The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.
Caution in royal tale of power
Garth George wrote on the importance of keeping church and state separate and of how the politicians turn out in droves to the annual Ratana Church celebrations.
I have always viewed this simplistically as just vote-catching but perhaps there is a bigger picture to it all.
The most well-known merger of church and state was when King Henry VIII wanted to divorce Catherine of Aragon to marry Anne Boleyn and thus became head of the Church of England.
Many heads literally rolled in the process and our most well-known nursery rhyme Humpty Dumpty was apparently the tangled tale of Cardinal Wolsey as Henry's Lord Chancellor who failed to enable the divorce and then cheated the sword by conveniently dying en route to his trial.
Luckily we do not have headsmen with sharpish swords but perhaps a cautionary tale to keep the church and state as far away from each other as possible.
The Bay of Plenty Times Weekend is to be congratulated on the brilliant article about the cost of food, published on 28 January 2012.
We all knew that prices were out of control but most of us didn't realise it was as high as 50 per cent in 5 years.
It is obvious that when the dairy companies and the producers of bread and meat raised their prices willy-nilly several years ago, the rest of New Zealand food manufacturers were watching and when they got away with it, all food manufacturers followed suit. Where it is going to end is anyone's guess.
Perhaps we should change our national anthem to God Please Save New Zealand.
Ferd Leenen, Mount Maunganui
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