Supporting the right to choose is fundamental to parents, irrespective of Destiny Church’s morality. Supporting our rights to choose our sensuality is a fundamental now ensconced in law.
Supporting the fundamental rights of the gay spectrum is far more important than the right to protest - especially if it is intimidating to others’ freedom of expression.
Intimidatory behaviour is not us, illegally patched or not.
Steve Russell, Hillcrest.
Ailing rugby
It seems that every day there’s a new “crisis” in NZ Rugby’s world.
With Ineos pulling their funding, among other reasons, there will be a $60 million deficit next year. The crisis has little to do with lack of funding; it’s the lack of interest in rugby among its fans.
There’s more enticement for players to join other more vibrant, exciting and higher-paying sports. Football, league and AFL, in our Australasian community, offer a great deal more variety and appeal for those who spend their money on them.
These three sports are more attractive in a world which demands action, speed and skill throughout the entire game. They make rugby look positively pedestrian. In an 80-minute game of rugby, with stoppages for scrums and lineouts and grinding rucks and mauls, anything over 15 minutes of actual running time is regarded as a great game.
The chance of serious injury is also much higher in this game than the other three codes combined, as ACC and hospital records can verify, and detrimental long-term effects are more noticeable now.
Rugby in New Zealand has a long and proud history. It’s becoming increasingly apparent that’s where this game belongs now. At the very least, as a winter sport, the season shouldn’t run from February to October as it does now. It’s overkill and becomes boring as a result.
Chariot racing and fox tossing were very popular in their day, but both are now extinct. The time is near to blow the final whistle.
We can’t afford the costs, financial and human, much longer.
Jeremy Coleman, Hillpark.
Govt spending
I appreciate correspondent Cheryl Clarke’s “Working from home” question and personal experience as a public servant (HoS, Feb 16).
I accept that a quieter work environment at home can be more productive than a noisy office. New Zealand’s public servant problems are an increase of nearly 40% in staff numbers since 2017, without a compensatory improvement in effective output.
Individual public servants are no doubt working hard on various projects, but the Government is not either directing the right projects or implementing the right projects.
Wellington’s “Golden Mile” could no doubt be paved with unread, unused public service reports. The result is excess expenditure on shelved projects with no beneficial gain, which the country cannot afford.
I also think Parliament should be resized to 70 MPs from the current 123. New Zealand cannot afford the current level of government spending and must make the appropriate cuts.
Gary Carter, Gulf Harbour.
Taking a pasting
As a family, we were enthralled by Jane Phare’s article about her assessment of the quality (or lack of) in Griffin’s Chocolate Sultana Pasties (HoS, Feb 16).
I have had an obsession with this biscuit in the past (many years). If a packet(s) were purchased by the family on shopping day, they would deliberately hide them from me. Of course, I would seek and find, I’m that good.
Once I opened a packet of Sultana Pasties, I would selfishly, over the course of only one day, devour the entire pack (I’m not overweight per se, which is miraculous).
Now Phare has clarified why I have been so continually disappointed about this “historical and timeless product” and why it has lost the power of attraction for my taste buds. It’s dead in the water.
My family has been told specifically by me: “Please don’t buy any more of this ‘fake biscuit’.”
That is my epitaph for the sad passing of what used to be a pleasurable experience but now is lost and is no more. Life must go now on without our beloved “original recipe” Sultana Pasties.
In time, I will heal. But for myself (and perhaps others), the memory of being together will be forever frozen in time. RSVP.
Stevan Tipene M.J. Sharples, Hamilton.
Feeling perky
Apparently, the New Zealand Cadbury banana chocolate bar Perky Nana has returned to UK supermarket shelves to a mixed reception, with apparently many Brits showing an abhorrent disgust with the confection.
However, we in New Zealand should not feel alarmed at this apparent lack of positive culinary insight. Research shows that the Brits have hardly been great connoisseurs of things edible.
There is black pudding, a sausage made of pigs’ blood and oats. Is this really a “pudding” and why would anyone even want to eat something with ingredients that sound and look gross?
Then there is Spotted Dick. Surely the name would turn anyone off. Bread and dripping is a slice of bread drowned in cold beef fat, which should come with a health warning. Pork scratchings are deep-fried pig skin, which should advise you to make an appointment with your dentist before indulging as they are so tough they are capable of breaking your teeth.
A chip butty is two slices of buttered white bread filled with chips that would seem to have no nutritional value whatsoever.
It would appear that a Perky Nana chocolate bar, whose only crime is to be filled with gooey banana substitute, should fit in well with the dietary requirements of any Brit.
Bernard Walker, Mt Maunganui.
