Your letters: RDA site - what's wrong with this picture?

RDA site sale

Why are the people of our region being asked to fundraise to purchase the land block where Riding for the Disabled is sited?

It could be argued that the ratepayers and taxpayers already own this land through the Whanganui District Council and NZ Government, having paid rates and taxes over many years.

The $750,000 purchase price being asked by NZ Transport and the Whanganui District Council is not that significant an amount of money when put into the big picture of these public bodies.

Why can't NZ Transport and the WDC gift the land to this very worthy cause, instead of asking the people of Whanganui to fund the purchase of what you could argue is really theirs all along?

We need to get our Wanganui District councillors and local member of Parliament working to resolve this issue so that Riding for the Disabled can get on with what they are very good at — helping rehabilitate severely disabled people, with often astonishing results.

ROBYN WEBB
Wanganui

False pieties

There you go again, Ken Orr, misstating the facts to create propaganda.
This time (Chronicle, February 23-24) you've falsely accused Russ Hay of trying to abridge your freedom of speech.

In the process, you've offered an additional preachment on freedom of religion.
In the immortal words of Emma Gonzalez, talking to equally self-righteous people who mouth false pieties in an effort to deny her right to express grief and justified anger, I say to you, sir: bulls**t!

Mr Hay's letter of February 8 did no such thing, and you know it.

He objected, as do I, to your further abuse of the PM, this time by politicising Jacinda Ardern's pregnancy to promote your bigoted agenda on marriage equality and a lecture on foetal development that is beyond your expertise.

You have your freedom of speech, but it comes with responsibility. Adherence to fact is one responsibility.

Using your speech, as you did, to harass Ms Ardern as to her sexual and social choices and now to use her foetus for your propaganda purposes is simply a form of abuse.

Jacinda Ardern is certainly too intelligent and too independent to be influenced by your views, so the goal of your religiously cloaked diatribe must be to attempt to control and denigrate women less powerful or possibly more susceptible to the emotional appeal of your self-created claim to victimisation.

Like anyone devoted to democracy, I defend your right to speak and to your religion. Just not your attempt by speech to impose those religious beliefs on others.

JAY KUTEN
Whanganui

Guns at school

Ha ha. I can think of more than one teacher at Wanganui Tech in the late 1950s (no names), who ruled us with the fear of the cane.

One teacher I am particularly thinking about had a long cane that was shaped like a shepherd's crook, and he would go down the lines of our desks, and if we hadn't done our homework, we got the cane across our hands.

We survived, but if he had been armed with a gun, I doubt we would have!

Perhaps we were the lucky generation but human nature and kids haven't changed that much. I do sympathise the situation the modern-day teachers find themselves in.

DAVID BENNETT
Whanganui

Homelessness

Homelessness can be easily solved. In Seattle they are building tiny homes for $1500. They have communal showers and laundry. They use their own people for security and cleaning. This can be done in NZ.

Homelessness is heartbreaking to see, shouldn't be happening here. We have to start caring more for people.

This would also help stop so much crime.

J FARRANT
Whanganui

Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz