A monumental mistake

The cathedral is a symbol, built to the glory of God, not a monument to ego.

It would be a monumental mistake to force Christ’s Church to almost bankrupt itself, forsaking its calling, to perpetuate the folly of an earthquake-prone masonry design on shaky ground.

More important than money, and something its owners understood before starting the rebuilding process five years ago, is how much safer a new design could be.

If the Government resorted to compulsory acquisition, they’d have to consider the option of better-engineered – yet as majestic – solutions for a half or a third of the repair cost.

If the Government wants to really help, read last week’s Mainlander; aggregate good advice and present costed, viable plans by September. Odd the $400k+ study never did that.

Mark Aitchison

Sydenham

The real water thieves

Your article (May 24) telling of a majority owned Chinese company about to take 1.5 billion litres of water from Canterbury’s aquifer was yet another instance of the exploitation of NZ’s water resource, for foreign interests.

But don’t blame the foreign exploiters, blame the system, ie the government for it’s nonchalance as typified by Minister for the Environment Nick Smith’s absurd excuse that it represents only 2 per cent of water.

Smith’s thinking is as shallow as the Selwyn River’s former swimming and trout pools are today. The real water thieves are not the foreign corporates.

What Smith fails utterly to comprehend is that regionally, Canterbury’s water resource is grossly over-allocated and the impact in terms of available water is many times greater than his imagined 2 per cent.

The theft of the public’s water is an indictment of government indifference, ineptitude and shortsightedness.

Bill Benfield

Co-chairman Council of Outdoor Recreation Associations

Martinborough

Terror attacks

The first step in the physical destruction of others is not a bomb but dehumanisation.

The other must be rendered vile, wicked and subhuman only thus can normal human empathy be anaesthetised.

Nothing does this more efficiently than religion, even the Nazi holocaust would never have gotten off the ground without centuries of Christian antisemitism.

Jews, Christians and Muslims are fallible human beings.

The entity(s) they worship are apparently infallible.

If the latter do not raise their omnipotent hands against the ‘‘other’’ who are error prone humans in arrogance to do so?

No human has the right to be so certain of their religious contentions that they would deprive others of life in their name.

Darren A. Saunders Waltham