Broken glass on the North Dunedin streets
Why, why, why are our councillors fluffing around with a container ban system that will only increase the amount of plastic waste? The solution is simple: bring back a container refund system.
It could work like this (dollar figures are guesses and obviously details need sorting out).
A $7 retail surcharge on all alcohol containers. All of them,, because we don’t want to push buyers towards plastic and metal — glass is the most reusable and hence environmentally friendly. $5 is refundable on return of the bottle: it has to be enough that even a drunken student thinks twice about smashing a bottle.
Because Dunedin is not an island there has to be a token system to ensure the surcharge is paid on the containers that are returned. Not hard to produce the tokens: we can do it here in Dunedin.
Of that, $1 goes to the retailer, to ensure they want to be on board, and $1 to run the depot. It needs to pay its way.
Because it is cost-neutral it can then sell the bottles to local winemakers, distillers and breweries, at whatever cost is competitive. Likewise the aluminium from cans. Only plastic is a problem.
Ok, it pushes up the price of alcohol by $2, but alcohol has never been cheaper in real terms.
If that $5 refund is enough, we will no longer need the glass collection run.
For those who find it too hard to get to the retailer to return, one does wonder how they bought their drinks in the first place.
Shaken and stirred
I am in disbelief that prime minister Luxon could allow his photo (ODT 25.11.24) taken shaking a mocktail in Queenstown, or to allow his name given to the New Zealand cricket team of the day playing there. What message do these self-serving behaviours give especially in Otago where a quarter of New Zealand's population awaits urgent completion of their main southern hospital as originally designed and promised?
Surely funding to stop the ridiculous accrual of associated debts is more urgent than tax cuts to the wealthy, tax cuts to tobacco companies, intended major road works. The $280 million to Waikato University for a medical school is definitely unnecessary when both Auckland and Otago medical schools have offered to take more trainees.
This latter recent news confirms that Otago's needs are being discarded for political reasons, not least being that of the two Hamilton electorates in 2026.
We need our hospital now.
True leadership
It is deeply disappointing that the time-honoured haka has morphed into a political statement directed at the government. If you wish to mix sport and politics then at least show some courtesy and respect to your hosts and a packed Allianz stadium in Turin, Italy is not the time and place for this bad behaviour.
There is a strong correlation linking TJ Perenara and the Hurricanes’ Poua women's rugby team and their provocative politicised haka earlier in the year.
What on earth were rugby and All Blacks administrators thinking when they allowed this to happen?
Given that the direction and popularity of the game in New Zealand is at a crossroads this decision reflects extremely poor judgement.
It's time for NZ Rugby to show true leadership.
Blood, plasma donation easy and much needed
It was good to read an article encouraging readers to give blood (ODT 22.11.24). Please note however that as Tony and Ella Gomez both donate fortnightly they are plasma donors, given that they are pictured in front of one of the plasma donation machines.
Blood donors can donate blood every 12 weeks, whereas plasma or platelet donors can donate more frequently because their iron levels are not depleted, as the machines return their red cells to them. I have donated blood or plasma well over a hundred times, in the UK, Ireland and Australia, as well as in New Zealand. I gave blood once in London, where, like Tony, I was offered Guinness after donating (due to its iron content). Unsurprisingly, when I donated in Ireland I was offered Guinness there too.
Earlier this year the vCJD (‘‘mad cow disease’’) ban was lifted on donations from people who lived in the UK, France or Ireland for six months or longer between 1980 and 1996, so the pool of potential donors has increased.
If you are 16 or over and meet the criteria for being a donor I urge readers to consider doing this.
Only 4% of those who are eligible to donate do so, and currently donations given in New Zealand fall short of supplying the amount of blood products which the country needs.
A fairy story
Whilst reading the story of The Gingerbread Man to my grandkids, I couldn’t shed the disturbing image of a grinning, bushy-tailed David Seymour swimming through a cesspit on his way to a Treaty principles sub-committee hearing. He was reassuring Te Tiriti O Waitangi that it would indeed be safe so long as it inched forward along his back and on to his snout.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
