Letters Aug 25
25/08/2010 5:26:00 p.m.
Cobblestone Park lights
It seems I was getting ahead of myself when I told your interviewer recently that the Council was switching off the lights at Cobblestone Park at night to deter late-night basketball games. I had been advised that the work was in hand and wrongly assumed it had been completed. The situation is this: the lights are operated by a photocell sensor, so they come on when it gets dark and go off again at daybreak. This is a security measure but, much as we want to discourage vandals, we don’t want to encourage 2am games of basketball either. Our contractor has agreed to fit a timer which will switch off the lights at 10pm, as happens in Waitangi Park skatepark. If this has not already happened by the time this letter is published, it should happen very soon. While we can never guarantee silent nights in the central city, I hope the locals who contacted the Council about this issue will then be able to fully enjoy the benefits of having this newly rebuilt park on their doorstep.
Mayor Kerry Prendergast, Wellington City Council
Car v bike
John Martin is right that motor cars sometimes have to wait behind cyclists, however it would be wrong to blame the cyclist for this situation. On Adelaide Road, there are three factors making it difficult to overtake: the cyclist, parked cars that reduce the lane width, and the frequency of oncoming cars that make it difficult to overtake. Two of these three factors are car related. When as a motorist I’m held up briefly by a cyclist, I remind myself that if the cyclist had chosen to use a car, the overall congestion would be greater, and my journey slowed even further. In contrast, when I’m riding my bike, I often find I’m held up significantly by traffic jams of cars!
Alastair Smith, Wellington
Real hot bitches
Dear Cynthia , I loved your letter [Write On, Hot bitch appeal, Aug 18]. Go the fierceness. I am so honoured – I actually think I am pretty “outside the square” most of the time, certainly on the edge of it. I enjoyed the evening but point taken and I will work on developing my regal horizons. Yes, I guess I am surrounded by wonderful dancers who work hard and have that svelte image but dance is always about the heart. Keep up the love and the looks ladies, and the sense of sardonic and I will do my bit to deserve the regal status you so generously endow. I suspect we are actually both on the same page at heart – fiercely passionate about dancing.
Deirdre Tarrant, Capital Times dance reviewer and director of Footnote Dance
Genius score
It’s great to see our local G & S Operatic Society is again venturing outside the Savoy Operas to stage what is surely the greatest operetta of all time, Johann Strauss II’s 1874 masterpiece, Die Fledermaus, whose score is a work of genius, without one dull moment. The flimsy, improbable libretto and rather silly lyrics don’t matter, but seem only to enhance the magnificent music; and productions always take care that there is lavish staging with sets and costumes worthy of that music. There are some creative people who produce one work that overshadows everything they produced before and after it, and they can never again equal. Two other instances are Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, and Jerome Kern’s Showboat (the latter having lyrics as great as Kern’s music). It’s interesting that some works often inspire sly copycats: I recall hearing, in 1946, aged eleven, a BBC radio play about a London lady’s maid who surreptitiously borrows an evening-gown of her employer’s, Lady Muck, and with the footman, gatecrashes a high-society ball. Somebody takes her for Lady Muck, with consequent complications. Well, a little boy on a Taranaki dairyfarm near Mount Egmont had heard of Johann Strauss, but never of Die Fledermaus, so it wasn’t till about 30 years later that I suddenly realised whence some Pommy writer must have pinched that theme for Thirty-Minute Theatre.
H Westfold, Miramar
Drink driving
Last week TVs Close Up and Campbell Live at 7pm informed their viewers of a person being convicted of “drunken driving, causing death of four people”. The offender was sentenced to 150 hours of community service and suspension of drivers license. Also in Blenheim a 20 year old woman pleaded guilty to charges of “driving with excess blood alcohol, causing death”. She collided with another vehicle, killing the driver whilst fleeing from police. The offender was sentenced to eight months home detention. Good to see the courts are getting tough with these killers! If the judicial system continues to take this hard line approach with crimes of this nature, who knows they may bring the offending rate down. It would be hard to, in fact drive, due to fits of laughter by prospective drink drivers, when contemplating the horrific punishments being handed out by out “Courts of justice’.
Ron Blair, Te Aro
Bus tunnel
I was amazed to read in “Tunnel vision” (18 August) that some people are concerned about out-of-service buses using the Hataitai bus tunnel. What is the problem? The route, via the tunnel, to Kilbirnie depot, or to Lambton Interchange, appears perfectly practical from the bus company’s perspective. For starters, it has fewer traffic lights than the route via Mt Victoria Tunnel, and the route avoids the sometimes-congested Basin Reserve. Regarding tunnel safety, the council’s plan to police the tunnel with cameras, and fine drivers who use the tunnel in vehicles other than buses, and emergency-service vehicles, makes compelling common sense. As for preventing use of the tunnel by pedestrians and cyclists, and horrific injuries such as inflicted on a man in 2009, dunderheads will always find a way around any barrier put in their way. Survivors of crashes may impose huge costs on our health system, but deaths help to raise the average IQ of the nation.
J Chris Horne, Northland
Lucky school boy
On the way to work yesterday I saw one of the new Crown limousines with a single passenger in the back seat - a schoolboy wearing a Wellington College uniform. What a way to get to school!
Curtis Nixon, Newtown
It seems I was getting ahead of myself when I told your interviewer recently that the Council was switching off the lights at Cobblestone Park at night to deter late-night basketball games. I had been advised that the work was in hand and wrongly assumed it had been completed. The situation is this: the lights are operated by a photocell sensor, so they come on when it gets dark and go off again at daybreak. This is a security measure but, much as we want to discourage vandals, we don’t want to encourage 2am games of basketball either. Our contractor has agreed to fit a timer which will switch off the lights at 10pm, as happens in Waitangi Park skatepark. If this has not already happened by the time this letter is published, it should happen very soon. While we can never guarantee silent nights in the central city, I hope the locals who contacted the Council about this issue will then be able to fully enjoy the benefits of having this newly rebuilt park on their doorstep.
Mayor Kerry Prendergast, Wellington City Council
Car v bike
John Martin is right that motor cars sometimes have to wait behind cyclists, however it would be wrong to blame the cyclist for this situation. On Adelaide Road, there are three factors making it difficult to overtake: the cyclist, parked cars that reduce the lane width, and the frequency of oncoming cars that make it difficult to overtake. Two of these three factors are car related. When as a motorist I’m held up briefly by a cyclist, I remind myself that if the cyclist had chosen to use a car, the overall congestion would be greater, and my journey slowed even further. In contrast, when I’m riding my bike, I often find I’m held up significantly by traffic jams of cars!
Alastair Smith, Wellington
Real hot bitches
Dear Cynthia , I loved your letter [Write On, Hot bitch appeal, Aug 18]. Go the fierceness. I am so honoured – I actually think I am pretty “outside the square” most of the time, certainly on the edge of it. I enjoyed the evening but point taken and I will work on developing my regal horizons. Yes, I guess I am surrounded by wonderful dancers who work hard and have that svelte image but dance is always about the heart. Keep up the love and the looks ladies, and the sense of sardonic and I will do my bit to deserve the regal status you so generously endow. I suspect we are actually both on the same page at heart – fiercely passionate about dancing.
Deirdre Tarrant, Capital Times dance reviewer and director of Footnote Dance
Genius score
It’s great to see our local G & S Operatic Society is again venturing outside the Savoy Operas to stage what is surely the greatest operetta of all time, Johann Strauss II’s 1874 masterpiece, Die Fledermaus, whose score is a work of genius, without one dull moment. The flimsy, improbable libretto and rather silly lyrics don’t matter, but seem only to enhance the magnificent music; and productions always take care that there is lavish staging with sets and costumes worthy of that music. There are some creative people who produce one work that overshadows everything they produced before and after it, and they can never again equal. Two other instances are Franz Lehar’s The Merry Widow, and Jerome Kern’s Showboat (the latter having lyrics as great as Kern’s music). It’s interesting that some works often inspire sly copycats: I recall hearing, in 1946, aged eleven, a BBC radio play about a London lady’s maid who surreptitiously borrows an evening-gown of her employer’s, Lady Muck, and with the footman, gatecrashes a high-society ball. Somebody takes her for Lady Muck, with consequent complications. Well, a little boy on a Taranaki dairyfarm near Mount Egmont had heard of Johann Strauss, but never of Die Fledermaus, so it wasn’t till about 30 years later that I suddenly realised whence some Pommy writer must have pinched that theme for Thirty-Minute Theatre.
H Westfold, Miramar
Drink driving
Last week TVs Close Up and Campbell Live at 7pm informed their viewers of a person being convicted of “drunken driving, causing death of four people”. The offender was sentenced to 150 hours of community service and suspension of drivers license. Also in Blenheim a 20 year old woman pleaded guilty to charges of “driving with excess blood alcohol, causing death”. She collided with another vehicle, killing the driver whilst fleeing from police. The offender was sentenced to eight months home detention. Good to see the courts are getting tough with these killers! If the judicial system continues to take this hard line approach with crimes of this nature, who knows they may bring the offending rate down. It would be hard to, in fact drive, due to fits of laughter by prospective drink drivers, when contemplating the horrific punishments being handed out by out “Courts of justice’.
Ron Blair, Te Aro
Bus tunnel
I was amazed to read in “Tunnel vision” (18 August) that some people are concerned about out-of-service buses using the Hataitai bus tunnel. What is the problem? The route, via the tunnel, to Kilbirnie depot, or to Lambton Interchange, appears perfectly practical from the bus company’s perspective. For starters, it has fewer traffic lights than the route via Mt Victoria Tunnel, and the route avoids the sometimes-congested Basin Reserve. Regarding tunnel safety, the council’s plan to police the tunnel with cameras, and fine drivers who use the tunnel in vehicles other than buses, and emergency-service vehicles, makes compelling common sense. As for preventing use of the tunnel by pedestrians and cyclists, and horrific injuries such as inflicted on a man in 2009, dunderheads will always find a way around any barrier put in their way. Survivors of crashes may impose huge costs on our health system, but deaths help to raise the average IQ of the nation.
J Chris Horne, Northland
Lucky school boy
On the way to work yesterday I saw one of the new Crown limousines with a single passenger in the back seat - a schoolboy wearing a Wellington College uniform. What a way to get to school!
Curtis Nixon, Newtown
