Letters: Performance-enhancing drugs, wild children, and where are the buses?

How can a commuter make her trips without the 856? Photo / Sylvie Whinray

Letter of the week: Such a fuss when there’s no sign of a bus

So the public transport services may be axed further? I’d like to share my experience — and that of many other commuters. It was a gloomy afternoon with rush hour just ahead. My bus was due and I was weary — ready for my bed. I thought about the evening’s chores and things I had to fix. As other buses glided by... but not the 856. Then more arrived with headlights on and parked along the lines. Disgorged their passengers and left — with “not in service” signs. No sign of mine and well past time. Now I was in a fix. As five more buses came and went — but not the 856. No auto-sign with timetables — at least there was a seat. I watched two double-deckers pass and never miss a beat. And still more buses came and went but how was I to know if mine would suddenly appear? Should I now stay or go? It was a dreary afternoon and I was in a fix. The other buses came and went — but not the 856. Jo Bowler, Torbay

Robertson’s drug use a ‘tragedy’

While never condoning Zane Robertson’s use of performance-enhancing drugs, this is a tragedy on many levels. Robertson went to Kenya with his twin brother, as a 17-year-old, to live and train in an environment that included the best runners in the world in the hope that he would too, become the best by association. The sacrifice this entailed has now been rendered useless. Robertson has represented New Zealand twice at the Olympics and he is a Commonwealth Games bronze medallist. These rare achievements will no longer be acknowledged. He has the best times of a New Zealander over the marathon and half marathon. These times are now suspect. He has tainted his own name and his brother’s name and New Zealand athletics in general. Could all this have been avoided? He states in some sort of mitigation that he was frustrated at the knowledge that he was competing against runners who were known drug cheats and that this meant there was no level playing field. Taking drugs is a crime in sport and rightly so. In society, crime is reported and due process carried out. Is the same process available to sports people? If not, why not? If there is, why didn’t Robertson go through this process, as he admits he knew of other athletes taking drugs? Too many questions, not enough answers. Bernard Walker, Papamoa

Rugby’s ‘alarming brutality’

It is only early in the season and the number of seriously injured players is alarming, despite all the new tackling height rules that were supposed to reduce the number of injuries. The sheer physical brutality of rugby is now alarming and must somehow be reduced if rugby is to survive, as no one will want to play it for fear of serious injury. One way to improve the game would be to reduce the number of players to 13, which would create more space. Another move would be to reduce the number of replacement players to a maximum of four. This would mean the forwards would have to downsize to last a full game, which would see the demise of 135kg-plus forwards. Something has to happen for rugby to survive in the future. Jock MacVicar, Hauraki

Are wild-child parents exempt?

A word on children who run wild, and the Government is expected to act as proxy parent: Are fathers and mothers of these children exempt from parenting? They should be held responsible for the behaviour of their young children, at all times. Peter McKenna, Taupō

Read the tea leaves, Nats

Two Herald on Sunday articles (March 19) stand out: The Beehive Diaries and Thomas Coughlan, who must be journalist of the moment; and on the same subject, Shane Te Pou, who has captured the pain of National’s leadership woes on who might replace Luxon. The problem for National is deeper rooted in old misguided beliefs that National will not put out policy until closer to the election as others might steal it. It seems like ex-president Peter Goodfellow is still interfering as National are unable to move on to current-day relevance. Luxon is not leading, voters are not following, so a leadership change is inevitable. The preference now is Nicola Willis as leader, Chris Bishop as deputy but, as Shane Te Pou points out, there are other talented possibilities in Shane Reti and the very personable and professional Erica Stanford, whose time will surely come, at some point. National should be soaring while Labour have the “Nashi Stumbles” and the Greens plot which shade of grey is best for their social conscience stand, forgetting about real green issues like forestry slash. Time to read the tea leaves, National. Gary Carter, Gulf Harbour

Fear of funding flip-flop

I agree totally with the Herald on Sunday (March 19) letter Teacher’s poor timing by Bernard Walker. The teachers knew what they were getting themselves into when they took up the career. Sorry, you have to front classrooms between your holiday breaks. Here is a paragraph out of a mainstream media outlet from a striking school teacher — over to you to decide if they are concerned for the children or themselves. “If a pay offer could be secured, it might gird against a potential National-led government that could be hostile to their concerns.” I think the Labour Party had to clear up the mess of the National Party, national standards and things like that, and that’s taken a long time. So now all this hard work we’re doing, the fear is National will get elected back in, and they’ll take away all the hard work, or we won’t get funding, they’ll take the funding off us. Sarron Bennett, Randwick Park

Why is Russian embassy open?

It was always expected that this Government, with Chris Hipkins at the helm, would harden its foreign policy, and that the pro-Russian sentiment would wane. One expected that images of Peeni Henare presenting a Māori mere to the Ukrainian Defence Minister would be a thing of the past ... and that the Russian ambassador would be summoned by the PM, or, at the very least, the Foreign Minister and asked to leave the relative comforts of Wellington. This becomes even more relevant since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin for war crimes. Putin is only the third serving president to have been issued an ICC arrest warrant. The others were Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi and Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir. While the New Zealand Foreign Minister has acknowledged that Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine “has caused thousands of deaths, a massive humanitarian crisis and immense suffering”, she has not seen fit to personally deliver the country’s condemnation to the ambassador or expel him from the country. It is reasonable to ask why the Russian embassy is allowed to remain open? Chris Parker, Campbells Bay

Fuelling the deficit argument

So we now have the largest ever current account deficit since records began. The biggest single cost to this country is motor fuel. Ironic to think we bring this into the country and then promptly burn it to power ever bigger SUV monsters invariably carrying the driver only. While we burn this fuel we add to the ever-increasing CO2 emissions and pollution of the air we all breathe. Transport by private vehicle continues to be so cheap, free parking on most of our roads, no third-party insurance required, no graduated registration cost for bigger cars, and a government that has reduced the fuel tax. The farmers and exporters of this country will continue to subsidise this wasteful and selfish situation. Vince West, Milford