Wednesday, 7 January 2026

Letters to the Editor: Queens Dr, Maduro, grizzlers

    1. Opinion

    Sections of Dunedin’s Queens Dr will be closed to through traffic for three months while a...
    Sections of Dunedin’s Queens Dr will be closed to through traffic for three months while a shared pathway connecting Roslyn, Mornington and City Rise is tested. GREGOR RICHARDSON
    Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including plans for Queens Dr,  the US arrest of Nicolas Maduro, and are we grizzlers?

    Joy and vexation about Queens Dr proposal

    Good on the Dunedin City Council for trying something innovative along Queens Dr (ODT, 17.12.25).

    It's a popular area recreationally with multiple unmarked crossings for those walking to schools and to town.

    I've noticed an uptick in drivers diverting from Maori Rd since the 30kmh zone was introduced there a few years ago and heard of several near misses as speeding drivers cut across the unformed pathway.

    The trial seems a positive initiative and an opportunity to give something different a go.

    Allen Frazer
    Dunedin

    I, like many others, am annoyed that the Dunedin City Council is contemplating closing to vehicles a section through the Town Belt just to provide another walking track.

    The tracks in City Forests (owned by the council) on Three Mile Hill to the weir are no longer passable due to the many large fallen trees blocking them.

    This was a nice loop walking track for families from the Taieri lookout carpark, through the forest descending beside the stream, crossing the stream on a bridge that was removed some years ago and coming back up the other side.

    It would be better providing the $15,000 to City Forests to improve access on the tracks already there.

    R. Morey
    Dunedin

    Nicolas Maduro. PHOTO: REUTERS
    Nicolas Maduro. PHOTO: REUTERS

    Maduro’s removal

    Trump claims that Venezuelan President Maduro had to be ‘‘removed’' because he is a brutal dictator.

    So are Putin, Bolsonaro, Kim, the drug trafficking former Honduran head pardoned recently by Trump, the El Salvadoran President Bukele, Mohammed Bin Salman and the man inflicting genocide in Palestine, Netanyahu, in my view.

    All of these men are either supported by Trump or they are playing him.

    Trump has no interest whatsoever in legitimacy and the removal of brutal dictators.

    His illegal action in Venezuela has everything to do with creating a distraction from the Epstein files, and the vast, untapped oil field Venezuela possesses.

    Empirically Trump takes the moral lowground faster than he inhales a hamburger.

    Ewan McDougall
    Broad Bay

    So, the gringos have taken Maduro!

    Now can they please come and get Winston?

    Jack Pritchard
    Palmerston

    Let us not be wee grizzlers

    Are we becoming a nation of grizzlers?

    No one seems to be content with their lot in life, always wanting more and more.

    The government seems to be elected on what they will give the people.

    And who is more deserving - if I had to choose it would be impossible. Do I give to the babies or the oldies, the blind or the deaf?

    This year let us look at what we have and appreciate it, not yearn for more.

    As the Selkirk Grace goes -

    Some hae meat and canna eat,

    And some hae none that want it,

    But we hae meat, and we can eat,

    And sae the Lord be thankit.

    Chris Trotter (ODT, 2.1.26) had a brilliant opinion piece on ‘‘NZ is not yet broken’’.

    So this year, which will probably be hard, it will be a lot easier than in many parts of the world.

    And sae the Lord be thankit.

    Janice McPherson
    Oamaru

    Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz