Students need fun and they need carparks too
Study, exams and hopefully graduation. This is the lot of our hard-working and intelligent young students.
Students are an integral part of our Education City. They are our future and every student needs to be encouraged, educated, respected and nurtured in a caring environment.
Thank you Grace Togneri for your regular ODT column and thank you to outgoing OUSA president Liam White for your in-depth and interesting articles.
I read and agree with most of the students’ writings but I usually take note of two obvious omissions.
1. All students need some fun. They need large, safe supervised areas to socialise and meet their friends. However student pubs have been sold or demolished.
2. Student tenants (and others) want more carparks. It is disappointing that the new mayor, who claims to be interested in rebuilding relationships (and included University of Otago and Otago Polytech in the extensive article ODT 25.10.25) voted twice to remove 60 carparks from Albany St.
Does she ever drive or walk in Albany St or the campus area? Unfortunately there is much talk but little action in support of these young people.
It’s past time for the university and DCC to combine with others to provide safe venues for regular social events and please, please stop removing much needed carparks.
Yes — the students will go off on holiday soon but they will return and business people and others need those parks too.
Welcome to the new normal
Climate scientists have been shouting out for 20 years about the consequences of a warming planet Earth which so far has fallen on mostly deaf ears.
For every 1°C of warming from pre-industrial levels the atmosphere can hold 7% more water vapour.
We are now at around 1.3°C of warming. What that means is a new pattern of dry and wet periods and being more volatile in storms and high wind events.
The mindset now needs to change, especially after this extremely damaging wind event we have just experienced.
That it is not just dairy farmers needing to have a permanent backup power supply but everybody being more aware of our situation and surroundings.The government and insurance is not going to come to our rescue.
If you look at the trees that were blown out of the ground they were all exotics. The lone totara or kahikatea is still standing out in the paddock.
Power underground or home generation. Power is vital now in this new era of being. This talk of a cashless society is looking very dumb. Also a rising sea level is very real.
The ambulance at the bottom of the cliff mentality needs to change. I suspect there is still time to greatly reduce the firehose of greenhouse gasses going into our precious atmosphere.
But will it happen?.
Get a grip
I totally agree with Lucy Te Awa’s comment on the board of Netball NZ (30.10.25).
They resemble a small child with a ball at the end of a string, swinging it around until all the china is broken .
The usual excuse, because someone feels "threatened". Years ago these people would have been told to get a grip. They need to again.
Cup runneth over as article brings back memories
I was interested to read your article about the White Horse Cup (ODT 30.10.25) as I was a member of the Cromwell/Bannockburn rugby team which took the cup off Matakanui in 1952.
We didn’t hold the cup very long, eventually losing it to Alexandra, but I can vividly remember bringing it home to Cromwell with our team bus stopping, of course, at the bottom pub where half of Cromwell were waiting to greet their rugby heroes and publican Davey Mangos had a busy night filling that cup.
I only lived in Cromwell for several months as I was on transfer with the company I worked for but now, after 75 years, I am back here living with my wife.
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