Rates pill hard to swallow
Having just paid my rates for the present quarter, which was the best part of $2000, I was less than happy to also receive the notification that the council was to introduce an extra future debit or levy as they call it, to help pay for the sludge minimisation facility at Moa Point.
This extra charge to the public is expected to last for 33 years, which will see a lot of us older residents out of this world, and a fair few of the present middle aged folks also.
With all the recent increases everywhere on just about everything, we on fixed incomes will soon have to re-mortgage our properties to pay for all these extra monies that this council is lining up to throw at us.
However, the cycle lanes must continue for the minimal amount of citizens that use them. Also, the unnecessary lumps and bumps that are more prevalent with every week in our suburbs are another example of the money wasted by our council.
Antony Cooper, Island Bay
Minister and Corrections Minister and Paul Goldsmith as Justice Minister are the Great Helmsmen in the project.
The scale of what is to be achieved is breathtaking. There are reckoned to be about 10,000 gang members in New Zealand.
There are probably around the same number of police. Maybe fewer. The proposed plan is for additional police powers to strip gang members of their badges, usually displayed on their jackets. Resistance will be met with fines, and possible imprisonment. Imprisonment is also the penalty for other, yet exactly to be defined, offences. Mark is the go-to man for the recruitment of 500 more police officers.
The last nut to keep the wheels of justice turning, is Paul Goldsmith fixing the Bill of Rights so it won’t obstruct any of this. He will also expand the court system so arrested suspects get justice within a maximum say, of a few years, in courts around the country.
What could possibly go wrong? David Townsend, Miramar [abridged]
Mining lithium involves massive earth-moving machines tearing up thousand of acres of land to access the ore, then loading the ore into equally massive dump trucks, all of them belching many thousands of cubic litres of diesel exhaust.
Add to that is the cost of the energy required to power the machines that crush and extract the ore and refine it. EV owners, smugly congratulating themselves on helping to save the planet as their electric vehicle whisks them to work, the shops, or a weekend outing, might like to ponder these points.
Dougal Cable, Waikanae that it did not appoint principals. To her, the answer is more money and control for the centre. OECD figures show that our principals have a particularly heavy bureaucratic workload. Maybe the answer is less money and less control from the centre and more support for school leaders instead.
Dr Simon Smelt, Levin