Council should take lead on smart SH1 decision
DUNEDIN City Council decisionmaking processes are halfbaked.
It is very clear, to those who are inclined to exercise a modicum of grey matter, that traffic, parking, and the functions of a city are predicated on the ability of its citizens to have freedom of travel and assembly.
What should be clear from this knowledge is that arterial routes to, from, and through our narrow central city are the foundation of the life and economic wellbeing of our city.
Why, then, would one even consider building parking buildings on land that could be considered to be used to relocate SH1? I refer of course to the St Andrew St car park over the railway line.
The full development/relocation of SH1 is an absolute fundamental to any future decisions about the current Cumberland/Castle Sts debate, the hospital build and any configuration of George St, together with the provisioning of any new parking.
Perhaps the planning department could actually do some planning and look at a 30year or even a 50year plan instead of a myopic 10year plan, or as some decisions are made, in even lesser time frames.
I fully realise that decisions about SH1 are not made by the DCC but by the New Zealand Transport Agency. However, as a major stakeholder, it has considerable influence.
Be proactive and sort out SH1 so that the other decisions are rational and not retroactive.
Social Credit
Dereck Gray
Mosgiel
I GET a laugh out of the Otago Daily
cartoon more often than not, but not out of the letters to the editor.
I couldn’t help myself this morning. A letter from D. Dorney, blaming the media for overlooking the Social Credit Party (Letters, 2.10.20).
Bastille Day 1984 was portentous for both the National and Social Credit parties. Both had pushed through legislation to force the damming of the Clutha River at Clyde.
Garry Knapp was ambitious and wanted to get in on the action. Leader Bruce Beetham was much more cautious, thinking more about policy — and the score or more of small farmers and business people in the valley — who were his bread and butter.
Bruce, however, was won over by a plate of scones and a cup of tea in Cromwell. Eileen Rankin had created a lobby of local businesswomen who were rightly concerned about canning the dam, both for the dayworker families and the local businesses. So Social Credit was won over — and the rest is history.
That election, Social Credit topped the polls in Cromwell and haemorrhaged in every other electorate in the country.
Your correspondent is right in lauding Social Credit policy — but when the rubber hit the road in practice, they slipped. Compromised forever by a Cromwell tea party.
David George
Cromwell
Gun control
SO the ‘‘would be’’ NRA here is telling its members to vote for National or similar. Smacks of ‘‘toys out of the cot’’ material.
The majority of Kiwis do not own a gun and it would be anathema to do so.
I also believe the vast majority of gun owners are responsible, diligent and honest people who use their firearms for the purpose they were intended. To tell them how to vote is treating these people like idiots — they are not.
The firearms banned were those that were designed to inflict the most damage in the shortest space of time.
The world lauded us for our stance on these weapons. They have no place in a civilised society.
To the gun lobby here: face facts, get over it and be grateful we don’t have people wandering the streets here with a gun on their hip.
Graham Bulman
Roslyn .....................................
BIBLE READING: Don’t worry about anything, but pray about everything. — Philemon 54.6.
IN recognition of the importance of readers’ contributions to the letters page, the newspaper each week selects a Letter of the Week with a book prize courtesy of Penguin Random House. This week’s winner is M. Dempster, of Mornington, for a letter about the sort of workforce we might need to rebuild the economy. The prize is a copy of V2, by Robert Harris. The winning letter was printed on Wednesday and can be read on the ODT website.