Credibility gone
By attempting to sabotage Rotorua's nominations for national awards, and now labelling the awards as fake, Reynold Macpherson and the RDRR have lost any last shred of credibility.
Constructive criticism of council activities is fine, but an attempt to sabotage national recognition for successes is not.
It is obvious that they were determined that the mayor and council should receive no form of positive recognition for their achievements, regardless of merit.
The irony is that, if they genuinely believed these projects were failures, they would have been confident that scrutiny by independent outside experts would reveal this.
There were many other nominations. By labelling the awards to Rotorua as fake, Macpherson is in effect insulting the judges and questioning their honesty and integrity.
It is hard to escape the conclusion that he is suggesting some degree of bias or undue influence.
In its attempts to move Rotorua forward, the council has tried many innovations.
Not all have been successful. However, there is an old saying to the effect that someone who has never made a mistake has never made anything.
I would much prefer a mayor and council who are looking boldly towards the future over those that would try to mire us in the past. These awards show that Rotorua is on a positive forward path.
Keith Garratt
Rotorua
Sitting on hands
I congratulate the Rotorua Lakes Council on picking up a couple of "least worse" awards at the recent Local Government conference.
Next year the Rotorua ratepayers will hope they pick up a couple "worse worst" awards for sitting on their hands after four years of at least double inflation rate increases while sitting on their hands over the earthquake damaged museum and the Sir Howard Morrison Performing Arts Centre.
Council borrowed millions to upgrade the airport runway (none repaid) and not used now.
The terminal building has been twice upgraded in the last 25 years and still needs to be made earthquake proof.
It is time the incompetent personnel resign and the free spending councillors go at the next election.
The next project that councillors want is to make Rotorua the arts capital of NZ. (Abridged)
John Cole
Rotorua
Honest pay the price
Your correspondent AN Christie (Letters July 19) has a point I could agree with except for one unfortunate fact.
There are nasty people in this world who for either spiteful or delusional reasons will contaminate a product because the world will not bow to their strange thinking.
Space would not permit a case by case summary to prove my point, so one will have to do.
Not many years ago a man sent a note to Fonterra claiming he contaminated some baby milk power with 1080 poison to stop the Government using this stuff to kill pests in the wild.
Fortunately, he was caught and imprisoned, but before he was it, cost this country and Fonterra, in particular, a lot of money and wasted products. This is only one example of terrorist activity by nut cases who have no respect for their fellow man.
Companies cannot afford to take the risk of such people contaminating or stealing their products so hence the plethora of over sealing, especially foodstuffs.
Sadly, these sorts of people live in any community in our world, and the decent, honest person has to pay the price for all this excess wrapping to ensure the enclosed products will not harm or kill us.
J MacKenzie
Rotorua
