Letters: Positive dog-walking experience at Rotorua Racecourse

Walking your dog at the Rotorua Racecourse is a great experience, a letter writer says. Photo / File

I have just returned home from walking my dog on the Rotorua Racecourse.

I would like to thank the Rotorua Racing Club for providing such a safe and secure area for walking dogs off lead.

If any owner does not have good control of the their dog they put their dog on a lead.

Also, I would like to compliment the racing club on the new fence that replaces the old wooden fence along Te Ngae Rd.

Visitors coming into Rotorua from the east will appreciate the view of the racecourse.

MARY BROWNE
Rotorua

Living on a Kiwi wage too tough

I've just been around the South Island and enjoyed the fabulous scenery there and likewise been struck by the cheap prices of fine dining in Queenstown.

Dishes of steak, venison or fish are about two thirds of the price in Rotorua, for a better-presented experience all round.

But more troubling are the waiting staff around the country, who, in all the bigger towns are young foreigners on work visas, often highly educated, working for peanuts to stay here as long as possible.

While one doesn't wish to deny their right to do so, it is a sad reflection on our economy that Kiwis can't live on the wages paid by our own employers.

As a nation we have to get away from the miserly attitude (of many employers) that people on wages don't have a right to exist.

Breaking the monopoly on housing that the baby-boomers and foreign speculators have is the first step. Once those people have been driven out, housing will cease to be a commodity and normal life can resume: wages won't need to be so high then.

*Note to Government: we owe property speculators nothing.

GJ PHILIP
Rotorua