Kapiti council took a hard line against old folk but is keen to okay a cycling club’s tree-lopping

Some mad bastards are running freely around the country after threatening to poison infant formula. But the  news media have been just as enthralled by the antics of some tossers with a powerful urge to protect  trees.

Alf is not sure what has happened today but overnight – as you can see here – the owners of the Titirangi sites where a kauri and a rimu were scheduled for removal have released an open letter saying the kauri  can stay.

This sounds like discrimination against rimu, but Alf – to be candid – couldn’t care less.

Accordingly he thinks Environment Minister Nick Smith is looking dangerously like a greenie for saying he hoped the kauri would be saved.

“I expressed to the [Auckland] mayor [Len Brown] a preference for the 200-year-old kauri to be spared, if at all possible, but that the Government respected the fact that it was a decision for the Auckland Council.”

This fuss led Alf to recall the appalling way an elderly couple in Kapiti were treated last year for doing the environment a favour and letting in more sun by lopping a few trees.

The bloody council fairly obviously knew it was being unreasonably bloody-minded by sending in the cops to help deal to the couple because it apologised while persisting with prosecuting them. 

What do silly Aucklanders want to protect? Oh, yes – some trees that elsewhere are shunned as weeds

So who’s got the Roundup?

Alf’s world is in a serious state of upheaval.  He was not approached by Fairfax hacks to contribute to a video and newspaper report in which Eketahuna residents share their memories of the 6.2 earthquake that rocked his neighbourhood at 3:52pm on Monday 20th January, 2014

At the same time the Grumbles have learned (a) that Dierde Barlow has died, (b) that The Sun may be stripped of its Page 3 girl and (c) moves are afoot to reduce if not eliminate sledging from international cricket, which is the best bit of the game in Alf’s view.

But you can be sure there are some tossers elsewhere who have got their knickers in a twist on much more trivial matters.

And yep.

You can find them in Auckland, according to a Radio NZ report which curiously combines good old English with Te Reo.

Squirrels and beavers put a glitch into the modelling that has been used to chart climate warming

All mouth, like a greenie … and bad for the environment, too.

All those tiresome greenies and lefties who have been giving our wonderful National-led government a hard time over climate warming should go back to the drawing board.

New information has emerged about the causes of global warming which suggest they have to revisit the models that show rising temperatures and which by and large get too many people into a great deal of bother about the world’s future.

This information is being disseminated today and highlights the role of rodents (a category into which your hard-working MP is apt to place greenies and lefties).

An account can be found here in Britain’s The Telegraph:

A lesson in survival: 100 humans turned out to be too many for the well-being of 58,000 moa

“Please, sir, may we have some moa?”

Alf read with great fascination today the news – if you can call it news – that the flightless moa was doomed the moment humans landed in New Zealand.

At least, this is what new research suggests, according to this report st Stuff..

Whether they were big or small, moa were wiped out in 200 years and the last were killed nearly 600 years ago, between 1440 and 1445.

It first blush, it is hard to square this environmental vandalism with something drummed into us by our indigenous persons and by such authorities as the Ministry for the Environment), because they insist:

For Māori, the concept of kaitiakitanga is of primary importance. Kaitiakitanga is a fundamental concept of the guardianship of a resource for future generations. It is practised as part of tikanga Māori (customary values and practices).

And…

Let’s go along with Mallard and bring back the moa – but Treaty claims about kai are bound to follow

Uh, oh … is that an indigenous hunter who fancies a feed of moa?

Alf was tempted to muse on the Treaty implications (among other things) on learning that Trevor Mallard is promoting the idea of bringing back the moa.

Trev might have started small by aiming to bring back the huia.

But no, credit where credit is due – he thinks big and bold and he has set his sights on the moa.

This comes from his fascination with “the science of de-extinction” and its rapid advance, according to a report at Stuff.

Accordingly

… the Hutt South MP has laid down a challenge for Lower Hutt and for scientists: Let’s work towards the possibility of moa one day striding again through the bush of Rimutaka Forest Park.

Is dam a dirty word? Certainly not when its promoters intend building it on Maori land

Breaching the Eder dam…that will teach the buggers for not compensating the local iwi.

One of the hits from the musical “South Pacific” was titled “There Is Nothing Like a Dame”.

If Rodgers and Hammerstein had ventured further south they might have changed it to “There’s Nothing Like a Dam”.

Building dams in this country involves a costly process just to get the consents and opponents of the applications can lead the applicants a right old song and dance.

The song and dance sometimes can be halted if the dam builder compensates Maori for the mischief being done to them culturally and what-have-you.

Bugger worrying about the eel being devastated – think about the devastation to our special people

Dunno why Ngai Tahu aren’t out protecting their own patch. Maybe they are too busy counting their money.

So it was left to some feller of the Ngati Porou persuasion to holler about the latest outrage the bloody colonialists are about to inflict on the country’s special indigenous people.

This feller happens to have emigrated from his own neck of the woods and set up shop as a West Coast commercial eeler.

It will be interesting to know if he retains his special status as an indigenous person, having uplifted himself and moved into the domain of Ngai Tahu.

This would make him a more recent immigrant than all the Pakeha and other non-Maori whose ancestors arrived there some 200 years or so back.

But that is to digress.

He is kicking up a fuss about plans to split the South Island eel quota into shortfin and longfin, saying it will be devastating to Maori.

Hitler’s bombs didn’t bother the Brits’ ancestors – but a 1080 drop might have riled them

Londoners took offence at their city being bombed…but their ancestors were indifferent.

Alf’s ancestors – because they happen to by very dead – don’t give a toss about what happens to the places where they once lived.

Most of them happened to have lived and died in England, some of them buried long ago in cities upon which the Luftwaffe dropped many bombs during World War II.

The good citizens of those cities were deeply affronted by the bombings, of course, and regarded Herr Hitler’s assault on their country as seriously disrespectful. But so far as Alf is aware, his ancestors were blissfully indifferent to the blitz.

Dunno if this indifference happens to be a British thing, but in this country the ancestors of the tangata whenua are much more twitchy about having things dropped on the places where they once wandered.

There’s taonga in them thar waterways – and Maori will want lots of say in what happens to it

Taonga flowed from here into Ngai Tahu’s bank account.

As a keen observer of the country’s special people – the tangata whenua – Alf sensed there would be dissatisfaction among them about the government’s proposed water management reforms.

Sure enough, Radio NZ has reported the chair of Te Runanga o Ngai Tahu as saying (here)

…the proposed reforms to freshwater management do not do enough to protect the taonga itself.

The law catches up with a paua plunderer who put profits ahead of his kaitiakitanga

The Ministry for the Environment’s website is instructive, in helping us understand Maori attitudes to the environment.

We should be encouraged to learn and understand these attitudes and values, because the Maori (see here) are treated by our government – and the United Nations, too, come to think of it – as special people.

Māori hold a distinct and special status as the indigenous people, or tangata whenua, of New Zealand. Indigenous rights and indigenous culture are of profound importance to New Zealand and fundamental to our identity as a nation.

This means they should be accorded special treatment.

They like to take full advantage of this entitlement.