Your say: Mining no threat to whales; and missing Bill English

Scare tactics

Peter Russell is trying to use scare tactics to stir up opposition to sand mining far out to sea off Patea, of which only a little area is mined at anyone time.

He seems to think the silt stirred up will blind the whales. There are thousands of tonnes of sand drift down our coast every year, so there will be no noticable change.

If noise is a problem to this whale he speaks about in the Wellington habour he/she would not have entered or choose to stay as the researchers were having trouble recording his/her sounds as there was too much noise from the ships.

Obviously the noise does not concern them and the South Taranaki bight is huge, leaving plenty of room for the whales to go round a dredge.

With the iron extracted, the remaining soil will become very fertile and produce way more fish food than it does now.

G R SCOWN, Whanganui

Words fail me

I watched Sunday on TVOne — the subject matter was two homosexual males who decided that they were fit parents for a future child.

Lo and behold, they found a person who was prepared to help them in their quest to become parents. Long story short, they now have a son, and the TV is ecstatic in showing pictures of the child being fed and not a boob in sight.

I cannot express my abhorrence of this farcical family situation because words fail me.

For those who have a religious faith, I seem to remember something about men laying with men somewhere in the Bible.

To move forward, a mixture of both males' sperm was fed to an egg, resulting in a foetus that was carried to termination by a surrogate.

I am probably totally ignorant, but could a foetus such as this be implanted into another mammal and survive to the point of birth?

I switched the TV off as all this palaver about same sex marriage and rights is insulting to my own personal beliefs.

D PARTNER, Eastown

Missing Bill

To all New Zealanders:
I, for one, am missing Bill English and his former cohorts.

BERNARD J CORKERY, Whanganui

Mental health services 'inadequate'

I will not be gagged. I provided a copy of my speech to the Mental Health Inquiry Panel, to the Wanganui Chronicle, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and Health Minister David Clark prior to the warning later about no reporting from the panel chair.

Do not rock the boat — silence is always to cover departmental embarrassment?

According to the prime minister, inquiry has been driven by New Zealanders. This was a public meeting for the brave to speak out for the less able.

I heard nothing I did not expect, except revelations from the local MP of her professional experiences. Mental health services have been inadequate for decades as any professional knows.

In my opinion, district health boards are too politicised to continue — ehen you are no longer the voice of the people, you have no public function.

"Incarceration by medication" has been the solution. Time for action.

KEN CRAFAR, Durie Hill

Winter energy payments

We're aware there've been some questions around the Winter Energy Payment from a few of the many older New Zealanders who've been receiving it since July 1.

In particular, some couples would have liked to receive the payment split equally between them, rather than the whole amount going to one person. We completely understand this concern.

We would have liked to have been able to split the payment and we tried hard to make this work within our existing payments system. Unfortunately, for technical reasons it wasn't possible in the short-term.

So, what we have done is to choose the person in the couple with the lower MSD client number and pay the money into their account.

We've also sent the letters about the Winter Energy Payment to that person. People can find the client number on their SuperGold Card or on letters from us.

If anyone would like the payment to go into their partner's account instead of theirs, they can give us a call on our Seniors line on 0800 552 002 and we can sort that out for them.
For more information on the Winter Energy Payment, please visit our website.

DWINA DICKINSON, Client Service Support Ministry of Social Development