Letters: Leave Western Springs Stadium untouched; higher speed zones don’t defeat traffic

Western Springs Stadium is the home of the speedway and the Ponsonby Rugby Football Club. Photo / Jason Dorday

Hands off Western Springs Stadium

Once again, the bureaucratic elite within Auckland Council are determined to “do what they want” and ignore both the wishes of the public (who pay their salaries) and common sense (Weekend Herald, July 6).

Western Springs Stadium is currently used for precisely what the public and the ratepayers need: playing grounds for children, adults and family sports and a wonderful, indeed natural, amphitheatre for a motorsport/speedway venue that has stood the test of time – despite new residents moving into the area and demanding that the world change to satisfy their new needs.

Now another “new” entity from the council is agitating to force a change of use of an existing and simply wonderful public amenity.

That is not what ratepayers expect of their council or the seemingly obsessed bureaucratic elite who simply cannot accept that no one outside their ivory towers agrees with them or wants these changes.

To the local residents who have bought in the area and are unhappy – move!

To the bureaucratic “elite”, please get used to the idea that your ideas are simply not valid and ignore the needs and wants of the community and of ratepayers.

Western Springs should stay a famous rugby club’s home grounds and a venue for concerts and speedway and cricket and families and Polynesian festivals and food festivals.

To Mayor Wayne Brown, please kill this simply stupid process and decision and let us know now that this madness will stop. We are all sick of council officers dictating to their masters all these unnecessary and unwanted “improvements” – they are ruining Auckland.

Roger Hawkins, Herne Bay.

Speed claims

The Minister of Transport claims that reduced speed limits in our cities are increasing travel times and detrimentally affecting businesses.

I assume that as a Cabinet minister, he has evidence to prove these claims. My travel times are determined almost exclusively by the number of vehicles on the road and I regularly notice that vehicles travelling faster than I invariably are stopped by the next set of traffic lights.

Since most journeys in the cities are less than about 30km, any increase in the speed limit would have only a small effect on travel time. As for businesses, Simeon Brown is a member of a party than prides itself on its business and economic acumen.

It should not be too difficult to produce evidence to correlate journey times and business prosperity.

Greg Cave, Sunnyvale.

Gangs and rights

The suggestion that gangs should have rights which may adversely affect law-abiding citizens flies in the face of common sense.

The level of violence and drug trafficking known to be carried out by gang members is disproportionate to their numbers. Any steps taken to limit their activities must be of benefit to the majority of the population.

The presence of gang members in numbers wearing patches is intimidating and interferes with the rights of others to feel safe when going about their business. The Bill of Rights is intended to ensure the legal rights of the majority of New Zealanders are not destroyed by minority claims.

Western Australia has successfully imposed restrictions on gangs in the interests of its people without any woke claims the activities of gang members should take precedence.

Janie Weir, Newmarket.

Cronyism concerns

It’s becoming clearer by the day that the agenda of this Government is to fill the top positions in the public service with its friends from the private sector.

Unjustified sackings of highly skilled incumbents is a brutal and cynical strategy. Vested interests seem to be driving the process.

If Sir Bill English or his family company Impact Lab get to “review” everything from Kāinga Ora to Gumboot Fridays, we should not be surprised if their findings overwhelmingly favour the private sector.

The question we should be asking is: why are we tolerating this sort of outrageous cronyism?

Vivien Fergusson, Mt Eden.

Bombed kicking

When I played rugby as a youth, I was taught that a “Garryowen” was a very high kick with a deliberately long time in flight rather than pure distance, named after the Welsh rugby club.

It was designed to put the opposing team under pressure by allowing the kicking team time to arrive under and compete for the high ball, thus providing a better opportunity to score or at least retain possession.

In Saturday night’s game against England, New Zealand regularly kicked the ball ahead directly to an England player, thereby giving the opposition possession and an opportunity to mount an attack of their own.

Surely when you have possession, you have a chance to score; when you give it away, you do not. But then who am I to tell the ABs how to play the game?

Gerald Payman, Mount Albert.

Close shave

Probably somewhat fortunate the England kicker had more of an off night than our kicker in Dunedin on Saturday night. At least our head coach escaped the term “disposable razor” after his first close shave.

Glenn Forsyth, Taupō.