Latest fromWC - Opinion

Editorial: A legal construct linking different worlds
is Whanganui River's legal status just too baffling?

Nicola Patrick: Stand all about increasing party vote
Is a Green vote still a strange option?

Terry Sarten: I flow with the river rather than the corporates
How companies make you do their work in your time

Readers' letters
Readers debate extraterrestrials, prison staffing, flood prevention and the river's status

'Don't give teens the vote'
Is lowering the voting age to 16 really the answer to engaging teens in politics?

Readers' letters
Readers share their opinions on the Whanganui River's new legal status and more . . .

Abortion should stay a crime
Should the law protect the lives of unborn New Zealanders in their first nine months?

Your views: Readers' letters
Readers wax lyrical about dialysis, offshore mining, the smokefree funds fiasco and more.

NZ politics no joke, sadly
We'll miss John Key . . . but maybe not for the right reasons, writes columnist Jay Kuten.

Alien life: What are the odds?
As the number of known extra-solar planets grows, the question of alien life looms larger

Readers' letters
Flooding myths Your correspondent M. Norris, sitting comfortably above any flooding up on St John's Hill, perpetuates many of the

Bird dog goes rural
What do you do if you're a dog with lots of excess energy? Columnist Fred Frederikse tells the story of Pipi - hyperactive Fox Terrier cross and born bird dog.

Committee kicks-off with robust debate
In Whanganui the first meeting of a new sub-committee was a corker.

Your views: Readers' letters
Trump's sham shamrock The US President was at his best for St Patrick's Day. He even had a version of his "Make America Great" cap

A river by any other name
While the average person may struggle to get his or her head around the fact that the Whanganui River is now legally a person, such things are not without political prcedent, says Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper.

Conservation comment: Mystery of ocean heat sink
By Ian Sutherland IN AN interview on December 11 last year, Donald Trump's answer to a question about man-made global warming ("Nobody

Thunderstruck by the best week of news
So much to be gobsmacked over and so few words. It's a columnist's worst nightmare. Not just gobsmacked either, but outraged. Where

Editorial: Going round in circles in the kingdom of the cones
On the day that our front page reported Whanganui District Council needed to find an extra $20 million over the next 10 years to repair

Rachel Rose: Visitor a delight; personalised coffee a bonus
WOULD Alejandro (Alex) Lopez Musalem be the first person to arrive at Whanganui airport from the Gulf of Mexico? It took four flights

Terry Sarten: We have more in common than we have differences
IT IS time we ditched the words "racism" and "racist" from our language - they allow those who act in racially discriminatory ways

Sensing psychic bullshit
I didn't find the re-enactment of a supposed cold case murder, initially named a hit and run more than 20 years ago in Ngaruawahia

Readers' letters
Watery walkway Several years ago, when I lived in the Wanganui East suburb, I was a frequent user of the railway bridge walkway from

Tag team terror at polls
Bullfighting and fox hunting pale into insignificance next to the blood-letting cut-and-thrust of local body elections. They're sanguinary gladiatorial bouts, risky to the health of combatants and onlookers alike. Paul Brooks presents the case for a ban.

Editorial: Murray Ball kept it real
We loved Murray Ball's Footrot Flats. The humour was uniquely Kiwi but internationally understood.

Short generation in Scotland
Three years ago Scots voted to stay part of Britain in a "once-in-a-generation" referendum on independence. Now they're going to have another vote, even though the future looks distinctly unpromising for an independent Scotland, writes Gwynne Dyer.

What happened to us?
Once we enjoyed a very high quality of life by world standards. Now that has gone and, sadly, we're leading the race to the bottom in some aspects of our lives. So what happened to New Zealand? Columnist Frank Greenall examines the question.

Games a celebration of rural heritage
The aim of the rural games is to give back something of our legacy to the next generation.

Readers' letters
Sensible step While I totally agree with Steve Baron's sentiments (Letters, March 9) about people not wanting to leave their homes