Cost of overseas visits

Press, 3 February 1986, Page 12

Cost of overseas visits

Sir,—Your correspondent, James Duncan, uses the words “neurotic” and “hysterical” in his opinion of our Government’s anti-nuclear arms policy. These emotive adjectives well describe Mr Duncan’s own thinking, if his letter is to be taken seriously. What right-minded individual can oppose a policy of antinuclear warfare and call such a policy hysterical and neurotic? As to the costs of the Prime Minister’s overseas visit, this cannot be measured in dollar terms alone, and, let’s face it, Sir Robert Muldoon was hardly a stay-at-home Prime Minister. Your correspondent should know that New Zealand’s anti-nuclear policies have widespread support, not least in the United States where by no means all American citizens share President Reagan’s jaundiced view of the world. — Yours, etc., R. L. PLUCK. Tai Tapu, January 30, 1986.

Sir, — Just when I thought the pro-nuclear constabulary had receded red-faced into temporary obscurity, out comes another apologist for. nuclear might and “defensive” militarism. James J. Duncan (January 30) accuses our itinerant Prime Minister of wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars, and goes on to say”... in an attem'pt to justify our neurotic, hysterical anti-nuclear stance ...” This, of course, means that most of our population are neurotic and hysterical. Mr Duncan concludes that “... This Government is strong in adolescent idealism and expensively weak in mature realism ...” I would rather live to be a 99-year-old adolescent than have Mr Duncan’s “mature realism” of war, paranoia, poverty, exploitation, nuclear errors, pollution and global genocide. — Yours, etc. ANDREW THOMPSON. January 30, 1986.