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Please pass on [not intended to be finger down throat]. Thank you Martyn for giving us an avenue to express our frustrations and thoughts and for giving me hope for the future of NZ. A very Merry Chirstmas to you and yours. Well done! May 2026 be a better year all round!
It is amazing that politicians can make bad decisions continuously that I would be sacked for making, after the first occasion, if I was working myself. How do they get into their privileged positions and then stay and stay and….?
https://wellington.scoop.co.nz/?p=176571#more-176571
December 16, 2025 11 comments
Will they have to leave?
…Monish and Abbu immigrated from Fiji with their families to drive buses in Wellington off the back of the Government adding bus drivers to the skills shortage list.
Unbelievably, at the end of 2024, Minister Stanford decided that ‘the shortages of drivers reported when this was established have been filled’.
This, and a new English language IELTS requirement of 6.5 (the same minimum standard required for most universities) means that many of the international bus drivers who came in 2022/23 won’t be able to renew their visas.
In Wellington this amounts to 100 bus drivers. This is a serious issue and could lead to a second bus driver shortage if Abbu and Monish and their colleagues have to leave New Zealand.
Minister Chris Bishop – this has serious transport implications. Are you concerned about the impact of our international drivers being unable to renew their visas?
Ros Connelly is Chair of Greater Wellington’s Public Transport Committee. Her article was first published on Facebook.
Hooray for Kaeo people in the Far North.
https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/582656/far-north-town-kaeo-gets-running-water-for-first-time-in-more-than-two-months
…Residents of Kāeo, about 30km north of Kerikeri, have lived under a boil-water notice for more than a DECADE, but in October the town water supply stopped completely. After 30 days with no running water in the town, Taumata Arowai, the national water authority, stepped in and ordered the Far North District Council to take over the privately-owned water supply…
[ A resident] said her family would now be able to celebrate Christmas without worrying about water, and she would be able to resume the cooking school she ran from her home.
She had been unable to run her business while there was no running water.
[She] said a number of options for the town’s water supply had been canvassed, but reviving the treatment plant was the best possible outcome.
“Especially for the businesses here and places like the museum. It doesn’t have holding tanks or anything, so the ladies that volunteer there have been bringing water from home so they can flush the toilets this whole time.”..
While she was thankful an end was in sight to the town’s water woes, it should not have been allowed to drag on for more than a decade.
“It’s been way too long worrying about the water for all these years, but significantly over the last few months. It’s taken a lot of emails and a lot of work to get people to listen and do something about it, and I’ve taken quite a bit of flak online for it. So I’m very happy for that all to be over – but I feel like people need to be held to account for letting this town down for so long.”
Kāeo’s water scheme supplies about 30 homes and businesses, as well as public facilities such as the toilets and memorial hall, along State Highway 10, the town’s main street.
The town supply was originally owned by the Far North District Council but was sold to Doubtless Bay Water in 2000.
Doubtless Bay Water exited in 2008, saying the scheme was no longer viable.
It was bought for a nominal sum by Wai Care Environmental Consultants, which owned and operated the water supply until Taumata Arowai’s intervention in November.
In August RNZ revealed Wai Care operator Bryce Aldridge had been trespassed from the treatment plant, which was on private land on School Gully Rd.
The land owner said he issued the trespass notice after he had not been paid rent for seven years. Aldridge said he had a document proving he did not have to pay rent…
This will be repeated in many other situations in NZAO as the fast buck merchants and cold-blooded corpse move on to better pickings. We had a country that worked and the governments and political parties reneged on their role, purpose and jobs. Now they just fool around with us. Let them go and pleasure themselves elsewhere, Jeff
The town supply was originally owned by the Far North District Council but was sold to Doubtless Bay Water in 2000.
Doubtless Bay Water exited in 2008, saying the scheme was no longer viable.
It was bought for a nominal sum by Wai Care Environmental Consultants, which owned and operated the water supply until Taumata Arowai’s intervention in November.
In August RNZ revealed Wai Care operator Bryce Aldridge had been trespassed from the treatment plant, which was on private land on School Gully Rd.
The land owner said he issued the trespass notice after he had not been paid rent for seven years. Aldridge said he had a document proving he did not have to pay rent.
And tracing out a future sad, likely world path, with the financial system so out of whack that it has warped economies and minds around the world. The needs of the actual people that financial systems and their accoutrements are built around, get left bereft as the next wealth rush occurs and ordinary life is abandoned as a main purpose in life. The gargantuan circus is too large not to fail, and it will fall; we can face that disaster so get started by working together amicably and sensibly. We have been brutalised by WW1 and WW2 and its aftermath, then the other wars and organised cruelties, and now Ukraine-Russia and exonerated murder in Palestine. I thought we were better than this.
I think that my editing on the water supply comment went haywire. But the story was a happy one for Christmas all the same. Cheers to all.
Merry Xmas to all, good work to Bomber for the ending year, peace on earth and no wars.
I’ve thought of a good new acronym which we who care can apply to our present government and hope we can get a different type for future.
WAFT government : one ruling by Whim and Fiat Tenacity. I think the term encompasses what we have thrust at us now!