When removing the Auckland surcharge, the average price would be $2.60/ltr about the same price as Gull situated approximately 40 minutes north of Taupō( ruling out any transport defence).
Assuming people fill every fortnight at an average of 60 litres, this equates to an additional $20 per person! Although it’s not large individually, when based on the approximate three months Gull has been closed and 10,000 fills per week, this equates to approximately $2.6 million ripped from Napier’s economy when we are already struggling since Cyclone Gabrielle.
I now fill up when in Hastings and advise others in Napier to do the same.
Mark Browne, Greenmeadows
Swarbrick should apologise
Green Party MP Chloe Swarbrick showed her total lack of sensibility at a recent rally in Auckland by cheerleading the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”. To free Palestine from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea means forcibly driving the Jews out of Israel. But in that land the Jews are, in my opinion, the tangata whenua, having first settled there almost 4000 years ago.
However, when called out for leading this abhorrent mantra Swarbrick tried to deflect criticism by claiming the words are “used worldwide by peace activists”.
Surely a classic oxymoron given the impossibility of applying the word “peace” to any activist group crusading for the death of the Jewish nation.
But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. She saw an opportunity to build some political capital with the protester class who are her constituents and simply parroted a rabble-rousing slogan without thinking about the reality of what she was advocating.
Just apologise Chloe and we can all forget about it.
John Denton, Eskdale
A night of cabaret
Gee, is it 60 years since we all trooped off to cabarets, dressed to the nines in long frocks and long white gloves, the fellas in tux? … Sigh. They were such elegant times.
Theatre HB has stepped back nicely, to the 1960s, with a loving tribute to “Ol’ Blue Eyes”(so many of us were secretly in love with that ratbag!), Sinatra. What a wonderful expression of an era now gone - all his favourite songs, sung by three real artists, beautifully dressed, and accompanied on stage by, right in front of us, a swinging six-piece real live jazz band. Such a surprise when usually the musical accompanists are out of sight, hiding under the stage!
It isn’t a long show - there is no interval, so it swings along from one item to another, snappy and toe-tapping. There were some marvellous numbers that made one long to get up and have a real quickstep, right there and then!
My absolute favourite was “Jimmy” belting out Mack the Knife, which was a real hand-clapping one. Twenty real Sinatra (and 60s) favourites - a wonderful way to sit down in comfort without irritating ads, and to lose oneself in a charming era we (seniors now) know is hard to find these days.
Well done, Theatre HB. Two more shows to go (Friday night and Saturday night) so get out there and have a night away from the 21st century!
Barbi Speers, Hastings
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