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• Published date: 29 June 2021

Hats off to the policeman who pulled me up as I set sail up Wiroa Rd from the Waimate North Rd turn off at 96km/h a couple of weeks ago and gave me a warning. I had absolutely no reason to believe that the speed limit had changed to 80km/h. Policing at its best.

LTA or whomever is responsible for putting up the signs - one on Wiroa Rd by the turn off, would be helpful. As it is a new speed limit a nice big one would help even more.

For the record, Mr Policeman, the one and only speeding ticket I have ever had was in 1978. The warning only was appreciated.

Kaikohe Hard

Kaikohe

Here’s an idea

I know what we can do about the dreadful and increasingly dangerous state of Northland’s roads. We can idly sit by and continue to force the taxpayer, the ratepayer and ordinary motorists to subsidise the trucking industry with unfathomably monumental amounts of corporate welfare.

According to one conservative study in Texas, a truck and trailer unit does 9600 times the amount of damage that a car does with every pass of every inch of roadway. Other studies have found big rigs to be 10,000 times more destructive.

None shall be taxed more inequitably than the drivers of cars and small-to-medium vans and light trucks, who also pay RUCs. Why not pay for all the big rigs’ diesel as well?

We appear to do this so we can want, want, want, and buy, buy, buy cheap ‘goods’ that are only cheap because we’ve failed to calculate their ultimate cost in terms of infrastructure, wellbeings, ethics and ecology, or almost anything else one can imagine.

Every piece of plastic is eventually going to break down into nano-particles in the environment that sustains us, aka Planet Earth, our Mother Nature.

Wally Hicks

Kohukohu

Kids’ lives matter

I haven’t checked Jane Johnson’s figures (Double that, June 24) so can’t comment on their accuracy. What I do know is this; in the 2018/19 financial year the annual rates funding for roading decreased from 19c to 17c in the dollar, and the footpath allocation of 1c was scrapped. Meanwhile future planning has increased from 8c to 12c per year from 2021 to 2031. This on an annual rate take of $97 million.

Presumably this will fund the cost of the SNA debacle and the flawed Mangonui Heritage proposal.

Meanwhile, because only $150,000 has been allocated to Te Hiku Ward footpaths in the 2021/22 financial year, our kids will continue to walk along narrow, winding, increasingly busy roadsides such as that on Cable Bay Block Rd.

Sheryl Bainbridge

Te Hiku Community Board

Cooper’s Beach

A...