Why are we waiting? Five years, still here
I read with a smile your lead article in the ODT today (4.6.24).
I have been waiting for knee surgery from Dunedin Hospital since 2019. The surgery I am waiting for is a high tibial osteotomy.
In approximately July 2019 I was told they would do knee surgery, the given waiting time was until approximately November that year. It didn’t happen.
Then Covid hit. Since then I have had a couple of letters telling me they haven’t forgotten me. In July last year I got a phone call that there was a specialist in Queenstown I could go see, and hopefully get the necessary surgery under way.
Unfortunately I had Covid for the first appointment and for the second scheduled appointment the Crown Range and Cromwell Gorge were closed due to snow and ice.
I phoned Dunedin Hospital on both occasions to let them know that I couldn’t keep the appointments. So now, nearly a year later I don’t have another rescheduled appointment.
I genuinely don’t blame the specialists, doctors or nurses, they work really hard, but I do feel our healthcare for non-urgent patients could be better.
I want to highlight that there’s lots of people waiting a heck of a lot longer than the "four month" period stated in your piece.
Wrong tree, wrong place
Incredulity turns to dismay to read of yet another dumb decision by a local authority (the Dunedin City Council) to not allow the removal of a large (suburban) pin oak tree which is the wrong tree in the wrong place (ODT 4.6.24).
The planting of trees at a metre high might seem like a good idea at the time but before too long they become well past their use-by date if growing on your property. Roots block drains, branches block sunlight and interfere with power lines.
Yes they look attractive to people unaffected by the trees’ presence and who pay no price through their rates to maintain these trees. If the tree is to remain and regarded as a community asset then the DCC must accept full responsibility for all damage and injury and pay for its pruning along with all the negative impacts their decision has on the owner’s property value.
One simple question I have always wondered about . Who is the legal owner of these protected trees? The message the DCC sends is keep your chainsaw sharp and don’t plant trees .
They’re not that bad
We are armchair critics when it comes to our opinions regarding political parties, but I cannot believe all the negative criticism the current government is enduring.
Some seem to forget that the previous government of six years left the country in an unhealthy state, monetarily and morale of the people.
The coalition has only been in for six months, an amount of that was spent organising who was getting which portfolio and and the rest of it thus far is coming up with a "plan", a word Labour never had in its vocabulary.
Education, health, crime, the welfare of children and so many more issues, Labour were going to fix, are even more broken, and it is going to take a year at least to get some semblance of them working.
Nearly every policy the coalition presents, seems to be a one-sided reported reaction from the negative.
This government is trying to cut the wasteful spending. The money trees at Parliament, were stripped clean by the previous government to print money, which they squandered and have little to show for it. Tighten your belts New Zealand, it is going to be an even leaner couple of years.
Where was the news when there was news?
Within the last few days, we suffered the unfortunate loss of an Ōtākou-based fishing boat at Taiaroa Heads, which the ODT had given due coverage, as would have been expected, as had also the Sky News channel at 5.30pm.
Where, in all this, was New Zealand’s loudly self-proclaimed "award winning" TVNZ news?
Not as much as a flicker from the channel which usually features the loss of every fisherman not wearing a lifejacket while out on Manukau Harbour.
On the night following the local event the news was the "same-old, same-old" as they padded out an hour with all the usual trite garbage, opinion of the performance of MPs, speculation as to who will be in/out of Super Rugby teams for the coming weekend and so on.
Their midday news has been dropped, no great tragedy, but it has been replaced by a banal Australian game of chance programme,which the credits at its end show had originated and been recorded in Australia, and likely first shown on this country in 2002.
Frankly, I feel we deserve better than this pathetic level of performance.
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