It is interesting to note that in all the photos published I have yet to see a male. It's always a baby or a mother and baby. Perhaps the men folk are in ragtag uniforms and carrying a rifle in another part of this unhappy country.
Roly Hammond, Matua
Bus seat belts
By law you must send your children to school. There are few exemptions to this law.
If you cannot take them yourself you must use the school bus. Alas, many of these buses are in their twilight years. Now if you are caught driving your children and they are not restrained with a complying seat restraint, you are quite properly subject to penalty. But if you are risking them on a school bus most do not have seat belts. Too expensive, we are told.
Well, you can't have it both ways. If I am going to be denied a warrant, and thus my car is put off the road, then surely I am entitled to have the same concern shown by the state in respect to their own vehicles?
While it may well be that the children in the back of the recent bus rear-ender may not have been saved by a seat belt, I'm quite convinced that those covered in cuts from glass and collisions with the backs of the seats would be much better off than they are now.
Charles Purcell, Mount Maunganui
What people are saying online
On Facebook:
* Tauranga is growing in population daily ... 30 years ago when I delivered my youngest, the annexe was overcrowded then ... several mothers had babies in the "special care unit" and we occupied the ante-natal classroom ... Personally I feel ... young mums leave hospital too early ... There is no manual that comes with a new babe and all the expertise that can be given should be provided for at least a week with a first child if desired by the mother
Website comments:
* I really hope Zespri have their house in order over this, its bad enough to be spraying antibiotics on the vines in the first place, if they muck this up growers will have mountains of unsaleable fruit and we'll have been drenched in antibiotics ... all for nought.
* Are these people out of their tiny chemically poisoned minds? Antibiotics on Kiwifruit is not the way to enhance our clean & green image. And before all the chem supporters start screaming that we need to stop PSA , let's remember we don't want to have to throw this very beautiful baby out just because its bathwater is dirty. It's time these people got familiar with the old Burl Ives song about the old lady who swallowed a fly. Start putting rubbish on your soil and it is the beginning of a never-ending cycle that can only end in tears.
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