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Thursday, November 3, 2011

Riding with the Feds


















Early tomorrow morning I'm boarding a bus that will fill with councillors and Feds - men and women stout and true. Perhaps we'll be matched one-to-one, clod-hopper to trougher :-)
Our driver will point the nose of the bus toward the Waituna lagoon and away we'll go, neck-veins swelling as we draw closer to the disputed zone. Paddocks of fluoro-green rye-grass will hove into view. Friesans with great bags of milk between their legs will barely stir as we chug by, peering through windows fogged by passenger emissions; (water vapour, CO2 and hot air).
The Feds intend to familiarize the ivory-tower inhabiting councillors with the reality and glory of farming upstream of the suffering lagoon, presumably to allay our unscientific, emotional concerns and straighten out our misunderstandings.
I'll arm myself with a camera, wear a disguise of gumboots, corduroy and oiled japara and roll my 'r's' like crazy. I'll be scribbling too - there's bound to be quotable quotes. Rose will be there, Fraser too, so I'll take a pencil sharpener.

4 comments:

Shane Pleasance said...

Sounds like you could write your report now, Mr G!

robertguyton said...

Evidence-based, Shane, that's me!

Dave Kennedy said...

preI heard from my meeting the other night that there were a few of you who needed to be sorted out. It is interesting that they had the same scientific presentation before our candidates meeting as Kevin and I got a week earlier. When Kevin and I saw the data we were horrified, especially after asking searching questions. The Feds thought the data was reassuring and provided no sense of urgency. I guess you take from science what you want but they obviously haven't got the message that science is conservative in its reading of data and I guess they add another layer of conservatism to that.

Good luck!

robertguyton said...

A good sortin', eh!
It gets better and better.
Cheers bsprout.