Donald Trump has a similar thought process for America, willing to dumb down a country so he and his deluded followers might look smarter.
Immigrants made both countries better, and we should be very careful about changing that.
America appears determined to go down that road, let’s not follow them
James Archibald, Birkenhead.
Rugby’s waning
I turned my TV on to watch the Football World Cup qualifying match between New Caledonia and New Zealand.
Eden Park was packed with spectators. I expected an exciting game, no matter what the result.
I watched the Super Rugby game between the Blues and Crusaders, apparently two of New Zealand’s top teams, the other evening. Eden Park was nowhere near half full.
Ten years ago, Eden Park would have been sold out. I turned the TV off before the game finished through lack of interest.
It seems a lot of people are doing the same. The glory days of rugby appear to be over. No matter how much money is thrown at the game or how many more teams and competitions are added to an already heavy schedule, the interest simply isn’t there anymore.
It’s time to move on.
Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.
RMA works
Claims by Chris Bishop that the RMA is broken are rubbish. Over 98% of resource consent applications are approved (over 35,000 every year) — only a handful that deserve to fail are rejected outright.
I had nearly 30 years experience as a planning commissioner and can confirm that almost all applications were approved, subject to a set of appropriate conditions tailored to address the particular nature of the proposed development and its location.
Some developers would deliberately try to push the rules in the district plan too far and would then cry foul when their plans were quite correctly disallowed. This is exactly how the RMA is supposed to work — not a failing.
Graeme Easte, Mount Albert.
Accelerate Eden Park
A very good decision by Auckland Council to give the nod to Eden Park 2.0. You cannot buy the history of New Zealand’s stadium at any price.
Now for the Government contribution — fast track, including overseas tenders for design and build (please include the Chinese who are so talented at construction — see the new Hong Kong Sevens Stadium this weekend) and international funding ideas, too, please.
Let’s get going now.
Gary Carter, Gulf Harbour.
Wrong site
Auckland Councillors have done it again — backed Eden Park, a venue that has already soaked up millions of ratepayer dollars with no benefit.
Quite simply, it is in the wrong place for a major multi-use stadium. It can never be a world-class venue. It would be best if the Eden Park Trust redeveloped the site as a shopping centre and high-rise apartments — and repaid all the ratepayer money.
Derek Paterson, Sunnyhills.
Adult acquiescence
There has been a lot of conversation about the Netflix series Adolescence, which deals with the dangers teenagers are exposed to on the web and calling for parents to be more aware of what their children are connecting to.
Does that mean that their parents will get off their iPhones to speak to them? My observation is that parents are too involved in their own web world to spare the time to converse with their children.
The iPhone has taken over the world.
Jock Mac Vicar, Hauraki.
Winston at 100
Correspondent Jeff Hayward is quite right, the unfettered free market has delivered a diet that is killing us — food so highly processed it has no nutrition (Mar 27).
We consume sugars by the ton and seed oils that are not food at all but actually suited to lubricating engines. Truly, man is the only animal on the planet smart enough to create his own food and the only one dumb enough to eat it.
But Jeff is happily throwing diamonds away with the trash by demonising animal fats. Winston Peters, in describing his diet, didn’t actually mention fats, fake or animal — but there’s a distinct difference.
Saturated animal fats, as any junior school science teacher can tell you, are essential. Our brains consist mostly of fat and cholesterol and we need the stuff. Mono, poly, and saturated fats arrive in real whole food in a package — in animal meats. They work the magic of healthy metabolism, hormone production, and every function of the human cell. It’s the fuel we can burn when we don’t eat sugar.
Winston’s doing well to eat high protein, cutting the carbs (sugars) and eating the natural saturated fat that comes in the food. That’s why he will live to be 100.
Judy Anderson, Remuera.
Grateful tourists
From the world’s second-best country, our thanks to the world’s best country.
Last week we took the morning ferry from Kawau Island and then the local bus to the transport hub outside Warkworth. There we awaited the 2pm Intercity bus to carry us 25km to Kaiwaka, where a friend with a car would meet us to go to Dargaville.
The bus arrived. We showed our tickets (bought a week prior) but were refused entry. There was no room on the bus because the bigger normal one had broken down. They will send transport said the driver, who then sped away. Ninety minutes later — and nothing. Too late now to catch the last ferry back to Kawau. We‘d have to find a hotel. Panic.
A police cruiser drove up and parked in front of the public washrooms. My wife accosted him as he emerged from a flushing toilet and told him our dilemma.
“Hop in,” he said — and drove us all the way to Kaiwaka. Thank you to the world’s most gracious police officer.
Grecia Mayers and David Kendall, Ontario, Canada.
King’s consultations
Correspondent Paul Knobel certainly didn’t mince his words about King Charles in his letter “Decadent King” (HoS, Mar 23).
In Knobel’s opinion, Andrew shouldn’t have been stripped of his positions, as he “is only guilty of mixing in bad company”.
Unfortunately, Prince Andrew has a rather wonky moral compass and the King, by relieving Andrew of his royal duties, actually saved him from embarrassing himself and his family more than he already had.
Knobel’s tongue-in-cheek comment about wondering if Charles consulted the heads of all the Commonwealth countries before he removed Andrew’s positions was priceless. That would have gone on for eons — a bit like the Treaty negotiations in New Zealand.
Lorraine Kidd, Warkworth.
Time travel
Correspondent Bernard Walker (HoS, Mar 23) asks what happened to all those graduates who didn’t have to do a cultural course in te ao Māori. My guess is that they went on to be nervous curtain twitchers, fretting about all the “wokeness” out there. But it’s alright, folks “Good Ole Winston Peters” is going to turn back the clock for you.
John Capener, Kawerau.
