The umbrella organisation for cycling in New Zealand has not said it does. Is there anybody or anything that does, apart from one individual person recently relocated to Wanganui?
Any thinking person must ponder the justification for the Mayor's ongoing pursuit of adding a fivefold velodrome operating expense to current council debt.
Perhaps the Wanganui Chronicle has an investigative reporter who can supply us with facts on who is currently using the velodrome, who wants the proposed velodrome improvements and why, details on the fivefold increase in annual operating costs, who is going to use the velodrome after any improvements and most importantly, who is going to pay for it.
"User pays" should be the catchphrase for any debt-laden council.
V W BALLANCE
Westmere
Offshore mining
What whales? asks Cameron Madgwick, CEO, Petroleum Exploration and Production Association of New Zealand.
Might I suggest he looks a little closer and perhaps beneath the surface of the sea. I could look at my lawn and say that there are no worms there. This is just one of the assumptions he makes about understanding the environment he wants to explore.
As was found when TTRL was planning to mine the iron sands, they also claimed there was "nothing in the mined area". It took the effectively zero-funded dive team from Taranaki to film the diversity of life there.
The science and facts tell us seismic work in any area is disruptive to marine life, particularly mammals. That is why exploration is directly bad for the environment.
But, even more importantly, I cannot understand how the fossil fuel industries don't get that they are directly responsible for climate change by the continuing use of fossil fuels and their knowing denial and obfuscation about CO2 affecting global warming.
Documents show they denied the science and covered up facts they knew to be true from the mid '80s, and spent billions of dollars in this denial.
It is estimated that if we want to avoid catastrophic climate change 50 per cent of global gas reserves, 33 per cent of oil, and 82 per cent of coal must remain unburned. That is fossil fuel known reserves, without looking for more.
What Cameron Madgwick hasn't explained is why he thinks it is necessary to look for more oil and gas. The logic of his exploration is that after we have burnt the current reserves, taking us above 2 degrees warming, we should hurry up and find more so we can get even warmer. They should take their own advice and base their fossil search on, as he says, "science and fact".
Cameron Madgwick should be feeling embarrassed to be involved in promoting greater climate change — or hasn't he noticed how expensive the current 1 degree increase has been, as we've seen this summer?
It would be more appropriate to put the oil money he was proposing for exploration into repairing the storm damage his industry is responsible for.
JOHN MILNES
Aramoho
Do no harm
To Jay Kuten in response to his article, "Empowering dying patients":
The initial sentence in the Hippocratic Oath is "First do no harm".
Forcing people to continue trying to live when they are in excruciating pain and have no quality of life any more and no hope of improvement, is doing harm.
Allowing them to stop living and assisting them to do so must certainly be doing no harm.
Loved your article.
SUE BEARDSLEE
Aramoho
Fluoride
The unique properties of fluoride were discovered in 1901 and the argument over its use has raged ever since.
Millions of words, and no real agreement has ever been reached with the "antis'' and quite frankly I fear never will be.
In the beginning, opponents decided fluoride in drinking water was poisonous, then backed off and were more concerned with their so-called rights than the enormous potential for the total public good.
A recent US Public Health review of all data concluded expert panels that had reviewed the body of fluoride international literature concluded correctly the only risk with fluoride was the condition known as dental fluorosis — sometimes a mild discolouration of the enamel.
DARRELL GRACE
Whanganui
Send your letters to: The Editor, Wanganui Chronicle, 100 Guyton St, PO Box 433, Wanganui 4500; or email editor@wanganuichronicle.co.nz
