Keep South Dunedin’s Kiwibank, NZ Post, open

I AGREE with Peter Lim’s letter (ODT,

19.5.18). It is so disappointing to hear of the planned closure of the South Dunedin NZ Post and Kiwibank.

This electorate is the most densely populated in New Zealand.

Thousands will be hurt by this selfish planned decision. It will indeed suck the life out of South Dunedin.

This post shop brings so many people to the busy South Dunedin shopping area. It is so handy to be able to go to one venue to pay accounts than go to many different places to do so.

About a dozen accounts can be paid by NZ Post, such as Dunedin City Council rates, vehicle registrations, telephone accounts, electricity accounts, parcel post, overseas post, Kiwibank, finance and insurance accounts, government organisations, local and regional accounts, road driving charges and dealing with changes of address.

Please, please think again what harm will be done by this closure.

G. Donaldson

Dunedin

Reading the Bible

LIKE many of my students over the last 20 years, I am obliged to raise my hand, not to ask a question or make a comment, but to plead ‘‘guilty’’ to being one the subjects of Chris Trotter’s (ODT, 14.5.18) tirade on religious education.

I have entered the classroom to teach the Bible, not religious education, and that’s what it was called at its inception, Bible InSchools.

Religion is ‘‘mankind’s attempts at clawing our way to God’’, but in contrast the Bible reveals God’s great plan to reconcile us to Himself.

It was King George VI, our present Queen’s father, who once said, ‘‘The Bible is the most precious thing this world affords’’.

Along with many others over the years we taught from material carefully graded for the ages of the children in the class, and it was taught with sensitivity and care for the students before us.

I have great admiration for our teaching profession — they work hard and care for the children they teach.

One day, a training college student arrived in my room and said I had taught her when she was a little girl. She was now becoming a teacher herself. A year or two later her mother, the assistant head, said her daughter was in London. She wanted me to know she had a scripture class and she was using what I had taught her.

I would hope that many of my students will go on to read the Bible through adult eyes and to understand that this ancient bestseller can be verified archaeologically, historically, grammatically and experientially to our generation as it has been for hundreds of years before us.

The results of throwing out the

Bible and its message are disturbing. Robert Hamill

Mosgiel

CHRIS Trotter failed badly in his article concerning the Bible in schools (ODT, 14.5.18).

Before speaking/writing critically your words should pass through three gates — 1. Is it true? 2. Is it necessary? 3.Is it kind? R. H. Lovelock

Wanaka

[Abridged]

Seffertown history

JUST a note to rectify a report (ODT,

17.5.18) on two Belgium mountain bikers rescued in the Moonlight area.

It was Seffertown, not Seppertown, a settlement on the true right bank of Moke Creek, where the bikers passed through. A few huts still remain more or less intact.

A previous resident was one Barry (‘‘Hang on a minute, mate’’) Crump, in the late 1970s. Also Jock Boyd in partnership with Arnold McDonald filed a claim for a copper mine some years previously.

There was a strong indication of ‘‘peacock’’ colour rock.

Jim Childerstone

Hampden