Bollards would help

Again I read of a fatality on the Hutt Road, this time apparently by the junction with Horokiwi (Loss of battler a ‘tragedy for NZ’, Feb 5).

The newish roadside cycleway from Nga¯ u¯ ranga north meets the access road from either Horokiwi or Belmont Regional Park, neither of which has any footpaths along their length; therefore, any descent to Hutt Road needs care and attention. Impossible when cyclists hurtle downwards or come from the south.

The ideal would be for a traffic island hedged with orange bollards filtering cyclists and the occasional walker to the left towards the Hutt going north.

All that is needed on the roadside going south from the Korokoro off-ramp, Hutt Road and the Esplanade is a line of bollards beside the few kilometres leading to the formal pathway heading towards Nga¯ u¯ ranga. The 1980s’ formal pathway is well maintained and these days even has a wire ‘‘safety barrier’’.

Many well-thought-out submissions have been written and ignored over the years. The NZTA and its predecessors have pre-determined the most expensive and environmentally questionable ‘‘options’’, not the most practical outcomes for this essential accessway. Rosamund Averton, Mt Victoria

Chilling reading

RNZ set to change tunes (Feb 6) makes chilling reading for an octogenarian who’s always had RNZ Concert playing as long as she’s in the house or the car (barring a few hours for TV news, and occasionally other programmes), and of course 2YC in her childhood.

Whenever I have to hunt for my station, I come across so many others playing what I assume to be youthoriented music that I wonder why RNZ feels it has to play more of the same.

As for New Zealand content, I have regularly noticed numerous local performers and composers on the Concert programme – but I do want to hear clarinettist Michael Collins playing Mozart, pianist Murray Perahia playing Scarlatti, Alison Balsom or Wynton Marsalis on the trumpet, and many international singers and ensembles.

So what am I, and classical music lovers of all ages, to be offered? All the familiar presenters being dismissed, but classical music broadcast round the clock – does that mean endless recorded music with no human voice, as we have during the night? Comparing notes with a UK correspondent who listens to BBC3 will become a bit embarrassing.

Jenny Chisholm, Wilton

It is a tragedy that RNZ Concert is to be axed, with the loss of 16 jobs. This station is high quality and well programmed to cater for diverse audiences. It broadcasts many excellent concerts and recitals.

Nowhere else is attention paid to aspirational listening pleasure.

RNZ chief executive Paul Thompson says younger listeners need to be catered for. Indeed, they are already, with nationwide choral singing such as The Big Sing, and instrumental competitions recorded and broadcast.

Many young people use devices to hear what they want when they want it, whereas the regular Concert listeners will lose the sustaining companionship of the radio.

The lively input and expertise from regular announcers should not be lost in pre-recorded programmes, which could readily become mere musak and schmultz.

Kristin Gibson, Wellington

RNZ’s proposal to take the Concert programme off the FM band, put it on the AM band and play it only on the internet is the sort of idea we might expect from a culturally backward organisation – not our own Radio New Zealand, which has loyally and intelligently nurtured singers, instrumentalists and composers to the point where they are now household names and internationally recognised.

The difference in sound quality between AM and FM is startling. To play concert music on AM is to lose much of what you were intended to hear when the music was recorded.

Please, readers, if you agree with me, persuade our Arts and Culture Minister Jacinda Ardern, Kris Faafoi, Grant Robertson, Andrew Little, Kim Hill, Kathryn Ryan, RNZ management and anyone else with an interest or influence, to oppose this irresponsible and shortsighted proposal.

Jan Farr, Carterton

My friend Mike

Mike Moore was my mentor and my friend. He was a conviction politician who always spoke up for the little guy. He also had the most wonderful sense of humour. The last time I spoke to him, he said with accompanying hilarity, ‘‘I thought you were dead!’’

He understood way before anyone else in the Labour Party that the NZ economy would not thrive until we embraced a global perspective. He supported the Douglas reforms even though he understood there would be some short-term price to be paid by those he cared about most – ordinary working people.

He was mercurial, funny, selfdeprecating and not always right. In other words, thoroughly human.

Some people couldn’t wait to stick a knife in him and the fact that he was refused an invitation to the Labour Party’s 50th anniversary was a wrong which the prime minister’s visit to his bedside hopefully helped right.

His wife Yvonne should also be acknowledged for her loyalty to Mike and to the cause of helping others, which they both served selflessly, and which cost him his health and a long, satisfying old age.

In my humble opinion, he was a great New Zealander, up there with Hillary and Sheppard.

John Terris, Western Hutt MP 1978-90

Not all ‘cowboys’

What do you have if you have an e-scooter rider who doesn’t care about damaging said e-scooter because it’s not theirs, who parks it where they like because it’s also not theirs, and who hoons around Wellington because they have to get from point A to B in the quickest time possible to minimise the amount they are charged for their trip ($1 to unlock, and $30c/min) regardless of the risk involved to the public?

According to councillor Nicola Young, we have a ‘‘cowboy’’.

But what do you have when you have an e-scooter rider who has invested more than $800 in their own e-scooter to use as an alternative to the failed bus service in this city, who ensures that all care is taken to avoid accidents and damage to their investment, self and others, who is patient and courteous when sharing footpaths with people and cyclists, who takes their time in busy areas because there’s no issue re cost mounting up, and who takes their e-scooter with them from the streets so they don’t get stolen?

Apparently also a ‘‘cowboy’’.

Nate Williams, Paraparaumu Beach