Delving into the ‘murky’ issues in Middlemarch

I ATTENDED the public meeting in Middlemarch with Dunedin City Council and Otago Regional Council representatives about the recent flooding.

Those who spoke to the meeting were informed, experienced in the climate and conditions of the Strath Taieri, and knowledgeable about creeks and ditches and water flow. They spoke with passion but objectivity, too.

Serious issues got to be addressed. Rumours, conjecture, and just plain gossip spring up like a westerly gale.

However, if contractors have signed off on maintenance work around the district as completed when it may not have been, a community has been put at repeated risk.

This time, for some, recovery is no longer possible. Livelihoods, employment, wellbeing are permanently affected.

Let’s get to the bottom of that rather than peer into murky, questionable waters looking for eels (ODT, 6.2.21).

Ms Robertson does deserve an apology, but a place called Middlemarch deserves the truth.

Liz Benny Middlemarch

Coal train protest

I LOOK forward to reading future reports of Bruce Mahalski (Letters, 6.2.21) and his fellow members of the local branch of Extinction Rebellion’s next protest.

Rather than targeting the greenest form of transport, rail, when will

Extinction Rebellion chain themselves to the gates of all the local branches of the many trucking firms around town?

All that CO2 that hundreds of trucks on the road emit every day — not to mention all those rubber tyres that have to be made, replaced regularly and disposed of, and to where? The landfill.

Then, of course, there are all their academics and professional members jetting around in these huge CO2emitting 767s.

I don’t see any of these protesters causing any civil disobedience at the airport; otherwise, they certainly all would be arrested and charged.

What I do see is the level of hypocrisy, and it is breathtaking.

P. Graham

Dunedin