Beggars can not be choosers, but what they can be is accepted, loved and treated
as what they are, human beings.
It is wrong to ban them from our streets.
Olivia Gourlay
Year 10
Te Puke High School
Homelessness crisis
New Zealand is facing a homelessness crisis and something has to be done to get this under control.
With the house prices skyrocketing, making the rents go up, it's becoming too much. Families have to revert to living in the backs of their cars, emergency homes or on the streets.
Affordable housing is a national priority.
Winter is too cold for our fellow Kiwis to be suffering on the streets with inadequate clothing. We can't let this dreadful crisis go on.
Marcus Cullen
Year 10
Te Puke High School
Dancing issues
I've always enjoyed the TV programme Dancing with the Stars but this year I find it irritating that voters aren't really appreciating the long hours of hard practice that goes into getting these 'non dancers' ready to appear on television in a competition and partnered by real professional dancers!
Maybe voters have always been this silly voting for a person (for example David Seymour, who really cannot dance even with hours of practice) instead of voting for the expertise and skill of the dancers.
In David Seymour's words (BOP Times, June 13) "as long as people keep voting for me I'm going to keep dancing".
As he says, he thinks it's possible he's received more votes in this competition than he got in the 2017 election. I think the well known saying "Don't give up your day job" should be amended for David and he perhaps should give up his day job ... and become a dance instructor. Heaven forbid.
Isabel Ashmore
Brookfield
Declining liberals
I write regarding about something that is hurting all of us. The decline of the liberal democracy.
Not just here, but across the globe, we are witnessing a decaying of relationships and respect in just about all areas of our lives.
The collapse of the family unit is the most horrifying. It's deliberate depowering from the urban liberal left is astonishing to watch.
The family now consists of a teenage mother and child, which is utterly ridiculous and is openly failing on a massive scale.
The results of this policy are now filling up our jails to overflowing and spilling on to the streets every day.
Domestic violence is endemic in areas and it's killing our people and their key relationships.
I think New Zealand must be on the shortlist for having some of the worst parents in the world. I'm not sure how to fix this other than to start being good people, good parents and good neighbours.
That means caring about your significant others, not letting them loose on the streets.
This is a problem getting out of control as we continue to underwrite these false anti-real-family assumptions into our law.
But that's another story.
Graeme Martin
Tauranga
