If you click the right hand button on your mouse and then click "open in new tab" you'll be able to view this image (above) more clearly. You'll be able to see that while the Wellington facilities operated by this "Union" (- they certainly are NOT a Union!) are very different from the 'services' they offer in the Wairarapa. You can see that in order to access the Wairarapa 'services' you need to pass TWO tests: You need (1) a referral from a health professional - this could cost you around $75 just for a start; and (2) you need to pass their "eligibility assessment". This organisation is NOT a Union by any stretch of the imagination - their funding has been stopped as a result of the number of complaints about the organisation. The Wairarapa branch of the organisation is a slush fund for the people operating it - they avoid having anything to do with mental health consumers!
Suicide is a serious problem is New Zealand, and Wairarapa regularly has around twice the national average. There are many dubious 'organisations' receiving funding to provide assistance, support and access to resources for people who may have depression, or other mental illness, and many of the organisations are not only failing to help people, they, and the people who run them are actually causing and maintaining the problems, it keeps them in a job, and they guard their jobs jealously, and criticism is stamped out promptly, whatever the cost.
They waste the money they get, and have a rude arrogant, patronising and dismissive attitude. Take the Wellington Mental Health Consumers Union: Follow this link to the website of the WMHCU. You'll find it doesn't exist, any more than the non-existent Transparency International NZ behind the sign on the door in Wellington.
"You've reached the future website of wmhcu.org.nz - er, the future website? What use is a future website to a suicidal person? The name is deliberately misleading, as is all the pious rubbish they print in their glossy little self promoting leaflets. They are not a consumers union at all, they are more like a secret society.
The same old people have had the same old jobs in the Wairarapa for far too long and that's why the Wairarapa continues to be so socially dysfunctional, and why the rates of violence and other crime, including child abuse and suicide, are not only higher than anywhere in NZ, but are regularly double the national average. These are the real bludgers, not the beneficiaries, many of whom, like me, would love a job, and did their jobs very well until the local corrupt constable spread false rumours about them being child abusers.
Time to get rid of the people running this organisation (an others) in the Wairarapa, and their supervisor in Wellington if she thinks this is acceptable, parts of Karin Keith's response to a recent complaint will be up soon and indicate that she condones this and supports the staff.
You'll note that the Wellington facilities offer a place for mental health consumers - and nobody asked me to prove I was a mental health consumer when I popped in recently, or if I had a referral, and nobody asked me to pass any assessment, a nice lady made me a cup of tea and listened to me and spoke with me constructively and acted in a professional manner regarding my complaint about the WMHCU Wairarapa Support in the Community organisation.
You can see that the Wellington Mental Health Consumers Union facilities in Wellington offer free services, and you can clearly see what those services are.
The Wairarapa Support in the Community Service offers a bunch of airy fairy nebulous waffle that the staff there think mental health patients want or need.
At the bottom of the left hand column you can see that there's a free Advocacy Service in Wellington and two drop in centres with specific resources which are open pretty much all day every day.
In Wairarapa they advertise as being in the Enterprise Village and open every day. They aren't open these hours at all - their door is never open, it is kept locked, and they only open it if you have an appointment. Good luck trying to get one! As you can see, access requires a referral from a professional, and an "eligibility assessment." Good luck getting the "eligibility assessment" - these people are in the business of getting their hands on the funding - NOT assisting their clients. Their priority is filling their OWN pockets.
Support in the Community Service Wairarapa is an insult to mental health patients, and the staff at this organisation spend all their time and energy applying for funding and finding ways to turn away the few people who do manage to get a referral from a health professional, and find ways to make sure they don't pass the eligibility assessment.
The staff are rude and unprofessional to hopeful clients, and their rude, arrogant, dismissive attitude is an insult to the clients.
Furthermore, they are not a "consumers union" at all. Mental Health Consumers have no involvement in the running of the organisation, an incorporated society, at all. There is not proper social audit of the organisation, or proper financial audit. The link to the "future website" is a good example of how they waste money doing nothing for their clients and thinking up fancy things to write in the glossy leaflets and funding applications. Have a look at the prices for these websites: $600 - $2,500. Our websites cost absolutely nothing, and we get no funding whatsoever. WMHCU Wairarapa provide zero resources for clients, none, not one, not a place to meet with a phone, computer, pool table, table tennis, nothing like the resources at the Wellington facilities, the people who run the WMHCUSCW or what ever they call themselves actually try as hard as they can to have as little to do with mental health consumers as possible.
Tere Torea's 'anti violence programs' and other 'services' he runs should be shut down and nobody should give him any more funding, he is a bully. He offered to help me, then discussed my confidential matters with his mate, an ex-prison warden who got the sack for smuggling stuff into the prison according to Tere, who actually brought him to my home. Then Tere Torea said he would collect me the next day and give me a lift to Court and advocate for me. But Tere didn't turn up the following day, his mate did. And he didn't take me to Court, he took me to his house. Tere turned up and shouted at me like a lunatic, I was lucky to get to Court at all, these guys are completely unprofessional, they are incompetent, they are bullies with delusions of grandeur, their reputations are made up by local journalists.
There's a group of people in the Wairarapa who run these community organisations, they attend each other's AGM's and elect each other, year after year, along with a few old and often half senile people to make up the numbers, and if anyone else tries to join the organisation who has a different point of view to them, they simply serve a trespass notice to prevent them attending the meetings, and that's the end of that. In the case of the Community Centre that didn't work, so they punched me in the face and changed the locks to cover up the fraud.
A lot of people in our community are depressed about the closure of the Community Resource Centre, sale of the Borough Farm, Health Centre and so many other community assets, and a lot are depressed about Mayor McPhee's arrogant and corrupt Event Centre plans, after two petitions against it and the opposition of almost the entire community and certainly all informed members of the community, who want an inquiry into the illegal takeover and closure of the former Community Centre by a group of people associated with the Carterton District Council, major funder of the Centre, for their own pecuniary gain and that of their mates.
This page is about the mental health programs developed by Friends of Caring Communities, our programs have proved to be very successful, and healing. We are highlighting the link between injustice and violent crime and suicide.
Our organisation encourages and supports people to speak up, speak out, and heal themselves and break the cycle by doing so. Friends of Caring Communities supports anyone in the community, whether they have been formally diagnosed with a mental condition or not, to shine a light into dark places and speak up about depression and feelings of injustice. You don't need a referral, and you don't need to pass any assessment test.
We support people who have tried to speak out and been betrayed, and who feel that their abusers are protected by mates in high places, or positions of trust, like Louise Nicholas, or local journalists who print stories to cover up the abuse and spread the word that the abuser is "innocent" when there is no evidence of that. These 'stories' make victims feel suicidal, and the particular case linked to above is very interesting indeed. Nobody in Carterton had heard anything about these leaflets, or the allegations contained in them, until the man and his family approached the media and managed to get it plastered across every newspaper and television that the man was innocent
The family's widespread publicising of the leaflets is ridiculous, The claims of innocence are not credible, and many people believe that whoever was named may well be guilty because the sexual misconduct conduct of the local constable who "investigated" the illegal takeover and closure of the Community Centre his girlfriend was involved in running into the ground and ripping off was widespread and well known. Abuse of vulnerable people, corruption and bullying have been rampant in the Wairarapa for years and years and everyone knows it. Constable Wakefield is the constable who investigated the illegal takeover of the CCC. He was having it off with Jo Roffe, who was getting paid $600 for running silly little arty fart courses for "troubled youth" - a euphemism for youth that were getting into trouble with the police. Wakefield and his mates would write letters in support of Roffe's funding applications, saying what a good effect the courses had on the young criminals - the same rubbish idiots like him used to write about Beyer the Liar's "Life Skills" courses. It's time these people got their snouts out of the trough nd kept them out because they are proven thieves and liars who are the direct cause of the Wairarapa having such outrageously high levels of suicide and violent crime.
Roffe got $600 through the CCC, plus expenses, goods, art equipment, bonuses, etc. Her and people like her pillaged the CCC, and used it as their own personal slush fund. Or cash cow, as Roffe put it. The small, dedicated group of volunteers who have run the Carterton Community Gardens since 1999 have received the grand sum of $250 from the Carterton District Council, ever. We did far more for the community than Roffe ever did. We have paid all our own expenses out of our own pockets, and paid for much of the plants, tools, equipment for the gardens, such as the plants and equipment at the South End School, plants and equipment which have now been stolen by the same staff and Board of Trustees members who have been spreading lies about me being charged by the police with an offence involving a child. The same staff and Board members who wouldn't even publish our letter of thanks to the companies and individuals in the community who had also contributed to the Garden at the South End School, the same ones who had an adults only working bee at the school gardens in the last week of the school holidays last month to tidy up the mess. They do not involve the children, and since taking it over by sending me the letter containing the false accusation, the Board and staff at the school have wasted the considerable amount of funding that they got, and have mismanaged the Gardens that we created with the children, the staff and Board deliberately destroyed our crops, ripping out spinach, kale, parsley, and many other plants, lovingly planted by us and the children. We weren't advised that this was going to happen, or given an opportunity to harvest the crops. This is typical of the way they run things in the Wairarapa, let other people do all the work, then push them out and spread lies about them and steal what they worked for, like the Community Centre. No wonder people are depressed in the Wairarapa.
When young people commit suicide it's particularly sad, and a real indictment on a community, and the people who govern it. Particularly when the people running it are claiming all the attention for their own depression the way Gary McPhee does, and claiming to know all about it because of his "murderous rages" (newspaper article up soon). Gary's advice is to go to the mental health organisations, staffed by his friends like Corinne Oliver and the ones who run WMHCUSCW, and have a cup of tea with them every once in a while.
Our advice to young people is to listen to music, and create your own, listen to your heart, and your own mind, and be grateful for any good advice you are offered, but don't believe everything you're told. Never give up, never stop learning stuff. Watch the sun rise and set, and the moon, look at the stars, and remember these words.
Poems can be sad and funny and insightful, put things in perspective, explain the unexplainable, cheer us up, make us feel not so alone. Half the trouble is, people are afraid of being alone, as though they are afraid of themselves, they need to fill the vacuum with noise, chit chat, tv, till they can't even think any more. More poems soon, submit your own, in the mean time, here's a wee joke:
I was feeling a bit depressed the other night, so I rang Lifeline, and I got through to a call centre in Pakistan.
I told them I was depressed, and felt like ending it all. They got very excited, and asked me if I could drive a truck. Ho ho ho.
Keep a diary, keep a little book with your favorite poems in, here's another of my favorites:
The Maori Jesus
I saw the Maori Jesus
Walking on Wellington Harbour.
He wore blue dungarees,
His beard and hair were long.
His breath smelled of mussels and paraoa.
When he smiled it looked like the dawn.
When he broke wind the little fishes trembled.
When he frowned the ground shook.
When he laughed everybody got drunk.
The Maori Jesus came on shore
And picked out his twelve disciples.
One cleaned toilets in the railway station;
His hands were scrubbed red to get the shit out of the pores.
One was a call-girl who turned it up for nothing.
One was a housewife who had forgotten the Pill
And stuck her TV set in the rubbish can.
One was a little office clerk
Who'd tried to set fire to the Government Buldings.
Yes, and there were several others;
One was a sad old quean;
One was an alcoholic priest
Going slowly mad in a respectable parish.
The Maori Jesus said, 'Man,
From now on the sun will shine.'
He did no miracles;
He played the guitar sitting on the ground.
The first day he was arrested
For having no lawful means of support.
The second day he was beaten up by the cops
For telling a dee his house was not in order.
The third day he was charged with being a Maori
And given a month in Mt Crawford.
The fourth day he was sent to Porirua
For telling a screw the sun would stop rising.
The fifth day lasted seven years
While he worked in the Asylum laundry
Never out of the steam.
The sixth day he told the head doctor,
'I am the Light in the Void;
I am who I am.'
The seventh day he was lobotomised;
The brain of God was cut in half.
On the eighth day the sun did not rise.
It did not rise the day after.
God was neither alive nor dead.
The darkness of the Void,
Mountainous, mile-deep, civilised darkness
Sat on the earth from then till now.- James K Baxter
Once upon a time in New Zealand there was a man called Neil Roberts. He blew himself up outside the building that housed the Wanganui police computer centre. Before he did so, he wrote the following words on the wall the the building: "We are maintaining a silence closely resembling stupidity." Wise words. Nothing's sadder than people who do commit suicide and leave everyone wondering why. At least he spelled it out.
Finally, for today, follow this link to watch a hilarious clip of Charles Bukowski reading The Last Days of the Suicide Kid to some little kids. If this doesn't make you laugh, you are definitely depressed, and even if it does you may well be anyway, but it should cheer you up. There's another link on Youtube to an interview with Charles, in which he talks about his feelings about alcohol and cannabis. He is all for the former and totally against the latter. He says "If I didn't drink, I would have committed suicide a long time ago." Drinking is committing suicide, just like smoking cigarettes and lots of other things, it's just doing it in slow motion. Your body is a temple and life is a wonderful gift, make the most of them.
Suicide isn't funny, and we should respect people who share with us how deeply they feel. People commit suicide, and try and commit suicide, for many different reasons, we should listen to them, not talk at them like they do in the Wairarapa. Good riddance to Barry Taylor and his Men Only Suicide Prevention scheme, complete with profiles and free advertising for Brad Martin and John Slater, poster boys, along with Gary McPhee, for the Men's Depression promotion group, Brad Martin and John Slater were deeply involved in the illegal takeover and destruction of the CCC and the Community Gardens. John Slater was Chairman of the CCC, his little autobiography is extremely selective - what about his other partner, who was on the committee of the CCC at the time of the gross misfeasance? What about his kids with her? The mainstream media needs to tell the whole story about these so called healthy heroes instead of spreading this propaganda.
Remember, life is a gift, enjoy it. Watch the sun rise every morning if you can, and watch it set every night, look at the stars and the moon every night, connect with the universe. Go diving and play with the fishes - it's like getting in a rocket ship and going to another plant with all sorts of alien life forms, or some amazing virtual reality game with strange creatures everywhere - it's great! Run away and join the circus, stow away on a ship to Africa, anything. The two things to avoid in life are boredom and poor self esteem. It's never too late to have a happy childhood, the meaning of life is redemption. If you make a mistake it's not the end of the world, nobody's perfect. It's a big world, and life is a wonderful gift, don't waste it.
