The day Paul Nieman arrived to provide hunger striker Sue Boyd had to step down for medical
reasons. He found himself taking her place and spent 10 days in the chair before returning to
family in Ashburton.
His perspective comes straight from the high-emitting, blue voting, conservative core, where
denial and skepticism are common.
I spent the evenings with him up at Viard house, and it was great to get some insights
from outside our urban point of view.
In the end, I concluded that even if there is more acceptance of science here in the city,
there is still precious little action from the person in the street, so maybe it amounts to the
same thing.
Imagine My Relief 
‘Vulture capitalism’ and ‘predatory lending’ sum it up neatly. It’ll be interesting to see how far Labour are prepared to go to address these issues, now they can. Having grown up on a farm, I can only hope that more farmers, and particularly their lobby groups, are belatedly waking up to the fact that climate is changing rapidly, and will continue to do so for millennia. Farmers need to understand that, and act accordingly in terms of their future directions. As Paul noted, a lot of the old ways will no longer work. Unfortunately that arrogant National Party act of sacking ECAN and fostering rapid expansion of industrial dairy into inappropriate landscape will continue to impact the region for decades, if not longer. But there are suitable approaches to begin to address this, and as above, it’ll be incumbent on Labour to get on with it.
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Cheers Lyndon – Paul really gave us some perspective and it was sad to see him go. The hunger striking is over for now but we do have another talk recorded which I’m looking forward to releasing soon.
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