Matthew Henry John Bartlett

[from Treehugger]

The last Viridian note – tidy up your self space [via BB]
Interestin discussion on Obama on religion on facebook

We live in an apartment and don’t have our own back yard. We have been putting a lot of organic waste into the ($1.85 each) council rubbish bags. Peelings, coffee grounds, teabags, old flowers, that sort of thing. That’s been grating on me, so now I’ve got a bucket and arranged to empty it every few days into the compost bin of a friend who lives down the road. It took a while to find a suitable bucket. Neither Mitre 10 nor The Warehouse sold plastic buckets with tight-fitting lids. I ended up getting one that used to have yoghurt in it from a cafe that another friend works at. They usually throw them out and gave it to me for free.

From the National & Act confidence and supply agreement:

National agrees to a review by a special select committee of Parliament of the current Emissions Trading Scheme legislation and any amendments or alternatives to it, including carbon taxes, in the light of current economic circumstances and steps now being undertaken by similar nations.

National further agrees to pass forthwith an amendment to the ETS legislation delaying its implementation, repealing the thermal generation ban and making any other necessary interim adjustments until the select committee review is completed.

[via NRT]

Tom Beard’s Google Map of left/right voting patterns in the Wellington

Free wifi for all of Wellington would be great.

Obama! Obama! said:

There is no better potential driver that pervades all aspects of our economy than a new energy economy. I was just reading an article in the New York Times by Michael Pollen about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it’s creating monocultures that are vulnerable to national security threats, are now vulnerable to sky-high food prices or crashes in food prices, huge swings in commodity prices, and are partly responsible for the explosion in our healthcare costs because they’re contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in healthcare costs. That’s just one sector of the economy. You think about the same thing is true on transportation. The same thing is true on how we construct our buildings. The same is true across the board.

[via TreeHugger]

I’ve got a Thompson ST536 ADSL modem and a D-Link DI-704P broadband router for sale on TM at the moment.

Perhaps unlike many of you who read this blog, I am feeling pretty sad about yesterday’s election results.  However, I believe that by standing aside immediately, Clark and Cullen have given their successors the maximum chance of leading an effective opposition for three years, and preparing successfully for 2011.

I guess this is just another example of the decisive, insightful leadership we needed a change from.

Last minute addition to my table from the Cycling Advocacy Network.

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This was Eliza’s idea

Source: Worldchanging

Said Russell Brown:

… I doubt that history will assess the Clark-Cullen Labour governments as dismissively as their critics do now. Labour’s real achievements – net government debt reduced from 20 billion to two billion before the current crisis; unemployment down to levels many people didn’t think possible; a huge drop in the number of welfare beneficiaries, especially per capita; real wage growth; GDP growth that outstripped the OECD for years; a historic turnaround of trends in poverty; the repair of a public sector that was in dire straits by the end of the 90s; a serious attempt to address our savings problem via KiwiSaver and the Superannuation Fund; and a degree of stability that we now all take for granted – outweigh any counterfactual.

In 20 years’ time, those achievements will be regarded as prodigious and defining of an era. The fact that Helen Clark signed a painting for charity, or that her car once went really fast with a police escort on an open road; or the absurd mythology constructed around the departure of an under-performing police commissioner; none of these will be thought of as anything important.

Two more, this time from Voice for Life, who care about abortion; and Value Your Vote, who care about prostitution, civil unions, marriage, abortion, euthanasia, definition of ‘family’, Easter trading, smacking, the drinking age, and the EFA.

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New column added, this time from Vote for the Environment. Issues important to them include climate change, water quality, ocean management and conservation. If you know of any other folks ranking parties, please send them in; I’d love to include them.

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