Letters: Virginia Lake poor choice for event

I AM amazed the Whanganui council has allowed a school "sports" event to go ahead around our beautiful Virginia Lake over the last couple of days.

I walk, plus many other people enjoy the peace and quiet while walking around the pathways.

Having to put up with very noisy schoolchildren shouting and screaming, plus a loudspeaker blaring forth during the games must have been very frightening for the swans, ducks and birds etc.

Why wasn't it held at the sports grounds, I'd like to know.

JUNE HOOPER
Whanganui

Get your facts straight

A deluge of "historians" (Chronicle September 6) all appearing in unison? Donald Brash went to Keith St School here and is known more as a politician and former Reserve Bank of NZ governor.

The hysteria from some parties quoting websites is unhelpful. My earliest ancestor came to Wanganui in 1861 from Cork, in Ireland. His cousin went to Jerusalem with Mother Mary Aubert as a nun. So the verbal story goes back to then and was passed down, as were the written accounts.

Lt. Bryce's defamation trial was in 1886 and the book is in our library. So I am more a "scholar of the road" than myth.

Truth is often the first casualty. So who knows the reality from that long ago?
As the Bible would say, whoever wrote it down. Get your facts straight.

KEN CRAFAR
Durie Hill

Judgment an insult

The judgment of the High Court in Wellington declared the Charities Board was correct in cancelling the charity status of Family First. This is incoherent and unjust.

Justice Simon France stated: "Its core purpose of promoting the traditional family unit cannot be shown to be in the public benefit in the charitable sense under the Act."

The traditional family of exclusively one woman and one man has been accepted by mankind since the beginning of time; New Zealand was founded on the traditional family.
The claim of the Charities Board and the High Court that the traditional family is not the foundation stone for a healthy society is outrageous and an insult to every traditional family in New Zealand.

The judge has failed to explain why the traditional family does not serve society nor has he presented another form of family that is now superior.

KEN ORR
Spokesman, Right to Life

New generation, new world

It never ceases to amaze me — this never-ending argument of the way Māori ancestors and colonial ancestors treated each other.

We all came here in boats (until planes).

You are not your ancestors; you do not come from New Zealand, so you are not indigenous. You are a new generation living in a new world. — Edited.

R PEARSON
Feilding

I've got your answer

In answer to Doug Price's query (letters, Chronicle September 14): Where did the term "I've got your back" come from? Here is your answer, thanks to Mr Google.

In the military, "got your six" means "I've got your back". The saying originated with World War I fighter pilots referencing the rear of an aeroplane as the six o'clock position. If you picture yourself at the centre of a clock face, the area directly in front of you is 12 o'clock and the area behind you is six o'clock.
You will often hear this term used in police or army type shows where one team member will support the other by "watching their back".

H MAY
Whanganui

Correcting injustices

I saw a man wrestling with the quantitative and qualitative in this morning's Chronicle (September 12, 2018). Jay Kuten took the New York Times to task over its anonymity of information. This is like some who declare the bias of the Spanish Inquisition.

Jay writes well (sometimes I can hear his teeth grinding) on anonymity. I would like to remind him of his statement in an article some months ago where "everything is quantitative not qualitative".

The reference to the word "complicit" here with the NYC is qualitative. Just like a lot of things: hope, life, thought, heroism, sympathy, nature, beginnings, contradiction, ideals and so on.

When he uses the word complicity Jay is talking about the nature or essence of something. Not only that, he is saying it is wrong. Why is it wrong? Why is complicity in this case wrong? We need an authority to make that value, to make that statement.

If he did a little spiritual reading he may find with personal effort, or easier by asking someone, correcting injustices has astonishing rewards.

F R HALPIN
Whanganui

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