Half-baked: Letters, 10 May

The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Here you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.

Neither race could do without the other here

Readers should bear in mind that extremists are important, but only to cancel out the other end of unreasonable opinion.

Therefore one Mary Brooks counters one Titewhai Harawira and so on.

Neither should be relied upon for reasonable debate.

However, the rednecks are correct that before the pakeha, Maori life was mayhem, murder and misery.

The brownnecks are correct that our community has lost more money through the likes of Hotchin et al than all the Treaty settlements put together.

The reality is that all our present wealth is founded on the development of the original Maori assets.

Neither race could have done it without the other.

Just like husband and wife, really.

And, just like a marriage, one partner controls a lot and one has very little. That doesn't sound like equality to me.

Richard Goodall, Tauranga

Coffee test unfair

I read with interest a recent article about local coffee. It's nice to know you cover life's really important topics from time to time. As a caffeine addict who spends over $1500 a year on coffee at local cafes, can I add my $4 worth.

A great cup of coffee is not easy to find (or create, obviously) on a consistent basis. Even the same barista with the same ingredients on the same day can produce different results. So to have your "survey" done with one coffee from each of the mentioned establishment is hardly a sample worthy of Page 3.

I go to cafes that can create great coffee six times out of seven, that's how I judge them. If I took any notice of your article I probably wouldn't bother to go to the Med. But I know better. They do great coffee six days out of seven. Not only that but their food is always fresh and fabulous.

If you do a similar article in the future can I suggest you widen your sample methodology a little. This would give you and your readers a fairer result, not to mention a better article.

Graeme Martin, Tauranga

Self-injury again

Good old Labour - shooting itself in the foot yet again and again letting floundering vulnerable National off the hook with another controversial loony-left private member's bill. Marilyn Street needs to know that, as with abortion, her so-called "stringent safeguards" for legalised euthanasia just will not work.

Holland clearly shows this to be the case. It is naive for pro-euthanasia supporters to bleat on that if you don't want assisted life termination you won't get it - it is your choice.

Not so, because unfortunately the right to die rapidly becomes the duty to die and this is the whole crux of the debate.

My right to live when I am old and frail is of far greater importance to me and to all New Zealanders than the half-baked conviction of some robust, healthy, idealistic person who opinionatedly thinks safeguards will work.

They did not for abortion and it is wilful ignorance and blind obstinacy not to look at the evidence and history of legalised euthanasia in Holland and our own 18,000 abortions per year.

I wish to continue to have the choice of a natural death, and hopefully with palliative care if needs be. It is ironic and instructive that a colleague of mine, Cam Campion, a former National Party MP for Wanganui and avid pro-euthanasia campaigner, when dying of cancer chose instead palliative care in a hospice.

Hylton Rhodes, Tauranga