Membership to this group is by invitation, once an A+ grade is attained from a series of tests. A sense of humour is essential. We have fun doing what we do -- under cover of darkness or in broad daylight.
GVA members love the English language with its commas, apostrophes, hyphens and speech marks. As New Zealanders, our English is NZ English, which contains Maori kupu, so we also love te reo Maori with its macrons.
Our task is to educate and influence others positively, with love in our hearts, knowing that signwriters may be challenged by our mahi (they don't know what they don't know, after all). Members act respectfully at all times.
Photos will be posted by members on the group's Facebook page.
MARGI KEYS
Vigilante in Chief, Springvale
Bureaucracy
The recent decision to charge Putiki residents for a sewerage system they don't have has a bureaucratic smell similar to the poo ponds at the airport.
Obviously some ivory tower dweller has thought what a great way to get some extra revenue for something we don't have to do anything for.
When we built here eight years ago, we were made to install a modern septic sewerage system that has a submersible pump that costs in the vicinity of $50 a month to run. Sir, we are already paying a substantial fee to live in a "clean environment". A clean environment that the council required.
Obviously, we would have an exemption to this new proposed fee as we already comply at our cost to a clean environment.
If the council gave as much attention to real issues in our area instead of manufacturing imaginary ones, we would have less reason to complain.
At the time of the elections verbal promises were given to take up the pressing issue of the culvert under Wikitoria Rd, which is woefully inadequate. Nothing has happened, though, since the elections.
Council, this is a real problem, not an imaginary one!
A near neighbour applied for confirmation of building compliance after four months and, nothing happening, the neighbour complained yet again. It was fixed in 24 hours. Makes you think, doesn't it?
Let's get some real issues sorted before we go tilting at windmills with imaginary ones.
WARRICK FUNNELL
Putiki
Broken science
Frank Gibson is right to be worried about the attacks on the freedom of speech, but he has completely misunderstood what has been going on with science.
Science is broken, and nowhere more so than with climate science, where peer review has become a check for doctrinal orthodoxy and an impediment to further debate.
Frank has been fooled into believing that the March for Science is supporting freedom of science and scientists. That is not the case.
Frank thinks the Trump regime is silencing science -- it is the quite the opposite. The previous regime have been the ones to silence science and scientists, and the complicit mainstream media have, at best, not told us the truth.
What governs climate? It is the sun, and the mechanism it uses, in simple terms, is cloud.
Extra-dense white low-top cloud reflects the sun's heat back out into space like snow and ice do. That causes us to cool. That has now started to happen as the "solar winds" drop in strength. (Edited)
WILLIAM PARTRIDGE
Hunterville
Maori in prison
Our editor Mark Dawson is castigating us (Chronicle, April 13) for Maori imprisonment rates. He says there is not nearly enough concern or ideas to fix the problem.
The real problem is that Mark and his fellow travellers don't have the stomach for the ideas that would work, so these don't get in the press or exposed to serious discussion.
Legalise all drugs. The war on drugs is futile, because it can't be won and costs billions of our precious dollars -- money that would be better spent on welfare, rehabilitation and birth control.
Permanent birth control should be enforced on people who have two or more children, who have had children removed from their care, so that the pool from which bad behaviour emanates, does not keep growing. Concentrate on quality, not quantity.
Mark and his fellow travellers, with little stomach for the hard decisions, would cry "Foul, they have their rights", but so do those whose hand feeds them. If they want to be outside those rules, no welfare.
Mark, take some of the blame because you want to contain the discussion in a very small space.
Drugs are a huge part of why we have so many incarcerated. Incarceration has serious ill-effects on families, especially the children. They are forced by the state to live in broken homes separated from, mainly, fathers but mothers also, and we all know how hard it must be for those children.
Nice people who believe in the war on drugs obviously don't think it's that bad, or they would be petitioning governments around the world to stop this unwinnable, futile war and start repairing the damage it has done, eliminating the gangs' and drug lords' wealth.
Don't blame Corrections for recidivism; blame the warmongers who put all these people in their hands to feed and shelter.
G R SCOWN
Whanganui
Tribunal flaws
Peter Rochford's (letters, March 4) esteemed Waitangi Tribunal is a pro-Maori lobby group that can only make recommendations. Unfortunately, this handful of unelected tribunal members has the exclusive authority to interpret the Treaty to suit agendas.
A Ngapuhi elder, David Rankin, had this to say about these so-called pillars of society, "The Tribunal makes up history as it goes along, it is a bully; go against it and you will be labelled a racist or worse. It has turned out to be a body that is bringing in apartheid to New Zealand."
[Noted journalist and media critic] Brian Priestley MBE said: "It would be hard to imagine any public body less well organised to get at the truth".
Dr Giselle Byrnes said: "Maori characters and stories are given much more emphasis and weight than Pakeha characters and stories. The reports increasingly champion or advocate the Maori cause."
Other notable historians who have questioned the academic integrity of the history produced by the Waitangi Tribunal are Keith Sorrenson, Michael Belgrave, Bill Oliver and Michael Bassett.
An increasing number of New Zealanders are now questioning the transfer of wealth to Maori elite, often on the unchallenged findings of this biased tribunal.
To my knowledge, no outsider is permitted to attend hearings or have any input into these claims, only the opportunist claimants, the Waitangi Tribunalists and the former Ngai Tahu lawyer Chris Finlayson for the Crown.
Fait accompli, you might say.
GEOFF PARKER
Whangarei
Phones in cars
A few weeks ago I almost had a head-on collision with what I will call a "millennial" driver.
The most notable thing about the experience was watching the vehicle cross the centre line and, as it got closer, noticing the driver's eyes were directed at their lap and not the road.
With the advent of mobile phones becoming "must have" technology for young and inexperienced drivers the incidence of young drivers passing by looking down at their laps is on the increase. Some even have their phones visible on their steering wheels or to their ear.
I thought this activity was illegal, and if I'm right, what are police doing about it?
The other thing I have noticed is that when I point out to drivers that driving while operating a cell phone is not "best practice" the most common response is for the driver to use body language to communicate their displeasure.
Does the signal of a single middle finger indicate that there is at least one cell phone in the car?
RUSSELL BELL
Whanganui
Where's the proof?
To your fundamentalist religious correspondents, I would ask two pertinent questions.
Firstly, where is your empirical proof for promoting your version of God?
Secondly, how would you recognise your mythical concept of the second coming of Christ in today's world?
Lucid theology scholars maintain that the latter concept was in response to the Roman Empire's tyrannical rule on the lives of the Jewish in the area at the time. The so-called second coming was not some fantasised prophecy for 2000 or so years in the future.
Why would they bother? They had their problems at the time and we have different ones in today's world. There is no link.
Apart from trying to save our planet for our immediate offspring are we really that concerned to warn the people 2000 years in the future of the planet they are going to inherit?
The answer is no. Mankind does not behave like that. As a species blame evolution that we mainly think in the present without regard to the future. Our physiological evolution has yet to catch up with the intellectual advances we have made in harnessing the environment we exist in. Our brains are increasing in size, hence the reason the female of our species is the only mammal to experience such pain and difficulty at birth.
A final thought. I will challenge any person alive who can point with empirical proof to a divine interference in anything during their lifetime. And if so, can they please inform the rest of us, because at my stage in life I'd really like to know.
PAUL EVANS
Whanganui
