Walk for a cause

I’D like to say a heartfelt thank you to the organisers and participants of the first Tasmanian Iconic Walks event, on March 3. You are truly inspirational. Seventy people trekked 17km through the stunning Tasman National Park, raising $27,000 for the Stroke Foundation. Organisers, led by Hobart local Jo Cordell-Cooper, demonstrated a true passion to make a difference. Funds will build on the State Government commitment for a better plan for stroke. The Stroke Foundation looks forward to working with government on stroke awareness, improved stroke treatment and care and a patient follow-up service. Tasmanians are among Australians at highest risk of stroke. Tasmanians are also more likely to die or be left with a disability as a result of stroke as treatment lags the rest of the country. There will be an estimated 1500 strokes in Tasmania this year. It doesn’t have to be this way. Stroke can be prevented, it can be treated and it can be beaten. The time to act is now. Socratic method to being the basis for philosophical questioning which became the Academy and morphed into the modern university. If Socrates was alive in Tasmania today, I am sure he would be asking probing questions of all sides of popular debate. He would have questioned pokies, forestry, traffic congestion, migration, light rail, conservation, SSM, and building projects both in cities and national parks. I suspect those who did not agree with our most recent exercise in democracy would have sought to have Socrates executed again, at least figuratively, for again asking inconvenient questions of their beliefs. on the Taste together with a wilful refusal to make any effort to render it cost neutral (more than $2 million cost this past year). So-called benefits to the economy at large (figures scribbled on serviettes in Paris or the like) emanating from so many community feel-good activities do not wash, and one might say a culture of extravagance and unaccountability broadly persists in Town Hall. Aldermen will never be able to stand up against any comparative scrutiny while rates are around six times those paid in West Pymble, Sydney. It’s time for the majority of offenders to rapidly mend their ways and make every effort to confine their expenditure to the benefit of the citizen ratepayers whom they will eventually meet at the ballot box.