Train: connect Dunedin and help environment

IT is absolutely brilliant that the Dunedin council is pushing for passenger train services between Christchurch and Dunedin.

What a difference it will make environmentally with so many single occupant cars travelling up and down every day. It’s a long, boring drive but by train it can be very social, plus with the great views of our fabulous coastline.

It will connect Dunedin with the north and assist tourism immensely. Visitors have struggled to believe they couldn’t get south but could go to the West Coast. Let me know when it’s going to start and I will be there with my ticket in my hand, ready to travel.

J. Park

Wakari

Death or passing?

I WAS very pleased to read the recent article (September 21) by your regular columnist Elspeth McLean regarding the euphemisms commonly used instead of saying dead or died.

I have often been tempted (although never having the courage to do so) to say to people who say someone has ‘‘passed away’’ that ‘‘No they haven’t, they’ve died’’

In a similar vain, I also get really annoyed by calling the end of year celebration New Year’s (as in an ODT

headline recently). It may be New Year’s Day or New Year’s Eve, but the celebration as a whole is New Year not New Year’s. Also, in headlines you often use a comma in place of the word ‘‘and’’ — why is this? It often makes it harder to understand headlines.

Chris London

Milton

EXACTLY!

ELSPETH McLean was right on the button in her column (ODT, 21.9.22). Would people please give ‘‘passed, passing and impact’’ the shove. I would never have told a worker to fetch the ‘‘digging implement’’ from the woolshed. Simply a clear instruction, ‘‘go and get the shovel’’. Jim Moffat

Caversham