Mid week music

Keeping with the Spanish theme, the mid week music spot is Joaquin Sabina singing Contigo.

Short sighted storm on netball court

A Palmerston North nteball team has been told players may have to swap from shorts to skirts.

They’ve been playing in shorts for six years. but that is now being questioned.

Ms Walden told the Standard “there is no story here”, as the team was still allowed to wear shorts.

Ms Walden said no decision had been made on what the team could wear next year, but she wouldn’t rule out a ban on shorts.

There shouldn’t be a story here, but there will be one if the local administration, which has the right to make its own rules, doesn’t make the sensible decision which will make the issue go away.

What is it about a little bit of power which blinds people in authority to common sense?

Riverstone on-line

Riverstone Kitchen, one of North Otago’s best restaruants has a new website.

Buy local, think seasonal, eat well is Riverstone’s motto and it practices what it preaches, serving delicious, fresh food which includes produce from its own garden.

The website includes some of chef Bevan Smith’s recipes.

He has been providing recipes for the ODT. I can recommned his hazelnut shortbread.

Why does gender matter?

The announcment that Marion van der Goes has been appointed  Otago’s new Department of Conservation conservator makes much of the fact that she’s the first woman to hold that role in the province and only the second in New Zealand.

She appears to be well qualified for the job and I wish her well in it.

But being female or male isn’t important in this role and it’s illegal to discriminate on the grounds of gender.

Does the fact a woman gets a particular job is newsworthy mean that legal equality hasn’t translated into real equality?

Or is it time to stop the fuss about women’s appointments because all it does is reinforce the idea there’s something out of the ordinary about ordinary appointments just because a woman gets it?

Customary title explained

The foreshore and seabed issue ought to have been a simple one of property rights but it was complicated by racism , politics and ignorance over customary title.

The ministry review panel has  recommended that the Act which took the right to go to court from Maori be overturned.

Racism and politics will try to complicate what happens next. But Sir Douglas Graham has done his best to remove some of the ignorance with his lay person’s guide to customary  title in today’s Herald.

Parking meters in the way of Speights’ spring

A tap delivering spring water outside Speights brewery is used by  hundreds of Dunedin people a day in search of  something superior to the city’s supply.

But now the city council has put pay and display parking metres in the street   and people are worried they’ll have to pay while they fill their containers with water.

The chances of getting a ticket in the few minutes it takes to fill a bottle or two aren’t great. But you’d think a council which knew its city would have had the wit to put a five minute free park beside the tap.

Sun farms

Are sun farms the next big thing in power generation?

This one between Vejer de la Frontera and Cadiz covers about 10 hectares.

The Scientific American asks is the sun setting on solar power in Spain ? 

It says that waning subsidies and other markets might entice developers to move elsewhere. 

Could it work in New Zealand and if so, would development on this scale attract the opposition wind power has through the resource consent process?

Wind power old and new

Vejer de la Frontera is on the Costa de la Luz, the Coast of Light, west of the straits of Gibraltar where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean.

This coast is the windiest place in Europe which is why Tarifa, about half an hour’s drive from Vejer, is a mecca for surfers.

It’s also an obvious place to harness the power of the wind and one of the features of its sky line is windmills old . .

 

. . .  and new:

Wind generation has been controversial here, what interested us was there are no pylons leading from the windmills which presumably means power is transmitted underground.

July 8 in history

On July 8:

1497 Vasco de Gama set sail on the first European direct voyage to India. 1889

1889 The first issue of the Wall Street Journal was published.

1933 English comedian and actor Marty Feldman was born.