Are we really minding the gaps?
Bagpipers’ efforts unrecognised
The Grenfell Tower fire in London highlighted the importance of fire-rated cladding systems. This prompted New Zealand authorities to check for potential problems with similar cladding systems here.
However, equally and possibly more important is what has been described as the systemic failure of passive fireprotection systems in New Zealand buildings.
Such systems require each apartment to be contained within a fire cell with fire-rated walls and doors to prevent fire and smoke spreading into escape routes and adjacent apartments. Door closers are required on fire and smokestop doors to ensure doors close and latch automatically.
A Dominion Post article (April 18) relating to the Grenfell fire states: ‘‘Gaps around windows and dozens of missing or faulty door closers on the 120 flats were also to blame for failing to limit the fire’s spread.’’
When my wife and I bought our Wellington apartment, the fire door closer had been removed. The Building Compliance Schedule issued by Wellington City Council specifies monthly inspections of the apartment fire doors.
When the doors were finally inspected some years after I had first expressed concern to the body corporate, 25 per cent of the doors were found to be noncompliant. In the meantime a Building Warrant of Fitness had been issued each year confirming all systems in the building complied with the compliance schedule.
When I raised my concerns with the council, it responsed that it had done an audit of the building and was satisfied all was well.
My concerns have been described by the body corporate as being obsessive.
John Adam, Carterton [abridged]
Two compromises
Henry Cooke, in What NZ can learn from US midterms (Nov 10), writes that ‘‘the famous ‘Missouri compromise’ during the nation’s foundation explicitly gave small rural states more power in the Senate to check the heady urban population centres which might dominate the House’’.
His observations seem generally cogent and thoughtprovoking. However, he needs to recheck his US history. He’s got two famous compromises confused, each named after states. During the Constitutional Convention of 1787, the Connecticut Compromise settled the argument between states with small and large populations regarding representation in Congress.
The Missouri compromise was reached 33 years later in 1820. This agreement settled, for a time, the growing division between slave-owing states and free states. At the time of the Constitutional Convention, the region that later became the US state of Missouri was still part of French Louisiana.
Nevertheless, thanks to Mr Cooke, from this native Missourian, for an otherwise well-researched and wellwritten column.
Peter Dyer, Mt Victoria
Science funding
Bob Brockie had a habit of drifting away from science into personal conjecture from time to time but, even when he did he was writing about science, not politics of science.
Politicians, don’t interfere with science (Catalyst, Nov 13), by new science writer Dr Siouxsie Wiles, is pure opinion.
Wiles’ piece demands that politicians not interfere with science and finished by saying ‘‘more than ever we need to safeguard research from political interference. How can we expect to understand the world without it?’’.
She references two US scientists’ papers which were critical to her current research. I don’t quite get her point as these scientists were not government funded.
It may be that Wiles needs to understand the world a bit more.
If you are dependent on political funding, you are subjecting yourself to scrutiny and selection, aka interference.
Is she agreeing with David Seymour’s suggestion that the Marsden Fund’s grants should be cut?
I doubt it, but maybe she needs to manage the ‘‘interference’’ and realise that a request for funding for ‘‘postorientalist arts of the Strait of Gibraltar’’ is never going to make it past an Australasian politician who cares what voters think.
Bill Aitchison, Carterton At 6 am on November 11, 2018, bagpipers in countries around the world heralded the centenary of the end of the war to end all wars by all playing the pipe tune When the Battle’s O’er. Congratulations to the City of Wellington Pipe Band for participating completely unrecognised on behalf of our city. Shame on the Wellington City Council and organisers of the Armistice events in Wellington for failing to recognise and support this international initiative.
Laurie Bond, Ngaio
Just shoot it down
Re the drone flying too close to Wellington Airport, causing delays and safety risks, why can’t security officials be allowed to shoot the thing, as they can with birds to prevent bird strikes. I’d rather read about a drone crashing after being shot down than that a plane has crashed due to a drone.
Chris Archer, Woodville
Sacred and scary
Verity Johnson is right to be concerned about young men’s attitudes to women (Why can’t we all learn to be cooler about sex?, Nov 9). A healthy view of sex begins with an understanding of its purpose: procreation, intimacy, companionship and physical pleasure. A biblical view of sex sees it as a fulfilment of God’s created order in marriage between a man and a woman. There are elements of mystery (‘‘scary’’) and the spiritual (‘‘sacred’’) present here, which can form part of a ‘‘normal’’ conversation we can have about sex with our kids. Roy Barry, Raumati South