The weekend we have just experienced was the complete package, and I would like to to offer my thanks and appreciation to all involved.
Whanganui has a whole new set of ambassadors who are advocating for your wonderful, outstanding city.
SIMON WOOLF, FPSNZ MPhotog
Wellington City Councillor
Carbon credit tree scam
In a front-page Chronicle report, Kathy Browning points out some of the downsides to trees growing in rural areas, and they are real bad.
She missed the lack of day-to-day economic activity in this logging game compared to farming.
Admittedly, things were bad in the farming arena at the time the decision was made to plant trees.
Rogernomics and the trade unions were killing traditional farming.
This tree-planting denuded rural areas of people and, when the recovery came, NZ and rural towns like Whanganui, which had lost a lot of beef and sheep farms, had a much lesser ability to access this economic take because of the lost farms.
Farming is daily economic activity with trading, stock-buying requirements for the farm and the families that would have still been on them. Whanganui has missed out badly.
Trees have a few years of minor activity, then nothing for 20 years, then an onslaught on our roads and rivers.
Overseas investors come in and buy these trees because local owners are desperate for a bit of financial relief after all these years of waiting.
These overseas investors then cream the taxpayer as they claim the carbon credits — nothing to do with the value of the trees just a swindle of the taxpayer.
I would also suggest that the money from the trees owned by overseas investors will not touch our shores, or only a small proportion; our economy will just be raped.
I have a suggestion for the Government. Pay the carbon credits to the local councils.
This will give them the wherewithal to do the heavy lifting needed to fix these country roads. You don't want to charge the loggers; that would be taking money out of our economy, and you would struggle to get it out of overseas investors.
G R SCOWN
Whanganui
Abortion debate
Karen Raaymakers (letter, "Abortion facts", September 28) writes: #1. Brain waves can be recorded as early as 43 days gestation (1st trimester). My parallel comment (letter of September 26) was #4: "there is no FUNCTIONAL brain in the developing foetus until approximately 26 weeks of gestation". It is precisely the question of FUNCTION that is germane to this discussion.
Ms Raaymakers' #2 is a cavil over my more generalised use of the term "medical terminations" as distinct from her more professional(?) use of "surgical abortion". I stand corrected, but consider my meaning to be clearer to the general reader.
In the matter of the legal situation, my response to F R Halpin was my #3: "Terminations beyond the first trimester will by law be conducted because of endangerment to the mother's condition or failed/failing viability of the foetus."
The parallel response from Ms Raaymakers is on the post-20-week gestation period when "the grounds are the woman's life is in danger or serious, permanent damage to the woman's physical or mental health [is envisaged]".
Is there a significant difference? Straw splitting does not help clarification.
RUSS HAY
Whanganui
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