Letters To Editor: 26/04/11z

Food prices getting ridiculous
Is this Government kidding? I went to the supermarket to get a loaf of bread and two litres of milk - $11 that's nearly one hour's work.
Prices go up on everything, that's fine, I get that, this is the way the world works. But wages stay the same and the Government just turns a blind eye. The poor are just getting poorer and this Government wonders why more people are going across the ditch or turning to crime.
The other night on a police show, they wanted help to fined two "hoodlums" who stole bread from a supermarket. Are you kidding? They are just trying to feed their family. I don't agree with people stealing but this is what it is coming to, and I can't stand watching it.
Meanwhile, the Government cruise around in their new BMWs and claim accommodation allowance. T
ALIA HOHUA Hastings
Poor form
Concerns have been expressed re the storage of archives in the basement level of the proposed Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery.
I wrote to the director some weeks ago and he seems to be satisfied the collection is not at risk from a tsunami. He would not say why.
The chief executive of Napier City Council, Neil Taylor, believes that a tsunami event in Napier is a 500-year occurrence. I would not be as confident to gamble our treasures on a statistical probability.
To me, it makes sense not to store them in a basement in the first place, but somewhere of lower risk. And as was mentioned in the article, it is not a new concern of storing the archives in a waterfront basement.
My other issue, which I have raised before, is the closure of the Berry Library at the museum until 2013. It is a pity that the museum's board has not insisted, and the management is unable, for whatever reason, to plan how to keep a skeleton library service open.
The Napier Public Library could easily have housed the photo and book collection, which used to fit into a modest room. Poor form, Hawke's Bay Museum and Art Gallery.
MICHAEL FOWLER Havelock North
Juicy fees
I agree with Philip Ward (Letters, April 14) that the investment company proposed by the Hawke's Bay Regional Council is not in the best interest of the ratepayers.
As Mr Ward says, it is to give the council powers to do what they please with our money. In other words, they want to play Monopoly with the ratepayers' money. They were elected to run the affairs of the council and not to set up financial empires.
What is even worse, this proposal is a blatant attempt to get paid twice for doing their elected duties. They are well rewarded for being council members, some of us would think too well, without adding juicy directors' fees. Of course, they are not to only ones trying to get a slice of the cake. The chamber of commerce is lobbying for their members to be directors as well.
The profits of the Port and other investments should benefit the ratepayer and not regional councillors or any other fat cats.Sid McCannNapierMeans of redressI read with mixed feelings John Denton's concerns regarding unionism, the new labour laws and democracy. (Letters, April 16).
Perhaps the writer was not aware that the Employment Contracts Act was introduced in 1991 by the Bolger administration, which ended compulsory union membership.
Ruth Richardson's "Mont Pelerinist" philosophies were employed to increase jobs, lift productivity and therefore GDP and in 1997 Australia, buoyed on by right-wing propaganda, tried to replicate the New Zealand initiative, but failed.
Empirical evidence during the following 10 years does not support the economic benefits which were supposed to accrue from the introduction of the act.
Paradoxically, large and small New Zealand businesses pulled up stakes in droves to set up across the Tasman, where highly organised unionism was among the strongest in the free world and most certainly in the OECD, and where many of those same companies, which had the opportunity of cheaper and unfettered, contracted labour in New Zealand, chose to operate and subsequently prosper in Australia.
I am by no means a union supporter, nor am I a fan of contracted labour, but I do know that during my years of hiring and firing, I would have deemed myself to be a complete failure in business if I could not have sorted out my labour requirements without the assistance of a draconian and unnecessary 90-day probationary clause. Anyone so inept should not be in business.
People like Mr Denton, who sounds like a typical libertarian, should realise that there will always be those who sometimes - well-educated or not, through no fault of their own - will be in the lower socio-economic ranks of humanity and that those who bay for blood in trying to achieve a laissez faire, libertarian existence are nothing less than right-wing Marxists.
In the face of such an onslaught over the ensuing years since 1991, income and the repressed right to earn a liveable wage has resulted in deprivation in functional illiteracy, social exclusion, crime, health and mortality.
Collectivism is, therefore, the only means of redress that the poor can apply in their claims for a better slice of the country's wealth, which they helped create in accepting minimum wages, but when they are expected to pay world prices, we should not be surprised if they want to stand together for a better deal.
Meanwhile, our blinkered and dishonest politicians reward themselves with huge tax cuts and purchase an opulent fleet of BMW limousines while slashing and wrecking the tents and the hopes of the poor and unfortunate, instead of trying to find real solutions.
It is when people have had enough that they take to the streets and take what they demand as a right to live in a true democracy and not a partial one, as has been witnessed in Libya and Egypt, and our own progressively strident administration should be mindful of this.
Whether from a green and pleasant meadow, beside a picturesque lake or from a stinking, filthy, excrement-contaminated place, the view of the horizon looks the same.
I would suggest that we each take a moment to cast our gaze downward once in a while, to see if we can recognise which faces or necks we are trampling on.
KEN R TAYLOR Hastings