In reality, I believe that the council should have seriously considered applying for a variation to the current consent prior to the building of the sports and exhibition centre, and also the purchase of the speedway and catering contract, as the current consent is obviously affecting the viability of the overall complex and will therefore ultimately become an even bigger financial drain on ratepayers.
Tauranga is a tourist town and to have a tourist attraction that is so inflexible that it must close down at exactly 10pm is ridiculous. So a decision to apply for a variation to the current consent would give all parties, both in favour and against, the opportunity to express their views and hopefully a realistic compromise can be reached.
MIKE BAKER, Bethlehem
Family's thanks
Many thanks to all those people in Mount Maunganui and other areas throughout NZ who have supported my family about been told to leave a cafe due to the noise of a happy baby.
The positive responses have been overwhelming and we appreciate all your comments. We understand that there will always be those who agree with the cafe's action, and appreciate everyone is entitled to their own views and opinions.
I just hope that the cafe rethink, not necessarily their view, but the actions they take when they approach parents in similar circumstances and possibly be a little more tolerant of families with children. Once again, thanks.
BRYAN NICHOLSON, Auckland
Education woes
Indeed, it's almost "Back to school" time again (BOP Times, Jan 16).
For primary and intermediate students and their families, it's back to lock horns again with National Standards. The holiday likely won't have cleared up the confusions that surround it, or made good its many faults. Why would any Minister of Education select such a flawed means of improving learning across the board? Ignorance is the obvious answer.
In his latest book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to get things right (pub Jan 2011), Atul Gawande talks of two kinds of errors that get made, "errors of ignorance (mistakes we make because we don't know enough), and errors of ineptitude (mistakes we make because we don't make proper use of what we know)".
Failure in the modern world, he says, is really about the second of these errors. So it is in education. Until the year 2000, we all thought we knew the cause of all this educational ill thrift we have, but we didn't.
We didn't know, for instance, that the learning process we set such store by is inherently flawed.
So we could be excused for our use of flawed understandings and practice around learning (an error of ignorance). Post 2001, Nuthall having reported his amazing research, we're already a decade into making "errors of ineptitude." LAURIE LOPERTauranga
