Village decisions difficult
Graham Wilkinson, Retirement Village Association president, said (NZ Herald, June 9) "all those that move into a village understand the issues".
I do not know where moving into a retirement village stands on the stress scale, but it is well known that moving house is one of
the most stressful things you can do. Making this move, maybe having to clear out 30 years of memories and accumulated treasures, selling the house, and then choosing a retirement village to move into, would be enough to confuse and bewilder even a much younger person.
Unfortunately for some of us, there is no other option. Who is going to argue about the clauses that relate to leaving your apartment when you haven't even moved in? Especially when your lawyer has okayed the terms and conditions which are the same in every village and have always been this way. No elderly person, in a confused, overwhelmed state is going to start off their stay in any village on such a bad note.
Graham Wilkinson could do well to ask some residents of their experience on moving in, a little research may disclose a very different picture.
Heather Levack, Hillsborough.
Baton passed
As it appears that every generation blames the one before for the manifest sins of mankind, I am, as one of the lucky Boomers, delighted to welcome Gen Z to our world. We are finally able to pass the baton of responsibility to those Millennials who have berated us for the state of the world they have inherited, just as we blamed those before us when we were their age.
All we ask of these newer, brighter and apparently much more gifted generations is that they keep us in the luxurious style in which we are allegedly living, at no cost or effort on our part.
We Boomers are bequeathing you the freedoms, technologies and rights we fought for and developed during our years at the helm. It's up to you now, please don't mess it up, Gen Alpha will be here before you know it and they probably won't thank you much either.
You will have to answer to them as we have been expected to answer to you. I wish you all the luck in the world, you'll need it. We won't be here to blame.
Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.
Wasted energy
One of the early bombshell announcements from this Labour Government was to ban all new exploration of oil and gas. This was with full knowledge that our gas supplies are nearing the end of their life cycle.
Now we have the irony of importing hundreds of thousands of tonnes of coal to fire the power stations so we can power electric vehicles.
To further add to flawed decision-making and total lack of practical research, we now will be taxing tradespeople and farmers who purchase larger SUVs to carry out their business.
The fact that there are no alternative vehicles for these people to purchase at this time seems to be lost in the environmental greenwash that has come over this government like a dark mist.
Paul Jarvis, Ōrewa.
Ideologically driven
Your correspondent Chris Bangs (NZ Herald, June 15) believes making it more expensive to use cars will get people out of them, or more specifically, poor people out of them. Ideology tends to be myopic. Private vehicle use is more than just the cost. It is the convenience of going from A to B without having to include C to Z on the way. It is about stopping at the shops on the way home to grab a pint of milk, stopping by a friend's house to say hello after work, picking up and dropping off kids for sports practice. It is about not wanting to sit in a germ-infested tin can, next to someone who hasn't showered in a week or standing up in a sauna-like bus for 30 minutes. It is a plethora of various requirements and conveniences that keep people out of the sardine cans. Requirements and conveniences people are prepared to pay for, albeit with increasing animosity towards those trying to force the ideology of the minority on to the majority.
Kent Millar, Blockhouse Bay.
