Self-control won’t need dress code

Gregor Paul (Rugby is dancing around women 25/3) argues that young women in Baxter Dance should not perform in “skimpy outfits” at Blues rugby games as this sends the wrong message to young men.

The outfits are tasteful and appropriate for the high energy dancing the choreography demands. Women at the beach wear far less. Men are quite capable of self control without imposing restrictions on what women wear.

The column states that rugby players are revered for their “muscularity” but dancing is only enjoyed for the outfits, hair and makeup. This is stereotyping at its worst.

Rugby is more than brute strength and dancing is more than women looking pretty. Increasing numbers of young women play rugby and men dance, although none chose to join the group at this time.

Many sports use pre-game or half-time shows to keep spectators entertained. Overseas, this is an integral part of the event and brings in huge audiences and funding.

Women as well as men are quite capable of making independent choices about how they act and dress. It’s men who need to take responsibility for how they perceive women.

Annette Perjanik, Mt Roskill.

Unadulterated rugby

In deploring the return of female dance cheerleaders for a Super Rugby match, Gregor Paul is right — but for the wrong reason. It’s not about “gender stereotyping”, but the stupidity of rugby administrators who assert that rugby is “entertainment”.

There’s a reason crowds of 45,000 go to Mt Smart to see and hear Adele — they want to be entertained.

There’s a reason why more and more rugby aficionados stay home and enjoy their sport via the superb filming techniques of Sky TV.

They don’t want to be “entertained” at Eden Park by having their ears blasted by loud music every time play stops, not to mention travel, parking and over-charging for food and drink. They want their rugby close up and unadulterated as the Sky cameras and commentators bring it: pure sport. Terry Dunleavy, Hauraki.

Rules ensure standards

Apart from their high educational standard, Auckland Grammar’s school rules are one of the main reasons that parents and pupils queue up to enrol. Rules ensure behavioural standards.

High behavioural standards ensure good employment prospects. Good employment prospects ensure success in life. The list goes on. It is logical.

H Robertson, St Heliers.

Changing medical ethics

Dr Sinead Donnelly ( March 24) should perhaps reflect on the nature of medical ethics, which are not set in stone, but change over the years, largely as a result of alterations in community opinions and wishes.

Until the mid 1960s for example, it was widely deemed unethical to prescribe contraceptives to unmarried women, but quite ethical to separate babies for adoption from their mothers at the moment of birth, attitudes now thought archaic.

Presumably Dr Donnelly would consider practitioners in many European countries and some American states, where physician assisted dying is now legal, to be unethical.

After over 40 years of very varied medical practice, I do not see an ethical problem in offering assistance in dying to those patients who request it, and whose distressing terminal states cannot be alleviated by palliation, though I would strongly support any health workers who decline to be involved according to their personal views on ethics.

Dr David Robins, Napier.

Instinctive primal urges

One can analyse a problem to death, and so it is with the vexatious question of coital consent.

The plain fact is that a great many women yearn to be swept away on a tide of passion by a masterful man. It’s as natural as wanting to live and breathe. And very many males feel compelled to be masterful, so it should be a match made in heaven.

All the armchair analysts in the world can’t change the fact that reproduction is an instinctive primal urge. Mysterious magic moments occur when the urge floods the senses, decently called romantic moments.

This needs to be the tenor of our instructions to our adolescents. You may feel such urge, and you might perceive reciprocation, but beware participant’s remorse. Always have both a condom and a contract at the ready — both very sobering. Jim Carlyle, Te Atatu Peninsula.

Parents’ accountability

Instead of the Children’s Commissioner and the Maori Party bleating about police dogs being used against Maori and Pacific Island child criminals — including a 12-year-old with an unknown number of others hiding in a kindergarten at midnight when they should have all been at home asleep — why do they continue to refuse to condemn the parents of these young thugs and not hold them accountable?

It is well past time for all the handwringing, denial and deflections to stop and to acknowledge where so much of this anti-social, violent and disrespectful behaviour is learnt.

The media should also be all over this instead of jumping on the usual bandwagon with sensationalist headlines and bylines blaming police and the Government, with no mention of home environment and family role models.

Fiona Allen, Papatoetoe.

Government’s ineffectiveness

So our Government is chasing bank data off NZ citizens while ignoring corporates who avoid what it estimates as “only” $300 million.

The overseas experts think it could be $700m and Labour have a figure of up to $1 billion.

Is the Government at war with its citizens or is it only being contemptuous?

The Government has only taken baby steps reluctantly and belatedly about the Auckland housing crisis. Appropriate action would have been good about 8 years ago, but nothing happens, apart from attacking tradies for “cashies”.

Do we actually have a government or is Parliament just a nice place to eat lunch?

Neville Cameron, Coromandel.

Free to air sports

Labour’s Clare Curran says a bill before Parliament to make All Black tests and other national sporting events free to air was “unworkable and impractical”.

It’s been workable and practical in Australia and many other countries for years. What makes NZ so different?

Is it because Sky TV has made significant donations to Labour’s coffers to ensure their support. Ian Foster, Taupo.

Make justice more timely

Much is being made of half a billion dollars being spent on boosting police numbers. However, much of this will be wasted if the Government does not make the justice system much more effective and timely.

In September 2015, a friend’s car was vandalised along with a number of other people who suffered similar vandalism to their cars. A suspect was due to appear in court on February 13, 2017. A number of victims were summoned to appear as witnesses in court on that day.

However the defence lawyer stated they were not ready to proceed. The judge has accepted their explanation and the trial has been adjourned.

How much time did the defence lawyer need since it is nearly two years since the crime was committed?

How much consideration was given to the fact that some of the victims had to take time off work and one had to take an annual leave day in order to appear in court and then they were sent home as the case could not go ahead?

Further injustices were inflicted on the victims and the accused has still not had their day in court and it is now 2017 .

Arthur Moore, Pakuranga.

Homophobia intolerance

The owners of Bun Mee Kiwi restaurant should remove “Kiwi” from their business. Kiwis may have trashed LGBT people in the past but New Zealand has strict legislation to address homophobia and a more tolerant and inclusive culture and it’s not Kiwi to be abusive and intolerant of LGBT. We have moved on.

I have worked in health and education in many Pacific island countries for 25 years. I see the effects of this Pacific culture that aids and abets intense homophobia. Suicide and fear is a dominant part of the lives of LGBT throughout the Pacific.

The restaurant owner says: “It’s not a homophobic slur where we come from in the Pacific islands.” Wrong. It is a homophobic slur and in most Pacific islands where it remains illegal to have same sex relations such slurs confirm the intolerance and abuse that results in suicide and damaged lives.

That the so-called Destiny Church can promote and build upon homophobia amongst its largely Polynesian participants is testimony to this prevailing culture of homo-hatred amongst many Pacific populations. Real Kiwi culture doesn’t embrace this rotten kind of thinking and nor should Pacific island cultures tolerate it in New Zealand or in the Pacific. Dr Jeffrey Buchanan Port Moresby, PNG.