The new-look Mongrel Mob

A very interesting article last week on how gangs are apparently changing their face, but like NZ First MP Shane Jones I am strongly inclined to take it all with a very large grain of salt.

Why do gangs find it necessary to employ PR firms, at some considerable cost, to sell their message? The large main picture shows gang member Rome Heemi who has apparently ‘‘changed his ways’’. If so, why is his face still masked by a large bandanna? Go figure.

The public consistently has grave suspicions as to exactly how gangs obtain the means to fund their lifestyles, so if the changed attitude is genuine they will welcome Inland Revenue taking a very close look at their organisations and individual members. Unlike the police, IRD has very considerable investigative powers that do not need court systems to apply them.

Philip Hickling, Papamoa

Before reading last week’s piece on the Mongrel Mob Kingdom, I had been thinking of writing a book with the working title: The Hitchhikers Guide to Big Gang Theory, which seemed pretty cool to me. Had it not been for writer’s block I would have started it by now. In the meantime, Jones says he’s seen it all before, and the Kingdom says: Look, it’s not racket science, we’re cleaning up our act. Simon Bridges appears to have gone quiet on the subject. I detect a Patch-22 situation lurking there somewhere.

Dean Donoghue, Papamoa Beach

Cancer funding

Your item ‘‘Cancer patient’s fight for time’’ (News, January 5) highlights two major problems with the delivery of health services to Kiwis.

There are too many bureaucracies, each doing their thing, which is simply a waste of money.

The cost of a year’s treatment, $66,000, is roughly of the same order for a year’s inpatient haemodialysis. Since Chris Purchase’s oncologist recommended cetuximab, what is the patient-specific reason it is not being funded, as I understand that it is registered for the treatment of bowel cancer?

Are there different criteria for the different modes of treatment? John Bent, Palmerston North

Funding St John

The issue of the $2 million donation to the Christchurch Foundation from Chinese sources, and the criticism that has attracted, once again places the spotlight on the funding of the St John ambulance service. In spite of the Kedgley Report to the Government in 2008, which recommended that it was desirable for there to be a single stream of public funding, 12 years on and nothing appears to be changing for the long-term.

Imagine if the fire and police services were funded primarily through public donations. Why should the emergency ambulance service be any different?

Dr Michael Gousmett, University of Canterbury

Boots on the ground

Some very interesting points concerning the presence of Western troops in Iraq, particularly American ones, have been aired from all sides recently in the media.

It seems to me that the manner in which the Middle East was carved up after World War I and World War II to create national boundaries that suit primarily the interests of the oilconsuming nations will have to be addressed yet again if foreign troops are encouraged to return to their homelands.

There is every likelihood that if such an event materialised, a vacuum would be created into which powerful neighbours would be sucked willy-nilly, regardless, with the prospect of continuing and new strife in the region. Certainly, Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions have added to the existing complexities of the area, as too have those emanating similarly from Iran. There is no easy solution, short of a drying up of the oil wells, but it behoves still the Western and superpowers to encourage working relationships between all parties. That could mean a continued presence to allay the underlying effects of tribal and religious differences superimposed on the ownerships of oil.

The thought of what might happen in the absence of outsiders disturbs as much as does their presence. Look no further than the chaos that ensued in Syria, with or without foreign interference. Boots on the ground could be the better of all other evils.

John D Mahony, Christchurch

Assassination of an official of a sovereign nation is clearly an act of war. But with the invasion of Iraq in 2003, on the pretence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, it became clear that war was being groomed as a normal course of relations between peoples.

This is consistent with the realisation, in our era of conscious fear of the fundamental nature of changes required to stave off the worst effects of climate change, that humans have been waging war on the planet for centuries (millennia?).

These issues of war and peace, and global warming, need to be seen as fundamental cultural challenges coming to a head in our time. Prime Minister