Message to DCC: let’s start all over again
Dunedin now has a forward thinking, businesslike mayor and most Dunedin residents were looking forward to having a council where all members would lead our city and work as part of a united team. It was most disappointing to read that two senior councillors (Crs Barker and O’Malley) had filed a complaint against Mayor Radich — especially when he had already apologised for his unwise comments. Worse still, Sophie Barker was then deputy mayor and, as such, should have been a support person for the mayor.
Surely, following an apology, the team should have moved on showing maturity, empathy, co-operation, respect, loyalty and even forgiveness. which are essential components for all of us. Let’s start again.
Alex Armstrong
North East Valley
I am dismayed to see that council members are still having bitter arguments about stupid things and the deputy mayor has now resigned, all because some rural member made an unwise comment in public. For heaven’s sake , start to behave like sensible people you are meant to be, not like spoilt children you seem to be.
Ray Scott
Port Chalmers
With regard to the Strath Taieri Community Board member and the racist comment. We all say things at times that we later regret. He has apologised and the apology has been accepted by his employer. This should be the end of the matter, but the DCC seems to be in a turmoil over it.
The mayor has apologised for minimising the comment made; that should have been the end of the matter. But no, Cr Benson Pope had to criticise the mayor through the ODT.
This was uncalled for, and maybe expected from this councillor, but I was disappointed to read that councillors Barker and O’Malley were taking the matter still further.
Why can’t they just get over it and get on as a cohesive council?
Mike Perkins,
Waikouaiti
Fiscal mythology
It is interesting to see one of our most enduring myths surfacing during the election campaign. Namely that National are better at running the economy than Labour. The facts tell us something quite different. In the 50 years running up to 2019, National were in power for 28 years and Labour for 22. So what was our average GDP growth rate per capita over those two periods? Under Labour it was twice as good – 9.62% compared with National’s 4.6%.
Bill Southworth
Port Chalmers
[Bill Southworth is a former Labour local body election candidate. — Editor]
A seasoned voter writes
After living and taking part in nearly 20 elections, I am probably a"seasoned voter". The current bunch of polls focusing on party leaders leave me at a loss to understand what the election is about. Are we voting for a leader or a party with specific philosophies?
Surely any election held in New Zealand is held to elect a political party (or group of parties), not to elect a leader in a presidential race. Being the leader of any party in New Zealand is fraught with danger as the position of leader is, at best, only temporary as is demonstrated by the many changes that have occurred in New Zealand between elections.
Why not poll on important issues such as knowledge of the important issues and policies being raised and discussed by all parties? That would be much more revealing as it would show how little many New Zealanders know about what they are voting for. It is not who but what party that is the critical decision to make.
Bob and Sue Farrell
Arrowtown
TV attitude to science and maths incompetent
IT is interesting and fair that our TV news go to great lengths on race equality and gender.
Unfortunately they seem to have no-one much with a science or mathematics background in their news team.
They do not seem to fully understand that New Zealand became a metric country about 65 years ago, as they still use outdated imperial units in their news.
The only non-metric countries in the world are Liberia, Myanmar and the US.
Unfortunately 65 years later we still do not get metric measures all the time.
And sometimes when they do use metric units they do not do so correctly, for example the abbreviation for kilometres is km, not Km or kms, as TV news had used, and as any year 9 student should be able to tell them. There are no plurals for abbreviations.
Is correctness not able to be applied to science/mathematics in our news? Why are we following the US which stands outdated and almost alone?
One Monday they showed a graph of the share price for Sky City. Again any vaguely competent year 9 student would say the graph was nonsense as the scale was not correct by starting at zero.
The graph appeared to show an 80% drop in share price when it was actually about 10% . Nonsense news.
Why cannot we have a competent mathematic/science person somewhere to ensure correct news? I have tried complaining to TV but they say we "can do whatever we want" — in their words. Not good enough.
David Fortune
Te Anau
BIBLE READING: I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. — Psalms 119.11
