The end of a lifetime love affair

It is the end of the test match at Hagley Oval, and as the voices of Simon Doull and Ian Smith fade away, I’m feeling a little sad.

You see I’m in my 80s and a lifetime cricket fan, but this could be the last time I can watch a test in this country. Next season, NZ Cricket have given the broadcasting rights to Spark Sport on its digital platform and, being on a pension, there is no way my budget will stretch to cover the extra cost this would involve. I also understand I would need to have unlimited broadband, which would cost twice the price of my present plan.

I dare say they will throw the odd white-ball game on free-to-air but, like many of my age group, it is the longer form of the game that I love, with all the many nuances that occur during the course of a match. I cannot imagine TVNZ being allowed to show all five days of a test match.

Never mind, I can always tune into Bryan and Jeremy on the radio, right? Well no, I won’t even be able to do that either, as NZ Cricket has not renewed its contract with Radio Sport. And when I hear Radio Sport admitting it was running the broadcast at a loss, I wonder why anyone else would bother entering into such a contract.

So it seems my dream of spending my twilight years watching and listening to my favourite sport has been dashed. Thanks a lot David White and NZ Cricket! Colin White, Havelock North

Split up Games venues

It would be tragic for both spectators and all the sportspersons who have aimed high and done the ‘‘footwork’’ to reach the pinnacle of their athleticism to be denied the opportunity to compete if Japan is deemed unsafe for the Olympics.

What about the concept of splitting up sports so they all compete, even if in various countries? Sailing could all be done here in New Zealand, being one of the least worrying countries virally? Marathons could be held in Iceland.

If crowds are not to be encouraged, due to transmission, then the sports can simply be televised and still reach almost everyone on Earth, even if quarantined for 14 days in some hotel.

Any country that can prove a high Covid-19 containment record by the end of May can then apply to the IOC to stage a sport or three.

Rob Buchanan, Kerikeri

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On route to a pandemic

As the saying goes, historic situations recur. Back in the 1980s, the HIV virus got away in the United States largely because of a president (Ronald Reagan) who was trying to appease his Right-wing religious supporters.

We now have a president downplaying the coronavirus for much the same reason, with a Right-wing religious vicepresident in charge of managing the crisis. I expect there will soon be a transition to a pandemic over there. Peter Waring, Eketahuna

Profits before health

Victoria University Vice-Chancellor Grant Guilford has just displayed that he is more concerned to be losing money from the banning of foreign students (mainly from China) than he is with the health of the country.

I would have thought, given his position, that he would be a smart person. Obviously not.

Then he has the audacity to attack the education minister. This is definitely a case of putting profits before New Zealand’s health.

I say good on our Government protecting our borders.

Trevor Tofts, Island Bay

Australia’s their home

Australian correspondent Greg Adamson (Letters, March 3) misses an important point in suggesting that New Zealanders who don’t like that country’s repatriation policy should ‘‘go home’’. For those born in New Zealand who have spent almost their entire lives in Australia, Australia is home.

Deporting people to a country they have no connection with, other than a couple of words on their birth certificate, where they have no family and no familiarity with local routines differs little from a sentence of transportation, a practice to which you’d expect to find some opposition among our neighbours to the west.

Martin Purdy, Upper Hutt

I’d like to hear the birds

I have had a hearing loss all my life, getting progressively worse. I am fortunate enough to have some hearing in one ear, with a hearing aid. The other ear, even with an aid, just picks up a balance of sounds. Without the aid I cannot hear anything, even the sound of my own voice, which came across strongly in the In Depth articles you have published this week.

The experience of Simon Baldock (Cruel wait for an implant) is exactly like mine. I was assessed like him a few years ago, and keep receiving a form to fill in, as long as I would be able to find funds to pay for it. No such luck!

I was so shocked to realise that, if I still lived in England, my home country, I probably would have qualified successfully for an implant. It would be very good to hear birds sing.

Tanya Ashken, Island Bay

Get the basics right

In Council told of pipes underfunding last year (News, March 3) you report that ‘‘16 years after its birth, Wellington Water now runs the entire water network from the reservoir to the tap’’. But the story seems to be all about management structures rather than about sound engineering.

There are strong parallels with the 1998 electricity supply crisis in Auckland when newly corporatised Mercury Energy was found to have all the right woke attributes – mission statement, debtto-equity ratio, risk strategies etc – except the ability to actually deliver reliable electric power.

A check today of Wellington Water’s website reveals colourful graphics and detailed charts for such important things as ‘‘gender equity’’ but very little (perhaps it is well hidden) about one of the main realities – the ageing pipes network and the effects of earthquakes, population growth and sheer decay over time on that network. To me as an ordinary water user, there is a case for public investment, but it obviously has not been made with strength, determination and clarity to the pass-the-parcel cabal of councils who own the company on behalf of present and future generations.

Cut out the trendy graphics, and get down to sound engineering.

Alan Smith, Lower Hutt

The case for tax cuts

Simon Louisson and Peter Wood both make the valid point (Letters, March 4) that fixing Wellington’s water woes will need a lot more investment than is currently planned. However, their expectations are awry.

Their argument that National’s proposed tax cuts should not go ahead assumes that the taxpayers of New Zealand will pay for Wellington’s failure to invest. On the contrary, tax cuts may put more money into Wellingtonians’ pockets so they can afford to pay the very substantial increase in rates that they must expect if the problem is to be fixed. Bill Aitchison, Carterton

Some things are certain

In all this discussion around abortion and euthanasia, buzzwords are the likely ammunition to be trotted out by those in favour.

For instance, Canada is now proposing to extend its ‘‘medically assisted dying’’ legislation to exclude the provision that the person’s death be ‘‘reasonably foreseeable’’, but continues to include the mentally ill in this prescription.

I would have thought that everybody’s death, including the mentally ill, would be ‘‘reasonably foreseeable’’ – in fact, 100 per cent certain. It pays to analyse the words that sound good but are meaningless. Kilian V de Lacy, Levin