Letters, November 11: Coaches not proven

I have been a long-time supporter of Waikato rugby and this year has led me to wonder who on Earth runs our great union.

First we are given two coaches who have not proven themselves. Sure Scott McLeod was a great servant of Waikato as a player but he has no coaching experience.

Chris Gibbes on the other hand has done a lot of coaching but none to any great success and none as a head coach. For me the results speak for themselves.

Again recently, I was left confused. I attended the annual rugby awards and was gob-smacked to see Chris Gibbes awarded coach of the year and the Air NZ Cup team awarded team of the year. Is sixth the new first?

In any other professional sport the coaches would be getting sacked and the team would be getting little recognition. Come on, Waikato Rugby Union board, let's get back to the good old days of Waikato rugby.

JEFF MARTIN

Hamilton

No rates control

At the last elections, we had the Rates Control team for Environment Waikato. The question is, did they control the rates?

Some of them who got in with the Rates Control team jumped the fence, joined the other team and voted for a rates increase and another went overseas at the ratepayers' expense.

Whether the property value goes up or comes down, the Hamilton City Council keeps on increasing our rates. The council does not provide any extra services to existing areas where property values have fallen, just extra services to the newly developed areas.

The council even neglects the existing areas – see the state of roads, centre islands, etcetera, but the rates keep on going up and up.

Who can trust politicians? They say recession, no tax cut, tighten your belt, increase ACC and all levies in addition to GST on fuel, but permit us to travel overseas with our boyfriends or girlfriends or spouses, at the hard-working taxpayers' expense.

But at election time they request you to put a tick next to their name when they come knocking on your door. They increase their remuneration and allowances and even claim rent for their own residences.

MANO MANOHARAN

Hamilton

Mighty milkers

I was intrigued to read an article in the Waikato Times (October 31) about Fonterra farms in China.

According to the article, the farm is 35 hectares and stocks 4858 cows in a containment system. That's 72 square metres per cow – probably an OK number for such a system – but they are mightily good cows.

These 4858 cows produce 60,000 tonnes of milk a day – that's 12 tonnes of milk per cow.

Now everyone knows that a cow can't produce that much milk per day – so obviously the Times must have got those numbers from Fonterra.

After all, this part of the company (that is the China branch) claimed to have known nothing about melamine – yet one of their senior staff in China was previously a senior member of staff at the dairy research institute in Palmerston North where melamine was studied as it is a competitor to casein in markets such as the button manufacturing industry.

Fonterra still manufactures casein today. I suspect its claims to not know about melamine are about as accurate as the claim that Chinese cows can produce 12 tonnes of milk each per day.

BARRY BOURKE

Hamilton

Editor's reply: We've checked with the writer who is still in China. The story should have said, of course, two 30-tonne tankers a day, not two 30,000 tonne tankers. We regret the error.

GE products

The fact that a strain of genetically engineered corn authorised as safe for New Zealanders to eat has now been withdrawn from commercial development comes as no surprise to many of us who fear that productivity and dollar generation will take precedence over human safety in the genetic engineering of food crops.

It was not that long ago when a containment accident, resulting in regrowth of GE corn in the Gisborne area, caused many of us to worry that the "accident" was no accident at all, merely a test to check the parameters of distrust of the GE "genie" in this country.

That the GE seed in the Gisborne instance came from the United States caused some suspicion that the "accident" may simply have been an attempt to surreptitiously "uncork" the "GE genie's bottle", and convince the public that the "bottle could not be re-corked".

Of course, there may be no substance to such suspicions, but the voting public would still be wise to observe which politicians can be seen as undervaluing human safety in the interests of fast production and the earning capability of GE products.

DENNIS PENNEFATHER

Te Awamutu

Money wasted

The Waikato SPCA has certainly come under the spotlight with an investigation pending by the RNZSPCA national office.

It was a bold promotion placed re the Waikato SPCA rational – a half-page colour spread, no doubt costly – in the Waikato Times sports section of October 24. I am genuinely wondering who paid for this advertisement?

While it stated it was sponsored by "supporters" of the SPCA, the content was a somewhat disappointing letdown.

I suggest the board and management get the basics right before they go to print next time. Why? Because as S Rawson advised in a letter to the editor, this organisation is really struggling with day-to-day management.

On visiting the website as promoted in this spread I clicked on 2009 annual appeal details only to find the 2008 contacts and information still featured. I note this information has only now been updated following the public relations campaign.

With the appeal less than two weeks away and one of the major fundraisers of the year, this at least should have been correct.

The heading of the advertisement was apt: "It's ugly".

It's a great shame to see supporters' money wasted on a public relations exercise when it would have been better spent on the animals this organisation claims to "save".

ROBYN WILES

Hamilton

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