Veteran taxpayer calls for retention of service
Although concerned for some time that the cost-cutters presently in power would seize on our wonderful mobility taxi fares, I have not brought it to notice.
However today’s article "Hard decision coming soon" (ODT 10.12.25) confirms my fears.
I am in my mid-90s. These mobility fares are a necessity to live independently, travelling cheaply to Moana Pool to keep fit, to supermarkets in order to see what I’m buying, to nurseries for garden supplies needed by my raised garden beds, for occasional coffee out with friends, for sewing materials etc.
My suspicion is that our present government members, in demanding general cost-cutting, have no idea whatsoever of the lives of others many not as lucky as I.
Family or friends take me to meetings, Dunedin Symphony Orchestra concerts etc but I wish not to burden them further in their busy lives.
I am so thankful for the above but also for the taxi service whose kind drivers put groceries or shopping inside my door on return.
I remind the Otago Regional Council that I began paying rates in 1953.
I remind the government that I was in paid work until nearly 80, and that being able to live independently with no home nursing, rest-home or hospital care saves the health budget hugely.
Retention of the mobility taxi service is vital.
Fast food taxes
Is it now time to tax supermarket junk food? The research is there to support this conclusion. Our families are eating poorly, because health whole foods are too expensive, while junk food like processed pizza, fried bites etc are cheap.
Take the tax and use it to lower the cost of good vegetables and meat. Better food quality, helps improve health outcomes, reducing long-term impacts on healthcare and taxation cost.
Freed from shackles
About time. The changes to the Resource Management Act will allow taxpayers to deal with their own trees thereby allowing the city council to concentrate on caring for the public trees.
At the last hearing of a ratepayer wanting to remove a large gum tree on their Chain Hills Rd property they, on their own, were faced by nine council bureaucrats. The applicant was also supported by the Protect Private Property of Trees Society.
It is hoped the RMA changes will mean the council will look after public trees while the ratepayer is no longer shackled by the heritage tree obligations under the Act. Such a change will also save the city council considerable costs.
[Jim Moffat is secretary of the Protect Private Property of Trees Society.]
View disputed
Claire Fraser’s report on Waimate’s White Horse Monument. (ODT 6.12.2025) is facile and overblown .
The views from the three strategically placed platforms are magnificent, the information boards among the best I have seen and the Māori history of the area beautifully presented.
Thankfully, the relative difficulty in getting there makes unviable that ubiquitous scourge, the coffee bar.
Heroes to be found inside the daily newspaper
Where might you find society's heroes pictured in the newspapers of democracies the world over? You will first see them in the court news, while the law ties itself in knots defending the indefensible, because it is the norm.
Bruce Mahalski and his lawyer Rhona Daysh are two such heroes. They have done nothing more than tell the truth, in a peaceful way, as is their right. "It's a Climate Emergency" is not a protest slogan, it's a fact universally acknowledged by all who still subscribe to a fact-based reality, including the institutions that are prosecuting this case.
Justice, I looked it up in the dictionary, is about a genuine respect for people — which Bruce and Rhona display abundantly.
Your paper has very recently published another story about climate change which states our present government has chosen a policy path which will lead us to a 4°C world. Johan Rockstrom, the world-renowned climate scientist, warns its 8 billion present human inhabitants, "it is difficult to see how we could accommodate 1 billion" at this temperature.
Yet the architects of this catastrophe remain comfortably on the front pages of our newspapers.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz
