Wasted time shows need for road rethink
Today I wasted half an hour trying to find a park.
Eventually I found one in Tennyson St — great when I want to go for five minutes to a business in George St. Given the current fuel crises, I have also wasted precious fuel.
There needs to be a significant number of parking wardens on duty to strictly enforce parking times.
George St needs to revert back to a two-way street over its whole length and there needs to be angle parking. Parallel parks take up too much space.
There should be 15-minute parks only. Please get rid of all the vegetation and playground. Also fix up the short phasing of lights.
It was a graduation day. All the capping ceremonies should be at the stadium and there should be no parade through the city.
Traffic flows needs to be reviewed and improved. Large four-wheel-drives should be banned in the city centre as well.
Fend for yourselves
The proposed rates increases are not affordable to a lot of Dunedin ratepayers.
We are informed that council staff have done their best to reduce future costs and council appear to have made no significant impact in reducing the spending.
Why not look at discretionary spending that is not necessary; for example and not limited to community grants, which were about $1.7 million in 2025. These grants are effectively a rate increase to raise funds that council then decides where it is dispersed.
These groups are important for our community but should not be funded by the ratepayer. Their funding should be from donees, the Otago Community Trust, other trusts and their own fund raising efforts.
Lesson not learned
Winston Churchill, on August 20, 1940 in the House of Commons: "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few". The quote can be used in a completely opposite way in March 2026: Never in the field of human conflict is so much owed by so few to so many.
President Trump and his cohorts have virtually destroyed the moral fibre of the US. Their country has been disgraced by a lack of trust, deceit, lies, fear, tyranny, and blatant hypocrisy.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. When will humanity ever learn?
Fuel crisis
The developing fuel crisis prompted the Saturday editorial (14.3.26) to ask about progress with renewable energy and electric vehicles. Broadening to how are we progressing toward robustness against fuel shocks via renewable electrification generally, the answer is "with massive asymmetry".
A renewables-based electrified economy unsupported by additional energy storage increases dry year impacts. Current renewable developments are for power generation. Significant new storage is missing. The single exception is the consortium currently looking at possibly constructing pumped storage at Lake Onslow.
Raising Lake Pukaki is another insurance possibility that could be built faster. Its recent total spill volume, if held in the lake, equates to a water level 20m higher – equivalent to half Lake Onslow’s proposed energy storage capacity. Pukaki spills are infrequent, however, so the Onslow scheme would still be needed to regularly accumulate stored energy.
Wondering what world the deputy PM lives in
I write in support of Mr Bede Crestani’s comments (ODT 18.3.26).
When I saw the television clip of the deputy prime minister sipping a very large glass of, presumably, one of New Zealand’s finest beers, I felt there was something not quite right about this legislation.
Its aim, it seems to me, is to make even more widely available access to alcohol, to set limits on people opposing the granting of, or extending of alcohol licences and to generally make it possible for the government to gather more excise tax for our increasingly troubled economy.
Nothing about the cost in terms of lives lost or maimed as a result of alcohol-induced road, and other kinds of accidents, physical abuse in relationships, in terms of pressure on the health system, daughters being crushed to death (I don’t say that lightly), and many other consequences.
What world does the deputy prime minister inhabit, where everybody drinks responsibly, alcohol causes little or no problems and the more money the government can milk (pardon the pathetic comparison) from alcohol consumption the better for us all.
Views pro and anti Iran war
Much of the correspondence I have read recently is a discussion on the legality of the US and Israeli attack on Iran. What seems to be missing is a discussion on the legality of Iran’s death threats towards the US and Israel.
If I received a death threat, I would report it to police. I would expect this to be taken seriously.
Iran has proved it is serious about the destruction of Israel and US with repeated statements over years. What has the international community done to challenge these illegal threats?
Some would say there is no evidence of impending direct action; I would say ask the Iranian people and its diaspora.
It is easy for us to make legal judgements on a conflict that does not directly affect our safety.
It is another thing to hear from those directly affected. It is these people who have the right to make judgments under international law.
No party
There is absolutely nothing to celebrate at this time of major military conflict in the Middle East in both humanitarian and economic terms.
Further global economic volatility, uncertainty and dire inflationary impacts coupled with a humanitarian crisis will transcend any justification or strategic reasons to address the perceived existential and other threats posed by the Iranian regime.
Entering the third week of this war, President Trump is still figuring out as to why the urgency of military action was necessary in the first place and sending daily mixed messages as to the objectives and end game. Iranian regime change remains a forelorn hope.
Amid the conflict the power of this American president continues unchecked, Congress remains complicit and the American people alarmed and confused.
This is Trump's war and there is nothing to suggest his administration has the intellectual and diplomatic nous to avoid further global damage on an epic scale.
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