Letters: Columnist a breath of fresh air

President Barack Obama. PHOTO/FILE

Your new columnist Rachel Stewart is a breath of fresh air (October 5).

Certainly your last contributor was showing signs of fatigue, in my opinion, but Rachel is full of fun. Pointing out the lunacy quotient required for political life may explain why voter turn out is so poor. Take our own election for example; it became increasingly obvious to me that at least three of the seven aspirants for mayor lacked an understanding of what the job required. How could this happen? While it is everyone's right to stand for public office, perhaps a simple competency test would save embarrassment and encourage more people to vote.

PS. Rachel was too hard on Obama. He had to pick the fights he could win; the gun lobby was not one them. Affordable Healthcare Act was.

MIKE BYRNE
Rotorua

We attended a recent three-week programme at QE Health Wellness Centre. Three of us were funded by ACC and two by Lakes DHB after being referred by GPs, specialists or case managers.

The programme is called ReCharge (Rehabilitation for Change, Acceptance, Resilience, Growth and Energy).

The group experience has made us realise we are not alone. The programme taught us to acknowledge our conditions and be at peace with them.

During our programme we found all the QE Health staff to be friendly, helpful, knowledgeable, approachable, committed and always there for us.

There is a wealth of knowledge to be learnt from the programme and with practises and steps we have put into place for a better future, we have found we have been able to find the "old me" again and now turned ourselves into the "new me".

Rotorua really has a hidden gem here with its geothermal healing qualities, the minerals, wellbeing and all the wonderful staff.

QE Health is, in our opinion, not utilised enough and more people could really benefit from it in mind, body and soul.

Each and every one of the staff have offered ongoing support in the way of phone calls, emails or just popping in to see them for a chat or advice.

We would highly recommend QE Health to anyone in need. Thank you QE Health.

[Abridged]
TINA ROSE, LEONIE BULLEN, LORETTE HARTEMAN, JAMIN FENTON (Rotorua) and DUANE HORN (Palmerston North)