Letters February 18 2012
Housing; kauri dieback; and Waitangi Day. [more]
Letters
Letters February 18 2012
Housing; kauri dieback; and Waitangi Day. [more]
Letters February 11 2012
Kauri dieback; copyright piracy; and junior education. [more]
Letters February 4 2012
Kauri dieback; electoral reform; and fracking. [more]
Letters January 28 2012
Thinking; the alcohol debate; and public broadcasting. [more]
Public broadcasting
While enjoying your article on TVNZ7’s Back Benchers host Wallace Chapman (“Not taking a back seat”, January 14), I was reminded that our only public service broadcasting channel, on which his programme screens, is soon to be shut down and reportedly replaced by a shopping channel.
In my position I had... [more]
Heritage lost
Christine McCarthy writes convincingly about post-earthquakes Christchurch heritage architecture (Letters, December 31). The situation is indeed dire. No thanks to Gerry Brownlee, who set the tone after February 22 with his intemperate “old dungers” comment. In its two-month reign, Civil Defence under John Hamilton flattened dozens of heritage buildings, and... [more]
What’s the score?
The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra was intrigued by calculations that compared how the APO and NZSO are funded (“A taonga changes hands”, December 24). There is about $16 million of central government funding to go around the country’s orchestras. In 2010, the NZSO received $13.45 million of it. The APO received... [more]
Global warming
Political inaction over human-induced global warming is not “a dangerous game” (Editorial, December 17). Rather, it is a real and present threat to human civilisation and to most life on Earth. As a retired upper atmospheric physicist, I sent six detailed submissions on global warming to 122 MPs and 74 chairs/mayors... [more]
The alcohol debate
Reading the relevant scientific literature, including Professor Jennie Connor’s contributions, shows she and her colleagues are out on a limb (“Knocking it back”, December 3). They represent a tiny minority in the global community of public health experts who are deniers of the overall beneficial effects of moderate drinking. Their... [more]
Breast tests
The last paragraph of Joanne Black’s article “What’s best for the breast?” (December 10) is disappointing. It reads like a glowing endorsement of thermography, with the faint proviso it is not proved. If thermography is worthwhile, it should be possible to state its failure rate, as is done for mammography.... [more]
The alcohol debate
Lifetime alcohol risk numbers are meaningless because they ignore time of death (“Knocking it back”, December 3).
For example, what does “the risk of dying of alcohol-related disease or injury rises to 9%” mean? Does it mean that instead of dying at age 99 of heart disease you may die at... [more]
Where there’s muck…
Highlighting intensive dairying’s role in the degradation of fresh waterways (Editorial, November 26) is an important acknowledgement of the failure of regulation to stop cows poohing in creeks.
But it’s not just pooh that damages waterways and nor are these the only casualties of the recent massive rise in dairy-cow numbers.... [more]
The booze lobby
I am the mother of the young athlete who laid a complaint about being harassed by an intoxicated Zac Guildford. Obviously, my first reaction was anger at what my girl had gone through.
But whose fault is it really? I wish somebody had mentioned drinking is okay, but manipulating kids to... [more]
Kiwi Jobs
Joanne Black’s article “The young & the jobless” (November 12) brought back vivid memories of when I, as a young teenager fresh from a rather disengaging high school experience, found myself struggling to get work during the recessions of the 1990s. I didn’t initially go on to tertiary study because... [more]
Youth wages
John Key likes to imagine his new youth wages scheme will create more youth employment. And to a certain degree that is true. However, it will be creating a larger youth workforce with a considerably lower income.
Now aged 17, I have been searching for a job for over 18 months.... [more]
The word on MMP
There’s one very good reason we should keep MMP. Because Roger Kerr thinks it should go (October 29).
Chris Brady
(Taumarunui)
Michael Baylis’s tongue-in-cheek letter (October 15) was not too far from the truth of the failings of MMP. I recently took part in a discussion with some senior elected MPs. The message... [more]
Counselling needed
Fluoxetine, paroxetine, citalopram, amitriptyline, nortriptyline – I’ve been prescribed them all, and lots more besides, for severe intractable clinical depression. Did they help? I doubt it. At one stage I was taking 13 prescription drugs – for the original illness as well as for the side effects from the medication.
Counselling... [more]
Maritime disaster
In 1998, when the Austral Achiever had a near disaster by the Poor Knights Islands, 28km off the Northland coast, it galvanised me. An engine-room fire broke out. Fortunately, the weather was fine and it was possible to get aid to it from the shore. Only a small spill occurred.... [more]
Keep the flags flying
KEEP THE FLAGS FLYING
Now we have become a flag-flying nation, let us revisit Merv Wellington’s idea to fly the New Zealand flag at every school, and spread national pride once again among our youth.
Don Goodall
(Whangarei)
ARTHRITIS EPIDEMIC
What was forgotten in the article on osteoarthritis (“Joint decisions”, October 8) is that... [more]
Culture clash
Artists have been ripping each other off since some bright spark first started scribbling on cave walls. Dick Frizzell’s tiki owes as much to Keith Haring as to any Maori (“Culture Clash”, October 1). Likewise your Gordon Walters example is a kiwified Bridget Riley, with its op-art roots in the... [more]