Letters to Editor: Bottle feeding fine example

Piri bottle feeding fine example for all

I have never heard such a lot of rubbish as I heard on Close Up on Monday, about Piri Weepu bottle-feeding his baby.

What is wrong with Linda Williams and her organisation, who see this as unacceptable?

To have a father helping to look after his baby in any way, is surely what this country needs. A father can't breastfeed, so the next best thing is bottle-feeding, cuddling and loving his child.

Linda Williams said with all the babies being abused and killed in New Zealand, mothers need to be encouraged to breastfeed.

Get real, Linda! Mothers who abuse their babies are not going to bottle-feed. Surely it's better for a baby to be bottle-fed than breastfed poison by a mother who has been smoking or drinking.

I feel the organisations who make mothers feel inadequate or bad because they don't breastfeed (for whatever reason) are just as bad, if not worse, than the people who object to a baby being breastfed in public.

We should be encouraging fathers to feed, love and cuddle their babies and care for their families. To be gentle, strong and someone their children can grow up to admire and copy.

You won't get a better role-model for young fathers than Piri Weepu.

Surely the aim for all of us should be: happy babies, happy mums and dads, happy families.

Maybe then we won't have so many of our precious children killed.

Liz Jones, Hastings

Safety not priority

Ross Holden of Hastings District Council (HDC) should come clean and admit that they chose mobile sirens over fixed ones because of cost, not effectiveness. Sure, mobile sirens are useful because they can convey a voice message. That's why police and emergency services already have a PA system on every service vehicle, and they have been used to good effect to convey warnings in recent tsunami alerts.

I know this because I'm a volunteer firefighter with the Haumoana brigade and have been on the business end of the PA system during a previous alert. I also know that in the event of a major tsunami alert from a nearby source, such as the well-studied Hikurangi Trench, there will be neither the time nor the personnel available to deploy HDC's precious mobile sirens. That is why the Cape Coast deserves an instantaneous permanent warning system and why it appears that yet again, HDC is treating the 3000-plus Cape Coast residents with disdain.

Xan Harding, Hastings