A passivHaus will maintain an even temperature all year round -- not just warm in the winter. PassivHaus offers those who are considering investing in a new home (possibly the biggest investment in their lives), to do so wisely, for the benefit of their health and the environment.
You don't have to go far to find people who have built a lovely new home to the minimum code (with added insulation by some), to find their disappointment having to still contend with condensation and high energy costs to warm in the winter and cool in the summer!
PassivHaus buildings are, in fact, the most cost-effective solution for every type of building. Yes, the initial cost is more, but it is well known that they save money when you look at the cost of ownership.
Quality in the beginning to deliver a better result is common sense, not rocket science. That is why, in many regions around the world, this way of building is actually the building code.
GLENDA BROWN
Director, eHaus
Irresponsible
I was disappointed to see the front page headline in Monday's Wanganui Chronicle.
To combine the phrase "pill popping" with the use of antidepressants seems quite irresponsible.
It appears to be sensationalising the use of psychiatric medication and stigmatising the people who have been prescribed them.
ROB MILLS
Whanganui
Editor's note: There was no intention to sensationalise what is a serious issue, nor to stigmatise people who are suffering depression and in need of medication. I would agree the term "pill popping" was not a good choice.
Virtual coalition
"Neither Labour nor National is likely to change what is happening," writes Murray Shaw (letters, June 9), countering Brit Bunkley's claim that Andrew Little's party is no longer neo-liberal.
True, there are cosmetic differences in policy between the two, but both are wedded to entrenched neo-liberal ideas of austerity and the debt-funding of our public sector, along with their associate parties, Act and Greens. There may as well be a grand coalition of these four parties, considering how closely they have collaborated on financial legislation.
In 2008 Labour's Commerce Minister, Lianne Dalziel, appointed investment banker Rob Cameron as chair of a task force charged with finding ways to "deepen the capital markets". A year later Mr Cameron presented his report recommending further sales of assets plus establishing a Local Government Funding Agency empowered to sell local body debt on the open markets -- highly desired by risk-averse investors because rate revenues are guaranteed to service interest costs. Well, the virtual coalition voted unanimously for Rodney Hide's Local Government Borrowing Bill (2011), but we hear no protest about local government debt now exceeding $17 billion.
As if that wasn't enough, there was the haste to jointly vote for the Rates Validation Bill designed to compel rebellious Mangawhai ratepayers to service an Australian bank loan about which they were not consulted. The excuse from the Greens was that withholding their vote could affect the Government's credit ratings. So much for being an "opposition" party.
Apart from all this, successive Labour and National finance ministers have signed with Reserve Bank Governors identical PTAs (Policy Target Agreements) for inflation control. There is vague talk about enlarging the RBNZ's "toolkit" but nothing serious has been done.
So readers can share with me and other Socreds our scepticism as to Greens avowing they could "never" become part of a National-led government. Along with Labour, they have proved eager to comply with National's demands -- the latest regarding the bill to give DHBs dictatorial powers regarding fluoridation. But that topic can await another day.
HEATHER MARION SMITH
Gisborne
Propaganda
Murray Shaw is another being led to believe the rich are getting richer at the expense of the rest of us. He is in good company; Jim Bolger and Christine Lagarde are just a couple hoodwinked by Oxfam's faulty data, data they have no ability to collate.
You can't build houses when there is no demand, but because of our good economy and stable government it seems everyone wants to live in NZ. We have been caught napping with our pants down, so now we are playing catch-up -- nothing new, that's just how the cookie crumbles -- but we are catching up fast.
Murray somehow blames greed as the source of the problem. If the greedy had seen this coming they would have been building flat-out in their desire to fill their pockets with the unawares' cash, the money gap between cost and what extra you can make when demand goes wild.
This propaganda that is doing the rounds at the moment, that somehow it is only the wealthy that are becoming well off, is the propaganda that gave us communism. Who wants to go there?
G R SCOWN
Whanganui
