Brian Holden: We're still poles apart on progress

Laying the city's power cables underground hasn't been as prompt as originally thought. Photo / Supplied

When one spends most of their life in a city, one can easily become oblivious to what has been happening - or not been happening - around them.

When I see so many ancient power poles around Rotorua, I wonder how they can still remain standing - I mean, those same wooden monstrosities have been holding up power lines in Springfield since I was a kid. Some are so decrepit they've had to be braced by huge iron brackets and galvanized bolts, to prevent them splitting apart.

The poles have been giving the street a "developing country" look you could say. Clearly, the jolly things are begging to be pulled down and the cables put underground as they are in newer parts of the city. But such work doesn't come cheap and certainly cannot be done overnight. It depends though what you consider "overnight" to be in power company terms. In reality, one could assume that would be "Before Easter" or "Before Christmas at the latest".

Well actually it's much longer. I distinctly remember our district council (presumably on behalf of the power company) announcing around 20 years ago, to have all power poles down "within 10 years". So to date, that's stretching the deadline by nearly two times. Sigh. With other more urgent projects on the nation's job sheet, I guess we'll just have to be patient.

Old news now, but still very much alive for the Christchurch couple who were photographed engaging in an after-hours sexual encounter in their work office, directly across the road from the pub where their colleagues were having a couple of pints. Definitely a bad time and place for such activity, which has cost - and will continue to cost them dearly. The moral is - you make your own bed (desk in this case) then you have to be prepared to lie in it. Amazing is it not, how the moralists spring out of the woodwork to give their two bucks' worth. The Opinion column in the (Christchurch) Press had what must have been hundreds of blogs with about half actually condoning the actions of those who took the photos and then uploading them on the internet for the world to see. Clearly, those sorry souls are just as much part of this shameful affair as the couple themselves. Not one person in that pub considered ducking across the road and dashing up the stairs to inform the couple and say "Hey, trousers up, skirts and curtains down - the show's over".

Humans can certainly sink to the darkest depths of cruelty when it chooses, with many seeing such events as just a good laugh. No doubt about it, the frisky couple were well on the way to the cliff edge of marital suicide. Shameful though, that their snap-happy colleagues unwittingly took it upon themselves to make that a certainty.

As you read this I will be about to go under the scalpel. Not too scary - just a pesky cataract that needs to be removed. A cataract is a cloudy area in the lens inside the eye. Right now, all I can see out of the affected eye is a foggy blur, making simple tasks such as driving and reading very frustrating. Despite becoming a little hard to live with, there is no pain - just a constant feeling of having a marble in one's eye socket. Many studies indicate that cataracts are "more common among elderly people (and for what it's worth) further down the socioeconomic ladder". In the UK alone, approximately one third of people aged 65 or over has cataracts in one or both eyes. We're informed by the experts that it's an "age" thing. Roll on the weekend, when by then I'm reassured that I'll be as right as rain and able to see properly again.