Unsure Dealing With A Dispute ?

Here are ten tips for complaining effectively:

1/ Know your rights – what are your rights in this situation? Find out before you go back 

2/ Complain to the person you first dealt with – this may resolve the problem without having to take it further 

3/ Don’t delay – act now before you forget the important stuff. Sometimes there’s a time limit for making a complaint 

4/ Be reasonable – when you’re asking for something to be put right make sure what you’re asking for is fair 

5/ Use evidence – take any evidence related to your complaint  eg. Receipts, letters 6/ Prepare – practice what you are going to say. Consider taking someone along to support you 

7/ Keep cool – keep calm and remember your manner ; this will get you further than if you don’t!  … Continue Reading

South Wairarapa Rebus Club – Meeting Review

At our July meeting we heard from Ben Masters of PaperHands in Martinborough. Ben is an artist and retail designer who finds creating wallpapers an exciting way to blend his talents and experience. His wife Helen, a winemaker at Ata Rangi, enjoys the opportunity to add her own design ideas and often comes up with new concepts. Ben’s designs can be seen in the foyer to the refurbished Martinborough Town Hall and at Peppers Parehua Hotel in Martinborough, the site of the Club’s Christmas lunch this coming November. 

Ben and Helen began looking for interesting wallpaper for their own house in 2008 and were surprised to find that there was no one in New Zealand then making handcrafted papers. But from their background in art and interior design they were aware that NZ does have a history of people passionate about both making and using them. After a period of research and trial and error they developed their screen printing setup: two 10 m long tables each fitted with a simple rigid device to ensure reproducible registration or placement of the screens as they are moved to and used, sometimes repeatedly, at each location. 

From the start they have worked with their own range of hand drawn designs based on NZ flora and fauna, aiming to create designs that are bold, simple and distinctive. They use premium water-based inks, sourced internationally and made to the highest environmental standards. The paper base is 100% natural wood fibres and is bought in in rolls. The designs, although often very natural – flax, tuis on kowhai – are not necessarily printed in natural colours, giving rise to distinctly different wallpapers from the same patterns. Because they print only to order customers can order their own colour choices from existing patterns. … Continue Reading

Library book club

As usual this club manages to encompass a wide selection of books (and not only books) and even our 2 year old member introduces us to her books.

Virginia Bailey’s The Fourth Shore  so named for a sliver of land that Mussolini promised to recover for Italy was found to be an entertaining read. The leading character Liliana Cattaneo on arriving from Rome discovered not a Mediterranean idyll but a Fascist hotbed taking over Tripoli and this young girl becomes involved in a dark liaison with sinister implications.

A  Conversation with my Country by Alan Duff highlights this authors ability to hold the hard conversations about our nation.

It seems usual now to have a book on woman’s affairs The Art of Feminism had our member finding the early history interesting but thought the book was boring when it came to the later years. And we also had another entitled Invisible Women and this showed how practically all data used is of an average male, hence seat belts, boots, cars, medicine etc most products and services are designed to fit the male body. We women know this! My clothesline! … Continue Reading

Fire Brigade report

Chief Fire Officer Bill Butzbach passing the reins onto new Chief, Jake Hawkins.

The Brigade held its 112th Annual General Meeting last week with Chief Fire Officer  Bill Butzbach presenting his final report prior to stepping down as CFO and passing the reins onto our new Chief, Jake Hawkins, Bill acknowledged the huge commitment Jake has made to attend numerous courses over the past 18 months to enable him to take over. A formal presentation was made of the Rank of CFO to Jake by Bill.

The CFO Report included the following call statistics for the Brigade in the financial year (1 July- 30 June) and made up of 32 Fire related calls, 24 Medical and Rescue calls, 14 calls that included Hazardous , public assistance, false alarms and assisting other brigades, we note out medical calls are down, hopefully this is a reflection of a healthy community. Remember we are here to help for more than fires.

Another highly anticipated Award at our AGM is the Charlie Johns Shield for most attendances, with this years reciepient being Firefighter Emily Abbot, well done Emily.

Many in the community would have heard our siren go off several times for a structure fire last week, this call came in just as our volunteers were returning from their day jobs and the siren was repeated to get maximum numbers for what became a 2nd alarm fire. We were assisted by both Featherston and Masterton brigades along with support from the Regional Breathing Apparatus unit from the Hutt Valley. 

The quick actions of the brigade whilst unfortunately not being able to save the commercial building prevented the fire from spreading to adjoining houses.  We would like to thank those bystanders from the community who offered their assistance to the first arriving fire crews, and  if this motivated or inspired you then come on down and see us to talk about how you can contribute to this town’s vital community  service.