Bouquets (and brickbat) for flooding response
In 2015 Dunedin was hit with an unprecedented flood which led to a number of inconsistencies in maintenance etc for which many of my members and other residents paid a high price.
I wish to commend all those involved in protecting our city during this colossal downpour of rain in the 48 hours of Thursday and Friday 3-4 October.
It is quite obvious that our Dunedin city councillors and staff have spent a considerable amount of time and effort endeavouring to resolve and look for solutions in such recurring weather episodes.
We, the citizens of this glorious city extend our sincere thanks and appreciation for all the duties they and the other non-council personnel carried out during this time, in an effort to protect all of us and our properties.
A huge pat on the back to you all.
May you now relax, reflect and be confident that all that was required to be done in such difficult circumstances was completed.
A big thank you to the Dunedin City Council, Otago Regional Council, contractors, Civil Defence, Red Cross, fire crews, and the many rescuers and volunteers for their quick responses, sandbags, and hard work during this time.
I see potholes on some roads repaired already.
Good work!
As many find shelter in Forsyth Barr Stadium I am reminded of the final meeting held by the Otago Regional Council to determine voting on the contribution to Forsyth Barr Stadium of $40 million some years ago, which was the final nail to driving the project forward.
Being a relative newcomer to Dunedin I was uninformed of the risks from shifting climate risks to the local landscape until the chief financial officer of the council at the time took the liberty of warning the councillors that the important Leith flood scheme had not yet been costed nor confirmed and to consider priorities for the city.
The vote went in favour of the stadium.
Glad it had come in use at this time.
I am far from impressed with some of the inconsiderate driving on the flooded roads during this last situation.
Due to flooding on Bay View Rd a block of Kirkcaldy St between Bay View Rd and Oxford St was closed.
Vehicles were therefore travelling from MacAndrew Rd along Kirkcaldy St and being diverted down Oxford St.
At the west end where I live there was a lot of floodwater across the road and on people’s sections.
With some drivers not allowing for the conditions due to the speed they were going it was creating a lot of backwash on the sections and more damage.
At my place it was rolling more water into my garage and workshop.
One driver called out "It is not me it is the rain".
It did not look like a raindrop driving the car to me but maybe it was just a rain drip.
A quiet suggestion to Graham Hunter (Letters, 10.4.24) — take a soothing breath in and a complete expulsion of your apoplexy on the out breath.
I am one that has become very attached to the cute penguins depicted in the A Change In The Weather cartoon — they are as loveable here as they are in the wild.
Their environmental message is gently and wistfully delivered to inform and warn.
Of course the in-your-face warning was delivered to Dunedin last week.
Understanding, universal values not being applied
The heart is bowed down with weighted woe on observing much of the media endeavouring to portray false moral equivalence between the admittedly deplorable killing of over 1200 Israelis on October 7 and the horrendous nearly 42,000 Palestinians killed by the Israelis in the last 12 months. There is no justification for the killing of over 14,000 children. Now our eyes are focused on Lebanon where the same scenario is happening with the invasion of Lebanon which is a term the media in general refuse to use. We are witnessing the oppression by one traumatised people towards another: the one traumatised by thousands of years of European persecution culminating in the Holocaust. The other is brutalised by decades of mistreatment and incarceration and deprived of their rights. Those arming one traumatised side against another traumatised people portrays a wholly different level of dysfunction. Instead of understanding where these two peoples are coming from and applying universal values, Israel and the West have dehumanised the Palestinian people, paying lip service to a diplomacy that has slipped into ineffectiveness behind brutal ethnic cleansing, destruction and genocide.
The money master
I concur totally with Mary Furnari, (Letters, 4.10.24) disenchantment with John Key’s yet again support for Donald Trump, although her referring to Key as a person of standing requires some qualification. I would argue that any standing he might have is confined to the eyes of those of his ilk – as with the likes of Trump, Boris Johnson, and the rest. It seems that Key’s greatest value and joy in life is money, more money, and all it bestows upon him. To quote Francis Bacon, "Money is a good servant but a bad master".
Previous govt is as much to blame for hosp
The costings for the new hospital have blown out because the previous government "fast-tracked" the hospital and then did nothing (which is normal for that mob). If we add copious previous government spending and borrowing to the mix (for no tangible return) we have a blow-out of inflation which added one billion dollars to the overall cost of the new build. All the previous government had to do was actually do something and start building the hospital.
The previous Labour/Green government does not seem to know that our country is a business and should be treated as such.
The government don’t support anything south of Christchurch; it all seems to be north.
They are funding a stadium in Christchurch, we had to pay for the Dunedin stadium through rates.
They are building roads and tunnels up north, instead of building a more efficient rail system throughout New Zealand not just the north island, for passengers and freight.
And they want to introduce a training centre at Waikato University.
Why when we can take more trainees down here but I hear that the government have a cap on how many we can take. National just don’t like funding things that work for the lower South Island. They just don’t support us.
John Price (Letters, 5.10.24) suggests changing the name of Dunedin Hospital to Southern Regional Hospital.
While I wholeheartedly agree with this, I think that an even better name would be Auckland Hospital Southern Branch.
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