Can the police be trusted?

In an attempt by Police and the New Zealand Transport Agency to get general acceptance for their use of advanced speed cameras that they have misnamed ‘‘safety cameras’’, they state that, in a test of the cameras, 50,000 people were found to have not been wearing a seatbelt and/ or using a cellphone while driving ( Trial snaps 50,000 drivers on their phones, August 17).

While that sounds good, hidden in the article was the information that if a driver had only one hand on the steering wheel, that driver was judged to be holding/ using a cellphone.

The stupidity of that judgment is only too apparent. And it raises two interesting questions:

1. Do the police consider that driving with only one hand on the steering wheel to be dangerous?

2. If so, why do they give a driver’s licence to people who have one arm?

But, most of all, this all raises the serious question as to whether the police can be trusted not to misuse the equipment that they so falsely call ‘‘safety’’ cameras.

Allan Kirk, Masterton

Increase the penalties

The maximum penalty for driving a vehicle while telephoning your wife, partner, daughter or anyone else is a mere $150 and as few as 20 demerit points!

Having driven a car, and a car towing a horse trailer, since I was 17, it is my opinion that driving any vehicle whilst using and chatting on your cellphone is as bad as, if not worse than, dangerous driving.

It is time the Labour Government substantially increased the fine and the demerit points and imposed a period of disqualification on these irresponsible drivers.

If I was Transport Minister Michael Wood, I would increase the fine to $2000, the demerit points to 100, and disqualify all errant drivers for six months and remove their ability to be granted a partial licence!

Brian Collins, Petone

Questionable priorities

At the bottom of Washington Avenue in Brooklyn, outside the Malaysian embassy, there is a curve and a carefully maintained lawn between the embassy fence and the footpath. On Monday, I observed a most bizarre occurrence when a team of workers built a railing fence beside the footpath. A very tidy job was done. Even the lawn appears undisturbed by the digging of the postholes, such care was taken. The posts and rails have been painted white and not a jot of paint was spilled.

In this same street, a water leak was left unattended to for months. Get the priorities right, Wellington City Council. Shift the resources from the make-work rail-building department to support maintenance of our core water infrastructure.

The fencing team does a very good job of digging holes quickly and tidily. I’m sure they could apply that skill in fixing leaks; just add a plumber to the team.

Residents of Brooklyn recently received the advance-notice letter telling us of the large rates increase we will see in our next rates demand. When faced with this substantial increase we are reminded of our right to scrutinise council decision-making and priorities.

Unnecessarily building beautifully constructed and painted footpath railing is no substitute for fixing leaking pipes. Michael O’Neil, Brooklyn

Disillusioned with council

Wellington City Council has produced a leaflet headed, Your Rates Explained. It begins with: ‘‘This year an average 8% increase in rates is needed to keep critical work moving, to account for the Covid-19 response and asset revaluations and other inflationary pressures.’’

On the face of it this seems a disingenuous statement. It would imply that only critical work is being funded when the reality is that the proposed expenditure includes discretionary projects.

I’m assuming the asset revaluations refer to the increase in value assigned to ratepayers’ properties. If so, then, on average, this should have no impact on rate increases as such. As for accounting for the Covid-19 response, I am at this stage somewhat dumbfounded.

The only piece of this statement that I seem able to give any credibility to is ‘‘and other inflationary pressures’’.

My disillusionment with WCC continues, along with wondering why the city still wants to expand when it can’t even support the necessary infrastructure that is needed for its current population. Maurice Horner, Karori

Measure of a man

I have been following the story of Sam Uffindell with amazement and disbelief. That the behaviour of a young person should define his adult life is hard to believe.

If youthful follies are to be the permanent measure of the man, spare a thought for Ben Carson, the neurosurgeon who pioneered the surgical procedure of separating twins joined at the back of the head in the US in 1987, going on to develop another groundbreaking surgical procedure which brought quality of life to untold numbers of acute epilepsy sufferers. Later he distinguished himself as a politician.

Describing himself as a violent teenager, Carson subsequently turned his life around.

If the same yardstick had been used for him as is now being used for Uffindell, perhaps he should never have been allowed to become a surgeon, or in fact to practise medicine at all.

If this decision to oust the new member for Tauranga is an example of the judgment now being meted out in New Zealand’s halls of power, I am ashamed of our elected representatives, and of this country, the land of my birth.

Suzanne McPherson, Waikanae

Vote for co-operation

Local government is not like business. You can’t move councils when you dislike this one’s decisions, or stop paying rates. So council decisions must consider all viewpoints in the community.

For this to happen, councils collectively should embody diversity. Councillors individually should respect all opinions, even ones they don’t share.

There are two key conclusions. First, residents should realise that compromising is not losing. It would be corrosive if community groups fought an extensively consulted cycleway, or stadium, to the bitter legal end.

Second, voters should avoid candidates who disparage ideas, and councillors with whom they disagree. That route rapidly renders councils dysfunctional.

Dysfunctional councils are replaced by commissioners, like Tauranga in 2021.

Ultimately we are all still neighbours. We must manage to co-operate, and elect councillors who enable co-operation. Dave Kelly, Christchurch [abridged]

Breakfast hosting

I laughed at the headline Petra Bagust found hosting TVNZ’s Breakfast ‘profoundly diminishing’ (August 17).

I could have warned her of this before she took the job. Intellectually rich and mind-broadening the show is not, nor will it ever be.

Bagust went on to do far more fulfilling things, such as learning te reo Māori and chaplaincy studies, and I wish her well. Mark Stocker, Christchurch

Hypocrisy of VFF

Anti-vax group targets local body elections (August 15), on Voices for Freedom candidates standing for council positions in Christchurch, contains this comment, from Fighting Against Conspiracy Theories Aotearoa spokesperson Stephen Judd: ‘‘A core part of VFF’s message is that shadowy forces are working in the background to influence affairs, hiding themselves and concealing their real intent – conspiracy. And yet that is exactly what they are doing themselves.’’

This is really important and needs to be widely publicised. Stuff is doing great work in helping to expose all these shadowy far right movements. Keep going, we definitely need it.

Leith Wallace, Karori