Have your say: Dark side of life

"I walk on with a heavy and troubled heart and see young people in the main street with time on their hands and nothing to do."

I gaze out of my window. I see men and women working, tractors tilling the ground and harvesting, milk tankers, logging trucks and general freight finding their destination, school teachers guiding and influencing the young, doctors and nurses repairing the sick and maimed with their skills and love.

Industries and retail and their assistants are hard at work, pleasing my and your needs, working, achieving, encouraging with enthusiasm.

Northland is alive and thriving. "The light."

I need to visit the city.

I approach my destination and park. It is 9am on a Thursday. On the corner is a bench with four people on it. It seems they have nowhere to go and nothing to do, and they are speaking with incoherent voices.

They are human beings just like you and me but they are completely stoned, with drugs or booze or whatever.

I walk on with a heavy and troubled heart and see young people in the main street with time on their hands and nothing to do.

I ask the helpful assistant behind the counter and she tells me that this is common in many of our towns in the north, people with no spark in their eyes, their heart or their footfall.

I question the direction of our society, which allows this to happen to some of its people. Is this the "dark side" of Northland.

Where is the light switch? Who can reach up and turn it on? Is it you? Is it me? Is it us?
People need work, encouragement and direction. This is our challenge.

Bill Bygrave
Mangawhai

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