Radical idea for hospital — but could it float?
I AGREE with Mike Grainger (Letters, 13.9.19) when he said ‘‘whoever thought of building a major hospital between two of the busiest arterial roads needs their brains checked’’.
The sevenyear build is now out to 10 years yet the cost — $1.4 billion — hasn’t changed.
A decade will result in trucks transporting uncovered earth and debris around the town, plus the noise involved in the build will result in a MondayFriday, 9am5pm, restriction.
With 4%5% unemployment in Dunedin — the majority not qualified builders — and other infrastructure construction, the hospital will be built by people outside Dunedin.
My suggestion is for the new hospital to be a floating cruise ship with 1000 beds. Staff would have their quarters on board. Nurses dressed in nautical style.
Ships can last up to 100 years with maintenance. No disruption to the city, up and running within one year, fiscal savings.
I would be happier in a cabin with a balcony than stuck in a hohum concrete building.
Kit Sutherland Queenstown
Impaired driving
THE ODT carried a report of coroner David Robinson’s comments regarding a car crash death (19.9.19). The driver was five times over the current alcohol limit and had consumed cannabis. The coroner said the cannabis undoubtedly exacerbated the effect of alcohol then said that this was ‘‘. . . something which should be of some moment given the forthcoming referendum on the potential legalisation of cannabis use’’.
How so? Impaired driving is both legally and morally unconscionable irrespective of the legality of the impairment itself. Without evidence of a rise of impaired driving caused by cannabis reform, the comments can only be seen as gratuitous personal opinion.
In itself, this might seem a trivial matter with which to take issue, but it seems to me to be symptomatic of the cocktail of irrationality and group think which plagues and, often, forestalls sensible discussion on drugs, which itself has caused enormous suffering around the world.
Bryan Horne Green Island