The day Paul Nieman arrived to provide hunger striker Sue Boyd had to step down for medicalreasons. He found himself taking her place and spent 10 days in the chair before returning tofamily in Ashburton.

His perspective comes straight from the high-emitting, blue voting, conservative core, wheredenial and skepticism are common.

I spent the evenings with him up at Viard house, and it was great to get some insightsfrom outside our urban point of view.

In the end, I concluded that even if there is more acceptance of science here in the city,there is still precious little action from the person in the street, so maybe it amounts to thesame thing.