Price rorts
I am writing this letter from aboard our yacht in Bermuda.
I've a hell of a hangover, my fellow retired vege and fruit growers are snoring and farting, the yacht is rocking. We have all grown fat and unhealthy.
Living this life of excess is just not all it's cracked up to be, and on top of this I have this terrible pang of conscience, thus this letter.
I wish to thank the NZ taxpayer for having subsidised us for so long.
Also, many thanks to the supermarkets, for always accepting our cost-plus price.
We are all feeling rather rotten about the many poor people unable to afford fruit and veges.
By way of atonement, we the undersigned wish to come clean about how simple it is to grow fruit and vege.
Just find a bit of land, sprinkle the seed, come back a few months later, click your fingers, and willing workers will come running.
Treat them well, do not expect them, under any circumstances, to work in the rain and mud or boiling hot day. After all, the produce will keep as good as gold till the weather comes right.
Then all that is required is to add up all your costs - including, of course, depreciation on the new BMW.
To be fair, you should deduct from your cost the taxpayer subsidy. We are ashamed to say we didn't always do this.
Phone up the supermarket chain. You may have to make a toll call to overseas, but you can add it to your costs. Dictate to them the price you want, and don't let them take the produce out unless paid first.
See? All so simple.
We, the undersigned, have great sympathy for Denise, for we realise due to her crippled leg, and being racked with pain, having suffered from Stirling Borrows' fast getaway, she is unlikely to be able to participate in this lucrative growing business.
However, we encourage her to keep writing letters to the editor, as she has such a talent for ferreting out the truth. We are sure her research into TPP would be equally accurate.
For and on behalf of all us ex-Wanganui growers here in Bermuda ...
PAUL WATSON
Papaiti
Bigoted attack
D Partner's intolerant and bigoted attack on Mandy Donne-Lee for daring to have an opinion different to D Partner or Carol Webb was quite enlightening. It wasn't just the anti-Christian views expressed as vitriolic personal attacks but also Partner's few false arguments fitted in between them.
For a start, the claim that no one complains about the "morning after pill" is clearly wrong. The irony is that those complaining the loudest should be the women who have such unhealthy drugs promoted to them. But to claim that anyone has the "right" to dispose of an unwanted child is shocking.
Partner claims that no one opposes the "morning after pill", so no one should worry about disposing of an older, unwanted child - at least before they get the chance to be born.
This ridiculous argument was parodied quite clearly by a media commentator recently, when he said he supported a woman being able to get rid of children, because they are noisy and hog the PlayStation.
Partner claims others have no right to dictate how Partner will "depart this mortal coil", which is something you could yell at the hit-and-run driver bearing down on you, I suppose, but makes no sense in the context of the euthanasia debate. Donne-Lee is not dictating how people will die, the proponents of euthanasia are.
The spurious claim of it only being for those who "choose" it is disproved by all the evidence, not only because people "choosing" out of fear are hardly choosing freely, but because every system in the world that has tried to legalise "voluntary euthanasia" has inflicted involuntary deaths on large and growing numbers of citizens.
K A BENFELL
Gonville
