David Loughrey

Inner city Dunedin bars are set to find out today if they can open until 3am on Christmas Day, a matter police have opposed for the first time.

Dunedin's Forsyth Barr Stadium is to get a $4.8 million addition to house the New Zealand Academy of Sport's South Island performance centre.

The vision for a Dunedin harbourside lined by apartments, cafes and tree-lined boulevards has been further narrowed, with a walkway that would have provided access to the area dropped from the project.

Dunedin homeowners with "illegal or informal" water connections appear to have escaped extensive backdated bills but, while the city council says it will not be "brutally bureaucratic", it has not ruled out disconnections.

The development of the Forsyth Barr Stadium has polarised the residents of Dunedin, coloured political debate in the city for much of the past decade and nurtured more conspiracy theories than one could fit in an encyclopedia.

A police policy change may mean an end to post-midnight revelry for Dunedin bars early on Christmas Day.

The future of the New Zealand Academy of Sport, South Island, may become clear this week, in an outcome Dunedin Mayor Dave Cull yesterday described as "an opportunity for both the academy and the city".

Having a conversation with All Whites player Andy Boyens, especially at his old school, Dunedin's Kavanagh College, comes with interruptions in the form of pupils keen to get his autograph.

The global issues of climate change and peak oil must not only be faced, but Dunedin's response to them should be turned into opportunities for the betterment of the city, mayor Dave Cull says.

Dunedin has gained hundreds of thousands of dollars from Lottery Grants Board funding for a festival that will run in conjunction with Rugby World Cup next year.

Dunedin residents will face radical cuts to car use and fundamental changes in the city's design when peak oil hits in the next few decades, says the writer of a report on the city's reliance on fossil fuels.

There were dramatic scenes in Dunedin's main street yesterday when a sleigh driven by Santa Claus was blocked from reaching the Octagon and, for a while at least, Christmas itself appeared in doubt.