Letters
Golden Bay A&P Show
The Golden Bay A&P Show Committee wish to acknowledge the very many people who helped to make such a success of the show last Saturday.
Thank you to the folk who put in entries and the many volunteer judges and stewards; people who put on displays of beef cattle, piglets, Diddly Squat, blade shearing and scything, quilting and spinning; the synchronised lawnmowing by Averill and Mark (which was unfortunately rudely interrupted by a pink alien); wood chopping, shearing and wool handling; Adam Allsorts the clown and Paul Madsen from the Madsen Brothers; Harcourt’s auction; trade stand owners who had varied and well-presented trade stalls; the vintage steam engines and machinery and collectable cars, all of which made up a colourful and popular section of the grand parade; our Takaka Brass Band and the Motueka Highland Pipe Band; Paul Sangster and Colleen Harwood, who kept us informed of happenings all day; newspapers articles, including The GB Weekly, which kindly printed a programme of events; Lindsay’s Clothing and Sports, who once again sold entry tickets; Scott Mercer, who managed the traffic signs; The Lions Club members who manned the gates and Search and Rescue members who kept order in the parking paddocks; and St John members who volunteered their services for the day.
We would also like to thank the very many sponsors, local and national businesses and individuals, who assist with prizes in all sections of the show.
Thank you also to everyone who came to the show - we hope you all had a great day.
Jean Wedderburn, GB A&P Show committee secretary
On behalf of Golden Bay Search and Rescue, a massive thank you to the team from Harcourts Golden Bay, everyone who donated the fantastic prizes and to the bidders for making the Harcourts auction last week at the A&P show such a success.
All the equipment needed for a search needs to be purchased by the individual SAR groups and that means fundraising. So, to receive such a great boost as we did from Saturday’s auction is just totally amazing.
Harcourts – thank you again, it’s fantastic what you do for the community.
Wouter de Maat, secretary/treasurer
Easy Earth Healing encourages self-empowerment
The sonic fabric of nature’s sounds weave a grid around earth. These sounds are overtones of the base frequency of earth resonance, 7.8 hz (Schumann). Each frequency has a unique wavelength; 7.8hz has a wavelength which equals the circumference length of earth. Really it’s a spherical wave encasing earth (means also light will travel around earth 7.8 times per second). Recently Nobel Prize winner Luc Montagnier claims to have teleported DNA using 7hz frequency (NewScientist 12/1/11).
When we listen closely to nature, our mind/brain drifts into alpha brainwave state (5hz – 8hz). This allows our auric field-wavelength to instantaneously expand (via omnidirectional quantum tunnelling) and encompass earth. In New Age lingo this is attuning to planetary Christ consciousness. Theosophists call this aligning with Planetary Logos and the east call it samprajnata samadhi.
While listening to nature, apply a little focus and you’ll resonate to any location on earth that you visualise (visualisation stabilises alpha brainwave state). You and that location become one. The important point is, does nature want your help? One should ask first (don’t attempt to influence any person, as this is an infringement of free will). Next feel empathy and gratitude for that land: this will trigger your emotional energy to inhabit that spot. A healing will occur (as Emoto’s water cleansing experiments show, applied focus/thought transforms matter).
Grayham Forscutt
Tata Titanic Cardboard Boat Race rescheduled
As the Tata Titanic Cardboard Boat Race wasn’t able to run due to extreme wind on Sunday AND I managed to mistake the tide, there wasn’t enough water in the lagoon for the event. My apologies to those who didn’t hear about it in time and especially overseas visitors who were really looking forward to it.
However the race will go ahead on Sunday 23 January, still at 11am. For cancellation info listen to Fresh FM between 8 and 9am and 10 and 11am. Hope to see you there.
Dave Myall, Tata Cardboard Boat Race organiser
Being balanced and prepared
Tyme Haz Kum for communities to have Community Spirit. I prematurely tried that at Rototai, aiming to create an orchestra of Creative People. It became a one man band. I don’t know why community requires Natural calamities to wake us up to share and help one another without time and money. I last wrote about being prepared into 2011. East Australia is warning us too. Around this Full Moon on the 20th and particularly the February Full Moon, we are offered another opportunity to rise to the occasion, on a personal level as well as worldly.
Dan and I set up Our Community Stall purely to establish a service to have healthy foods available throughout the Bay and supply bread and butter on the tables to the many growers connected to nature from their gardens. That is now well in place. We encourage all to grow and share in many ways.
I am planning to open the M.A.D. Skool of ART very soon to bring about the necessary healing and education that is desperately needed to enter Photon Energies next year.
Be well!!!
NgAngA
Success at country music awards in Blenheim
The Blenheim Country Music Awards were amazing! I was up against 18 contestants and they were all very talented. I sang in the traditional section on Saturday and my other three sections, gospel, vocal and country rock on the Sunday morning. The finals were on Sunday night at 7pm. I was very excited as I had been put through all the sections I had entered by the judges. The pressure was a little more intense at the finals as we had all had a big weekend and were ready for bed. I had to put my best foot forward. At 2am in the morning I became the Blenheim Country Music Awards Overall Intermediate Winner! I ended up leaving Blenheim with six certificates, prize money, and three massive trophies. As you can imagine I was pretty happy about this, so thank you to everybody who helped me and supported me to go to Blenheim. Especially Alan Swafford, Bill Richards and my family. Thank you very much!
Nikita Buys
Embarrassed
My Golden Bay friends are too embarrassed to write to the local paper to express their feelings about the presentation of some businesses in Golden Bay. I’m only a visitor so I’m doing it instead.
I saw filthy car parks, filthy toilets, dirty floors, dirty aprons, cluttered entrances and lazy, unfriendly, overly-casual service. This usually reflects the training provided by business owners. In other places I saw clean, welcoming, hygienic facilities and professional service by efficient, knowledgeable and friendly people who want you to return to their business.
Which business would you prefer to own and/or work in? Which business would you prefer to spend your money in?
Pride in your business from the front door to the back corner is very important.
Business owners, why don’t you walk around your business and have a really good look at the state of the place and the attitude of your staff. Ask your staff and customers for written feedback. You may be embarassed too. Or you may want to give everyone who works for you a pat on the shoulder.
William Brace
Community Health Centre
Central Government changed the Local Government Act, permitting privatisation of water under “urgency,” bypassing democratic process. TDC ratepayers paid for water infrastructure that now can be transferred to private companies.
It isn’t far-fetched to predict the proposed integrated health centre will fall prey to privatisation. The rest home, medical centre and hospital as separate facilities wouldn’t be sniffed out by hungry transnationals, but combined into a centralised asset they’d be an attractive investment for foreign-controlled, private ownership. Privatisation brings higher fees, lower wages, poor working conditions, and inferior healthcare and service, siphoning gains to investors outside GB or offshore. $10,000,000+ principal and interest will have been paid for by GB and other NZ taxpayers’ money.
Threat of privatisation of GB’s healthcare is greater since the legislation allowing water privatisation. Government could allow DHBs to privatise healthcare without public consultation. An article on privatisation of eldercare in NZ in December’s Foreign Control Watchdog makes frightening reading.
GB owns the medical centre mortgage-free; the rest home and hospital have small debts. Among other good reasons not to integrate (debt, location, vulnerability, “rest ward” not home, no consensus, etc), it would be tragic to sacrifice our local assets to the privatisation beast.
Joanna Piekarski
Thanks for the big reply. I am delighted to hear that the financing of the project has no relationship to any rate/targeted rate take from Golden Bay and that the TDC will put the whole value of the proceeds from the sale of the Medical Centre into the pot.
I remain disappointed to hear that
1. The project figures were and are still approximate. When will you have the figures? I look forward to the community reading and debating the build costs/IT costs/salary costs and what the mortgage projections/interest will be.
I am still very concerned that
2. The written agreement from the NBPH is to pay UP TO $545k a year, rather than AT LEAST $545k. I worry that this may be reduced, leaving the project and Golden Bay in difficulties. I worry whether it is future-proof and will be able to cope with inflation/gst/emissions trading increases in the years to come.
3. The design of the build has shifted from a community-friendly place to one with a starker, prison-like layout with poor rest-home amenities or views, and with poor car pick-up/drop-off facilities.
4. It appears the nurses will be paid $1 per hour less than now to achieve the 10% savings in staff costs – let alone the ongoing issue of the envisaged staff efficiencies and the unacknowledged knock-on effect on lower quality and quantity of patient/elderly care.
Nicola Basham
I would like to thank Chris Hill for her responses to my queries about the Community Health Centre (GB Weekly 14 January 2011).
1. Community Fundraising: Chris, this is really a question of trust. John Peters, when questioned on the subject, indicated that there would be no campaign to raise funds from the community. Now there is a campaign to raise funds from the community. How many other things are we going to find are quite different from what we have been told?
2. It is great that trust meetings will be open, and that annual accounts will be available for inspection, but this is quite different from community ownership, and being answerable to the community.
3. The Taihape saga: I appreciate that the GB Community Health Centre will have a different structure than that of the Taihape Centre. That does not alter the fact that if, say three years down the track, Nelson Bays Primary Health (also not answerable to the community) finds that the rest home services are not viable (a real possibility), it may decide to abandon these services, as has happened in Taihape. This will leave the trust, through no fault of its own, in the invidious position of owning and paying for a purpose-built facility that is no longer needed. What then?
Dick Wenzel
Response to Joanna Piekarski, Nicola Basham, Dick Wenzel from Chris Hill, Golden Bay Community Health - Te Hauora O Mohua Trust:
The following aims to answer the questions raised by the three letters, without undue repetition.
The community health centre integration project involves a number of interrelated decisions, which affect each other. Decisions about costs will be made by the interim management group based on commercial realities, balanced by the needs of the users of the health services. These decisions will be made over time so there will not be a “final” static position; but one that evolves as the project develops.
As with any business (including the existing Golden Bay health services), not all detailed costs will be made public, for commercial reasons. Annual accounts will be presented by the community trust that owns the building. The service manager Nelson Bays Primary Health also publishes annual accounts.
The final rent agreed between the community trust and NBPH will be sustainable for both organisations; NBPH will want to rent a well-maintained facility and the community trust will want to have a tenant that can afford the rent so it is in their interests to agree on something reasonable for both.
Concerns about the design of the building are premature; it is one being worked on by all of the parties involved to ensure we achieve a pleasing environment, as was explained last week: We want to optimise the design to make sure there is no wasted space, the traffic flows work well and those living and working in the building enjoy the best sun, views and other benefits.
Nurses will not be paid less. Savings in staff costs will be achieved by having about 10% fewer staff because of the efficiencies that can be achieved through integration. The quality of care will not be compromised.
Regarding fears about privatisation, the ownership of community health centre building will be a charitable trust, the same structure that currently exists for Joan Whiting and the medical centre. Both have in the past borrowed money to improve facilities.
The rest home is not viable now and only remains open due to the temporary support of the current government. Without that support it would have closed before Christmas. The only way such a small home can operate – now and in the future - in Golden Bay is for it to become a part of a larger integrated health facility that can operate more efficiently and share overheads.
The medical centre’s doctors, previously working in a privately run commercial partnership, agreed to join the publicly funded NBPH last year. Among their reasons were the patient benefits integrated health offers, including being better able to attract professional staff, and provide safer after hours emergency care.
The medical centre staff have made an enthusiastic transition to the new structure and are looking forward to joining with their hospital and rest home colleagues to work as one integrated team with patient needs as their primary focus.
The plans for integration, which involve continued full funding of Golden Bay’s health needs from a range of government sources (Nelson Marlborough District Health Board, Ministry of Health, ACC etc), do not mean privatisation. If anything, it makes for greater public ownership through continued community ownership of a health facility for the benefit of Golden Bay people.
NBPH is contracted to provide health services for the NMDHB and government agencies and is therefore answerable to the funders of health care. They in turn are required by law to provide specified health services for the people of Golden Bay.
Building the facility involves a commercial mortgage paid off within 15 years, supported by the community’s equity from the proceeds of existing facilities and donations from charitable organisations and the community.
Regarding community contributions, we are sorry if we have not been absolutely clear, so for the record our position is:
some people in the community have indicated their wish to contribute financially – either in cash or kind - to this project. We are keen to receive whatever donations people would like to make.
yes, we will be inviting people to contribute. It is up to each individual to decide if they want to be involved in this community project, in the same way as people have over the years for the medical centre, the rest home and the community hospitals in Takaka and Collingwood.
we could raise all of the money to build the facility from borrowings, donations from charitable organisations and asset sales, depending on the size of the facility and proceeds from sale prices. But the lower the debt the more quickly we can pay back the mortgage and the more money can go into improving health services for the people of Golden Bay.
We would like to reiterate that any money being raised is to build additions and alterations to the community hospital for the rest home and medical centre facilities. It is NOT for running costs.
The business case carefully analysed the three existing health providers and how an integrated service will work. It shows we can deliver a comprehensive and more effective health service.
This is a complex project developed over more than five years with hundreds of hours of time contributed by those involved; much of it voluntary. Golden Bay’s health budget represents less than 2% of Nelson Marlborough District Health Board’s total, but the project is regarded as sufficiently important for chief executive John Peters and his senior staff to have invested a disproportionate amount of time and resources. They are not doing it to save money, but to ensure Golden Bay has sustainable health care.
We will never be able to know ahead what various governments may do, but we consider, along with the three organisations, integration puts the community in the best position for future health provision.
