Letters: Where is the banks’ duty of care on scams?; standardising education; Easter trading folly

Where is the banks' duty of care to protect customers from scammers? Photo / Jason Dorday

Letters to the Editor

Where is the banks’ duty of care?

I was shocked and appalled to read about a scam victim who was refused compensation by the Banking Ombudsman (NZ Herald, April 1).

I had an unfortunate experience when I dealt with a bank when I was concerned about whether or not the person I intended to pay money to did in fact own the bank account that he had quoted to me.

The bank refused to tell me, quoting privacy considerations. So my question is, where is the duty of care that the banks owe to their customers?

My advice is that customers who have been scammed and then denied justice should appeal to powerful politicians like David Seymour or Winston Peters to take up their case.

Should those earnest politicians decline to help, it just might be the right time for a reputable firm of legal eagles to step up to the plate and bring a serious class action against the banks who have refused to financially assist their scammed customers.

Johann Nordberg, Paeroa.

Pause for thought

One part of the Government’s next 100-day plan about education concerns me: ”Take action to develop standardised assessment and regular reporting to parents.”

Good teachers should not be accountable to a nationally imposed system of standardised testing, but should be free to create their own curriculum, one based on the needs of their students who they themselves have assessed.

Literacy and numeracy are now treated as if they are subjects or fields of actual study. They are not subjects or disciplines.

Literacy and numeracy are states at which one hopefully arrives at as a result of schooling. Standardised testing compares students’ literacy and numeracy against each other, like judging an athletic event.

But you don’t judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree. We should be allowing good teachers to teach, teaching students how to learn and how to think, not how to pass endless assessments.

Huw Dann, Mount Eden.

Diagnosing ADHD

The psychologist who claimed that most of his patients were faking it should not be dismissed out of hand.

There is no advantage to the Psychologists Board in having people claiming to have ADHD not accepted, they only gain mana and importance by increasing the number of people found to be suffering what is a very hard-to-define condition.

Many people involved in health are somewhat surprised by the number of people suddenly emerging with ADHD, but having this as a diagnosis is often a means to gaining money and community support.

Obviously, there are people with ADHD, but it is improbable that there are not many malingerers. As a small-town pharmacist I have dispensed Ritalin for children diagnosed with ADHD and was aware that the parents were selling it.

Physiotherapy has similar problems, because finding that a person has suffered a back injury provides large benefits for both the patient and the practitioner, especially if the “injury” is decided to be work-related.

Psychology and physiotherapy are both branches of medicine where it is very hard to find hard proof that there is actually a real problem, and where finding a problem is beneficial to the practitioner; consequently, whistleblowers are detested and punished.

Neville Cameron, Coromandel.

Dangerous driving

Enough carnage on our roads over Easter, it’s time people learned not to overtake on double yellow lines and to take time to reach their destination.

On our long drive on open roads we saw lots of driving that was an accident waiting to happen.

Thank goodness in many cases there was no one on the other side of that road or there would have been many more fatalities.

Linda Beck, West Harbour.

Reducing immigration

Again we have a politician expecting Auckland to double its population by 2050, as if this is the only option.

It is time to remind Infrastructure Minister Chris Bishop that growth in numbers can be a recipe for disaster. The GDP may rise, but New Zealand has proved that the per-capita value that measures our individual wealth will fall.

There are other ways. The chances are that significantly reducing the numbers of immigrant growth will be the best way to rebalance demand for infrastructure and housing and help education, health and welfare services, all under stress currently.

David Reid, Cockle Bay.

Easter folly

The owner of the Wānaka New World supermarket will be laughing all the way to the bank with a measly fine of $1000 for breaking the law over Easter.

The store would have made that in profit in the first half-hour of trading with all the crowds at the Warbirds over Wānaka.

New Zealand needs to have a conversation about trading hours and those who want to work given the choice, but not penalised by their employer if they choose not to due to planned holidays, family time or religious beliefs.

Marie Kaire, Whangārei.