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Climate stance criticised
Councillor ‘Nay’ Sayers latest opposition to the climate action targeted rate beggars belief! The responsibility for Climate Action is the responsibility of Central and Local Government, and every resident and ratepayer. The Rodney area with its extensive foreshore is particularly impacted by sea rise and ever increasing severe weather events.
Ken Cutforth, Snells Beach
Kindness of strangers
I want to publicly thank the people who came to our aid on the night of Monday, 17 January, about 9.30pm. We had a puncture when driving in our host’s car from Matakana Village (after enjoying a restaurant meal) to Snells Beach.
A local man came to our aid and went home for a larger jack, a couple in a dark-coloured ute (the woman was named Shelley and she had a young white coloured collie dog named Sky) stopped to help and a young woman guided me back to my car.
As the tyre could not be changed, both cars drove behind us to make sure we got to the Snells Beach house. Truly a very touching and kindly act for three seniors. I plan to make a donation to St John Ambulance in return.
Annie Guy, Katikati
Stop cosying up
I was extremely annoyed to read elected local board member Phelan Pirrie’s opinion piece (MM Jan 31) endorsing Auckland Council’s spending. He is clearly one of those complicit in supporting Phil Goff’s budgets and direction setting.
What we need are elected members who are prepared to challenge what is clearly an under-performing Auckland Council. Those elected to office should be listening to the deep concerns ratepayers currently have about the misuse of our rates, not cosying up with the Mayor.
Catherine Ashby, Wellsford
Homeopathy efficacy questioned
I’m one of the sceptics referred to by Eugene Sims in his Health column (Feb 14) so I’d be very interested to see the “many excellent studies” he suggests support the efficacy of homeopathy. Perhaps he could post some links in a future column. According to an article in the Smithsonian Magazine, Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council assessed more than 1800 studies on homeopathy and only found 225 that were rigorous enough to analyse and a systematic review of these studies revealed “no good quality evidence to support the claim that homeopathy is effective in treating health conditions”.
Also, the NHS in England stopped funding homeopathy in 2017 due to “the lack of any evidence for its effectiveness”, a decision that was backed up by a High Court judgment in 2018 (www.nhs.uk/conditions/homeopathy/).
The NHS has also stated that “there’s been extensive investigation of the effectiveness of homeopathy” and that “there’s no good-quality evidence that homeopathy is effective as a treatment for any health condition”. Given that modern technology is now able to detect many very strange and unimaginably tiny things such as the Higgs Boson particle, surely there should be some scientific evidence of the mysterious “type of electric charge” that is supposed to “energise” the liquid. If there is, let’s see it.
Ian Docking, Warkworth
