Whanganui letters: Future flight school bailouts from council should be loans

New Zealand International Commercial Pilot Academy chief executive Phillip Bedford and Whanganui Mayor Hamish McDouall in 2018. Photo / Bevan Conley.

Monday's Chronicle states that the "Council" stumps up cash to prop up a failing flight school (NZICPA) that it owns.

It should read that the "ratepayers" have stumped up the cash, as the council first must take, before it can give, from the ailing ratepayers who fund the council.

The total at present seems to be $300,000 and will most likely be more.

A similar but bigger flight training school north of Whanganui has recently closed its doors and sold all its assets as, unfortunately, they did not have the ratepayers to fall back on.

This council's decision to continually bail out the NZICPA needs to stop, and their spending needs to prioritise on what council should spend ratepayers' hard-earned dollars on, e.g. infrastructure.

If, as it seems, they are committed to keep funding this failing investment for the ratepayer, I would very much like to see the monies granted treated as a commercial loan to be repaid with interest, as any other commercially operating business has to.

Then the ratepayer might feel a bit less stressed about this open-ended arrangement that appears to be operating between the council and this commercial flight training operation.

SHAUN BURTON
Whanganui

A propaganda war

In a letter signed "Whanganui Science Forum", we see an interesting example of the current state of public discussion around the pandemic and Covid vaccines.

This letter describes those with a different viewpoint to the authors as "self-appointed experts", "anti-vaxxers", and "conspiracy theorists", contrasting them with "science and medical experts" and "scientists and doctors".

So, the case is clear, all the scientists, medical experts and doctors are of one mind about all issues surrounding the pandemic and Covid vaccines, while anybody who questions anything about it is a nut with no real knowledge.

This propaganda war against questioning anything about the information we receive about the pandemic and Covid vaccines is having some success, especially with many in the media as well as the Big Tech companies censoring anyone who raises the questions.

The biggest problem for this propaganda effort is that many of those raising the questions, and being censored for doing so, are scientists, medical experts, and doctors.

Freedom, a right that was supposed to be important in our country, not only includes being free to choose but having free access to the information on which to base your choices.

K A BENFELL
Gonville

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