This is a submission that I made to the Wellington City Council supporting lowering the vehicle speeds in the Inner city.
You can make a submission too. The deadline for feedback is 5pm on Friday 16 July. Go to http://wellington.govt.nz/haveyoursay/publicinput/2010-06lowerspeed.html and fill out the online submission form. State that you support the proposed changes. And at the end you can have a little rant about why you think it is important. Here’s my rant:
I love cycling. I am not a ‘cyclist’, I am just an everyday New Zealander who recognizes that it is cheaper, healthier and better for the environment. Not to mention thrilling in a Wellington gale!
This year, the first of the baby boomers are eligible to hang up their hats and step into retirement. So what are they planning to do with their time? Can one have a purposeful retirement?
My hope is that they will develop a retirement ‘portfolio’ (like I have a work portfolio) that consists of leisure, leadership and legacy. Because let’s face it, at 65 people are potent. They have experience, are highly qualified, generally well resourced and as of soon, they have a lot of time on their hands. After 6 months of playing golf and gardening, they might start asking “is there more to retirement than this?”. Some will serve on boards, and although I think that governance is an important place to have their experience and expertise, I also hope that there will be more active transference of knowledge being brokered.
Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
This video gets to the very heart of what being a purposeful young professional is all about. We need to transform our business to harness the potential of our employees sense of purpose. Otherwise, we are not fully ‘employing’ a person, and we miss out on all the potential gains of what that person can bring. This is what was at the heart of Alto’s Good Fridays.
In the Page Blackie Gallery last night, Intersect - a national network of young leaders in sustainability - awarded 22 year old Amelia Hitchcock for her artwork “New Zealand Pure”. The artwork is a ‘dunger’ of a fridge - stacked with old fashioned baby bottles filled with water collected from lowland rivers around the artist’s home town , Wanganui.
“..In a nation that proclaims to the world to be ‘clean and green,’ 90% of our lowland rivers are so polluted, you cannot gather food or swim in them” says Amelia.
Today’s U-turn by choc industry giant coupled with the latest youtube viral video has given me the last smidgeon of evidence that I need to back my personal belief that Human Beings Can Do Anything They Put Their Minds To.
In less than a fortnight, tens of thousands of people outraged over the injustice of the milk solids being replaced by palm oil have exerted enough influence to see a tail between legs apology from Cadbury.
Isn’t it weird that it takes us being incensed about something as seemingly trivial as recipe changes to a luxury food item to discover the profound environmental impacts of our food choices, but also to begin to understand the potential power and influence of our collective consumer voice and preference?
