The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Below you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.
TODAY'S LETTERS
Right turn bank-up asking for trouble
I also have an issue with the turning lights on Fraser Ave when travelling from Fraser Cove to turn right at 15th Ave.
Traffic banks up, particularly at rush hours, and can often take up to five light changes before being able to turn.
I don't blame any impatient drivers who turn anyway through the red light, but an accident is only another impatient driver away.
Pat Maindonald,Ohauiti
Sex safeguard
Concerning "Religious zealots would deny children right to essential sex education" (Comment, March 12), I would like to point out that evangelical Christians do not have weird attitudes to sex as has been suggested.
They certainly should be allowed influence over sex education for children.
Children should enjoy their childhood without thinking about sex.
When they become teenagers the sex education they receive should not encourage them to live promiscuous lives but should teach them to abstain from sex until marriage.
So many young people ruin their lives by self-indulgence leading to abortions, sexual disease, damaged emotions and lifetime regrets.
God created us not for self-indulgence but for productive lives.
Young people should save themselves for marriage and then be faithful and loyal to that commitment. Children can then be brought up in homes where the mother and father love each other and love their children. Why should anyone object to that?
Kath Howan, Ohauiti
Excuse rejected
I am concerned with the Tauranga City Council's varying reactions to similar situations in regards to the slowly deteriorating CBD.
They are prepared to throw about $30 million of ratepayers' money to turn The Strand carpark, a vital area for the profitability of the CBD, into a public recreation reserve - which would also become the most dangerous park in the country with the sea on one side and a railway line on the other - but at the same time will not allow the customers of the CBD monitored free parking.
That free parking is essential for businesses to be able to compete with all the other shopping centres throughout the city.
The city council is using the excuse that they do not want to lumber the ratepayers with more costs.
Obviously the viability of the businesses is not as important as the pleasure of the few people who can find a parking spot with enough allowable time given to be able to utilise The Strand park for picnics or public events.
A Campbell, Papamoa
Art and alarms
I totally agree with the Bay of Plenty Times piece regarding siren installation (Our View, March 15).
This elected member largely chose to support a "plug-in" alarm system, based on what has transpired to be insufficient and inaccurate advice, moving away from sirens for the same reason.
This experience emphasises the need for those elected to represent us to carry out research independent of staff and their chosen consultants, and perhaps take more cognisance of their own instinct and common sense.
If we can afford to spend $800,000 a year to manage an art gallery it seems offensive to suggest we cannot afford to install and maintain a reasonably effective natural disaster warning system, in particular along our coastal strip and inner harbour.
Councillor Murray Guy, Pyes Pa
Time for action
I am one of the 35,000 people living in the Mount/Papamoa area, and it is pleasing to see that you and your columnist Richard Moore (Straight Talk, March 15), have taken up the challenge to try to get our council and Civil Defence to stop dilly-dallying concerning a tsunami warning system, in view of the disaster in Japan.
I wrote to your paper some months ago expressing concern.
The only thing that has happened since then is that the siren system has been scrapped and some sort of remote-controlled idea dreamed up. No thought has been given to creating another way of getting out of the area, even though a motorway is planned from Te Maunga. I would like to suggest a cost-effective and easy system.
What would be wrong with Civil Defence buying two good sirens, as used on fire engines for example, and mounting them permanently beneath the rescue helicopter? If and when the balloon goes up, it could be flown along the coast a couple of times at a fairly low level from the Mount to Papamoa East.
I would think this would be quite effective. It could be tried out in the early hours one morning - if there were 35,000 complaints about the noise at least we would know it worked.
(Abridged)
Gordon Peterken, Papamoa
Let's look ahead
I heartily endorse the letters written by Bonnie Leonard and Roger Bailey last week that we need to celebrate simply being New Zealanders instead of Waitangi Day being an occasion always earmarked by ugly protests.
I very much admire a well-respected Maori leader in Tauranga who told me he has traced his English ancestry back to 13th-century Wiltshire. The polar opposite is the Moby Dick of activists, Hone Harawira. I had a look at his website and see that he lists only his Maori heritage, with not a sausage about his obvious European heritage.
Tommy Kapai, to his credit, acknowledges that it is time to ditch the blame game. The arrival of Europeans cannot have been too bad as so many of those early Maori families allowed their children to inter-marry.
So let us continue to be stirred by the haka but also by the Highland dance, Irish jig, Dalmatian kola, and English morris dancing.
And there are Dutch tulips, Indian saris and Asian technology.
All these are symbols that make up a multicultural New Zealand and that is what we should be celebrating.
If Kapai can say kaput, why not the rest of those who continually bleat despite the ongoing payments to them by way of Treaty settlements?
It is time to stop looking backwards to 1840, do a 180-degree turn and look forward to 2040.
(Abridged)
Robin Bishop, Pyes Pa
Text Views
* Re waitangi day /bonnie leonard. We r pakeha frm england, studied te reo at te wananga and were welcomed in2 "te wa" whanau, on waitangi day in 2010, my husband was joining in a haka with nzrn kapa haka grp, consisted of maori & pakeha, adhering to 1 of the 3 p's unda treaty of waitangi, that is partnership not to mnxn participation. He tangata,he tangata,he tangata. Kia ora. Gregory whanau, welcome bay.
* Im sick of sharing bus stop with boozers at 14th ave. Is it legal. Its disgusting. I wish they wouid take their grog outside police station asthey thought it was ok when i complained 2 them
* Very sad for christchurch but what luck for Tauranga. The NZ Surf livesaving champs on our great beach.
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