Willing owners and workable rules needed
Gerry Eckhoff’s (Opinion ODT 29.8.24) article likens heritage protection to theft. This is an argument that only looks at a small aspect of the issue and not the big picture.
No ownership of property is without rules. There are a vast array of planning rules that govern this, from height limits to yard setbacks.
These are there to try to help shape the place we live in for the good of all. Heritage rules are part of this, and without them buildings that don’t economically maximise the value of their sites, such as as the Dunedin Railway Station, most churches and many significant houses, could be lost.
What I think Gerry is objecting to is that act of providing heritage protection to a building that previously hasn’t been listed ... which of course is something that has to happen if any buildings are to be protected.
Like many planning rules such as, say, changing height limits, this can affect the value of the property, but that is not a valid reason to say this shouldn’t be done.
It could be, however, that where buildings of real merit are selected for listing, greater efforts are made for this to be a desirable outcome for the owner. From access to heritage funding for maintenance, to agreements to limit intrusive, costly and irrelevant aspects of the protection. The listing might, for example, exclude aspects that could limit future development, or aspects that could require future repairs or maintenance work to be done in a very expensive way.
In the end the only way to save a heritage buildings in the long term is to find a good economic use, so protection on its own will not work. Willing owners working with helpful and flexible planning is the only real path to success.
Listen to the boss
The 29.8.24 Opinion page made me think — Ian Davie’s Climate of Shame and Gerrard Eckhoff’s Understated, about our dysfunctional state and local government, who are on a self-destructive spree in this country.
If we listened to our Head of State King Charles we would be a better society. I know he is a long way away and is not allowed to interfere in politics but anyone employed by the Crown should, out of respect, listen to his concerns as a kind of moral compass if you care about heritage and nature.
If only our current ministers would ask themselves what would the boss think about inflicting austerity on a nation that was trashed by climate events and deadly pandemic or tearing down all the imperial Britannic-inspired buildings to make way for American-style corporate warehouses. Or maybe ask if this generation has the right to end human civilisation through bloody-minded gross incompetence.
He might not be allowed to tell you but it’s clear what the answer is. Especially if you are sworn in.
Holey heck
Might I be permitted to point out what I consider to be the gross inadequacy in dealing with an instance of surface-break-up.
On Somerville St, right outside Marne St Hospital, five or six shallow potholes have been developing.
A couple of days ago I noticed that they had been attended to, if an apologetic small dollop of asphalt around the size of a dinner side-plate or a saucer is considered to be adequate; more especially so when the parsimonious amount of asphalt used has barely filled the holes to the level of the surrounding road surface, which has itself, showed signs of cracking up and enlarging the area to be filled in next time, if ever.
[Abridged — length. Editor]
Do not succumb to intellectual capitulation
At the British Association’s annual meeting held in Oxford on June 30, 1860, Samuel Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, challenged Thomas Huxley as to whether he was descended from a monkey through his grandfather or grandmother. This debate followed just seven months after the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.
Well over a century later, I discussed the same issue, the ancestry of our species, with the then Bishop of Oxford, but in a more respectful milieu. M.W. Cowan, like Soapy Sam, professes his ignorance by parroting that we must be descended from chimpanzees. The alternative model, based on and supported by scientific data, sees both humans and chimpanzees following separate evolutionary pathways from a common ancestor.
Indeed, we also share a proportion of our DNA with bananas, as well as with every other lifeform. To identify the last universal common ancestor, we have to go back not just 7 million years but at least 3.5 billion, to an organism with a single cell identified in the Pilbara region of Western Australia. So M.D. Cowan can relax in the knowledge that he is indeed related to a banana.
M.D. Cowan and the Rev Pastor Ben Hudson are perfectly entitled to their belief in their chosen deity.
However, to quote Richard Dawkins, they should also reflect that "to succumb to the God temptation in either of those guises, biological or cosmological, is an act of intellectual capitulation."
Ignorant chorus misses point of camp life
The ignorant, persistent chorus "we tried boot camps, they don’t work" annoys me.
In 1959, aged 15, I was apprenticed on a 10,000-hour contract to the Labour Department and a printing company in Dunedin. I was a middle-of-the-road student and could have objected when my father suggested it, but I didn’t, partly because I was bored.
There were five apprentices and about 14 tradespeople in a total staff of about 25. First-year apprentices swept the floors, unloaded and loaded trucks and performed most of the lesser tasks. As we developed skills the lesser tasks were handed back down line. For me, that was important progress and success plus a source of pride.
I had to complete weekly trade correspondence assignments, in my own time. If we got behind our employer got a letter from the school.
If you listened and learned you got encouraged and helped. If you didn’t the worst-case scenario was you could lose you apprenticeship and that was public failure.
Most of those men and women were important role models for me. They had families, they were proud of their skills, they earned good money, they worked hard and their work was valued. I absolutely respected them and I wanted what they had in life.
I was fortunate to experience and appreciate discipline, direction, opportunity, hope, pride, ambition, encouragement and success. I was inspired to learn the meaning of self discipline and consequences, I had meaningful support and was mentored throughout my formative years.
Today we cut our young people adrift at the slightest excuse, pay them to do nothing and then wonder why youth crime skyrockets. There is a need for a learning regime based on the attributes listed above and which apprenticeships and post-school training once provided.
Call it what you will. Just don’t let senseless, negative catchphrases define it. If we incorporate a genuine, positive mindset it can be done. The gangs have been doing it for years.
[Abridged — length. Editor.]
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
