Pitiful plight is so unnecessary
I'm writing this from the Emergency Department of Starship. Parents around me watch in sympathy as my 7-year-old son screams and thrashes about in pure fear. He doesn't want to be here and neither should he be. He is terrified of his seizures. He doesn't
want to die.
As he is sedated and dozens of wires attached to his head, I feel a sickening sense of deja vu - wasn't there another mother who campaigned for medicinal cannabis a few years ago? Didn't her epileptic son pay for our current medicinal cannabis scheme with his life?
Only two medicines approved since are also the most expensive; unaffordable for most patients. Although doctors can prescribe them, most won't due to lack of training. So patients turn to the black market or grow their own in fear of prosecution. When caught they face jail time and their medicines destroyed - punished three times for having crippling conditions.
The developed world has moved on from the war on sick people but not here. Pointing to a closely failed referendum that was about the right to party, not the patient plight, shows an unbelievable lack of compassion from the party that claims to be kind.
Katy Thomas, Auckland Central.
Return raid
When we were 20-somethings in 1976, a group of us carried out dawn raids on the homes of a couple of National Government Cabinet Ministers in Wellington.
At dawn, George Rosenberg, Tony Atkinson, Dennis O'Reilly and myself terrified the sleepy politicians in a most satisfactory way. We were committed to any action being peaceful but we were appalled at the actual dawn raids that were happening in the country.
I remember that one of the ministers was Lance Adams-Schneider.
Our Hillman Hunter was stopped by police near Wellington railway station afterwards but we managed to talk our way out of any suspicion falling on us.
I have always been proud of this small effort, which admittedly, was completely ineffectual.
Penelope Bieder, Ponsonby.
Fuelled again
Just before Covid shut everything down, I bought a new car; a demonstration model, just under a year old. Having had a look at similar age models in the electric car category, I stuck with petrol.
Electric cars were twice what I paid for in the petrol car option, and even with the subsidy now offered, out of my price range. As the car is near new it should have low emissions and will certainly be cleaner than older vehicles. I live in an inner-city suburb, am retired and of course have a fixed income.
This Government is totally out of touch with the realities of daily life for most of us.
Annette Stewart, Greenlane.
Blooming berms
To balance out Rick Mozessohn's "bermscaping" (NZ Herald, June 14), we offer wildflower seeds for the city's berms, and support residents to look after/defend/eat the growth, and to encourage a city with delicious, medicinal, and pleasurable berms for all.
We support Rick's vision of everyone maintaining their own berm being the "ideal scenario" but wish to offer a different type of maintenance and a different, more diverse "ideal".
Chris Berthelsen, Negative Emissions and Waste Studies Programme
