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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Vol 35 no. 19. 3rd August 1972

Letters

page 2

Letters

Cock Dribbling?

Sir,

For sometime I have been a subscriber to "Cock", and, when Chris Wheeler cried "wolf" about a police raid on his flat dutifully did I write to my local M.P. (Dr. Wall) to complain about such a breach of civil liberties.

Now Mr Wheeler's mouthings have wound down to a subdued whimper — we learn he has just happened to discover his information about a certain person was not correct. This is not the first time this ebullient writer has had to apologize for libellous accusations unleashed in the heat of the mement. I am rapidly losing confidence in Wheeler and his pseudo-socialist circle who in my opinion are so rude, brash and incompetent as to present no alternative at all to the rude, brash incompetent clique at present ruling the capitalist world. I might add also that Wheeler has also exhibited unreliability in the dispatch of "Cock" and reply to "Cock" correspondence).

Either Wheeler closes up "Cock", which at present is surpassed only by Readers' Digest for "Worst Journalism of the year Award" or he learns a few kindergarten manners. This time he may have cried "Wolf" once too often.

Love and Peace

(Mrs) Margaret Davey.

Against the Wall

Who wrote this letter for you Maggie, Mr Muldoon? They grabbed and read your letters to me, along with a lot of other peoples letters. You weren't involved in a criminal libel neither were any other correspondents. I'd say that's a breach of civil liberties. I'd say taking address books and subscription details and a confidential file on the seamen's dispute stinks of a politically motivated investigation that bears an unpleasantly close relationship, to methods favoured by right wing dictatorships overseas. As Dr Martin Findlay remarked in the House, such measures employed against Chris Wheeler are just as easily used against any other critic or publication.

Since when does it become "whimpering" to admit a genuine mistake? The daily newspaper you read, Maggie makes many more serious and deliberate mistakes. When was the last time the Evening Post or Dominion were charged with "criminal libel"? Ask Dan Riddiford he might be able to tell you.

As you say "this is not the first time" I've apologised. It's the second. There haven't been any other apologies although you imply otherwise.

I've never called myself a socialist.

As to your other remarks - what's the matter with being rude, brash incompetent and unreliable? Some of my best friends......

I'll hang that award in some appropriate place.

Yeah - far out stuff Maggie. Always thought you young married sheilas had the clues.

Peace and Love

Christopher Robin

P.S. How's about a donation to the Cock Robin Defence Fund?

Love Thy Neighbour

Sir,

It's really students who are the mother-fuckers of this world — I've just come across one who takes first prize in the "cunt of the year" contest.

I was in the varsity post office on Friday morning a week ago to draw some money (what money?) out, and left $5 on a table in there for about two minutes. By the time I realized that I didn't have the money, some prick had come along and made sure that I never would. Looking back on it, I'm pretty sure that the joker who nicked it knew whose the money was, or at least had some idea. I've been to the various lost property places around, and the money hasn't been handed in.

Sure, I know, In this great, socialist, "love my neighbour" type world, my money's your money, and yours is mine. Except judging by this situation I would say that I'll never see any of his. I didn't choose to be born into a world where money speaks louder than words - that's just the way things happened — and I can see no reason why I should finance some joker's ego trip in the pub tonight when I don't even have enough money to go myself.

Keith Walton.

A Load of Rubbish

Sir,

Since this is the week in which we all cultivate a hypersensitive attitude towards questions of Ecology, a little campus introspection is called for.

On Wednesday the 27th the Library Foyer was carpeted with a thick pile of Bank of New South Wales propaganda leaflets. Few Students stopped to take one of these blurbsheets; most trampled over them with casual indifference.

Throughout that same week every available space was graffitted with the semifictional ideologies, policies, life stories and otherhangups of all those politically minded campaigning for positions on Exec.

Throughout the year to date the University grounds have been snowed under with broadsheets from every partisan group and loudmouthed individual.

What I want to know is this: What happens to all this paper once it has been read/or ignored) and discarded? Do we show our extreme tolerance toward capitalist and/or National concerns and send it to Paper Mills to be recycled? —Do we burn it?, Do we bury it? - or what?

If student ideologies spent as much time formulating imaginative publicity campaigns as they did in formulating the image they are trying to project we might avert alot of this unnecessary usage of paper.

The Public Relations people responsible need to take a message from Marshall McLuhan and forgo a medium that involves the visual senses only i.e. broadsheet, propoganda and digress into that form of advertising that titillates or aggravates all the senses simultaneously.

Black and white optical design

If you want people to know who you are emblazon "Vote Joe Bloggs" across a well liberated breast. The liberationists will want to know who you are in order to castrate you for sexploitation and the Chauvinists will nominate you to an honorary position in Hugh Heffner's elite as well.

If Mike McKinley wants to make himself familiar around campus it doesnt require wallpapering the buildings with photographs of his kindly visage - Just get Alick Shaw to wear a personalized McKinley Teeshirt.

For that matter - since each of these demagogues seems to have an aura of disciples why dont they all wear motifs symbolizing their leader. Most other groups advertise their affiliations by wearing various paraphenalia, so isnt it time that the political clique also buttoned up. Who knows - the shock of seeing a giant-sized Vote Robert Reid badge blazing blatantly from a neighbouring lapel may provoke a rightwing "Fascist" into a political confrontation then again it may be the end of a beautiful friendship.

Whatever happens for the earth's sake lets stop this irresponsible and unnecessary use of so much paper - and as a corollary to this plea will future propagandists indulge in a more imaginative, more responsible advertising medium.

Its not so much what you say - even if some of it is true but its How you say it that counts.

Kathi.

What a Foe We Have in Jesus!

Sir,

While we are repeatedly told by the intelligentsia of the revolutionary movement that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, it would 'seem that in The Faction Line the sword quails before the pen. Or perhaps more accurately the crucifix? Logan, Gager, and Devereaux have been selfrighteously exposed as traitors to the working class while the God Squad are left to delude the workers in peace that passeth all understanding. A "One Way" badge to the first person who serves on the same vestry as the "Big F."

Don Franks

As I sit here, in the library a good view of Wellington's harbour is laid out below. In the foreground tied up behind some building lies the good ship "Maori". Then I think of the accommodation — more so the lack of it available at cheap rates to students etc.

Thinking further I know that the "Maori" was a passenger ferry, sort of a floating boarding house, full of small rooms suitable for accommodation for many hundreds of students.

It now seems to me that the "Maori" is just waiting for somebody to buy her and I guess she's going fairly cheap, would, with suitable modification make excellent accommodation for desperate students. The vast areas of cargo space could be utilized for recreational areas, which would be used for concerts, films, common rooms or gymnasiums.

It therefore seems to me and surely to many other people who have wondered about the fate of this vessel that this would be an excellent use for it. Overseas other groups have modified such boats for various requirements (take for example the Queen Elizabeth I, modified for a floating university before some arsonist wrote her epitaph

It however seems aparent that the purchase and modification of the "Maori" would prove more economical than buying land and then building an apartment block for students. For this reason I believe that this university should look into the possibilities of such a venture.

James D.C. Patchett.

When in Hell. . .

Sir,

When in hell is the Anarchist Movement (P.O.Box 28015) going to grow up and get stuck into some real action against the system. The only thing these quasi-radicals have done so far is to write all over the toilet walls of the S.U.B. If having a 'Bomb Evening' in the smoking room constitutes active opposition to the state things have changed since Bakunin. Why dont these armchair militants do something usefull like machine-gunning Major-General McKinnon.

(P.S. unsigned — scared of reprisal). (Spelling unchanged - so are we - Ed.]

Concern for the Unborn

Sir,

Two points struck me after reading the pathetic stories about abortions in Salient. The first was the breakdown in family relationships — the girls could not bring themselves to tell their mothers, or indeed any responsible adults. Their first reaction was the childish one of trying to avoid responsibility for their own actions.

The second point concerns the lack of a spokesman for the child — there is no one to speak for the one truly innocent individual.

If one does not consider the fusion of sperm and ovum the vital point at which the life of the child begins, where else is a logical point? The idea of a 'viable' baby —one who can support life apart from the mother — leads to extremely variable limits even now. We can look forward to these limits being pushed back further as medical science develops. We must try to have an absolute, unclouded by emotion.

I would hope that the extreme concern shown by many for the worth of every individual life in wartime would overflow into a similar concern for the unborn child.

Patricia Morgan. (Mrs.)

STAFF Produced by Gil Peterson (Editor) and Roger Steele, David Naulls, Graeme Collins, John Muirhead, Helen Pankhurst, Geni Anderson and Colleen Hodge. Photography Jothiram & Lee Advertising Roger Green (793-319) Bryan Pratt (758-684). SALIENT Office: 70-319 ext. 81. 75 P.O.Box 1347. Wellington N.Z. Printed by Wanganul Newspapers Ltd. P.O. Box 433 Wanganui, and published by the Victoria University of Wellington Students Association (Inc) P.O. Box. 196 Wellington.