Your say: Smart model to cut crime

Former Whanganui MP Chester Borrows' smart of crime approach has the backing of one Chronicle reader.

I support Chester Borrows' view that New Zealand has to be smart, not tough on crime (Chronicle July 26).

The Guardian recently published an article which said violent crime was reduced dramatically in Glasgow and in South West Chicago by treating crime like a disease.

The idea came from the treatment of TB in Somalia where cases were identified and mapped and then resources were committed to ensure that the disease was treated effectively.

Using a prescription of "violence interrupters", drug rehabilitation, health and counselling services under the supervision of the police the cities saw "80 per cent of participants staying out of prison and going on to other employment".

Sure, there is a need to keep some violent offenders in prison, however, this model shows that when people are given a chance to have a stake in their society they do change.

CHRISTODOULOS MOISA, Durie Hill

Online sales cut NZ jobs

Have those folk who are being laid off by The Warehouse and other businesses ever shopped online to save a few dollars? Has Amazon or the like lured you in?

If so, you have endangered your own employment by saving those few dollars. More and more Kiwis will become unemployed because of their own habits.

NZ businesses will continue to crumble, especially if Walmart is allowed to operate in our country.

It will lead to blocks of small family operations such as dairies and vege shops being bankrupted. Whole families will be out on the street.

Why are our successive governments signing trade agreement which favour foreign enterprises over our own people? We of the, TPPA Action Whanganui group tried extremely hard to warn you all, big business and small alike, to these dangers, and the dangers of de-regulation.

That your own government was selling you all down the river but on the whole your ears were painted blue and would only take in that blue painted propaganda.

Are you feeling the pinch yet? 'Cos the pain will increase 100-fold.

DENISE LOCKETT, Whanganui

Life or death choice

Thirteen thousand baby's booties were presented outside Parliament (Chronicle, July 26) representing the number of boys and girls killed in the womb each year in New Zealand.

Here we have the gentlest of reminders of a crime committed 13,000 times in our country still generating a strong protest from some who champion the death of a child.

Where do these people come from who agree priestly paedophilia is inexcusable but the death of a child is quite all right?

Surely, it is not mental instability. It's a hatred of life perhaps that contradicts quite clearly the sentiments of those who have lost their lives protecting our country.

Who generates such animosity against the life and limb of the unborn?

Another thing is clear. Our community cannot the survive this onslaught on defenceless babies.

Those who dismiss an unborn as a foetus need to re-examine that thought with great depth for they attack their own family.

Surgeons need to re-examine their careers in abortion to see this is not a health issue but decimation of persons.

Those who remain silent need to think along the lines of moving into action to show fellowship with an unborn child who can do nothing to defend themselves.

I don't think there is a single person in our community who would not go to the rescue of a child in danger. Why are we not doing it before they are born?

The choice is very clear; life or death.

F R HALPIN, Gonville

Trump fracturing Union

I would like to thank the apologists of Donald Trump for explaining their point of view so well in these columns.

I have just one further favour to ask of them.

Trump has taken a solemn oath as President of the United States "to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution," and the stated purpose of this document is "to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty."

However, to those of us who read not only news from the BBC, Al Jazeera, South China Morning Post and Wanganui Chronicle, but also the holy truth of the Great Man's own tweets, Trump appears to be hell-bent on completely fracturing an already imperfect Union, perverting justice, destroying domestic tranquility, crippling the common defence, promoting his own business interests, and securing the blessings of Vladimir Putin.

I'm sure many Chronicle readers would be most grateful if our Trumpist friends could explain to us how these leadership behaviours of Trump are preserving, protecting and defending his country's constitution.

JOHN ARCHER, Ohakune