brighton

Help farewell Christchurch’s iconic and much-loved visitors, the Bar-tailed Godwits (kuaka), as they take off on their long trip back to Alaska.

The champion long-distance flying birds are seen off towards the end of summer with a brief and informative ceremony at the Southshore Spit. The Godwit makes the longest non-stop flight known for any bird and the longest journey without pausing to feed by any animal – more than 11,000 kilometres along a route from Alaska to Christchurch to escape the northern winter.

After resting up and filling out under the protection of park rangers and bird lovers in Christchurch, the birds are ready to return to their Alaskan breeding grounds.

This unique and very special event is presented by the Christchurch City Council, its Regional Park Rangers team, the Ornithological Society of New Zealand and the Avon-Heathcote Estuary Ihutai Trust.

Free BBQ sausages. BYO binoculars. No dogs please.

Roadworks to Bridge Street meaning that it only runs one-way, access into South New Brighton is recommended via Pages Road. Visitors can catch the route 5 bus and limited off-street parking is available

These events are all part of the Garden City SummerTimes festival. For more information please visit summertimes.co.nz.

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Public Address Link:
A (Sweary) Analysis Of Urgency Abuse And
The Consititution

Keith Ng: You’re looking at the Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) for the Public Health and Disability Amendment Bill. Basically, the courts said that the Government had to pay family members who looked after people with disabilities (because not doing so was discriminatory), so the Government passed this law to say: “Yeah nah.”

The RIS isn’t just redacted for the public – it was redacted for MPs. *Parliament* voted on this, with all the relevant facts blacked out.

Sure, it’s understandable, right? If you’re passing a law that’s really dodgy, you don’t want advice from civil servants saying “uh, this is pretty illegal” to be public. But actually, that’s not really a problem here, because in the same piece of legislation, THEY SAID THEY CAN’T BE TAKEN TO COURT. More>>