Letters: Some children just have a 'different pitch' to others

Some children are just a different pitch to others, says a reader. Photo / Getty images

Melany Eason has my sympathy (News, February 8).

Some children just have a different pitch to other children. I cannot understand why a cafe puts a playground in next to their cafe, then doesn't expect to hear screams and hollers of excitable children.

My three children ranged in pitch from a son who roared like a lion through playgrounds to my daughter's high-pitched squeals.

All of which was down to excitement and natural vocal cords.

Surely cafe users wanting the simple sound of other jabbering humans and piped music would steer well clear of playground cafes.

(Abridged)

Annette Bates
Hamurana

Chicken or egg?

Your front-page article (February 10) tells of another shop closing in the CBD.

It emphasised bad behaviour out on the footpath.

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Are undesirables hanging around because the CBD is shabby and run down or did their presence cause the problem in the first place?

Depends who you talk to.

I asked the owner of a shop which closed down about a month ago after a long tenure. She said parking hassles were a big contributing factor.

I went to feed a parking meter on a recent public holiday when a kind shop owner came out and told me to save my money.

He railed against the machine when I expressed my disdain of the meters and said he gets a lot of negative feedback about them.

CBDs in general are in decline. So they have to be reinvented to make them a destination. Change is painful and people get hurt. Some cities are replacing commercial shop fronts with apartment dwellings. Some are taking away the smelly car and introducing a cafe culture with lots of greenery.

Scientists tell us global warming is going to hit the poor the hardest.

(Abridged)

Lesley Haddon
Rotorua