Upgrades to public amenities at the site have been lacking for years, but a new ramp surface and toilet currently being constructed is a good start for this incredible amenity.
Any user-pays charge is not about gaining extra general funds for council, but to continually dredge, provide additional public amenity and possibly only charge users who aren't our ratepayers.
A thorough report and investigation and community feedback must occur and councillor Rob Vinsen and I are impatient with what seems slow progress.
Cr HELEN CRAIG
Property and Community Services Chair
Whanganui District Council
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Amdram
What a thought-provoking, interesting pair of one-act plays Amdram has come up with - A Pair of Pondering Plays, opening night Thursday, March 30.
Those who pursue perspicacity and not persiflage in their plays may prepare for a pertinent, somewhat perverse peek behind the shallow patterns of life that pervade our so-called "reality".
Translation: If you want a belly-laugh, these plays are not for you. If you are intrigued by what may lie behind the "veil" at the edge of the ordinary, hurry to the plays, the season is very short.
I guarantee you will leave the theatre enriched, wiser, understanding of what just may be ...
GO!
STAN HOOD
Aramoho
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Christians
P Andrews responds to Mandy Donne-Lee "pushing the god thing" with some sweeping generalisations that have no factual basis.
He states that Christians are "all sheep following along, believing something that was written hundreds of years ago".
If Christians just accept everything they hear from the pulpit, without checking it for themselves, P Andrews has a good point. But this is not the case.
Any religion must be logically consistent and have supporting evidence from other areas of human experience, and there are a lot of Christians who look for this kind of evidence.
An example is the big bang theory, which concludes from observational evidence that the universe had a beginning. This supports the Bible, which states: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." Before this advance in science, the universe was believed by scientists to have always existed.
P Andrews appears to be saying that "believing something that was written hundreds of years ago" somehow makes the "something" invalid or false. A lot of historians believe in events that were written about hundreds of years ago.
P Andrews also states that Christians are "sheep believing in a fairytale book about a mythical man". One historian has stated that the fact that Jesus Christ was crucified is as true a fact as any. Obviously the "mythical man" must have existed to have been crucified.
I have prayed for people and seen them healed and have seen others do the same. Prayer definitely does change things.
Finally, Christian faith is based on fact. It is not "blind". When we observe certain events, it give us the faith to believe that a similar event will happen in the future - rather like believing our cars will start in the morning.
DAVID GASH
Whanganui
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Whanganui River
Re: The letter from Jennifer Grammaticogiannis (March 21):
As a member of the Whanganui River Working Party on Horizons Regional Council, on two separate occasions I brought up concerns about a lack of knowledge to the general public.
My concerns were never recorded in the minutes which I challenged twice. I was told by the working party chair, Annette Main, that press releases had already been made on the matter.
Considering the river belonged to all those in the district and of all races, I was shocked that a decent marketing and promotional drive didn't take place. In my view there was a serious lack of knowledge among the general public about what was going on in respect of the river and iwi involvement - and that clearly still applies today.
Horizons acknowledged that the two main players were the local iwi and the Crown which had face-to-face meetings. The working party received progress reports from this group, but the whole time I felt like an observer and things just rolled by with little input.
I recall asking an iwi negotiators what was the Maori view of stopbanks and controlling the flow and channelling of the river. I said: "Surely iwi can't be happy with people playing around with the control of the river"; the reply was: "Bob, the iwi don't have a position on stopbanks."
I also recall the chief iwi negotiator saying: "If the local people don't buy into the total concept, this project will never get off the ground". Clearly lack of knowledge and perhaps trust is rife now due to this lack of information.
- Edited
BOB WALKER
Retired Regional Councillor
