Who are these ugly new blocks being built for
This carnage our fair city is currently undergoing has to be brought under control — and soon. I am referring to great blocks of suburban Dunedin succumbing to the bulldozer's blade for the creation of cheek by jowl, blocks of cheap-looking two-storey buildings.
For whom? Dunedin's ageing population? Not likely, with steep little staircases, the chance of noisy neighbours and no place to enjoy the outdoors.
New arrivals to our fair city likely to include young families? Not likely with nowhere for young children to play, except perhaps in the carpark.
For students then? A bit too removed from the campus and other student hangouts.
If not the developers themselves, who will know what these ugly blocks are being built en masse to attract?
Please enlighten those among us who love this city, take pride in its built environment and want to see it prosper and grow, not become a Third World slum.
Thanks for the help
I spent about 10 hours in the emergency department of Dunedin's hospital recently.
It is certainly a busy place and my experience definitely confirmed that.
From the moment I fainted on the floor of the waiting room to the time I was discharged after 1am, I received and observed nothing but professional and kind treatment of every patient entering the ward.
Although many of us had lengthy waits we knew that the staff were doing their very best under what must have seemed overwhelming numbers waiting for attention.
Throughout the night, in addition to those coming in under their own steam there was a steady flow of patients arriving by ambulance.
I would especially like to thank Kerry from South Dunedin who was waiting with her son and who drove me home when I discovered there were no taxis available until after 3am
Here’s hoping it sticks
A fine move by the incumbent government in regards to capping the local body rates, and our prime minister’s comment of "Stop the dumb stuff" in regards to wasteful spending is so true.
We can only hope that a socialist left coalition does not flip this policy should it regain governance before 2029 when the capping of rates rises legislation takes effect.
Minding the mine
Interesting the amount of disruption the Dunedin City Council go to over possible lead in soil.
Even though flecks of old paint from a previous old house will likely be built over.
Yet the Government is happy to let Santana Minerals have an open cast mine.
Using arsenic and cyanide to extract gold leaving these poisons in a slurry behind a dam that could collapse sometime in the future.
Some people never learn anything.
Steve Munro (ODT, 25.11.25) provides a useful summary of the multitude of human-induced changes to Central Otago since occupation began some 700 years ago.
Clearly, the present-day landscape and ecosystem are far from pristine.
Country clubs, skifields, and vineyards speak more of privilege than peace and serenity.
Is a gold mine really that out of place?
Language purist not keen on use of Americanisms
It is ironic that Susan Grant-Mackie (ODT, 2.12.25) should have been told to use ‘jail’ instead of ‘penitentiary’ by a teacher resisting the Americanisation (or should that be Americanization?) of English when for many years the dominant (although not exclusive) spelling in British and New Zealand English was ‘gaol’, long after ‘jail’ had become the standard spelling in America: between 1861 and 1950 there were 25,376 appearances of ‘gaol’ in the ODT but only 2095 of ‘jail’.
Other jarring American idioms and spellings that are increasingly encountered – even in the ODT – are ‘train station’ for ‘railway station’, ‘airplane’ for ‘aeroplane’, ‘race car’ and ‘swim team’ for ‘racing car’ and ‘swimming team’, ‘wait list’ for ‘waiting list’, and ‘gotten’ for ‘got’.
It is also ironic that Ms Grant-Mackie’s letter began with a mention of ‘Civis’ column’ rather than ‘Civis’s column’ – or is there a novel grammatical rule that a punctuation mark is pronounced in certain circumstances?
Does the ODT have a policy on these matters?
Our style is that when proper names end in s, for possessive we add only the apostrophe: Jones', not Jones's (but the Joneses when plural not possessive). An exception is St James's Palace (because that is its proper name). Our style is to use British English (unless in a direct quote or quoting from a document/text/social media post, etc). Language is, however, always evolving and there is some flexibility, and not every word can be in a style guide. It should be noted we often work at speed putting out multiple papers and sometimes as deadlines approach the finer points of style can be missed, hence the occasional inconsistency. — Ed.
