Hospital staff should not have to put up with this. I was told by one nurse it was quite a frequent experience. Really!
I was home by Tuesday, well on the way to recovery. Thank you all so much.
Roy Ayris, Wattle Downs.
Superannuation
Liam Dann argues (“Why 70 really is the new 50”, April 27) that increasingly expensive New Zealand Superannuation needs its qualifying age raised from 65, because (on average) we stay healthy and work-capable a decade longer than we did a generation ago, and live a decade longer.
And (on average) he’s right. New Zealand has a very high proportion of people between the ages of 65 and 75 who are double-dipping: continuing to work while collecting their NZ Super.
It’s the “on average” bit where Dann’s argument for raising the pension starting age falls down. He makes his case only a week after Te Pāti Māori repeated its demand for the opposite: that Māori people be able to start getting NZ Super up to 10 years younger than everyone else. Why? Because (on average) people who identify as Māori tend to die up to a decade younger than the broader population and (on average) become infirm and unable to work up to 10 years younger.
What is really needed to keep NZ Super affordable is not to raise the starting age, but to restore a form of the surtax, abolished in 1998, that required double-dippers who both work and get the pension to pay a higher tax on their non-pension income. Susan St John has published a paper (New Zealand Superannuation as a Basic Income) describing how this could be efficiently and fairly introduced to ensure that NZ Super remains universally available at 65, but goes to those who need it.
There ought, indeed, be a social-welfare benefit that pays as much as NZ Super for people younger than 65 who cannot work. But that must be means-tested and it must be strictly based on assessed need.
John Trezise, Birkenhead.
Victims of war
Professor Gillespie’s excellent article (“We’ve been slow to remember our military veterans”, April 24) raised concerns about our Government’s reluctance to understand illness and deaths of veterans in wars, including the lengthy Vietnam War from 1963 to 1975. It exposed 3400 of our soldiers to Agent Orange, a notorious defoliant used by the US military in Vietnam, causing health problems in some soldiers and defects in their children.
It’s shameful this happened. But what about US war crimes such as the Mai Lai massacre in 1968, killing 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians? What about long-lasting effects on civilians of America spraying nearly 72 million litres of defoliants, napalm and Agent Orange on vegetation in Vietnam, which also affected people in neutral neighbouring countries, Cambodia and Laos? In the decades since, the damage has lived on, including terrible birth defects to children of those exposed.
Washington, while admitting and addressing the defoliants’ long-lasting effects in Vietnam, largely sidestepped the dioxin issue in the two neighbouring nations, offering no assistance. Over 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese died in this terrible war, which America and its allies lost.
Kay Weir, Wellington.
Russia-Ukraine war
If Vladimir Putin had ordered the occupation of Mar-a-lago under a so-called “special military operation”, would Donald Trump see Putin as a person to be admired and reconnected with, and Russia as a commercial opportunity awaiting exploitation? Would he trade off Mar-a-Lago by allowing Putin to keep it?
David Pickford, Whitianga.
