Letters to the editor: Housing Available, unequal wealth and population growth
24 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
7 minutes to read
Letter writers have reacted to housing available in New Zealand and Kiwis coming back home. Photo / File
Letter writers have reacted to housing available in New Zealand and Kiwis coming back home. Photo / File
NZ Herald
Housing Available
The housing shortage we are facing has taken a long time to develop, over a decade. The shortage is part of the reason houses are now so expensive.
There is no quick solution because the building industry does not have capacity to further increase supply. More materials, more machinery and more skilled workers are needed for that to happen. However supply has been ramped up to record levels. Sections are not really in short supply, there are thousands of new and infill sites available and properties are now changing hands all over the city to be redeveloped with more dwellings than before and suitable sites are being sold lik
John Roughan: Small businesses choked by kindness
9 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
3 minutes to read
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern looks on during a press conference at Parliament. Photo / Getty Images
NZ Herald
As we say goodbye to 2020 and welcome in 2021, it s a good time to catch up on the very best of the Herald columnists we enjoyed reading over the last 12 months. From politics to sport, from business to entertainment and lifestyle, these are the voices and views our audience loved the most. Today it s the top three from John Roughan.
Are we really all in this together ?
Jacinda Ardern has received praise from near and far for her leadership in this pandemic and most of it is deserved, wrote Roughan back in April.
Letters: Simon Wilson and therapists, John Roughan, house prices and Kiwibank
8 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
7 minutes to read
NZ Herald
Letter of the week: Larry Mitchell, Rothesay Bay
Simon Wilson s Diary Love Rises Up (Weekend Herald, January 2) is a magnificent and beautifully crafted paean to the nursing and caring people who day after day show their compassion and love for those undergoing challenging medical treatment.
His observations apply to all carers, the special people of enormous empathy and compassion whose collective humanity ease the burden of pain and anxiety.
Simon says also; My family have been so great, looking after me, putting up with all that. Love rises up . and it s pretty good .
Letters: Covid lessons, TEC funding cuts, John Roughan and summer TV
1 Jan, 2021 04:00 PM
8 minutes to read
NZ Herald
Letter of the week: John Ford, Taradale If there is one thing I have learnt this past year, it is this: we can do things if we want to.
We had money for everything Covid. We could create jobs, we could extend immigration and we could afford to fill the car with petrol.
We could get to the South Island on a budget never before seen, Queenstown actually valued the Kiwi visitor.
Many ivory castles were destroyed by Covid. Where there was a bureaucratic minefield of rules and regulation, somehow, they were excused in 2020.
Peter Summers/Getty Images
Pre-Christmas shoppers in London, as the capital and large parts of southern England were moved into a newly created “tier 4” lockdown, closing non-essential shops and limiting household mixing. Cue astonishment. “But New Zealand has done so well!” To be fair, John Roughan’s
NZ Herald column, titled “Did we overestimate the pandemic threat?” never does explain who “we” is. Does he mean New Zealand – or the entire world? His final line: “Like terrorism, war and a Wall St crash, a pandemic has long been a recognised threat, but we may have overestimated it.” Roughan blames “the news”, which has “feasted on numbers. Big, raw numbers published without context or perspective”, a metaphor itself spectacularly lacking in context or perspective – “the news” as a lobotomised piranha gnawing on a bloody T-bone.