Good idea!
“World of difference” (November 3) compares New Zealand to other countries, and mentions that China and North America gain health improvements with tai chi.
In this respect, New Zealand is catching up rapidly. ACC adopted the programme of Sydney-based GP and tai chi master Dr Paul Lam some years ago, and now subsidised classes for the over-65s (or 55 for Maori) are conducted throughout New Zealand for 48 weeks of every year. Christchurch alone has more than 420 students attending twice-weekly classes, and Presbyterian Support offers subsidised maintenance classes, which follow on from the ACC scheme.
The savings to the community are immeasurable: a reduction in the number of hip and knee replacements needed, fewer falls, with corresponding saving in hospital outpatient and physiotherapy costs, improved health of seniors, fewer problems with arthritis and diabetes, greater independence for the elderly, and an enjoyable and safe exercise class where many friendships are forged.
Many tai chi groups can be spotted around our Christchurch parks. They meet daily and anyone who wishes to join in can be assured of a warm welcome.
Hazel Thompson,Tai chi tutor (Cashmere, Christchurch)
Of corse, Finnish teens scor at or neer the top in reeding, along with maths and sience (which both depend on reeding). Havving good teechers is a grate help, but Finnish pupils hav the added advantage of a regularly updated eesy spelling sistem that helps, rather than hinders, literacy lerning.
Wer we to hav simmilarly sensible spelling, our lerners could also pik up reeding and riting in a yeer or so, insted of the three or four now needed for most. Like the Finns, we would not hav a “long tale” of less litrat scool leevers who giv up on reeding. Tertiary education institutions and busness firms would not hav to teech litracy to thare recruits.
Allan Campbell, Spell 4 Literacy (Christchurch)
The writer of “World of difference” (November 3) must have missed the Ecologic column (September 22) that covered eco cemeteries. The Spanish ash cemetery described is far from an environmental asset. Cremation turns bodies into at least 20 different types of air-polluting compounds, and ash provides zero sustenance to plants.
New Zealanders are keen to accept new ideas – we took dozens of calls after the Ecologic column appeared. But it has been largely bureaucrats who have prevented eco cemeteries starting here. The exception has been Wellington City Council, with whom we have partnered to start conducting natural burials. It didn’t get stuck on asking why or what the risk is; it wanted to know how.
Mark Blackham, Founder, Natural Burials New Zealand
CLIMATE CHANGE
“Fast follower” (Editorial, November 3) was a sad grasping at straws being offered by David Skilling of the New Zealand Institute. Skilling’s most egregious proposition is that New Zealand should abandon its Kyoto Protocol commitments, and seek to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels some eight years late, ie, by 2020.
This proposition is irresponsible. It would mean breaking international law – not on principled grounds, but purely on the basis of narrow, short-term, national self-interest. It would do significant damage to our international reputation and undermine our efforts to work with the international community to cut greenhouse gas emissions radically and promptly.
It would also mean missing important economic opportunities. What Skilling calls a “fast follower” (but what is really a “slow learner”) is a recipe for being left behind, in a rapidly changing global policy environment.
Climate change presents a tough set of ethical choices, since we have to weigh up our own standards of living and comfort against those of future generations. But there is compelling evidence that delaying action risks enormous damage for our children and grandchildren. When top scientists such as Jim Hansen of NASA warn that a decade of little action risks making the Earth “a different planet”, can we treat Skilling’s do-less-and-do-it-more-slowly prescription with any seriousness?
The issue is not going to go away; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has made it crystal clear that climate upheaval will get much worse before it gets better, if indeed it does. Skilling underestimates the huge impact accelerating climate change will have. It will remake our markets and radically alter much of our economic and social lives.
Associate Professor Ralph Chapman & Professor Jonathan Boston, Victoria University of Wellington
PETROL PRICES
Every day more articles, opinions, doomsday predictions and heated debates hit the headlines concerning the issue of global warming. It seems like every ad these days is touting some company’s commitment to reducing emissions and generally making the world a better place. People are screaming for alternatives to petroleum-derived products, while firms boast about the merits of their petrol alternatives. But in case nobody noticed, no one is using cars powered only by electricity or fuel cells. Why? Because petrol is better. It’s cheaper, it’s easier to use and the infrastructure for it is already in place.
Until using petrol no longer becomes economically viable, people will continue to use it. As soon as the price of petrol skyrockets so that the average person can no longer afford to run their car, then people will switch to alternatives. Companies will develop better technologies to meet the growing demand, and not before. Necessity is the mother of invention. So I, for one, am not worried.
Clay Ripma (Warkworth)
CONCERT FAVOURITES
The relentless and irrepressible Radio NZ Concert promos struck a real pall of gloom today, with the first “It’s that time of year again!” chirrup. Oh no! Two whole months of this ridiculous daily battery ahead of us. “You, the listeners …” Can nobody pick the appalling condescension in this attitude? What did long-standing, loyal Concert listeners ever do to deserve this perpetual water-on-stone attack? Our favourite music? Who would be dim enough to pay attention to a list?
Concert’s job is to keep playing the stuff, not to put us through a kindergarten awareness course. Where in Radio NZ’s charter and funding ethos is there any hint that the classical station should descend into what is, in effect, mindless commercial radio blather? To treat an audience as tame idiots with no memory bank; grinding on with the torture until a new year arrives; how can this be justified?
Keith Money (Warkworth)
PLAGUE
Wally Martin (Letters, November 3) says that the cause of the approaching destruction of the world is over-population. It is not. The world has enough resources for everyone. For example, sufficient food is being produced by the world to feed the entire population (as stated a few years ago at an international conference of plant pathologists). What we need is the political willingness, on a global scale, to get the food and other resources to where they are needed.
To claim that China is approaching its population problem with intelligence is short-sighted. A one-child-family policy is not desirable when the only child is indulged to the point of having severe weight and discipline problems. Nor is this policy desirable in a culture which so favours males that a female baby can be a disappointment of life-threatening proportions. If you really want to control a country’s population, then educate the women. This will improve their quality of life, and family sizes will decrease naturally. This is already happening in many western countries where population growth is now zero, or even negative.
To claim that the world’s problems are caused by over-population is simplistic and does not lead to appropriate solutions.
Stephanie Parkes (Mt Eden, Auckland)
FOOD COSTS
Diane Robertson (Letters, November 3) advocates the removal of GST on foods in order to help those on low incomes. Unfortunately, this is not the way to tackle the problem. First, all prices are governed by “what the market will stand” and if GST were removed on food it would not take long for the prices to revert to the old level. Second, by removing it from all foodstuffs a huge amount of GST income (from those who can easily afford food) would be lost. This money could be used to directly help those on lower incomes. The benefit for those on lower incomes would be much greater than simply their temporary saving on GST.
Ken Chandler (Hamilton)
AUTHORS’ FUND
It’s good to see the Listener getting behind the need for an increase in Authors’ Fund payments (Editorial, October 27). The rate has stood still for years while the cost of everything has rocketed. Is there any other payment this is true of? An increase would not be money for nothing. Leaving out its wider importance, literature is a good little earner for New Zealand. Fair treatment for the workers, please.
Maurice Gee (Nelson)
CALCIUM SUPPLEMENTS
Mac Jackson (Letters, November 3) analyses the reported findings from the University of Auckland calcium supplementation trial with a lucidity that puts media commentators to shame. He then states “the results were discovered in post hoc analysis, so are in need of proper experimental testing”. From a logical scientific perspective this is no doubt correct, but the ethical humanist in me demurs.
To repeat the trials in order to test the hypothesis that high-dose calcium supplements increase the risk of heart attacks in elderly women means exposing half the subjects to this (admittedly minuscule) risk. Worse, it means depriving the other half, the placebo-receiving control group, of a moderately effective protection against osteoporosis, one that will be safer when it is tailored to the individual patient’s circumstances instead of randomised, and is allowed to include important factors excluded from the trial, such as vitamin D, which allows calcium to be effective at lower levels.
My old pharmacology textbook (D R Laurence 1966) says, “It is only proper to perform a therapeutic trial where the doctor genuinely does not know which treatment is best.” In New Zealand, where volunteers for trials are so few (the successful testing of the Phloe kiwifruit enzyme product had to take place in China on Chinese subjects), it is surely indefensible to repeat this trial just to prove what every doctor should already know.
George D Henderson (Huia)
SHOCK TACTIC
Carl Watson (Letters, October 20) is right in not wanting resuscitation in certain circumstances and most of the thinking elderly would agree.
I would remind them to complete an Advance Directive specifying the circumstances in which they would wish to decline life-sustaining treatment and to appoint someone they trust with an Enduring Power of Attorney in relation to Personal Care and Welfare.
They can also help in the longer term to amend the present laws that deny full personal autonomy in end-of-life situations by supporting the Voluntary Euthanasia Society of New Zealand Inc.
Frank Dungey, President,VESNZ Inc
BACK TO BURMA
The words “Burma” and “Rangoon” are, I believe, the traditional names of that unhappy country and of its capital city. It is political correctness gone mad to use, as our news presenters do, the words invented by the military junta (in opposition to the wishes of the majority of the oppressed Burmese people). I note that the BBC doesn’t make this mistake.
Philip Macdiarmid (Thames)
HEALTH WARNING
Can anyone tell me why New Zealand cigarette packets have at least a dozen different health warnings in English, but only the one in Maori?
Michael Burke (North Shore City)
