Your letters: Top beauty spot needs urgent TLC

Virginia Lake was a bright, algal green in January.

Lake problems

A few comments concerning Virginia Lake:

As a Wanganui icon and a place visited by tourists, the health of the lake is disgraceful and a poor reflection on our city.

Something needs to be done immediately.

I invite all councillors to go up and have a look.

Viewed from the boardwalk, a thick layer of unsightly blue/green, smelly algal scum covers the southern end of the lake, and the boardwalk is covered by disgusting droppings from pigeons in the palms overhead. A cull is needed.

When wet, the boardwalk is dangerously slippery and regular water-blasting is insufficient.

Token efforts have been made by council in what appears to be a trial of narrow plates across the boardwalk deck short distances from both ends. These have been there for over 12 months and nothing further seems to be forthcoming. I fear joggers and walkers may be injured when conditions are wet.

I suggest some form of web matting track, either rubber or metal, be placed along the boardwalk.

The lake needs some form of circulation. Although I know algal growth is a perplexing problem I cannot understand why the solar stirrer, the wave generator and the ultrasonic machinery were removed. Perhaps Reserves staff may wish to comment.

One of the main causes of algal growth is lack of oxygen, and stirring could help ameliorate the algal problem, as would curbing errant discharges from the overflow of Rotokawau subdivision.

I walk around the lake every morning and live in its vicinity. It is a lovely place, but I am saddened by its deterioration.

I am not convinced the algal blooms that this lake regularly suffers from in summer are entirely due to natural phenomena, as some say, but leaving it in its present state would be disappointing.

RAY HUTCHISON
St John's Hill

Bad drivers

We support comments made by Gary Stewart (April 13) and Paula Rodgers (April 19).

There is nothing wrong with the majority of our roads. Many of the crashes are not "accidents'', they are caused by incompetent motorists who have a blase attitude towards traffic rules.

One only needs to drive around Wanganui to see the blatant abuse of road rules, eg talking on cellphones while driving, running red lights, failing to stop at stop signs etc — and as for not driving to the conditions, the Totara Street/Fitzherbert Ave intersection is a prime example of that.

Sadly, there is a distinct lack of a dedicated traffic law enforcement group. At least in the days of the black and white MOT vehicles they created the "fear factor'' by being visible.

B & M JOHNSON
Springvale

Wrong horn

The man on the front page of Friday's paper (April 27) is not a bugler, he is a cornetist.

PETER JOHNSTON
Whanganui East

Editor's note: While he is pictured with a cornet, he was the official parade bugler.

Cowboy sport

Margaret Harold asks me why other countries have banned rodeos, even in the US.
Probably because there are now so many kind, caring people accessing the internet who have not had any experience handling large animals.

On large ranches in the US you have thousands of beef calves to tag or mark and castrate. They are tough, chunky, muscular animals that can outrun a wolf soon after birth.

It's in the wilderness. There are no vets. Maybe some kind of stockade. They are rounded up, using horses, dogs, vehicles ... and a helicopter.

You need a cowboy or cowgirl. So the cowboy rides a horse, ropes a calf, leaps off, the trained horse braces itself and the calf flips flat on to the ground ... the cowboy ties, tags, castrates if male, lets it go. All in seconds.

It is the best, most humane way of doing this.

The caring masses may stop the rodeos, but the calves still have to be fixed every year.
The cowboys will get even faster if they have the incentive of competing.

SARA DICKON
Whanganui

'Hate speech'

Steve Baron (Chronicle, April 20) is "Obstinately and unreasonably wedded to a particular belief or creed" (Collins Dictionary definition of "bigoted").

Baron "never will" read the Bible, but unhesitatingly makes assertions that misrepresent it.

He calls Israel Folau "sanctimonious'', yet his own tone is "morally" superior. He does not know why "gay people" need saving; he is unlikely to find out.

Out of closed mind, he asserts that the Christian God is "fictitious". His question — "Why did their god embed it (homosexuality) in up to 10 per cent of the population?" is pernicious. The Wanganui Chronicle gives him a huge audience to spread what is effectively hate speech about "Folau's Dark Ages-based religion."

More so with Steve Braunias (Chronicle, April 21) who is creatively vicious. How, Wanganui Chronicle, did either help? "ST*U, we don't want to hear" emblazoned across the page would have conveyed the unreasoned sentiment and saved space, or was that what "Body's View" (April 23) was about?

The contemporary creed of moral autonomy cannot stand before a supreme God, his law, and his judgment based on the truth people know already about their actions ("choices"). It is those who speak the truth, in love, that can help those souls that seek salvation.

JOHN HAAKMA
Whanganui

'Holier than thou'

A week ago I penned a letter to the editor voicing my opinion of the comments made by Steve Baron concerning the "Folau" issue and Baron himself. The fact my missive has not seen the light of day is due to the diligence of the editor and his desire to not see me incarcerated due to the somewhat non-PC comments I made. Thank you.

Having said that, may I congratulate all those who have now come to the party in criticising Baron's rant, starting with David Bennett a few days ago. Despite his response, Mr Baron has done nothing to excuse his half-page diatribe. All he has done is prove to the residents of Wanganui that he occupies a "holier than thou" stance when it comes to his opinions.

Obviously, the Chronicle has decided to give Mr Baron some time in the "naughty chair", as there has been no column this week. Well done, the Chronicle. I am afraid that, yet again, Mr Baron's perception of how to win votes and influence people has run into a brick wall.

I hope this is the end of the "Baron opinions" in the Chronicle. If he still thinks he has a chance of achieving his ambition of becoming an influential citizen in our town, I hope a couple of gents in white coats are on standby.

D PARTNER
Eastown

Editor's note: Steve Baron's columns appear irregularly, and not weekly.

Name change

I accept that, as New Zealanders cannot read, no one will ever get this message.

But try listening to the Wanganui Chronicle's death notices as read by a national of the only country that can apparently read and cringe at the American readers' abuse of te reo place and personal names.

The step too far for any sane resident has to be the revelation their city has had a name change to "Wanganoo", so I guess from here on I will pay my rates to them not the Whanganui District Council, who seem to have been wrongly siphoning off my money.

ELIZABETH STILES DAWE
Whanganui

Apollo's energy

My thanks to Mike Philo for introducing us to the idea that gravitation is "negative energy".

I have never heard this term used in a scientific discussion before, although I did see a dramatic demonstration of it in the predawn darkness above Suva, Fiji, in May 1969, when Apollo 10 re-entered the atmosphere on its return from the moon.

When that spacecraft went up there, the moon was at its apogee, or maximum distance from Earth, so for the three days of Apollo 10's return journey, the Earth's gravitational energy acted on it for a longer time than on any other manned spacecraft, and the pull got greater and greater as it was drawn closer and closer to our planet. At the same time it gained more speed (physics buffs say more ''kinetic energy") until we saw it hit the atmosphere 100km above Suva travelling at 23,900km/h, the fastest re-entry speed of any manned spacecraft.

Actually, we saw two objects streaking across the sky above us; the streamlined crew module, and the unshielded engine module they jettisoned. Both glowed red-hot then white-hot with long silver trails. Suddenly the overheated gas tanks of the rocket motor exploded and there were brilliant trails all over the sky. At first we thought the crew module had blown up, but then we saw it zooming steadily towards Samoa, where the crew splashed down in the sea 15 minutes later.

That spacecraft had gained record amounts of both kinetic energy and of gravitational energy while coming home. But energy can be neither created nor destroyed, so these days physicists say that the pull of gravity is "negative" energy, equal and opposite to the kinetic sort. In 1969 they said Apollo 10 had lost potential energy.

Alas, we didn't see the historic "one-giant-step-for-mankind" Apollo 11 coming home two months later. The sky was cloudy.

JOHN ARCHER
Ohakune

Nectar of life

Sara Dickon says warming causes cooling. We agree there's a lot of cooling happening around the planet. Her experts say it is heating, a conundrum if ever there was.

Could she please explain how this works, and why the lack of sunspots, the shifted jet stream, the pacific oscillation, La Nina and El Nino have no effect on our weather, and CO2 — the plant food that keeps our planet green — is the culprit.

Let's hope she has factored into her thinking what happened to Mars when it ran out of volcanic activity that supplied the CO2 necessary to keep the plants growing.

Here's a toast to the nectar of life, CO2.

G R SCOWN
Whanganui

Satellite spies

Interesting, the article in the Chronicle (April 21, 48 hours / books, p.11: "Even mutiny didn't stop doctor from his adventure"), which carried a paragraph about an encounter between a suspected UFO and Dr Neville de Villiers' yacht in the Tasman Sea.

Some UFO believers claim we have been visited by alien beings since 1947 (Roswell and all that).

I wonder why, after decades of alleged fact-gathering about us by aliens, aliens still think it necessary to investigate an ordinary yacht, crewed by ordinary people on an ordinary adventure in a safe part of the world?

I have a better, more earthbound explanation, with 40-year-old evidence published in Wanganui Newspapers (date forgotten, circa mid-1970s).

Then, it was reported the Soviet Union had found a way to knock out the US spy satellites during the Cold War, by "blinding them" with light beams from powerful ground-based sources. In the 1970s, we were amazed mere earthlings could conduct such "space-age" warfare.

I am sure 40 years-worth of military spending later, with stable, space-based GPS satellites also proving the concept, there may be satellites now capable of beaming bright lights towards the ground, able to track moving objects. In my opinion, de Villiers' yacht was being tracked as a training exercise by earth-based military sources. It requires no more than publicly known, earth-based technology to understand this is a reasonable conclusion.

Let's not blame the aliens this time.

STAN HOOD
Whanganui

Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz