Letters: Chinese water bottlers not to blame

Chinese water bottlers are not to blame for this fiasco over free water. Photo / Getty Images

I was quite surprised that one of your contributors to (Letters, October 11) deemed that the Chinese water bottlers were to blame for this fiasco over free water.

What business, be it foreign or otherwise, would pass up such a free offer and we should really be asking who authorised such an offer, possibly to justify a few local jobs. Big deal! No doubt they are the people who should be giving the public some answers.

To imply that water is a resource that belongs to all Kiwis does not ring true if you consider that the country's biggest company utilises water on a massive scale and in doing so has created a huge problem to our waterways, all in the name of export.

Added to this it would be prudent to realise that a large proportion of this export goes to the above country, so finger pointing makes no sense, as that market is critical to the financial well-being of New Zealand.

Possibly a small dividend paid out to every New Zealander annually would acknowledge that water does belong to all of us, but I will not be holding my breath on that one.

Gerald A. Neale
Rotorua

Climate change

it was great to great to read there may be young people running for next year's local election (News, October 11).

As a 60-something woman, I live in the hope that local and national politicians will treat our greatest threat - global warming - with the gravity it deserves.

Young people have a vested interest in the future and will have to pick up the tab for my generation.

The latest scientific opinion says we only have a decade to make big changes before it's too late.

Everyone has to make sacrifices if we want to see our grandchildren have a half decent life.

Lesley Haddon
Rotorua

Air travel woes

Regarding air travel, (Opinion, October 11), recently my wife and I had a holiday in Phuket.

Luckily we spent an extra amount on reserving our tickets to our destination.

While we were on holiday, our travel agent contacted us to advise that our return flight from Melbourne to Auckland had been cancelled and we had been rebooked on a later flight.

Our original flight was within three hours of arriving in Melbourne, but the later flight was 10 hours later, so we had to spend the extra time doing the same as your correspondent and having to pay for expensive airport meals.

On boarding our flight, we discovered that we were not seated together from Melbourne to Auckland. No explanation given.

My wife was very upset over the separation as she is a nervous flier.

Our later flight into New Zealand inconvenienced us, as well as the motel that we had booked arriving well after midnight.

Our experience has also ensured that we will do our best to avoid travelling with this airline where possible.

Fortunately, it was not a New Zealand airline (and one hopes that it will never adopt the same practice) but our near neighbour's national airline.

Jim Anderson
Whakatane