The teachers need to accept their pay offer or risk losing public support. The parents need to stand up and do a far better job of instilling good values and respect in their children.
We all need to work towards making teachers highly respected and valued career it should be. (Abridged)
BT Hill
Tauranga
Support genuine cases
I agree entirely with Diane Cranston (Letters June 8) that genuine cases should be helped and I would never consider women in those circumstances burdens on the taxpayer.
Separated and divorced women with dependent children were not that well supported before the Domestic Purposes Benefit was introduced by the Norm Kirk Government in 1973, but many seem, in my view, to take advantage of that benefit nowadays.
Gwyneth Jones
Greerton
Climate rhetoric
It is outrageous that our Government, spurred on by accolades from global leaders, are planning punitive changes that will destroy our economy.
Global warming/climate change still has many questions to answer.
President Trump made a brave stand in the face of the conflicting evidence and we need to take notice.
Manipulating videos and Green Party rhetoric are, in my view, threatening catastrophic responses to what, according to many leading world scientists, is simply a normal cycle of global warming.
We must pull back now to save our farms and our national well-being.
Denis Shuker
Cambridge
Budget breach
Two questions are fundamental to the so-called Budget hack. Firstly, who directed the National Party towards the available breach in the Budget's security? Secondly, why wasn't this breach reported to the Government when it was first discovered?
If actions by Government ministers in addressing the issue are questioned, then the motives and ethics of those responsible for initiating the whole affair should be examined similarly.
Michael Carter
Mount Maunganui
We are not equal
Ex –British Labour MP, Bryan Gould (Opinion, June 10), quotes the American Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz as saying "Privilege breeds privilege" and "the best chance of being well-off is to be born to rich parents".
There are plenty of people who have come from so-called "poor" parents, (no privileges), who have gone on to be successful and are now very well-off.
It's a matter of ambition, energy, work ethic and determination.
Despite what academics, such as Joseph Stiglitz, would have us believe, we are not all equal, physically or intellectually.
Equality does not always lead to equality of outcome.
But, in a free world, we all have equal opportunity. We are all privileged in that respect.
Would Gould rather us all be Zombies with no ambition, forced to always involuntary share the fruits of our labour? That would take away any incentive for people to strive to be successful. Nothing short of communism, and we all know that that system doesn't work.
And should successful people who he says are privileged, be made to feel guilty? I don't believe so.
No matter what system of government, there'll always be people better off than others, but they are not "privileged".
Pete Kelly
Te Puna
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