Turner slams ‘barbaric’ council threat to cut water

United Future deputy leader Judy Turner today slammed the Far North District Council’s plan to reintroduce a policy of reducing water flow to properties that are well behind with payments.

“This is a barbaric response and a dangerous one. People need water. It is a basic of life and it is quite appalling to see threats of it being withheld under any circumstances at all,” she said,

“We’re talking about cutting an essential service for non-payment in a low-income area where a lot of people are not working and would struggle to maintain an acceptable living standard as it is,” Mrs Turner, United Future’s health spokeswoman, said.

“We already face health problems based on poverty in this country. This can only make that worse.

“This council and others facing such issues need to look at any number of other options, including legal remedies.

“But you do not hold people’s water back. What next? Bring back debtors’ prisons?”

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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>>