Well done Caitlin
I wish to congratulate teenager Caitlin Rose Johnson for her feature 'It doesn't need to be like this' (September 6).
It is good that we speak up and be counted on things like suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence, child abuse and much more.
The above affect people of all ages when it happens to our families or to our friends.
Sadly, the above is happening far too often, and I believe will increase in the years to come as more financial and emotional pressures are brought to bear by central and local government and their wealthy buddies.
Just think of the $26 million wasted on a flag debate, or the millions of dollars of sponsorship for the New Zealand Olympic team to Rio, with further money going to waste elsewhere.
We are living in 2016, not 1916 to 1945 amidst the first world war, the Depression years and the second world war, so something is really wrong with our present day system that we do not have the money for research into poverty, of those willing to work mental house housing, policing, suicide and much more, at a time when our New Zealand rich list keeps growing year after year with greater fortunes.
As the years go by fewer and fewer people are able to give freely of their time, as they need to work themselves to make ends meet.
These wonderful people once saved the government many millions of dollars a year, so now we have many people falling through the large cracks that the government has created.
What about education for our young? It appears to be also in disarray, either that or our forebears, who were the pioneers of New Zealand, must have been very dumb, yet they built a great nation which New Zealand once was, through some of history's hardest times, even with the loss of many young men, who died or were badly wounded in WWI and WWII, along with the tens of thousands of young men who were overseas for many years, serving in the army, navy and air force.
And the women too, who served in the forces, Red Cross, and those at home, providing a few home comforts to our men on the battlefields.
We remember Anzac Day, but the losses at the Somme and Passchendaele are very vague, yet our largest death tolls and those wounded.
I say politics is to blame for our present problems in New Zealand. Will it right itself? I say no.
Promises shall be made in the upcoming local body elections, and next year in the general central government elections, of great times ahead. Yes, it will be for the wealthy, but not those at the bottom.
So I can see an increase in suicide from sadness, depression, hopelessness, emptiness and failure, plus more.
JOHN BASSETT
Diggers' Valley