Balance needed in cruise ship reporting
There have been a number of recent articles about the cruise ship industry’s importance to the local economy. I am concerned about the ever-increasing numbers of such articles in which the Cruise Ship Association is given a lot of exposure about how important they are to the national economy while dissenting voices from fed-up locals and climate protesters are lucky to get a few words in.
Any article about the benefits of this industry should surely be balanced by the climate emergency the government declared in 2020. These ships (with their massive carbon footprint per passenger) absolutely fly in the face of this sombre fact with their unnecessary luxury emissions.
As well as the issues of the ships’ carbon emissions, ship owners have also been found guilty in court and paid huge fines for dumping both oil and plastic, running over whales and destroying coral reefs.
Locally, we have to breathe their emissions and subsidise the passengers with our rates via water use, public transport (extra public buses because lots of cruise ship passengers use them because they are cheaper) and the local excursion train (which is only kept going because of these ships).
Please can we get some balance on the impacts of the industry every time it wants to blow its trumpet?
Bruce Mahalski
Dunedin
[Abridged — length. Editor.]
Telling truth
Who can read Mike Hunter’s knowledgeably accurate description of the nursing situation in our hospitals (Opinion ODT 5.10.24) and not be moved to tears? Everything he outlines is clearly true, with no exaggeration.
What can we do about it? We must continue to hold this government to account, for it holds the purse-strings. We must do everything we can, be it to protest, write letters or if able to, send submissions. We can send copies or the actual cut-out excellent articles by Mike Hunter which portray the parlous conditions in which our excellent nurses are bravely having to do their work.
This is a crisis — a crisis for our whole health system, which means all of us. It takes absolute priority over all other issues.
Pamela Ritchie
Caversham
Food for thought
Your three opinion page articles (ODT 25.10.24) provided considerable food for thought about some dynamics that lie behind an increasingly polarised and violent world in which individuals struggle to foster hope. A common thread was an irony inherent in the interplay in society between institutions and individuals: the hunger for power that is too often fostered within faceless institutions contrasts with the humanitarian hopes and activities of individuals who often feel powerless except they band together in protest.
Metiria Stanton Turei recognised that collective iwi institutions are doing very well economically while too many Maori individually still suffer poverty. Forough Amin contrasted power hungry rulers with grassroots people who desire peace and prosperity. Robbie Moginie highlights the inefficiency of the health system with the needs of an increasingly older population.
So what are individuals to do about this malaise, short of revolt? Both Metiria and Forough pinned their hopes on the successes of past generations. Forough also hopes for a willingness of people to rise above religious zealotry and racial prejudice, coupled with a spirit of human unity and love. There is also an almost forgotten ancient revolutionary alternative: a change of heart.
Individuals can, bit by bit, be conduits for widespread change in their world but, it would seem, not without the protection of institutions, however corrupt they may be.
Ron Adams
Wakari
Both US candidates divisive and unworthy
What an extraordinary editorial to publish at the closing of the United States elections (ODT 6.11.24).
It has always been a wise politician who, if asked who they would prefer to be elected in a foreign country, to reply that it is up to the citizens of that country to determine their own destiny. However the Otago Daily Times has chosen to nail its editorial stance firmly to the mast of the Democrats. A reader could infer that a similar editorial position has, or is, being taken on politics here in New Zealand.
What is without doubt is that the US system of voting for the presidency is gravely flawed. I would strongly suggest that neither candidate is worthy of the role, and that the system itself fails to allow the most qualified or inspiring person to rise to being selected. Joe Biden was obviously struggling to perform in the role and it was only because of frantic work behind the scenes that he was persuaded by the party machine to stand down.
He had insisted that he would stand against Trump in this current election and only the most foolish were not able to see that he was no longer capable of even stringing a sentence together, let alone lead a country as important as America. Ms Harris, as vice-president, had failed to impress in her role and continues to deliver long meaningless word salads, while Mr Trump offends huge numbers on a daily basis by his outrageous statements.
Both candidates are equally divisive in their own way, both unworthy of the role.
Whatever the result, it is simply astonishing that in a country so large, so influential, so dominating, that their presidential elections cannot offer up, from either the left or right, a candidate that is inspiring, uniting and believable.
Russell Garbutt
Clyde
