Wednesday Write-In: Rainfall patterns

Te Mata peak had snow on it yesterday morning. On page 4 of Saturday's paper, one of your reporters gave a summary of NIWA's weather predictions for the next 30-50 years. If your reporter has conveyed the facts correctly, then NIWA has predicted nothing but contradictory nonsense.

In one breath they say summer and autumn may become wetter, and in the next breath they say drought periods would stretch into spring and autumn.

They also mention miniscule changes in average rainfall over decades. For instance a 4 per cent reduction in average rainfall in 80 years time. What a nonsense. La Nina and El Nino weather patterns have a much greater effect on our rainfall.

And if the planet is getting warmer, why has Te Mata peak got snow on it this morning?

Richard Karn, Westshore

Working dogs

Re Brad Parkes and horses for courses with dog training:

50 years ago my father had the same dilemma. He came from a hunting, fishing, shooting background with the family owning curly coats, English retrievers, labradors and pointers since the 1930s.

His grandfather (the main hunting, fishing, family member) the Hon WE Parry always thought a good dog was the lab/retriever/pointer cross.

We still have a portrait of Tony, an English retriever (tan/white) that he owned in the 1930s.

My father wasn't a big fan of retrievers and so elected to breed a English pointer (lemon/white) lab cross which he bred for some years from the late 1950s.

The puppies were sent all over New Zealand as working dogs. They were great dogs!

Monique Ciochetto, Waipawa

Tasteless milk

Your article "More to milk than meets the eye" , in HB Today of August 11, I would see is really a misquote. I think more appropriate it should be "LESS to milk than meets the eye".

Twenty years ago I used to drink two pints a days, and that doesn't include the milk in my tea and coffee. Now, I utilise less than two litres a week. Why? Well there are a couple of good reasons. The taste is terrible, it tastes like re-constituted milk powder, and I am not sure it is not. Secondly, real milk used to have a wealth of goodness in it, now they take that out and sell it in various forms of coloured water.

So now I only use milk in tea and coffee - it hides the taste.

And no, it is not directly the fault of the farmers, they work hard to produce a premium product, I just wish I could buy it directly.

The fault really lies with Fonterra, although that may be as a result of trying to maximise a dividend to the farmers.

Philip M Ward, Greenmeadows

Milk price lower

Thanks Lindsay Gordon Paku QSM JP (Letters, Monday), thanks for injecting some hard facts into the milk price furore. With 1962 milk costing wage earners nearly 90 per cent more and beneficiaries nearly 17

per cent more we certainly don't have too much to complain about today.

Perhaps we should call for a moderate price increase to show our gratitude to our farmers and milk producers for progressively lowering the per litre price over the last 49 years.

D B Smith Napier