Letter of the week: Johan Slabbert, Warkworth
I have practised criminal law for over 40 years and, although I am not a psychiatrist nor a social worker, enough of the tragic end to youth has passed through my hands to enable me to understand how the young may fall into
criminal behaviour.
Although poverty and domestic abuse are clear frontrunners I have seen that wider social issues combine to play a prominent role in young crime.
There is much common ground among these young criminals but many will find this social truth unpalatable: struggling single-parent families; lax discipline at home; no setting of reasonable boundaries or respect for others; no meaningful accountability for anti-social behaviour; truancy; gangs, boredom and the social media.
The disdain for authority or accountability is fortified by the knowledge that the police will not chase them when they drive away in their stolen cars, and even if they are caught there are no serious repercussions for a 10-year-old in the "justice" system.
Turning to crime is thus not a big step for them – and then the mother comes to a person like me. Too late. Too late.
Comparable deaths
"The land of the long Covid cloud" editorial (Weekend Herald, May 21) contained much-needed advice to our Government on what should have been explained before we were all "set free" from Covid restrictions. There was also good advice to businesses and other authorities on procedures to help reduce risk.
What is questionable, though, is the emphasis on the stated death toll of more than 1000, which is true to a point.
Announcing the total death toll on its own is a distorted view of our death rates overall, as the great majority of those dying are over 60 years of age and many of these within their 90s.
Daily figures reported come with an explanation that many of those over 70s entered hospital for other reasons and found later to have had Covid.
For a true reading of the "over a thousand" deaths, we need to know what our pre-Covid death rates were for this obviously vulnerable age group and then compare it today's. The findings could be surprising.
Emma Mackintosh, Birkenhead.
Plain speaking
Referring to your story about the new inheritance law (Weekend Herald, May 21), it is essential that such is couched in terms that are intelligible to the layman.
As an English honours graduate, I asked my lawyer what "devise" means in the current wording "to give, devise and bequeath" and he was unable to say.
Similarly, I was told that commas made a long sentence subject to misinterpretation. Yet I could not parse it at all. Such legalese is antiquated, condescending and dare we say colonialist?
Julie Daymond-King, Helensville.
Budget shortcomings
When Keri Hulme's The Bone People won the Booker Prize, a reviewer in The Economist opined he could not imagine anyone finishing the book unless paid. On that score, John Roughan's arguments (NZ Herald, May 21) are mercifully short.
The function of government is to keep society going. There is no point in choosing a destination if the trip will kill you. If we used gold instead of fiat money there would be no inflation, but we would be unable to cope with catastrophes. Like the very real Covid pandemic and Putin's senseless war.
There was nothing for me in the Budget except the comfort that Grant Robertson is doing a good job. Jacinda Ardern should retire now, taking the blame for the pandemic with her. Yes, it's unfair, she's been a great prime minister, but the family wins.
Robertson would thrash Luxon. Surely Kiwis are not so dumb as to fall for Trumpy table-thumping and slogans? God, I hope not.
Dennis Horne, Howick.
