Your say: Sweeping claim not right about Whanganui rubbish collection

Rubbish bags, untouchable to the contractor, sit in Whanganui's Brunswick Rd.

Laurel Stowell's report on uncollected rubbish bags (Chronicle, August 21) confirms my suspicions that one council spokesperson needs to think before they make sweeping claims that "the reason the rubbish was not collected was that it didn't meet guidelines".

How could they know the ignored bags contained toxic or animal waste, were overweight, had sharp objects and did not contain household or domestic waste?

They are also wrong in claiming that the bags cannot contain "sharp objects", as the yellow stickers I purchase state these are allowed, as long as they are wrapped.

My black-sack rubbish bag was rejected, despite being yellow stickered, facing the road, having no sharp objects, contained only my domestic waste and all within a sealed 60 litre bag that was not filled to capacity.

The driver covered my paid-for yellow Waste Management sticker with his orange "Rejected as overweight" sticker.

As there remained little option but to deliver the bag to the Waste Management site myself, I did so, but paused at the Caltex service station and used their weighing scales to find that the weight of my bag was 19.1kg.

So, despite the rubbish trucks not having weighing scales, the driver claimed it was over the allowable 20kg, obscured my sticker and caused me to undertake the delivery for which I had paid Waste Management.

Improvements are needed at the council and Waste Management.

V W BALLANCE, Westmere

End of life choices

Bill English's false statements on the End of Life Choice Bill (Chronicle, August 17) would be risible if they were not a display of the willingness of his religion-inspired group to say anything in the service of exercising control over the last shreds of human dignity.

English is Catholic, as are several of the anti-choice group. His church has been indicted in the US state of Pennsylvania for sexual exploitation and a subsequent cover-up by church hierarchy.

Just as the issue of Pennsylvania and jurisdictions in Ireland or Australia is about power and control of choice, defiling dignity, so also is the dogmatic imposition of religious dogma on the rest of us, and on terminally ill adults.

One might suppose that a respect for decency might give him and the rest of the religious anti-choice faction cause to stop fearmongering.

Almost every single claim English makes is false. I'll take just one for illustration.

"Remember this bill makes the doctor immune from criminal and civil law."

ELOC Section 27: "A person commits an offence who - a) wilfully fails to comply with a requirement in this Act; or (b) completes or partially completes a prescribed form for a person without the person's consent; or (c) alters or destroys a completed or partially completed prescribed form without the consent of the person who completed or partially completed it.

(2) The person is liable on conviction to either or both of - a) term of imprisonment not exceeding 3 months, (b) a fine not exceeding $10,000.

Is that civil and criminal enough for you, Mr English?

JAY KUTEN, Whanganui

Treaty expertise

Bruce Moon of Nelson can be relied on to join any controversy about Treaty and Māori matters. He rubbishes Claudia Orange's "tales" about these things (Chronicle, August 21).

When I consult Wikipedia about Dame Claudia Orange, I find the details of a distinguished career as a historian in senior academic and institutional positions.

When I consult Google on Bruce Moon, I find he doesn't appear in Wikipedia, but I find references to him in connection with the Hobson's Pledge group, and a description of him as a distinguished former rocket scientist and "retired computer pioneer".

I'm old-fashioned enough to believe expertise in a relevant field deserves recognition. I would willingly listen to Bruce Moon on rockets or computers, but Claudia Orange would be my pick on history and the Treaty.

Bruce Moon has also written for the One New Zealand Foundation, who were kind enough to send me samples of their publications. They have a strong anti-Treaty and anti-Māori stance.

Their "research" methods would make angels weep, and are really a search for anything, however dubious and taken however far out of context, that can be used to denigrate Māori and the Treaty and to support their predetermined views.

DAVID JAMES, Whanganui

In praise of Trump

John Archer has "doubled-down" on his absurd claim that the Trump administration is a "fascist regime".

Mr Archer rolls out a shopping list of apparent attributes of fascist regimes, many of which could be pointed to in places like New Zealand, then asserts these attributes are "growing stronger every day" in the United States. Some assertions are simply foolish.

For example, how is the Trump administration giving "draconian powers to political police"? They are not.

Mr Archer might point to the policy of separating illegal immigrant children from accompanying adults when the adults are arrested, but that is simply the law in the US.

The president does not make the laws in the US - Congress and Senate do that. The fact the Trump administration is operating within that system shows that they are not "fascist".

How about the idea that there were "flags and slogans everywhere"? Seriously? Please show me a single US presidential campaign that doesn't?

Another claimed attribute is that of vilifying journalists. But fascists and totalitarians don't just vilify journalists, they arrest them, lock them up, close them down, or kill them.

Do we see that happening in the US? No.

What we see is a president who supports a free media and free speech, but who attacks some journalists for their biased reporting, and they all continue to freely whinge about it.

Criticise the Trump administration when it does something wrong, and praise it when it does something right.

K A BENFELL, Gonville