Adding up the changes to general practice in healthcare. Photo / File
Adding up the changes to general practice in healthcare. Photo / File
Letters to the Editor
Letter of the week: Dr R. Ian Symes, Devonport
I have worked in the health system since 1967. For 37 years, I served as a family doctor; owning two practices, rural and urban. I have also worked in 90, mostly rural, locations around New Zealand as a relieving GP. Inaddition, I have worked in the Australian Outback and rural Ireland, also as a relieving GP. I understand how difficult it is to deliver a modern health system that benefits the majority. In New Zealand, about 80 per cent of health costs are in wages. Successive governments have tried to keep a lid on by limiting wage increases and filling gaps with overseas health workers. Even so, costs have risen. Annual medical costs increase by 7 per cent while GDP grows by 3-4 per cent in the good years. In 1970, 4 per cent of the system’s costs were in administration. Today, it’s 30 per cent and increasing. Here are my suggestions for improvement: Promote responsibility between patients and health providers; promote preventative care; reduce administration costs; promote discussion on the proportion of GDP to be spent on health; identify the avoidable mortality rate and initiate improvement; promote private health insurance; and tax bad food and promote good food consumption.
Crossed purposes
I was interested to read the article “Neighbours at war over fears of losing sea view” (Weekend Herald, August 5). The cross-lease title was developed in the 1960s to avoid restrictive rules on the subdivision of land and to provide individual titles on relatively small multi-unit developments. Generally, it has been very successful but is not required today with more liberal subdivision rules and the ability to create “unit title” subdivisions in more complex developments. The query raised in the article of the need for a mechanism to prevent neighbours from more intensive development of full freehold sites is easily resolved by the creation of “land covenants” over the new freehold titles. These covenants can prohibit more intense development of the site (restriction on height or adding further dwellings to the site) as well as other restrictions on the use of the developed property and are commonly used in new subdivisions. That would certainly be a better solution than retaining cross leases as a solution to this issue.
Regarding your article about the Returned and Services Association (Weekend Herald, August 5), I am a member of the Birkenhead RSA. Recently, I inquired about a friend I would meet in the club. He was 94, his wife 88, married for nearly 60 years. He had died and his wife had taken it hard. Not a veteran, not wealthy; merely a gracious, gentle man. I was advised the club was monitoring his wife, who was recovering slowly. The RSA clubs must transition to be centres of deep values and commitment to our way of life, which some loud-mouthed uninformed politicians and activists would destroy. Transition with a depth of values retained. There are people in the institution keen to do just that. I strongly support them. Every person in Auckland over 50 should have a membership with their local RSA club. A minor annual associate fee permits one to mingle with those who share the depth of caring for our traditional values. The food and booze emphasised in your article delivers the profits enabling my club to take care of the elderly wife of my dead friend.
Bruce Cotterill’s opinion piece (Weekend Herald, August 5) on New Zealand losing its mojo, merely states what most of us have resigned ourselves to: We have devolved into a nation where we are soft on policing - and the dispensing of justice - but heavy on Māori cultural immersion and virtue-signalling, (boarded a bus or train and heard the extended preamble?). It’s so pervasive that it has become a national obsession as well as our stifling conceit. This explains why so many are leaving to cross the Tasman.
Merv Lowe, Remuera.
Braunias continued
Steve Braunias’ satire (Weekend Herald, August 5) on Christopher Luxon as Truckin’ Luxon and Winston Peters as the Great Khan Winston needs a postscript as they confront each other on the road. “And the Great Khan Winston rose from behind the barbed wire barrier, stood tall or as tall as his PR team desperately tried to make him out to be, drew back the jacket of his three-piece Savile Row suit, revealing a holstered Magnum (registered of course) with also a hint of a well-used SuperGold card peeping out from the jacket pocket, drawing applause from a zimmer frame supported, silver-haired observer. The Great Khan drew his lips back in a snarl and said menacingly, “Make my day, Truckin’ Luxon. Make one move, punk, and I’ll fill you full of as many holes as you couldn’t possibly count on a 100m stretch of State Highway from Whangarei to Tauranga.”
Bernard Walker,Pāpāmoa.
That’s progress
In May 1937, the year I was born, one of the wonders of the modern world, the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco was opened to traffic. It took four years and four months to build and was completed ahead of schedule and under budget. Today at Mt Maunganui, the Bayfair/Baypark two flyovers and road improvements are still not completed after more than six years of construction. The estimated project dates were November 2015 to December 2023 (eight years) and the project cost $292 million. So I guess this development must be more complex than building the Golden Gate. But will it be recognised as one of the wonders of the Modern World?
The multiple controversies that have erupted over the proposed new harbour crossings in Auckland were predictable in our pre-election political circus. Yet, the debate should be taken quite seriously. Labour Party’s two tunnels and a rearranged bridge vision is hard to believe on at least four accounts: time horizon, benefit, cost and climate. The proposed timeline - well into the 2030s - means the value of these projects would materialise too far into the future. The benefits of resolving congestion are unproven or, at best, will be short-term. The cost - at $40 billion, but more likely to be between that and double - is too high to be covered by the kind of economy NZ and Auckland have. Finally, the climate meltdown - rather than “change” - is around the corner. So how can we assume the same lifestyles, types of economic activity, and traffic volumes beyond 2030? The last point should be crucial. But no political party wants to address these concerns. The de-growth alternative is just not a vote winner, as we continue to ignore the weather signals from the northern hemisphere and the latest warnings from scientists.
Dushko Bogunovich, retired professor of urban planning, Cornwallis.
School’s out
Modern parenting is already relentless and exhausting and now, as Bruce Cotterill rightly points out (Weekend Herald, August 5), parents also have to perform the role of teacher to ensure their children can “emerge from the education system properly prepared for university or the workplace”. How on earth did it come to this?
Allison Kelly, Mt Eden.
A quick word
If one is a criminal being sentenced, it would appear to be advantageous to have had a bad upbringing and so get a 20+ per cent discount on the penalty. Perhaps the blindfold is slipping on the scales of justice. Ian Doube, Rotorua.
If you want to indulge in indecent behaviour and be let off without conviction and with name suppression, all you have to do is to become a contender for some or other Olympic event. Bruce Robertson, Westmere.
Should we be worried about the Warriors? Yes, judging from the disjointed error-prone performance against a 12-man Titans outfit. Larry Mitchell, Rothesay Bay.
Wellington Mayor Tory Whanau hopes the council’s permanent home would allow dogs. I want to bring everyone I love to work with me, including my husband and all our pets, because I work long hours at times too. Bernard Jennings, Island Bay.
BlackRock is buying New Zealand, while it is failing under the current Government. Neville Cameron, Melbourne.
You’d have to say the never-give-up philosophy which dates back to medieval times and has become America’s deep-rooted philosophy is nowhere more epitomised than in Donald Trump’s efforts to again become President. Gary Hollis, Mellons Bay.
So the question that must be asked is can Winston and NZ First be trusted now? Mike Baker, Tauranga.
I’m very pleased to note that all of the creatures nominated for this year’s Bird Of The Year competition are actual birds. Renton Brown, Pukekohe.
The Football Ferns were rated individually by Jason Pine (WH, August 5) with 13 of 15 players achieving a grade A or B. Does this reflect the dumbing down of sporting skills akin to the similar erosion of NCEA? Stewart Hawkins, St Heliers.
“We lost the world cup by a millimetre,” the USA goalie says, after a goal she didn’t save. I didn’t realise this was the final. USA arrogance coming through? Ian MacGregor, Greenhithe.
TSB is closing seven branches due to “digital” banking. Banks need to look up the meaning of “customer service” because they seem to have forgotten what it means. Julie Pearce, Matamata.
Christopher Luxon’s proposed phone ban in schools? In a bygone era, conservative, unimaginative libertarians did vociferously wail, “Nanny State, Nanny State!” Martin van Zonneveld, Westmere.
My new garden shed is finished and ready for an “opening ceremony” and I wonder if the Labour Government would like to attend and make an announcement on issues it has ignored for nearly six years. Brent Marshall, Whangaparāoa.
“Slithy” means lithe and slimy. Lewis Carroll called them portmanteau words. I’m practising how to say this new one. You saw it here first: Nactional Guvmint. Arch Thomson, Mt Wellington.
