A belated attempt to remedy an A&E trial
Recently I spent time in Accident and Emergency: I am not looking for sympathy, merely setting the scene.
It was busy, people were being treated in the corridors and the waiting room was so crowded that people had to stand.
You see and hear some awful things in A&E but one of the most awful things I heard that night was a well-spoken, middle-aged woman in triage shouting that she had waited over an hour to be seen and that people who had come in after her had been seen before her.
One of those was an unconscious teenager on a stretcher. Her sense of entitlement made her ugly and clouded her judgment, she felt her need was greater than theirs.
She raged and shouted abuse. She accused the staff of not caring. Nothing could be further from the truth.
We frequently use the term heroes: sporting heroes, musical heroes, business heroes. There are none more deserving of the term than our nurses and medical staff.
I witnessed nothing but dedication, professionalism and compassion. They dug deep.
There is a very thin veneer to civilisation and that veneer is called manners. We seem to be losing ours. We lose them at our peril.
I feel shame, shame that I didn’t disentangle myself from equipment and go out into the corridor and stick up for the staff. This letter is my belated attempt to do so.
All night the staff worked with maximum efficiency, compassion and professionalism. All that was asked of that woman was patience and civility. It’s a shame that she couldn’t rise to the occasion.
[Abridged — length. Editor.]
Flourishing garden
A thank-you to the Dunedin City Council for their vision in developing a garden of rhododendron plants at Caversham Heights, at Barnes Dr on the north side of the motorway. And to the Delta contractors who maintain the garden.
The plants are flourishing and it makes for a pleasant drive into the city from the south.
The early pink rhododendra are currently out and the others are very healthy and will be blooming wonderfully over the coming months. The walkway/cycleway alongside is a well-used feature.
Also a shout-out to the local who sweeps the cycleway clear of leaves. This area is a great community and local government asset.
Holding out for a hero
Here is my plea to the Elim Group. You have the legal right to demolish the Anscombe house in Stuart St, but you know now how much it means to Dunedin people and Dunedin heritage.
Be good citizens of the city and do your new development on one of the empty sites in the central city. You will be my heroes if you do.
Power co sale advice needs a pinch of salt
I take with a grain of salt Sue Kedgley's advice to the Dunedin City Council against selling its electricity lines network (Opinion ODT 9.7.24).
In describing Wellington's experience, she rues the loss of influence that the city council had over its lines company. Three points are worth noting.
First, as I pointed out in a letter to The Dominion at the time, the lights in Wellington were then still on, despite the network being in private hands; they're been on ever since.
Second, it's true, as she points out, that distribution networks are monopolies and that once sold councils have no influence over their pricing; but that's why they are regulated.
And third, as I noted, despite the council's influence, the Wellington lines company's dividend return to ratepayers had been derisory.
Ms Kedgley also rails against the subsequent on-selling of the Wellington network, successive sellers supposedly making enormous windfall profits. This suggests either that the council, of which she was a member, had sold it too cheaply in the first place or, perhaps more likely, that successive owners had invested in upgrading the network, thus increasing its value.
Such investment might be beyond the reach of councils, as surely Ms Kedgley knows. There's just a chance that the Dunedin City Council's independent advisors might be worth heeding.
Columnist praised
Hugh Askerud’s latest column (Opinion ODT 11.7.24) is a brilliant expose of landlord and agent manipulations of rents and contracts in the student quarter. Greed and cynicism rule OK? But, as he points out, this will lead to their killing the golden goose. Mr Askerud’s writing is top-flight: I look forward to his publishing future.
Remembering start of Hyde memorial push
The time is ripe to place in history the origin of a feature of the Central Otago landscape. Every day dozens of visitors pass the Otago Cycle Trail which used to be the railway line. Most stop to admire the pyramid monument near Hyde. This commemorates the disastrous train crash of 1943 in which 21 local people were killed, not to mention dozens injured.
Though it was a major catastrophe in New Zealand, the event was overshadowed by World War 2. Even today few know about it. It is left to the tourists to discover this part of our history. The task of recording this gem of history is carried by the obilisk near Hyde.
In 1990 a campaign began to erect a memorial to the Hyde rail crash, where my father and brother died.
I wrote to the mayor of Dunedin and many other persons who might help with the process. Before the end of the year a committee of keen people had been formed to support the project. Some of these had lost relatives in the disaster.
Dusty Coleman sketched a design for the monument in a pyramidal form. Gerald Kinney, a local farmer, began to collect stones by the river. We gained permission from the DCC to build close to the old rail track. The monument was erected by Mr McMillan, a monumental mason from Alexandra.
There is a plaque on the memorial that records the victims.
In January 1991, the memorial was dedicated in a well attended public event with Bishop Penelope, Fr Scanlon and the Rev Keith Robertson blessing the proceedings.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
