Get Informed About Resource Consents

It’s a com­mon com­plaint: “how could the Coun­cil let people build that, and not even noti­fy any­one?” That’s partly down to a mis­un­der­stand­ing of what “noti­fic­a­tion” means under the RMA: it’s not just about let­ting people know, but also the start of a long and com­plex pro­cess involving hear­ings, law­yers and pos­sible appeals, and it only occurs […]

Serious Monkey(ish) business at Wellington Zoo

Okay, let’s get the puns out of the way. While it is nev­er inap­pro­pri­ate to spank your mon­key in pub­lic, and only Peter Gab­ri­el can shock the mon­key, at Wel­ling­ton Zoo you can, how­ever, touch some mon­keys. Sort of. Well, the touch­ing part is cor­rect, but tech­nic­ally the Black-and-White Ruffed Lemurs aren’t actu­ally prim­ates, they’re a […]

Craft Central, moves into the Centre of Wellington

Craft Central, moves into the Centre of Wellington

For over a year Craft Cent­ral’s been a delight­ful little mar­ket held monthly at Miramar School, one of those little secrets only loc­als know about, like Craig the Chem­ist who always has stick­ers on hand to bring a smile to kids’ faces.  But Libby and Kath­er­ine, Craft Cent­ral’s cre­at­ors, had big dreams, to turn their 100% NZ […]

Review: Whore &, Lashings of whipped cream

I had high hopes for Whore. Described in the promo mater­i­al as “Con­tem­por­ary, top­ic­al, true-life based mono­logues told by six characters…this work is a col­lec­tion of stor­ies about street sex work­ers in Auck­land, New Zea­l­and” I thought it would be an up to date explor­a­tion of mod­ern, decrim­in­al­ised sex work. Well, I was dis­ap­poin­ted. If […]

Snakes and Shadows: History as Poetry in Chris Tse’s Year of Snakes

Snakes and Shadows: History as Poetry in Chris Tse’s Year of Snakes

Cross Tory Street head­ing toward Aro; ban­ish the Car­ri­lon’s long shad­ow behind the white-and-teal Bible Soci­ety on your left, Nurse Maude’s mosa­ic gaze upon your right shoulder. Point your nose toward Tara-Ngaki Street – “shin­ing moun­­­tain-peak” – and feel Hain­ing Street incline beneath your feet as Tory’s con­stant woosh recedes into urb­an din. The senses […]

Nominees for the 2014 Capital Awards

This after­noon we popped down to Vivo for the annoucing of nom­in­ees in the 2014 Cap­it­al Awards ‑Wel­ling­ton’s premi­er hos­pit­al­ity awards. It was a pretty cas­u­al affair, with many of the nom­in­ees hard at work and there­fore unable to front to receive their cer­ti­fic­ates. Still though, it was great see­ing so many Wel­ling­tonista favour­ites get […]

Spot That Pigeon!

Take a break from watch­ing polls and start watch­ing birds with The Great Ker­erū Count. Forest & Bird have teamed up with loc­al com­pany Thun­dermaps to cre­ate an easy way for all of us to track these mag­ni­fi­cent yet near-threatened nat­ive pigeons, using the Thun­dermaps smart­phone apps or web applic­a­tion. Ker­erū are vital to the health of our […]

Victoria, What Do We Want From You?

Sat­urday is your last oppor­tun­ity to make your voice heard on the future of…no, I’m not talk­ing about the elec­tions, but about some­thing more spe­cif­ic to Wel­ling­ton. In a very con­densed con­sulta­tion pro­cess, WCC is seek­ing your input on the pro­posed trans­form­a­tion of three blocks Vic­tor­ia St, between Dix­on and Abel Smith streets. And that […]

Voting Weather

There are signs that this elec­tion could have a good turnout. Advance vot­ing is about twice what it was at the same stage in the last two elec­tions, and there have been over 35,000 new enrol­ments since I pos­ted about poor enrol­ment fig­ures: nearly 1500 in Wel­ling­ton Cent­ral alone! How­ever, one thing that can still put […]

Bring Back Kate – March on Monday

Bring Back Kate – March on Monday

On aver­age the Nation­al Col­lect­ive of Inde­pend­ent Women’s Refuges receive one call for help every nine minutes. From July 2013 to June 2014 the Shakti nation­al crisis line ser­vice exceeded 10,000 calls. Bring Back Kate is Women’s Refuge’s latest call to action on domest­ic viol­ence in New Zea­l­and. In 1893 Kate Shep­herd and a band of […]