Latest news with #Dickie
The National
10-07-2025
- Business
- The National
BrewDog co-founder creates Scotland's first medical cannabis farm
Martin Dickie told the Press and Journal that he aims to grow his business, Waterside Pharmaceuticals, by investing £20 million over the next five years. With most of the UK's medical cannabis currently imported, Dickie explained that he sees huge potential for his new business, which is based near Newburgh, Aberdeenshire, and is a Scottish first. The businessman expects his first full yield at his high-tech indoor vertical farm to produce nine kg of medical cannabis with the company planning to increase further harvestest to 200kg a year. READ MORE: Council rejects Ewan McGregor's £2 million mansion renovation plans Dickie founded the Scottish drinks giant BrewDog in 2007 with James Watt and hopes to grow Waterside Pharmaceuticals like he did with his craft beer firm. The 42-year-old married father-of-three is the pharma company's chief executive and said he plans to expand the business, helping to create more jobs and reduce its environmental impact. Dickie told the P&J: 'Our aim is to become the UK market leader in medical cannabis. 'We have ambitious plans to expand the business, creating up to 100 new jobs in the local economy and investing around £20 million over the next five years. 'Our longer-term ambitions involve building a second facility co-located with a renewable energy source, minimising our environmental impact, creating jobs and diversifying the rural economy.' There are only a couple of smaller UK facilities growing medical cannabis, both in England, making Waterside a Scottish first, Dickie said. He added: 'The global market for medical cannabis is growing rapidly as its clinical applications become better researched and understood. 'In the UK medical cannabis can now be prescribed by specialist doctors, with an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 patients thought to be benefiting from cannabis-derived medicines. That figure is growing year-on-year, but supply depends largely on imported medicines. 'Waterside Pharmaceuticals is on a mission to provide safe, efficacious and cost-effective medicine that can help thousands of people.' Dickie said that he decided to pursue the ideal of creating his own pharma company after one of his acquaintances told him that they use medical cannabis and found it very helpful for their anxiety and mental health. 'We want to develop domestic production,' he added. 'I've spent a lot of time in America, where I had exposure to hemp and medicinal cannabis production in a controlled environment.' Crops are grown under 'optimum conditions' with everything from genetic selection to temperature and light controlled to a precise standard, the P&J reported. Plants are grown with 12 hours of bright artificial light, followed by 12 hours of darkness, to help stimulate growth. Morag Thomas, Waterside Pharmaceuticals' chief operating officer and former supply chain head at BrewDog, said that they are working with researchers at University of Aberdeen to help with the project. She said: 'Our unique approach allows us to control and replicate light, heat and irrigation, without any need for pesticides or fungicides, resulting in a premium quality product. 'We use sustainably sourced energy, and rainwater for irrigation and we are committed to minimising the environmental impact of our operations. 'We are working with researchers at University of Aberdeen and University of Lincoln on projects exploring the use of AI and automation to optimise production. 'We have worked with local and national stakeholders at every stage, liaising with the Home Office, MHRA, local authority, community representatives and Police Scotland, as well as the Aberdeenshire's business and economic development organisations.'
The National
30-06-2025
- General
- The National
Poverty levels in Scotland below UK for 20 years, graphs show
Accredited UK Government statistics show that across all age groups, Scotland has had lower levels of poverty than the UK as a whole since 2005. For child poverty, Scotland has seen levels drop in the last three years, from 25% in 2021 to 23% last year. In England and Wales, rates in 2024 were at 31%, the same as in 2021. For the UK as a whole, child poverty rates have flatlined at 30% since 2018. John Dickie, the director of the Child Poverty Action Group in Scotland, told The National that the poverty levels were directly impacted by interventions like the Scottish Child Payment. 'The biggest single factor is the level of social security available for families,' he said. The rates The National has used for the analysis are all relative poverty – having an income below 60% of the current median income for that year – after housing costs are excluded (AHC). READ MORE: Child poverty falling in Scotland but rising in rest of UK, study finds This, Dickie said, is the best measure to get an understanding of the amount of disposable income a family has available. He also said that historically higher levels of social housing in Scotland could help explain the lower levels of relative poverty north of the Border. In London, child poverty AHC has tracked above the UK average for 20 years (at 35% in 2024), largely due to the high cost of housing in the city. Further analysis of UK Government figures shows that children in families where a person has a disability are more likely to be living in poverty. And children in households with three or more children are much more likely to be in poverty than those with two or one. In 2024, an estimated 44% of children in a family with three or more kids were in relative poverty, compared to 21% of those in a single-child household. The two-child cap, imposed by the Tories and kept in place by Labour, prevents families from claiming benefits for third or subsequent children unless certain conditions are met, such as proving that the child was a product of rape. The cap is seen as a key driver of higher poverty levels among families with three or more children. Dickie said that child poverty levels were also about the 'long-term consequences' on people's lives. Better off children are more likely to do well in school, and more likely to have good health in the long-term, he said, warning that the UK would eventually 'pay the price' for having high levels of child poverty. READ MORE: 2 million families 'lifted out of poverty if UK followed Scotland' The Child Poverty Action Group Scotland director pointed to a report from his charity which estimated that the cost of child poverty on the economy was around £40 billion per year. 'This figure is comprised of costs to the economy due to the greater risk of unemployment and lower earnings potential of adults who grew up in poverty, and of the additional amount spent on public services to help address the damage done to children growing up in poverty,' the report said. For people of pension age, relative poverty levels AHC have also tracked lower than the UK average for two decades. The UK hit a 20-year low at 13% of pensioners in relative poverty in 2014. Scotland tracked at 12% from 2011 to 2016, before seeing levels slowly climb up to 15% from 2022-2024. This was below the UK as a whole, which was at 18%, 17%, and 16% respectively through those most recent years. And for individuals Scottish poverty rates have tracked below the UK as a whole since 2005, when they were both at 21%. Last year, the UK saw relative poverty levels at 21%, while Scotland's was at 20%. Like for people of pension age, this was an increase on the lows seen in the early 2010s.
Daily Mail
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Richard Wilkins celebrates 71st birthday in style with towering $150 chocolate cake adorned with strawberries
Channel Nine star Richard Wilkins celebrated his 71st birthday on Thursday. And his devoted colleagues at Today took to Instagram to share a touching tribute to the media veteran, who has been with a brekkie show for over three decades. Today posted a photo of Richard in a smart black suit posing alongside a lavish cake topped with strawberries, which included a message in chocolate icing, 'Happy Birthday Legend'. The delicious looking dessert priced at $150 also included a decoration styled as an '80s TV set complete with V-shaped antennae. And inserted into the television 'screen' was a throwback image of Richard sporting his trademark 'wave' haircut. From A-list scandals and red carpet mishaps to exclusive pictures and viral moments, subscribe to the DailyMail's new showbiz newsletter to stay in the loop. The breakfast team from Nine also included a caption in the post, 'Happy birthday to the heart and soul of TODAY entertainment, our beloved Dickie! 'We hope your day is every bit as legendary as you are.' It comes after the TV stalwart opened up earlier this year about his 38 years working in television. And in a surprising twist the entertainment editor admitted he had a fair share of regrets. The Nine star, who began working for the network in 1987, revealed in January he wishes he tried harder to become a pop star. While he holds much pride in the TV work he has done over the years, the Weekend Today co-host told The Sunday Telegraph he regrets he stopped writing songs. 'I don't think I'd do too much differently, I was playing in bands and wanted to be an actor there for a while,' he said, when asked what he would change about his career. 'I wish I'd kept writing songs because I thought some of them were starting to get quite good and the comeback to that is, "Well it is never too late to stop."' 'But I had an opportunity that came along when television was in a great growth spurt and music television, MTV, came along and it was just a perfect combination of everything that I had done.' Richard went on to say his first gig on MTV when it launched on Nine in the late '80s came at the 'right time, right place', and he would never take it back. He said he 'worked really hard' and has 'enjoyed the majority' of his stint in television, even if it didn't shoot him to rock star status as he hoped it would. Despite being just a few years off his 40th anniversary with Nine, Richard doesn't appear to be slowing down any time soon. The TV presenter said he doesn't know what he would do with himself if he wasn't working. Richard has worked in breakfast television for many years and also hosts weekend radio on Smooth FM. On the side, the media personality is producing a movie and has plans to write a second book following his 2011 memoir Black Ties, Red Carpets, Green Rooms. He was an aspiring pop singer when he first started working in the entertainment industry while still living in New Zealand where he was born. But Richard said working for MTV was 'a perfect combination of everything I have done' previously in showbusiness. It seems the apple doesn't fall far from the tree as Richard's son Christian Wilkins landed the role of red carpet host for the prestigious ARIA Awards last November.
NZ Herald
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Hart to Hart: The latest actors to play one of Sir Roger Hall's great characters compare notes
Andrew Grainger (left) and Ross Gumbley play Dickie Hart in different versions of Sir Roger Hall's The End of Summer. Photos / Supplied In a possibly historic moment in NZ theatre, Andrew Grainger and Ross Gumbley will be men alone, on stage at opposite ends of the country playing the same guy in the same one-man play at the same time. Dickie Hart first came to life on stage nearly 30 years ago in C'mon Black, a play inspired by Roger Hall's visit to South Africa among a party of All Black supporters for the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Upon his return and thinking the team's defeat in the notorious final had killed his idea for a play about the jaunt, Hall wrote a piece for the Listener about being there. But writing that story inspired C'mon Black, a solo show featuring Dickie, the rugby-fanatic cow cockie easing into retirement who finds on his travels that the outside world is a complicated place. With Timothy Bartlett in the role, it premiered at Dunedin's Fortune Theatre. Dozens of Hall's plays had been the box office lifeblood of the southern company until it foundered in 2018. But it was a Wellington actor, the late Grant Tilly, who played many Hall characters on stage and screen, who picked up the C'mon Black ball and ran with it. He toured the play all around in New Zealand and took it to London. He got the benefit of Hall editing the monologue after its Dunedin debut. 'Good friends told me the script was too long and too preachy, so I hacked a lot out of it,' Hall tells the Listener. Back then, Hall wasn't thinking there would be a Dickie Hart trilogy – 'Hard enough to look ahead to the end of the play'. But now there is. You Gotta Be Joking debuted in 2013 and had Hart and wife Glenda shifting to a townhouse in Wellington. And now End of Summer Time, in which the couple have moved to Auckland – the one place Dickie said he'll never live – to be near their grandkids. When the new play starts – it's set between 2019 and 2023 when Dickie is in his early 70s – they, like Hall, are living in an apartment near Takapuna Beach. But that's as close to home as the latest work gets to its author. 'There are often many parallels between me and my characters. Move along; nothing to read into this.' End of Summer Time may be about Dickie being a fish out of water, stranded on Takapuna Beach, in Auckland traffic, suffering apartment bodycorp politics, and worse. But this City of Sails tale premiered at Wellington's Circa Theatre last year and came back for an encore season in April. Circa stalwart Gavin Rutherford played Dickie, having first performed him in a 2011 revival of C'mon Black, timed for that year's RWC. Hall wasn't involved in the Wellington End of Summer Time production but he liked it. 'Gavin's performance was magic. For me and for everyone else in the audience.' Sir Roger Hall: "There are often many parallels between me and my characters. Move along; nothing to read into this." Photo / Supplied Now Auckland Theatre Company and The Court Theatre in Christchurch are staging simultaneous productions. Hall has had two plays in production at the same time before, but it's been a while. 'During the giddy days of Glide Time there were two productions of that, at least, and similarly with Middle-Age Spread. It was enjoyable but I always had to make sure I had put enough money aside to pay for provisional tax. This was an era when the IRD expected you to estimate your income for the following year and pay tax on it. I pointed out this was impossible for me to do since I didn't know that far ahead how many productions there would be.' Yes, in a possibly historic moment in New Zealand theatre, two blokes are playing the same guy in the same one-man play at the same time. Well, more or less – Andrew Grainger, a familiar face on the Auckland stage since arriving from the UK in 2007, will be in the ATC production for 20 performances at the ASB Theatre from June 17. Ross Gumbley, Court Theatre's former artistic director and now artistic adviser, will start his 51-show run in the Court's intimate Wakefield Family Front Room four days later. Each man will deliver some 10,000 words in every performance. On a late Thursday afternoon, after each putting in a long day's rehearsal a couple of weeks before opening night, both actors join the Listener via Zoom. Gentlemen, welcome to the Dickie Hart group therapy session. Ross Gumbley: I've certainly never done anything like this before. In fact, Andrew, I think the last time you and I met was when you auditioned for The 39 Steps. Andrew Grainger: Goodness me, that was a long time ago … I hadn't been over here that long. Doing a Roger Hall play with a character of this particular seniority, do you have to age up for it? RG: Well, I'm a little insulted, you had to ask [laughing]. There was a quizzical tone in your voice. I can't speak for Andrew, who looks ridiculously undercast. I mean, I'm only 12 years off his age … the play takes place in a sort of a zone between 71 and 75. I think you have to cast it that way because of the sheer stamina required… AG: Yeah. RG: …to keep this piece driving right through to the end. Andrew, you're much more match-fit than me. I think I've done three, four plays since 2006. So the first week of rehearsal has been … I've been sleeping well. Let's put it that way. AG: You're right. It is exhausting, especially at this stage, when you're really searching in your head for what's next, and the change because you've got to remember what leads into what. But as far as age is concerned, I might be too young, but you can't get wrapped up in that because if you start playing 'old man' too much, it becomes … people are here to listen to the story. RG: Yeah. It's the oddest thing to rehearse a comedy. When the audience isn't there, they're the other character in this game and all you're doing is actually getting ready and making yourself prepared to accept them into the world of the play that you're creating. AG: That's right. RG: And if something happens in that room, you are duty bound to write it into the show that night. Because when the audience knows you're on your toes and you get that sense of danger, then they have to keep their eye on you. What's it like being on stage alone with 10,000 words? RG: Andrew, have you done a one-man play before? AG: No, I haven't. It's my first time. RG: I'm keen to hear your experience of this. AG: It's exhausting. It's all encompassing. For me, I'm paranoid that I'm going to be boring. So you have to trust the director going, 'It's interesting, it's fine.' But it's also about finding when we move the story forward, when we hold back, what's important for the audience to hear at this point. All these technical things. Normally you have a bit of time where you can go off, have a cup of tea. But in this, you're just always on and for me at the moment, I'm going, 'Oh, this is going ever so well. Oh, I'm liking this …' And then boom. It's like this big thing comes down in front of me, and I'm going, 'I have no idea where I'm going next or what I'm doing.' RG: I'm just going to mute you now, Andrew, I don't need to hear any more of that [laughing]. I've never done a one-man play before, but I've done a few two-handers with Mark Hadlow, which is almost like the same thing. In this play, you're a long time waiting for a cue if you drop your line. So, I'm thinking about it as one line – 10,000 words, a bit of punctuation, over 29 pages. It's taken me the best part of this week to get over that feeling of there is no other actor here. And as Andrew says, you never get to catch your breath. The key in a one-person play is variation of rhythm. Roger has got some beautiful set pieces, like that lovely run where Dickie takes the ute into the CBD and the pace of the anxiety. Your foot is on the accelerator, literally as an actor. Having read those 10,000 words, I know there's an event in the middle of the story that might cause a very big lump in the throat for anyone performing it, and audience alike. How are you finding it? AG: Well, it's playing the truth. It's not being worried about: 'Oh, I'm in a comedy here and I've got to keep them buoyant.' Hopefully, if you play the comedy right, it gives you the licence, and then the room to give them that. And I think that's even more powerful. It's great. RG: The thing that always affects us in life – and it's the same in the theatre – is when you see courage within somebody. Coming from this New Zealand farming stock, Dickie wasn't allowed to have feelings. When you see somebody who has every right to break down and they don't… AG: …it can actually be even more moving. Andrew Grainger at Takapuna Beach. Photo / Supplied On a lighter note, the ATC production is apparently 'a love letter to Auckland'. It's possibly less so in Christchurch. RG: Dickie talks about Auckland being the one place in New Zealand I swore I would never live, and we are hooking into that, because there's a rule of comedy that says, 'put your characters where they don't want to be'. So my role is slightly different to Andrew's. I have to convince Cantabrians that it would be a good idea to retire to Auckland … there's a lot of comedy where Dickie puts the boot into Auckland and I think that'll play for us. Given that this character has had previous iterations and that he dates back nearly 30 years, he's got quite a legacy. Does that affect your approach? AG: It's a bit like James Bond, isn't it? [Laughing] I did see Gavin in the play down in Wellington. It was great but I'm different, and Ross is going to be different. There are different things in it that I see and that's what you play to, your strengths. RG: If anything, knowing that you're stepping into Grant Tilly's shoes – and let's face it, if he were still alive, he would be playing it – that gives you a huge sense of respect. Somewhere in your bones, I think, it makes you work a bit harder. It makes you dig a bit deeper, and you just want to respect the legacy of the actors that have taken this on. I've got a beautiful Grant Tilly story in this role. When he played Dickie Hart in C'mon Black they did huge business all over the country, and then they go to Westport and they play in a pub to 12 people. Tilly comes out afterwards, full of Grant Tilly-ness, and says to this wizened old West Coast guy who's at the pub, 'What's going on? We've played this play up and down the country to full houses, and we come here to Westport, we get 12 people.' And the guy he's talking to says, 'Well, if you were any good, you wouldn't be here, would you?' End of Summer Time by Roger Hall, Auckland Theatre Company, ASB Theatre, June 17 to July 5; The Court Theatre, Christchurch, June 21 to August 16.
Otago Daily Times
30-05-2025
- Business
- Otago Daily Times
Producing port with a smile
What started as a small hustle on the side of her wine-making business has grown to be the main focus for Bannockburn's Debra Cruickshank. Business editor Sally Rae pays her a visit. She is the undisputed Queen of Port. Not only in her adopted home town of Bannockburn but now also nationally as New Zealand's largest producer of port. Debra Cruickshank is a force of nature; the one-woman show behind Tannacrieff Wines, producing port with a smile in the heart of Central Otago. Behind the smile has also been much pain, with an eventual diagnosis of the chronic inflammatory bowel condition Crohn's disease in 2021, and fears she might have to close her business. But being accepted for a Singapore-based clinical trial has seen her regain her life and allow her to continue to operate her boutique winery. An undisputed work ethic and life skills had its roots in her childhood on a farm in the Catlins where Ms Cruickshank, 45, would help her father with lambing, milk the pet cow before school, make hay huts for pregnant pigs and then stay up all night to watch the sows deliver their piglets. The farm was named Tannacrieff, after the ancestral Dickie farm in Ayrshire, Scotland — Ms Cruickshank's maternal great-grandmother was a Dickie — and several members of the Dickie family emigrated to the lower South Island in the early 1860s. In 2000, Ms Cruickshank caught the eye of the winemaker at Akarua Winery in Bannockburn and started her winemaking journey, working from the bottom up initially in the vineyard and then into the winery. That culminated in formal recognition from the Eastern Institute of Technology and Massey University. She spent eight years at Akarua and, after a year in Western Australia, she returned home to make wine for a very small winery in Cromwell. Never particularly keen on working for others, the time finally came to open her own boutique winery. She started a small contract winemaking facility in March, 2012, which was the start of DC Wines Ltd, and later moved to Bannockburn where she also produced her own wines. A pivotal moment came in 2017 when she won the supreme award in the Rural Women New Zealand Enterprising Rural Women Awards. It thrust her into the spotlight and the resulting publicity ensured people knew exactly what she did — "not just a chick who makes wine for everyone". It was also a turning point for her to concentrate on her port and slowly phase out the winemaking, where she was making up to 30-odd different wines for small-batch wineries. People started to know her for her port and yet she did not have enough time to make it. It was January, 2018, when Ms Cruickshank got her first "painful tummy" and knew something was wrong. Initially, having been recently to Samoa, doctors thought it was parasites. Both her parents had bowel cancer, yet she said it took three years of pleading with doctors for a colonoscopy. "I knew something was wrong. My motto is always the squeaky wheel gets the grease." By the time she was diagnosed with Crohn's disease three years later, it was severe. "The pain and fatigue and brain fog really did stop me being a normal person," she said. Around the same time, she needed back surgery and much of 2022 was spent in bed. Through the public health system, she was unable to access funded medication for Crohn's disease. In September that year, she was accepted for a clinical trial and "instantly felt like a new person". "I had my life back." Since then, she has travelled to Dunedin every two months for treatment and she has a colonoscopy every year. Ms Cruickshank knew things had to change — stress was the main trigger — and the decision was made to concentrate on port, keeping it manageable and what her health would allow her to do. Tanacrieff specialised in small-batch, handcrafted ruby, white and tawny ports which had gone from "just a little hustle on the side" to now being the focus. She recognised her passion was making port, leaving winemaking to others. "There's some amazing winemakers out there making wine, so why not stick to a niche market that's doing really well?" Port had shrugged off its old-fashioned image and had become a very popular drink, particularly with young people. It was also versatile and could be used in cocktails. The process of making it was also more fun than making wine and it was easier on her body. Her port was stocked throughout the country, and often sold through word of mouth, and her aim was to continue to grow the domestic market. "I don't want to go overseas, there's enough people here. I want to keep it big enough to handle," she said. While there had been offers of investment in Tanacrieff Wines, Ms Cruickshank preferred to keep total control, saying she had worked too hard to give it away. She particularly enjoyed having a stall at the likes of Wānaka A&P Show and catching up with customers and seeing people enjoy her products. She also did tastings by appointment and enjoyed showing people what she did. Even horses were welcome at her rustic base while their riders sampled a drop. That was the beauty of Bannockburn and open spaces, she said. A rose port was scheduled for release in October and, by the interest shown already in it, she expected it would sell out quickly. During the winter — her quieter time — Ms Cruickshank enjoyed travelling and she had been to Porto, Portugal, from which port wine was named. Port was one of Portugal's most famous exports and it was an "eye-opener" to see the home of port and also the quantities produced, making her contribution just a drop in the ocean.
