| Letters

Plus Caption Competition, Quips & Quotes, Life in NZ and 10 Quick Questions

Congratulations on linking, perhaps unintentionally, two topics in the June 24 issue that are symptomatic of our Western-worldly fetish with consumerism.

Sally Blundell’s story on hoarding (“Taming your inner hoarder”, June 24) says it all: we are obsessed with possessions and many of us tend to hoard. Our existence has become crammed with the nice things of life, not necessities. Our houses are bigger, our possessions always bigger, brighter and better than our neighbours’, we’re earning far more money than ever before but we’re further in debt – yet we aspire to still more.

And, of course, to fund all this, we must work harder and for longer hours – no time for table tennis, as Joanne Black ( Back to Black, June 24) points out. So much for the idea, boldly put to us by so-called visionaries in the 1960s and 70s, that future generations would have more leisure time because machines, computers, robots and artificial intelligence would do the work for us.

Scarily, much of the rest of the world now aspires to the same lifestyle – as if it were a God-given right. We must stop: as Blundell points out, our bad habit is totally unsustainable economically and environmentally.

Mike Patrick (Motueka) WHAT’S REALLY NEXT

It’s hard to imagine a programme promising as much and delivering as little as TVNZ 1’s What Next? Apart from its superficiality and unchallenged assumptions, it skirted around the single most urgent issue facing the planet, the one overshadowing all else.

People won’t be much concerned whether they eat chicken or chipmunk when their houses are under water, thousands of hectares of foodproducing land lie charred, the Arctic is permanently ice-free, the Antarctic is shedding shelves at speed, the world’s coastal cities are sinking under rising seas along with islands ceasing to exist, and every freshwater body is toxic.

The goals were good, but where were the priorities? The reduction of poverty, closing of the wealth divide and marvels of medical advances are likely to concern us less when storms of unimaginable ferocity wipe out swathes of urban settlement in a single instant.

Robots may have their use in places rendered uninhabitable for humans – by summer temperatures, for example, soaring to 50°C for months on end – and technology will help in overcoming some of the challenges that await us. But even the production of technology’s hardware comes at an environmental cost, extracting rare metals and raw materials from the finite resources of an already over-mined planet.

Although presenters John Campbell and Nigel Latta and their participants did acknowledge the world-wide transition to greener energy, they failed to acknowledge that the transition is happening too slowly to halt the changes now in motion. In the face of the stress the planet will be put under by a human population approaching eight billion, the issues raised in What Next? are but adjuncts and footnotes.

Jacqueline Walker (Parnell, Auckland) DUMPING ON THE DUP

The June 24 Editorial bemoans the leverage that the UK’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) now has in regard to the curtailing of prosecutions of soldiers and police for alleged crimes committed during Northern Ireland’s Troubles. You go further and say this threatens peace.

I cannot imagine supporting the DUP, but the Editorial reveals a bias that of itself could be a threat to peace. One of the DUP’s concerns is that Republican-terrorist crimes go unpunished but Unionist forces are open for scrutiny and possible action.

Thus we see former soldiers in their seventies facing manslaughter charges. Notwithstanding the Good Friday agreement, at the very least the same justice should be applied to all parties. In this matter, the DUP holds the moral high ground, and any threat to

peace or political stability is just as likely to come from the non-pursuance of criminals from the other side.

Graham Sharpe (Wellington) SOMETHING MISSING

I found an incredible gap in Aimie Cronin’s five-page article (“Class captain”, June 24) on Nikki Kaye, the Minister of Education.

Although mentioning her education at primary, intermediate and secondary schools, there was no comment on the fact that she has university degrees in science and law.

Frank Coulter (Pauanui Beach) BANGING ON ABOUT BANGERS

Listener Food column (June 10): a recipe for a gourmet breakfast plate including sausages and bacon. Nutrition column (June 17): sausages and bacon give you cancer.

Is this an Alzheimer’s test?

Adam Doughty (Kerikeri) CARE FOR THE ELDERLY

As a pensioner, I am concerned at the media’s huge emphasis on elder abuse. Yes, there are occasional despicable individuals who take advantage, but they are a small minority.

Much more typical are the

sons and daughters who spend a huge amount of time and energy supporting their elderly relatives out of love and not in expectation of any reward. This can be a difficult and thankless task.

The constant stereotyping of children as rip-off merchants by advocacy groups such as Age Concern and Grey Power

corrodes trust between parents and families. Some balance in discussing the issue is needed.

I am disappointed that more of my fellow senior citizens do not rise to the defence of their children and the fine young people of today.

Robert McDonald (Hastings)

LETTER OF THE WEEK

MANSPORT

Thank you to Paul Thomas ( Sport, June 17) for so carefully mansplaining the perils of sport fame to the “ladies”. Were it not for his analysis, I would have had no idea that sportswomen should keep their nice, polite personalities out of the media for fear that they would be tainted by the same ills as much of

the multimillion-dollar men’s sport industry.

Sally Shaw (Dunedin)

I agree with Anne Willmann’s point ( Letters, May 27) that it’s disappointing the Sport column (still – I first raised this in 2012) pays little attention to women’s sport.

I read the Listener for its breadth of topics in all kinds of subject areas, and the narrow range of the column is irritating, even if all readers are interested in is controversy, as

Paul Thomas seems to think.

Venetia King (Thorndon, Wellington) BOB’S YOUR FINANCIAL ADVISER

I read the article by Sir Bob Jones (“Home truths”, June 24) without stopping, expecting the answer to my problem, but it never came.

As I approached retirement, I did as Jones advises and sold up and downsized, thus leaving a cash surplus. Now what?

I would like to invest the cash to get an income to add to my state pension. And that’s the problem that was not answered.

Putting it in a bank gives about a 4% return. There must be a better investment I can make. What is it?

Doug Tomey (Orewa, Auckland) ANTI ANTI-AMERICANISM

Joanne Black complains “it has long seemed to me that Kiwis’ anti-Americanism is real and barely disguised ( Back to Black, June 24). I find this strange.

Anti-Americanism is itself an Americanist concept, used to explain away and dismiss criticisms, complaints or objections by people in other parts of the world about actions of the US Government, its military, its corporations or its buy-up-anything super-rich one-per-centers.

Still, insofar as one can make a generalisation, let’s say that as members of a relatively small nation, Kiwis tend to be pro-New Zealand and to resent the perception that their nation is being bullied, or punished for standing up for its own perceived national interests, or forced into a corner.

Take, for example, the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement. The TPPA was rejected by Donald Trump because the concessions it made to US corporate interests did not go far enough. From objectors’ points of view, it went far too far, especially in relation to investor-state-dispute resolution, in fatally compromising the sovereignty of all the other so-called “partners.”

Having recently enjoyed visiting family in the US, I could go on. But let’s simply reassure Black that individual Americans who do find their way here will encounter friendliness, provided they are themselves friendly.

John C Ross (Palmerston North)

BOAT BUILDERS OF OLD

Bill Ralston ( Life, June 24) wrote that the America’s Cup “launched our local boat-building industry”.

Such a statement cannot go unchallenged. In Auckland alone, from 1853 to 1872, the industry built 482 sailing vessels totalling 12,935 tons.

People will recall that the industry was thriving to such an extent in the days of Muldoon that he brought in a boat tax. John Vague (Epsom, Auckland)