Fiddlers par excellence
outrageous and blatant to the subtle and insidious.
But who cares about truth, when the only thing that matters is imposing your beliefs on the rest of us?
MARTIN HANSON
Nelson
Point missed
Robin Lieffering has missed the point of Paula Salisbury’s letter (Numbers game, February 18).
Salisbury made a particular point of highlighting the heartfelt individual contributions at the Hamilton hearing (which I also attended) from submitters including “suicide counsellors, school teachers, care givers of the elderly, medical professionals and lawyers.”
Add to this the fact that the proportion of health care practitioners who submitted against the Bill was even higher than the overall proportion of opposing submissions, namely 93.5 per cent. Is Lieffering implying that these professional people did not know their own minds?
Lieffering also fails to understand the anxiety being felt by those in the disabled community about this legislation. I recommend he looks up the stories of Claire Freeman and Kylee Black on the DefendNZ website. When he has tried to comprehend where they are coming from, perhaps he will develop the compassion to understand their position.
Disability Commissioner Paula Tesoriero also has plenty to say. She points out there is no bright line between disability and terminal illness, adding that “the safeguards in place are woefully inadequate for terminal illness.” She goes on to to say that the legislation “undermines the position of disabled and vulnerable members of our community, and poses significant risks to them.” ROBYN JACKSON
Hamilton
Water-go-round
Every time you do a wash with your machine you can save, from our meagre reserves, an awful amount, by catching water from your rinse cycle (surely nobody does double-rinsing at this time of impending trouble) and using it for your next load for the wash cycle, thus saving approximately 50-70 litres, every wash. The 50-70 litres of soapy water, if used for filling the toilet cistern, will save that amount of water again.
So my estimation is today we did three loads of washing and saved over 200 litres, and still had enough to either wash the car or save my shrubs.
Now I have a question. Can someone please tell me why our rural friends can catch rainwater but in town we waste countless litres of water every year by letting it go down the gurgler?
PRJP Kaitaia
Never overpaid
In Australia, and almost certainly most countries, there have been stories of wage underpayment, mainly in the food and hospitality industries.
A restaurant group underpaid their staff by $8 million in total, and today a supermarket chain admitted an underpayment of $20m. Both have or will backpay the lost earnings.
There are many reasons underpayments could happen, and yet there are no equivalent massive overpayments, although people may be slower to report any such cases.
People deserve to be paid for their work and paid fully, including for overtime. It has been suggested that this ‘theft’ would be a criminal offence and jailable.
Next time you go to a restaurant, check that the smiling people serving you are being fully paid, and if there is any doubt suggest to the owner that you are only
Although Nero didn’t fiddle while Rome burned — there were no fiddles then — politicians at all levels today ‘fiddle’, while largely ignoring the warnings of science that the Earth is in an accelerating climate heating crisis.
A prime example is the response to the 2008 Australian Ross Garnaut climate change report, which said that projections of fire weather “suggest that fire seasons will start earlier, end slightly later, and generally be more intense,” and that “This effect increases over time, but should be directly observable by 2020.”
Broadly, the report stated, “The weight of scientific evidence tells us that Australians are facing risks of damaging climate change.”
In the interim Aussie pollies ‘fiddled’, and now their country burns as never before.
A parallel is the 2008 Niwa report Climate change effects and impact assessment: A Guidance Manual for Local Government in New Zealand. There it was confidently predicted that Northland would have increasing temperatures, decreasing average annual rainfall, increasing risk of dry periods and droughts, some aquifers in northern and eastern regions could experience reduced recharge, and that small coastal aquifers would be under threat from reduced rainfall.
The 12-year-old report stated that the inexorable nature of climate change means that councils and communities need to consider and plan for climate change, with particular emphasis being given to infrastructure and developments with a long lifetime needed to cope with more adverse climate conditions in 50-100 years’ time.
In the interim, Northland politicians have been ‘fiddling’, and now, after a prolonged period of below normal rainfall, causing deficiencies in water supply, we have both a severe meteorological drought and a
going to pay part of the cost.
Eat well, pay well.
DENNIS FITZGERALD
Melbourne
Easily conned
Most people don’t realise Queen Victoria did not have the right or power to grant Ma¯ ori exclusive rights over her British subjects. This is elementary knowledge, as Britain never had racial laws.
All Treaty documents that have been used to install exclusive Ma¯ ori rights have been false or unauthorised translations, such as, Hobson never authorised an English Treaty, and unauthorised translations of Hugh Kawharu. Kawharu was actually a sitting judge on the Waitangi Tribunal when he wrote what he called his “attempt at a reconstruction (note reconstruction) of the literal translation of the Ma¯ ori text,” and this “reconstruction” is what was accepted by the 1987 Court of Appeal to establish there was a “Partnership between Maori and the Crown,” as well as the “5 Principles of the Treaty of Waitangi.”
The Crown likewise accepted it for the purpose of this case. Amazing how easy it is to con the people.
IAN BROUGHAM
Wanganui
How bizarre
After reading the news the other day I have to say it bothers me greatly to see how the neo part-Ma¯ ori elite, like Tamati Coffee and Matthew Tukaki, are always banging on about racism when it is them hydrological drought, as measured by well below normal stream flow, lake and reservoir levels, groundwater levels, and depleted soil moisture content. Essential principles of sustainability and precaution have been neglectfully side-lined in the face of prevailing demand for economic growth.
The summary of a 2017 NRC report on Northland climate change projections and impacts reinforces the 2008 forecasts, and with specific reference to aquifers it is stated that they are likely to be affected by changes to rainfall and river flows, as well as irrigation/ abstraction demand.
that are the racists.
The Ma¯ ori Council has just come out and said it was going to set up a ‘task force’ on racism. I find this bizarre, when it is Ma¯ ori who are the racists. Everything you hear from them, what they claim, want, expect, blame us for, is because of their race. Or “our” race.
The meaning of racist in the dictionary is simple and easy to understand. Racism is a belief that one race is superior to the other, or the practice of treating a person or group of people differently on the basis of their race. This is how Ma¯ ori operate. Ma¯ ori-only electorate representation, Ma¯ ori-only health funding, Ma¯ ori-only legal representation, Ma¯ ori-only educational scholarships, and the list grows by the day.
They can’t deny they get these privileges because of one thing, their ‘race.’ Yet we are the racists?
We have a grievance industry, not to be mistaken for a grievance process. Once you get your head around that it makes it all a lot easier to understand. To treaty troughers it’s big business.
Let’s look at this not as an angry taxpayer, but from the business side of things. The government say claims are nearing an end. Remember, we are talking business.
Would you walk away from a business that earned you millions of dollars a year and was completely paid for by the New Zealand taxpayer?
Do you think treaty troughing lawyers, tribal elite and governments like National and Labour, that base their values around the same ideology, are going to let that happen?
REX ANDERSON
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 2020 has been the hottest in 141 years of recorded climate history. Northland has been caught up in that global heating trend, and it will only get worse with failure of political structures to give effect to international agreements on mitigation measures.
The FNDC boasts a vision, ‘He Ara Tamata, Creating great places, Supporting our people’, but there appears to be much work to do yet. ROSS FORBES
Kerikeri
Intrinsically evil
Slavery in New Zealand is unlawful and a crime. It is prohibited by the Crimes Act 1961, Section 98, Dealing in Slaves.
By seeking to decriminalise abortion the Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, and her government will be introducing slavery for our unborn. This is the ultimate tyranny of the powerful over the defenceless unborn. If she succeeds in removing the killing of the unborn from the Crimes Act she will achieve the following objectives:
Deny the humanity of the unborn child, deny the child’s inalienable God-given right to life, grant property rights to the mother over her child. declare that it is no longer a crime to kill an unborn child, grant the ‘right’ of the mother to terminate the life of her child.
Right to Life calls on Parliament to defeat the contentious Abortion Legislation Bill at its second reading.
CONTINUED PAGE 8
Those who promote abortion today share the same philosophy as those who supported the ownership of slaves in the United States in the 19th Century. Everyone who supported slavery was free, everyone who supports abortion is born.
Slave owners claimed that Negroes were not human beings and had no human rights. Abortion supporters claim that unborn children are not human beings and do not have a right to life.
Slave owners claimed that they had a human right to own slaves. Supporters of abortion claim that abortion is a human right.
Slave owners claimed that slaves were ‘property and that they could do with them as they wished.’ Abortion advocates claim that unborn children are the property of the mother, and that it is her choice whether she has a live baby or a dead baby.
Slave owners claimed that they had a human right to choose to own slaves. Abortion supporters claim that they have a human right to choose abortion.
Slave owners claimed that owning slaves was for the good of the slaves, as they were fed and clothed. Abortion promoters claim that killing a child in the womb is a kindness; it is unkind to bring a child into the world who is “unwanted” or who has a disability.
Both slavery and abortion are intrinsically evil. The movement for the abolition of slavery did not compromise, it was the total abolition of slavery, nothing less. Likewise the pro-life movement must not compromise, and the goal is the total abolition of the killing of the innocent.
Mankind has always known that to deny the rights of a group of human beings, you must first deny their humanity. Slave owners claimed that Negro slaves were not human beings, and the United States Supreme Court, in the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, declared that Negro slaves were not human beings and only became persons when they were released from slavery.
It was our own Court of Appeal, in the judgement of 2011, in the case of Right to Life versus the Abortion Supervisory Committee, that declared that “the unborn child is not a human being and has no right to life. It only became a human being when it was born.” A cruel legal fiction.
The arguments of the slave owners are all too familiar. “It is my right to choose to own slaves, if you are opposed to slavery, don’t own them.” Those who are opposed to slavery were condemned as being antichoice, endeavouring to impose their morals on others and are infringing on my human rights.
The pro-choice position overlooks the rights of the victim; the slave had no right to choose freedom over slavery, and the unborn child has no right to choose life over being killed.
KEN ORR Right to Life
"Both slavery and abortion are intrinsically evil. The movement for the abolition of slavery did not compromise, it was the total abolition of slavery, nothing less. "
Ken Orr, Right to Life
Busted
A Picasso painting, Bust of a Woman , in the Tate Modern Gallery, has been slashed. It is apparently worth €23 million ($38.85m), or should that be was worth?
This is worrying. Art and objects of value should be safe, and where needed be protected. Given the number of recent terrorist attacks, how does anyone get a knife into an art gallery?
More worrying is why it is worth so much. Let’s not discuss the $500m Da Vinci piece. People can pay whatever they think something is worth for whatever they want, but that painting would be just as good for $1m, with $20m donated to a hospital with enough left over for a few drinks with friends.
Support the arts that give us beauty, but also hospitals that give us life.
DENNIS FITZGERALD