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OPINION: Letters on school rugby, royals, doctors, Iran, and Ardie Savea.

The game I loved and played has become a bore and a threat to health. On the same page, we are reminded that the Herald and Radio New Zealand often swap news stories, to economise on the costs of putting reporters in the field. Having been employed by the former Department of Lands and Survey from 1968 to 1987 and the Department of Conservation from 1987 to 2011, I have personal experience of “the best and worst of the public service”. In comparison, the Government has turned down, for the second year in a row, an offer from Auckland and Otago Universities to increase the number of much-needed doctors they can train. A law of physics is a law of physics, as informed and developed by knowledge and practice derived from the ancient Greeks, Chinese, Persians, Polynesian peoples, or whoever. For over 100 years, one of the fundamental tenets of the public service was that the permanent heads of government departments were always expected to give their minister “free and frank and neutral advice”. Perhaps it should be a compulsory requirement for all political appointments to the public service to re-read the readily available “Code of Conduct for Public Servants” published by the State Service Commission. Second, the net result of the cyclone was to disclose the inadequacy of the NZ highways and communications networks. We need to be quite clear that in a perfect world, the cost of upgrading all of our necessary infrastructures would cost in excess of a trillion dollars, which we simply do not have. The reading of these should not be necessary as the standard of public commentary required by any public servant should be patently obvious and failure to understand this should disqualify them from such employment in the first place. The current slew of ex-politicians ignoring the “rules” of political comment is disturbing. With everything that is happening in what is a very strange world, and particularly with regard to the numerous problems which now beset our lovely country, surely it is time for a complete reset of our priorities in all respects, and get back to basics.