Keep election reports neutral
In the editorial of August 11, the Chronicle openly urged the Green Party candidate to withdraw her name from the ballot paper, claiming a vote for Nicola Patrick would be a wasted vote.
"Nicola Patrick has said she does not expect to win the Whanganui seat ...
"But her name will be on the ballot and any votes she receives will, in effect, be wasted.
"Her 10 per cent early support may be votes Steph Lewis needs."
In other areas where "dirty political deals" have been mooted, the media and political leaders have been critical. Labour's new leader has said Labour will not be pulling any of its candidates to assist candidates of other parties.
On August 15, the Chronicle published the results of its shonky online reader poll under the headline: "Lewis leads poll of readers".
The Chronicle has very poor reach into South Taranaki, and negligible into Central Taranaki, which together comprise 40 per cent of the Whanganui electorate, areas that have traditionally been strong National Party and electorate voters.
Online polls of this nature have no credibility where political parties can skew the results by galvanising large numbers of supporters to go online and vote, and individual supporters can vote more than once by using different devices.
The Whanganui electorate is fortunate to have several strong candidates to choose from this election, and it is the local media's role to put forward the attributes of the candidates.
Wanganui Chronicle readers look to their newspaper for unbiased, informative and reliable election coverage to uphold the newspaper's proud publishing traditions.
ANDY JARDEN, Whanganui
EDITOR'S NOTE:
Accusations of media bias - including veiled ones like this - occur at almost every election. The fact that they are commonplace does not mean they should not be strongly repudiated.
The Chronicle will continue to cover the election in an unbiased and objective manner; we will report the news from the campaign and opinion pieces will address the issues, one of which is tactical voting. Mr Jarden's selective and "biased" extracts suggest he did not read the editorial carefully enough.
The Chronicle did not "urge" Greens candidate Nicola Patrick to withdraw from the ballot. It noted she had put her name forward for a job (Whanganui MP) she did not want (" ... she intends to remain in Whanganui as a Horizons regional councillor ... ") and, in view of the memorandum of understanding between Labour and the Greens, we said: "Perhaps she should consider withdrawing."
As for deals ("dirty" or otherwise) in electorates and tactical voting, the National Party has stepped back to allow Peter Dunne (United Future) and David Seymour (Act) seats in Parliament to support the Government.
Mr Jarden needs to inform himself better. This from the Stuff website of July 26, 2017: "Prime Minister Bill English has called for National voters to back ACT leader David Seymour in Epsom and United Future leader Peter Dunne in Ohariu." (Prior to Mr Dunne's departure).
As for our online poll, the editorial Mr Jarden critiques said this: "It [the Chron online poll] makes no pretence at being scientific or a reliable predictor of how things will unfold ... "
The actual online poll (on our website and on Facebook) stated that is was "unscientific", and the story about the poll result states: "It [the Chron online poll] did not claim to predict who will win the Whanganui seat."
I doubt Mr Jarden would have complained had his favoured candidate been at the top of the poll and in the headline - so perhaps that indicates where the true bias lies.
Union coverage
Some weeks ago your readers were favoured with a wall chart of the scheduled games for the Mitre 10 Cup and the Heartland Championship
Then you published the pundits' predictions for the first round of the former with matches on Thursday, Friday, three on Saturday and two on Sunday.
A fine build-up, but as of August 22, no results have been printed. In the same period, seven articles have appeared on the league game, mostly about the woeful Warriors.
Rugby league has minimal, if any, interest in this part of the world and we would much prefer results and summaries of union matches played in provincial New Zealand.
This is in no way critical of your South Taranaki sports writer who gives a wonderful coverage of the game in Whanganui.
PETER JOHNSTON, Whanganui East
Hidden debt
National tells us how well they're managing the economy. Bullswool! There's a large matter of interest costs, plus principal repayments.
With Crown and state-owned enterprise debt, that amounts to billions of dollars. Where is it coming from?
Not much will be from the economy - their so-called $1.6 billion surplus is already spent.
Is it coming from taxation or from future borrowing, or is it coming out of education, health, policing, etc, all in crisis?
It's a growing debt and when the piper must be paid you will know the true extent of damage this irresponsible government has created.
L GOLDSACK, Gonville
Maybe pollution not to blame
"Alarming asthma stats ..." (Chronicle, August 18).
I recall that circa 1970 there was anecdotal evidence that Wanganui may have had a higher rate of respiratory ailments than the national average.
My feelings in 1970 were that it wasn't surprising, given our (then) stinking open sewer of a river, the stink from Imlay freezing works, the acid-soaked air produced by Kempthorne Prosser chemical works in Aramoho (strong enough to rust and rot workers' cars in the parking lot), the enormous vats of sulphuric acid used to clean wool at Wanganui Woollen Mills at Aramoho, and the proud, patriotic news item (in one of the two Wanganui daily newspapers) revealing manufacture in Heads Rd of Agent Orange used in the Vietnam war.
Possible lackadaisical factory processes in its production may have helped contribute to the mix of some fairly "sick" air back then.
Obviously, my assumptions were wrong about reasons for a higher rate of respiratory illness about 1970. If our rate is still higher some half a century later, and the above polluters now don't exist, then this city should look elsewhere for why we still suffer.
STAN HOOD, Aramoho
Comment: There are food sources that have a stronger attraction for certain birds.