Keith Garratt
Rotorua
Grin and bear it
With regard to the recent outburst by the council and in particular councillor Tania Tapsell (News, May 28), many years ago US President Harry S Truman said: "If you can't stand the heat get out of the kitchen!"
Politics is a dirty business, words are bandied about with a gay abandon that is rarely seen in any other theatre, sometimes the water falls off the duck's back and other times if the water is dirty enough - it sticks - that is the name of the game, hence Harry's words.
I have covered many elections in different countries. Much of it is entertaining, some of it crude, some quite enlightening.
Most of it, however, has convinced me to stay well away from politics - being blackboard monitor during several terms of kindergarten was enough for me.
My advice? For what it's worth, Tania, grin and bear it, you are very young yet, by the time you get to my age you will look back and laugh! Grin, learn, laugh!
Jim Adams
Rotorua
On the Budget
The Budget is a concession to despair, a pointless sop to our producers of primary goods, a salve to the collective conscience of the rich Kiwi and a windfall to the landlord's association. All that lovely disposable income to be soaked up in weekly rents.
A more sensible thing would be to do a Donald Trump and bring in tariffs on things we used to make here, thereby creating manufacturing jobs.
What poorer people want are jobs they can do, jobs they can keep for years, jobs that don't require working weekends and not having regular hours, jobs that can be done by people who aren't gorgeous or politically correct, manufacturing jobs in fact.
Jobs like making shoes, making furniture, making jeans and clothes, all the things that China makes cheaply. (Abridged)
GJ Philip
Taupō
A common denominator
My lifetime spans 71 years, three countries and dozens of travel destinations, and sadly, I find a disturbing common denominator in funding requests: Claimant entitlement without effort and expectation without reciprocal obligation.
While there are certainly multiple, genuine causes of ills that justifiably call out for government intervention, I frequently read and hear many factors termed "causes" that are better expressed as "excuses", which then carry the erroneous expectation of government, community and tax solutions, rather than the exercise of personal responsibility for individual, detrimental behavioural choices and the consequences that should result.
While society, as a whole, has a responsibility to its members in genuine need, it cannot be held accountable for those poorer choices, particularly when repeatedly and/or culturally established.
Tragically, the welfare of children becomes the pawn in this cycle.
We hear of the need for more and more assistance programmes in New Zealand, to be supported by those who, in large measure, have struggled to make the difficult choices necessary for a productive life.
There is no issue when the need has been created through no fault of an individual. My objection is to being consistently asked to fill the gap for those who, through personal decision, repeatedly choose unwisely, and then look to outside intervention instead of changes in self-indulgent behaviour.
Increasingly lenient subsidies must not compensate for careless, dismissive attitudes toward study, work and sacrifice which waste the opportunities available in this plentiful land - understood by respectful, multicultural New Zealanders and immigrants.
Mary L Wright
Rotorua
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