Further, pathways at high profile scenic points around Muriwai are dangerous, and an insult to the local ratepayers.
Super City employees flying over Muriwai in a luxury seat should reflect that they are meant to be there for the ratepayer, not the ratepayer being there for you.
I. M. Phillips, Muriwai Beach.
Good example
We have just returned from a wonderful stay in Napier. As Aucklanders we were very impressed with the clean and tidy public parks, gardens and restrooms. The grass was well maintained, gardens impeccable. No rubbish or loose litter anywhere. The picnic areas had clean rubbish bins and very clean toilets. We think Mayor Goff should take a trip to Napier for some "fact finding" lessons instead of going on expensive trips overseas. Whatever Napier is doing it is working. Even the shop staff were pleasant and co-operative, not sulky and impolite. What a lovely change.
John and Karen Forsberg, Northpark.
Filling in the harbour
Congratulations to the Herald for the well balanced and informative articles helping to clarify journalistic direction for the forthcoming America's Cup regatta. It was very much needed, otherwise as usual, some self serving group such as "Stop Stealing Our Harbour", with its well intentioned but in this case misguided emotive wording, has too much say.
Of course none of us would like to see the harbour reduced in size. However, it is not very hard to work out that the sea area between Wynyard Wharf and Princes Wharf, if used as suggested by Team New Zealand for the Halsey Wharf extension, does not protrude any further out into the harbour from a straight line drawn between the ends of the existing wharves. Lets hope your balanced articles lead a good decision.
Andrew McAlpine, Remuera.
Patronising comment
I have increasing concern that when a northern hemisphere side loses in a close game to the All Blacks, columnists tend to overplay the "bad luck" factor to their loss and what a courageous and spirited bunch they are. These emotions rely upon the old fashioned principles that the Irish and Scots, especially, are a persecuted people who never get an even break.
Northern hemisphere rugby has strengthened to the stage where they can be considered our major opposition. The simple reason the Scots did not win the last test was because they made too many unforced errors. The "arithmetic" of the game defeated them, not history.
D. C. Crossman, Papamoa.
Rattue's view
Decaying ABs really? The game has evolved, there are Kiwi players and coaches changing the game for many nations worldwide and that has been great for the game. Add to that the rule changes and judicial scope given to the match officials that can overturn real time decisions by constant replay of marginal super slow motion replays fuelled by parochial crowds that are always against rather than for. So yes, theirs is a hard road.
Yes there will be closer matches and the odd slip on the scoreboard. But to say it's decay in the ABs' coaches and culture is to miss the many influences teams with their tactics and officials with their interpretations bring to each game.
Gordon Jackson, Papakura.
Fraught trial
Any third trial of Malcolm Rewa, however legally authentic, has the ghost of Teina Pora indisputably in its sight. Ex post facto deliberations are always, in my opinion, fraught with prejudice and historical difficulties. And of course any aspects of revenge or the need to find tidy solutions are, I believe, anathema to the just enactment of law. Rewa is up against public prejudice no matter how you see it.
Nicholas Lyon Gresson QSM, Parnell.
Mumps immunity
The current mumps outbreak involving schools and the All Blacks ought to raise fundamental questions as to the vaccine's ineffectiveness and indeed, the concept of herd immunity. Historically, nature has designed things that future parents developed a natural immunity by getting these childhood infections between the age of 2, when breast-feeding ceased, and 8, or well before puberty.
The pseudo- and temporary vaccine-derived immunity prevents this natural process only to expose young adults to the risk of infection, including from recently vaccinated children shedding live viruses. Couldn't it be wiser to welcome rather than ban unvaccinated children from school so that they can get over these infections as nature intended instead of risking mumps orchitis in a young man let alone an AB?
M. Godfrey MBBS, Tauranga.
Not hard at all
No wonder the maths exam is thought to be difficult when the comments on it are so complicated. The kite problem can be solved by inspection, plus a set of sine tables, no construction is needed. Let a half-side of the square have value unity (one). Then, in the triangle between a lower side of the kite and the adjacent boundaries of the square, the vertical part-side has length the square root of three. Thus the upper part-side, between a kite wing-vertex and upper square-corner, has length two units minus "root" three.
Application of the sine rule (to the triangle between an upper kite-side and the square's boundaries) quickly provides an interior angle of 14.5 degrees, and the kite-apex angle of 151 degrees. Use of the same angle's inverse tangent might be slightly simpler.
Dando Francis, Bayview.
American travel
Herald contributor Robert Borotkanics from Baltimore, when comparing the travel habits of Americans and New Zealanders, says he has come across Americans in many countries around the world and also met people in New Zealand who have never even been to the South Island. However is he aware that only one third of Americans hold a passport which means that two thirds of Americans are restricted to travelling only in North America, whereas the majority of Kiwis do hold a passport, and therefore a far higher percentage travel all around the world compared to Americans.
David Mairs, Glendowie.
Road to the top
I read your article on the 50 years of the Queenstown Gondola. I was disappointed you gave no recognition how this wonderful tourist attraction was started. My father Ian Hamilton had a dream to build a road to the top of Bobs Peak and then carry tourists to the top first by bus and eventually by gondola. He and his friend George McGreggor started the road in the 1960s with a small bulldozer, shovels and much gelignite.
The two of them worked on their own for three years, often between other work, with no outside funding. These two men achieved the almost impossible by getting the road to the top. Once the road was driveable my father and mother, Joan Hamilton, started the bus tours to the top.
Unfortunately my dad was killed in a car accident before he could realise the gondola project and Skyline Enterprises was formed to continue this dream. Today at the top of the Skyline there is a bronze plaque that states, "In memory of John Brown, Ian Hamilton, who had the vision to make access to this point".
Terri Saxon nee Hamilton, Dunedin.
Rachel Stewart
I refer to this week's column by Rachel Stewart, entitled "Stop the spin — I'm feeling sick", in which she criticises Fonterra's waterways plan. This sort of negative left wing anti-commercial journalism makes me want to vomit, but as I normally make sure to avoid Rachel Stewart I am not sick too often.
Tim Abbott, Kohimarama
