Welcome To Another Issue Of "The Buzz" - News From WASP

Would All Of You Who Have Phone Tree Lists Please Let Your People Know The Following:

Public Meeting: Tuesday 7 July, 7 pm, Kelston Community Centre. Local MPs from the main political parties will discuss the Aerial Spraying. Come along ready to show them that you're as "mad as hell and you're not going to take it anymore!!!" This is your chance to tell them what you think of the aerial spraying. I need helpers to give out flyers as people come in the door, so if you can help, please meet me there at 6.45 pm.

Just in case you haven't read my previous emails or the local paper, I am standing in the election as an INDEPENDENT Candidate for TE ATATU - up against pro spray MP Chris Carter. I have attached a flyer that you can put up in your local dairy, library or wherever. I have attached another one you can photocopy and cut in half and distribute to people. I am getting flyers printed next week and will phone you all to see if I can drop some off for you to pop into letterboxes in your street.

GROUND SPRAYING OF BTK Everyone needs to be aware that ground spraying of Btk and Decis is taking place all around without notification. My neighbour just happened to see them using high pressure hoses spraying 20ft up in a cherry picker in high winds at the bottom of my street. The spray was blowing everywhere. The person doing the spraying had full face mask on but not those on the ground. I have had bad sinus ever since. You may have noticed on TV3 the other night they showed them spraying people's fences and gardens with high pressure hoses. You can phone the contractor in charge of the spraying on 025 964 885 - Chris Scott (Vigil) or 025 923 761 or try 368 1460 first thing in the morning. I am asking everyone to phone the MAF Hotline and/or Aer Aqua and say you want to be notified whenever they ground spray in your suburb, so you can take steps to protect yourself. The public notices column in the local paper lists a great number of reserves where they are ground spraying with Btk and Decis. Decis is even worse than Btk. Chris Scott told me, when I questioned him about spraying in high winds, that in east Auckland when they ground sprayed there they only ever sprayed in winds up to 4 kms per hour. He told me his wind gauge was broken and that he hadn't been told that they had to notify people. He was spraying an outbreak in Swanson at the time and he said he could see the wind blowing the tree tops around. We need to make as much fuss about the ground spraying as we did about the aerial spraying as in many ways this is much worse as we don't know where it is taking place. They are spraying wherever they have finds. They spray 4 times at one week intervals, so I was told. Note that in Canada ground spraying was banned by an Environment Court because of health effects. If you still have our WASP leaflet you can read the details there.

Spraying in Lynnmall Carpark Because so many of you phoned the Management of Lynnmall and said you wouldn't shop there if they sprayed there they are now saying that no spraying will take place, only removal of foliage. Apparently they found a couple of caterpillars on some rose bushes along the new main driveway into the Lynnmall carpark. The manager was most annoyed because the first he heard about it was in the Herald which was ten days after the find. MAF never bothered to contact him. MAF wanted to remove all the rose bushes within 50 metres which didn't go down well either.

Picket outside the new PriceWaterhouseCoopers building, downtown Auckland the other week. Unfortunately only Terry and myself turned up. It was a lovely calm night on the waterfront. We stood on the spotlessly clean pavement with our placards alongside the red carpet, under the glare of the spotlights, posing for the cameraman from TVNZ, as all the glitterati turned up in their ballgowns, black ties and limos. The place was swarming with security and they tried to say they owned the pavement outside the building and we were to move to the other side of the road. Naturally we stood our ground. Some nice police ladies asked us how long we were planning to stay there and whether we planned to do anything violent ! I think we must've disappointed them as they went across the road and bundled some poor street person into a police car instead. Eventually Helen Clark and her entourage arrived. The moment came that we had all been waiting for. We got to do our chanting and wave our placards in her face. She carefully avoided eye contact with us and was surrounded and hustled off by various flunkies. At least we were there keeping up the pressure, and attracting lots of beeps from passing motorists.

Talking about keeping up the pressure: You may have noticed on TV3 the other night the chap from Forest and Bird in Wellington and the chap from the Forestry Industry Council saying MAF should blanket spray the whole of Auckland. The Forest & Bird chap was trying to say that the moth would devour all the beech forests in the South Island and was the equivalent of the opossum. The fact that it doesn't like the cold and the female doesn't even fly doesn't seem to have come into it. It's taken 3 years to get from Glen Eden to New Lynn so how long would it take to get to the South Island? I would like to suggest that any of you who are members of Forest and Bird immediately cancel your membership and tell everyone else you know to do likewise. You might like to phone Peter Maddison (818 6803 W), the chair of West Auckland F & B and tell him what you think of his organisation. They appear to be all Forest and no Bird. And don't appear to give a damn about people's health either. Ask him why West Auckland F&B have not done any proper monitoring of bird populations, especially the rare fernbirds on Pollen Island, to measure the effects of the aerial spraying.

More pressure: Any of you who haven't sent the email to all the politicians saying AERIAL SPRAYING EQUALS NO LABOUR VOTE - this is the time to do it, or even do it again. The govt has postponed making the decision re the future of the spray programme till next week, so we must keep the pressure up. F&B and the Forestry Industry have pressured the govt into delaying the decision so that gives us a chance to lobby further. We need to make it plain that this is an election issue. This is why I am standing - to give people a chance to register their protest by voting for me instead of Chris Carter.

They are obviously getting worried: Seen yesterday at West City "pressing the flesh", surrounded by media and being accosted by anti water privatisation campaigners - Helen Clark, Chris Carter, Dover Samuels and the rest of the local boys. They must be getting a bit concerned if they needed to bring "Mummy" (Helen Clark) along with them.

Btk Antidote Lincoln Road Pharmacy, 254 Lincoln Rd, report that hundreds of people have been coming in to buy their Moth Spray Homeopathic Remedy available from their homeopathic section.

If anyone knows of a good naturopath also, please let me know.

Legal Action We have an appointment to talk to a defence lawyer next week about taking legal action to stop the spraying. He seems very interested in taking the case so I will keep you posted.

Keep Buzzin' On Helen Wiseman-Dare WASP (West Aucklanders Against Aerial Spraying) Ph: 09 827 2516

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