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Joanne Drayton’s book on Peter Hudson and David

Halls (“Hiding in plain sight”, October 20) seems to explain what had always puzzled me when I got to know and like and spend time with them in Leigh in the early 1980s, after writing a cover story for the Listener. Hudson was, as Drayton writes, the funnier of the pair in private.

After a couple of drinks he would launch into stories that were as hilarious as they were scatological. But there was a dark, unhappy side to him, too. Now we know his disturbing family background may have been an element. As to how the two managed to win the hearts of a country that 35 years or so ago was still largely homophobic, I suspect a selective, rather hypocritical blindness.

I offended a neighbour, in her sixties at the time, who loved Hudson and Halls on television, by saying that I found it odd she would deride gay people but seemed to make an exception for Peter and David. “Don’t be stupid,” she said. “They’re not gay. They’re just flatmates.”

Phil Gifford (Royal Oak, Auckland)

I was in the same Christchurch Girls’ High School class as Pauline Parker and Juliet Hulme, written about in Joanne Drayton’s book The Search for Anne Perry. The assumption that they had a homosexual relationship was, in my opinion, incorrect.

Because they both had very different backgrounds from the norm, they gravitated towards each other and became close friends. They lived in an imaginative fantasy world. Juliet, in particular, was very good at art, and was more extroverted than Pauline.

At school, the murder of Parker’s mother, for which both girls were convicted, was never mentioned, and there was no counselling for their classmates, as would happen today. It was an unforgettably shocking and scary event that certainly ended our family’s enjoyment of our Port Hills picnic place.

Clare Dudley (Coromandel) SYMPATHY FOR KAVANAUGH

Paul Thomas is not correct when he writes that Brett Kavanaugh was “credibly accused” of sexual misconduct (“Breaking Bad”, October 20). The evidence against him was found to be not credible.

The judge has my sympathy. I experienced something similar in South Africa, when I was falsely accused of racist remarks in the workplace. I understand the sheer rage Kavanaugh expressed, the utter frustration and helplessness of being innocent and of not being believed.

Kavanaugh and I were, in our different ways, innocent victims of a changing world where scapegoats were required. I was found “guilty” because I was white and my accuser was black. Kavanaugh was found “guilty” by the media, not because he did what the accuser claimed but because he is male.

Jenny Harrison (Te Aroha)

Rachel Mitchell, a prosecutor and specialist in rape cases who questioned Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, said in her report, “A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that.”

Read the report and you’ll find that, in addition to the holes in Ford’s story bordering on perjury, her claim of a fear of flying is a myth.

She will no doubt go on to write a book and garner wealth from film rights, but the public can draw its own conclusions.

VK Samuelson (Hamilton) PICKING ON THE POTUS

Paul Thomas (“Gone rogue”, October 6) obviously hates US President Donald Trump, but what is Trump’s job? Is it to be an examplar of good character, or to keep his promises to his electorate?

Andrew McKenzie (Havelock North) DOING RIGHT BY TEACHERS

I have sympathy for teachers, who are caught in an impossible bind ( Editorial, October

13). In the absence of parents, teachers are, by default, in loco parentis and are therefore obligated to keep safe the children in their care. Doing so, however, may well necessitate restraining a child who is on the brink of posing a danger to other children or classroom amenities. By doing this, they jeopardise their own safety because restraint is now somehow confused with assault.

This is invidious for teachers, but also concerning for children. I worked as a child pyschotherapist for many years, and it beggars belief to hear that teachers are being advised to evacuate classrooms in favour of restraint. The very children who are needing restraint are children who have not yet learnt how to regulate themselves.

By having to evacuate the classroom, teachers are conveying to the child that they can’t help with their anger and are implicitly saying that the child is too much for them. This leaves the child with unbridled power, which is terrifying. It is akin to being in a runaway car, the child unable to reach the brakes and the teacher not there to do so for him or her. The child has to endure the crash alone.

When families are unable to help children to regulate their feelings and behaviours, these

children need teachers to be able to do so on their behalf. Joy Hayward (Dunedin)

EXOTIC MAYHEM

There’s more to native and exotic herbivores and predators than Tony Orman acknowledges ( Letters, October 13). Our native herbivores were clearly in tune with their environment, including predators.

Native vertebrate grazers such as takahē feed by pulling out single stems (tillers) from their preferred snow tussock species, but they take no more than about 10% of the several hundred in a mature plant, which experiments show promotes tiller replacement and the tussock remains healthy. Introduced tahr and deer, by contrast, crop the whole tussock crown, which can kill it.

Research in 2004, using emus and ostriches as surrogates for moa, showed native shrubs and trees had adapted to the distinctive, moa-type browsing, whereas they were found to be “useless against mammalian browsers”.

Also, a 2008 macrofossil analysis of 116 coprolites

(fossil faeces) from four moa species concluded,“the feeding ecology of moa are shown to be widely different to introduced mammalian herbivores”.

As for predators, the native Haast’s eagle and moa lived in balance, whereas the mix of exotic mammalian predators we now host – possums, mustelids and rodents – obviously dominate.

Alan Mark

Emeritus professor, Department of Botany, University of Otago LETTER OF THE WEEK

FOSSILISED THINKING

Given the latest IPCC report on climate change, it would seem that aiming to be carbonneutral by 2050 would be a good idea. But carbon-neutral implies no more burning of fossil fuel. Instead, we have motorists whingeing about the

high price of petrol, and the fossil-fuel industry objecting to limits on their ability to search for more of the stuff ( Politics, October 20).

What was that about “those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad”? I’m glad I’m an old man and will be safely dead by the time humanity’s climate chickens come home to roost. Digby Scorgie (Kaiapoi)

BACK TO RUGBY’S FUTURE

Crikey, Paul Thomas – suggesting that rugby teams come on tours and play midweek matches ( Sport, October 20). Next, we’ll be reading about provincial games, and matches against Māori, universities, juniors, combined services – where will it end? Well, possibly in renewing my interest, at least. Gordon Gandy (Lower Hutt)