Fridays Fabulous France

3 July 2026

The last stanza of Rudyard Kipling’s “If“:

We plod on, we do plod on, in this beast called local government. Sometimes I really wonder how I ever got entangled. A big reason I chose to become self employed ten years ago was to escape the office politics, so why on earth did I choose to do this? Although no human endeavour is ever completely pure of self-serving interest and gaslighting excuses, I have never encountered it on such a grand scale before. I have found it pays to remind myself that anytime in Council should feel an alien experience where normal forms of human encounter do not apply, because the day it doesn’t is the day you have succumbed. Anyway below is how it all went down, and just as well we have the football.

Amalgamation fumblegation: On Tuesday we had our first Council meeting where we discussed the Head Start pathway which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. Just an hour before, we were introduced in the backroom to some spreadsheet analysis our financial manager Sarah Matthews has undertaken and only now shared. We were told that we would receive some comparative analysis by early June or around a full month ago, but this was the first we have been presented with and only minutes before the debate. The spreadsheet contains information that is publicly available and apparently took some time to prepare, and is being held by Mayor John Funnell as so crucially important towards future negotiations that it needs to be kept secret. My own point of view about that is somewhat different: that it contains many assumptions and its comprehension in layperson terms is definitely questionable. For example there is a dubious assumption that larger entities will be more efficient, and a fairly obvious lesson that it may be unwise to shackle oneself with others already heavily in debt. But I say that irrespective of all that, the ringfencing of debt and the TEL fund are still valid bargaining chips – otherwise is it fair for Taupo ratepayers to pay for Hamiltons rapid development? This Head Start process is a large piece of work being required very quickly, and I think it is wrong to be backroom manhandling – but that is how Mayor John Funnell wants to play the ball. The only reason I am not publishing the secret spreadsheet for your viewing anyway, is that I don’t think its important enough to cause even more friction in Chambers than there is already. Ugh, is it living in a small town?…

So one thing I am really quite wary of with any amalgamation is that the small town small mind predilections of Taupo District Council will be magnified even larger (e.g Option 3), and that is one positive thing in favour of say hitching with a city like Hamilton. In hindsight, instead of staff I think we should probably have engaged a consultant for a more objective point of view like Wairarapa Councils did (although to be fair, they have been talking about amalgamation for over a decade). I asked AI to compare with some other Councils Head Start progress with the output shown below… you get the picture.

One thing I did attempt to highlight in that Tuesday meeting is that the Backstop Option D to stay independent is still a very practicable option, and we could become our own Unitary Authority like Rotorua is apparently considering (there are many more options than just four, but these are what was narrowed down to). I say that unless the Local Government Act gets changed, constituents of the Taupo district still have much protection to just being swept away in something ill-defined and un-consulted. The only public consultation undertaken for this very significant decision has so far been rushed and bereft of useful information – in other words it was not “meaningful”, and that has significant legal implications as this Simpson Grierson advice does point out. So we could probably stay put until 2031 in the meantime which anything could happen – but do we really want for that?

While we are on the topic of comparisons, the above secret financial analysis by Council staff is all very well – but what about condition of the infrastructure? Because although financial modelling does help assess the affordability of various arrangements, infrastructure due diligence helps identify the condition and future obligations of the assets that would be inherited under those options – so both perspectives are important to informed decision making. I put a few hours into this question in the past few days and using AI managed to prepare this quite comprehensive summary of all our potential Council partners. What do you think? I have not verified each and every source, but it is looking very useful to me and I will be asking for staff to carry it on.

NOTE: This assessment is a desktop review of publicly available information relating to the infrastructure assets and asset management practices of councils included in the Head Start structural reform scenarios. Sources include Long-Term Plans, Infrastructure Strategies, Asset Management Plans, Annual Reports, and other publicly available technical documents. The assessment is intended to complement the Head Start financial modelling by providing a comparative overview of infrastructure condition, future renewal risk, and asset management capability. It is not a detailed engineering audit and does not rely on internal asset management databases, condition survey data, or other non-public information.This document was prepared with the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to support document review, comparison, drafting and presentation. All findings should be independently reviewed and validated against primary source documents before being relied upon for policy, financial or engineering decisions.

Anyway on the basis of the above effort, I should be expecting some plaudits from the Mayor don’t you think?

Okay in other news less depressing but only just:

Didn’t you vote for something different? We also had a Council meeting Tuesday later that day where the Annual Plan got approved with my own and Councillor Hope Woodward’s voiced disapproval (you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE). My concern is not so much the final number of 6.6% which is just 0.1% less than the orginal forecast, but how we arrived at it. This Council is simply not exercising sufficient oversight of its own expenditure. We rely too heavily on staff to identify savings, rather than elected members being given proper opportunity to scrutinise spending and explore different ways of doing things. That is reflected in the excessive financial delegations given to the Chief Executive in 2022 (watch my previous video on that topic HERE), a culture that too often treats operational matters as being outside the governance role, and the frequent refusal of information requests from individual elected members. In my view, governance is about setting direction, holding the organisation to account, and ensuring value for money for our ratepayers. We are not doing enough of that, and for that reason I did not support this Annual Plan nor the last three I have voted against. Before asking our community to pay more, I believe we have a duty to demonstrate that every reasonable opportunity to reduce costs has been rigorously explored, and that goes for everything from pedestrian islands to multi-million dollar gas flares for a landfill. We do not meet that standard by a very long shot.

Screaming from the hilltops: On that note we also had a Long Term Plan (LTP) workshop which you can watch HERE, and I voiced some frustrations including that staff are given carte blanche licence to present their own subjective viewpoints with Elected Members wishing to say anything contrary getting 5 minutes only (even members of the public get more latitude in a public forum). But I have to acknowledge Councillor Rachel Cameron’s filling in for the Deputy Mayor’s absence to present a pleasant facade of responsible governance leadership.

Taupo Airport goes live: Thanks to my request the Taupo Airport Authority (TAA) Committee meetings are now going live, with its first from Monday gone which you can watch HERE and read the agenda HERE. The most notable thing mentioned was the uncertain state of the airport runway which could require a lot of $M’s to repair and which even garnered a Waikato Times article about it. We are still awaiting further findings about it, so watch this space.

Taupo connects but only just: We had a Taupo ward Councillor Connect forum on Wednesday night at Waitahanui Community Hall which you can watch HERE if you’re keen, but only about six people turned up and the topics discussed weren’t too mind bending. What is it about smaller communities like Mangakino that get more people interested in things like this?

Middle of the pack nothing to be proud of: The Taxpayer’s Union Rates Dashboard 2026 is now out where you can see for yourself how Taupo stacks up against the rest. We aren’t the worst by a long shot but certainly not anywhere near the best.

Un-natural justice: Last week or so Rotorua Councillor Robert Lee gave a comprehensive breakdown of the Code of Conduct (CoC) process of Elected Members as evidenced by South Waikato District Councils abhorrent $34K persecution of Councillor Zed Latinovic for a raft of negligible so-called offences. You can watch HERE for Cr Lee’s lengthy presentation to a packed community meeting. Fun facts: Investigators are paid by Council so that means by definition they are far from independent, and CoC’s weren’t a thing until 1998. Imagine being in a courtroom where the prosecuting lawyer has unlimited resources and is also the defacto judge, with your own defence being limited to just 15 minutes and without a lawyer unless you pay yourself – and you will get a feel for Zed. In other words: the CoC process gives official licence to ratepayer funded hit-jobs on Elected Members the Mayor doesn’t like, and it deserves to be scrapped.

Bird flu coming near you: Yes its true Council are preparing and I’ve even heard them talk about it, watch HERE if you want to know more about it.

Since its World Cup: For one of the most politically incorrect and hilarious football diatribes of all time by a disappointed Iraqi supporter watch HERE

Fridays French fabulous of the week:

Fridays Roundup Galore

29 May 2026

However weird churches can be and however flawed its participants, Christians are not meant to live in a cave. Hebrews 10:24-25: “And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works, not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching”.

So people about the great amalgamation, where are we with that? Next week or so this Council will be asking for your feedback, just like some other Councils like Western Bays are currently doing. At least Western Bays have narrowed it down to just five options, but Taupo which is in the middle of no fewer than eight other Councils – none of which we have ever seriously entertained the thought of working more closely with – is not so lucky. And yes, as Epitome of Coolness has been pondering in her recent article, Chatham Islands has even been floated. But given that the Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) has previously mentioned to us that transport and water catchments are key factors of consideration, I am not sure we will get very far with that as an idea (and DIA are the ones who receive these Head Start proposals due 9 August and make their recommendations to the Minister). Transport is far more relevant to those bordering cities because not much point in one side of the border building a four-lane expressway if the other won’t budge, so given that we have a lake which feeds to about a third of the nations population, my estimation is that the gravitas will inexorably be northwards towards the rest of the Waikato, perhaps as far as Hamilton.

Checking out the Taxpayers Union page of Waikato Councils, Taupo isn’t looking like such a desirable partner if debt per household is a factor of consideration, with only Rotorua and Hamilton looking a lot worse … and what’s up with Waipa? Rotorua Mayor Tania Tapsell seems to be suggesting in her recent docial media post the option of an alliance from Taupo to Maketu based on awa and Iwi makeup, and in a Rotorua meeting reported in local media the DIA’s Future of Local Government deputy executive director, Sarah Polaschek, apparently said that “proposals could proceed even without full agreement from all participating councils, provided they meet required thresholds based on population or majority support” – we have received no mention of any population threshold before, so I wonder what that number is? I wonder if the likes of smaller population Otorohunga and Waitomo know about it, because they are already making statements about their proposed merger.

Further north, there is a movement called Northern Action Group Inc which is petitioning for Rodney ward to secede from the supercity Auckland Council union and instead buddy up with rural Kaipara, you can read more in detail about it HERE if you like (I am not sure if this is going to be submitted as part of any official Head Start proposal). Their motto which the likes of Taupo should probably bear in mind if we are going to contemplate going the Hamilton way: PLUNDERED FOR OUR RATES AND RESOURCES! A FREE PLAYGROUND FOR HOLIDAYING AUCKLANDERS! A BACKYARD FOR AUCKLAND’S RUBBISH! URBAN MINDSET BUREAUCRATS AND PLANNERS! OUT OF CONTROL CCOs!

I also managed to have a chat with Ken Turner who is one of the 20 Auckland Councillors who recently opposed (unsuccessfully) to fend off Auckland Mayor Wayne Browns bid for a 7.9% rates increase which is apparently the highest in Supercity history. Apart from his interesting anecdotes about the dictatorial running of Wayne’s 30-odd staffed Mayoral office (the complete opposite of how it works here, but it sounds like a compelling idea) and that 90% of debating time gets devoted to the Auckland CBD, he tells me that although the 21 Community Boards get allocated a seemingly healthy annual budget of some $300M, less than 10 percent is actually able to be discretionarily spent with the rest set in stone for various contracts or another. So the Auckland model for local representation is looking a little shaky in my mind right now, although Ken did assure me that good attention to the nuts and bolts of the thing could make the difference with ringfenced budgets and proper accountabilities (Ken is a mechanic by trade and doesn’t shirk from looking under the hood) – so once we start getting into the detail, he could be a useful person to call.

Okay so that is the big question for now dealt with, what else is going on?

Actually quite important: There is a new bill before parliament right now to try and lessen the power and influence of Chief Executives in local government and increase that of Elected Members. It is MP Stuart Smith’s idea, and it sounds a very good one to me. You can check out the new Bill HERE and watch a Platform interview with the Minister HERE. It reads as most legalese does so quite convoluted, but my hope is for it to make a good difference.

Transparency but only when convenient: We had an open to the public workshop yesterday entitled “Ratings decisions for Annual Plan” which you can watch HERE on youtube. I did not appear in person only online, and viewed the workshop as an exercise in justification which I didn’t have the energy to disrupt. There was a proposal near the beginning which you can watch from HERE about increasing the Uniform Annual General Charge (UAGC) from the current $250 to $425, which will adversely affect residential ratepayers in favour of commercial and all under the banner of “fairness” – so if you are a commercial ratepayer you will be among the happiest. Apart from that: all the excuses in the world as to why we can’t trim the forecast rates increase any less than 6.6% (only 0.1% below the forecast of the previous Long Term Plan (LTP)), and yet somehow other Councils like Wellington manage to do it after consulting with their constituents first. We aren’t even a city with all their infrastructure demands, or a Thames-Coromandel which loses a few bridges every storm, so I find there to be little excuse. Councillor Hope Woodward was asking when Elected Members get to go through the budgets line by line, but the response was basically that we wouldn’t. I couldn’t be bothered repeating about lack of financial accountability and the need for significant financial decisions to be brought before Elected Members for individual evaluation throughout the year rather than once every 12 months at Annual or Long-Term Plan time. So I guess this will be yet another Annual Plan I will be voting the negative to (yawn).

Parks and kindy’s and playful things: We did have a Council meeting on Tuesday where a couple of interesting items did get discussed. You can watch the whole near three hours if you really want HERE with the agendas available HERE, but you have to be quite special to want to do that (I am telling you and another Councillor agrees, if it were last term the meeting would have been done and dusted in under 45 min). Kinloch parents of young children will be happy that the deal for Council to contribute around $0.5M of Development Contributions (DC’s) towards the new kindergarten and reserve proposal by Kinloch Families Trust in Item 5.3 was passed unanimously (you can watch from HERE). I say this is a healthy model for future community partnerships, even though there are some local naysayers around the issue of “opportunity cost” i.e. that the money could have been spent elsewhere.

There was also Item 5.4 Taupo District Wide Reserves Management Plans, which some of you will recall from last week I was questioning the wisdom of proceeding due to the cost and trouble and looming amalgamation. You can watch the proceedings from HERE, including my fair disgust that instead of this item being presented as a decision to proceed or not was just a delegating of the task to the Regulatory Committee. My question about cost was answered that it would involve staff time of around 1.5 FTE (so lets call it around $200K), but that does not include all the time and effort required by everybody else – and these do take 12 – 18 months to get through. My other objections were around: (i) the subjective nature of these being deemed “outdated” just because some are over 20 years old, when the requirement is to keep them continually updated (which really means any Reserve Management plan is outdated the day after it is published); (ii) my once bitten twice shy experience with Motutere, which in my mind was a decision very much influenced by outside minority interest groups and a pre-determined agenda within Council; and (iii) the amalgamation question which means that after 2028 a new Council organisation will probably attempt a revamp in its own mold. So talk about unnecessary, and I am not convinced there are not ulterior motives at play once again – so my recommendation is that you had better watch this space carefully, and yes, the motion was by majority passed.

Oh yes, and there was Item 5.2 which was a Notice of Motion by myself to Acknowledge Standing Orders which you can read below and watch from HERE. It was really an attempt to try and bring about some order in Chambers and reiterate why we are all here, so it never ceases to amaze me that something as benign as this could only receive partial support (Point 1 was rejected, Points 2-6 supported but only by majority). My conclusion: You can table a motion to acknowledge that grass is really green, but unless the egos around the table get sufficiently stroked then it will not get the nod. My Notice of Motion:

Bed tax for Taupo? We had a very interesting submission by Scott Mead who did a 5 min presentation during Tuesdays Public Forum including slides for a form of proposed Bed Tax through rates which you can watch from HERE. He included some info of what other Councils like Wellington and Queenstown are doing, and based on Scott’s calcs we could generate around $2.8M of additional income. Conceivably this could be put towards relieving residential property rates by around 3.4%, or any other purpose Council might come up with. Great presentation Scott, and I for one am keen on following it up.

Where have all the Councillor Koreros gone? Been wondering why messages from Elected Members haven’t been included in the Taupo & Turangi News inserts since election? The plain and simple answer is: CENSORSHIP. The powers that be do not want the Council party line to be dis-coloured by any winds of dissent or disengagement, so that means the only way you will get to hear directly from us is via other channels like social media or this website. Which is a very real shame, because I believe that opinion pieces from Elected Members are exactly what the public want to hear, not everybody uses social media, and we are not servants of the staff who are currently permitted to censor our views. I did receive this response from Mayor John Funnell, and reading between the lines he does not support my view, nor do the majority of current Elected Members who still don’t seem to want to recognise they are politicians. Mayor John: “Any current communication spaces are being redirected to support proposed amalgamation priorities. This means some regular content, including Councillor Kōrero features, will be paused while we focus on ensuring clear and consistent messaging around this work”.

Anyway I will leave you with this disallowed contribution of mine from July 2024, which was dated before the rates caps regime from central government was announced and was deemed by the staff censor to contain “misinformation” (it did not). I wonder which bits they did not want you to hear?

Imagine how much it is worth: Picture taken from Ngauruhoe Street looking down towards the lake over Taharepa Reserve. We are talking around 7 acres of prime near-lakeside real estate, and its not even much good for kicking a ball because it will end up on the road. Any takers to help out a cash strapped Council like ours?

Damn, that was a quick about face!! After the Minister of Education Erica Stanford admitted her Bill targetting homeschoolers was triggered by Gloriavale and she talked to some homeschool protestors at Parliament, there has been a backdown and the Bill will not proceed. Wow, what a turnaround and only in a matter of days too, and it didn’t even take an occupation of Parliament. What on earth is the world coming to, or is it perhaps that its election year?

Fridays are we California or a Texas?

Fridays Fuming Foibles

20 February 2026

Ecclesiastes – a book of the Old Testament of the Bible still as relevant today as the rest, and one of my favourite books in the Bible. I highly recommend it as a good read for anybody trying to tackle this world on its own terms. Widely attributed authorship by King Solomon who was blessed with a Wisdom beyond any human comparison before or since, although even he was not infallible enough to avoid having several hundred wives (how wise is that?). But if you want to read about the difference between foolishness and wisdom and why it matters, this is the book for you. It is one of the only books in the Bible where God gets scant mention – and with good reason I think – and reason abounds in these writings of Ecclesiastes.

Which brings me to my main topic of today – doesn’t it stand to reason that one of the coldest regions in the country as we are here, should be making better use of the abundant heat beneath our very feet? Your elected members were yesterday hosted by local economic agency Amplify for a day tour of some geothermal sites around Taupo including GNS Science laboratories in Wairakei, Contact Energy’s Tauhara Geothermal Power Station, and in Rotokawa the Natures Flame wood pellet production facility and Te Ahi Eco Business Park commercial development. It was all quite impressive, though I must say the industrial atmosphere is one thing I never wanted to experience full time which is why I chose civil engineering as a trade rather than something which could end me up in places like these – and I was right. But if you want to live in a provincial place like Taupo and put into practice some very high qualifications like PhDs (and there are quite a few of them in this industry), this surely is the golden opportunity for this region at least. At the moment, the geothermal industry apparently employs around 1000 people in the Taupo district, second only to the dairy industry.

Contact Energy produces around 20% of the nations electricity, and over 90% of it is classed as ‘renewable’ with a significant portion contributed by geothermal, and in the Taupo region it operates some of the most productive wells in the world (note: figures I am quoting are anecdotal only but roughly accurate), and if you believe the spiel from the scientists – we are leading edge stuff here in little old Taupo and sitting on a goldmine of opportunity. But therein lies the catch – opportunity. Although the main thrust of geothermal exploration and activities go towards electricity production (and it still isn’t as cheap as coal, even with all the carbon subsidies and penalties), virtually untapped is the direct use of geothermal heated water for industrial and home heating. Sure we have AC Baths and a scattering of other individuals doing this, but nothing like Iceland and Northern Europe who do this on a grand scale. You see, at the moment in New Zealand geothermal is really all about tapping into the hot water under the ground (sometimes a few km’s deep) and piping it up to the surface to generate electricity with steam turbines to then re-inject it back a km or so distant (those are all the silver pipes you see around the place, and at around $10M per km they don’t come cheap). But it is fairly obvious to me anyway, that if a significant portion of that electricity is only to go towards heating of household airpumps as it must do in the chilly North Island Central Plateau during winter, then this must be very wasteful. And some of the GNS scientists agree.

So what then is the holdup? Apparently and not unsurprisingly, and the scientists and practitioners all fairly agree – it is a combination of bureaucracy and widespread ignorance. That is not to say direct geothermal heating is not going on – because that is exactly what the fairly unique He Ahi development in Rotokawa is basing itself on, and in conjunction with Contact Energy have a setup allowing convenient direct connections to tenants wanting this facility. But things like that are all too rare in a place with such abundant heat beneath our feet -and I have yet to figure out if the bureaucrats are mostly in Wellington – but certainly more can be done, and Taupo District Council could be leading the way on this if it so chooses. Because apart from a few spots up in Northland and down south, we are sitting in the epicentre of this countries geothermal activity and therefore opportunity. The question is – are we in the Taupo region going to take advantage or it? Shane Jones Minister of Resources wants to double geothermal energy production by 2040 – which is fine – but he is probably only thinking in terms of electricity generation. We can do more than just that.

As an aside, I do think if this country had simply invested in nuclear energy a long time ago then we wouldn’t be in the pickle we are now (if only former prime minister Robert Muldoon could have Thinked Bigger). As a clean green option it just can’t be beat, and if just a portion of the $70B this country spent on the Covid response had been put towards a few nuclear reactors (they come at around $10 – 20 B each) we would be sitting very pretty indeed. And the last governments ban on oil and gas exploration has crippled us for a very long time. But at least we are being pushed towards exploring other avenues, and becoming a world leader in geothermal electricity production can’t be an entirely bad thing.

Okay so what about other stuff?

JMA saga continues: In the next exciting chapter of this political hot potatoe that scurried our last Mayor to the dustbin of history, we will just have to see how it fares this time round. This Tuesday 24 February 11am we have the second public-invited workshop on the Joint Management Agreement (JMA) which tackles the question of: What exactly are the mandatory matters? A very basic question, and one that has been so shrouded in a fog of misinformation which I say Taupo District Council has done much to contribute. For one thing, how did Lake Taupo slip into a ‘Waikato Waters’ JMA? For a clearer picture of what areas of waterways are included, I suggest reference to the map below (and referenced here) which was provided not by Council, but a member of the public.

And how about the idea of doing a deal with Tuwharetoa Maori Trust Board (TMTB) anyway? They haven’t exactly demonstrated responsible guardianship of Five Mile Bay Public Reserves, and I am far from convinced that their governance is anything like as accountable to its members as even this Council which at least has the Local Government Act to force some level of transparency (I have previously written a small piece on TMTB here).

The Chief Executive has also promised in advance of this workshop a point-by-point response from (I say biased) Council engaged Treaty lawyer Paul Beverley to these assertions about mandatory matters which were forwarded by the Taupo Ratepayer Group (TRG) before Christmas. It contains 20 assertions which seem to make good sense to me, and it is fairly crucial that we properly set our starting point here and now. Apart from that, how much is all of this going to cost the ratepayer?

As an aside, here is a snippet from my JMA for Dummies article of July 2025 that gives a clue as to why we ended up in the totally preventable place we are now:

To put it plainly: This JMA agreement could have been signed, sealed and delivered back in July of 2025 perhaps even earlier, if only your elected members of the time had decided to keep things simple instead of including all the optional extras to only end up compromising the whole thing. Your current sitting Councillors Kevin Taylor and Yvonne Westerman were among those who voted for the extra items to be included, so part of the blame must squarely sit with them.

On that note: Legal Council Franks Ogilvie have been offering free 30 minute consultations to elected members around the country, these are the guys which provided advice to Kaipara District Council (KDC) regarding Local Government Obligations to Māori (which are quite lesser than widely proclaimed). Of course they are only seeking to expand their business, but one of these days I may be giving them a call. Franks Ogilvie lawyer Stephen Franks gives his brief take on Council Treaty obligations in this Platform interview here.

And further on that note: I sent this letter to Mayor Funnell today to formally request that the Council templates be changed to contain neutral and statutory obligations only, and not political statements like below:

I’m not challenging Treaty obligations, I’m challenging the inclusion of a contested political interpretation as neutral agenda framing. This is about template neutrality and statutory accuracy, not ideology. If we had been including ACT Party slogans, I think this would have been picked up long before now. So let’s see what happens.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will take your job: I have been using Chatgpt for nearly a year and now find it an almost essential tool for all sorts of things, with a notable exception (thus far) being in my own profession. I quite quickly did recognise its limitations though, especially for the written word. It is great for dealing with bureaucratese and legalese, but quite hopeless for stuff you want to make a personal impact and I never use it to write these Friday updates. But AI is certainly making an impact to some industries and career paths as this article well illustrates. If you are already enrolled in a course for graphic design for example, it may be worth switching now.

Those damned electric wheeled thingies: Did you know that a lot of those electric thingies zipping around on our roads and footpaths are actually illegal? Yes, really. In New Zealand, if an electric scooter is <300W power output then it gets classed just like a bicycle and doesn’t need to be registered as a motor vehicle, but unlike a bicycle is permitted to ride on a footpath. The laws in New Zealand around this topic are currently pretty convoluted and were not drafted with electric personal mobility in mind at all, but I can tell you that there are a lot of >300W electric mobility devices which are not registered as motor vehicles as they are supposed to be, and riding on footpaths too. Some other countries like the United Kingdom are cracking down on them a lot more (including confiscation and disposal like here) and Singapore where jail time is on offer for those who ride E-scooters on the footpath. But as a transport professional I like the idea of E-mobility, and am glad we live in a more liberal place than those.

While we are on about Transport…Recall that last week I mentioned about a submission to Waikato Regional Council regarding Public Transport and Total Mobility? Well read here for my submission sent on behalf of Taupo District Council in advance of the next meeting of the Waikato Regional Council Public Transport sub-committee on 9 March. Some of the things being requested would cost money to implement, so that means ratepayers would have to foot the bill. By how much is really the question, and on 9 March I hope to be making some headway to getting some answers.

Elections area coming sooner than you think: These guys are in town Sunday evening if anybody wants to catch up. I have once met John Alcock the Deputy leader of Loyal party and he is an interesting character who also ran for the Auckland mayoralty. If you want to talk alternative ideas like say, no income tax or GST, then I might see you at Ploughmans restaurant this Sunday 22nd Feb 5pm.

Northland takes dog control seriously: Sometimes it takes a fatality to bring about change, and that seems to be no exception up in Northland of late. I have heard anecdotal stories around here of dog misdemeanors going unpunished, more so in the likes of Turangi. But nothing like I experienced on a recent trip up Whakatane way where a bunch of angry dogs chased our car for several hundred metres down the street – we were really off the beaten path.

Turns out the covid vaccines probably weren’t a good idea: as this article by Dr Raphael Lataster in Daily Sceptic outlines. I didn’t do it myself, but know of a few people close to me no longer with us whom I attribute this to their early departure. I just hope they made it to a better place.

What about that tree in Turangi: Just beautiful ain’t it?

Fridays Free Advice for the Filthy: This is something an engineer colleague and myself wrote up a couple of years ago. I think it helps to have a cynical nature to be an engineer, don’t you?