Airport proposal Lasting legacy

As an annual visitor to new Zealand, sadly not this year thanks to Covid, I recently received a copy from relatives in Christchurch of a Press article dated January 6, by Joe Bennett – Leave Tarras alone, you greedsters!’

From 13,000 miles away in a desperate Covid-infected UK, and suffering extreme cold

in a harsh Aberdeen version of a Scottish winter, I fully agree with the sentiments of Mr Bennett.

Tarras is an original and quite unique little part of New Zealand, a part I have passed through on probably thousands of occasions in my 52-year NZ association, both residential and annual tourist.

To even contemplate an airport simply beggars belief and with plenty of lockdown time available to put my thinking cap on, my only positive input would be it may eliminate some of the maniac drivers one encounters with monotonous regularity when travelling south!

I have even jokingly suggested to your most famous golfing legend that should I ever win the lottery, I would stage a NZ Open around Tarras golf course, again a unique feature of the adjoining countryside.

In these desperate times, one would much prefer to be joining my many golfing friends in Christchurch, perhaps even a game of golf round Tarras, than be suffering recurring lockdown for close to 10 months.

Stay safe, New Zealand.

Jim Hardie, Aberdeen, Scotland

Now that Joe Biden has been inaugurated, one of the questions that arises is what will Donald Trump’s legacy be?

How will history view him? As the first president to be impeached twice?

Perhaps as the most unpopular president in history?

The answer, I think, is he will be looked at in the same light as historians view the Roman statesman Tiberius Gracchus. Gracchus, like Trump, was an elitist turned populist whose actions led to the first instances of mob violence and death at his nation’s ‘house of democracy’.

But Gracchus is not remembered so much for this.

Rather he is viewed as the first person who realised unconventional routes to power had been opened because of the general population’s hatred towards the establishment, which had come about due to falling economic conditions.

This will be Trump’s legacy

centuries from now, that he paved the way for future populists, and it will be these figures who will have the really well-known and controversial legacies, just as most people now know of Julius Caesar, but few know of Tiberius Gracchus. Caidan Taylor, Avondale