Letters: Parting fact from fiction

They overlook completely many of the most anti-Kiwi-citizenry actions the coalition and National have enabled, such as the expansion of the gangs.

Parting fact from fiction
Why are the self-promoting and self-congratulating pieces from Messrs Rurawhe and McKelvie not run as advertisements? Because that's what they are. They are misleading, vacuous, emotive, inaccurate, self-promoting and accusatory against those who may disagree.

They overlook completely many of the most anti-Kiwi-citizenry actions the coalition and National have enabled, such as the expansion of the gangs, the Sroubekisation of immigration policy, the apartheidisation of history, the criminalisation of licensed firearms owners and the focus on virtue-signalling over honest solutions.

Actually, darn it, I just answered my own question. In NZ we have laws so that under the Fair Trading Act businesses in New Zealand can't mislead you with false information in advertising.

So, never mind then. These two can never work as advertising copywriters. My bad.
RENE DE JONGH
Whanganui

Pet friendly
Thank you, Countdown, for not selling fireworks.
From Shema basenji dog, and felines Snowy, Chester, Pixi, Wobbles and Tess.
MAGGIE MOSS
Whanganui East

Evolution facts
Ms Donne-Lee's assumed equation of her own opinion about the facts of evolution relative to those of Professor Nick Lane is risible.

The bacterial flagellum she refers to as an example of "irreducible complexity" was (as I'm sure she knows full well) dealt with completely by the eminent (and Catholic) biochemist Ken Miller in The Flagellum Unspun.

In a similarly comprehensive way, Professor Sean Carrol demolishes the same "intelligent design" arguments in relation to the multiple evolutions of sight over many species and 500 million years (The Making of the Fittest, 2006, and see my letters of July 2017, ref. Gash/Hay).

The "sight" examples include clear evidence of animals having previously evolved sight but losing it by changing habitat as, for example, becoming wholly nocturnal (the howler monkey) going underground (the blind mole rat), or the deep-sea "fossil fish" coelecanth, rediscovered in December 1938. In every case their sight became defunct with disuse; they did not.

Given the large number of expertly researched books containing reams of evidential proof of evolution across the three great families of life - bacterial, archaea and eukaryote - it is a matter of ignorant impertinence for Ms Donne Lee to claim "there is still no evidence". I also find her customary refusal to name her claimed published and recognised "experts in their field" who reject what she chooses to call "evolutionary faith". Most unhelpful, while the last phrase piles insult upon mischievous and already dealt-with untruths.
RUSS HAY
Whanganui

Early settlers
There's been an interesting exchange of letters in this column recently as to who were the first inhabitants of New Zealand. Angela Stratton claims there were people here before colonisation by Maori, while Potonga Neilson cleverly avoided having to acknowledge the fact by inferring she was referring to white people only.

I had an interesting discussion about New Zealand history with an old kuia recently, during which we covered the same topic.

When I referred to there having been previous inhabitants and that males and females respectively were (to put it delicately) dealt with according to customary Maori practice of the time, she asked: "How do you know that?"

"Because it's recorded in Maori oral history," I replied.
MURRAY CRAWFORD
Whanganui

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