On their minds

Pumped full of antibiotics and painkilling pills there’s no doubt what has been uppermost on my mind lately – an infected tooth with no respect for international agreements banning the use of torture. To find out what is on the minds of the inhabitants of the world’s most southerly capital city, however, I turn as usual to the letters they write to their newspaper, in this case Wellington’s ‘The Dominion Post’.

On the local level, the Council’s ‘spy car’ has raised the ire of many a motorist. It has been driving around photographing vehicles parked where they shouldn’t. One aggrieved lady took her complaint to court, claiming she had simply moved over to allow the spy car to pass and was so taken aback to find herself being photographed that she started to shake, and couldn’t move off until she had regained her composure. She lost her case.

Rubbish collection is another subject making many reach for pen or keyboard. There is a charge for rubbish bags as well as bins, and the charges are due to rise, along with the fees for a number of other services. Also, there is considerable debate over whether the capital city should follow Auckland’s example and merge all the councils in its urban area to form a single ‘super-city’. More efficient, say some, moving power away from the people, say others.

Nationally, there is much discussion of the Government’s well-advanced plans to sell off 49 per cent of four, highly-profitable, state-owned power companies. Although heralded in the autumn election campaign last year, the move is largely unpopular, to the extent that the unions and certain other organisations are trying to get at least 300,000 registered voters to sign a petition calling for a referendum on the matter. As legislation paving the way for the sell-off has already been introduced in Parliament, it could be as one commentator put it like trying to lock the stable after the horse has bolted.

Also unpopular among a majority is the sale of a block of 16 dairy farms to a Chinese company, with complaints that New Zealand interests have been ignored by the National (Conservative)-led Government under John Key, a former currency trader in London, said not to have hesitated to speculate against the NZ dollar during his time there. The farm sale is now under review.

The Government also plans a number of cost-cutting measures to reduce the budget deficit, including ‘reforms’ to welfare benefits, and cutting a large number of public service jobs, among them 300 from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which, critics claim, could seriously affect the country’s diplomatic representation overseas.

In all, there are a lot of people beginning to feel the pain – without having an infected tooth.