Letters: Government announcements, wind farms and Flying Officer Trigg

Olwyn Trigg watches on as Lawrence McBeath hangs a picture of her late brother Lloyd Trigg, who won a Victoria Cross for the exploits illustrated within the picture, during World War 2. Photo / John Stone

Letter of the week: Fine retelling of flying officer’s story

Your article about Flying Officer Trigg (“Kiwi pilot’s bravery hailed by the enemy”, Herald on Sunday, August 6) was excellent. Max Lambert is a fine journalist who, from memory, was with the NZ Press Association and wrote a similar article in the New Zealand Herald some years ago. Would it be possible for you to name the members of Trigg’s crew who went down with him? One of them was Ivan Marinovich, from Oratia, who was my godfather. The other article about Slovenia mentioned that the j in Ljubljiana was silent. Not so. The j has the same pronunciation as y in the word you. Otherwise your paper each Sunday continues to entertain and be enjoyed.

J. Radich, Red Beach

Not just Nats with promises of unicorns

Reading through Shane Te Pou’s piece in the Herald on Sunday (August 6), with his criticism over the alleged lack of detail of funding for the National Party’s election promises for modernising our decrepit roading infrastructure, one wonders just where Te Pou was in the lead-up to the 2017 election. The promises rolled out by the Labour Party, voiced primarily by their newly minted leader Jacinda Ardern: Not just a unicorn for every voter, but a herd of the little buggers! And sorry Shane, we are still waiting for them after nearly six years. We know some of those promises were unfulfillable, and at the time there must have been older and wiser heads in Labour listening to Jacinda, knowing the impossibility of some of those promises but thinking it would not be a problem as the chances of a Labour election victory seemed unlikely. But due to the vagaries of MMP and the alchemy of Winston Peters, a government was formed with one partner being there in part due to these wildly uncosted, poorly thought-out promises. So we still wait for the Auckland housing crises to be solved, child poverty to be eliminated, the Pike River mine to be entered — and can I hear that light rail train clanking to the airport?

Trevor Stevens, Pukekohe

Wise words from Prebble

The sell-off of profitable state enterprises in the 1980s was to me a backward step. Ever since then I have been a constant critic of Richard Prebble. And so his regular articles in the media have often attracted letters from me attacking the views expressed by a man who left the Labour Party and became one of the founders of the Act party. However, I was hugely impressed by an article he wrote on August 2 (Cutting GST on food is bad answer to wrong question). Like the skilled wordsmith that he is, Prebble unravelled a puzzle that most certainly would have resisted the wisdom of King Solomon. In his inimitable style, he quoted a study which showed how much tax a government can take from the taxpayers before the economy goes into recession. The percentage is 23 per cent of GDP. The powerful mandarins in Wellington who dominate Treasury thinking were unhappy with the findings and so they found a way to bury that study. It seems obvious to me now, with the vision of hindsight, that the next Government should put Prebble to work to reduce the shortsighted advice of the mandarins based in the Treasury Department. The New Zealand economy needs to be stimulated instead of being strangled. And so if Richard Prebble can influence the next Government to set taxes at a maximum of 23 per cent of GDP, our economy can match and possibly surpass the economy of Australia. That would then result in New Zealand attracting and retaining intelligent and talented people who would otherwise seek greener pastures.

Johann Nordberg, Paeroa

Govt announcements

The Labour/Green Government is making policy announcements on every day of the week ending in a “y” and delivering policy outcomes every day of the week ending in a “z”. Shouldn’t all Labour/Green policies yet to be announced be prefixed with “if we get back into Government”? Because time has run out on them to achieve anything. The 18 per cent protection of the Hauraki Gulf recently announced will not happen because Labour/Greens cannot get the legislation through Parliament before the election. A cynical and fishy announcement demonstrating six years of doing nothing.

Gary Carter, Gulf Harbour

Wind farm negatives

Meridian Energy appears to extol the virtues of its wind farms by having them supposedly lazily spinning in the background of its TV advertisements and on its website. However, wind farm electricity generation may make the company feel good about it being to the forefront of saving the planet from carbon emission-generated electricity but is this really the case? Is this at the cost of causing other environmental problems? Apart from being aesthetically unappealing in a country that prides itself on its beautiful scenery, has the company thought about the centuries old migratory routes of birds, such as terns, gannets and dotterels, that don’t alter to avoid wind farms, setting up collisions with turbine blades? Then there are the virtually unseen impacts on insects in the area. Studies have also shown there is a social and psychological impact on people living in close proximity due to the noise and vibrations generated by wind farms. And has Meridian considered the end-of-life disposal of the components of wind farms which have composite materials made of carbon fibres, epoxy resins which are difficult to recycle? Is the company, in its efforts to save the planet from climate change, inadvertently causing environmental problems both now and in the future? A search of its website would show that the above questions have not been addressed.

Bernard Walker, Pāpāmoa

China vs United States

We are constantly being pressured to recognise the danger China poses in our area. But it’s interesting to see there are no Chinese bases around the US and no Chinese warships in the Gulf of Mexico or cruising off the New York or California coast with middle finger raised. America has bases and warships all around the world, many with nuclear weapons, constantly goading China to react. In the same way, the Americans have surrounded Russia with support for Nato forces. Also we have a fantastic free trade deal with China, something the US will never give us due to its selfish farming lobby. We should be very careful who we side with in this ever-escalating conflict.

Vince West, Milford

Ideas not idols

It is time to be “absolutely” honest about the situation Chris Hipkins finds himself in. The “fairy dust” that our previous celebrity Prime Minister surrounded herself with lured too many people to believe blindly that all was more than well with the Labour Government. It disguised the lack of any real progress by them and heightened the emotional level at which people adored their leader. When the “dust” began to settle, the new leader was left with enormous problems to deal with, not only for the country but within his own party as well. Politics should be about policies for the good of all not just for the most vocal of interest groups. Also for the political party not the personality of the leader. Let’s focus on ideas not idols.

Christine McNamara, Wellington