MANGAWHAI'S NO.1 NEWSPAPER
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Letters to the EditorConflict of interest? Thank you for the profiles of the various mayoral and council candidates for the upcoming Kaipara District Council elections. Very good. A previous correspondent in the Mangawhai Focus advised that one of the candidates, Mr Greg Gent, continues to leave out the fact that he was, and may still be, an employee of the BNZ and could be considered to be compromised as the BNZ is one of the two banks who advanced the loans to the Kaipara District Council. It is essential that a Mayor have no commercial or employment link to any organisation that carries out business with a local government. I ask Mr Gent to clarify this matter as he is still registered as The Chairman, BNZ Partners Northland. John Black Kaipara Something’s not right For the past seven years I have been a regular weekend visitor to Managwhai and have met many great locals. This is just to give some constructive feedback and by no means is a complaint, rather to inform. Two days after heart surgery my mate bought me out (Thursday afternoon) to Managwhai for a bit of recovery by the beach. In hindsight this was not so smart. I definitely underestimated my level of fatigue as I am usually extremely active and fit and around an hour after arrival the body decided to go through a stress attack and my friends called the ambulance. They were surprised that one had to come from Waipu (I believe) with the new facility but understood as it was voluntary it simply could not be manned the whole time. The chap who arrived was exceptional and was on his own as he had no volunteers for that day. Anyway, everything settled down and I felt fine again but the ambulance driver wanted to take me to the medical clinic in Managwhai for some routine tests. He contacted his dispatch and gave a full rundown including my heart surgery. During the trip the ambulance dispatch came on and asked whether or not the patient was one of theirs to which the ambulance officer informed them I was from out of town. Around 40 seconds later dispatch came back and quoted “based on the background you have given the doctors refuse to access.” That certainly made our ears prick up (I was sitting in the front) and the driver said “I can’t quite make that out so we pulled into the car park of the new Mangawhai ambulance center so he could get confirmation from his dispatch to which we heard again “they said, based on the background you have given the doctors refuse to access.” There was no back-up reason or explanation, so the driver said to me he would be happy to run me through to Whangarei. I immediately told him, actually I think I’m fine, but just out of interest, what if I or someone else was not? He mentioned that maybe they would not want to take the responsibility and maybe they thought you should go to Whangarei – I got he was reaching for an explanation. I told him he was amazing but I was absolutely astonished by that outcome, I was fine but what about the next person? What if they were having a heart attack and doctors choose to send them on a one hour trip without medical attention? Hence my letter. Something in this procedure does not seem right. Surely any medical attention is better than none? Surely there is a priority system? Worth a discussion. I’m sure I’m missing something that improves the rationale but this will affect one of you or at least one of your visitors sooner or later. Aaron Hudson Auckland [Abridged] |