The Bay of Plenty Times welcomes letters and comments from readers. Below you can read the letters we have published in your newspaper today.
TODAY'S LETTERS:
Thoughts welcome
Re: Brisbane wakes to flood horror (Our View, Jan 13).
It is great to know that family and friends in NZ are reading of this devastation. I have been
caught in the Central Queensland floods since December 30 here in Emerald.
We still do not have roads to be able to take us back to Brisbane nearly 1000km away.
Food is getting short on the shop shelves but throughout the attitude of helping your friend/neighbour/mate has shone through. Please donate to the Queensland Premier's appeal so those who have lost everything can rebuild their lives.
BARBARA COOK Emerald, Queensland
Admission exposes folly of fluoride
It has only taken 50 years but we have to understand why.
I raise this issue because the American promoters of fluoride have finally admitted that fluoride has been damaging people's teeth. This was made public on the news this week.
Reports of the damage to teeth have been published for many years but "the authorities" would not admit it.
To understand why, I believe, we have to remember the American system, where people take out claims against anyone who they think has wronged them. So, the fluoride pushers would rather let people be poisoned than admit their mistake and face the courts.
Here, in NZ, we have similar fluoride pushers who steadfastly promote it. They hide behind their professions. Our health department still tries to make councils put it in the water supplies and some do.
Congratulations are due to Tauranga City Council which allowed the citizens to decide, by referenda, to not be poisoned.
This admission, after 50 years, further vindicates our decision.
KEN EVANS Tauranga
It'll never happen
I write in reply to the letter from Graham Clark (Your View, January 12) re tough luck when you come to be on the side who have their property taken from them.
I do hope that Mr Clark does not suffer too much stress while awaiting his fantasia of Maori winning enough votes to ever control Parliament. It is never going to happen. With our current influx of Asians we will soon (100 years maybe?) have an Asian controlled government. With the diminishing Maori population one can only wish Mr Clark good luck.
GREG SOAR Papamoa
Mulching failure
When people such as the recent correspondent from Welcome Bay (Your View, January 12) actually go to look at an area of mangroves which hasn't been mulched by machine, they will see abundant titiko or mudflat snails. Mangroves are a nursery for juvenile titiko.
They will see healthy, brown oxygenated surface mud.
They will see barnacles encrusting the breathing roots of mangroves.
Also encrusting the breathing roots they will see dark algae which parore come to feed on.
If they cared to look at the estuary below Hurea marae in the mulched zone they will see black (not brown) mud, new varieties of sea lettuce algae and a lack of titiko. The area stinks of hydrogen sulphide - the toxic gas of Rotorua fumaroles.
If they looked at Omokoroa in the mulched zone they will see a vast area of the same putrefaction and dead oyster shells where once there was a living oyster bed.
The consent to use a machine to mulch mangroves is an absurd failure.
BASIL GRAEME Tauranga
Generous youth
We hear so much negative publicity about our young people these days. I believe we should hear more of their positive, often unheralded, actions.
To this end I would like to thank the extremely helpful young couple who assisted us when we had a blowout on the Matata straight recently. Even though the young man had injured his hand earlier that day he very willingly assisted my 80-year-old husband to change the tyre of our campervan. This done just off the northbound lane with traffic passing at the full speed limit, a somewhat nerve-racking experience.
We are very grateful and wish to thank Ashley and Tiana for their generous and unselfishly given assistance.
GAIL KOCH Bethlehem
NZ can't bat, bowl ...
The Poms are only bog average, Aussies are pathetic but the NZ team is something else. A spineless, technically bereft bunch with no heart, no pride, little skill and over-inflated egos. They can't bat, can't bowl and can't field so what's left?
Instead of subjecting the NZ sporting public to this rubbish, just stop playing tests. If players are not representing the national side they won't be selected for the Indian IPL money circus and that will hurt financially and perhaps focus them on performance.
No one is saying NZ must win, just show some guts, fight and spirit, not simply turn up, roll over and hold out the hands for a cheque. Currently not one NZ player would make any other top eight country's test team.
C MORAN Arataki
TEXT VIEWS
* Kia ora. Well I just want 2 say congrats 2 all the locals 4 making tga such a gr8 place 2 live and hang out. Have a safe and happy holiday! Louisa Short :)
* Taking into account the mayors record with the REGO & WOF issue i assume that we ratepayers will be able 2 comment PRIOR 2 the sale of any ratepayer assets.
* Hi there. Govmt smokefree. Got 2 be joke on u. This means i will hav 2 gt my fix frm th black market. That is fine thanks 2 th internet. Got seeds 2 grow my own tarboo. Talking 2 mates other day. Thy would do th same. Or just go 2 th local tiny house and get a pound or 2 of cab. Say $40 mouth. Face th fact. Smoking has being around 4 100s of years. And still be here when i die of cancer. Mat Deane
* K Moore's letter re sex at the Mount on New Years Eve has probably just doubled the amount of people who'll want to celebrate over there this year, hahaha.
* Anzac day dfnely shld nt b alterd if it hppnds to fall on a wkend. no way David
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