Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including Town Belt changes, the meaning of Christmas and where have all the frogs gone?
Town Belt proposal not cheap in anyone’s reality
At the council meeting on December 11, staff presented a proposal following consultation with only 70 people.
The original idea of creating a shared walking and cycling path had morphed into taking the roadway of Queens Dr to form a shared path for cyclists and pedestrians. Cars are to be excluded.
Along the section of Queens Dr to be closed a walking path already exists and in our opinion it is a small matter to reform this path to include cycling and maintain the road for vehicles.
The Dunedin Citizens Association cannot support spending $16,000 to close the road and provide entertainment elements for three months. The money would be better allocated to cleaning the shabby condition of existing footpaths and gutters throughout the city and suburbs.
It is all very well for Cr Walker to reassure fellow councillors that the money is “coming out of existing budgets”, but what does that mean. That is ratepayer funding which could be better deployed elsewhere.
It seems that many of the returning councillors do not yet understand that the citizens of this city have sent a message that requires prudence.
This extravagance was praised by newcomer Cr Treadwell as an amazing and awesome plan, who expressed the view that “keeping the cost down to less than four grand a month is honestly amazing”. It is not cheap: this is not virtual reality.
Jennifer Thomas
Chairwoman, Dunedin Citizens Assn
No pipe dreams
Unbelievable. Less than two months after being elected, our council is hatching up plans to waste rates money on completely unnecessary projects. Their proposal to mess up part of Queens Dr by stopping traffic and creating sitting areas in the Preston Cres/Braids Rd area will benefit exactly nobody. They would be hard-pushed to find anyone living in the area who thinks that’s a great idea.
I suspect there are some council employees whose job it is to dream up ways to spend our rates. Please run your bright ideas past the yardstick of ‘‘necessary/fancy’’ and remember that we pay ever increasing rates to be spent on essentials, not pipe dreams.
Annette Carr
Belleknowes
Islamic Christmas?
The ODT (Opinion 12.12.25) carried a wide-ranging contribution from Abdullah Drury loosely themed around the meaning of Christmas for Muslims.
Across global Islam the business preparing a host society to embrace Islam - or “Dawa” - may involve such benign commentary on the Muslim presence in a nation and apparent commonalities shared with existing local religions and values. I want to point out one important difference in relation to Christmas that the apparent commonalities between Koran and Bible cannot gloss over.
The Christian Christmas Story rests on documentation formed and published within a generation after the event of Jesus Christ’s birth. His nativity in history was related by people very close to the events. The evangelists Matthew and Luke became the recognised documentary sources. It was 600 years later when an illiterate man in a cave 1500km away set about to upgrade the story.
Two hundred years later his revised account was written down as part of the Koran and spread widely.
With respect, that process brings no sound basis for any “deep historical and doctrinal intersection between Christianity and Islam” as Abdullah suggests. First-hand or even second-hand accounts from multiple sources set down within decades are no match for the unsubstantiated reworkings of one man many centuries later.
Francis Noordanus
Dunedin
Where have all the frogs gone, long time passing
Has anyone else noticed the absence of frogs in Dunedin in recent years?
We used to listen to them croaking in the summer evenings but not any more.
No tadpoles to be found in all the old spots either. Gone.
I wonder if the decrease in flying insects in the last few years is the problem? No frog food.
Ten years ago, if we left windows open and lights on at dusk, the ceiling would be covered in a mass of midges and other small flies. In recent years virtually none.
The change in such a short period of time is worrying. If this is an early warning of things to come we are in big trouble. Life on earth will not survive without insects.
Ian James
Abbotsford
The good doctor
Anyone who has a doctor should read Dr Lucy O’Hara’s book, Everything But The Medicine.
Lucy’s insight, bravery and compassion in telling it as it is deserves an award on its own. As Glen Colquhoun says, it’s a medicine on its own, Thank you Lucy for opening our eyes.
Lyndsey Hughes
Wanaka
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: letters@odt.co.nz
