Lifestyle blocks bad use of land

I know Auckland needs more houses but does it need more lifestyle blocks? On a weekend trip to Auckland, I was horrified to see hoardings advertising “lifestyle blocks” on prime agricultural land beside the motorway close to Pukekohe.

As a Waikato resident I consider it tragic that prime agricultural land is being decommissioned for housing and agricultural production is being shifted to the provinces. In years to come, food prices will rise as food has to be transported back to Auckland, and there will be an increased volume of heavy trucks on roads that are already suffering capacity problems.

Please can the city planners reconsider what they are trying to achieve. More houses are necessary but more unproductive lifestyle blocks are not. It is tragic to ruin prime agricultural land by planting houses on it.

Bruce G. Church, RD Waharoa. Yesterday’s correspondent Kim Hegan needs to live in the real world. I would not be happy sending an unarmed young policewoman, even one trained in handto-hand combat, to subdue a drunk and drugged offender, obviously mentally unbalanced and armed with a machete that he had already used on another person. Get real. Dave King, Avondale. Contrary to assertions that the choice of such an obvious venue as Astoria for the Curran-Hirschfeld meeting disproves any intentions of confidentiality, it seems more likely to be a signal of the blatant hubris with which Curran has conducted the whole sequence of attempted deceptions. As is well known, high-vis jackets have been useful for burglars and other offenders to disguise their activities.

Jane-Margaret Sadler, Remuera. Judging from the large number of critical articles in the Herald over the last few days it is clear there is a consensus in Auckland that the 51 per cent government shareholding in Air New Zealand does not entitle the Minister for Regional Economic Development to remind the board that serving the whole of New Zealand is part of their job. This would explain why I just have to put up with regularly paying up to $500 more for a short-term return to Auckland from lovely Dunners than from Christchurch, which is 80 per cent of the distance.

And yet I read that in the UK exactly the same proportion of shareholders is enough to hand the engineering giant GKN over to Melrose to play with and trouser hundreds of millions of pounds for the trouble. This is against the wishes of the GKN board, the UK public, Airbus, the defence industry, Her Majesty’s Opposition, Michael Heseltine, the terrified GKN employees and even the Daily Mail. Could the experts in the Herald please explain the apparent discrepancy here? John Stewart, Dunedin. pretend we are expelling spies just to be one of the gang.

Whether it is because we run a lean diplomatic presence in Russia and can’t afford the inevitable retaliation, or because she believes we cannot identify spies and doesn’t want to deport innocent people, or because she knows we have spies but would prefer to keep the ones we know about rather than precipitate the posting of unknown ones, or just because she is naive, I’m glad she didn’t do it to be one of the gang.

Lyall Dawson, Sandringham. At the time of the attack on the Rainbow Warrior Maggie Thatcher was the PM of the UK and she was asked by a reporter, “Was the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior by French operatives on a par with recent Arab terrorist attacks?” Mrs Thatcher was most indignant and she responded that the attack on the Rainbow Warrior was not at all similar. Mrs Thatcher expressed solidarity with France. It must have escaped her attention that New Zealand was a friendly country that assisted France and the UK in two world wars.

Johann Nordberg, West Auckland. Auckland Council has a vision for the future of high rise living, electric cars, bikes and public transport for all. But remember electric cars need roads and parking, bikes need roads and storage, trains and buses need termini and feeder services, and high rise living needs open space and fresh air. The major metropolitan centre envisaged for Takapuna will need all these.

Takapuna beach is near deserted from the scaremongering of the Safeswim app. Now we are faced with a ghost town scenario as Panuku and Auckland Council go after the money. Auckland councillors, have some vision, please. Don’t sell the carpark at 40 Anzac St. You can never buy it back. Ruth Ell, Takapuna. Tim Hazledine supports the levying of a congestion charge on Auckland traffic in preference to a fuel tax across the region. If the congestion charge was set at a level that would match the revenue expected to be generated from the fuel tax, commuters may find their cost of commute during peak hours exorbitantly high. Should this be the case, it may result in drivers choosing not to use their vehicles during peak hours. Unfortunately for the Auckland Council, if this were the case there would be a dramatic drop in their income.

Dick Ayres, Auckland Central.