Stand against RM House to be congratulated

AT the height of his drugdealing career, Pablo Escobar earned $21 billion a year, which is slightly less than McDonald’s annual revenue. Although Escobar murdered more than 4000 people, many in Colombia revere him, not least because he built a neighbourhood of houses for the poor people of Medellin.

By contrast, obesity kills an estimated 4 million people a year worldwide, of which at least 3000 deaths are in New Zealand. Twothirds of adults and onethird of children in New Zealand are overweight or obese. New Zealand is the thirdfattest nation in the OECD and obesity costs the New Zealand taxpayer $1 billion a year.

McDonald’s spends $22 billion annually worldwide marketing its products, often using the Ronald McDonald clown. The marketing of fast food to children has been shown by the US Institute of Medicine to be directly linked to childhood obesity.

A report on Ronald McDonald House Charities (RHMC) showed that not only does McDonald’s donate far less (0.32% of pretax profits) than most other corporations, but more funds for Ronald McDonald Houses come from the RHMC donation boxes on the counters of McDonald’s restaurants than come from contributions from the company itself. McDonald’s ‘‘philanthropy’’ has not done it any harm, with profits up to more than $50 million here last year.

I congratulate Dr Keith Reid and Public Health South on their stand against RHMC, which I hope the Southern DHB endorses.

Escobar’s ‘‘philanthropy’’ resulted in more than 25,000 Colombians turning up to his funeral — a similar misguided gratitude may have resulted in Dunedin’s petition against Public Health South’s stand.

With friends like Ronald McDonald, who needs enemies?

Dr Alistair Humphrey Canterbury Medical Officer of

Health

A proud Luddite

YOUR correspondent Norman Ledgerwood (ODT, 14.11.17) gives an impression of greater prescience than most of us by anticipating the usual ‘‘Luddite tribe’’ crawling out of the woodwork regarding the harbour development proposal.

Apart from the fact that, as a retired architect, a significant proportion of those who formerly furnished his income were bound to have come from that despised sector, and had likely not supported his views on past imprudent and unaffordable projects, there is the small matter that our city is, in my view, still too far from seeingoff the bulk of fallout from its last brain fade to consider another.

I, for one, would be proud to be the first Luddite to have my views registered, given my suspicion that the greater part of the financial burden would again backfire on Dunedin’s approximately 53,000 beleaguered ratepayers.

On the other hand, I would be delighted to see the same energy, enterprise and financial firepower that he glibly seems to assume will be available to finance an extravagance better suited to a Gulf State awash with surplus oil revenue diverted instead towards the provision of a new, modern hospital, purpose designed to assure, through synergies with the Otago Medical School, the longterm viability and retention of that institution in Dunedin as a premier teaching facility.

Since there will have to be government money for that project, and MP Shane Jones has hinted at a possibility of government money being available toward the other, I, as a sceptic of all public utterances these days, sincerely hope that we will not see ourselves faced with a choice of ‘‘either/or, but not both’’. Ian Smith

Waverley [Abridged]

WHY couldn’t the dedicated disciple of Antoni Gaudi, Damien van Brandenburg, instead whip up a beautiful sea wall and save all of our denizens of St Clair? Tony Crick Andersons Bay