So long, Airport Flyer, it was nice knowing you Look for bigger picture

NZ Bus, operator of the Wellington Airport Flyer, would be wise to learn from the Cadbury chocolate debacle, circa 2009.

Cadbury infamously added palm oil, reduced the block size without reducing price, and changed its packaging – all at once. New Zealanders were livid. Cadbury irreversibly ceded swaths of market share to Whittaker’s and, as we know, eventually closed its Dunedin factory.

The Airport Flyer is destined for the same fate. The frustration of trying to find the new bus stop at the airport with insufficient directions was real. Then the unapologetic notice taped to the wall telling me that Snapper is being pulled irritated me.

Today, an email from Snapper points out that real-time information services are ending as well. All this after a major price increase in 2017. See you, Airport Flyer, you were a great service while you lasted.

Nathan Brown, Te Aro

Lessons of history

Must reporters, especially on television, gasp over the latest political opinion polls? The current Government, half-way through its term, is scoring high at about the level that the Opposition scored in the real poll in 2017. Is this really a ‘‘shock result’’ for National? Is Simon Bridges dog-tucker?

History lesson No 1: Helen Clark replaced Mike Moore as Labour leader in 1994. By early 1995 she scored within the margin of error figure as preferred PM, even though Jim Bolger had only just scraped back into power. Within 18 months she could have been prime minister had she offered Winston Peters a Cabinet deal more powerful than that containing Jim’s whiskey.

History lesson No 2: The polls show support for NZ First languishing well below the threshold required for MMP election. This is typical of its performance for yonks. Winnie is a cunning old dog. He is happy to sleep in the sun when nothing is at stake. When the real meat is on the table and baubles dangle, he is all snarling and glistening teeth.

Get a grip. National knows the score. Oppositions don’t win elections – Governments lose them. As may well happen next year.

Philip Lynch, Elderslea

The small print

Justin Lester’s Adding, not taking away (Feb 15) was illustrated by a mock-up photo of the roundabout at the Calabar Rd/Cobham Drive intersection (opposite the northeastern corner of Wellington Airport) with a possible sign on it: the top third had in large lettering over two lines: ‘‘Heke mai ki Poneke’’.

The bottom half (at least) had line drawings of various Wellington landmarks; and squeezed between those two in print so small that at first glance it just looked like a line underlining the Ma¯ ori writing, was the phrase: ‘‘Welcome to Wellington City’’, the part that the majority of visitors would have best understood if they could read the small print.

His last paragraph said: ‘‘Our vision is not about . . . promoting one language above another. It’s about adding, not taking away.’’

Could have fooled me.

Elizabeth Franks, Camborne The oil conglomerates estimate our Government’s oil exploration ban will cost the country $28 billion. But just imagine how much of that money could be used in developing solar power or wind farms, maybe even building affordable electric cars and trucks.

It’s sad that the National Party backs these oil giants and can’t see the bigger picture of reducing carbon emissions. And Simon Bridges wonders why National is failing in the polls.

Roger Wright, Hastings

Playing the game

The National Party’s trade spokesman, Todd McClay, made a very profound and useful contribution to the current debate about New Zealand’s relations with China.

He said that the Government ‘‘needed to stop ‘playing politics’ and urgently repair NZ-China relations’’. He will go far with comments like that.

From my experience, when a politician makes that overused, cliched argument about somebody else playing politics, it is exactly what they are doing themselves. It is a vacuous and oxymoronic statement.

After all, what else do politicians play at, but politics. So beware of politicians using that phrase – it means they have nothing else worthwhile to say.

Russell O Armitage, Hamilton

Useless cycle paths

Tony Sutcliffe (Letters, Feb 20) rightly complains about the waste of money on cycle lanes that serious road cyclists have no intention of using, never having wanted these babyish things anyway.

If the road is wide enough in the first place, it is already as safe as is practical. Cycle lanes stolen from already inadequate road space increase cyclists’ risk in many ways. The guru on this subject is John Forester.

‘‘Green’’ politicians and activists are motivated by malice towards motorists and automobility, not by any sincere understanding of cycling as a lifestyle, health and sporting choice. I was one who made this choice when young and fit, not owning a car until the age of 27.

It always infuriated me that SH2 from Ngauranga to Petone was not simply widened by knocking out the useless ‘‘cycle path’’ that none of us wanted to use.

Today’s proposals to put it on the sea side of the railway line demonstrate the ignorance of the promoters, as the reason for its undesirability was the wave-borne

debris with which it is constantly strewn. It will be exponentially more unusable if it is moved right next to the sea.

Phil Hayward, Naenae

What price a new one?

Now that the estimated cost of earthquake strengthening the Wellington Town Hall has escalated to $112 million, I have some questions. How much is the Town Hall insured for? What would it cost to demolish? What would it cost to build a new equivalent to meet the full earthquake code?

Wellington City Council also needs to consider how many other earthquake-risk buildings will not be strengthened if it exhausts scarce resources on the Town Hall.

Peter D Graham, Island Bay

Support for CGT

I don’t understand why there isn’t more support for capital gains tax. I must live in a different Aotearoa; most people I know are either struggling to pay their overinflated rent, never mind saving or struggling to pay off a mortgage before they retire. A capital gains tax won’t affect them.

I would love to know the percentage of Kiwis in this position because that should be the minimum percentage of suppoort for this. That’s a figure I haven’t seen in the media.

Also where are all these mum and dad investors that a capital gains tax would hurt? I’m not sure there are that many, or that it would be that painful. But I could be wrong.

Maybe these ‘‘mum and dad investors’’ are our politicians protecting their own interests? The very politicians who are meant to lay personal agendas aside and vote in our interests, not theirs.

And if the majority of us, when given some of the details, would favour a capital gains tax, then that’s what they should do. Tim Pate, Newtown