Whanganui letters: 'A plague on interference with our houses'

A Kiwibuild home. Photo / File

Do you really think the politicians and bureaucrats who brought us such stellar successes as KiwiBuild, measles vaccination, Covid vaccination, leaky homes, bicycle lanes ... will succeed where the market has failed?

The market hasn't had a chance to succeed, because the Government has perverted and constrained market forces beyond anything that is remotely sensible.

Forty years ago we bought our first house in the central North Island as a kitset and had it assembled by a builder. We had $15 rugs to put on the coldest parts of the particleboard flooring - and we achieved 24/7 ventilation through the now-revolutionary use of actual standard windows by opening them through greater or lesser arcs to control indoor-outdoor flow (of cold and warm air). And gosh, 40 years and three children later, we are all still alive and well.

My point is that - as one sheep said to the other - the Government just needs to get the flock out of the way. Let people sell land to willing buyers, and when those buyers have ... power, water and sewerage connections, then they should have the right to safely build what they can afford when they can afford it.

Rescind the RMA and let the buyer decide what to buy'n'build - and let the renter decide if they need Full Meddled Heatpumps or they can use the same heating and cooling practices as people have successfully lived with for literally millennia.

Decades of nationwide jobsworths' Nimby-Twyfordism is why we are in this current mess. A plague on their interference with our houses, as I'm sure Shakespeare would have said if the Labour Party had been running the Globe Theatre. [Abridged]

RENE de JONGH
Whanganui

More ratepayers needed

Rates hikes seem to be quite high and in Horizons' case are being pushed by the dreamers of Utopia at any cost.

We need more ratepayers, an extra 10,000 would help.

A big start would be for the Government to move Inland Revenue to Whanganui, there is no need for them to be in the capital.

A move to Whanganui would be like a wage rise to staff because of decreased cost, housing and travel.

So perhaps our mayor and councillors should start a push, the Government does not really have an argument against a move, and it would help their housing crisis, which they are trying to remedy. [Abridged]

GARTH SCOWN
Whanganui

Ultimate absurdity?

I came across a statement by Thomas Sowell, an African American economist, social theorist and senior fellow at Stanford University. He dropped out of high school and served in the US Marines in Korea.

After that war he enrolled at Harvard University, graduating magna cum laude in 58. He then followed this with a masters degree from Columbia in 59 and then a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 68 and is currently the Senior Fellow on Public Policy at Stanford. He is the author of over 30 books.

I consider it an honour to quote the following statement that he recently made: "Have we reached the ultimate stage of absurdity where some people are held responsible for things that happened before they were born, while other people are not held responsible for what they themselves are doing today?".

Food for thought perhaps?

D PARTNER
Eastown

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