Go shopping in any mall during school term and you will see school-age children accompanying their mothers. Or the children might be marching in the latest hīkoi, spending days out of school.
Our country is internationally known for low literacy, science and maths levels; low productivity and manufacturing capacities and a shrinking economy which is making our expanding welfare state unsustainable.
Our children can save us – but parents need to realise that attending school is not an “optional extra” but is vital to our nation’s long term survival.
Johan Slabbert, Warkworth.
Fat chance
A report by the Helen Clark Foundation (NZ Herald, Nov 26) tells us successive governments have failed to halt obesity and Type 2 diabetes by primarily focusing on individual responsibility, without addressing the food environment. Spot on, partly.
We know cheap, convenient over-processed food is super harmful and without change the health of our population will continue on a downward spiral. Normalising junk foods on primetime TV plays a huge part.
A sugar tax has been proven to work overseas but in NZ remains “pie in the sky” because the political will is lacking. Both government and media are in denial.
Sadly lacking in the report is the importance of responsibility for one’s own health. The three overarching recommendations are, a healthier food environment, healthier food in public places, and expanded treatment of new weight loss drugs.
Where is mention of proper nutrition, lifestyle change and self-empowerment of the individual to achieve reversal of Type 2 diabetes? It’s a proven fact that the right carb/sugar-restrictive diet can reverse the condition, avoiding a lifetime of injections, drugs and continual blood checking.
We are what we eat, why overlook the obvious?
Judy Anderson, Remuera.
Safer cycling
I love riding my bike through Cornwall Park and seeing so many people strolling, jogging, wheeling, picnicking, watching animals and smelling flowers. It’s a precious haven in Auckland and a wonderful destination for visitors near and far.
For locals, it’s a particularly safe location to learn and build confidence on their bikes within a local area severely lacking in protected cycleways.
I find it ridiculous then, that accessing the park without a car isn’t easy and is downright unsafe if you try by bike. From Greenlane train station you can ride along a painted bit of footpath that stops 400 metres short of the Green Lane West entrance – which doesn’t sound far, but it spits you out onto a busy road with the worst bike lane I’ve ever seen: no protection at all, minimal signage, and barely wider than the gutter.
Google Maps always suggests this road to me for riding to Sandringham, and I always take a longer, quieter, winding route while wishing for an express cycleway to “enable [me and other] Kiwis to get where they want to go quickly and safely”, as the Transport Minister said recently.
Surely he would support funding for a much-improved cycleway along this key cross-town route?
Lucy Ruck, Oranga.
History lesson
At times like this when NCEA is very much in the news, I have this hope at some distant time in the future NCEA will become one qualification awarded when a student leaves school that records the standards achieved at whatever level at whatever time.
Have I heard this idea before? Yes I have: it was what was proposed by the board of NZQA back in 1991. A whole variety of different interests turned NCEA into what it is today, with the entirely predictable problems.
David Hood, Hamilton.
Police priorities
Just in case the Minister of Police is reading this, please refocus your officers from harassing people for their clothing to catching some of the e-scooters that are racing around on the footpaths in central Auckland at high speeds and terrifying me.
I’m in far more danger on central Auckland pavements from e-scooters than from a gang member.
Viv Allen, Freemans Bay.
