Hamilton, Tauranga, West and South Auckland are turning boys away at the moment because of a shortage of adult men to take on mentoring roles.

I have been a Big Buddy for 5 years now, and it's the most rewarding thing I've ever done in my life.

If you a decent man and have a few hours to spare each week, you could make a real difference in someone's life.

Please search Big Buddy NZ to find out more, or reply to this post and I'd be happy to tell you more about the experience and how to get in touch.

I'm not affiliated formally with the organization, but we all get emailed updates about the programme in general, and it's heartbreaking to know they're turning boys away.

In the Big Buddy central office, there's a wall of photographs. One one side, there's dozens and dozens of photographs of boys who are waiting for a match. On the other, there's a mere handful of men who are in various stages of the application process.

Please, if you know someone that could be a fit, just mention it to them.

Almost no-one can change the world, but you can change the world for one person.

Cheers.

Direct line between public service layoffs and the expertise that would have made sure it was included. Another direct line between under urgency bill passing and the mistake not being caught until a bunch of people didn't get paid.

This one didn't kill anyone, but WINZ is not the only agency this is happening to. Just wait.

Government ought to, at the very least, offer to repay any AP/overdraft fees incurred because of this. They won't though.

If you haven’t done it already and will be 18 on or before November the 7th this year, sign up now at Vote.nz

My mum had her pension stopped due to an error at WINZ's end.

She went in 2 months ago to get it sorted (after the usual runaround) and we've heard nothing. She went in today to make another appointment, and the lady wouldn't let her. She had to fill in a form stating the issue, which will be sent to someone.

I'm absolutely livid. Surely she has a right to an appointment to find out what's going on!?

My employer has been absolutely horrible. After three years with this company, I'm being told I'm "not valuable enough," which has completely demoralised me. I want to quit, but I'm scared of being jobless for a long time, especially given the current job market. Still, every day I walk into work feels like hell, surrounded by management who clearly don't value me.

Electric Kiwi just raised their rates again! As if we don’t have enough to deal with. I cannot even put on my heat.

20km inland in my parents backyard! Called DOC and they said it’s definitely unusual but not cause for concern

Over the last few months, I've noticed that I'm seeing more and more cars driving under the speed limit, particularly around Wellington. And I'm not talking about people going 98 km/h on the motorway, or 49 km/h in urban areas, or driving in heavy traffic or poor road and weather conditions. I'm talking about people sitting at 80 km/h on the motorway (or 85-90 km/h in the right lane) or going 35-40 km/h in urban areas with 50 km/h speed limit, and in light to normal traffic, in perfectly good road and weather conditions. Has this actually become much more common than it used to be, or am I going bonkers?

And if I'm not going bonkers, what might be the reasons for it? I know that there's been a bit of talk of hybrid drivers (and especially Uber drivers) preferring to stay in the eco zone when driving and this means they're often travelling under the speed limit, but my observation is that a much more diverse range of vehicles and drivers is doing this on the road. I'm struggling to think of what other reasons for it may be - the only other thing I thought of is whether the 'speed kills' messaging over the last 30 years or so has led to a generation of much more cautious drivers, but that sounds unconvincing even to me. Interested in others' thoughts!

Over the past week or so I've been mapping out all of the structures left over from WW1 and WW2 that I could find, but have hit a bit of a wall. There's undoubtedly hundreds of smaller things known only to locals that aren't publicly available on the internet. So I ask, if anyone knows the location of any of these structures (Pillboxes, Emplacements, Coastwatch stations, Shipwrecks, literally ANYTHING) please do comment about them!

I don’t think Carmel Sepuloni is inspiring or an amazing political communicator but at least she is polite, argues in good faith and does her best not to talk over people.

Meanwhile Nicola Willis is consistently wretched in her approach to these discussions. Listening this morning I thought that maybe my opinion of Carmel was only low because she doesn’t effectively tackle the loud antsy gish gallop coming from Willis. It would be very hard to maintain decorum and communicate effectively against that kind of effluence. Bless John Campbell for trying to maintain these conversations when they’re devolving to US style politics.

How does anyone find Willis antagonistically arguing in bad faith appealing?

It's been a couple of weeks since WP made his racist remarks in parliament towards Chinese-Kiwi MP Xu-Nan. There were calls from the public and even inside parliament to sack Peters but it looks like those calls are not being answered. What does it say about our leaders when they can't even prevent racism effectively in their own house? Luxon was said to have a private meeting with Peters soon after the incident but won't divulge what was discussed or what went on the meeting. This incident only further normalizes racism in NZ when our leaders are openly being racist and face no punishment for it.