Ad and subtract
Hopefully, in the interests of balance, Michael Horton will also place a full-page advertisement in a forthcoming Listener that compares the death rates of New Zealand and the other, more-welcoming countries he mentions in his ad (Listener, January 29). To help him out, New Zealand, according to the World Health Organisation (at time of writing), has 52 deaths. Afghanistan, the first on his list has 7393 and Zimbabwe, the last country he mentions, 5305. No doubt Horton can find someone to help him distribute the remaining total deaths of 5.58 million among the other countries he features, who readily welcome home their citizens in the middle of a worldwide pandemic.
Terry Carson
(Pukekohe)
Perhaps Michael Horton’s advertisement, about New Zealand’s alleged policy of denying its citizens unrestricted passage home from wherever in the world they may be, should have been credited as “misplaced by” rather than “placed”. Unlike many of the countries he’s listed as allowing such travel, New Zealand is one of the few countries that doesn’t engage in or suffer from any of the following: civil war, public execution or maiming of criminals, the genocide of different races and/or adherents of religions deemed unsuitable by any country’s leadership, the subjugation of women or any number of other deplorable human-rights atrocities.
If some New Zealanders who have made their way in other parts of the world for years suddenly decide they want to return home where it’s
