Give police access to right tools

Hera Cook and Marie Russell make the case that armed cops won’t make us safer, and I’m unwilling to go toe to toe against well-funded researchers and historians secure in ivory towers (Armed cops won’t make us safer, March 5). But they miss the point, which is that arming police will make police safer, or at least give police a chance to do their job.

It was thoughtless and clumsy of them to conflate male suicide, Pike River deaths, arming of police and the gunlobby in their article. Police are not at risk from male suicides using firearms, but they are the state employees that we as a society expect to front up to armed criminals.

Wearing eye and ear protection is mandated in industry, but the Cook and Russell show want to limit the ability of police to defend themselves. We are not a guntoting society of cowboys like the open-carry crowd in Oklahoma. I just want the police to have access to the tools to do the job we pay them to do, and I’m extremely grateful that the police are willing to do that job for us.

Fraser Watson, Otaki

Prime spin

No wonder Stacey Kirk’s analysis found a lack of accountability from our Government’s communication (The year of delivering policy riddles, March 2). She must have forgotten that our prime minister learnt her style while a policy adviser with the two biggest spin doctors in the United Kingdom, Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell.

So it’s not surprising that Kirk found our Government’s communication ‘‘laden with hyperbole but never full of any substance’’. Perhaps Jaspinda is a more appropriate name for our PM?

James Graham, Mt Cook

Tabs on tooting

The Dominion Post’s recent article about the cancelled Mt Victoria Tunnel tootathon provoked an interesting discussion with me and my visiting relative. While she was exploring Wellington she found the tooting in the tunnel amusing and unique. She even found it welcoming.

The article discussed how in the future police may monitor the tunnel for people tooting.

Exactly how will they monitor it and, if you ban tooting in the tunnel, wouldn’t it just encourage more people to do it?

Fergus Marks, Wadestown

Vote for Taylor?

When New Zealand citizen and Isis fighter Mark Taylor returns to New Zealand he may face a lengthy prison sentence.

Will he be legally permitted to vote in every general election during his time of incarceration?

Heather Mackie, Trentham

Green roading lie

To those who are indicating their frustration with the everincreasing incidence of ‘‘abnormal’’ road delays in the region, I say nothing will change until voters stop swallowing the Greenies’ ‘‘big lie’’ about roads. It cannot be stated too often, that ‘‘induced traffic’’ is a half-truth.

Building more road space does induce more car use. But we do not ‘‘reduce car use’’ by not building road space as population increases and economic growth occurs. The options are not, as the absurd and shallow assumption might have it, that the more road space we build, the worse congestion will get.

Wellington is like a case study in the global data. European cities of a similar population have around double our highway and arterial road space. US ones have around three times as much. Their congestion delay per hour of driving is around 5 to 10 minutes – ‘‘induced traffic’’ has perpetuated this level of delay for decades as they built more roads. Our delay was also 5-10 minutes decades ago, and the result of not building more road space is a delay of 45 minutes+. And the slightest incident or spike in demand (such as a rock concert) creates hours of ‘‘Carmageddon’’.

Phil Hayward, Naenae

So, not integrated?

If the GWRC is running an integrated bus network, as claimed by Chris Laidlaw (March 6), then the Airport Flyer would appear on Metlink’s real-time information. Maybe Laidlaw needs to explain what he means by an integrated bus network. John Dee, York Bay