Your views: Readers' letters

Rugby triumph

Phew! What an arm wrestle - but you did it.
We could analyse the final for hours, but that would be pointless, as the trophy is at home again for another year.
Your performances this season rank with the great Whanganui sides of the past. Your fitness, skills and dedication have been a joy to watch, with Jason and his crew bringing it all together.
But they could not do it without the material at hand, which they had in buckets.
Every home in the Whanganui should have a copy of that excellent team photo in Friday's Chronicle hanging on the wall.
Thanks, fellas.

PETER JOHNSTON
Whanganui East

Time for change

Is it me or the "spin doctors" who are suffering short-term memory loss as a minor financial surplus and the spectre of an election loom?
What do we want? Tax cuts, better resourced health care, or improved education services? On balance, the older generation is projected as greedy. This is emotive, psychological bullying.
The trade union movement, outside the public service, is increasingly impotent, as older workers are cast on the scrapheap at an increasingly early age. You must think we are all stupid.
Auckland and its overblown housing needs dominate our political landscape. The red herring of superannuation is a typical "soft" target again. In my lifetime we have had women retiring at 55 years of age.
A compulsory universal scheme was scrapped by former Prime Minister Rob Muldoon in the 1980s. Then, in 1990, the age of entitlement was progressively raised from 60 to 65. Now we have migrants qualifying after 10 years. Give us a break!
Our politicians have an extremely generous super scheme, don't work on weekends and have extensive holidays and housing and travel benefits. There also appears no time limit on their parliamentary careers. Time for changes?

KEN CRAFAR
Durie Hill

Bason stones

I visited Bason Botanical Reserve over the long weekend with a daughter and a 4-year-old.
We had a lovely morning made so much more special by the finding of beautifully painted stones hidden around the grounds.
The first was a surprise, and we thought it was a random find, but after finding five more, we realised someone had deliberately placed them to be found.
Fortunately, we were able to persuade the 4-year-old to hide them again around the reserve so that someone else could have the delight of finding them.
Thank you to whoever did this. It was a magic moment for a little 4-year-old.

JENNY SAYWOOD
Whanganui

Prison luxury

Your correspondent Paul Rea, chairman of the NZ Seniors Party, makes the bizarre claim that inmates in our New Zealand prisons live in luxury.
This luxury, he claims, consists of "three meals a day and all the home comforts".
I would hardly suggest three meals a day is a luxury, but "all the home comforts"?
I don't know who Mr Rea has been talking to, but those I have talked to who have worked or been inmates in our prisons would strongly disagree with his assessment.
In fact, the suggestion was made that anyone who thinks it is a soft living for inmates should spend a couple of months as an inmate themselves.
Of course, others suggest that the complainers would barely make it through a night.
The point of Mr Rea's letter appears to be to claim that we should not be spending more and more money on prisons and the rising prison population when there are many people suffering in our communities who could do with the assistance.
On this we would agree, yet I would suggest to Mr Rea that rather than simply labelling all prison inmates "the dregs of our society", he ask questions - like how many of them are in prison because of the "poverty and suffering in our community"?
In reality what is needed is for the community to take a careful look, not only at the way we deal with poverty and suffering in our community, and also its causes, but an especially careful look at our legal system and why so many are in our prisons, and how many of them should not be there.

K A BENFELL
Gonville

No negativity

About 45 years ago, Sir Dove Myer Robinson (mayor of Auckland City), as a member of the Auckland Regional Authority transit committee, advocated a rapid rail system for Auckland. ARA chairman Tom Pearce and many other members opposed the expensive scheme.
In 1973-74, the Labour government reneged on an election pledge, which Robinson had secured, to pay for the scheme and both the city and New Zealand lost a long-term solution to Auckland's transportation needs.
Now Auckland is forced by circumstance to build such transport infrastructure at a much greater cost.
Incidentally, sewage and the ecological disposal of it from the Mangere oxidation ponds into the Manukau Harbour, saving the Waitemata Harbour from human pollution, was one of Robbie's many achievements.
Similarly, Whanganui is facing a huge bill for a new sewerage scheme.
Instead of going ahead, some are trying to stop it and go back to a scheme that had, for a variety of reasons, failed.
If, with the new Cook Strait ferry from Whanganui to Motueka, and possible government departments' decentralisation, we face the prospect of a 20,000 population increase and perhaps more industry moving to our city, it seems that again we are being short-sighted.
Councillors are there to serve the whole of the city and not just their own pocket or the interests of a few.
Now that we have discarded divisive politics, we are enjoying our new positive image promoted by the previous two councils.
Any negativity will have to be explained with hard facts and not just spurious aspersions.

CHRISTODOULOS MOISA
Durie Hill

Political savvy

I had to laugh about Stan Hood's advice to David Bennett regarding his alleged inexperience with political matters.
If Stan had bothered to do his homework, he would know better than to make such a suggestion.
For the last 30 odd years until Chester Borrows came on to the scene, David was the face of the National Party in Wanganui. He has been a branch and electorate chairman, a divisional chairman, a party president and a member of the list committee that sets the position of all National Party MPs prior to elections.
Given that, it was no surprise to me that he happened to run a successful campaign for council along with the "Beyond 2030" team.

DAMIAN CURTIS
Wanganui