Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including the release of Mark Lundy, the future of South Dunedin and the price of dairy.
Lundy parole may be but verdict still flawed
Mark Lundy has been granted parole two years after he became eligible.
The second guilty verdict was based on forensic evidence that expert witness Prof Stephen Bustin, professor of molecular science at a London University critiqued as ‘‘novel, invalid, no better than pseudoscience’’.
This test was to prove whether the speck of central nervous tissue found on Lundy’s shirt was of human origin or could have originated from eating a chop or sausage.
Four immunochemical tests were undertaken and each was performed three times. Seven out of 12 were positive and the cutoff was set arbitrarily at 50%.
If this test was consistent and reliable, why wasn’t the aggregate of positive tests a number divisible by three? Lundy’s second guilty verdict was just as flawed as his first, and was appropriately delivered on April Fool’s day.
Ian Breeze
Broad Bay
Loving it
With all the images on social media over recent days showing earthmoving machinery in action at Wanaka. I take it that they are preparing the site for the long-awaited McDonald's restaurant?
John Noble
Mosgiel
Sim city
So now the council wants us to play Sim City according to their seven possible futures for South Dunedin mail-out.
If you missed out on this ’90s computer game, players had to manage various aspects of city life, including zoning, infrastructure and citizen needs, all the while trying to keep the city thriving and prevent disasters.
One has to wonder what we are paying them to do when they want us to tell them how to play the game!
Lynne Newell
Dunedin
Better quote perhaps?
Given this Easter’s weather, perhaps the quote of the day from Sir Geoffrey Palmer (ODT, 21.4.25) ought to have been “New Zealand is an irredeemably pluvial country”.
Alan Roddick
Waverley
Huge and wild
The English poet A E Housman wrote:
The Grizzly Bear is huge and wild;
He has devoured the infant child.
The infant child is not aware
He has been eaten by the bear.
When is America going to wake up?
Russell Thew
St Leonards
Cheese and milk prices should be decreasing
With the cost of living being so prominent I want to ask if we are being ripped off? Globally, as reported in Trading Economics, which tracks commodity sales, for the 2025 period to March, milk and cheese prices have decreased globally by between 7-9%. While at the same time these items increased in price to the local consumer by 9%.
If our price is tied to global prices, as New Zealand producers claim, why has the New Zealand price increased, when globally it decreased? Are we being ripped off?
Kevin O'Hara
Dunedin
Self-congratulations
Since the decisive parliamentary vote to defeat the Treaty Principles Bill, I have observed with interest the self-congratulatory outpourings from those who opposed the Bill. If the parliamentary vote was indeed a true reflection of the wider public's attitude to the issues raised via the Bill, I wonder why the Bill's opponents were so determined that it should not be put to a public referendum.
John Bell
St Clair
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
