What a shame that today more minds will be directed towards an election result rather than the 100 year anniversary of Passchendaele. October 12 is undoubtedly, in terms of lives lost in a single day, the blackest day in New Zealands history. An election result fades into insignificance compared to this part of our countrys war story.
S. Fitzpatrick, Papakura.
Benny winner
Last Sunday evening I attended a great night of entertainment at the 51st annual Variety Club awards honouring New Zealand live performers, many of whom have left a big entertainment footprint worldwide and many totally ignored by New Zealand media. The winner of the top award, The Benny, this year went to Kevin Greaves 41 years after his father, Rusty Greaves, a pioneer of New Zealand country music, won it.
Kevin worked as a professional entertainer for 15 years in the highly competitive US country music industry performing on shows with some of the best of that genre. Country music has been the biggest selling music in the USA for around 20 years now - bigger than hip hop, rap, and the rest of the machine driven industrial noise promoted by our woeful radio stations in this country. Kevin is still touring, working many more shows than any of the acts your entertainment pages laud each week.
Peter Caulton, Forrest Hill.
Take a bag
Better late than never, the supermarkets are banning plastic bags. But why provide reusable bags for free? Their manufacture will have an environmental impact and many will be taken and unused. How many shoppers dont have a bag? And why delay the ban until the end of 2018? They will say the public needs an adjustment period. Rubbish. One trip to the supermarket in which you have to load items individually back into the trolley and then transfer them one by one into the car will provide all the adjustment incentive anyone will need.
Peter Calder, Westmere.
Dirty town
On a recent visit to the central city I was disgusted to see all the people lying outside McDonalds and across the road. All the dirty food containers and drink cups strewn across the footpath discarded by them.
Also, the outside footpaths of many of the eating places in Queen and surrounding streets were strewn with rubbish and stained with grease and other unmentionable things. Not the sort of thing that would entice you to go in.
Not a good look for locals or visitors.
Sue Gallahar, Mangere.
Crash lessons
The tragic photograph on the front page of yesterdays Herald will give all drivers a moments pause to think about just what happened? This tragedy is an opportunity for the police to review their advertising. Instead of changing their ads every two or three months, at the whim of their advertising agency, they could give an in-depth explanation of this particular incident and others like them, while they are still fresh in the mind of the public.
Otherwise it will soon be forgotten, only to resurface in two or three years time when no doubt a coroners report will call for improvements to the road or stiffening of fines for cell phone use while driving, or something.
Slogans such as legend may be seen as cool but these and other attempts at story telling are proving ineffective, as evidenced by the dramatic rise in the road toll. So please, National Road Policing Manager, think about it, and once all the measurements have been taken, let us know what happened? We may all learn something.
Rob Elliott, Kohimarama.
Recipe for collisions
Sadly nothing will change the road toll unless something changes. Allowing two cars to speed towards each other at 100km/h separated by a strip of white paint is insanity and a recipe for disaster. The impact if they collide head on is equivalent to 200km/h and the result is crash horror. Four dead on Tuesday in Taupo and this could have easily been 12.
In my mind we need to adopt the Swedish model and impose a speed limit of 70km/h on all roads that are not separated by crash barriers. At the same time we could increase the speed limit to 110km/h to all motorways and roads that do.
Glen Stanton, Mairangi Bay.
Increase speeds
Our road toll will only increase until we teach drivers better, especially about keeping left and not holding up traffic. Frustration is the root of all evil. Increase all speed limits but especially in overtaking areas - getting past quickly must be safer. Build more overtaking lanes, limit truck use of roads and again, teach people to keep left. NZTA should try all this for a year and compare the toll.
Bill Brown, Herne Bay.
Slow mail
I dont like complaining, but feel pretty let down by NZ Post. I sent my old passport to the UK, fully tracked at a cost of $40. This was supposed to take five days, it was lost for nearly five weeks and I nearly did not make my fully paid up trip as a result.
I bought a book on Trade Me three weeks ago, $6.50 postage paid. It has never arrived.
NZ Post has got all these sexy little runabouts to deliver mail, but they still seem to mislay items. How do you lose a package? What happens to it? Does it dematerialise?
Chris Blenkinsopp, Beach Haven.
Wily the word
Something different in yesterdays Herald, a journalists whimsical stance on the medias challenges of reporting the coalition conclaves. They will not give up and are now counting floor tiles in a quest to break Wily Winston.
The meaning of wily includes astute, sharp-witted, acute, intelligent, clever, alert, canny, media-savvy, perceptive, perspicacious, observant, sage, wise, far-seeing, far-sighted; cunning, artful, crafty, calculating, on the ball, smart, savvy and have all ones wits about one, a shrewd businessman. Media will continue their unending quest to bait Winston. Keep them guessing, Winston.
Leonie Wilkinson, Waiuku.
Selling weapons
The protests in Wellington around the arms conference show how far police will go to protect people who make money in the armaments industry. People were thrown around by police, hit with batons and given painful pressure point holds all because they were getting in the way of the democratic right of businesses to make profit out of war.
The businesses at the conference supply goods and services to the armed forces. These armed forces occasionally do good, like civil defence response in emergencies.
However, they also travel overseas to kill people. The 2016 armed forces white papers committed huge spending on arms despite acknowledging there is no foreseeable military threat to our country in the short or long term.
If the armed forces change to a genuine defence force and put down the guns in exchange for a sole focus on civil defence responding to natural disasters and emergencies, Im sure these protests would stop.
James Barber, Newtown.
Post apartheid
The ANC Government in South Africa have openly legislated and enforced racist policies in the guise of quotas and transformation in most , if not all, sporting codes in South Africa.
These policies have been in operation for a few years now and have no end in sight. In essence, it discriminates against white and other minority race groups and favours the majority race.
Why is the rest of the world so silent on this matter when they were so vocal and instrumental in fighting against the previous apartheid policies in sport?
Leon de Vos, La Lucia, KZN.
