Wandering stock notices – a new policy for the grapevine.

Often people send us notices of wandering stock on roads – I know these notices are often sent with the best intentions… but:

I’m always concerned about posting these types of notices out to the grapevine; if someone has subsequently come across this mob, and if you haven’t stopped and acted to try to secure the stock, or reported it in a manner designed to see the stock secured and dealt with – then you *may* become liable for any subsequent damage through your lack of further (appropriate) activity. – Effectively you have known about a present risk on the road to other drivers, and perhaps if you have done too little about it, you may well now be jointly culpable, along with the stock owner for any subsequent damage.

I have called NZTA to ask for clarification on the obligations which drivers face if they discover wandering stock on a road; their advice was hazy at best. – The only legal obligation which they could state was that of the owners of the stock to prevent them from getting onto the road in the first place. – There is apparently no legal obligation for anyone to take action to report this through official channels. – I was personally quite surprised by this.

So, instead of using legal references to encourage people to act responsibly towards other road users, we have to use moral grounds: If you’re in a position where you can help to make other road users safer; then I encourage you to do so. I’ve been living in the area for 15 years now and have made a point of setting myself some personal rules in terms of my own behaviour when it comes to discovering stock on roads – I will ALWAYS deal with the problem. I’ve had three near misses with stock on roads, mostly at night; and I’ve had one incident where I wasn’t able to avoid hitting a farm dog on SH16. I’ve seen a ute smash into bobby calves at 100kph on SH1 and total the vehicle, killing two calves in the process. I hate to think what might happen on some of our rural roads, with steep sides and drop-offs, if someone were to swerve to avoid something which shouldn’t be there.

Every time we come across animals which shouldn’t be on the road, please-please-please, get involved directly; stop, get help, move the animals off the road into a nearby paddock. Then if you can, make every effort to find the legal owners and tell them where their stock is. – If you feel so inclined, call stock control to ensure that the matter is handled officially and that all of the relevant precautions are adequately taken to prevent it from recurring.

From the Auckland Council Website:
(http://www.aucklandcouncil.govt.nz/en/licencesregulations/dogsandanimals/otheranimals/pages/reportingproblems.aspx#wandering)

Wandering animals or stock

If you see cows, bulls or other livestock wandering, please report it as follows.

State highways

Contact the New Zealand Transport Agency. – Motorists are asked to report any wandering stock by phoning 0800 4 HIGHWAYS

    Auckland motorways
Contact Auckland Motorway Alliance, phone 09 520 0200 or email [email protected].

    All other areas
For all other areas, please call us on 0800 462 685. We are here to help 24 hours a day seven days a week.

——–

The grapevine is not an appropriate place to report wandering stock; it may be convenient to you, but in no way does it guarantee either an appropriate response time or that you’ll manage to get any meaningful notice out to those who might be driving along that stretch of road, nor does it address the issue appropriately with the owner of that stock. – Just sending us a notice is a half-hearted effort to do the right thing.

I’m setting a new Grapevine policy today; I’m only going to forward notices out about wandering stock, if you have demonstrated within the notice that you have personally taken all reasonable steps to deal with the issue yourself – in conjunction with asking us to let others know about it.

If you just drive by, then send us an email then I’m sorry, but that’s simply not enough and it’s not responsible enough behaviour; it does next to nothing to help others be safe on the roads. It’s lazy and and we’re not interested in encouraging that type of behaviour any more.

We’re no longer willing to send those kinds of notices out; it’s often too late by the time we get to those notices for them to be meaningful anyway.

Regards, Chris.

Winter Pre Loved Children’s Market at the Orewa Community Center – Saturday 11 June

Good Afternoon,

We are holding the Winter Pre Loved Children’s Market at the Orewa Community Center on Saturday 11 June – 9am – 12 noon.

It’s a great opportunity for mums and dads to recycle all the things their children have out grown and a good chance to purchase quality 2nd hand books, clothes and toys, nursery furniture at great prices. We have lots of families from Rodney, The Coast and North Shore attend as both buyers and sellers, it’s a fun morning out for all the family.

Good as New Pre Loved Kids Winter Market.
Saturday 11 June
Orewa Community Center
9am – 12 noon.
40+ stalls selling quality 2nd hand kids Clothes, Toys, Furniture and Accessories
Inquiries 0274 707 151

Our Facebook page is Good as New Pre Loved Kids Market

Wanted: Horse grazing (with facilities), Local builder

1. Does anyone have any grazing with horse facilities available in the area of lease / rent for June, July and poss August.
New to the area but our building of facilities has been pushed back so need facilities and grazing for horses for short term.
Contact Vanessa [email protected]

2. Is there a local builder available we have a job to discuss if available.
Job is conversion from garage to unit.
Contact Vanessa [email protected]

Caution – email scams / Weather warning.

PreScript: while we’re on the subject of staying safe: – there’s a weather warning out again for tonight, and it’s often during rubbish weather that the ratbags come out and cause problems, so be vigilant and aware tonight, make sure you’ve locked your sheds and out-houses up.


Hi, there are a number of email scams going round right now. Notably people overseas have managed to access a number of people’s XTRA / Yahoo accounts, and are sending mail to people contained within the contact lists within their Webmail.

Once they have brute-forced their way into your account and obtained your contact list, they create a generic type of email which they send out individually to each member of the Contact List, something generic like:

Hello,
Can I ask you to do me a favour?
Tom

When you reply to the email it gets sent off to a different email address, one which the scammers have setup deliberately to catch the responses of people who might be concerned for their friend who appears to be asking for help.

… Do not fall for this, instead of replying by email pick up the phone and check if your friend sent the message, and if they need help. – Chances are they they will have no idea initially that someone is abusing their email address and contact list.

The next steps of this scam are for the person overseas to claim that they are currently on holiday and need some money for something, they’ll then attempt to get some funds from you or some credit card details etc; something which you might give, if you honestly believed that it was your friend in need… – DO NOT DO THIS. 🙂


What can you do if this has happened to your account?

  • Make sure your virus software is up to date (use a paid solution, don’t be cheap and insist on using free software, you often get what you pay for!).
  • Change your email password – often you’ll need to use your webmail interface from your ISP to do this. – Call them for help to learn how to do this if needed. – Make it a complex and hard to guess password, DO NOT use common or dictionary words. If you have zero imagination and cannot think of anything then use a simple password generation service like http://www.dinopass.com/ to make something up for you.
  • Use dedicated, one off passwords for services like this which can fall under regular attack, if you use common passwords over multiple services, then if one of them gets brute forced, the chances are that your Facebook account, your Amazon account, your eBay account and others which are commonly used, will get opened up and abused too!
  • If you’re using XTRA / Yahoo (which seems to be regularly targeted and cracked), then consider shifting to another service provider. – But importantly make sure your passwords are not easy to break!… There are computerised routines being run against accounts looking for easy ones to break into…
  • You’ll get a feel for how widespread the abuse of your account has been by the number of concerned phone calls you get from your friends. – For every one which takes the time to call you, it might be safe to assume there’s 10 more people on your contact list who also go the email, but who just dismissed it and ignored it… When you’re dealing with your friends and contacts calling you to let you know about this, be patient and apologetic, most likely the reason why they received this email in the first place if because you most likely used a simple to crack password…

Good luck, and stay safe online. – Pass this message on to your children who operate their own email accounts too, you need to help them to understand that they too need to keep their own accounts safe – Make sure that they don’t reply to emails like this, they may well get drawn into email conversations with nasty people overseas!..

Chris – Grapevine Admin.