Letters to the Editor

Letter: New building will obstruct sea views

OPINION: So Waterfront Wellington Ltd is at it again.

Letter: 'Spy car' operator should be 'outed'

OPINION: Wellington City Council parking manager Colleen Thessman describes the parking dash- mounted-camera car-operator as a "mobile warden" (Feb 4-5).

Letter: Continuing education and medical doctors

OPINION: Trades and professions are licensed and regulated. A statutory body, the Medical Council, admits doctors to the Medical Register, which is open to public inspection. It determines doctors' fitness to work in their chosen field. Each must pay a prescribed annual fee.

Letter: The West is right to be worried

OPINION: I'm amazed at Barney Richards' and Noeline Gannaway's naivete (Letters, Jan 30).

Letter: Our busy city roads need more crossings

OPINION: For a city that prides itself on its "walkability" - that is, the fact that people can walk home from the city within 30 minutes - certain roads near Wellington's centre could still do with a few pedestrian crossings.

Letter: I'd like to see some Maori progress

OPINION: When I heard about Maori making claims for the water in New Zealand, I wondered if the Treaty of Waitangi gravy train would ever stop.

Letter: Authority's urge to build monuments

OPINION: Wellington City Council's obsession with putting up high-rise buildings on the waterfront has raised its ugly head again.

Letter: Stop waterfront block or it's 'On yer bike', madam mayor

OPINION: MANY people voted for a change of mayor in Wellington at the last local body elections, hoping to rid the council of the developer- friendly mayors of the past. However, Wellington Waterfront Ltd continues on its merry way leasing the waterfront to developers to try to pay off their large debts to the council (Battle looms for waterfront building, Feb 8).

Letter: Aikman showed grace under pressure

OPINION: The weekend obituary for Helen Aikman, QC, reminded me of the great job she did for her country and its pipfruit growers 11 years ago under very challenging circumstances. Enza, the apple-and-pear export company, had been taken over by a corporate partnership, which was determined to milk all the benefits it could from what was a regulated monopoly.

Letter: What about their kids' class sizes?

OPINION: Finance Minister Bill English says class size doesn't affect the quality of education. I have a question for him and his colleagues in National, ACT, United Future and the Maori Party: what is the average class size in the elitist schools their children attended?

Letter: Our opposition isn't race-based

OPINION: I was disappointed to read Opposition to sale has whiff of racism (Editorial, Feb 1). Save the Farms maintains the position that productive farmland shouldn't be sold to overseas buyers.

Letter: China's buying up land worldwide

OPINION: The Crafar farms purchase by Chinese interests is part of the Chinese Government's massive programme of outsourcing of agriculture for food-security purposes.

Letter: The condemned might be relieved

OPINION: Let's economise. After the performances of Waitangi Day 2012 and the upcoming Anzac Day, let's roll the two, with their extraordinary expense, together. Let's have one day and get it over with.

Letter: NZ First candidate asks when it will end

OPINION: The Treaty of Waitangi is dead. Long live freedom. The Treaty is a joke with no end. How can a document that is more than 170 years old be of any value today? All it does is promote racism and separatism by promoting the interests of one group over the interests of everyone else.

Letter: Maori will claim fresh air next

OPINION: Most people empathise with the descendants of Maori who had their land illegally or unfairly confiscated in the post-Treaty of Waitangi years. They don't bridle at the Crown giving a fair measure of compensation.

Letter: Civic Trust wants to see joined-up planning by bureaucrats

OPINION: It's good to see your report (Feb 4) about tenders being called for the Australian-funded memorial opposite the carillon at Wellington's new National War Memorial Park.

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Letter: The tactician that is Gordon Tietjens

OPINION: It was another emphatic victory for Pacific islanders at the Wellington Sevens. Fijian, Samoan and Tongan- born players (known for their flair in the abbreviated code) are in abundance in New Zealand.

Letter: Kirkcaldies must be cherished

OPINION: I'm astonished at the moaning miseries complaining about Kirkcaldie & Stains. They say it's out of date, too expensive and has too many lights. Rot. Kirks is one of the few exceptional shops we still have in Wellington that is not an ubiquitous chainstore seen everywhere or Australian-owned.

Letter: Why did things go so very wrong?

OPINION: Those of us who can remember back 30 years will recollect the controversy, anguish and indecision before the then Wellington Regional Council decided to build two water-storage lakes at Te Marua to ensure a risk-free supply of high-quality water for the next 100 years.

Letter: Performance-based pay is the problem

OPINION: The underlying cause of the current controversy over local authority chief executives' pay has its foundations in the introduction of performance-based remuneration under Sir Roger Douglas' reforms in the mid-1980s.

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