Voyager 2023 Cartoonist of the Year Oldest record store still going strong up north

YOUR online article ( ODT, 20.4.24) re Record Store Day credits Slow Boat Records in Wellington as being New Zealand’s oldest independent record store. It was founded in 1985 as we clearly see on the store window in the photograph you published. I suggest that is incorrect and remind you that Marbecks in Auckland’s Queens Arcade in was founded in 1935, still going strong, and is where my family and I bought our first LPs in the early 1950s. Julian Faigan

Roslyn

Looming issue

SEA level rise is inevitable, in that humanity seems incapable of reducing green house gases pumping into earth’s atmosphere, raising temperature and sea levels. Jim Mora, on his RNZ programme on April 21, interviewed Koen Olthuis from Water Studio, a Dutch architecture company building floating homes and buildings.

These mostly concrete box floating homes have a 75 to 100year life. Imagine South Dunedin being a desirable place to live with raised roading, sewer connections, parks etc with housing on flushing canals. Not battling, but harnessing a major looming issue for South Dunedin.

Ian Davie Careys Bay

One does not fit all

ACCORDING to a number of respected economists, Nicola Willis is going to borrow $15 billion for tax cuts for the rich. Just imagine what would happen if a Labour finance minister was about to borrow $15 billion to give to a different, but equally small, section of society— let’s say solo mums with three or more kids, or a labourers’ union. There would be a volcanic stream of invective and outrage from some mainstream media and political commentators. Now what do we have? Zilch. If we don’t somehow reform the biased and destructive way we look at rightwing greed, and in my view, looting, our democracy is lost.

Ewan McDougall

Broad Bay