Sky Tower to fly white flags for mental health
Three white flags will fly from the very top of the Sky Tower this week, to raise awareness about mental health in the construction industry.
SkyCity spokesperson Arron Money said the construction industry has one of the highest rates of suicide in the commercial sector in New Zealand.
“Flying the flags from the top of the Sky Tower is our way of acknowledging the problem and empowering the industry to do something about it. The flags are a visual reminder for workers to stop and have the courage to ask a mate if they are alright,” he said.
Fly the Flag is a campaign created by Mates in Construction - an organisation established to combat the high rate of suicide among construction workers in New Zealand.
As a mark of respect for the families who have lost loved ones to suicide, the Sky Tower will also be lit as large ribbon with colours of orange and gold on September 10 to support World Suicide Prevention Day.
Poll: Should you ask before planting tall shrubs/trees near your property line?
It may be fine now but in a few years trees can block out light or views for neighbours.
Do you think neighbours should ask before they go ahead and plant these?
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69% Yes, always ask
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29.8% No
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1.1% Other - I'll share below!
What's the best way to keep grocery shopping bills down?
We are still feeling the pinch and the weekly shop is no different. So we are after your cost-saving tips please, neighbours!
What’s the best way you've found to cut down on your grocery bill? Share below (and hear tips from others!)
Remembering Martin Phillipps on East FM, Saturday from midday
As a Gen Xer and NZ music enthusiast, it’s taken these days to comprehend the loss of Martin Phillipps, who died last Sunday aged 61. That’s too young, but what an extraordinarily full life, with a significant chunk of it on the road playing his music of The Chills to audiences in this country and across the planet.
As an indie-rock band out of Dunedin, and for its Kiwi fans (us Gen Zers), it has always been a great source of pride that one of ours generated attention abroad.
They attracted fans everywhere, and the only time I met him was on foreign soil at a venue, The Orange, at Islington, in London, around 1996. Our band had a gig upstairs in the acoustic room, while The Chills were headlining in the main room below. Sound check times overlapped and we talked while waiting around. They were road warriors, on one of their many UK and European tours.
I remember seeing them at the late-great Gluepot here in the late 1980s, too, the last NZ gig before heading overseas for the first time to fly the flag for the Dunedin Sound.
Martin Phillipps will be missed. A great New Zealander who accentuated our national character in all his eccentricities. The legacy he leaves with us is priceless, music so vast in quantity and lush in quality, and those who were fortunate enough to acquire a taonga from recent online sales of his legendary pop-culture collection know they now possess a wonderful connection to a man that showed the world what Kiwis can do. And acquire.
There are many of Phillipps’ and The Chills songs that are part of our national cultural DNA, the soundtrack to the Gen Xer life – I Love My Leather Jacket, Heavenly Pop Hit, Pink Frost, Kaleidoscope World, Doldrums, Rolling Moon – and recent albums, Snow Bound (2018) and Scatterbrain (2021), are regular favourites, especially the driving song Complex:
I’m not the man you think I am
I’m a complex piece of the plan…
Essential viewing: One of the best music documentaries is The Chills: The Triumph and Tragedy of Martin Phillipps, made in recent years and telling the story of a determined Kiwi bloke driven to take his music to the world, and of a band that must have the record for most members over four decades. And at the end, he and they were at their most settled and enjoying the most original of NZ indie rock n’ roll. – PJ
I’ll be playing music by The Chills on tomorrow’s She’ll Be Right on Saturdays Show with PJ Taylor, midday to 4pm on East FM, East Auckland’s fair-dinkum community-powered public service radio station, on 88.1FM and 107.1FM on local frequencies, nationally and globally at www.eastfm.nz... and on app iHeart Radio.
Photo: Martin Phillipps in the 1980s. Page 293 in John Dix's book Stranded in Paradise, the History of NZ Rock n' Roll 1955-1988.
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