Talkback

Your comments on TV and radio

FALSE IMPRESSION

From time to time, I see letters from Listener readers bemoaning the fact that Coronation Street screens too late in the evenings. Can I assume that these correspondents do not have some type of device with which to record the show and watch it at a more suitable time? Unfortunately, these letters give a false impression that this show is watched mainly by people of a certain age, which is certainly not the case.

Colleen Stephenson (Howick, Auckland) CONCERTED EFFORT

May I express my appreciation for the original and stimulating presentation on the life and music of Chopin by Margaret Ogilvie (RNZ Concert, April 8)? I do look forward to these talks on Saturday afternoons. And could we please have a revival of the Composer of the Week series?

Geoffrey Hinds (Mt Eden, Auckland)

Thanks for Inside Out with Nick Tipping (RNZ Concert, Saturday): always interesting jazz. And for Kim Hill, of course (RNZ National, Saturday) – a national treasure!

Pam Tarulevicz (Auckland)

RNZ Concert’s Cynthia Morahan must rank among the best radio announcers in the world. It’s a rewarding

privilege to listen to her.

Clarke Isaacs (Dunedin) MILKY WAY

The Cameron Bennett documentary ( Sunday Special: The Price of Milk?, TVNZ 1, April 9) was promoted as a view of the dairy industry from a farmer’s point of view.

The documentary offered two models of dairy farming: Jasmine Purnell, who farms within sustainable economic and environmental limits, and Gavin Flint (Flinty), who farms in a traditional manner. Flinty knows the damage that the industry is doing and says so, but he has to get up every day at 4am to milk those cows. Like many small farmers, he is trapped in a cycle of debt and expectation that the price of milk solids will magically rise again.

In the meanwhile, taxpayers are subsidising irrigation to allow more intensification. Above all, we mustn’t forget that a cow excretes more than

50kg of manure a day and milk powder sufficient to make a litre of milk will take approximately 100 litres of fresh water to manufacture.

The most rewarding thing for this country would be for all farmers to own the pollution and ask for help to fix it. That would be more positive than the saccharine ads from Fonterra.

David Blair (Dunedin)