Letters: 83 per cent want Whanganui's velodrome roofed, but wait, how many is that?

The Government should pick up the $26.3 million tab for the Raise the Velo Roof project, 83 per cent of respondents to a survey believe.

Close the gates, Schultz!

It seems there's no escaping political campaigning right now. The same day that the National Party added yet more tunnels to its plan to turn Wellington into Stalag 13, a full-page advert in the Chronicle shouted "83 per cent say Yes!".

Like Sergeant Schultz, who was wont to declare "I see NOTHING! I hear NOTHING!", I tried to ignore the arresting headline and move on to the letters page, as is my wont.

But it got the better of me. I had to know: 83 per cent of who say yes to what? Aha, I thought. It must be politics because there's been a survey and down the bottom of the page a tagline straight from Labour's 1969 campaign book: "Let's Make This Happen!".

But on closer reading, it seems 83 per cent of 427 people surveyed said Yes, the Government should pick up the $26.3 million tab for the Raise the Velo Roof project, to create some jobs and salve our post-Covid-19 economic wounds. No ratepayer dollars would be harmed in the making of this bold venture, they promised.

But our parliamentarians were celebrating the end-of-term so were unlikely to spend time reading their special-delivery Chrons. And anyway, would they be persuaded to part with $23.6m on the say-so of 354 survey respondents? I think not!

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Like Hogan's men, who couldn't wait for the war to end, the velodrome chaps can't wait for the arrival of what one hopes will be the report to end all reports on whether the velodrome project will be a drain on ratepayers in the long term. That report should land on the council CEO's desk any day now, after an inevitable Covid-19 delay, and it will be up to councillors to mind the purse strings of present and future ratepayers.

Finally, apologies to Gen Xers and Millennials, who missed the golden years of black-and-white television with long-running favourites like Hogan's Heroes. Never mind, its send-up of wartime Germans surely would be deemed a crime against good taste today.

As Colonel Klink commanded: "Schultz! Close the gates! The war is back on!"

CAROL WEBB
Whanganui

The Swedish approach

I totally agree with Jonathan Hartfield's letter (Chronicle, August 6) in regard to the Swedish response to Covid-19, but would like to add the following information in regard to the predicted economic impact this will have on Sweden. The economic downturn in Sweden is predicted to be the same as that of its Nordic neighbours at around the same as is predicted for New Zealand in the 8 to 10 per cent range, so there is no economic benefit for their great loss of life.

I also note with the figures for August 5 (81340 infections and 5760 deaths) that they have a very high mortality rate of over 7 per cent compared with ours of around 1 per cent.

I see no advantage of letting Covid-19 loose in NZ as no one would want to come here out of fear and our people would not be welcome anywhere else in the world if we were a hot spot, so having a lot of people die due to a social experiment gone wrong is totally unacceptable as even the chief medical officer in Sweden has admitted that they got it wrong.

ROBERT CONDER
Marton

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