No doubt about it – tiny minds make tiny lives – and the evidence is there for all to see in recent letters to our newspapers. Sukha Singh and Rajeev Sharma thoroughly deserve the roasting dished out by Tai Smith of Nasinu (FT 7/1).

It is difficult to even try to understand the motivation behind the thinking of the likes of Sharma and Singh. Such meanness of spirit, paucity of generosity, lack of tolerance. Have you two never had a dream? Have you never ever wanted to do something simply for the fun of it? To do something to lift your spirits with joy?

We have no idea how Talei Burness managed to pay for her sky-dive and we have no right whatsoever to criticise her right or means to do so. For all we know she may have been stashing away $1 a week for years! Other people spend many times that in a week on grog or lottery tickets or any number of other fruitless pastimes.

Here we have a lady (a true lady, this writer can vouch for that) who on her 70^th birthday fulfilled a dream: at the same time doing every pensioner world wide an enormous favour. She showed the rest of us what we are made of. She showed us what we can do if we put our minds to it.

Talei Burness jumped out of a plane at 4,000ft and in free-fall yelled ‘One for the pensioners!’ showing us all that, wrinkles, cellulite, grey hair and creaking bones do not mean that we are over the hill, finished, ex, no more, done for, irrelevant and useless.

Talei Burness is a 70 year old lady with guts and grit. Shame on you Singh and Sharma. Jealous, are you? Envious? Please just take your tiny minds and crawl back into the holes where you belong.

IN a long article (FT 17/12), Shauna Tomkins and Geoff Rashbrook, consultants to the Fiji National Provident Fund, say that statements continue to be made about the FNPF reforms that are simply untrue.

The duo went on to make many claims.

One of these denies that the FNPF has contracts with existing pensioners.

Ms Tomkins may have forgotten that she is a party to a report to the FNPF which acknowledged that contracts are in place.

In fact she recommended that the FNPF should allocate funds to meet the payments promised under the existing contracts.

Many of the pensioners now facing a major reduction in their income argued strongly that the FNPF is breaking their contract.

Clearly this is a matter for the courts to decide except that pensioners have been denied their fundamental right to seek legal redress. This is an act of discrimination against them.

Ms Tomkins should explain why she has associated herself with such an injustice.

The article has a crucial disclaimer. It indicates that the comments by Ms Tomkins and Mr Rashbrook are opinions not intended as legal or financial advice.

PRATAP SINGH
ERONI VULI
Suva