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From local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:
There has been plenty of progress, just not visible progress.
Construction of the $56.75 million Ashburton Library and Civic Centre, Te Pātaka o kā Tuhituhi and Te Waharoa a Hine Paaka, is tracking along, Ashburton District Council chief … View moreFrom local democracy reporter Jonathan Leask:
There has been plenty of progress, just not visible progress.
Construction of the $56.75 million Ashburton Library and Civic Centre, Te Pātaka o kā Tuhituhi and Te Waharoa a Hine Paaka, is tracking along, Ashburton District Council chief executive Hamish Riach said.
“The tarpaulins and wrapping on the outside of the building is to enable work on the inside to proceed with relative protection from the weather prior to the facade of the building being attached,” Riach said.
“While this enables work to proceed, it does mean it is very hard to see building activity behind the tarpaulins.
“Once the facade is attached in the next few weeks and months, the building will look dramatically different.”
The project is still on track to be finished about mid-2023 while the budget remains under significant pressure because of “these difficult Covid times and skyrocketing construction prices".
“We are very grateful for the $20m grant given by the Government to the project as part of its Covid stimulus package.”
Ashburton’s new building will display the names gifted from Te Rūnanga o Arowhenua, Te Pātaka o kā Tuhituhi and Te Waharoa a Hine Paaka, alongside the words Ashburton Library and Civic Centre, Riach said.
Selwyn’s Te Ara Ātea, the multi-use community facility and library that opened in Rolleston in December last year, has been a topic of debate recently.
Rolleston Residents Association members want the Selwyn District Council to put the word “library” under the name of Te Ara Ātea on its signage because they feel people don’t know what the building is – despite it attracting over 100,000 visitors.
Before the building opening the Association had campaigned to have the words community centre removed from the project, as the Rolleston Community Centre, which had housed the old library, was being retained.
The Selwyn council decided to use the name Te Ara Ātea, which means the unobstructed trail to the world and beyond, rather than a by-line describing the building’s various functions.
Arowhenua gifted the names for the new Ashburton library and civic building, with the library known as Te Pātaka o kā Tuhituhi and the civic centre as Te Waharoa a Hine Paaka. Te Pātaka o kā Tuhituhi means the storehouse of written publications, while Te Waharoa a Hine Paaka derives from an ancient matai tree that once stood at Alford Forest. Known as Hine Paaka, the tree was a significant landmark to Māori travelling through the district.
*Public Interest Journalism funded through NZ On Air
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On Monday, 21 November, the Supreme Court ruled that preventing 16 and 17-year-olds from voting is 'unjustified age discrimination'.
The current age of voting is 18 in New Zealand and lobby group Make It 16 have been running a youth-led campaign advocating for the vote to be extended … View moreOn Monday, 21 November, the Supreme Court ruled that preventing 16 and 17-year-olds from voting is 'unjustified age discrimination'.
The current age of voting is 18 in New Zealand and lobby group Make It 16 have been running a youth-led campaign advocating for the vote to be extended to our 16 and 17-year-olds.
“This is history,” said Make It 16 co-director Caeden Tipler. “Today New Zealand’s highest court has confirmed that stopping young people from voting is a breach of our human rights...The government and Parliament cannot ignore such a clear legal and moral message. They must let us vote.”
Share your thoughts below - these may be published in the We Say You Say column of the local papers.
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Our national women’s rugby team took out the Rugby World Cup on Saturday in a tense finale at Eden Park. The Black Ferns won the match by just three points taking home their sixth world title.
With public celebrations taking place following the All Blacks (men's) Rugby World Cup wins … View moreOur national women’s rugby team took out the Rugby World Cup on Saturday in a tense finale at Eden Park. The Black Ferns won the match by just three points taking home their sixth world title.
With public celebrations taking place following the All Blacks (men's) Rugby World Cup wins (2011 & 2015) as well as parades for the America's cup team, do you think similar celebration plans are needed for our winning Black Ferns women?
Hey does anyone out there have any ideas on how to contact IRD. I have called their 0800 number and i just get a message saying they are too busy and to call back later or go online. Then it just hangs up on me, there’s no option to leave a message and no option to remain on hold.
I have been… View moreHey does anyone out there have any ideas on how to contact IRD. I have called their 0800 number and i just get a message saying they are too busy and to call back later or go online. Then it just hangs up on me, there’s no option to leave a message and no option to remain on hold.
I have been online and requested they call me via myIRD as I need some assistance in filling out a return and correcting some gst returns someone else did for me and did wrong. However, 5 months after asking them to phone me and making it clear I could not do the return without someone calling me, still no one has called.
Now i cant even log in to ask them to call me, again. After I log in with ‘realme’ it asks me for a second secure authentication. I have no idea what the username/password for that is supposed to be as I have never set anything up for that and never been asked for it before. My existing realme login does not work for this, and there are no links on the page so that I can set one up (normally on a login oage you have links saying stuff like “forgot your password” or “reset your username/password”. There is nothing on this screen). The only options are to enter a user name and password and as I have no idea what they should be I cant. The only other option on the screen is to click cancel, which must logs me out of the whole thing and returns me to the main IRD login screen
So….
I cannot fill out my returns as the forms I was seeing on myIR, dont contain the fields I need, to put the figures into.
I cannot call them as their message just says they are too busy then hangs up on me.
I cannot get them to call me.
Now I cant even access myIR.
And I am getting letters with threatening subject lines (I cant actually read their contents as I cant log into myIR to read them)
Ive even tried emailing their general customer feedback email address and a survey email address I found (the only ird email addresses I can find which are not no-reply bounces) and no one has replied to those emails.
How can it be legal, for IRD to just threaten people and take their money? But not have a working phone number or any email addresses for anyone to contact them on. And not call people 5 months after the have asked them to (because they cannot do the returns till someone calls them to explain where to enter the return info into a form with only two vaguely/nonsensically, named fields), and then on top of all that, decide to just out of the blue, add in a second layer of authentication on their website, but have no information on how to set up a username and password to use for that second authentication, thereby making it impossible for anyone to login to myIR and even read their threatening emails, let alone do anything to resolve them?
I have a lot of business expenses I am unable to declare and very worried they will just take money out of my account based on my turnover and not my actual (significantly less) taxable income. Im just a sole charge contractor, and don't have the funds to pay thousands to an accountant just to get someone from ird to pick up the phone and call me.
Does anyone out there have any ideas on how to contact them?
Or maybe someone has been given a direct dial number for a real person at ird that they might be willing to share with me? (Your name will never be mentioned! Lol). I did have a number like that myself on my old phone but it died suddenly and the contact list couldn’t be retrieved from the dead ph the attempts to do so are a saga of their own).
So im really hoping someone out there might of an alternative contact method which is NOT any of the following methods I have tried which have failed:
The 0800 775 247 number (which is apparently always too short staffed for anyone to ever pick up the phone)
MyIR
The two emails address i could find which did not begin with “noreply@…”
Honestly do business not realise how bloody frustrating it is to receive an email that “requires your action” in some way, from an email address you cannot respond to!
Alternatively if you work at ird. Please call me on Monday 020 406 41485, and if i don’t answer because I am in a work meeting, please leave me a message with an actual number that is not 0800 775 247 that I can call you back on!
Ok rant over, but if anyone has an actual working number that i can call to speak to an actual real human being at ird, could you please share it with me? I don’t care what department, at least if a real person answers I can beg them to let me speak to a real person in the gst returns dept (or record the call as yet more evidence of the ridiculous impossibility of getting to speak to a real person at ird, if they wont put me thru).
At this rate maybe i could make up a youtube or other social media audio and video series entitled… ‘the long hunt for a real person at ird’, or something equally sarcastic…
At least till I cant afford internet after they withdraw all my savings to pay my horrifically inflated tax “assessment” that their combination of unusable systems and uncontactable departments has made impossible for me to file an actual return and expenses against!
Actually maybe thats what I could do next. Record every failed call to their 0800 number, till I have many hours worth, then post them on youtube or similar….till I set a Guinness record for the person who went to the most hours of effort to try and do her gst return, but still got penalised by ird because that was easier than actually calling her!
Despite how boring being on hold with IRD would be to listen to, I sort of feel at this stage, that getting my first million views on a long boring video of IRD hold music, and ‘sorry we are too busy, please call another day’ hangups, might happen faster than anyone real at IRD actually ever phoning me!
Seriously though
Does anyone know how i can actually get to speak to someone there? Or is the idea of real people at ird just a myth? How ridiculous is it that i have to take to social media because after 5 months of trying I don't have a way to communicate with a real person at IRD to find out how to fill in the gst return form !
Someone did call me about 5.5-6 months ago and told me now to fill out the gst return adjustment forms. Problem is the form and form fields they described to me and told me to enter the numbers into, do not actually exist on the gst return forms that were available to me when I was able to access myIR. They seemed to be describing an entirely different form that is not available to my myIR account.
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Mia and Jade love Christmas, but their parents are struggling financially. “Christmas time brings a lot of stress. I want to put a good meal on the table and give my kids a good and exciting Christmas but with bills and rent, our credit card is already maxed out,” Jenna says.
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Selwyn residents are being asked to have their say on what sports, recreation and play spaces the district needs in the next decade.
The district council opened consultation this week on its Draft Sport, Active Recreation and Play, Spaces and Places Plan.
Residents have until Friday, December… View moreSelwyn residents are being asked to have their say on what sports, recreation and play spaces the district needs in the next decade.
The district council opened consultation this week on its Draft Sport, Active Recreation and Play, Spaces and Places Plan.
Residents have until Friday, December 9 to share feedback on the provision of spaces and places to support sport, active recreation and play in Selwyn over the next 10 years.
"We have been working with local clubs, organisations and educators to help prepare the draft Plan, but wider community feedback will be key," council community services and facilities group manager Denise Kidd said.
“Sports and recreation are a big part of what makes Selwyn a great place to live. We’re seeing big growth in our sports clubs and in the use of our parks and sports facilities. We want to encourage that and make sure we’ve got what is needed to meet what the community wants now and into the future.”
Submissions will help the council build on what the sector has told it so far and allow for community views to be considered in the decision-making.
The council said it would review all feedback before approving the final plan.
For more information and to make a submission, visit selwyn.govt.nz/yoursay.
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This is the filling from used pillows, but is in a good clean condition(has always been inside pillow covers plus pillow slips) I am sure anyone making soft toys would find this useful, rather than throwing away, FREE TO GOOD HOME
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Howdy neighbours
I have a whole lot of pet and rescued ducks who are laying lots of yummy eggs. Unfortunately I am too busy with work and with general duck care to have the time right now to collect, grade, check, market and sell these eggs, so they are piling up until I get time to cook them … View moreHowdy neighbours
I have a whole lot of pet and rescued ducks who are laying lots of yummy eggs. Unfortunately I am too busy with work and with general duck care to have the time right now to collect, grade, check, market and sell these eggs, so they are piling up until I get time to cook them and feed back to the ducks or they go to waste.
Duck eggs can be used the same way you would use chicken eggs and are considered richer and more gourmet than chicken eggs. They are usually preferred by chefs for baking. And most people who are allergic to chicken eggs can eat duck eggs. They are larger than chicken eggs and due to a thicker shell usually keep longer. They are also used by a lot of people to create salted eggs (which apparently keep for a long time) or cultural delicacies such as century eggs.
This feels wasteful to me as they are a good nutritious form of food and we are in a situation right now where food is expensive.
I also have another problem which is that my ducks could so with some fresh vegetables or vegetable scraps, and since moving out to Oxford, I cannot find any vegetable markets nearby which offer scraps that I can feed to my ducks.
So I am hoping I can solve both these problems at once, by offering free nutritious duck eggs to anyone out there who has excess vegetables from their garden, or excess vegetable scraps to offer my ducks (and make their day) in return.
The ducks are laying around 2 dozen eggs a day, and they would love to swap them for the following types of vegetables and vegetable scraps:
Cauliflower and broccoli leaves (they will eat the cauli and broccoli too but they actually prefer the leaves)
Carrot tops and carrots (again I think they prefer the tops lol)
Cabbage in small amounts, lettuce in large amounts
Green peas in any amounts
Beetroot
Corn/sweet corn
Kale
Tomatoes
Strawberries grapes. Raspberries
Silverbeet
Pumpkin and pumpkin seeds
Cucumber, courgettes
Duck weed if anyone has any on their pond etc
Celery
Any of the above that has gone to seed is also fine
Probably other things that are not coming to mind right now, feel free to text and ask.
They can’t eat the following or any other vegetables which have been contaminated with any significant amount of these vegetables as they are toxic to ducks.
Beans (toxic to ducks unless cooked which I just don’t have time to be doing right now)
Onions (toxic)
Egg plant (toxic)
Avocados
Alternatively if any food banks are willing to collect from View Hill, Oxford please get in touch.
Please text me on 020 406 41485 if interested. Pickup from view hill Oxford, or can maybe meet you in Oxford or Rangiora when I am going to either if you are happy to meet up at short notice.
If there is anyone else who has an excess of some type of food they wish to exchange, even if it is not what I need or you don’t need duck eggs, pls post a comment on this post, maybe we can do a three way exchange or someone else might have something useful or a need. It would be good to have a forum to exchange excess food with summer coming up. I know a lot of people will end up with more of certain vegetables in the vegetable garden than they need, and it seems silly for food to be wasted when we can maybe all help each other out.
Also if there is anyone out there who is just genuinely struggling at the moment with the constantly skyrocketing food costs who would find some eggs helpful for their own fridge, get in touch with me as I have plenty.
Admin: I put this under free stuff as it was closer to that than buy or sell and there is no exchange option, I hope that is not breaching any terms.
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