To survive: Letters, 28 November

The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.

Letter of the Week

City to shame smokers (News, Nov 26).

I think the Tauranga City Council should go ahead and ban smoking in public places.

The past few years I have been my son's football coach. At practice and on match day a few parents would chuff away on the sidelines. The smell and the smoke wafting over children and myself is out of order.

I couldn't tell them to stop because my hands were tied.

I am not anti-smoking, I used to smoke 20 a day when I was younger. I know how hard it is to give it up.

And while they are at it, ban it in cars too.

The number of mums taking their kids into school while smoking in the car disturbs me.

Do these mums not think about their children's health? Clearly not.

This needs to be looked at.

Plus, the sale of cigarettes in shops and garages needs to be addressed.

The smokes should be under the counter or away from main view. Being in full view all the time doesn't help people wanting to give up.

In a world when finances are tight what better way than to quit smoking?

Robert Clark, Papamoa

Repression no myth

According to Ruth Hodgson (BOP Times November 21) everything was kapai back in her day when she attended school in Ngaruawahia. Never a thick ear or soapy mouth was dished out to Maori tamariki in schools for speaking their native tongue in the 1930s when my mother attended school. It was all just "a perpetual myth", says Ruth, an obviously educated woman.

If Ruth Hodgson believes this then she must have attended the same school as Dr Brash who also believes that the Maori language is mythical and irrelevant.

I wonder if Mrs Hodgson believes that Maori were refused the use of public toilets in Tauranga during the same time as children were physically punished in Tauranga for speaking te reo? Or 50 years prior to this 100 Maori men, woman and children were slaughtered at bayonet point at the battle of Te Ranga up on Pyes Pa Road, for no other reason than they were trying to hold on to their land, their language and their lives.

Or was all of this perpetual myth propagated by Maori like me?

T. Kapai, Te Puna

Tall poppies

My greatest fear as a Kiwi is being ashamed of my country, I took six months off work to fight my country's neglect of our young girls who had developed HER2 breast cancer and needed herceptin.

John Key, Tony Ryall, and Jackie Blue came to our rescue and supported our team which fought and fundraised. Nick Smith helped start a petition on the church steps in Nelson. John Key delivered in government the drug herceptin and saved to date 654 young kiwi girls' lives. They mostly all have kids. They mostly all have husbands and talented careers.

Watching my country's people again try and pull down our tall poppies again shames me, the attacks on John Key this week resonated with an attack on Hayley Westenra by David Sell, again the media printed a cocktail of verbal diarrhoea. I was at Hayley's concert where she showcased Chase Douglas, Chase was stunning, but the young 24-year-old from Christchurch was the star who created another. Time to grow up New Zealand.

Jeff Ryan, Papamoa

Well done BOP

All too often we hear of things that go wrong, things that upset us, and our most unfortunate experiences.

I am taking this opportunity to let you know that as organiser of a recent conference in Tauranga I had only good experiences and all those involved from your community are to be congratulated.

The team at Tourism Bay of Plenty, led by Trudi Peet were outstanding in the way they opened doors for us, guided us, made recommendations and never hesitated in dealing to our many and varied requests. The team at the Sebel Hotel were equally accommodating and helpful.

The management and staff at De Bier House, Como Cucina, Bravo, Lo Spuntino, ZaBar and Classic Flyers Museum were exemplary and a real credit to themselves and the hospitality community.

Their willingness to assist and the work they did to ensure our event was successful should stand as an example to many larger and more prominent restaurants around the country and should serve as testimony to any organisation considering Tauranga as their next conference destination.

It's been a tough year for many so if our experience can shed some good fortune on the Tauranga businesses that assisted us we are only too pleased to recommend them.

Kerry R. Tyack, Executive director NZ Juice & Beverage Association

Pension cuts

To survive financially in the world today, you must first live within your income.

This is the same for every person, firm, company or country. If you do not it is only a question of time before you will go bankrupt.

The formula is simple although it may be hard. Take net income and by zero budgeting (assuming that you have no expenses) allocate what you have available and divide it among expenses so that you will survive. This will mean that all luxury items come at the end (if there is anything left). With a country this will mean a cut in all pensions and services - too bad but it is the only way to economic survival. We will all suffer now or later.

Geoff Harmer, Tauranga

Power of positive

Re: bullying (BOP Times, November 21), given its prevalence, it's always surprised me that it's never drawn anything other than a raft of reactive, largely negative responses. Are we so conditioned by the ubiquity of violence that we cannot conceive of a community, or even a school without it?

Is our response to it to be forever governed by the rule that holds true across all species: The more toxic the environment, the more aggressive the organism? Or are we prepared to do something new that might significantly lessen that toxicity? True, that would involve an about-face in thinking.

But supposing that could be achieved, there is one solution available that's so obvious people overlook it. One well-established fact is that unacceptable behaviour is very hard to maintain if the environment in which it's manifested doesn't support it.

Applying that to bullying, and indeed to all forms of violence, the best counter would certainly be to significantly increase positivity. My own research shows we're sparse users of positive feedback - a legacy of more puritanical times? So I'd expect my suggestion to draw an immediate negative response.

But hang on a minute, there's a power of research backing it, and it would be surprisingly easy to implement and cheap to do so.

Laurie Loper, Manor Park

Action too slow

The Government and Maritime New Zealand have failed the people of the Bay Of Plenty by not by 10am on the day of the grounding having the refloating plan drafted and action under way for the right weather conditions to refloat. The office girls, boys and lawyers were likely not able to cope with the emergency, risk and danger involved.

Much missed, is the old Marine Department, staffed with experienced master mariners and chief engineers, working with ships' staff who in the past refloated many groundings.

Could it be, that the vessel going off course to ground on the reef, no interest in refloating, censorship on the site, indicates insurance ramifications?

Julian Webb, Bethlehem

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