Protectionists will be peeved as a pugnacious Piha preservationist pitches for support

Alf gave the protectionists' domain a miss...

...to sup with the preservationists.

Hats off to Andrew Higgs, who aims to represent residents of Auckland’s west coast villages and towns east of the Waitakere Ranges.

Andrew was involved in the struggle against a reactionary army of greenies, heritage huggers, meusli munchers and what-have-you-to set up a cafe in Piha.

An outfit called the Protect Piha Heritage Society engaged in a three-years battle with Preserve Piha Limited in the Environment Court to scuttle the cafe proposal.

And so Piha protectionists were pitched against Piha preservationists (readers should warn anyone within spitting distance to stand well back before they read those words out loud).

Oh look – an altar-cation in Oamaru where the Environment Court seems to have lost its marbles

Alf has huge sympathy for a bunch of nuns who are being heavied by the boorish townsfolk of Oamaru.

The nuns want a 90-year-old marble altar shifted. The bloody townsfolk say it must stay in Oamaru.

If Alf were the nuns, he would tell the townsfolk to piss off, although he accepts that nuns maybe are trained to eschew bluntly expressed and easily comprehended commands of that sort.

More important, telling the townsfolk to piss off would not do the trick in this case because the boorish townsfolk have gone through a bit of legal howz-your-father aimed at obliging the nuns to get a resource consent to move the altar.

A bloody resource consent??? Really???

When building has been vetoed, the building plans might just as well be used for dunny paper

It took a while for Alf to find out why a multi-millionaire’s family has been denied approval to build two houses on their own property on Waiheke Island.

There’s a whiff of objections being raised just because the buggers are rich.

Objectors to the housing plans wailed about the mischief that would be done to some old bones on the property.

But the bones weren’t the undoing of the Spencers.

The Herald tells the story today:

Now the Greens are grouching at an MP just for doing his duty and helping a citizen

Alf is bewildered this morning by news that –

Associate Local Government Minister John Carter is denying doing favours for a constituent after claims a clause was secretly inserted in legislation allowing a Northland man to build a boat ramp on public land.

A clause secretly inserted?

What chance would you have of sneaking a “secret clause” past 120 or so eagle-eyed Parliamentarians?

On second thoughts, forget that question. Let’s take a different tack.

Why would an MP want to deny trying to do a favour for a constituent?

Locals hosed off over Makakahi constraints

Looks like the Tararua District Council would prefer the lawyers aren’t kept too busy (and well watered) after the Eketahuna Community Board appealed to the Environment Court over a water take consent variation issued by Horizons Regional Council.

The council wants to talk with the board, presumably to try to talk it out of pursuing the case.

What’s up DOC?

It makes no sense for government departments to hire lawyers to do battle in court with the lawyers hired by another government agency. The biggest winners in that game are lawyers.

Nor does it make sense for a government department to be arguing the toss in court to frustrate a matter of government policy.

But when Meridian Energy secretly slips money to DOC to buy its silence…

Then we are on to a hot political story which yet another government agency – Radio New Zealand – has flushed into the open.