Tears over tree plans
Two years since Russia’s invasion, the war is at a stalemate but allies must not waver in supporting this fight against evil, writes Matthew Parris
I was moved to tears by the article on Saturday The quietly radical plan for a leafy city.
Over the past few years I have lived in and visited Auckland, Calgary, Vancouver, Singapore and Sydney, big, beautiful and green cities.
Returning to Christchurch to raise my young family was a shock - it was not the leafy city I remembered from my youth, and lagged in comparison to where I had been. I applaud those leading this quietly radical plan. The following generations will be forever grateful. Thank your for your leadership.
Many thanks for publishing this article and building awareness about the importance of trees in cities. Please keep this issue front of mind within our community.
Imogen Cowley, St Albans
City planning
An excellent article in The Press on Saturday by Charlie Mitchell about plans for a leafy city. An excellent compilation of fact, comment, and assessment.
Let us hope that everyone takes notice of what Charlie has written and our city councillors have the courage and commitment as a body representing the people to look far enough ahead in planning for our city. Remember, next election is merely one in a series and politics is nothing more than a handicap. Michael Allan, Parklands
Saturday highlight
Some 50 years ago I sat alongside a little boy playing clarinet in the CSIM orchestra. He was much better than I was, even though he was about 10 years younger.
Our teacher recognised that too. Mark was obviously destined to follow an orchestral career.
However, I would never have dreamed that he would be the author of such fascinating, well-written articles based on this city. For me they are the highlight of the Saturday paper - a much-needed antidote to the predominant doom and gloom of the news. Please keep writing, Mark.
Philippa Lane, Russley
Quake claims
I was pleased to see an earthquake claims story last week as the 13th year since the 2011 quakes was remembered.
I was not pleased to see EQC chief executive Tina Mitchell say the oldest claim her organisation is dealing with is two years old.
Absolute nonsense. I’m assisting a number people with their claims, two of whom have been trying to achieve resolution for eight and five years respectively. I know there are many others older than two years, both in EQC and Southern Response.
Canterbury EQ insurance claims continue to wallow in the depths of deny and delay while people struggle to cope with the ongoing stress, misery and lack of surety.
Also it is totally disingenuous for EQC to say it is not dealing with any “original claims” as most of these are original claims. They have the same claim numbers as when they were lodged and they relate to the same event and resulting damage. They are reopened claims but original, and I’m calling them out on that.
Ali Jones, St Albans
Cathedral cops
Why were there five pairs of police officers with their backs against the fence of the Christ Church Cathedral on Saturday around 1.30pm?
Were they protecting the cathedral in case citizens angered by the cost of restoring it came and tore it down?
Were they there to remove the Palestinian Solidarity Network Aotearoa T-shirts from those wearing them in the group of maybe 100 men, women and children calling for a ceasefire, listening to poetry, and painting love hearts on banners in grief at the thousands who have died in the Israel-Hamas war?
Were they there for their mental health to listen to the uplifting music of the Woolston Brass Band?
Come on Mark Mitchell, get real. Use police resources where they are needed. Put police in rural communities such as Opotiki and Wairoa so that they can work with communities and other agencies to address the social issues behind crime and violence. Confrontation over gang patches will lead to violence.
Sue Piercey, Heathcote Valley
Police recruitment
Perhaps the police minister should contract out their recruitment process to the gangs. The gangs seem to be a lot more successful at it.
Pat Nicholls, Runanga
Cycleways working
I hear some people say nobody uses the city’s cycleways. I beg to differ, as I did an unscientific count when biking along the new Heathcote cycleway into town recently.
Between Heathcote and the Tannery I met 11 bikes, and between the Tannery and town I encountered, to my surprise, a further 41 cyclists. That could potentially mean 52 fewer cars on the road just during that half hour. Car drivers, be glad your roads may be less congested!
Many thanks to the forward-looking councillors who backed the “build it and they will come” cycleway network. It’s working .
Prue Stringer, Heathcote Valley
Bank’s only tool
Luke Malpass (Government large and in charge; eyes now on Orr, Feb 24) refers to Christopher Luxon having the Governor of the Reserve Bank (RBNZ) in his sights, as if high interest rates are the fault of the central bank.
Per the Reserve Bank Act the RBNZ is compelled to get inflation down and it has only one real tool – interest rates. The high domestic inflation data is the fault of this Government which, like the last, allows net migration flows to be above 2% of NZ’s population.
The 100,000+ people arriving each year don’t come here to camp and add to the already massive housing shortage. Housing “supply” cannot possibly match a fraction of the rampant demand side so all the costs relating to housing such as rents, building costs, section prices, house prices, will keep increasing and thereby keep domestic-sourced inflation high, meaning interest rates will remain high.
New thinking is required that sees AI and other forms of technology reduce labour needs and increase productivity, and what is more, AI and other forms of tech don’t need houses to live in. In the meantime, the acute labour shortage will ease as public and private sector lay-offs gain momentum and retraining becomes essential.
Jeremy Robert Thompson, Nelson South
Church origins
What a pity that an otherwise good letter from “lapsed Anglican” Phil Butler was spoiled by his apparent belief that the church only exists because Henry VIII wanted a divorce.
Certainly, that influenced the decision to break from Rome at that point, but the effects of the Reformation, which had begun earlier in Europe, were already being felt and it would simply have happened a little later. It might be best not to confuse inaccurate views on history with the current dilemma.
Vic Smith, Halswell
Faulty interpretation
Marie Venning’s quote “to him that hath shall be given, and he that hath not, even that which he hath will be taken away” (Letters, Feb 24) was not “an observation from society 2000 years ago” as she claims, it was a quote from Jesus (Mark 4:25).
Jesus also said “the poor ye will always have with you” when wickedly expensive perfume was poured on him (Mark 14:7). He encouraged people to give away everything they had to obtain his “kingdom”, not to worry about future needs, and publicly praised a destitute widow for giving away her last two mites (Mark 12:41-44).
Despite Marie’s attempt to distance Jesus from his own words, and her cherrypicking the Gospels for support of her laudable humanitarian position, in fact Jesus sent very mixed messages about poverty.
Phillip Rex Robinson, Waltham
Two years is a long time for a nation to be fighting for its life, a milestone of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine marked at the weekend. The anxiety in Ukraine is palpable.
And for many Ukrainians, two years is a personal as well as national figure. Shivering on the morning of February 18, in the famous Maidan square in Kyiv, where uprisings against the Russian puppet government first showed themselves, I watched a forlorn demonstration by army wives, their chants and banners reminding onlookers that many of their husbands have now spent all that time at the front line. Many are exhausted.
Ukraine has now lost some 70,000 soldiers. They’re not overwhelmingly young. The average Ukrainian soldier is 43. The age of conscription has recently been lowered from 27 to 25. The ceiling is 60. This has so far been a middle-aged soldiers’ war.
Younger people can volunteer and at first many did. There was optimism, even excitement. But the prospect of the trenches now brings only foreboding.
If you want to describe the prevailing mood, the word is neither despairing nor defeatist. It remains dogged, while, towards the Russians, fury and rejection are searing. This is a nation spitting with rage.
But determination is tinged with worry. President Zelenskyy may have dismissed his top commander for talking publicly about a stalemate, but General Zaluzhnyi spoke the truth and everybody knows it.
“Stalemate” is not a word that gladdens the heart. But let’s not forget that when outright victory looks beyond reach, stalemate is a damn sight better than the alternative. If stalemate is what you face, then so does your enemy.
There will continue to be small, localised gains and losses but any big Russian advance remains more or less stalled. They’re stuck, and that’s a cause for celebration. These invaders’ aim was total occupation and they were confident of achieving it. After two years, they squat on more or less the same territory they had when the big attempted invasion began.
So I invite you to a considerable effort of the imagination. Think like a Russian. Lay aside your (and my) sympathies with our own side here.
Try instead to put yourself into the mindset of those in command in Moscow. I say “Moscow” rather than Vladimir Putin because it’s my strong conviction that, though for the moment he is in charge, the leader and the gang are not the same thing. This is Putin’s war, his idea, his project and (increasingly) his obsession. He knows he miscalculated and it’s driving him mad.
I think it unlikely that his senior colleagues today inhabit Putin’s lonely and lunatic world. Of course they don’t want their country to lose, but do you honestly think they’re happy their leader got them into this? He turns 72 this year. Leaders call the tune until they don’t. But when - through ill-health or mutiny - he falters, his successors will take an open look at what, privately, they already know. Think yourself into their minds. What confronts them? A sea of troubles.
In pushing back against the West their leader has thrown the Russian Federation into the arms of a much more formidable long-term threat: China. They are bogged down in Ukraine.
They’ve lost at least 120,000 troops; they may be running out of tanks; financial assets abroad have been frozen and are threatened with confiscation; sanctions have lost them their huge gas market in Europe and, with it, European dependence on Russian supply. Finland is joining Nato.
Most of the West is united in hostility towards them, and will for years be wary in our dealings; and across Europe and in the US, Canada and Australia, Russia’s reputation is shot. This is a now a pariah nation. Oligarchs and cronies have been sanctioned. And, though a wall of economic sanctions has proved sometimes porous, their economy is taking a hit.
Any empire frays at the edges, and Moscow’s faces a host of difficulties, small insurrections, local agitations and troublesome regional leaders in places often thousands of miles from Moscow. The last thing the Russian Federation needed was to get stuck in a huge and deadly war, very close to home.
Memories will still be strong of the USSR’s humiliating withdrawal from its failed adventure in Afghanistan after two years’ trying to shore up a puppet government in Kabul.
Surely nobody, even perhaps Putin, now seriously contemplates the reoccupation of the whole of Ukraine and the installation of a new client administration there. Virtually all of that nation is now energised and seething, and has found a reinforced sense of identity and purpose. If the Afghan Mujahideen (with mischievous Western help) could eject the Russians with all their military might and hang their puppet president, what could a vast and rebellious Ukraine do?
Moscow is in a bind. “Stalemate” is putting it mildly. Consciously in a few Kremlin minds, unconsciously in many more, there will be a dull ache for something they can call victory, and a halfway dignified withdrawal of claims to the three quarters of Ukraine they will never repossess.
All we and the Ukrainians need do is stay strong, banishing any supposition that Russia could ever outstare us.
It is possible simultaneously to hold in the mind two thoughts that are only superficially ill-matched. First, a redoubling of support in funds and materiel.
Second, a signal that in due course Ukraine will be ready for a deal.
Some I met there already want this. Others would be sorry to see it. Few any longer see it as preposterous.
I’m entirely unqualified to set out the sums and the weaponry required, or the terms of any final deal, though copperbottomed Western guarantees would have to accompany it. But this much I can say: Moscow must be persuaded that even if the US cuts support, Europe is willing to take up the slack, even doubling its contribution.
I don’t like the word “evil” and have rarely used it in a newspaper column. But talking to frightened young people in Ukraine I could not but feel, hanging in the freezing winter fog, a threat for which I know no other word.
If confronting this is not worth a couple of hundred quid from each of us, which is what Britain’s contribution amounts to, what price the liberty we take for granted? - The Times