Your views: Readers' letters

The big flood of June 2015 was followed by an unusually damp winter in Whanganui.

Resilience

It's refreshing to hear local politicians finally using the term resilience and addressing the issue of climate change on our community. Better late than never.

The Whanganui community did show great resilience after the 2015 flood, especially the hundreds or possibly thousands of households that suffered an unusually damp winter in the months after the June rain event.

Sadly, those households may have endured unnecessarily poor living conditions because local health officials and council health officers chose not to engage with an outreach campaign to help suffering families improve their health and comfort.

In the days following the storm, I made a lot of phone calls warning that a long, damp winter would have disproportional health effects on the Whanganui community. While government agencies chose to do nothing, the Whanganui Chronicle and the River City Press help spread the word and each acted as a distribution centre for information sheets on the best ways to address damp homes.

Many months later, it was reported that the hospital had recorded an increase for the year of patients in respiratory distress -- exactly what I had predicted in the days after the flood. The non-response from local health officials cost our community: it cost in human suffering; it cost in parents' anxiety; and it cost a lot of money in hospital visits.

Whanganui has the highest rates of asthma in the nation and our poor housing stock has a lot to do with it. Some may call the families soldiering through the mould and coughs and asthma attacks "resilient." Fair enough, we are a staunch lot here in Wangaz. But I call it unnecessary suffering.

It's well beyond the point we saw some leadership on this issue.

DR NELSON LEBO
Okoia

Truth and lies

Well said, Editor, in your opinion piece on June 23

I feel you should be saying that more often and much more loudly -- bigger, bolder headlines and bylines. And it should be as much about local politicians as about national ones.

There are a very few politicians who have an innate inability to lie. There are more than a few who have an inability to speak truthfully. And there are many more who cannot tell the difference.

RICHARD OVERY
Ohope

Thanks for help

Some months ago I made an appeal for information through this column. I'm pleased to report your Chronicle readers were most helpful.

As a result of their help, I have all or nearly all the names of the men who served under Captain Wilmot Powell in the defence of the Weraroa redoubt in 1868.

This information and the names of the men will appear in Accidental Immigrants, my new book on the Powell family, who arrived in Whanganui in the 1850s and played various roles in the development of the town.

The book is in production and will be in local bookshops by early August.

JOHN EWAN
Nelson

Chosen people

Isn't it astonishing how the tiny, beleaguered nation of Israel commands so much notice and aggression?

Article after article refers to Israel taking territory, but little is said about how embattled the nation has been since it was reformed in 1948.

Who were the aggressors? Who has been willing to find a way toward peace? What Arab nation grants citizenship to Jewish residents? Or invited resident Jews to remain as citizens in their nations?

The government of Israel asked Arab residents to remain and granted them citizenship automatically so long as they remained in Israel. Meanwhile Arab nations persecuted and expelled Jewish residents, regardless of their historic and legal rights.

Why is it so popular to blame Israel for the conflict when this little nation is so obviously in existence only by the grace of God?

Ah, that's it! Israel is a reminder that God chooses the small, insignificant, unruly, unworthy and rejected to demonstrate His willingness and ability to overrule.

MANDY DONNE-LEE
Aramoho

Ferry proposal

Now a second report by Tonkin & Taylor Ltd has been presented to our council, as reported by the Chronicle on Thursday, June 22, laying out very, very serious doubts about the technical feasibility and even the viability of Mid-West's ferry proposal.

What a wafer-thin "business" case it's been so far, with so many major faults and omissions already noted.

ROBERT JAUNAY
Aramoho