Young offer best hope of change
Watching an interview with two of the young men from Parkland School reminds me young people have huge power to drive social change . . . should they choose to do so.
It’s easy to forget the major changes wrought throughout the ’60s and ’70s and later by young people. The end of the Vietnam War, women’s rights, civil rights, environmental issues and many more.
Unfortunately, life gets in the way and more mundane issues such as family and career can take our energies elsewhere as we get older. The baton is best passed to the young who have the time and energy to lead the charge.
Hard to credit that 500-year-old trees were being felled for house construction and that consenting male gay couples risked imprisonment as late as the 1980s.
Peter S Dredge, Beach Haven. The coalition honeymoon rolls on like an Indian summer but are there winds of change in the air?
The recent Auckland Transport disruption and the indefinite closure of Port of Lyttelton due to industrial action may be a forerunner for further workplace discord. Major shipping lines will follow this event with interest as the reliability of Port of Timaru beckons, providing options, so a dangerous game is being played out.
Pending changes to tenancy law has seen many investors exit the market, impacting rental availability. Policy relating to foreign investment is being questioned. Will lifting minimum wage rates and changes to employment law hit business confidence/profitability?
Of greater importance is the intent to revoke and replace the Employment Contracts Act with the Labour Partyinspired “Fair Pay Agreement“. Could this become the catalyst to return the country to 1970s style collective agreements?
P. J. Edmondson, Tauranga. Matt Damon is quoted as saying “. . . there’s a difference between patting someone on the bottom and rape . . .”
Yes, just as there’s a difference between punching someone and murder. Both, however, are unacceptable.
The MeToo discussion is not about actions between boyfriend/girlfriend, it’s about men saying or doing things to women (or other men) they are not on personal, intimate terms with. How would Matt feel if a male colleague patted him on the bottom? I believe he and every person reading this would consider that a sexual act and would find it shocking and repellent.
There is no grey area here. It is not acceptable to do or say anything sexual to another person unless you have already established beyond question that such overtures will be welcome. This goes in spades when you are in a position of power over that person. None of the millions of women joining the MeToo movement had given permission for the sexual words and actions of the men they are complaining about.
Susan Grimsdell, Auckland Central. Where has your correspondent Phil Skipworth has been living lately?
He is bemoaning the lack of female leaders in the world today. Has he never heard of Theresa May and Angela Merkel? Probably the two most powerful women in government. A quick search of the internet turns up female leaders in Norway and Bangladesh. Also there are female presidents in Taiwan, Lithuania, Malta, Mauritius, Croatia, Nepal, Chile, the Marshall Islands, and until last year in South Korea. No doubt there are others.
Joyce Cooper, Eden Terrace.