Today's Letters to the Editor from readers cover topics including the storage plan for Lake Onslow, a good experience at Dunedin Hospital and the importance of a suitable venue for concerts.
Lake Onslow project should go ahead
National has, predictably, come out against the proposed Lake Onslow storage project.
In government, the party sold off about half of the country's hydro assets 10 years ago, promising lower power prices. Instead, they rose, with the generation companies ploughing profits into share buybacks.
Places with considerably lower grid emissions than New Zealand, such as Norway and Quebec, use mainly publicly owned hydro. Norway, with about the same population, but a third our power CO2 footprint, has 82 terawatt/hours of storage, including 12 pumped hydro plants.
New Zealand has only 4.5 TW/h, which could almost triple if Onslow goes ahead. (The world's largest battery holds 0.0016 TWh, and caught fire recently.)
This would insure against burning shiploads of Indonesian coal in winter, cap price extremes, and allow use of spring river run-off and excess wind, otherwise wasted.
Major tunnelling projects in Auckland are due to finish in a few years.
That skilled workforce, and their economic boost, could transfer to Otago.
John O'Neill
Roslyn
Remember the successful Otago National MP who campaigned on, ‘‘They will build the high Clyde Dam over my dead body’’, then went on to vote for it.
Happy to say both are alive and running.
Murray Jones
Bannockburn
Chris Trotter
Chris Trotter’s article (ODT 13.1.23) said ‘‘transforming Jacinda Ardern into a hateful caricature, and loading her with responsibility for all the nations woes, will serve to distract the electorate.’’
While correct, this is merely a case of New Zealand political leaders reaping what they sow.
If you are going to rely on a single leader as your way to win an election, putting them on a pedestal instead of focusing on policy, naturally enough your electorate is going to focus on your leader.
You can not then expect to have roses thrown at your leader's feet all the time. You must then get the full spectrum including sections of the electorate saying not nice things.
Boo hoo.
Bernard Jennings
Wellington
Dunedin Hospital
Our nation’s health system faces multiple challenges, as does the New Dunedin Hospital project. These issues quite properly receive considerable media coverage.
In light of this, I want to share my experience of Dunedin Hospital where I recently underwent elective surgery.
The whole process, from GP appointment to operating theatre, was smooth.
Each person I dealt with at each stage, and there were several, was professional and compassionate.
The wait between GP appointment and operating theatre was much shorter than I anticipated.
My experience was wholly positive and my gratitude is immense.
I am especially grateful to the many staff who have left their home countries to perform such valuable roles here, where I hope they can build fulfilling lives.
I was amazed by the number and range of “workarounds” all staff were required to perform in the current hospital setting.
Our replacement facility cannot come too soon.
Mike Stevens
Dunedin
Acoustic clarity needs a fit for purpose venue
Is it coincidence I wonder, that the article outlining the audio-engineering talents of Oscar Goodwin of Wanaka (ODT, 12.1.23) appeared just three days after I had taken in the contents of an excellent item featured on the British-based Spitfire Studios website; a walk-through and history of London's famed Abbey Road recording studios.
Young Oscar obviously well knows and appreciates what are the vital elements in securing the best possible musical experience; as few flat plane surfaces as possible, unless covered by sound deadening material, little or no complexity in the way of exposed internal beams to scatter unwanted reverberations in an incoherent fashion; even the difference in responses between a packed and an only partly filled venue. Most of these cannot be cancelled out, or their effects partly mitigated once the sound is ‘‘out there’’. The key is a fit-for-purpose venue design in the first place.
Dunedin has one concert venue which delivers well in these respects, and one which miserably fails to do so, begging the question that with their amphitheatres, the ancient Greeks likely knew more about sound, its transmission and dispersal patterns than a whole army of would-be present-day geeks who perceive the problem as something able to be solved by squandering even more ratepayers ‘‘hard-earned’’ on ‘‘solutions’’ incorporating microphones, delay-lines and speakers. Once the genie has escaped from the bottle, there can be no putting it back.
The engineers at Abbey Road came up with the same imagined ‘‘solution’’ of delay-lines and banks of speakers many years ago. It was a dismal failure then, and would be bound to be the same today. A sensible and practical solution is to do what has been done world-wide for many years; concerts in open air venues, with as few sound-distorting obstructions as possible. Think Woodstock.
Ian Smith
Waverley
Address Letters to the Editor to: Otago Daily Times, PO Box 517, 52-56 Lower Stuart St, Dunedin. Email: editor@odt.co.nz
