tribunal results

Earlier, I mentioned that our last landlady didn't return our deposit/bond because she said we didn't clean the house to her liking. Sadly, she stuck to her guns and refused to return it, so we had no choice but to take her to Tenancy Tribunal to try to get it back. When that happened, we were both quite annoyed and Hubby decided that some things that we were going to let slide were going to be brought up.

We had a two hour session at the end of June and got another three hours last week.

Basically, we won almost all of our items and she didn't win any!

The bottom line is that we got our bond back plus we were paid $1050.00 in punitive fines from the landlady! 

I would have been happy with just our $400 bond/deposit back so this was a very nice surprise.

Huh?

I saw this sign a while back when I was at the pharmacy in Stratford. As I pondered how one would decide if they liked the scent of these items without using the testers (which I thought were for testing!), an employee stopped by at the display, took a bottle off the shelf, put some lotion in her hand, returned the bottle to the shelf and kept walking as she rubbed it into her hands.

In my book, that's stealing but I guess that's an old-fashioned notion.

 

St Joseph's Catholic Church

 This historic church is in Jerusalem, NZ, 66 km up the Whanganui River Road.

It is the second church on the site after a fire in 1888. There has been a continuous presence of the Sisters of Compassion since 1883.

You can click here for more history of the church.

the impossible dreams

 Below is a portion of an article in today's paper. 

Road Safety advocates said the 'Road to Zero' programme isn't moving fast enough.

"We are seeing some progress in certain areas, like speed interventions, but we're not seeing the scale of what we'd like to see," Caroline Perry, Brake NZ director, told Newshub. 
The Government's Road to Zero campaign ultimately wants to see no deaths at all.
To get there, one of its targets is to have 1000km of median barriers added to our roads by 2030. If we're on track, in 2024, there should be 400km installed. 

I can appreciate their enthusiasm, but that seems a bit ambitious, like the goal of New Zealand being smoke free (less than 5% smokers) by 2025. 

Before I move to NZ (2006), I bought cigarettes for $3/pack. I got here to see gross photos on the packs that sold for $12 for a pack. Now they are about $40 for a pack and you won't even know they are being sold because they have to be kept out of sight.

So, I can see how reducing smoking can happen, but you can't make drivers drive better.