The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.
Toothless Act abets cowboys
Re: Building Act changes, (Times, February 28.)
As a cowboy builder, I'd like to thank the Department of Building and Housing for continuing to pander to our industry by making it so easy for our incompetent staff to achieve registration as Licensed Building Practitioners.
Luckily, it will be 2015 before licensed building practitioners will require any formal qualification, so for a few dollars, a completed form and a biased reference from us, the department will declare the applicant competent (yeah, right) and issue a licence.
Thanks, too, to the department for deciding consumers are not allowed to submit real references which might provide examples of incompetence.
In the meantime, with performance-based building codes requiring buildings to be waterproof and not to fall down, but with little or no requirement to meet any kind of established best practices, we continue to cut costs at the consumers' expense. We ignore NZ Standards (most of which are non-mandatory), use inferior materials and workmanship and ignore work practices established by respected bodies like BRANZ and CCANZ in the knowledge that consumers are only protected if they can demonstrate that this has caused "damage to their property".
(Abridged)
Mike O'Neill, Tauranga
Tax fat foods
Re: Fat tax on foods would offer hope in obesity battle (Weekend, March 3). Congratulations Annemarie Quill, what an interesting and well-informed editorial. You are so right, we're all making our own choices and we are responsible for the outcome.
Eating the wrong food or the unhealthy option is our choice, but sometimes it's the only choice we have.
A friend with two children (aged 4 and 5) wants to provide them healthier food, but sometimes the budget is not enough to choose the healthier option. She and her partner are overweight and she struggles to provide healthy food for the family.
The Government has to wake up and remove the GST on food such as fruit, vegetables and milk. The obesity epidemic is here and if we don't do anything now it will cost us billions in the near future, like it does in the US right now.
Be wise and invest in our future.
(Abridged)
Steffi Mueller, Mount Maunganui
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Opponents say the changes will make it harder to successfully bring pay equity claims.