Sins of the past
Five years ago, Metiria Turei resigned as the Greens' co-leader after admitting a welfare fraud occurring 25 years previously. You may recall the storm of outrage she was subjected to, including from National's Steven Joyce who stated her resignation had to happen and somehow claiming this historical,
individual act was a sign of "the mess on the Left" (Figure that out if you can).
So to be consistent, we assume Christopher Luxon will inform Sam Uffindell that his position is untenable and he should resign immediately. That would be a sign of leadership and moral consistency.
But, hold on. Uffindell states he'd already told National about that incident prior to his selection from a short list as the National party candidate for Tauranga.
So, National already knew about this. Ouch.
The ball is in your court, Mr Luxon.
Roger Laybourn, Hamilton.
Face value
Grant McMillan, principal of James Cook High School, has not needed to close this school since the start of the year after requiring mask wearing indoors on the advent of "orange".
Personal responsibility on this scale, in a pandemic, should not be expected of children and so it is not unreasonable for school principals to request of the government, a re-enforcement of school mask mandates.
Dr Benjamin Spock, who still remains a trusted parenting guide, wrote that children will share only two things: their mother's age and communicable diseases.
Hopefully, the rest of us will see fewer children of all ages who are obviously not at school and avoid grandchildren bringing home deadly diseases such as Covid-19 and long-Covid.
All schools need on-site professional nurses who can deal with pupils who are unwell and shouldn't be at school.
Julienne S. Law, Snells Beach.
Poll vaulter
Is Labour paying the price for being too conservative and centrist, pleasing no one? Perhaps it's time for a tax cut on GST.
Offer everyone relief from high inflation, and let's hope they don't leave it until too late.
Kushlan Sugathapala, Epsom.
Voter turn-off
Your columnist Audry van Ryn (NZ Herald, August 8) laments low voter turnouts for local authority elections, and claims that this is mainly due to a lack of knowledge about the candidates.
However, the widespread disinterest in voting is more likely a quite logical and rational reaction to the ratepayers' realisation that the whole thing is a meaningless and impotent charade that changes nothing.
The way the local authority act now works is that all the elected officials are permitted to do is read reports and sip tea.
Their only allowable point of contact with the council staff is the council CEO who can ignore, stall or frustrate councillors as they choose - with no apparent penalty. The elected cannot pick up the phone and say "mend those potholes" or "remove those bus lanes, my voters hate them". We have even had some council CEOs publicly gagging elected councillors from discussing controversial subjects with the media and the ratepayers.
The reality is that the inmates have taken over the asylum and are running it for their own benefit and according to their own agenda and beliefs.
So people just don't bother to vote.
Peter Lewis, Forrest Hill.
Haphazard rates
The really bad thing about the rates is how it is arrived at. The council does not do a real valuation, it relies on the information from QV, who in turn gets its information from real estate companies, who have a vested interest to see unnatural increases in value.
The value of my property has gone down 15 per cent since the valuation but I will be paying the higher rates for another three years.
On the good side, I will not bother insuring my house as it is only worth, according to the council, $25,000. I will use that money to pay the rates. If it burns down I will just sell the land for $1 million and move on.
I know how QV do their valuations as I objected the last time.
A woman walked up to the gate of my ROW section, stopped at the gate, looked at the house and walked away - a total of 40 seconds from start to finish, filmed on CCTV.
John Davison, Manurewa.
