A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
The first letter to the editor received through our new website yesterday was from a regular correspondent over recent years, signing off because he feels other contributors have been intolerant and attacked people for their opinions with impunity.
His letter arrived late morning, ironically just as the new site
was taking over our web address and in the process wiped all the online comment trails of the past five years. These discussions, which often get heated as people with diametrically opposing views bang heads, will have included much of the rhetoric he has decided he can no longer stomach. Effectively the slate is suddenly clean . . .
Your editor believes open debate is important and does allow a fairly free rein in comments, except where people try to base arguments around false, harmful or disingenuous claims. Those who doubt human involvement in climate change, against the overwhelming scientific evidence, tend to be most aggrieved about restrictions on what they can say in The Gisborne Herald.
The world is changing fast in more ways than the weather and climate, and our correspondent signing off today has often written in expressing bewilderment at societal transformations, normally in a gentle and self-deprecating way. Occasionally he has copped more criticism — for views that are widely held, especially among our older citizens — than he deserved.
Recent years have seen a sharp rise in power globally of two opposing political wings, that have fed off hatred for each other: the Trumpian right, and as classic liberal champion the Economist put it in a 2021 leader, an illiberal progressive left “sure real progress is possible only after they have first seen to it that racial, sexual and other hierarchies are dismantled”.
