WHEN LETTERS TO EDITOR ARE WORTH LESS

Michael from Trentham

This week's Upper Hutt Leader has just two letters to the editor published.
They caught my eye because of the subject matter and of their inaccuracies. The fact is they will unlikely to be corrected in any follow-up.
The first was on a water burst. Ok, the writer says a month has gone by and no fix. I recently brought to the public's attention a water leak in Upper Hutt in a major street that took almost 4 months to fix..

But the letter writer blamed the Upper Hutt City Council. Alright, the Council can take some blame because of complicity but of course Wellington Water are responsible once the matter has been brought to their attention.

The next letter was about the spelling of the Lower Hutt suburb of Petone. Change is afoot to spell it Pito-one. But the writer goes on about Maori language spelling and how it was a European missionary or two who created a Maori "dictionary" because the Maori did not have a written language.

Of course this letter writer has the wrong end of the stick because Petone and Pito-one are pronounced differently with different emphasis. And as an aside one has no meaning and the other has every meaning. Nothing much to do with any spelling.