Fries with that? National leader Christopher Luxon on the drive-thru. Photo / Pierre Nixon
What a delightful collection of Shakespearian irony in Claire Trevett’s Beehive Diaries (Herald on Sunday, October 23) “Winter of her discontent”.
Could there be more rich material in Shakespeare for our PM? “The Lady doth protest too much, methinks?”
“To do a great right, do little wrong”, “Much ado about nothing”, “Comedy of errors”, “To be or not to be”, “The Tempest” — a passionate fight over something that is in fact fairly trivial.
Or maybe “Beware the ides of election year” (apologies to Shakespeare).
Gary Carter, Gulf Harbour
Letters to HoS (October 23) quote various views of our primary industries that illustrate a lack of knowledge of modern farming practice.
Tom O’Toole and Michael Walker assume food prices will increase as a result of the methane tax on our farmers.
While this will impact the cost of production, that cost will be borne by the farmer with no guaranteed pay-out rise.
Product price is set by the global market. Our primary producers are price takers, not setters, and this dictates local prices. Keep in mind 95 per cent of product is exported and only 5 per cent consumed locally.
O’Toole also claims farmers agreed to the scheme. The final draft from the Government had crucial alterations to what was agreed.
J McCormick unjustly offers no credit to farmers who, at their own expense have fenced and planted many hundreds of kilometres of riparian land in recent years.
Gary Hollis is critical of investment in modern machinery. The latest equipment, technology and innovation keeps our industry at the leading edge of efficiency in production and emissions.
George Williams, Whangamatā
Creative maths on cars
Alan Gray (Letters, October 23) is to be congratulated on his creative maths. Nice try! The formula he is searching for is, of course, 9000 people x two thirds of a car = 6000 vehicles, not 18000. Unless, that is, he is certain two out of three residents will each own two cars and can drive them simultaneously, giving 12000 vehicles.
Richard Quatermass, Muriwai Beach
Luxon photo hypocrisy
It beggars belief that Christopher Luxon would seek out a photo op with McDonalds’ workers in Christchurch the day after the Fair Pay Agreement was signed. National and Act fought tooth and nail to prevent this legislation.
The FPA ensures that people at the lowest rates of pay like McDonalds workers, cleaners, bus drivers and others get a fair go and prevent the “race to the bottom”. And here the Leader of the Opposition parades before the cameras as some sort of benevolent promoter of these workers’ plight, working alongside them. Breathtaking hypocrisy.
Diana Walford, Greenlane
Niue perfect for Mallard
So Trevor Mallard has been exiled to Ireland, wouldn’t it have been cheaper and safer to send him to Niue?
Neville Cameron, Coromandel
Farmers frustrated
Farmers are frustrated. Frustrated that the trees and hedges they have planted can’t go against the carbon produced on their farms including riparian plantings along streams etc. They get frustrated at being blamed for the price of dairy and meat but only receive a small percentage of the price that everyone pays. Eg: $6.80 per kg for all the meat on an animal.
How dear is the cheapest cut of supermarket meat? Someone else is getting a big chunk of the pie. No wonder farms are being sold to a foreign outfit who will plant it in pines. Many of these farms are not for forestry but carbon sink. (Never to be harvested).
Farmers are frustrated with a Government that dislikes them, though is happy for them to earn a chunk of our overseas funds, but keeps bureaucratic garbage coming to frustrate them.
Good luck when you buy your meat one day and its imported from a country that doesn’t care about the environment, food safety, animal welfare or you.
Bruce Turner, Cambridge
Airport embarrassment
Wake up, Auckland Airport!
If tourism is expected to revert to its position as one of the most important contributors to the economy now that Covid-19 is no restraint, then the country’s biggest airport needs to jack itself up big time.
We returned to New Zealand after a month in South Africa on the Qatar Airways flight that arrived at 00:45 on Sunday. What a shocking and embarrassing experience!
Six other international arrivals presented around the same time so those hundreds of people and their baggage needed processing.
We disembarked at 01:02 and finally cleared through Customs at 03:30! Two and a half hours later! We heard people on cellphones telling family or friends simply not to bother if that debacle was indicative of the New Zealand experience.
Four Customs kiosks open. It wasn’t as if those six flights arrived unannounced. No short-term parking, no place open to grab a coffee for those waiting for passengers. What a disastrous advert for Aotearoa. I’m embarrassed. Sort this mess out.
M Cartwright, Whangaparāoa
Bennett on bandwagon
Paula Bennett, like a lot of people, makes the usual sweeping generalisations about youth crime. Children may be told their “rights”, but those telling them are generally wrong or, in the case of gang recruiters, have their own agenda in glamourising crime.
Given that ram-raider arrests are on the increase, I’ll bet those young miscreants before the court are learning the hard way just how seriously the police take this behaviour.
For the record, the Government is not responsible for the way children are raised. Judges hand down the sentences, and for the most part are using the same sentencing guidelines that were around when Bennett was in government.
John Capener, Kawerau
Protest inconsistency
National Party transport spokesman Simeon Brown needs to talk to his boss Christopher Luxon and mate David Seymour (Act) to decide when a protest is approachable without looking hypocritical.
He made a gleeful point of order over rail protesters holding up traffic, stating, “I don’t think it’s appropriate we listen to them while they are breaking the law”.
His boss and their bedfellows, however, had previously waded into a mob of misinformed protesters for a chat as they stood outside Parliament, blocking traffic and pedestrian movement for two weeks.
These protesters, full of misinformation gained online, were standing against the Labour Government’s regulations put in place to save as many lives as they could.
Hopefully, we all noted the misjudged approach by Luxon and Seymour as simply vote gathering at the expense of our health, and the move by the excitable Simeon as sanctimoniously similar.
Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead
Flawed emissions mission
A reason given for Jacinda Ardern’s visit to Antarctica was to highlight climate change. I would have thought the journey there and back, with something like two to three litres of carbon emissions thrust into the atmosphere every second on the trip, is why we have a climate-change problem.
Gary Hollis, Mellons Bay
