West Aucklanders, fed up with alcohol purchasing restrictions, campaign for 'fairness'
In West Auckland, you can't buy beer or wine in supermarkets, and there are a limited number of liquor outlets and taverns because of restrictions put in place by two licensing trusts. But a local group is calling for an overhaul on the area's alcohol rules. A petition that aims to force a referendum on whether to maintain the current liquor monopoly or to introduce competition is gaining traction in the area. More than 22,000 people have signed it so far. The petition needs 28,000 and has just over two weeks to do so. Advocate and petition organiser Nick Smale says it's about relative fairness, with people in other cities or suburbs getting a better deal. "It's the relativity, not the absolute that's important," he told. "It's because it's two or three bucks cheaper down the road that's important. "If the price of wine, if a bottle of alcohol went up $3 everywhere I don't think we'd have any complaints ... It's the fact that in West Auckland [it] costs a little bit more and so all of the people in West Auckland are a little bit frustrated." Reasons for signing the petition have been "wide and varied", Mr Smale said. "I think we see what we get in other suburbs, other parts of Auckland, other parts of New Zealand and it's better. The pubs are better, there are more of them, there are nicer places to go out, different types of places to go out for a meal and a drink, and in West Auckland there is a real dearth of nice places to go out for a drink." Money from the trusts go into community projects, as does money from the Invercargill Licensing Trust, where alcohol is also not sold in the Southland city's supermarkets.
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Poll: Should drivers retake the theory test every 10 years?
Drivers get where they need to go, but sometimes it seems that we are all abiding by different road rules (for example, the varying ways drivers indicate around a roundabout).
Do you think drivers should be required to take a quick driving theory test every 10 years?
Vote in the poll and share any road rules that you've seen bent! 😱
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49.5% Yes
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48.6% No
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1.9% Other - I'll share below
Here's Thursday's thinker!
I am lighter than air, but a hundred people cannot lift me. What am I?
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Why make picking up reserved library books harder? What do you think? Challenge: Write the last stanza for the first poem attached below.
Once books are reserved in Auckland Libraries books, when they are available no longer go alphabetically by customer but instead go into a Holds pickup shelf number based presumably somehow on when each book needs to be picked up by.
I had two books reserved that arrived on two different days in the Blockhouse Bay Library and hence each book has a different shelf number. Hard to find unless you knew the shelf number in the notification email. Even if you knew the shelf number I found myself three books by the same author on the two shelf numbers.
More recently yesterday a book I reserved was on a different shelf number than was specified in my notification email (see image below).
Sadly it is clear from library staff that a numerical system for reserves is here to stay.
I suggest that so that all books for each person has the same shelf number, the shelf number becomes the last digit of a person's library card (0-9).
Within each shelf number a book is found under the day the reserve arrives in the library (01 to 31, hopefully the same date the email is sent).
Since a customer appears to have 10 days to pick up a book, ten days of the month would appear to be required at any time (for each digit 0-9).
Once there are 10 days used the next day's reserves could go back at the beginning of the shelf number after any remaining books not collected (hopefully none) are removed (along with the old day number and the new day number (01 to 31) inserted) after the last day available and future days' books remaining moved forward to make room.
Each day number (01-31) would appear once for each shelf number (0-9) before the first book on that day- perhaps cover an old withdrawn book with paper with each day number on the spine?
When a reserved book arrives in the library the last digit of the library card could be placed on a piece of paper in the book to be removed when it is put on the shelf, to be recycled the next day.
What do you think?
See the image below and page 3 below for a letter appearing in the Western Leader on 9 September:
www.neighbourly.co.nz...
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