One person per house isn’t right

I read your piece on our homeless with dismay. Daily I see a man in the Pak’nSave carpark who lives in his car. Increasingly, as I do volunteer work at the courthouse for Friends of the Court, the address line in the paperwork reads “No fixed abode”. But I seem to be part of the problem. My wife died in November and I am a widower living alone.

The houses on either side have one occupant each. The widower directly opposite lives alone. In a street of nine houses, four have one person. I do not know what the answer is, but this is very poor use of our housing stock. I am sure this is commonplace across the country.

John L. R. Allum, Thames. open class at a state school, is taking time to adjust to the noise and constant activity. Some teachers and pupils will never thrive in such an environment and why should they have to conform?

Apparently charter schools have had excellent results and Maori children who struggled in the state system are doing particularly well. This reactionary stance from Chris Hipkins is ideological and runs counter to experience. The serious decline in standards internationally calls for an alternative to the Ministry of Education strait-jacket.

Mary Tallon, Morningside. It annoys me to see so many so-called media experts forever having a pop at Warren Gatland. So let us examine his crimes. Gatland has taken his skills overseas and coaches Wales. If he was still coaching in New Zealand I am certain he would not attract so many attacks. There seems to be something lacking in the New Zealand character.

Perhaps many of the attackers have forgotten what they were taught many years ago as youngsters when they encountered “Bible studies”. The lack of Christian belief and compassion also used to show itself when New Zealand fans hissed and booed Quade Cooper, another who took his skills overseas. Wake up, before we attract world wide attention for our poor sportsmanship.

Johann Nordberg, West Auckland. remarks about Maori have no place in this millennium. He should paddle his waka back to Wales or wherever the Joneses came from. I am proud to be Maori and of Irish, English and Viking heritage.

Rob Thompson, Whangaparaoa. The people calling for Sir Robert Jones to be stripped of the knighthood given to him by the Lange Government after he had helped them get rid of Muldoon need to understand they are producing the sort of reaction he had hoped for. Sir Bob may talk a lot of rubbish, but it was inevitable that eventually somebody would put in a word for the colonists.

Without any outside exposure, the local populace would have no written language, no wheel, no electricity and no law. Surely nobody would see that as a Utopian state. Perhaps old Whitey didn't do everything wrong after all.

Alan Tomlinson, Herne Bay. To those correspondents who disparage Jacinda Ardern on a personal level, realise this. New Zealand now has a new, elected Government. It is a coalition, as provided for under MMP. We have a new Prime Minister who happens to be youthful, personable, female, pregnant and unmarried, and full of positivity. So, stop sulking and throwing your toys out of the cot. Get over it, and accept it like grownups. John Walsh, Green Bay.