Retired Feilding man stands for regional council and health board

Leslie Pillow is pictured with son Ben and granddaughter Ari while on a train ride at Taupō. Photo / Supplied

Now retired and having moved to Feilding, Leslie Pillow is standing for both Horizons Regional Council and MidCentral District Health Board.

If he gets voted on to both he imagines it will be a full-time job.

Pillow is a keen angler and values conservation and clean and healthy rivers.

He has worked as a journalist for the Turangi Chronicle, Havelock Village Press and Evening Post, and edited and published the Flyfisher and Outdoor Adventures magazines. He's also been a salesman and a bumblebee catcher.

As a journalist he's attended many meetings and is familiar with the way they work - and he thinks he will ask the right questions.

At Horizons he'd be interested in improving tourism, perhaps by having walkers and jetboats, or even hobbits, orcs and elves, in the Manawatū Gorge.

Matamata never had tourists until the Hobbiton movie set was put there, he said.

He's also keen to investigate transport, especially how vehicles can move faster and more safely.

He's busy learning about nitrates in groundwater, climate change and electric vehicles, ready to "bring knowledge to the table", and says he hasn't organised an election campaign yet.