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Letters to the Editor

 

Stop illegal developments
Read Council’s development framework (policy area 3, page 46-49). You will see that subdivisions get “approved” that are described in Council’s own development framework as a “traditional and unacceptable approach”.

For example: Council’s development framework demands walkway networks through shared private open space and requires that subdivisions avoid the traditional grid fashion. Older subdivisions actually do have pedestrian short cuts and coastal connections.

In the last five years or so nearly all subdivisions are designed without a walkway network, without safe pedestrian crossing points and they are structured in the traditional ‘grid’ fashion. Public consultation has been reduced to a minimum so that there is no chance to create a walkway network. In this way we destroy the beauty, magic, safety, and environmental integrity of our town.

We have a general problem in local government. A proper unique, sustainable development can only be done by the affected communities themselves. There are no general solutions. The Heads, the Village, the lifestyle properties and the proposed Estuary Estate and Cove Village (between Cove and Tara Roads ) developments need to be developed with their own unique identity but they must be safely connected for vehicle and pedestrian traffic, and, importantly, for cycling.

The council started a new town planning discussion. But this is completely pointless when they does not abide by the policies that come out of such a process.

We need to stop the illegal developments. We need to rethink all subdivisions that have been signed in the last five years. We need to check what else can be done so that those subdivisions respect and comply with Council’s existing and lawfully adopted development framework.

Christian Simon
Mangawhai


Racist views rile
My goodness me, what rock did this so-called racist historian Noel Hilliam crawl out from? For him to say my Tupuna and I are not the Tangata Whenua of this country – and he says he can prove it – well, prove it. Others have been trying for hundreds of years. As for the billions of dollars that you say was fraudulently

handed out to our people, let me correct you on that matter. It was actually $1.22 billion, less than what the government paid to bail out South Canterbury Finance to the tune of $1.7 billion, and this included an estimated $1.58 billion from the crown retail deposit guarantee scheme.

The funny thing about it is all us Maori (a name that you say was given to us by the French) and were bought here from around the Pacific basin and you Mr Racist are paying for it.

Seeing that you are the historian, maybe you should come on to our Marae and tell all my people your racist views and why we don't deserve the money that was paid to us for the land that was stolen from us, and the many Tupuna that were slaughtered while this was taking place. It’s people like you who bottle up your racist views, then all of a sudden the government gets to you, so you blame my people.

We have a saying in Maori: Kei te ki me te tutae koe.

Ed Nathan
Mangawhai

 

Trump and the media
There is little doubt that a majority of NZ’ers regard President Trump in a negative light. Not surprising, as our own media unquestioningly cites sensational reports from overseas sources without bothering to check both sides of any story.

Our main sources seem to be CNN, NBC, Associated Press, and newspapers such as the Washington Post and New York Times. All of the aforementioned are unreservedly anti-Trump, and these are the only viewpoints that our media presents to the NZ public.

TV1 news presenter Peter Williams triumphantly announced that President Trump’s first news conference was “unhinged” – a term being widely proliferated by the anti-Trump factions. Perhaps our news compilers should watch actual footage of the conference (available on YouTube) and then observe for themselves that the President remained calm and in control throughout the entire interrogative assault.

The leading cable TV channel in the USA is Fox News, a channel that presents the viewpoints of both Trump supporters and protagonists, yet our media ignores this balanced source and instead wallows in the non-stop derisive and derogatory approach of an hysterical anti-Trump faction.

Viewer ratings on cable TV in the USA show that Fox News is watched by more than twice as many viewers than CNN, and around 80 percent more than NBC, yet both CNN and NBC are main sources of “news” for our media while Fox is

completely ignored. It would appear that NZ coverage is deliberately targeted at denigrating President Trump by citing only antagonistic sources.

The irony of the situation is that recent polling shows that Americans trust Donald Trump more than the news media.

It’s time for Kiwis to wake up to ‘fake news’ being presented as fact.

Mitch Morgan
Kaipara


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