The Pope’s modern thinking may not suit some

THE Pope has to be careful what he says to his followers who take everything they read and are taught as gospel.

Telling them there is no such place as hell after years of being brainwashed that there is will, to some, amount to blasphemy.

If he goes further and states heaven may have been sucked down a black hole 1000 years ago, then he’s out of a job. K. Sutherland Frankton

Town hall balcony

WHEN the proposed new Dunedin hotel was designed for construction west of the town hall, everyone was up in arms because it would block people’s view and look out of place in the area.

Yet many seem happy to have a rail put up in the town hall which also blocks people’s view — of performers on stage or the dance floor.

What next? A rail across the front of the stage so you can’t fall off?

The public of Dunedin need to question their council representatives about the number of patrons who have fallen from the balcony.

I have asked twice with no response, probably because I am from out of town.

Please use some common sense and fight the bureaucracy that make and then enforce these ideas.

B. E. Plant Oamaru

So many lives wasted

NOW the lament for Gallipoli is over for a year, we may assess the event with less nationalistic fervour.

The Great War was not a ‘‘just war’’ as World War 2 was described. It was a lengthy political failure hidden behind uniform, mournful bugles, cenotaphs and empty, tragic sentiment.

In truth, the dead were mostly boys, not soldiers. They were clerks and farmers’ sons and the sons of a generation that would never come home. What a different country New Zealand could have been.

Sadly, they died horribly and, dare we breathe it: they died for nothing. David Stillaman

Maori Hill