Legal bloody highs | DCC’s pathetic buffer zones (fail OGHS / View Street)

Legal highs (via ODT 31.8.15)
• All psychoactive substances banned last year.
• Producers now need to prove their products are safe.
• Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority expected to begin issuing retail licences to sell approved products from November.
• Dunedin City Council consulting on proposed legal high retailers location policy; outlets permitted in only limited central city sites.
• No applications for product approval, or manufacturing licence, yet received.
• Any psychoactive product expected to take “at least” two years to win approval.

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Dunedin City Council
Legal High Retail Location Policy

Closes: 14/09/2015

The Council is proposing to set out where legal highs (commonly referred to as ‘party pills’ or ‘synthetic cannabis’) can be sold within Dunedin.
The proposed Legal High Retail Location Policy will effectively ban sale of legal highs outside of the central city and within 100m of sensitive sites such as education facilities, churches, libraries, hospitals, mental health facilities and justice premises.

Background
Previously psychoactive substances could be manufactured and sold without restriction. The government reacted to the harm these products caused by banning them individually once harm had been investigated and proven. The process for doing this was slow and reactive and did not effectively manage the harm caused by the substances.

Parliament has now banned all psychoactive substances unless they can be proven to be no more than a low risk of harm to users. Although manufacturers are testing products, none have yet met the test to be considered an approved product.

Despite this, from later this year, those wanting to sell legal highs can apply to the Ministry of Health’s Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority for a retail licence. This means the retailers could sell legal highs as soon as one meets the low harm threshold.

Parliament also introduced rules around selling legal highs, including an age restriction, display and packaging restrictions and a ban on their sale from supermarkets, dairies, petrol stations, premises licenced to sell alcohol, residential premises, vending machines or places likely to be frequented by minors (for example recreational or sports facilities). It also gave councils the power to specify where (within reason) in their districts, legal highs can be sold.
This means the Council can formalise the community’s preferences for where legal highs can be sold (within the scope of the law) by adopting a Legal High Retail Location Policy (also called a ‘Local Approved Products Policy’). All applications for retail licenses would have to first be checked against the policy before the Psychoactive Substances Regulatory Authority could legally grant a licence. The Council cannot make a policy that bans legal highs outright, or is so restrictive it effectively bans their sale.

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OPTIONS (Pros √ / Cons X)
Parliament has created a system which makes some psychoactive substances legal. The Council does not have the power to ban the sale of legal highs in Dunedin. The options available to the Council include:

Option A
Restrict legal high retailers to the Dunedin central city area provided they are more than 100m from “sensitive sites” (proposed).
√ Restrictions within the Act apply (no sales from dairies, petrol stations and residential premises etc.)
√ Sales only allowed where there is high public surveillance (Dunedin central city area) and away from sensitive sites like schools, churches, the library, the hospital, mental health facilities and justice premises
X Demand for complete ban not met

Option B
Allow sale of legal highs in areas other than the Dunedin central city area
√ Restrictions within the Act apply (no sales from dairies, petrol stations and residential premises etc.)
X Sales occur away from the areas of highest public surveillance and potentially closer to sensitive sites like schools, churches, the library, the hospital, mental health facilities and justice premises
X Demand for complete ban not met

Option C
No restrictions above those outlined in the Act
√ Restrictions within the Act apply (no sales from dairies, petrol stations and residential premises etc.)
X No restrictions on sale of legal highs near schools, churches, the library, the hospital, mental health facilities and justice premises
X Demand for complete ban not met

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The Proposal
We are proposing Option A – restricting legal high retailers to the Dunedin central city area (Option A), provided they are not within 100 metres of sensitive sites such as schools, churches, the library, the hospital, mental health facilities and justice premises.

There are two key reasons for this approach.

This is the only regulation currently available to limit sale of legal highs in Dunedin

A Legal High Retail Location Policy is the only way the community can limit the sale of legal highs within the current regulatory system. The proposed policy limits the sale of legal highs to the extent possible under the law as it stands. Adopting an overly restrictive policy could be legally challenged.
Non-regulatory responses such as education and advocacy to central government can and will also be used to help manage the harm caused by legal highs.

To limit sale of legal highs to where harm is likely to be better managed

Limiting the sale of legal highs to the central city would mean sales would occur in areas where there is natural public surveillance (ie areas of high foot traffic and/or CCTV cameras). This would help reduce risks to the community.
Adding a 100m buffer zone around sensitive sites (schools, churches, the library, the hospital, mental health facilities and justice premises) will further reduce exposure to legal highs, particularly among users of sensitive sites.
By applying these criteria legal high retailers will be prohibited from suburban retail areas such as South Dunedin, Green Island, Mosgiel and Port Chalmers.

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Have Your Say
The Council wants to know what you think about the proposed Legal High Retail Location Policy. Have we defined sensitive sites effectively? Would you add or remove any? Are the proposed buffer zones correct? How would the proposed policy affect you?
Provide your feedback using the form below and/or indicating whether you would like to speak at the public hearing, to be held in late September.

█ Feedback closes 5pm, Monday 14 September.

Consultation documents
Draft Legal High Location Policy (PDF, 549.0 KB)
Legal Highs in Dunedin – Have Your Say

Consultation details: Closing date: 14/09/2015

Public feedback
● Online submission form
● Email to – legalhighs @dcc.govt.nz
● Post to – Dunedin City Council, PO Box 5045, Moray Place, Dunedin 9058, Attention Governance Support Officer – Legal High Retail Location Policy Consultation
● Hand deliver to – DCC Customer Services Centre, Ground Floor, 50 The Octagon, Dunedin, Attention: Governance Support Officer – Legal High Retail Location Policy Consultation

DCC Link

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Comment at ODT Online:

What next DCC?
Submitted by Catcher on Mon, 31/08/2015 – 9:37am.

I think it’s just an unhappy circumstance that we’re seeing the ‘Bermuda triangle’ occur at the bottom of View St – A known problem area for anti-social behaviour. The Council will certainly be copping some flak for it and where they depict the woefully inadequate buffer zone that 100m represents around the most vulnerable and impressionable of all the ‘Sensitive sites’, the school. If that measurement started from the perimeters of these sensitive sites, no one would be permitted to operate in the city centre – which would send a clear message to our City planners.
Read more

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██ AS IF VIEW STREET RESIDENTS AND NEARBY BUSINESSES HAVEN’T HAD ENOUGH ALREADY, MAYOR LIABILITY CULL

Related Posts and Comments:
12.5.15 View Street, seen from Moray Place
2.6.15 Unpublished letter to ODT editor —Aftermath of Sunday TVNZ (10 May)
17.5.15 Social media messages after Sunday TVNZ (10 May)
11.5.15 Aftermath of Sunday TVNZ on ‘Party Central’
8.5.15 Sunday TVNZ #Dunedin —10 May TV1 at 7:00 pm

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University rolls down, Harlene not the only problem….

Due to an observable fall in student numbers, we have claimed if not predictably on other threads that there is PANIC !!!! at the University of Otago.

We’ve set to encouraging “our people” to attend other universities; while University of Otago continues to generate and support drunken disorder and lawlessness in our public domain —by allowing wayward noisy destructive gatherings (euphemistically known as parties!) in the tertiary campus area, particularly at the likes of Hyde and Castle Streets. These combine the usual assortment of assaults, vandalism, fires, hospitalisations and arrests, with undue waste of personnel, money and resources by emergency services, city council and university —impacting taxpayers and ratepayers. This so-called support from University of Otago and OUSA for youthful hijinks (civil unrest and criminality) comes as “ambulance at bottom of cliff”.

Funny we should say “ambulance” —perhaps it’s better to use “rapid response vehicle with broken windscreen”, Harlene?

Although you prefer “paving” and “village square”, or whisper “quality”.
How about ‘Dark Disgrace’ ?

█ QUESTION: Is University of Otago using an open tendering system for construction projects? YES/NO
If not why not, contact head of http://www.otago.ac.nz/propertyservices

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### ODT Online Thu, 2 Apr 2015
Editorial: Jolting any university complacency
OPINION Whatever the spin from the University of Otago, the sudden drop in first-year domestic student numbers is a shock. The fall of 350 full-time equivalents (Efts) equates to nearly 10% over last year. It reverses the previous year’s first-year domestic increase of 119 (3.2%). […] Overall, the roll decline compared with March last year is 469 to 17,172, against a budgeted prediction of an increase of towards 200. Vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne might say projected shortfall in income is less than 1% of the total budget. But the university is a huge organisation and 1% represents about $6 million.
Read more

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BORING SALES TALK FROM HARLS

### ODT Online Wed, 1 Apr 2015
Luring the best and brightest
By Harlene Hayne – Vice-chancellor, University of Otago
OPINION It is easy to forget that neither constant growth nor sheer size define the world’s great universities. Indeed, if anything, the opposite is true. Among those that consistently make the top 10 in the prominent international rankings, the vast majority – including Yale, Stanford, Harvard, Princeton, Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Chicago and Caltech – have a student roll either similar to or smaller than Otago’s.
Read more

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Related Posts and Comments:
28.3.15 University of Otago landscaping
22.3.15 University of Otago: More national and global publicity #HydeStreet
10.3.15 *Surprise!* Farry’s f.u.b.a.r. Stadium not attracting first year Efts
18.2.15 University of Otago: Toga Party 2015 #video
16.2.15 University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image
18.12.14 University of Otago —um Harlene, what you sellin’ now, girl?
12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
9.1.14 Facadism: … University of Otago warps Castle Street
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
24.7.13 University: Leith flood protection scheme and landscaping
31.5.13 University of Otago development plans
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Images (tweaked by whatifdunedin): sunlive.co.nz – Cat (called Harlene); natlib.govt.nz – Bottom of cliff [original by Christopher Slane 2.2.08]

University of Otago: More national and global publicity #HydeStreet

### tvnz.co.nz 7:03PM Saturday March 21, 2015
Drunk shoulder-barges ambulance at Dunedin street party
Source: ONE News
A drunk man shoulder-barged the windscreen of a St Johns ambulance during the Hyde Street student party in Dunedin, covering a woman paramedic with shattered glass fragments. Police say the man damaged three vehicles including the ambulance driven by a sole female paramedic, causing her to be covered in glass fragments. They’re asking for any witnesses to the incident on Albany Street around 4pm to come forward.

“This is yet another example of the harm alcohol causes and the poor decision making of those under the influence,” says Inspector Mel Aitken, the officer in charge.

Police arrested a dozen people for a variety of offences including assault on security staff, fighting, disorder and offensive behaviour. Police say the Hyde Street party is far from what they deem a safe event following a spate of incidents involving the excessive consumption of alcohol.

“Despite the best efforts of organising staff to create an enjoyable occasion for students, the level of alcohol related harm and the risk to public safety still remains too high,” Inspector Aitken says.

The Hyde Street party has become a major event in the social calendar for many of Dunedin’s ‘scarfie’ population. Otago University Students Association took over running the annual part three years ago after unruly scenes in 2012 embarrassed the university.
Read more + Video

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The party was “far from being what police deem a safe event”. –Inspector Mel Aitken, NZ Police

### NZ Herald Online 9:00 PM Saturday Mar 21, 2015
Dozen people arrested at Dunedin street party
By Matthew Theunissen – Herald on Sunday
A dozen people were arrested and a man smashed an ambulance window, covering a paramedic in glass, at a Dunedin street party tonight. Some 4,000 tickets were sold for the Hyde St keg party, an annual student blow-out known for its excessive alcohol consumption. In a statement released about 8.30pm, police said a dozen people had already been arrested for offences including assault on security staff, fighting, disorder and offensive behaviour. A particularly distressing incident involved an intoxicated male who damaged three vehicles including shoulder-barging the windscreen of a St Johns ambulance.
Read more

● 3 News: Dunedin’s Hyde St party still far from safe – police [+ Video]
● ODT: Drunken incidents mar Hyde St party [+ Video]

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TooSurreal NZ Published on Apr 13, 2014
Hyde | 2014
Annual Hyde St keg party in Dunedin, New Zealand!
Music: “Strange clouds” – B.O.B feat. Lil Wayne
Music: “Wild for the Night” by A$AP Rocky featuring Skrillex & Birdy Nam Nam (Google Play • iTunes)

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Related Posts and Comments:
18.2.15 University of Otago: Toga Party 2015 #video
16.2.15 University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image
18.12.14 University of Otago —um Harlene, what you sellin’ now, girl?
12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Images: Hyde Street Party, Dunedin – ONE News screenshots by whatifdunedin

*Surprise!* Farry’s f.u.b.a.r. Stadium not attracting first year Efts

BLUNDER CITY #DUD —AND THE STADIUM REVIEW AIN’T NO HELP

Ivy League Assaults: Dumber and Dumber due to UE failure, drunkenness, fires, civil disorder, better campus and study offerings up north and overseas?

AWAIT UNIVERSITY OF OTAGO PRONOUNCEMENTS AFTER THE MARCH MEETING OF THE HALLOWED UNIVERSITY COUNCIL

A ‘PUBLIC RELATIONS EPIC’ IS EXPECTED

### ODT Online Tue, 10 Mar 2015
University roll worry realised
By Timothy Brown
Fears of University of Otago first-year student numbers falling for the first time since 2011 appear to be realised, with “serious” vacancies at Knox College and Salmond College. About 10% of beds at the two non-university run colleges remain vacant and the Otago University Students’ Association revealed, earlier this year, the University of Otago could face a drop in first-year student numbers.
Read more

Both Knox and Salmond have undergone recent building upgrades and provide excellent pastoral care in quiet settings – who then, would choose a university-owned rough-house college if you were serious about career education.

What sort of undergrad student is the University of Otago attracting nowadays? Party animals? Generation Zero lefties? Discount ivy-leaguers (Kiwi-Asian style)? And how come accommodation at college halls is so steep? It’s an obscene weekly cost if mummy and daddy aren’t paying, so yes, way better(?) to camp out in the grunge and gunge flats of Studentville —or hey, move up the hill to sink the tone of City Rise, look at all those “historic-kick-apart” villas and mansions, incredibly suited to Face Book parties and upsetting middle class owner-occupiers next door. Cripes, at each former family or professional home there’s room to park “6 cars!”, yes, the cash-cow landlords will happily (just ask) destroy established 100-year-old plantings and gardens to lay down asphalt.

Welcome to ‘Absolutely Beautiful’, Dunedin. Welcome to the student ghettos, the broken streetscapes…. smashed bottles, lingering trash, burnt furniture, bouncing basketballs (all hours, Really Dumb like that), drying vomit and worse, weeds, untrimmed trees and hedges, a few kicked-in fences, more asphalt, flaking paint at once proud residences, stickering with satellite dishes and heat pumps, strings of poorly washed laundry draping house fronts. But who can forget the “Dunedin Sound”, of nights, drunken male yahoos, uncoordinated white trash hakas and ‘young girl’ screams, passion or torture, hard to tell. 111.

THIS is, Dunedin FOR Education.
Student loans FOR Banks and Slum Landlords.
Google Images: “castle street hyde street dunedin”

And Harlene, next! Frat Life starts in on St Leonards – just a quick ride from your Ivy League of diminished offerings, that overpriced BA, BCom or BSc.

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Related Posts and Comments:
18.2.15 University of Otago: Toga Party 2015 #video
16.2.15 University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image
18.12.14 University of Otago —um Harlene, what you sellin’ now, girl?
12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University of Otago can’t beat broadcast news and social media #image

[click screenshot to enlarge]

This is how New Zealand Herald, via the National news section (it’s an ODT story and photograph by Hamish McNeilly), markets the University of Otago Campus Area to parents and intending students, nationals and internationals. Read the full article at NZ Herald.

Better advertising to reduce Otago’s student rolls we couldn’t hope to find.

Glad Vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne has everything under control.
Perhaps the VC could visit and apologise to the distressed student from George Street, hard at work today serving customers at the Octagon, who told me she and her flatmates ventured out on Sunday morning to find their driveway grossly awash with vomit.

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Related Posts and Comments:
18.12.14 University of Otago —um Harlene, what you sellin’ now, girl?
12.8.14 Cameras in North Dunedin
1.8.14 University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
30.4.14 Octagon mud
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
25.3.13 UoO: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.2.12 Salvation Army: The Growing Divide
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it
9.11.11 DCC has PR problem

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University Partyville, North Dunedin: Put the cameras in ~!!

“We’ve earned the right to live away from home and live by ourselves and do what we want and I don’t think we should be baby-sat or monitored,” Ms Walker said. Students “should be able to be stupid on the weekend” and the situation had improved from previous years. –Maddy Walker (21), student

“If you look at the costs to city council every year of holes burnt in Leith St, Hyde St, Dundas St … some years it’s been $600,000.” –Cr Lee Vandervis

### ODT Online Fri, 1 Aug 2014
Call for north end cameras
By Vaughan Elder
A Dunedin city councillor is calling for video surveillance of the student quarter as a way of preventing out-of-control vandalism. The call for surveillance from Cr Lee Vandervis was not welcomed by north end residents and students spoken to yesterday, who said such a move would be an invasion of privacy. Cr Vandervis said video surveillance in the Octagon worked well and there was no reason why it could not be successfully employed in North Dunedin. “I believe we need to have some cameras up and we need to have a few prosecutions.”
Read more

Related Posts and Comments:
16.7.14 Stadium: Out of the mouths of uni babes…. #DVML
22.3.14 Dunedin North care less filthy slum
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
19.8.13 Cull on senility (firing up graduates)
31.5.13 University of Otago development plans
25.3.13 University of Otago: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder…
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Images: (from top) stuff.co.nz, stuff.co.nz, wikimedia.org – North Dunedin

Student Proof Carpet – New Zealand #video

Marketing student life (passive/aggressive)

Godfrey Hirst 30 Apr 2014

STUDENTS VS CARPET
18 Students, all male, flatting together in Dunedin over Orientation Week 2014. Did our Student Proof carpet survive?
[View Street]
http://www.studentproof.co.nz

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5.5.14 Human traffic: Otago students put carpet through its paces
http://www.stoppress.co.nz/blog/2014/05/students

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

Dunedin North care less filthy slum

—– Original Message —–
From: Jeff Dickie
To: Elizabeth Kerr
Sent: Friday, March 21, 2014 5:45 PM
Subject: Sunday in the slums of North Dunedin

Hi Elizabeth, your comments re the new hotel [“Cull’s Cockup”, the new “Farry’s Folly”] are very good and congratulations on the National Radio coverage.

In the next day or so I’d like to post something on your Whatif site regarding the implications of the DCC neglecting core business and services. We’ve watched as the North End has transformed from an integrated community combining residents and students to an intensely populated and filthy slum. Largely as a result of poor planning by the DCC and University. I took these photos on Sunday, 16 March.

While Dave preens himself in front of the mirror and is distracted by the latest snake oil salesmen, there are some very serious social issues developing.

Regards, Jeff

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George Street

Castle Street

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Related Post and Comments:
19.3.14 Dunedin North drunks
15.2.14 University of Otago: Starter questions for Harlene
10.2.14 University of Otago major sponsor for Highlanders
25.3.13 University of Otago: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder…
20.2.12 University of Otago student orientation
17.12.11 Stadium + Cull love = University of Otago + OUSA party
23.11.11 Judge Oke Blaikie finally said it

For more, enter *university* or *campus* in the search box at right.

Dunedin North drunks

Mr Gable stressed not all the partygoers exhibited bad behaviour, with others trying to calm the more aggressive young men.

### ODT Online Wed, 19 Mar 2014
Man attacked by St Patrick’s revellers
By Hamish McNeilly
A Dunedin man says he had his shirt ripped, glasses pulled off his face and his car’s wing mirror yanked off after he confronted drunken St Patrick’s Day revellers who were urinating on his property. Walking from work to his Malvern St home, Chris Gable encountered a large crowd of green-clad revellers in the area of the former Woodhaugh Hotel, about 5pm on Monday. […] He later had to leave the property, and while he was away, his neighbour, Jeff Dickie found an estimated 40 people on Mr Gable’s section, including some bouncing on his trampoline and others urinating on his property.
Read more

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Figures released under the Official Information Act show the Fire Service recorded 586 nuisance fires in the North Dunedin student area between February 20, 2009, and February 20, 2014. Of those, 179 were recorded last year – compared with 77 in 2009.

### ODT Online Wed, 19 Mar 2014
Student fires dampened
By Hamish McNeilly
Nuisance fires in the student quarter hit a five-year high last year, with Castle St the area’s top hot spot. To dampen fire threats, the Fire Service, police, University of Otago and Dunedin City Council have taken a zero tolerance approach to such fires in the city. Fire Service East Otago area manager Laurence Voight said that approach, coupled with fire prevention activities during Orientation Week appeared to have ”reduced the unwanted behaviour”.
Read more

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Meanwhile Vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne, on advice received from the likes of Stuart McLauchlan and John Ward (did we mention Mayor Cull?), ‘decides’ the University of Otago should sponsor, yes, the ‘drinking culture’ that attends a professional but barely coherent and losing rugby team, The Highlanders. Some things are cumulative by fragile branding connection… a marketing marriage borne in heaven: A GREAT EXAMPLE TO ALL. This, a ‘subtle’ buttering device, before the DCC’s Stadium gets offloaded to the University for nothing, and Hail Mary/Harlene! the University doesn’t have to pay rates.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

DCC bylaws (good governance?)

LONG LIVE CITY SKATEBOARDING

### ODT Online
Wed, 19 Feb 2014
Board bylaw reviewed
By Debbie Porteous
Having the ability to confiscate skateboards in the inner city would be ”extremely useful”, Dunedin police say.
City councillors seem set to recommend that the power to confiscate boards from people riding in prohibited areas in the central city be added to a reviewed skateboarding bylaw.
Read more

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Worthy comment at ODT Online:

Where’s the problem?
Submitted by Challispoint on Wed, 19/02/2014 – 9:59am.
Sometimes I really wonder at the focus of our Dunedin City Council. With all the major issues and challenges they are facing they have decided to focus on . . . . skateboarding. After two days of public hearings (attended by four groups I understand) the staff are recommending that the current by-law be strengthened to allow “recreational vehicles” to be confiscated and the owner fined $100 if caught riding their scooter or skateboard in the central city area, the Gardens or St Clair.
Read more

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Related comments at another thread…
https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/university-of-otago-starter-questions-for-harlene/#comment-45578
https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/university-of-otago-starter-questions-for-harlene/#comment-45585
https://dunedinstadium.wordpress.com/2014/02/15/university-of-otago-starter-questions-for-harlene/#comment-45586

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

*Image: schidt.com – skateboarder adds shape to Dunedin streets
re-imaged by whatifdunedin

Not just in America !!!

Link from Martin Legge.

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### marketoracle.co.uk Oct 28, 2013 – 09:37 AM GMT
Politics / Social Issues
America’s Culture of Ignorance
By James Quinn

“Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.” –Thomas Edison

The kabuki theatre that passes for governance in Washington D.C. reveals the profound level of ignorance shrouding this Empire of Debt in its prolonged death throes. Ignorance of facts; ignorance of math; ignorance of history; ignorance of reality; and ignorance of how ignorant we’ve become as a nation, have set us up for an epic fall. It’s almost as if we relish wallowing in our ignorance like a fat lazy sow in a mud hole. The lords of the manor are able to retain their power, control and huge ill-gotten riches because the government educated serfs are too ignorant to recognize the self-evident contradictions in the propaganda they are inundated with by state controlled media on a daily basis.

“Any formal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession – their ignorance.” –Hendrik Willem van Loon

The levels of ignorance are multi-dimensional and diverse, crossing all educational, income, and professional ranks. The stench of ignorance has settled like Chinese toxic smog over our country, as various constituents have chosen comforting ignorance over disconcerting knowledge. The highly educated members, who constitute the ruling class in this country, purposefully ignore facts and truth because the retention and enhancement of their wealth and power are dependent upon them not understanding what they clearly have the knowledge to understand. The underclass wallow in their ignorance as their life choices, absence of concern for marriage or parenting, lack of interest in educating themselves, and hiding behind the cross of victimhood and blaming others for their own failings. Everyone is born ignorant and the path to awareness and knowledge is found in reading books. Rich and poor alike are free to read and educate themselves. The government, union teachers, and a village are not necessary to attain knowledge. It requires hard work and clinging to your willful ignorance to remain stupid.

The youth of the country consume themselves in techno-narcissistic triviality, barely looking up from their iGadgets long enough to make eye contact with other human beings. The toxic combination of government delivered public education, dumbed down socially engineered curriculum, taught by uninspired intellectually average union controlled teachers, to distracted, unmotivated, latchkey kids, has produced a generation of young people ignorant about history, basic mathematical concepts, and the ability or interest to read and write. They have been taught to feel rather than think critically. They have been programmed to believe rather than question and explore. Slogans and memes have replaced knowledge and understanding. They have been lured into inescapable student loan debt serfdom by the very same government that is handing them a $200 trillion entitlement bill and an economy built upon low paying service jobs that don’t require a college education, because the most highly educated members of society realized that outsourcing the higher paying production jobs to slave labour factories in Asia was great for the bottom line, their stock options and bonus pools.

Instead of being outraged and lashing out against this injustice, the medicated, daycare reared youth passively lose themselves in the inconsequentiality and shallowness of social media, reality TV, and the internet, while living in their parents’ basement. They have chosen the ignorance inflicted upon their brains by thousands of hours spent twittering, texting, facebooking, seeking out adorable cat videos on the internet, viewing racist rap singer imbeciles rent out sports stadiums to propose to vacuous big breasted sluts on reality cable TV shows, and sitting zombie-like for days with a controller in hand blowing up cities, killing whores, and murdering policemen using their new PS4 on their 65 inch HDTV, rather than gaining a true understanding of the world by reading Steinbeck, Huxley, and Orwell. Technology has reduced our ability to think and increased our ignorance.

“During my eighty-seven years, I have witnessed a whole succession of technological revolutions. But none of them has done away with the need for character in the individual or the ability to think.” –Bernard M. Baruch

The youth have one thing going for them. They are still young and can awaken from their self-imposed stupor of ignorance. There are over 80 million millenials between the ages of 8 and 30 years old who need to start questioning the paradigm they are inheriting and critically examining the mendacious actions of their elders. The future of the country is in their hands, so I hope they put down those iGadgets and open their eyes before it is too late. We need many more patriots like Edward Snowden and far fewer twerking sluts like Miley Cyrus if we are to overcome the smog of apathy and ignorance blanketing our once sentient nation.

The ignorance of youth can be chalked up to inexperience, lack of wisdom, and immaturity. There is no excuse for the epic level of ignorance displayed by older generations over the last thirty years. Boomers and Generation X have charted the course of this ship of state for decades. Ship of fools is a more fitting description, as they have stimulated the entitlement mentality that has overwhelmed the fiscal resources of the country. Our welfare/warfare empire, built upon a Himalayan mountain of debt, enabled by a central bank owned by Wall Street, and perpetuated by swarms of corrupt bought off spineless politicians, is the ultimate testament to the seemingly limitless level of ignorance engulfing our civilization. The entitlement mindset permeates our culture from the richest to the poorest. Mega-corporations use their undue influence (bribes disguised as campaign contributions) to elect pliable candidates to office, hire lobbyists to write the laws and tax regulations governing their industries, and collude with the bankers and other titans of industry to harvest maximum profits from the increasingly barren fields of a formerly thriving land of milk and honey. By unleashing a torrent of unbridled greed, ransacking the countryside, and burning down the villages, the ruling class has planted the seeds of their own destruction.
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● James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. James has held financial positions with a retailer, homebuilder and university in his 22-year career. Those positions included treasurer, controller, and head of strategic planning. He is married with three boys and is writing these articles because he cares about their future. He earned a BS in accounting from Drexel University and an MBA from Villanova University. He is a certified public accountant and a certified cash manager.

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

University of Otago: NEGATIVE PRESS: Weekly disorder in Dunedin campus area

● Unacceptable student and non-student behaviour ● Vice-chancellor Harlene Hayne’s bid to bring students into line fails ● Dunedin’s multi-agency approach to campus area unrest not working

[Archives: newzeeland.wordpress.com]

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### ODT Online Mon, 25 Mar 2013
Students blame authorities
By Rosie Manins and Eileen Goodwin
Drunken disorder in the student quarter is being exacerbated by police and council intervention, university students and Castle St residents say, citing a Saturday night incident as a classic example. At least one private Castle St party was shut down by a Dunedin City Council noise control officer about 10pm, forcing people out of the flat, on to the street.

$$$ ● About 300 people had gathered on the street by 11pm, when four Dunedin firefighters arrived in an appliance to extinguish two couch fires.
$$$ ● The size of the crowd prompted them to call for a back-up appliance and crew from Roslyn, as well as for police attendance.
$$$ ● At the same time, four Willowbank firefighters in an appliance were called to a Dundas St mattress fire.
$$$ ● They were finished in time to respond as back-up in Castle St, so the Roslyn crew was stood down, then immediately called out to back up a St Kilda crew, attending a fire in Harrow St.
$$$ ● In total, seven furniture fires were extinguished in the student area on Saturday night.
$$$ ● More than a dozen police officers, including a dog handler and two paddy wagon crews, arrived in Castle St to disperse the crowd about midnight.

Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull said if people’s behaviour on private property was excessive and had to be curtailed, it made no sense for them to assume such behaviour in public was acceptable.
Read full article

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[Archives: newzeeland.wordpress.com]

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What do we think of OUSA…
Close down the Hyde St party never to return?

### ODT Online Sun, 24 Mar 2013
Moves to increase safety at Hyde St keg party
By Vaughan Elder
The Otago University Students’ Association has settled on a range of measures to make this year’s Hyde St keg party safer, including a ”one-way” policy from as early as 2pm. An estimated 5000 people attended last year’s party, which was marred by 15 arrests, the collapse of a roof overloaded with partygoers and 80 people requiring treatment by St John. The OUSA has been looking at ways to make this year’s April 13 party safer. OUSA president Francisco Hernandez said apart from limiting numbers, it had settled on a range of measures, including a ”one-way door” policy, with non-resident party-goers who leave the street barred from returning. It was also looking at making it a 10am to 5pm party, he said.
Read more

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr

The little horrors

Tweet (2 hours ago):

@whatifdunedin RNZ Checkpoint: Two thirds of people not enrolled to vote are aged 18 to 29 bit.ly/tY0QF8 (MP3)

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If you can, drag a few of those you know kicking and screaming to enrol to vote.

If they think they’re voting only for themselves and there’s nobody who can represent them worth voting for, you’ve worked out where New Zealand’s gone wrong and where it’s sadly headed.

Related Post:
28.10.11 Elections New Zealand: Enrol to Vote

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Posted by Elizabeth Kerr