Letters to Editor: 'list of shame'

Drink drive 'list of shame' has no use

Once again you have printed your "drink-drive list of shame" (this time for September).

What is the purpose of this special attention? The persons involved have already been dealt with by the courts.

I feel sorry for those only marginally above the legal limit. Some may have believed they were not breaking the law, and may have been perfectly capable of driving safely.

There is evidence to show that persons slightly over the legal limit are involved in less driving accidents than pure statistics would predict. This is explained by the fact that these persons take account of having had a drink, and modify their driving and attention to compensate.

Persons well over the legal limit are unlikely to be influenced by any persuasion from anti-drink driving campaigns.

So my question to the editor of Hawke's Bay Today is: "What is the purpose of your 'list of shame' and what has it achieved since you first published it?"

Edward Hamilton, Hastings

Editor's note: New Zealand's drink-driving statistics are alarming. Hawke's Bay Today, along with many other New Zealand newspapers, publishes names of those convicted of drink-driving to draw attention to the extent of the problem and to support efforts by the police to show zero tolerance no matter who is driving.

Need our own flag

I'm not sure why Giles Thorman thinks I made comparisons to the US with our flag - I did no such thing. Nor did I say that the people who like our flag don't have pride in our country - of course they do. What I'm saying is that the Union Jack prevents me and many others from feeling proud of our flag.

If our flag showed only New Zealand, then every one of us could take pride in our flag and our country. Surely the job of every nation's flag is to represent the specific country to which it belongs - not some other country on the other side of the world. That's not being anti-British - it's just wanting to show pride in New Zealand.

Removing the Union Jack doesn't delete our history - it'll still be there just as it was before. It's a shame HB Today took out my sentence about keeping our current flag to remember our history (I presume because it said about my website). I know what our flag means to some of you, which is why I'm suggesting we keep it as a commemorative flag (to fly with the new one on Anzac Day, Waitangi Day). Seeing the two flags together would actually make our history better known than it is now.

Bear in mind that Canada went through all the same arguments before changing their flag, and now most people wouldn't go back to their old one (similar to ours, only red). People think the New Zealand flag was designed specifically for us, but it wasn't. The only part of our flag that is truly ours are the red stars.

The rest of our flag (the blue and the Union Jack) are known as the British Blue Ensign of the Royal Naval Reserve, and more than 60 other countries had the exact same design but with a different thing in place of the stars. Most of them have long since had a flag that is unique to them and that gives them their own identity, without looking like they still belong to Britain. Some have become republics while remaining within the Commonwealth, while others have changed their flag and still remain part of the monarchy and the Commonwealth. The latter is what I am advocating.

Keeping the Union Jack might be fine for those who feel some affinity with it, but it's also a bit selfish when there are a lot of people for whom it means nothing.

Although I respect my long-ago British ancestry, I see the Union Jack as a symbol of Britain that belongs on their flag - not ours. Is it wrong to want a flag that simply shows New Zealand so it feels like my flag as well as yours, regardless of where we are from?

Patricia Roberts, Hastings