Payments to NGOS

I cannot express enough my disgust at the recent move by the government to pay up to $12,000 per patient to NGOs, which are able to push those on disability for mental problems back into fulltime jobs.

The cynicism of this is breathtaking, particularly when we know the same government is covertly assessing New Zealand children going into the school system for mental health profiling. This is done with a view to getting these children into a pernicious everconstricting straitjacket of chemical treatment; namely psychotropic drugs, all highly addictive and largely ineffective.

Apparently, only the New Zealand Government and its array of DHBs are ignorant of what the rest of the world now knows about psychiatry and its chemical cocktails.

I am only too aware that there are those eager to work who find difficulty because of a mental health issue, but equally, it is clear that many of these NGOs will be seeking factory fodder for their $12,000 payout and at the end of the day, many will be forced into dead end jobs that no-one else can be persuaded to do. If depression is their problem I can’t see this as a benefit. (Abridged) CAROLYN MCKENZIE Patients’ Rights Advocacy Waikato Inc 166 international citizens in captivity and without charges at the American naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama talked about democracy and a new Africa; yet he and his government detain five Cuban nationals (The Cuban Five) on fabricated charges and, while the cold war is well and truly over, America continues the morally bankrupt blockade of the sovereign nation of Cuba for no other reason than it can’t control it!

Obama and his government failed to rein in the greed of Wall Street’s financiers, providing billions of public funds in a bail-out to ensure their multimillion-dollar bonus weren’t affected. He personally oversees drone attacks on foreign soil, killing armed and civilians alike.

Mandela was an insightful revolutionary, Obama is little more than George Bush with a different veneer. NOEL HYDE Te Kauwhata information or expertise to make informed decisions. However, in today’s broadband-friendly society, this old argument has become defunct.

This is especially true in the case of the recent fluoride decision. The full four days of tribunal hearings are on YouTube, hereby enabling the public to be equally as informed as the mayor and councillors were when they made their decision a few weeks ago. JAMIE STRANGE Hamilton Proud men of New Zealand, I have a warning for you. There is a new discrimination afoot in our society. It is a terrible new plague, a vile spectre, an iffy boondoggle of a horror.

‘‘What,’’ you cry, quaking in your manly boots, with barely-suppressed but somehow incredibly masculine fear, ‘‘is this scurrilous bandersnatch, this terrible jabberwocky?’’

‘‘My brothers,’’ I say, my deep gravelly voice cracking like a .303 hunting rifle being used to bring down a mighty stag in the remote wilds of New Zealand, ‘‘you already know the curse we labour under. It is feminism, and it is back to destroy us all.’’ Men, I give you permission to swoon. Feminism reared its feminine head yet again with the horrifying news that Labour intends to allow only women to run in certain electorates. Actually, that’s not quite the case, but my masculinity is far too threatened for me to worry about details like, er, details.

Naturally, this push to see the beings that comprise fully half of New Zealand’s population accurately represented in our governing body has many of my male brethren running scared. The comments sections on internet articles about the brouhaha haven’t stopped ringing! Here is a selection of the most brilliant reactions from New Zealand’s brightest minds, chosen more or less at random, unedited:

‘‘What’s next!! ‘White people only’ slippery slope labour!!’’ asks ‘‘Huh’’, in what one hopes is a rhetorical fashion.

‘‘At least we will make world news headline once again. What a joke!’’ laughs ‘‘Renate’’.

‘‘Nothing equal about this, this is purely about sex. I want to see a man only check box, or white only please,’’ opines ‘‘Dorga’’, who I suspect may be a time-traveller from the Confederate States of America.

OK, I lied about those being selected at random. They’ve been picked from the first 15 or so comments on just one news story.

I shudder in delicious anticipation at what further gems might await me, if only I had the testicular fortitude to pry further. Alas, my pending electoral emasculation renders me impotent.

It has been coming for a long time now.