It’s only a building, how hard can it be?
It is no wonder that many health professionals are packing their bags and heading to Australia.
When I read the ODT (16.8.24) front-page article with a senior Cabinet member stating that the new Dunedin hospital build is "too large" for the New Zealand market I really feel that the whole project is a lost cause. Perhaps he is suggesting that the best option may have been to build it somewhere offshore and then have it barged to where it is meant to go.
It may be a good idea to place an option to buy the HMAS Canberra from the Australian Defence Force when its time is up. It would certainly be large enough, has standalone power capabilities and has a large helicopter facility built in.
Come on now, get real – it’s only a building.
Wardrobe advice
Mayor Radich should be dusting off those They Save We Pay T-shirts if he wants an annual music festival. It's funny how, since National won, he has backed off. The idea of a music festival is awesome obviously but those sorts of events mean busy EDs. I'm sure he has thought of this, and has complete confidence in the government.
Paying for it all
The Conversation piece by a team of health academics on the state of our health system is compelling (Opinion ODT 19.8.24) and the conclusion that an appropriately tax-funded system is the only feasible means of achieving anything worthwhile seems unarguable.
However, it takes a government with the political will to institute the appropriate taxes to realise such a conclusion. It would, therefore, be useful if the same team of academics could sit the Labour health spokeswoman down and elicit a straight answer as to whether she supports wealth taxes, capital gains, or whatever combination of broad-based taxes is necessary.
Dr Verrall must be aware that without a comprehensive shift in tax policy her criticisms of the current government's underfunding of health can never be anything more than the routine gestures of an opposition politician.
She could, perhaps, remind her leader that unless he acts on this front, soon, her task is futile and she might even have to resign.
But wait, there’s more
To complement Jean Balchin's excellent account (Opinion ODT 12.8.24) of Phoebe Anna Traquair's visionary murals in Edinburgh's Mansfield Traquair Centre, readers may like to know about a slightly earlier creation of hers, on the walls of the Song School of the Cathedral Church of St Mary on Palmerston Pl, Edinburgh.
This splendid series of murals, commissioned by the Edinburgh Social Union and completed between 1888-92, illustrates the canticle Benedicite — where all God's works, animate and inanimate, are bidden to praise him — and portrays famous contemporaries of Traquair such as William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, alongside birds, beasts and flowers, and even local clergymen and choristers painted from life.
Thanks to YouTube, you can see this cornucopia of visual delight by going to "St Mary's Episcopal Cathedral Song School Tour".
As Jean points out, only in the 1990s did Traquair's fame spread afar, but the Song School's murals were already greatly treasured by the cathedral when I was sub-organist there in 1963-64.
A compliment for the cartoonist’s perspicacity
The ODT has in the past advised that cartoonists’ efforts are not intended to be taken seriously.
However, Mr Yeo’s efforts of Thursday suggest that the subject of legislation is generally obeyed by the law-abiding, but tends to be ignored by the criminal fraternity. In this instance he should be congratulated for his perspicacity.
Where firearm controls are concerned there is compliance with the law by licensed firearm owners, yet those meant to be targeted by the laws stoutly publicise their unwillingness to comply.
Vive la difference
In response to Michael Gibson (Letters ODT 13.8.24), every human should indeed have the chance to flourish through equal opportunity.
Flourishing however, cannot and should not be at cost to another human being.
Differences must be celebrated and protected.
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
