Unskilled staff not fit for all jobs. Photo / 123RF
As a building firm of 25 years, primarily renovating heritage homes, we almost continuously advertise for skilled builders - with limited success, despite the aid of an experienced employment agency specialising in trades. Eighteen months ago we were fortunate to gain the services of a particularly talented young Frenchman, qualified as a builder and cabinetmaker, on a working holiday visa.
He left the country to travel and volunteer his skills overseas, returning for a further eight months of travel and work.
He has no dependents and intends moving to Guadeloupe to live with his lovely partner. Despite carefully doing everything Immigration has asked, it insists we have no immediate need for skilled builders, only unskilled.
Rarely do we find one able to work on our site, let alone with this young man's skills. Due to the nature of our work and clientele, we cannot take on unskilled builders and "supervise" them, which we are aware happens with substandard results.
At a builders' conference we listened to Bill English tell us, "We will just keep it coming to you". Then we listened to Andrew Little tell us he would stop everything as we knew it. However, neither mentioned that our Government appears totally out of touch with industry needs if it cannot grasp that skilled builders are preferable to unskilled ones with virtually no English.
Wendy Mackereth, Sandringham.
We are in the hotel waiting for our airport transfer and just wanted to thank all of the New Zealand population (apart from the Auckland taxi driver who tried to charge one of our party $60 from the town centre to Rose Park) for giving us Lions supporters such a wonderful welcome.
From the under-14s match in Christchurch, through the series leveller in Wellington, to the generous acknowledgment of the draw (despite butchering four scoring opportunities) we received nothing but friendship and open hospitality. The only possible regret is, that's it for another 12 years.
John and Mieke McGuinness, en route to Snowdonia.
I have huge admiration for New Zealand rugby and its outstanding results of recent years but nevertheless noted Steve Hansen's complaint about French referee Poite's reversal of the late penalty decision in the final Lions game with considerable irony and little sympathy.
New Zealand's exploitation, over many years, of the laws of rugby and of referees appears, like much of their game, so well executed that one could be forgiven for believing it to be intentional or even part of the game plan. I suspect this isolated reversal from "the norm" will be seen by much of the rugby world outside of New Zealand as a bit of poetic justice.
I fully agree the referee was wrong, not in changing his mind but rather in awarding the penalty in the first place. Careful examination of the incident seems to confirm that the ball was not knocked on, but moved from the Lions' receiver toward the Lions' goal line. More significantly, the ref was in no position to make the call as he was still approaching from the halfway-line kick-off.
In short, it appears to me the ref guessed. And guessing, as South Africans who recall Bismarck du Plessis' first yellow card, leading to red, by the same referee in New Zealand in 2013, will know, is an unforgivable error.
K. J. Went, Umhlanga Rocks, South Africa.
Where does James Shaw get off telling anyone to pay for using our water? He says there are consents for bottling 2.3 billion litres a year, yet only 27 million litres were exported in 2016. Why should I pay anything to the local council, let alone half to local Maori? Nobody owns the water. As far as I recall it rains down naturally so anyone that has access to it for private or commercial use can have at it. Bringing in the Havelock North debacle is just weird. That was the local council's screw up. Go away Jimmy.
Mark Noble, Whitianga.
Dick Cuthbert made some excellent points ("Why do our babies keep dying?") in the Weekend Herald, but no amount of well-resourced social workers can manage the increasing need which in large part comes from children being brought up in stressed, dysfunctional families without the resources that allow children to thrive.
We have a housing crisis. We have many families living in cold, overcrowded homes. There is increasing inequality of wealth and income and those that are housed often have no security of tenure and not enough money left for healthy food after paying rent. Add to this, unequal access to health and education, under-regulated and cheap alcohol which fuels family violence, easy access to drugs, and inadequate mental health and addiction services. There is no point in blaming social workers or having a new ministry if these are not addressed.
Barbara Grace, Grey Lynn.
Individual car ownership costs continue to be driven down. Reliable second hand cars are very cheap, fuel costs have declined from historical highs, registration costs have fallen, warrant of fitness checks are less frequent, third-party insurance is optional and street parking is provided free for unlimited numbers of cars in most residential areas.
Now the residents of some inner-city suburbs are to be given preferential parking rights for a mere $70 a year.
Compare this with the value of land in those same areas which would frequently put the value of a parking space at around $100,000. The true cost will be passed to other ratepayers either in direct costs to commuters who must find other forms of transport when their opportunity for parking close to work is removed, subsidies to those same commuters to encourage them to leave their cars at home, and inconvenience to residents of other areas where the demand for parking increases.
Until the true cost of car ownership is made the responsibility of individual car owners, car numbers will continue to run at levels which require enormous expenditure on infrastructure and huge subsidies on alternative transport modes to even maintain our current level of traffic chaos at the expense of other more rewarding forms of social investment.
As a first step, at least charge the wealthy residents of the inner city a fee for their parking privileges, which would reflect the true cost of those privileges to other citizens. Around $50 to $100 a week rather than $70 per year is more like it.
Peter Lucas, Devonport.
The city to the airport via the Waterview tunnels can now take only 15-20 minutes. However, then you hit the airport snarl-up and it takes another 20 minutes to travel the final kilometre. Auckland Airport thinks by changing one lane marking they are doing their bit to improve traffic flow. Wrong. Getting in and out of the airport is still a nightmare.
John Little, Milford.
It was good to see Brian Fallow take a positive stance on the Labour Party policy on fair pay and giving all workers a living wage. Meanwhile, the Herald editorial and Kirk Hope, head of Business NZ, repeat the cruel mantra that paying workers a living wage is "unaffordable", which is also the view of Bill English and his Government. This is unacceptable and voters should reject it.
I want to know why, in spite of all the evidence that it is a failure, our leaders still adhere to this discredited doctrine of zombie economics. In the UK there are moves to impose basic rules to regulate the "gig economy" and protect workers who have no security and very low wages. We need to do the same thing here to protect these workers and their families.
V. M. Fergusson, Mt Eden.
Thank you for bringing me one brave, insightful sports columnist every Monday and Thursday, namely Chris Rattue. The man writes with neither fear nor favour and although he opens himself up to being disagreed with vehemently on occasion, I find every one of his offerings thought-provoking and invariably accurate. This is in contrast, for example, to so many other sports journalists who appeared to think that writing excuse-ridden, referee-baiting, Lions-mocking articles was what I wanted to read day after day.
Kieran Smyth, St Mary's Bay.
I cannot understand why shoppers are still using plastic bags. For goodness' sake, invest in fabric bags and keep them in the boot of the car. If we do not get off our backsides and do something positive what a shocking legacy we will leave the next generation. If an 80-year-old can do her bit surely others can do more.
Judith Bouwman, Torbay.
Elisabeth Nicholls vanished from a retirement village in Riccarton two weeks ago.