Boomer music rules...

My name is Pete Hodgson, and I chaired or served on the governance group of the new hospital for 6 years until last Xmas.
I have also chaired the Southern district health board, was the health minister back when Richard chaired the DHB, was a local MP for 20 years, and I want to talk about money.
Two days ago, Ministers came to town to downgrade the new hospital and to release Robert Rust’s report.
I know Robert Rust and I have read his report.
He is an engineer who understands finance.
He has spent much of his life building health infrastructure in New South Wales.
He is a polite, careful man and he knows his stuff. He says that the hospital ‘probably’ cannot be completed within the current budget of $1.88 B. That is a problem to which I will return.
Two days ago, when Ministers came to town to downgrade the new hospital and release the Rust report, they said they wanted to be open and transparent.
They were anything but. They said that the cost of the new hospital was approaching $3 billion. The Rust report didn’t say that because it isn’t true.
Richard has already read you Rust’s first recommendation which is that ‘the scope needs to be fixed as a matter of urgency’. That scope was decided years ago, when Bill English was Prime Minister. Rust is politely saying that someone has bolted a car park and a community pathology cost onto the hospital when they were never part of the project.
He is saying that someone has decided to throw $300m at refurbishing an abandoned building when the no-one knows to whom which bits might be sold or leased for what purpose.
He is politely saying that the governance needs to be fixed.
But Ministers have instead used that criticism to pump the cost towards $3 billion. Did they really think we wouldn’t notice? I am calling them out for their deceit.
Two days ago, when Ministers came to town to release the Rust report and to be open and honest, they said the project had been trouble from the start.
They said that it was built in the centre of town, prone to flooding, on contaminated soil, with uncertainty over piling.
But the Rust report says nothing of that. Ministers just made it up.
The reason that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern asked that it be in the centre of town, where it has been for 100 years, is that Dunedin trains health science students, for all of New Zealand, in their thousands. I would hope the Minister of Health would be enthusiastic about that.
The chocolate factory was demolished, the rubble used to build up the ground level, all necessary soil decontaminated, all piles driven for both buildings, all for less than 3% of total cost. How wrong could Ministers be.
Here is my advice to the Government about yet another cost overrun.
Don’t bother to review the building capacity again. It wastes time and it costs money.
There are no vanities or bells and whistles to be found.
Remember Richard’s comment that the hospital was designed from the outset on ambitious assumptions of high efficiency and significant investment in primary care.
Lopping even one storey from the tower block will mean the new hospital would have fewer beds than the current one.
Instead satisfy yourself that you have created an acceptably strong competitive environment, and an acceptably innovative approach to modularising or other tricks of the trade, and an acceptably competent governance.
Then build the bloody thing.
Don’t bother with the blackmail that other hospitals such as Whangarei need the cash.
I know the Whangarei hospital. My father spent his last days there a few years ago and it is in dire need of attention.
But Northlanders want half a hospital as much as Southerners do.
Instead look at the Infrastructure Commission’s report of a few years ago which said health infrastructure spending needed to be quadrupled – for thirty years.
Then note how the previous government did put big chunks of money into each of their 6 budgets but how this year’s budget had next to nothing.
Therein lies the problem, and the solution.

Built this machine about 6 weeks ago, all stock standard no overclocking etc.
It's a ryzen 5600GT running on a gigabyte board with a B550M series chipset, memory is 3200mhz which is the maximum speed for these.

About 2 or 3 times in the last month it's just spontaneously rebooted for no apparent reason, with no warnings in event viewer other than unexpected shutdown.
Then last weekend it would simply not start and would boot into a loop where it would take you into windows recovery environment, etc.
I performed a system restore after the usual startup repair failed.
Then it booted into a BSOD with a CRITICAL_PROCESS_DIED error.
I decided to perform a fresh install of windows 11 on a new SSD and upon its first startup, I get another BSOD this time with the error DRIVER_PNP_WATCHDOG.
Memory tests all fine, have reset CMOS and updated the BIOS with no effect.
Now I was able to get windows 11 to run again after swapping a drive out that I installed previously on another computer, so it is still possible to get windows to run on it, same goes for my hirens winPE disc.

I have read a bunch online with people having similar faults with their mobo and/or CPU but appear more sporadic and random, but a BSOD upon a windows install points to some sort of hardware issue, I feel it can only be CPU or motherboard, but will need to find another CPU to swap out and test it with.

I rarely ever come across faulty CPU's but it can't be ruled out, am more interested to know if anyone else has come across something similar in recent?

Fantastic; SO good to know that someone,somewhere will benefit from the idiocy of this govt.


Blatant, uncaring, greed motivated, callous behaviour from this govt. Casey Costello was told that Philip Morris would be the biggest winner from the tax cuts for Heated Tobacco Products, told they were toxic & more harmful than vaping but claimed to have got her own independent advice & went ahead.



https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/529...y-costello

And there appears to be virtually  nothing being done to change that. Our health system has been progressivey worsening over decdades, thanks to the idiocy of Neo Liberalism & unless every govt from now on makes a determined effort nothng will change & there will be more incidents like these.


One man lost fingers after waiting hours to be seen.


https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5294...help-in-ed

Another patient died at Rororua's ED, yet its said to be safe by the Minister of health.

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/political/527...ient-death

26, 260 days...

Now, that is a lot of days.   And most of them were pretty good ones.


https://www.countcalculate.com/calendar/days-lived

Maggie Smith has died at age 89...bugger.


https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgk7375ngkxo

There had previously been a stay of execution when DNA on the handle of the knife was found not to be from Williams.

I'm so glad we no longer have the death penalty here.


https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world...19025.html

If the downgrade of Dunedin hospital goes ahead; govt might want to take heed. Quite a lot of farming people need that hospital & they tend to often be Nat voters.


https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/5291...n-hospital

They're calling it the star system...but not until 2026

At its worst, it could see parents prosecuted if their kids don't attend school. Just fabulous, criminalise parents.

And they don't like teacher only days - according to ACT all that should be done during school hours.





https://www.stuff.co.nz/politics/3504300...-reo-maori