Letters: Lanterns on the Awa 'a brilliant community success'

Lanterns on the Awa festival lit up Whanganui on Saturday. Photo / Lewis Gardner

Your reporter sadly understated the numbers who attended Saturday's Lanterns on the Awa (News, May 10).

We were told by various experts that there were 3000-5000 over the course of the evening.

(Ed's note: The attendance figure came from a member of the NZ-China Friendship Society Whanganui branch)

UCOL was not involved this year, but Chinese courtesy insists we honour Bronwyn Paul and her team who initiated and directed the event in 2018-19.

We thank our terrific sponsors, in no particular order: Kaiteng Lim of INC Creative; G.J Gardner Homes & Go-Fox Electrical; Beck Ding and the Confucius Classroom students from Whanganui High School, who brought the Confucius Institute's top brass from Victoria University; and Fergus Reid & his Venues & Events team from Whanganui Council. Also Mayor Hamish for his wise words - and his very dashing Lijiang headgear!

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To the Chinese ladies of the Hometown Association and the local NZ-Chinese Association; Melissa Tate's & Sharyn Underwood's dancers; Stephanie & Sean of the Nam Pai Chuan Kungfu School; the young musicians from Collegiate under Richard Ellsworth; Tim Crowe of Civil Defence and Ned Tapa's Kaihoe on the Awa; Peter Hewson & John Milnes of the River Markets Trust - your 'sure-can-do" style and generosity always inspire us. To anyone we left out, our apologies.

NZ-China Friendship thanks the good people of Whanganui for a brilliant community success. Let's "burn even brighter" in the Year of the Tiger 2022!

JONATHAN PARSON -President
MATT NOWAK - Treasurer
JAN McLEOD - Adviser
NZ-China Friendship Society
Whanganui Branch

Health system needs to deliver

Your correspondent misunderstood my point in the Chronicle (Letters, May 8).

Nothing changes much except for the worse with careless or un-thought-through changes.

It was obviously the same in the Roman army as it will be for the state funded public hospitals.

Centrally controlled health systems without a great deal more front-end funding and reduction of bureaucracy are very unlikely to change anything for the better.

Funding the system is obviously part of the problem, and hard to see resolved in the current situation.

Some commentators have described the minister's proposed changes as a like a nuclear bomb but I doubt they are nuclear enough.

For at least 55 years of working my life I have paid heaps of tax, but apart from (in recent years) the state contributing some pills, I have had almost nothing out of public health system that I didn't pay for myself.

Can I get a refund?

We all deserve a better, speedier public health system that actually delivers for those that urgently need it.

DAVID BENNETT
Whanganui

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