Welcome mat all set for Mr Eaqub

Mark Dawson, Editor of Wanganui Chronicle

A warm welcome to Shamubeel Eaqub, principal economist at the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research and certainly one of the country's top brains when it comes to matters fiscal.

Mr Eaqub is visiting Wanganui on Friday (possibly for the first time) to take up an invitation from the Chronicle after his comments about "zombie towns" in provincial New Zealand.

The comments came in an interview following the publication of his book Growing Apart: Regional Prosperity In New Zealand which suggested that if Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch were the equivalent of France, Finland and Saudi Arabia (that is, rich and prosperous), then Wanganui was more like Greece (that is, going broke).

It's a dry and dusty book but it does make some worthwhile points. However, strangely enough, we here in the Athens of the lower North Island are not as despairing as Mr E thinks - in fact, a council survey this week found us to be generally happy.

Hopefully some of that happiness will rub off on the esteemed economist on his trip around the city, and I am sure mayor Annette Main will be eagerly pointing out the many positives to life here and dispelling the myth about the living dead.

Mr Eaqub's subsequent views on our economic future will be well worth noting.

On the Chronicle front page today, there's a clear message - hoax phone calls are not the least bit funny.

The man who put schoolchildren, teachers and parents into a panic - not to mention wasting valuable police time - with a phone call about a gunman stalking the ground of a Wanganui primary school is heading to prison.

It's a lesson to him - and to any others who might think of trying such a sick stunt.