Our Mayor, Hamish McDouall, offered no response to my letter to the Wanganui Chronicle in May regarding setting a timeframe for fixing this public menace. His inaction has created a credibility gap comparable in size to the council's slip scarp on Ikitara Rd.
The WDC needs to remediate and stabilise its unstable bank, which could very well collapse on top of passers-by. This matter is more urgent than dealing with uneven footpaths.
W MCCALLUM
Whanganui East
The worst president ever?
Before slamming Donald Trump as the worst-ever US president, we need to compare him with the others.
He does not own hundreds of slaves, like those Thomas Jefferson had, nor has he ordered the genocide of Native American land-owners, like James Monroe, Andrew Jackson and Benjamin Harrison. And unlike Abe Lincoln, has he not jailed civil rights protesters.
He has not invaded Mexico, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Cuba or Iraq, like James Polk, William McKinley, William Taft, John Kennedy and George Bush Jr respectively, and he has not (yet) dropped nuclear bombs on cities full of women and children the way Harry Truman did.
Trump's murky financial dealings with Russian oligarchs have not been as blatant as the corrupt dealings of Ulysses Grant and Warren Harding, his immigration policy is not as racist as Herbert Hoover's forced removal of US-born Mexicans, and his drone attacks have not yet killed as many innocent civilians as Barack Obama killed.
Trump is perhaps most like Lyndon B Johnson, whose escalation of unwinnable long-term conflicts in multiple Asian countries killed millions, cost trillions and benefited no one except international arms manufacturers.
In the 1970s, indefatigable reporters filled the media daily with horrific war reporting, and millions of Americans protested "Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?"
In stark contrast, today's reporters are largely ignoring Trump's escalating conflicts in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Korea, Somalia, Libya, Nigeria and the Ukraine, with Americans showing no qualms about the uncounted innocent lives Trump is destroying. After all, their president's trillion-dollar perpetual war machine is creating more and more jobs for them.
Trump may not be the worst US president, but today's US citizens certainly are the most self-centred, with the laziest and most complaisant press and TV journalists.
JOHN ARCHER
Ohakune
Bags the tip of the plasticberg
We keep hearing a call for the banning of plastic shopping bags, specifically supermarket bags.
This is partly because they are usually single-use and all that dumped plastic is bad for the environment. It is also because it is easier to guilt the general public over such things than go after the real culprits.
Quite apart from the number of plastic items in our everyday lives that could be manufactured from other environmentally friendly materials, there are many obvious and wasteful uses of plastic that should be included in the calls for a ban.
For example, try visiting warehouses, distribution centres, factories, transport companies, the rear of large stores or supermarkets etc and see the huge amount of stretch-wrap and shrink-wrap used in storage and transportation of goods, cut off and thrown in the rubbish.
The supermarket plastic bags may be right in our faces -- always good for a publicity campaign -- but they are only the tip of the plastic-berg.
K A BENFELL
Gonville
Climate science
I attended the Green Party climate change talk given by Dr Kennedy Graham on August 5.
Candidate Nicola Patrick was there to greet people. I had never met her in person before, and I was very impressed. The Greens have chosen a great candidate -- very genuine and charming.
I perceive Dr Graham to be a very clever politician, but is he a wolf in sheep's clothing?
Near the end of the talk he was discussing New Zealand's progress in reducing carbon dioxide emissions.
He seemed pleased that sheep numbers had fallen from 60 million in 1986 to 29 million, but was not pleased that cow numbers had risen from three million to seven million.
He advocated that two million hectares of farm land needed to go into forestry.
Knowing that Dr Kennedy had worked within the Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change, I got the impression he was working, not for New Zealanders but for the United Nations.
At the end of the lecture, I informed Dr Kennedy that he was using failed science.
I told him the sun, not CO2, was the driver of climate change.
What impressed me about Dr Kennedy was his ability to keep control of his temper.
Dr Kennedy chatted with me and asked about my farming and even listened to more examples of climate science fraud from me.
WILLIAM PARTRIDGE
Hunterville
Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
