DOES your columnist Chester Borrows think he is still the Whanganui MP, giving us his reassurances and guidance on what to think on everything from race-based constituency seats to safety and crime?

Isn't it time he gave it a rest, and let us all have a bit of a breather from his incessant political spin?

Instead, he tells us that he happily rode into Parliament on Don Brash's coat-tails but was not big or honest enough at the time to tell electors (what he now claims were) his own strongly held views favouring special race-based treatment. If so, that was totally at odds with National Party policy pre-Brash, during Brash, and even post-Brash. Perhaps read your party manifestos, Chester.

And next he tells us that NZ is a mellow, safe and secure place, where crime is comparatively minimal and everything is motherhood and apple pie, and prison should be more like a self-rejuvenation health spa experience.

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Maybe he is now so far removed into Labour Party territory that he doesn't see communities across provincial NZ awash with gang-supplied synthetic cannabis and methamphetamine, and the petty and often violent crime that usually accompanies it.
You call this safe?

Maybe he doesn't notice the thefts of farm equipment.

Or the bruised infants, shopkeepers and grandmothers regularly admitted to ER units in our towns (ones lucky enough to still have functioning hospitals).

You think we should relax?

These almost daily reminders don't neatly fit into the narrative that Chester wants us to reimagine as being the legacy of his time in government, or the PR objectives of whatever taxpayer-funded working group Labour has established for him to keep dipping into.

G. HARRISON
Mangamahu


What about rail bridge?

A $38 million road boost for the city. I would like to know, from the council, what priority this will now give to the replacement of the Wakefield St rail overbridge.

R.A. MABBOTT
Okoia


Life choices change

Contrary to what people think, life does not end at the last breath — in many instances, it effectively has ended way before then.

Fifty years ago doctors ended these people's lives well before they might have been expected to expire. That really was the good old days.

F.R. Halpin, another with a heightened fear of death, is letting someone else's death put huge stress on his life. Is his fear about protecting others or protecting himself?

At this stage he is absolutely sure he wants to squeeze out every last minute — might not always be so.

My 97-year-old auntie, a former matron, was against euthanasia but also said they did not go to extremes to keep people alive.

In her last months she said: "I have changed my mind." So there is a chance F.R. Halpin may change his mind, but in the meantime many will just have to suffer.

G.R. SCOWN
Whanganui


It's their language, eh?

My reply to the bloke hearing the word "kodi" on National Radio was too obscure. I asked the two people who read the letter and they both thought it contained helpful radio reception tips.

The bloke heard National Radio pronouncing kauri in a "te reo" fashion, he didn't like that, and this was his way of venting.

Radio reception tips aside, I meant that the chap with his "cody" needed to move from steam radio to the 21st century and drag his "cowree" and cultural DNA with it.

The glasshouse of the English language is hardly an ideal perch for stone-throwers. My parents called it "cowree" till the day they died. I learnt the soft "r" in Maori 40 years ago, working with a woman called Ore. My cowree and reemyou suddenly sounded like a blunt chainsaw. It is their language, eh?

PETER RUSSELL
Whanganui


Local engraving great

I was interested in the Chronicle front-page article on August 24 that suggested it is now necessary to send trophies to Palmerston North for quality engraving.

I am a committee member of the Wanganui Country Music Club and can advise that Signs and Engraving on Somme Parade does an excellent job of all our engraving requirements.

This includes producing our name badges as well as engraving trophies.

Their work is prompt and professional.

JIM MAIDENS
Aramoho


Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz