Ella needs fairy with $90,000
While we appreciate the Herald covering this incredible story of Ella and her heroic family, we’d like to highlight what most people may have missed if they skimmed this article, “Fairies spirit Ella closer to surgery”. Ella is scheduled to fly out for surgery on April 26. The family have gone to the ends of the earth to raise money for this trip, but they just discovered they need $90,000 more. Certainly Air New Zealand could cover flight costs? But they need a true fairy angel to step up now, please. Mary Granfors, Onehunga, (Guinness Book of World Records holder — most fairies). disadvantaged children, mainly Maori and Pasifika, where the state system fails.
The Prime Minister likes to preach how her Government is really focused on reducing child poverty. As Prebble and international experience make clear, education is the most successful path out of poverty.
The Government’s decision on charter schools defies logic and common sense. Rather, it is ideology driven by a prejudiced Minister of Education and equally prejudiced teacher unions who, on the issue of charter schools, are not tethered to the truth.
Vince Ashworth, Morrinsville. Did anyone else see the “drone guns” security people were using at the Commonwealth Games? Slightly strangelooking “futuristic ray guns” that you apparently point at drones, shoot and they stop working and fall to the ground. Instant expense to those nuisance operators. Surely the security vehicles patrolling our airports could carry these? Even rescue helicopter crews?
Dave King, Avondale. To answer Jacqui de Ruiter’s question, women are at the heart of the abortion law-reform discussion, exactly where we should be. Abortion is a procedure that carries risks, as do all medical and surgical treatments, and those risks are properly addressed within the process of informed consent.
Jacqui de Ruiter seems to mistrust women’s capacity to make a rational decision and fears we will suffer lifelong regrets as a consequence. Given good information and support, a woman will make the decision that is right for her.
Removing abortion as a criminal offence from the statute books, and destigmatising it, will be a giant step towards improving women’s wellbeing, psychological as well as physical.
Speaking as a woman who has had an abortion, as a mother and as a health professional, I believe that this change in the law cannot come soon enough. Andrea Dawe, Sandringham. Broadcaster Duncan Garner said on air that, contrary to Taika Waititi’s assertion, New Zealand is not “racist as f***”, “we’re not that bad”. So perhaps he can tell us how racist we are. As racist as buggery, perhaps? As heck? As all get-out? Are we only a little bit racist, so that’s all right, then? What, in his view, is an acceptable level of being racist? More important: how would he know? And has he ever contemplated the meaning of the word “we” in this discussion?
Peter Calder, Westmere.