Menopause relief

Thank you for highlighting menopause (“Lifting the fog”, January 22) and particularly hormone replacement therapy (HRT). My menopause symptoms weren’t subtle; they walloped me with a hot, soggy blanket. There is nothing worse than sitting in a boardroom full of men while experiencing hot flushes every 30 minutes, trying to ignore that sweaty-beetroot feeling.

Having such frequent flushes meant sleep was almost impossible, especially during a humid Auckland summer.

I did some research at the time, but apparently HRT was “very bad for you”, so after I’d spent two years trying many unsuccessful herbal remedies, my GP did, thankfully, prescribe HRT. I didn’t call them my “happy pills” for nothing; I would not have been able to function in my high-stress job without them, let alone cope with everyday life.

After I moved to Christchurch in 2013, my new GP was rather HRT-resistant and, in 2017, advised that I had been taking my happy pills for too long, making me wean off them, despite there being no family history of breast cancer, and despite yearly (clear) mammograms.

Three years later, I still miss the quality of life HRT gave me, and a mild form of flushes has returned. I am glad HRT/MHT therapy is being looked at in a new light, as many women who are suffering could find relief and something that resembles normality.

Sue Carline-Wright

(Kirwee)

Upfront ( January 22) showed the importance of women in understanding their biology, especially menopause. As the label of the phenomenon, men o’ pause, suggests, males should stop and think before making any comment.

Dr Nicholas Martin

(Auckland)

HYDROGEN QUESTIONS

Lawrence Watt’s article (“Hydrogen or hot air?”, January 15) highlights the Government’s lamentable lack of planning and risk assessment across the mutually dependent energy and transport sectors that are currently split between two ministries and public- and private-sector management.

In an age of resource depletion, both sectors’ fixation on growth – the word that has to go – ignores questions such as, how many rare minerals will be needed and how much CO2 will be generated in providing more energy infrastructure to manufacture hydrogen?

Hydrogen companies waving the banner of CO2 emissions reduction win the lolly scramble for government money while obscuring the fact that manufacturing hydrogen is the least-efficient method of using renewable energy. It can be much better directed, for example, towards powering rail, both heavy and light.

Watt’s article didn’t examine the vital water resource needed for hydrogen production at scale. Where will it come from? What consents will be needed? What iwi requirements will be involved? Will this be a problem in drought-prone areas? And how much power will be used for its necessary purification? Proper risk assessment and analysis of future transport and power needs are required from independent scientific agencies before we head for another Think Big shambles.

Philip Temple

(Dunedin)

LETTER OF THE WEEK

PETER ELLIS CASE

I was a psychology major studying for my master’s degree in the US in the 1980s. This was the era when “recovered memories” were big news and many fathers were having their children taken from them. I completed my degree, but was sickened by what was happening, and how fast it was spreading, so never practised. I firmly believe Peter Ellis (“Supreme test”, January 22) was a victim of this distorted thinking. Janet Brennan

(Kerikeri)

Many people are convinced Ellis’ conviction was an egregious miscarriage of justice, including, it seems, writer Jonathon Harper. As he points out in his article, some of the children’s evidence given at the trial sounds bizarre. However, it needs to be understood that people who sexually abuse children frequently inculcate them with a mixture of facts, fantasies and theatricals so that when they relate experiences to adults, their accounts sound ridiculous, so are not believed.

Whether this sort of strategy was a factor in the Christchurch Civic Crèche case, I cannot say, but one of the criticisms of the children’s evidence has frequently been that some of it was bizarre.

Harper cites author Lynley Hood’s strong criticism, in her 2001 book A City Possessed, of several people’s personal and professional conduct. He comments that no one has taken legal action over her claims. Nevertheless I know of one person who gave up such a quest because of what it was going to cost. In her book, Hood applies her panic – hysteria – witch-hunt theory to the Ellis case, but it’s ridiculous to say the people of Christchurch and the criminal justice system were seized by hysteria.

I was not at the crèche (although I did work in the same building), so I cannot say definitively what happened there. Most of those who are adamant Ellis is innocent were not there, either. How can they be certain no abuse occurred? Non-negotiable certainty is at the heart of many problems and I wonder whether it may

be at the heart of this one. Tighe Instone

(Wellington)

COMPULSORY VIEWING

I’m sure the viewing audience for Border Security (Australia) will exceed all expectations in the coming weeks.

Conal Atkins

(Nelson)

KNOWING YOUR STUFF

Drug testing at music festivals reduces potential harm to people who choose to consume illegal substances (“A woman of substance”, January 8).

MDMA, LSD, magic mushrooms and GBL have been common within our dance and music festival scene for decades.

I have seen Wendy Allison and Know Your Stuff at many music festivals, and they have provided friendly, non-judgmental and evidence-based opinions for anyone with questions or concerns about drugs they intend to take.

This country is leading the world with Know Your Stuff

collaborating with the police and Minister Stuart Nash to support the legalisation of drug testing at music festivals.

While not condoning illegal drug use, this pragmatic approach ensures young people, especially, can confirm the relative safety of what they intend to consume, then make a fully informed decision.

Ray Calver

(Auckland)

NZ BROADCASTING

Hugh Templeton ( Letters, January 8) reminisced warmly about the 1976 Broadcasting Act, suggesting its enactment marked “a remarkable era of New Zealand TV drama” including Pukemanu, Buck House, The God Boy, and The Governor. If he re-examined the 1970s records, he would see those series were made by the New Zealand Broadcasting Corporation, the National Film Unit and TV1 before the 1976 Act came into force. He must have crossed his fingers when citing The Governor as a success, because this disregards

the strong attacks Prime Minister Robert Muldoon made on TV1, the series and its producers, forcing them through a parliamentary examination for overrun costs as part of his campaign to return public television to monopoly control.

The letter speaks of 1976 consultations with “a wide range of New Zealand broadcasters and journalists”, but does not mention the considerable opposition from TV1 and South Pacific Television (now TVNZ 2) broadcasters, who did not support a return to monopoly control; their work had flourished as they competed to engage viewers with New Zealand-made programmes. The two distinguished advisers mentioned (Ian Cross and Sir Geoffrey Cox) were experienced in commercial broadcasting and so perhaps not concerned that the Muldoon Government had frozen the television licence fee, thereby forcing public broadcasting away from viewers’ needs and towards the service of advertisers.

With later encouragement from politicians such as Jenny Shipley and Richard Prebble, the commercialisation of public TV is now complete and viewers who can’t afford to escape commercial programming are more exposed to it than those in any comparable country.

Templeton also pushes his luck suggesting the Broadcasting Corporation of NZ created by his Act was “like the BBC”.

The chances of this country ever finding the courage to create and sustain a service of that merit and mana are long gone, destroyed in the hotchpotch of political reorganisations introduced every six years or so.

We can only guess what Minister Kris Faafoi’s version will bring. We must prepare for the worst and hope for the best.

Ian Johnstone

(Wellington)

MORE CAPTIONS, PLEASE

Well said, Jenny Hammond ( Letters, January 15). The lack of captions for so many TVNZ OnDemand programmes is surely a major reason many of us with hearing loss often don’t bother trying to watch. Even the best hearing aids frequently can’t compensate adequately if the loss is significant.

TVNZ OnDemand isn’t the only culprit, but it seems to be the worst of the streaming services I know about. It’s well past time that captioning was made a priority.

Where full closed captioning isn’t practical for cost or other reasons, even the automatic captions using speech-recognition technology we see on some programmes are much better than none – and as a bonus, the captions resulting from the accents or speaking habits of presenters or actors can often provide a good laugh for all viewers, with or without hearing loss. Mike Cowell

(Dunedin)

UNNECESSARY PACKAGING

James Eaton’s letter ( January 15), about returning end-oflife appliances to the retailer for disposal, reminded me of a scheme begun in Germany some years ago. Supermarkets had recycling facilities that allowed customers to strip their purchases of all unnecessary packaging as they left the

store and leave it behind.

This committed retailers to dispose of it, encouraging them to reduce use of, for example, unwanted plastic on fruit and vegetables.

David Barber

(Waikanae)

FUTILE SEARCH

Hilary Oxley ( Letters, January 15) can’t find “lesbian” using the search function on Rainbow Youth’s website. I can’t find “gay”, “queer”, “trans”, or “intersex”, either – or “the”, for that matter. Never attribute to malice what can be attributed to malfunction. Hugh Young

(Pukerua Bay)

FIREARMS CONTROL

John Dyer’s idea ( Letters, January 15) about holding firearms in armouries administered by the police is flawed for several reasons. It is unrealistic to ask, say, farmers in Central Otago or anywhere else to go to the JANUARY 29 2022 LISTENER

nearest armoury whenever they need to shoot vermin – or does he suggest every police station has an armoury?

Also, I say with tongue in cheek, will a gang member turn up at a police station to pick up his firearm whenever he wants to settle an argument with a rival? I think not.

The Government’s buyback scheme is also flawed because only honest owners turned in their guns to the police. The number of gang-related shootings at present bears this out. Richard Lucas

(Christchurch)

SCIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE

I believe it is now appropriate to congratulate the Listener

on a wonderful debate after publication of the original letter “In defence of science” ( July 31, 2021).

It was a great exposé of the breadth of opinion from our academic community as well as most valuable contributions from abroad.

Thank you, Listener.

David Reid

(Auckland)

Behind the arguments for the acceptance of mātauranga Māori as a worthy field of university-level study is the implied demands for greater shares of research funding and for academic staff positions where the resources are finite, so that the gain for one sector means a direct loss for others.

Unless the Government provides new money, which is unlikely, there has to be proper consideration of priorities. That should include a reduction in management staff.

John C Ross

(Palmerston North)

I apologise to Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal that I did not have space within the compass of a review focused elsewhere to render all the nuances of his thoughtful analyses of the relationship between mātauranga Māori and science (“A defence of truth”, December 25).

He writes ( Letters, January 15) that “there are aspects within traditional mātauranga Māori which represent the seeds, at least, of science”, including observation, hypothesis and testing, and the transgenerational accumulation of knowledge. Indeed. But the fully grown forest of science offers much more.

All peoples and, indeed, most intelligent animals use observation and trial and error (or hypothesis and testing): New Caledonian crows use them when searching for food in novel situations, orangutans use them when springing locks zookeepers set to confine them, the Dutch used them when working out how to construct dykes to withstand the assault of the seas, Polynesian sailors when navigating their vast ocean, and their Māori descendants when they arrived in a radically different ecological zone.

But such processes, even in culturally cumulative form, do not include the pursuit of everdeeper testable explanation, and the openness to question, all the way down, and the openness to all, regardless of status or origin, that make science unique. These extra factors allow science to transcend traditional knowledges and local constraints through a ratchetlike methodology of discovery now available to all.

Royal writes in his excellent Let the World Speak: Towards indigenous epistemology that “some aspects” of mātauranga Māori “are mythological in character, others are applied, still others lend themselves to a scientific approach” (2009: 119). Indeed, again. But the puzzle is why there should be such pressure in educational and research circles in Aotearoa to include on a par with science and within science curricula a mix of myth, technology, and “the seeds … of science”.

Brian Boyd

(Auckland)

Professor Alison Jones’ ( Letters, January 8) ad hominem reference to Richard Dawkins ( Letters, December 25) being “out of tune” does herself and the University of Auckland’s School of Māori and Indigenous Education no favours.

It puts them in the same company as those who hate him for being an atheist or one who