To sleep, perchance

Vincent van Gogh’s The Siesta, which illustrated your July 15 cover story (“Land of Unrest”), may provide the single most effective solution to the complexities that bedevil what should be the simple business of sleeping.

More than half a century spent working against tight deadlines wrecked my ability to sleep either soundly or long enough. About 25 years ago, I began a daily 20-minute afternoon session of Transcendental Meditation but became dissatisfied with its failure to sufficiently alleviate my mental fatigue. So I switched to a half-hour sleep, which with practice became both instant and deep and able to compensate for my five to six restless hours during the night.

After a night punctuated by wakefulness, I nevertheless race through the morning watching international news and current-affairs channels on TV, doing copious amounts of reading, and undertaking a vigorous one-hour physicalfitness workout, knowing that my reward-after-labour slumber awaits.

Persistently poor sleep causes depression, lethargy and lack of concentration. But for those in a position to do so, making a top-up afternoon nap a priority can prove life-enhancing. Gavin Riley (Havelock North)

CONTEST FOR THE CUP

Great as it is that the America’s Cup is back in New Zealand ( Editorial, July 8), thought should be given to where the next contest will be held.

Auckland is stretched in every way. So why not defend the cup somewhere else – Whangarei Harbour, say, or the Bay of Islands? It would give Northland an economic boost and wouldn’t be too far from Auckland and its airport. L Holland (Napier) The Editorial summed up well how winning the America’s Cup is not all about money, but devotion, consistency, love of the sport and humbleness. A touch of No 8-wire ingenuity also helps.

It gladdens the heart to be reminded that our sportspeople, artists, scientists, film-makers and actors can match any of the big boys who depend on their wallets and egos. Well done, New Zealand. Kate Gore (Rotorua)

BLOKES’ BOOM

Is Tauranga booming for everyone or just middle-class men ( Money, July 15)? The article mentions several people by name, including just one woman who was introduced as “his British wife”. Maybe man can live on tennis and fishing alone, but my friends and family say that in the cold winter wind, it’s a lack of culture and vibrancy that hurts Tauranga’s reputation as a great place to live. Bridget Burdett (Hamilton)

ALTERNATIVE RENTAL REALITY

Rental accommodation in

New Zealand is largely an arrangement between private homeowners and tenants.

Our property-ownership laws provide plenty of incentive for owners to sell their houses to make profit or end short-term leases in order to raise rents.

One of my sons counted 10 rental addresses he had occupied in 10 years; he never knew how long any given address might last.

In the US, we lived for years in “garden apartments”, which are corporately owned rental accommodation. Apartment complexes may trade between corporations, but tenants would never know.

Birch Creek in Silicon Valley consisted of 160 one- and twobedroom apartments clustered in variously sized groupings

on either the ground or the first floor of the multi-acre site. There was a pool, hot tub, exercise room and spare apartment available for rental to tenants’ guests. Attractive landscaping linked all areas. Permanent front-office staff managed and maintained the apartments; a full-time maintenance person was on site.

People stay for years – decades, even. Rent increases are fairly minimal, and there is never a need to leave. Incidents of abuse or disputes are rare. Lives of Americans living in rental accommodation are infinitely more predictable and less stressful than they are in New Zealand.

This is a model for stable, high-density housing that our Government could well consider. It works. Barbara Callaghan (Kohimarama, Auckland) LETTER OF THE WEEK

ADMAN BITES BACK

How deftly Richard Harman (“Race is on”, July 8) models the left’s five-point

Maorification strategy.

First, denigrate. Mock anyone who champions the 80% of Kiwis who reject racial favouritism in poll after poll. Cast Don Brash as “an ageing rock star”, Waikanae as “Wellington’s retirement town” and his audience as “greyhaired baby boomers”. Smugly assume most readers share the leftist’s distaste for my factual observation that whingeing Maori radicals “have gone from the Stone Age to the Space Age in 150 years and haven’t said thanks”.

Second, intimidate. Harman didn’t tell you he spent Brash’s meeting furtively photographing every audience member’s face like a Stasi informant.

Third, invalidate. Frame Brash’s Orewa speech as “notorious”. Forget that 93% of Dominion Post readers applauded it. Frame my Iwi/ Kiwi billboard as “controversial” despite floating voters rating it their favourite of 13 billboards that won two campaign-of-the-year awards.

Fourth, exaggerate. Harman cites one dissenter as evidence that the billboards were unpopular with National MPs. (Not evident to me when a clapping caucus confirmed after the election that many wouldn’t be in Parliament without them.)

Fifth, fabricate. (Remember when “history revision” meant studying, not muddying?)

Trot out the party line that the chiefs retained sovereignty post-Waitangi, cunningly entitling their distant descendants to “specific representation in an increasing number of pieces of legislation and regulation”.

The Treaty specified nothing of the kind, of course – cultural Marxist revisionist historians, journalists and Maori-vote-grubbing politicians did.

But Harman is right that National is “looking more like an urban liberal party” that’s “working hard to align itself with Maori”. Clearly any MPs who still represent the party’s members and principles “have effectively been silenced” as National and the rest of the left “test the line between [non-] partnership and [anti-] democracy”. John Ansell (Martinborough)

BARCLAY v McCARTEN

In comparison with the Todd Barclay affair, the plight of 85 US volunteers attracted here by Labour activist Matt McCarten – some of whom may have arrived here with the wrong visas – is hardly earth shattering ( Politics, July 8).

Such volunteers are regularly attracted here by all political parties every election. They are not, as National and its political supporters suggest, workers imported to do the work that locals could as easily do. They are unpaid volunteers who come here for the experience of actively working for parties they personally support politically.

Jane Clifton’s assertion that somehow this “strobes about Labour’s competence to govern” is nonsense. Tom Brockett (Redwood, Christchurch)