The Power List
I was surprised the Listener’s Power List (December 6) made no mention of the country’s serious/classical musicians in its Arts, Culture & Entertainment category, especially as in the same issue you feature soprano Madeleine Pierard and her receipt of a New Generation Award from the Arts Foundation. The many other brilliant young performers, exemplified by those like John Chen making it on the world scene, would also be possibilities.
One could imagine the world-class New Zealand Symphony Orchestra itself being a candidate, or perhaps even its dynamic music director, Pietari Inkinen, the envy of many an overseas orchestra.
Other candidates might include the much-acclaimed baritone Teddy Tahu Rhodes, who recently completed a national tour to rave reviews, and long-time trouper, Beethoven exponent and pianist Michael Houstoun continues to fill halls up and down the country.
Murray Eggers
(Paraparaumu, Kapiti Coast)
I really enjoyed reading the Power List. It would be nice to think that the average New Zealander could rise above their distaste for, and envy of, the rich, successful and enterprising. I live in hope.
Perhaps with the country’s political shift from left to middle-right, we may come to have a little more faith in our talented leaders, including the enormous number of unsung heroes in our communities.
But will we? Unconstructive criticism is a hard habit to break. I’d like to add a fourth B, after Best Boldest Brightest – “Benevolence”.
Natalie Sutcliffe
(Birkenhead, North Shore City)
In the Power List’s Law category, it says some people believe David Collins QC to be “undistinguished” before he took on the role of Solicitor-General and that he remains so. I am one of many who disagree.
I was a member of the Council of the Wellington District Law Society when Collins served as its president so have first-hand experience of his abilities. I am aware that before he was appointed Solicitor-General, he served as chairman of the ACC and the Health Practitioners Disciplinary Tribunal, and appeared as counsel in numerous complex trials, and before the Privy Council no less than seven times.
Collins’ doctorate is in law, earned and awarded because he wrote a major text on medico-legal matters, thereby demonstrating his mastery of the subject and his ability to perform and present erudite research. Such doctorates are rare; I doubt if there are more than half a dozen in New Zealand.
In 2000, an article in the New Zealand Law Journal had this to say about QCs: appointment is made only of the select few regarded as worthy of the prize awarded to the specially diligent, learned, upright and capable members of the bar.
To regard such an accomplished scholar as undistinguished is simply perverse.
Philip McCabe
(Kelburn, Wellington)
Mental health
Any system with a one-size-fits-all approach that fails to provide the necessary resources to address the causes of mental unwellness could never achieve a healthy outcome (“Did the system kill my child?”, November 29). As soon as people present for help to the mental health services, they are seen as a disease and treated accordingly more often than not with a severe lack of empathy or compassion.
Our mental health service is top heavy with bureaucrats so that Mental Health Commission chair commissioner Peter McGeorge and his colleagues can continue to conduct reviews and develop blueprints, all of which come with a hefty price tag. These have been conducted for years, yet outcomes remain unchanged.
I recently helped a consumer of these services to make a valid complaint about severe breaches of their rights that occurred while they were incarcerated under the Mental Health Act. The four attempts generated four different responses from the in-house complaints procedure.
It appeared obvious, when called to accountability, that staff had lied to protect their reputations and jobs. If one is marginalised, like some consumers are, they are considered mad and therefore not to be believed.
I trained and registered as a psychiatric nurse here nearly 30 years ago. I believe the environment is more attractive these days, but its culture remains disempowering and abusive for the consumers it serves. On the other hand, many groups benefit from it fiscally, from the multi-national pharmaceutical companies at the top and the slum landlords who often provide substandard boarding-house accommodation to the clients receiving scant community-based treatment.
I get tired of hearing about staff shortages and pay parity. Conditions and pay parity for staff have greatly improved since the major strikes of the early 70s. If mental health workers feel dissatisfied with their lot, why don’t they leave and find another vocation as I did.
Which leads me to ask: who treats the treaters? Take a walk around any of New Zealand’s health and mental health institutions and observe the high levels of morbid obesity among the staff. Many of their other personal agendas and addictions remain hidden.
Our mental health system comes with a huge price tag and it still fails to work for the majority of consumers it was created to serve.
My heart goes out to the parents and siblings of those who have sadly chosen to take their own lives. For the survivors there can never be closure; there will always be why. This is made worse by lengthy waits for coronial inquiries and district health board tribunal processes, especially for those unable to afford good-quality legal representation. The parents and siblings feel angry, understandably so, towards a system that has let their loved ones down. The traumatic effects of suicide on survivors are as yet, largely uncharted territory, rarely acknowledged and frequently medicalised and stigmatised.
Denise Rensburg
(Dunedin)
Mental health care has changed, certainly. When I worked in acute mental health care 12 years ago, there was time to work with patients individually, incorporating mental, physical, spiritual and family health into our patients’ care. As a nurse, I loved working with my patients to achieve the best outcomes for them and their families.
With the advent of deinstitutionalisation and the subsequent closure of inpatient beds, nurses are no longer able to give this type of care. With fewer beds, there is a never-ending pressure to get people back into the community as quickly as possible. Now it seems it is all about the dollar, with the resulting management layers leaving even less money (and support) for those at the coalface.
Ward cleaning has been contracted out to private companies; cleaners work for a specified number of hours. Consequently standards are not the same.
Regional prisons all now have “at-risk” units where people with mental health problems are treated. Not by nurses but by prison officers, who do their best but have neither the training nor expertise to give little more than custodial care.
Certainly, they have the support of prison and forensic nurses; unfortunately, this is often not enough and beds in forensic mental health units are limited, so people are treated for the acute phase of their illness and then returned to the general prison population until they become acutely unwell again and so the cycle continues.
Often, part of the reason they are in prison has to do with their illness. One in four in prison have mental health problems and as a result have ended up in institutional care.
But then, it is far less expensive to keep people in prisons than hospitals.
Name withheld by request
Food for thought
Just because women who eat an egg a day have a higher rate of late-onset diabetes, it does not follow that eggs cause diabetes (Health, December 13). Women who eat more eggs may, on average, eat more in general.
In the American diet, eggs are often included in sweet foods such as pancakes. And almost all the eggs eaten in the study are likely to have come from battery hens, and may contain antibiotics and other drugs that could affect the pancreas.
In any case, this claim contradicts one made in the Nutrition column of the same issue in relation to omega-3 fish oils: that food sources are more sustainable than supplements (whatever that means), less expensive (a dubious claim in regard to fish oil) and have fewer toxicity issues.
Most people do not find it sustainable to eat oily fish yielding 3-4 grams of fish oil every week. The fish oil in omega-3 supplements contains no measurable mercury – unlike many of the fish it comes from.
If you wanted to get a very modest preventive dose of vitamin E, say 50mg per day, from the richest food source, rice bran oil, you would have to consume 200 grams of oil a day – that’s 1800 calories a day from fat.
There are many other examples that contradict these food and drug industry bromides. The whole concept of toxicity in regard to nutrients at the doses marketed as supplements (as opposed to some prescription products) is based on exaggeration and special pleading.
George D Henderson
(Huia, Waitakere City)
Noam Chomsky
Ben Naparstek reports that Noam Chomsky has been rated as one of the 10 most cited thinkers ever and the only one still living, yet he still set about checking the man’s credentials during his interview on the occasion of Chomksy’s 80th birthday (“Who’d have thought?” December 13).
He found the great thinker’s political conclusions that result in most citations wanting: Chomsky is opinionated, his judgment flawed (associates with neo-nazis and rationalised Pol Pot’s crimes), his contributions are ignored by most US commentators, he lacks charisma and has an inaudible “froggy voice”, his renowned humility was bogus and his “relentlessly cynical vision” offered little.
Naparstek recorded verbatim some of Chomsky’s “extreme views” to buttress his case that he was an oddball. It’s fortunate that Naparstek can’t time travel or he’d demolish the reputations of the other great thinkers on the list.
We got family information that Chomsky is reluctant to give but which journalists thrive on often at the expense of his relevant findings. His parents, we were told, came from Russia and Lithuania, which is novel as his father came from Ukraine and his mother from what is now Belarus. We did not discover why Chomsky’s conclusions are taken seriously by so many, especially outside the US.
Chomsky is credible because of the high quality of his work (often after reading and digesting freely available unclassified documents, research papers and books) to explain how political power really works in contrast to how we are told it works. He is an impassioned advocate for the virtues of freedom, truth and justice for all and unselfishly applies his excellent mind to construct arguments to help the disadvantaged take charge of their affairs.
His conclusions can often seem “extreme” and contradictory, but if they are supported by dependable scholarship, privileged western readers have to adjust their views to fit his awkward conclusions.
So read Naparstek’s article again, concentrating on the verbatim quotes, and take them as seriously as the victims of power abuses do.
Peter Grant
(Okoia, Wanganui)
White-tailed spiders
I read with amazement the article “Tangled web” and wondered how many others who have been bitten by a white-tailed spider had the same reaction (Health, December 6).
My experience was certainly not “most side-effects were mild and disappeared within a day”. I was bitten by a white-tail on my upper arm on a Saturday evening at our bach in Northland. The bite was extremely painful – the spider was seen running away – and that night my arm became extremely hot, itchy and painful.
After a sleepness night and applying cold compresses in an attempt to cool my arm, I decided to head home. It was then I discovered to my amazement that my whole right arm was swollen from the armpit to the wrist, red and still painful and had become so heavy I could hardly lift it.
When I finally managed to see a doctor on the Monday morning, she diagnosed extreme cellulitis and prescribed a week of antibiotics. I was also told to keep the arm elevated on a pillow to help drain the poison away. The doctor said the antibiotic was most important – otherwise the effects of the bite could be extremely severe.
It took a week for the swelling and pain to disappear. Admittedly, I did not develop an ulcer and there were no more ill-effects after the antibiotic took effect, but it was certainly not an experience I want to repeat.
I regularly read the Health column and think that most of the time it is correct, but those of us who have been bitten by a white-tailed spider (and I know of two others who have had nasty bites recently) shall certainly be avoiding them at all cost.
Sheryl Logan
(Maungaturoto)
