Why is a community like a cake?

By Eric Auton

Collect the ingredients, mix them carefully, warm ’em up and most of those at the table will enjoy and benefit from the treat of sharing . Most of those at the table? Kiwis love their tuck.

We all need sustenance to survive and strive; not all of us even turn up to the table because not all of us know where is that sharing table and when the warm cake is laid before us.

My wife teaches further north than Te Awamutu and we were chatting on the phone about a conversation she had with some of her senior pupils: a casual and very relaxed type of community sharing. The topic of fear was warmed up.

These are young people from multiple ingredients (ethnicities and nationalities), from pretty healthy mixing (parenting) who were about to be popped into the oven of their futures (leaving school).

Their choice of anxieties and fears for their futures include the usual suspects.

However, more often than not, top of their list was not having hope: not being able to compete with AI, not getting a decent job, not making friends, never being able to own a house.

In other words - not being full of hope about their futures. Are you surprised at their anxieties and fears? They are not a selection of wimps

Age Of Reason

By Peter Carr

Goodness knows why this was the (then) plan as the topography to the south embracing Taupo and the ravines that herald the start of the Desert Road should have told any engineer worth his socks that the feat was nigh impossible. It is history now, but common sense prevailed, the line was moved to the west and the last spike driven to complete the construction in 1908.

So why this treatise on rail transport? Well, it is really about the wider subject of multitransport types and infrastructure.

It is no secret that we, this once-proud nation, repair yesterday’s infrastructure to maintain the status quo of the past. We do not replace totally inadequate roads with what is now needed to handle a huge number of cars and the over-large 16-metrelong B-train high sided trucks that thunder along the roads.

The current roading mess north of Gisborne is a prime example of political wavering supporting engineering ineptitude. Pity really, for NZTA (yes, I still use that title) have fine engineers and there are excellent roading engineering firms capable of providing high-standard roads promoting both safety and high speed where appropriate.

The current pothole saga is a case in point. Slapping in a spade-full of hot asphalt to allegedly bring a state highway back to ‘prime’ condition is a fallacy.

Throwing down another thousand orange cones is a bureaucrat’s way of apparently slowing down the average speed of travel. Rubbish.

The very recent call for overnight passenger rail reinstatement – plus three other daylight passenger trains – is in the too-hard basket for the railway company. They are predominantly freight driven using narrow-gauge track that produces an average speed Auckland to Wellington of without backbones, I can assure of that. They are a representative fraction of a present generation unlike many of their predecessors.

It seems that never before has it been so challenging for young people to sit with friends at the table of healthy choices and benefit from being fed optimistic nutrition.

I believe that, as their elders, there is at least one positive, concrete contribution we can make as a commitment to building a beacon of hope in a darkening world: the next time we go past a place of worship enquire if a modest contribution would make a difference to the future, concrete maintenance of the building.

Without churches we have no spires. Without spires, we have no inspiration. Without inspiration, we have no aspirations. We owe it to our youngsters to maintain our places of healthy choices and worship in good condition for them.

How else will they know where to search for a community table of hope and support?

The red light of warning is blinking in our eyes.

40kmh. I frequently follow trucks well exceeding their permitted 90kmh as they thunder along the highways giving a direct point-to-point delivery that the rail system will never achieve. If there is to be a reinstatement of any passenger rail it should be in the hands of a separate company who knows what they are doing.

Preferably a European one. I well remember telling the (then) chair of the regional council that the subsidy (that’s you and me paying as taxpayers) for the passenger rail shambles that links Hamilton to Auckland would be too high to stomach. And last week the true figures came to light. The subsidy to date is 86 per cent. This is criminal and a prime example of local government wielding the stick of poor governance to seek glorification.