Simple way to boost city’s appeal
Good grief. The ink from the rubber stamp has barely dried on the ICC long term plan (LTP) and now already they are mulling approval for a $2.3 million replacement of the water slide complex at Splash Palace.
While acknowledging the merit of such a project I ponder why the ICC failed to include this project in its LTP, you know the plan that supposedly looks 10 years hence?
This is a project that clearly has been in the wings for some time.
Incredibly Cr Toni Biddle states she knows people who would travel specifically to Invercargill for the proposed slides, followed by Cr Ludlow who states it reminds him of the butterfly house in Dunedin museum and that it had potential to become one of those attractions that draws people. All for $2.3m.
I remind all councillors that for zero dollars they, along with the museum’s trust board, can reopen the Southland Museum and Art Gallery and restore an attraction denied to Southland locals and visitors alike and ‘‘boost the city’s appeal’’.
I, and others, have clearly demonstrated the fallacy of the SMAG closure. SMAG could be reopened to the public today.
This, along with the omission of the $200m HWCP Management Ltd development, of which the ICC ratepayer is a 49.999751 per cent shareholder from the consultative LTP, altogether demonstrates that in my opinion this council could not plan its way out of a wet paper bag. Insult or a fair summation?
The people of Southland and Invercargill will be the ultimate judge.
Lindsay Buckingham
Climate change
Southland has to pull its weight where climate change is concerned.
We don’t want to be thought of as slackers by the rest of the country and there’s plenty we can do to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. Fonterra has promised to turn off the coal burners at Edendale and make their milk powder using renewable energy, as soon as they can: ‘‘Our targets are ambitious and our commitment to meeting them is resolute, because there is no alternative with climate change,’’ says the Fonterra spokesman.
Even the big polluters are joining the campaign to turn back the tide of seriously damaging climate events that are right now frying the northern hemisphere.
But not the National Party. Instead of working with Southlanders, they’ve chosen to try to alarm us, frighten us with veiled hints about ‘‘trouble’’ and ‘‘unaffordable sacrifices’’.
In other words, it’s business as usual, according to National’s ‘‘climate change’’ spokesman, Todd Muller, and local National Party MP, Sarah Dowie.
Who, I wonder, will explain that head-in-the-sand thinking to Todd and Sarah’s grandchildren when they ask,
‘‘What did we do here in Southland when we learned how serious climate change was?’’
Robert Guyton
Abortion grief
Regarding your August 14 editorial ‘‘Miscarriage grief needs acknowledgment’’, Right to Life applauds Ginny Anderson MP who has a bill that provides bereavement leave for woman who have suffered a miscarriage.
The writer claims that there needs to be a clear distinction between the emotional state of those who have chosen to end a pregnancy and those who have not, this is questioned.
Every pregnancy loss is a tragedy for the woman whether it is a miscarriage or an abortion.
No woman wants an abortion, it is contrary to her nature.
No woman seeks an abortion as she would be seeking a Porsche or an icecream cone, but as an animal caught in a trap wants to gnaw off its own leg.
It could be argued that many women who are coerced into an abortion and are subject to sexual and domestic violence and threatened with abandonment experience intense and unspeakable pain and loss at the killing of their precious unborn child.
Since the abortion laws were passed in 1977 more than 500,000 unborn children have been killed in our public hospitals.
There are hundreds and thousands of woman who are suffering the loss of their child, we should acknowledge their loss by including these women in this bill.
Ken Orr, spokesperson, Right to Life
Netball’s finest
‘‘By the Frewts of their labour shall you know them’’ to misquote an old saying. Steel both in name and deed. The most exciting and rewarding television viewing that a local audience could ever wish to watch.
Ignoring all the distractions in the last quarter and playing for their captain Wendy Frew, one goal at a time, when it mattered most, says so much about this team.
There are many lessons for the rest of us in what you achieved for each other on Sunday afternoon.
Thank you all so much – you did yourselves proud.
Daniel Phillips