Is today's style of rugby as entertaining as we are made to believe?
Our rates system has become a wealth tax
What a shock it was to be notified of the new rates assessment by Auckland City Council.
My own rates increased by 16.8% without any increase in the capital value of the property. My neighbours’ rates have increased by even greater amounts - up to 25%.
However, the Council maintains the average rates increase across the city is 5.8%.
Let’s do some mathematics with these numbers. So, if you have an average of 5.8% yet many other rates are in the 16%-to-25% range (and I know of others even higher), then to bring that average down to 5.8%, it stands to reason that many properties must be in the 1%-to-2% range.
This pattern of rates collection can only be explained by a “Robin Hood” council that is robbing the well-off to give to the poor, which I label as socialism.
Is this the job of a council? No council should adopt this mandate. Its function is to provide quality services to the public at acceptable prices, and not do this via a wealth tax, because that is what our rating system has become.
Trevor Smith, Takapuna.
The languages of real life
I was lucky to have something of a natural talent for assimilating language. When I started school in 1950, Māori was forbidden to be spoken and the small number of Māori kids were forbidden to use their native tongue.
When I got to secondary school at the age of 11, I was put into 3L1, and was taught Latin, French, and English, but not a word of the only other language that was spoken by numerous New Zealanders.
Now these accursed philistines in charge are winding the clock back again. This is an international humiliation and disgrace, and a terrible blot on our collective copybook. The more language you learn while you are young, the better prepared you are for real life. Real life almost universally includes more than one language.
Bruce Rogan, Mangawhai.
Not my kind of rugby
The letter by Gary Carter (Aug 19) enthuses “this rugby championship is a must-watch for spectacular, world-leading excitement”.
I am not sure if the writer has his head in the clouds or the sand but the current version of rugby is almost unwatchable.
Crash-bang dangerous tackles, late TMO rulings, whistle-happy refs, rolling mauls all add up to a stop-start game going backwards.
With 10 minutes of running rugby in an 80-minute game, wouldn’t there be more “excitement” watching Donald Trump and our Prime Minister playing noughts and crosses?
Graham Fleetwood, Tauranga.
Retain the moral high ground
The idea that New Zealand should consider losing its moral high ground and its nuclear-free status as contemplated by Matthew Hooton (Aug 15) gets a big Yeah, Nah.
How could he suggest such a thing after all the work put in by activists of the past? We should reaffirm our non-aligned status and spend our defence on firefighting drones capable of defending us against any threat. If we can build America’s Cup yachts, surely we can do that here, and probably better than elsewhere.
We could also take a leadership role in reforming the UN Security Council so we (the whole world) can feel safe with genuine collective security, and put our energy into the real threat to the world - anthropogenic climate change.
Dennis Worley, Birkenhead.
Performative, not informative
Jeremy Coleman (Aug 19) is right. Demands for Dame Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson, Aysha Verrall and Chris Hipkins to present in person at the Covid inquiry are pointless.
During lockdown, as we silently watched the countless dead being loaded on to refrigerated trucks around the world, as we listened to clear messages from our leaders about what was happening, and as we learned that subsidies were helping people to put food on the table, I for one felt grateful to these people and proud to be a New Zealander.
It needs to be understood that these former leaders have already responded to hours of questioning on the Covid response for the commission. Appearances by them would be merely performative, not informative, as others have said.
This inquiry runs the risk of becoming less about how to do things better next time, and more of a political witch hunt. The money would have been better spent on social housing and equal pay.
Christine Hart, St Mary’s Bay.
Keeping up with AI
Writing is going to be the future for school kids. Really?
Having just used AI to transcribe handwriting to text and found it recorded my statement about it being “absolutely amazing”, it is no surprise that Education Minister Erica Stanford needs a distraction.
Perhaps our kids could learn a few Māori words like tūī and kererū. Our manu/bird names are part of our vernacular.
Steve Russell, Hillcrest.