I respect both the prime minister's choice to decline the invitation as well as Nicola Patrick's choice to disagree.
KEN RODDICK, Whanganui
Drastic plastic
A TV report last week showed the contents of the stomach of a whale that had repeatedly beached on Sotra Island in southern Norway.
The two-ton goose-beaked whale had to be euthanised as it was visibly sick. When examined, over 30 plastic bags and other plastic items (labels in Danish and English) were found in the whale's stomach and intestines. Very little actual food was found.
Plastic is entering waterways and oceans at a rate that it is believed that there will be more plastic than sea life by 2050.
Plastic single use bags were invented in the 1960s and have become so integral to the shopping experience that they are used unconsciously and exclusively for carrying goods.
They are used on average for 12 minutes, and getting them to landfills is a costly exercise for councils, ratepayers and the environment.
In Whanganui we have our plastic bag mountain at the Resource Recovery Centre. Markets for any kind of recycled plastic are very limited at present.
The Plastic Bag Free Whanganui group conducted an informal survey last December when members stood outside the major supermarkets and counted the bags carried out over the period of one hour. We counted around 2000.
Plastic pollution could be greatly reduced by reducing uptake, and it is easy to run up strong cloth bags from fabric remnants and get into the habit of taking them shopping. Supermarkets now sell cheap reuseable bags, too.
The most effective way to stem the plastic avalanche would be for large retailers to take responsibility by acknowledging their role in the waste stream.
A 20 cent levy for each bag would soon make customers think twice about accepting them.
Are any of our local supermarkets up for the challenge? Please note that Waiheke Countdown is now plastic bag free.
DEB FREDERIKSE, Whanganui
Lack of proof
We all loved the humour of Mr Benfell's parody in the letters to the editor - "Trump stance proved right".
And the "proof"? In true Trumpian fashion, there was none.
The two-sentence letter basically parroted Kate Stewart's mantra: Protests are bad. The media is bad. Trump is good.
Perhaps ... but why does the right-wing attack the media for being too liberal?
This is the same corporate media who either ignored or talked down centre left politician Bernie Sanders; it wrote incessantly about "Islamic terrorism" while ignoring white supremacist terrorist activities; this is the same media who published "flag-waving scoldings" after Trump stated that "You got a lot of killers," implying correctly but for ignoble reasons, that the United States has blood on its hands.
As Adam Johnson wrote: "He was evoking America's own sins not to challenge them, but to apologise for those of the Russian president and, pre-emptively, his own."
Donald Trump, a proven pathological liar with record low favourability polls, has threatened to undo every progressive policy. Meanwhile, he has stocked his swamp cabinet with the racist far right, billionaires and veterans of the same Goldman Sachs that he had previously lambasted. His sanest cabinet member is nicknamed "Mad Dog".
As Bill Maher joked: "He ran for the little man and then what does he do? He gets into office - the coal companies can dump sludge in the river because, you know, that's what the little man is aching for."
BRIT BUNKLEY, Whanganui
From another land
There have been a few books about why New Zealand needed a treaty. If we are to understand the Treaty, we must understand why it was instigated and by whom.
About 10 years prior to the Treaty, the missionaries had tried to encourage Maori to form their own government but the chiefs could not agree between themselves and it became evident that New Zealand must become a British colony if Maori were to survive.
Maori are not indigenous people. Indigenous people are people whose ancestors were "born of the land".
Maori are a group of people, like the rest of us, born of another land.
IAN BROUGHAM, Tawhero
