Gerry Eckhoff: In response to Anne Stevens - KC

Members of the public who have a long standing interest in civic affairs will be astonished and somewhat bewildered to be described as being exploited by the Treaty Principles Bill. Adding insult to this injury, Dunedin lawyer Anne Stevens (Kings Council) also described the public - in the same breath – as having their ignorance and prejudice exploited when it comes to matters pertaining to the Treaty of Waitangi. Really? Whatever Ms Stevens personal view of this bill is, her role as a KC is surely compromised by her pre-emptive strike against the Bill and her use of a totally emotive and inaccurate descriptive term of the Bill as “evil.”

Heather du Plessis Allan: We need more cops on the beat

Man alive. There is a family in Dunedin doing it tough today. I mean, these guys sent their 16-year-old boy to school yesterday and he didn't come home. He was stabbed at a notoriously dangerous bus stop by a 13-year-old. What the hell, by the way, as a 13-year-old doing with a knife? 

Now, that stabbing at the bus stop will have sent chills through parents up and down this country. Because the thing is: that is not just a Dunedin problem, it’s an every part of the country problem. And we have for a few years now been warning that kids are beating each other up at bus stops at places like Rotorua, Tauranga, New Lynn, Pukekohe, Albany, Dunedin....And now the worst thing that could possibly happen has happened.

Heather du Plessis-Allan: Mice and rats aren't Countdown's problem

It is amazing, isn't it?

How the story of one rat in a Dunedin supermarket has just blown up for Countdown. First, it was a photo of a couple of rats in the supermarket in Dunedin.

Then there were more rats caught, then the supermarket closed for two days, then it closed for another day and now it's closed indefinitely- until they finish catching the rats. At last count, it was 19 just since Friday.

Frank Newman: Stadiums and pet projects

The Otago City Council has during this last week faced up to something that has been blindingly obvious to most ratepayers for many years – Council’s fancy $230 million covered stadium will forever be a black hole that eats ratepayer money.

In a report to the Dunedin City Council the Council’s CEO said the operating deficits of the last two years were going to get worse. No international rugby tests are expected to be held at the Forsyth Bar Stadium in the coming year and major events are not returning after previous shows failed to attract worthwhile crowds. Quite simply, there are not enough people in Dunedin to sustain the level of activity the stadium requires to come close to being viable.

Karl du Fresne: Dunedin - finger-wagging capital of the world

What on earth has happened to Dunedin? I’ve always thought of it as a city of hard-working, practical, no-nonsense people, reflecting its Scottish Presbyterian heritage. It was the home of Sir James Fletcher, founder of a construction empire, Henry Ely Shacklock, who made the country’s first electric ranges, and Bendix Hallenstein, whose name lives on in the menswear chain he established.

I wonder what such men would make of Dunedin today. Once a southern bastion of industry and commerce, it’s now chiefly known for the torrent of shrill, moralistic scare-mongering emanating from Otago University. It seems hardly a week passes without someone from Otago University, or one of its satellites in Christchurch and Wellington, warning us that our drinking and eating habits are leading us to moral and physical ruin.