Crackles the pig enjoys the free school lunches thrown away by Nūhaka School.
Crackles the pig enjoys the free school lunches thrown away by Nūhaka School.
Letters to the Editor
School lunches
I was disgusted to watch school lunches being fed to pigs; lunches that included pasta and whole apples.
This clearly illustrates the extent to which young New Zealanders have become unappreciative, entitled young people who are clearly not hungry.
A hopelessly, social-critical curriculum hasresulted in a nation of adults of whom 50% cannot ensure that their children attend school on a regular basis.
I attended school here in 1970 when fifth formers who chose to leave school would get their licences and work on farms milking cattle, pulling up fences and attending to all aspects of growing and picking fruit.
I have lived in this country for 30 years and I am appalled at the regression brought about by weak parenting and a growing need for state dependency to earn a living.
Where on Earth is the spine of a Meads or the guts of a soldier at Gallipoli?
We are superb at talking about social injustice and poor mental health but we do very little to get young people to grow up with spine, self-respect and a sense of worth.
Lead young people from respect towards earned and valued independence.
The rotten cycle has to be broken.
Gordon D. Paterson
Ōhauiti
Almost daily we are being told through the media of difficulties being experienced by schools with the lunch programme.
Yes, the new providers are struggling to deliver at times but this can be expected at the phase-in period when one realises the logistics involved in a nationwide rollout.
The media are making a meal of this.
It appears to be more newsworthy than events in Eastern Europe, our shattered economy, an underperforming health system or our broken infrastructure.
Is this intense scrutiny of the school lunch programme politically driven?
Give a little time for the programme to deliver.
Meantime, if parents have concerns about whether a lunch will be provided through the school, they should take the advice of Christopher Luxon and provide one.
Parents have the prime responsibility of feeding their kids, not the schools.
Dan Power
Mount Maunganui
Fiona Montgomerie's "pet" arapawa sheep were attacked and killed by dogs in Mamaku.
Dog attacks
Sonya Bateson’s well-written story – Mamaku sheep killed by dogs – is both sad and galling in the response it evokes, because none of the people affected did anything wrong, and none deserved the horror inflicted upon them.
Dog-attack reports are so troubling because, in the hands of different writers, it’s the same story, over and over.
I can’t understand why there seems to me to be no effort to round up feral dogs and, if they aren’t traceable to a responsible owner, why they aren’t destroyed.
Recently while hiking in Scotland and the Shetlands, we saw signs in fields with grazing animals stating that any dog found among them would be shot.
In New Zealand, we seem to accept incidents where roaming dogs – known and unknown – attack animals and people, yet run away to attack again.
It’s time to actually do something, other than sit on our hands and do nothing.
Barb Callaghan
Pāpāmoa
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