Brassed off after seeing Project Kea statements
Regarding Miles Anderson’s comments about South Island Resource Recovery Limited’s Project Kea (ODT 11.10.24) it is important to make some relevant comments in reply. In what context were the environmental impacts “debatable”? The negative impacts to land, air and water are well known. And they want to build this 2km away from a vibrant rural school.
Incineration is the most expensive and dirtiest form of energy production, releasing more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere per megawatt-hour than coal, undermining jobs, and destroying finite resources while leaving significant amounts of toxic ash requiring secure landfill.
As for generating more energy for the grid, a modest wind farm would produce far more electricity with far less environmental impact.
What is there that we have to wait and see? There is not enough waste in the South Island to feed this proposed beast; it would need to be imported. Wouldn’t that be great for our overseas image. So much for the image of a clean, green New Zealand.
John Guthrie
Waimate
Cyclical economy
The current Biden/Harris administration should be held accountable for indirectly facilitating the situation in both the Middle East and in Ukraine.
Upon coming into office in 2021 this administration removed many of the sale of oil embargo restrictions placed upon Iran by former president Trump. This instantly resulted in hundreds of billions of dollars of oil sales revenue for Iran to fund its proxy war terrorist organisations with a firm intent to destabilise the region .
What we now see is Iran supplying ballistic missiles to Russia, funded by the very sales oil sales revenue, in the likely exchange for nuclear weapon advancement technology from Russia.
Meanwhile the Biden/Harris administration is providing billions of dollars in weapons to Ukraine to defend themselves against these same Iranian-produced missiles .
Had Iran been kept in a financial box we may would likely have never seen events of October 7 in Israel and Russia having not been supplied with long-range weaponry to attack Ukraine.
Greg Glendining
Glenross
Don’t get fooled again
The remarks from Nicola Willis chiding Dunedinites to ‘‘be sensible’’ get my dander up.
As she and Christopher Luxon, expensively dressed and coiffed at an early childhood centre, for the cameras, picked up and hugged babies who will one day be impacted no doubt by this government’s austerity decisions.
I thought how hypocritical they were, while condemning these future New Zealand citizens’ babies to an inadequate health system by shortsightedness and greed.
I say greed, because money saved for future government projects that may impress some North Islanders, such as ‘‘roads of national significance’’ and tax cuts for tobacco giants and landlords etc, serve to keep them in their high-paying government roles.
How dare they ignore and patronise like parents who think they ‘‘know better’’. This government was elected to serve all New Zealanders.
Nicola Willis and Christopher Luxon are not being ‘‘sensible’’ - nor sensitive, to the average middle-class and poor in our part of New Zealand, who need to have the promised future new Dunedin hospital built as envisaged from the start, and not put into private hands, which citizens would end up paying for.
Who do they think they’re fooling?
Pamela Ritchie
Caversham
[Abridged - Editor]
Greater rigour required on confirming identity
The recent article in the ODT on the DCC's vote, to use online consultation processes for the long-term plan, is a sign of the increasingly digital times.
However, given simple-to-access technology like random IP addresses, free emails and email automation, without checks on identity a small group of activists can give the appearance of a huge crowd. Therefore, without online proof of ID, online consultation about any contentious issues must be regarded as of questionable validity at best, and dangerous at worst, as it offers the potential for mis- and dis-information being perceived as accurate and to be acted upon.
So: a logical requirement would be to make the Department of Internal Affairs RealMe, or other government ID, mandatory for submitting to online consultation. I would ask the council if they plan to do that, to help assure the consultation's validity.
David Cohen
Kew
[Iris Eijbrink, DCC web team manager, responds: While we understand the issues the author is bringing forward, we are doing our due diligence to stay ahead of these new technologies, and assure a valid consultation process. We have tools in place to monitor and prevent fraudulent or suspicious activity regarding consultation submissions, and all submissions are carefully assessed by our officers. We have had little to no problems with online submissions in the past.
An identity validation tool such as RealMe is certainly something we could consider implementing; however there is a chance it may pose a barrier to some members of the public, or make the submission process more difficult and less accessible.
We are also confident in our current processes to filter out spam and bulk submissions, and do not feel the need to implement a tool like the ones suggested at this time.]
Tit-for-tat for a century and no end in sight
As usual Gwynne Dyer (ODT, 4.10.24) effectively summarises the situation from the Israeli, US, and their leaders’ points of view.
The current outbreak started with the attack by Hamas on October 7 a year ago, but many will not appreciate tit-for-tat fighting has been the history of this theatre for 100 years.
Atrocities and massacres have featured in most of these encounters. Why would the Palestinians listen to Western nations? They weren’t consulted in 1948 when Israel was established by UN Fiat.
Benjamin Netanyahu knows the Palestinians can always be relied on to respond in predictable ways.
I don’t believe he was caught off guard by the Hamas attack a year ago. The tunnels were not constructed with bags of sand in trouser legs. It justified further military action and destruction of infrastructure.
A state of continuous warfare can be expected until Israel has realised its ultimate goal.
Stuart Mathieson
Palmerston
Bonus bonds
Finance Minister Nicola Willis called the hospital site ‘‘ill chosen’’, which I believe is the main problem.
Born in 1939, I recall people talking about ‘‘war bonds’’ to help fight for our war effort, our freedom. It seems easier to finance war than peace.
Would it be possible to build our hospital calling on citizens to take up hospital bonds? Could 25% of Lotto go into health funds?
It is so easy to sit back and demand this hospital be built. I see that we, an ageing population, are a challenge to Treasury (ODT, 23.9.24). What with Covid and this, makes one feel guilty that we have reached senior years.
David Mackie
Clinton
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