Accident victim speaks out
To the man who sent me flying when he hit me in his jeep on Friday on Dominion Rd, there are a few things I wanted to say:
1. Thank you for stopping. I appreciate that you didn’t just drive off. Thank you also to the kind woman who stayed with me until I was calmer and could work out that I didn’t have a serious head injury.
2. No matter how flash your car, whether you’re indicating (at the last minute) or not, you shouldn’t pull across someone’s path at the last minute. You own a big car and you could have killed someone. I’m lucky to have been able to walk away from that.
3. I’m a student, I’ve just finished my degree. You own some kind of fancy jeep or Porsche or whatever it was (I’m not sure because I was so shaken at the time). But I can guarantee that you have money in the bank. Yet I’m almost certain that I left you without a scratch to your car. You left me with a battered bike that I must now get repaired, tears in my clothes and a ruined jacket. My whole body hurts and I keep finding more bruises and cuts. I don’t want to take you to court or get you in trouble or anything like that. But I do want you to understand the impact that this has had on me and not only financially. I’ve had multiple concussions in my life (from situations different to this) so my head is precious. I want to look after it. I’m sore and I now have to pay for the repair of everything that was ruined. If I was your daughter or your sister, you would be furious.
So please, next time you’re in your car, think of me. I save lives for a career and I want to be able to continue that.
My life is just starting, I have so much to live for.
I’ll leave my email with the Herald, so that you can contact me if you like.
Anna Louise, Mt Eden.
Organ donations
I have “donor” on my driver’s licence. I don’t want any haggling by family to alter this “will” so that my parts can be quickly recycled while still usable to those awaiting organs.
If my licence happened to be destroyed in the “departure” process, I think a national database would make medical, legal and government clearance simple.
One benefit of being a registered donor should be no cost at all to your estate or family for disposal of one’s body.
How neat it will be, watching from hallowed heights, seeing me still chugging along in someone else!
After all, we are just 80 per cent water and some minerals that, for most people, end up wasting fossil fuels in a final carbon-emitting act!
Rob Buchanan, Kerikeri.
Economic alarm bells
The Herald with its expose on house sales and the Herald on Sunday’s editorial correctly stating housing is now a sharemarket commodity should set off alarm bells for our economy. The Government is tied to a free-market model so we can expect little intervention from them.
Currently houses are grossly overvalued as their price is set by demand rather than worth. When this occurs, like the sharemarket they can lose half their value overnight. Confidence which keeps the market bullish has a habit of over time being quite erratic and it needs only a small downturn to start an avalanche.
Where the danger lies is with the last buyer and that could be an owner or investor. They will be left holding the bag when the crash occurs, which it surely will.
We have had examples of this with kiwifruit and currently the dairy industry. Interest rates are also a snake in the grass and will bite. The Unitary Plan is only a plan and in the meantime Rome burns.
Reg Dempster, Albany.
Givealittle’s costs
Givealittle crowdfunding website is such an easy way for New Zealanders to be able to donate direct to causes that are close to our heart. So 5 per cent is needed to pay for some of the website costs, that is a minuscule amount compared with other charities.
Compare this 5 per cent with what Cancer Society of New Zealand and World Vision, to name just a couple, use for administration and advertising. I would be very interested to see a list of percentages of what comes off the top of donated monies for organisations such as these. How about the Herald giving us a list of these percentages plus the CEO’s annual salary.
Come on, New Zealand, we have a terrific site with Givealittle and they are honest in the amount needed to keep it going. Show your support when it is a cause close to your heart. I for one will keep giving through this website and appreciate that Spark contributes so much to keep it going.
Jeanette Waters, Half Moon Bay.
Alcohol and boats
After reading the Herald on Sunday article (July 31) it is patently apparent the police are once again abdicating their responsibilities and passing them on to the owners/skippers/operators of those boats. It is a case of blanket regulations to cut down on work and costs. The council on the other hand has sensed a chance to generate more revenue from easy targets.
I have no doubt there have been problems with alcohol, as there are with everywhere alcohol is served. I doubt the problem is as big as suggested and may even suggest some lobbying by vested interests with an agenda.
The law was designed and introduced to protect the public. However, more and more, the law is being used as a cudgel to control/manipulate/restrict the public and generate revenue.
Graham Hansen, Howick.
Evidence for global warming
I am writing in response to the piece in the Herald on July 28 titled “No place for scare tactics” by Dr Chris de Freitas. I agree that scaring people for no reason is not constructive.
Neither is misinforming people to downplay the risks they face. Based on the observations, it is clear that climate change presents significant dangers to societies and economies globally, as outlined in the Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). De Freitas’ soothing blandishments in a national newspaper do nothing to further public understanding of this critical issue.
I am puzzled that de Freitas can review the evidence, the melting ice, rising seas, warming oceans and atmosphere, and see nothing to worry about.
He claims that hysteria is being stirred up against those raising “serious questions” about climate change. What are these serious questions? Can he give an example of the hysteria?
Yes, the geological record shows how sensitive the climate is to changes in the sun’s output and greenhouse gas concentrations. That knowledge should make us more concerned for the future, not less, given the recent huge rise in greenhouse gas concentrations.
Positive feedbacks are clearly under way. What scientific evidence does de Freitas have that shows negative (cooling) feedbacks prevail?
De Freitas states that there is no evidence to distinguish between “natural” and “human-caused” warming. There is an 86-page chapter on this topic in the last IPCC report, citing over 600 scientific papers on the subject. The conclusion was: “It is extremely likely that human activities caused more than half of the observed increase in Global Mean Surface Temperature from 1951 to 2010.” How can this be characterised as “no evidence”?
James Renwick, Professor of Physical Geography School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences Victoria University of
Wellington.
Social workers overloaded
The number of notifications made to CYF has quadrupled in eight years. The average number of cases per social worker is up to 18 depending on their complexity and the person’s experience. This top limit is very often exceeded.
Child abuse is New Zealand’s national embarrassment; solutions must be found. But the obvious and immediate one is to increase funding to match workload; that is at least quadruple it.
If CYF could promise rational workloads then many of the excellent staff who have left will return.
Meanwhile, renaming the ministry is just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. Bob Atkinson, Birkdale.
Relief teachers
How do “they” know 686 relief teachers have been affected by a system introduced in July last year?
My registration expired in March 2015 and I wasn’t allowed to renew. When I renewed my registration in 2012 I was told I wouldn’t be able to register again. I enquired about the retraining programme and guess what — there wasn’t one at that stage.
By the time I found out what the programme was I was in my 60s and not keen on wasting time and money “training” for something I was already competent in. I wrote to the minister pointing out my age and experience but only received a reply from the PA about the course.
Since qualifying I have had two jobs and a one-year contract and none of these had the required mentoring to enable me to fully register.
Two of the principals were “forced to resign”, so after these bad experiences I decided to spend my time relief teaching.
Unfortunately I didn’t know when I was wasting my time at college on a substandard, out-of-date course that it was policy to “pay” schools to employ overseas teachers. It is impossible for someone just out of college to compete in that environment.
Anne Leighton, Mt Eden.