So it turns out writing letters to the editor may not get you a seat around the council table, but it will help your local MP with his spelling.
On the weekend I saw one of Rotorua MP, Todd McClay's signs and discovered a piece of duct tape printed with an updated authorisation statement covering his old statement, whereby McClay referred to his job title and corrected the spelling in his address from "Roturua" to "Rotorua".
I couldn't help but draw a comparison between this fixer upper and McClay's National Party's latest policy announcement which would send youth offenders to a year long boot camp.
This boot camp idea was tried before ... Only instead of the children taking their punishment and going on to become law abiding citizens, more than 60 per cent of them went on to commit further crimes.
The evidence overwhelmingly shows these programmes simply do not work. So just like McClay covered up his spelling failure, National are covering up and ignoring evidence which says their boot camp policy is destined to fail, while hoping the New Zealand public will be stupid enough to follow them. For everybody's sake, my hope is that they don't.
[Abridged]
RYAN GRAY
Rotorua
Worst offenders
As a previous critic of National's lack of action on law and order, I have to applaud them for finally taking some action on youth offenders, well for part of it anyway.
The current youth justice system is massively failing the small group of hard core offenders - the 14 per cent of offenders who account for something like 75 per cent of youth crime.
These are the worst of young offenders, who thumb their noses at society and continue to offend with impunity until they have racked up 50 or 60 serious offences and then get shipped off to another part of the country.
In most cases they come from parents who themselves have ingrained criminal behaviour and they simply indoctrinate their offspring with the same attitude.
By shipping them off to a boot camp for 12 months they will be away from the negative influence of their family and criminal associates for 12 months, they will have a disciplined lifestyle. They will have decent food perhaps for the first time in their lives and they won't have access to drugs and alcohol.
That can only be a step in the right direction for these offenders.
[Abridged]
BRETT WILSON
Rotorua