Inheriting problems

Many factors can affect a child’s inheritance (“Sense of entitlement”, September

23). Sometimes it’s because a parent has remarried and there is a combined family, or the parent may feel he or she has the right to favour one child over another. Sometimes, when a child moves overseas, they are written out of a will at the instigation of the parent or of avaricious siblings.

In my view, a person’s inheritance by direct line is sacrosanct and there is no room for legal dispute. A person should not have to make a case to inherit what is rightly theirs by birth. The rule must be equal shares for all, no matter how deservedness is judged. Why should one child be punished for making more of their life than a sibling?

Having made the decision to become a parent and raise your children equally, a last-stroke-of-the-pen power play will leave only bitterness and hurt. The responsibility of parenthood never dies: our children owe us nothing; we owe them all we have.

Jennifer Broadhurst (Brighton) MEMORIALISING THE PAST The soldier on horseback pictured on the left of the

illustration used with last week’s Editorial (“Finding a balance”) commemorates World War I, not Marmaduke Nixon, who is memorialised with an obelisk some metres away.

Nixon was buried in Auckland’s Symonds St Cemetery, and when the motorway cut through it in the 1960s, his remains were recovered, cremated and placed at Otahuhu. The headstone was also removed and now stands hard against the base of the obelisk.

John Webster (Takapuna, Auckland)

Our apologies for the error. – Ed

WHEN KARL POPPED OVER

The Listener and AC Grayling have done New Zealanders a service (“Age of uncertainty”, September 23) in confirming the value of philosophers in our polity.

Of particular interest during Election 2017 should be Grayling’s noting that the great Karl Popper “taught for a while in New Zealand”. He did so at Canterbury University College.

Over eight years from

1937 – it was not a momentary visitation, as Grayling implies – Popper, astonished but encouraged, after the crass politics of inter-war Austria, to be in a free and open democracy, wrote his great “war work”, The Open Society and Its Enemies. He also led the drafting of a blueprint for a modern university of New Zealand and saw his finest student, Peter Munz, go on to Cambridge to participate in Popper’s redhot-poker debate with Ludwig Wittgenstein, and emerge to produce works including the compelling The Shapes of Time: A New Look at the Philosophy of History.

Not long before he died, Popper advised Britain in a letter to the Economist to eschew pressures for proportional representation. Popper’s reasoning: it took the choice of government out of the hands of the people and put it into the hands of parties.

Hugh Templeton (Wellington) COMPUTERISING ELECTION NIGHT

In the 1966 general election, results were shown on AKTV2 using a computer for the first time. Arrangements were made for Burroughs (later Unisys) to install a computer temporarily in the television building in Shortland St. This was destined for the Auckland Electric

Power Board, but it stopped on the way, as it were, to handle the election results. The payback for Burroughs was the showing from time to time of its logo in close-up shots.

The computer, in large cabinets, was set up in the corridor outside the main studio. The studio wall was painted black and divided into 80 rectangles showing the name and number of all the electorates. On the night, a team of graphic artists entered the figures as they were broadcast, with a camera zooming in on the relevant entry. Nowadays, of course, the figures are inserted electronically.

In the body of the studio, a bank of typists and teleprinter operators was set up. Actually,

most of these were props as there was not much typing or teleprinter traffic required.

The political commentator was University of Auckland professor of political science Robert Chapman, who analysed the results as they came in, predicting outcomes, etc. The professor had collaborated with a programmer to set up an analysis and prediction program that included a pseudo candidate called “no vote”.

Another feature of this election was the success of the first Social Credit candidate, Vern Cracknell, elected as MP for Hobson. He was interviewed live, but with only sound over picture, as there was no outside broadcast van near him.

My function was as results editor: all results as they were received passed over my desk where I kept a record and passed them on to the various positions in the studio.

Rod Melville (Mt Eden, Auckland) JUST FINK ABOUT IT

From time to time commentators sing the praises of Finland in regard to prisons, tackling inequality, social welfare, etc, and suggest that we should copy it. A Finnish neighbour told me this story: Finland had a tough time during World War II. The decade

after the war was particularly difficult for it. In seeking to improve conditions, the Government looked to learn from a similar-sized country that was successful. It chose New Zealand. Studies were undertaken of our systems and delegations were sent to gather information.

The Finnish Government implemented the recommendations from this investigation. It followed New Zealand.

According to my neighbour, Finnish people are well aware of this part of their history. She says that it is common now to refer to the path Finland has taken as “the New Zealand way”.

Rob Lewes (Wellington) MAORI LANGUAGE WEAK

I am ashamed. Another Māori Language Week has come and gone and I notice, yet again, it has had little or no impact.

I still hear “Paraparam” and “Taihappy” when, out of respect, we now say “Beijing” and “Mumbai” and no longer “Peking” and “Bombay.”

What’s wrong with us?

Not wanting to learn te reo is everyone’s choice, but deliberately avoiding correct usage of even one’s hometown name ? That must, surely, be calculated.

Which is why I’m ashamed. Living near Otaki and Waitarere, I have to keep nohopuku (silent) to avoid raruraru (problems) among family and friends. Can’t we all just say the names right?

Kia ora.

Michael Dally (Levin/ Taitoko) LETTER OF THE WEEK CATHEDRAL CONUNDRUM

The last thing the architectural world needs is a small, fauxgothic cathedral in a Western world jam-packed with ancient large gothic cathedrals (“Power

& glory”, September 23). And the last thing Christchurch needs is another large worship centre when, along with the rest of West, it has a diminishing churchgoing population.

After the completion of the soaring Cologne cathedral in the late 19th century, the world seemed to have decided that the final statement had been made on gothic churches and largely went modern.

However, the existing old churches of Europe are indeed magnificent and awe-inspiring, and should be preserved at all cost, but except for the hordes of tourists who come to experience them and marvel at medieval man’s amazing ingenuity, they are otherwise mostly empty. This includes Spain, where they have not forgotten the church’s association with fascism and its anti-republican stance.

Barcelona has its own ancient gothic pile only a short walk from the Plaça de Catalunya and La Rambla that is a major tourist attraction, but it’s undoubtedly the magnificent art nouveau Sagrada Família basilica, some distance from the main tourist area, that is Barcelona’s top attraction. It’s the tourists who are paying

for it, because it is an exciting piece of art and architecture.

Unfortunately, about the only similarity a rebuilt ChristChurch Cathedral would have with the Sagrada Família is its completion date. It would have little architectural merit and is unlikely to pull either hordes of worshippers or tourists.

There’s also the question of whether taxpayers’ money should be going into a religious venture, especially one of little use to most citizens. Those likely to directly benefit from this luxury will be the Canterbury Establishment, who, if they want it, should pay.

Murray Eggers (Paraparaumu) AMBULANCE RULES

My wife is at home with terminal cancer. We have used the St John ambulance service many times in the past two months and its people are terrific. However, some of its policies border on the bizarre.

Last week, when my wife was discharged from Thames Hospital, I asked the nurse if she would please ring for an ambulance. She did so and was told it would cost us $200. It is a distance of 1km.

I took the phone and said, “So, if I get my wife into a wheelchair, push her to the car and, with great difficulty, get her into the car and drive her home, where she will be unable to get out of the car and into the house, and I then ring for an ambulance to come and have the staff carry her into the house, the ambulance will be free?”

The answer was yes. So that is what I did.

John Allum (Thames) GONE PHISHING

I’m 70-plus-years-old and a technology klutz. I have only recently learnt to change a light bulb, for example. But your August 5 story about the perils of email (“You’ve not got mail”) has thrown me a lifeline.

Now, at last, the likes of me have a simple formula to solve our computer problems: get “phished”, preferably daily at 5pm.

Christopher Bourn (Richmond, Nelson)

TYPING, NOT WRITING

Don Goodall’s concerns ( Letters, September 23) about productivity in the halls of power by two-finger-typing senior managers are somewhat misplaced.

First, speed of typing does not equate to quality of thinking, and anyway, the more words highly paid executives generate, the less productive they tend to be.

Petrus van der Schaaf (Te Arai Point) PROTECTING THE US WAY OF LIFE

With US plans for a border wall with Mexico, the travel restrictions on Muslims and tightened border security checks, the people of America must feel grateful to the Trump Administration. They’ll soon be able shoot each other in the knowledge no terrorist action is involved.

Tony Goodwin (Pt Chevalier)