Hospital bureaucracy

A post at NotPC about form filling ad infinitum has prompted me to recall how a few years back Robert was admitted to A&E with suspected appendicitis (thanks to our diligent and sharp-eyed GP whose receptionist was overwhelmed by my ringing the surgery later to thank her - apparently a very unusual occurrence).

The form-filling was a marathon, with the same information (name, address, date of birth, age, Nationality, etc) required each and every time. It went something like this;

Admission into A&E

Permission to provide pain killers

Permission for pre-op

Admission into main hospital

Admission into Children's Ward

Permission for medicines given in Children's Ward by Paediatrician

Admission into Surgery

Permission for Anaesthetist

Permission for Surgery

And I think I may have missed one or two like permission for a drip to be administered, but I'm not sure.

The staff were kind and reassuring. But the length of time everything took, during which Robert, then quite young, was, for what seemed like hours, in severe pain, vomiting and dehydrating but not allowed to imbibe any fluid due to the pending operation, must have been due, in some part, to all the bureaucratic processes.

(The silver lining was however, it taught me something about my son. He was a real trooper.)

If you are going Meat-Free today, here are some more possibilities

Have you caught up with Sir Paul McCartney's latest brainwave to fight global warming?

Meat-Free Mondays

I don't think he is trying hard enough. Why stop there?

Meat-Free Mondays

Travel-Free Tuesdays

Wash-Free Wednesdays

Technology-Free Thursdays

Fart-Free Fridays

Sex-Free Saturdays

Salt and Sugar-Free Sundays


The possibilities are just mind-boggling. And we could all go and live in yellow submarines too.

Spending on prisoner health - and your point is?

Shock, horror. Taxpayers fund bill of $22 million for prisoner health.

Convicted criminals have received more than $22 million in taxpayer-funded healthcare while in jail in the past year – nearly three times more than five years ago.

Figures obtained by The Dominion Post under the Official Information Act show the average annual health spend per prisoner in the year to June was $2752.

But how does that compare to non-prisoners?

Total health spending forecast by Treasury for 2009 was $12.396 billion. Divided across 4,316,000 people that's $2,872 each. More than was spent on prisoners.

Where's the story? The only conclusion I can draw is that prisoner health has been chronically under-funded in the past. Under Labour, no less.

Or is the writer simply attempting to fuel resentment that anything at all is spent on prisoner's health?

1,2,3,4...6

More on Garth George's response to Taskforce 2025

That really was a shocker from Garth George during the week. Full of misrepresentation, that unfortunately gets picked up as gospel. I sent the letter below and it was printed yesterday.



Don Brash also wrote a response which I am lifting from Home Paddock. Let's hope the NZ Herald has the integrity to publish it.

Garth George was way off beam in his attack on the first report of the 2025 Taskforce.

Leaving aside the personal invective, he claims that the “biggest absurdity” in the report is the proposition that New Zealand can and should catch up with Australia. He says that “there is just no comparison between the two countries”, with Australia having five times our population, 32 times our land area, and huge resources of minerals. Well, those are factual statements about Australia, but they ignore some important facts which he would be aware of had he read the report.

First, there is no correlation between living standards and population – if there were, India would be super-rich and Singapore would be poor.

Second, there is no correlation between living standards and land area – if there were, Russia would be super-rich and Finland would be poor.

Third, there is no correlation between living standards and mineral wealth – if there were, the Congo would be super-rich and Japan would be poor.

In any event, a recent World Bank study showed that, in per capita terms, New Zealand has more natural resources than almost any other country in the world.

For most of New Zealand’s history, our standard of living has been very similar to that in Australia – sometimes a bit ahead, sometimes a bit behind. And the Taskforce didn’t off its own bat decide that catching Australia again by 2025 would be some good idea: the goal was set by the Government itself, and the Taskforce was set up both to advise on how best to achieve the (very challenging) goal and to monitor annually progress towards achieving it.

Too often in the past, governments have announced grandiose commitments to lift living standards – such as the last Government’s commitment to lift us into the top half of developed countries within 10 years – but then totally ignored those commitments, hoping that nobody would notice it. It is to the Government’s credit that they made a commitment and then established a mechanism to hold them to account.

Garth George accuses the Taskforce of recommending a whole range of things which we do not recommend. For example, he accuses us of recommending a flat personal income tax, and notes that if such a tax were established a whole range of low income people would have to pay more tax. But whatever the merits of a flat tax, the Taskforce did not recommend such a tax. What we did say was that, if core government spending were cut to the same fraction of GDP that it was in both 2004 and 2005 (29%), the top personal rate, the company tax rate, and the trust tax rate could comfortably be aligned at 20%. Under such a tax structure, all those earning above $14,000 a year would pay less income tax, while nobody would pay more income tax.

Nobody seriously argues that government was vastly too small in New Zealand in 2004 and 2005 (the end of the Labour Government’s second term in office), so why the ridiculous reaction when the Taskforce suggests reducing government spending to that level?

Mr George also suggests that we recommended abolishing subsidised doctor visits, and implies that we are advocating an American approach to healthcare. This is again utter nonsense. We suggested targeting subsidies for doctor’s visits at those who need them, either because they have low incomes or have chronic health problems.

He suggests that we favoured removing subsidies for early childhood education. Again, not true. What we said was that those subsidies – which have trebled in cost from $400 million a year to $1.2 billion a year over the last five years – should be focused on those who need them.

The recommendations of the 2025 Taskforce are actually totally in line with orthodox thinking in most developed countries, and are almost entirely consistent with the recommendations of the recent OECD report on New Zealand.

Quick sketch for the Xmas Card

Here's a quick sketch I've just done for the Xmas Card this year. Robert says, But Jeffrey is purple and Palangi is yellow. True. But black and white is so boring. And nothing is ever black and white.

South Auckland Police - surrogate parents and social workers

Really. What is Law and Order coming to.

Counties Manukau Police say there are some practical tips that will assist everyone to have a calm, happy and safe Merry Family Christmas and New Year.

 Set aside money to cover bills in January and February.

 Don't spend more on Christmas than you can afford. Christmas can be about spending time together as a family, not about buying expensive presents.

 Moderate your alcohol consumption. You don't need to drink to excess to have a good time.

 Don't drink and drive. Arrange for transport home prior to going out or appoint a sober driver.

 If you share custody of children, come to an agreement before Christmas so that children get to spend time with each of you.

 Problems can be resolved without arguments.

 Take time out. If things become heated or stressful, go somewhere for a few hours to let things calm down.

 If you are feeling afraid or overwhelmed, talk to someone you trust.

 If you want help to avoid or prevent family violence, contact an appropriate agency. Some are listed below.

 Most importantly, if you have any fears for your own or your children's safety, contact the Police immediately.

British politics - tragedy or comedy?

The wife of the Commons Speaker wants to run for Parliament. He was a Tory MP before becoming speaker but she wants to run for Labour. Anyway, in anticipation, she figured she would get the skeletons out of her cupboard herself. What a riot.

Sally Bercow, 40, described her battle with drink, her fetish for one night stands in her twenties and criticised David Cameron as a “merchant of spin”.

“I was a big binge drinker in my twenties. I started drinking at Oxford, being a party girl, and it got out of control.

“I got a grip for a while, but in the mid-Nineties I was working in advertising and I would drink wine at lunch then go out and drink a bottle in the evening: most evenings really. I had no stop button.

Asked whether this was as excessive as she implies, she added: “Well, OK. It was sometimes more like two bottles, except I promised John I wouldn’t say that. Have I mucked it up already?”

She became teetotal in 2000 after realising she had put herself in danger. “I was an argumentative, stroppy drunk, picking arguments with my bosses over stupid things. Plus I’d lose my judgment and put myself in danger. I’d fall asleep on the Tube and end up in Epping or Heathrow. And I’d get into unlicensed minicabs in the early hours: all the things we’d tell our daughters not to do.”

Mrs Bercow also confessed to casual sexual encounters fuelled by alcohol. “The weren’t romantic. They were more like flings. I wasn’t looking for love. But it’s true that I would end up sometimes at a bar and someone would send a drink over and I'd think, ‘Why not?’ and we'd go home together. I liked the excitement of not knowing how a night was going to end. It was all very ladette - work hard, play hard.”

Nadine Dorries, a Tory MP who opposed Mr Bercow’s selection as Speaker, said: “We desperately need to restore both authority and respect to Parliament. What this interview has done is remove any painstaking progress Parliament has made and reduced the Speaker and his office to that of a laughing stock. How can we ask the people to trust us, when the man who holds us to account has such poor judgment that he allowed his wife to give such an appalling self obsessed interview?”

She even made comments about her husband that could be seized upon by his opponents. She revealed that after dating him for six months “he dumped me for being too argumentative". She added: "But you have to remember that he was a Right-wing headbanger at the time. He’s much more rounded and moderate now and he's rethought a lot.”

Ummm. He might be rethinking some more.

And I liked this reader's comment;

It was so toe-curlingly cringeworthy that I couldn't read it through to the end.

Yet another cheerleader for mediocrity

Another apologist for being a second rate country and economy. Garth George in today's NZ Herald dismissing the Taskforce 2025 report as "full of absurdities";

But perhaps the biggest absurdity is the proposition that New Zealand can and should catch up with Australia. Apart from the fact that Kiwis and Aussies speak the same language and have a historic affinity for each other, there is just no comparison between the two countries.

Australia, for instance, has five times our population and 32 times our land area, an almost entirely different climate and is immensely richer in mineral resources.

So how is it that in the past NZ ranked higher than Australia in per capita incomes?

According to economist Brain Easton,

New Zealand’s GDP per capita was just ahead of Australia through the 1950/1 to 1966/7 – by around 5 percent. In effect the two economies were growing at the more or less the same per capita rate, the minuscule difference of New Zealand growing .2 percent a year perhaps being due to measurement error.

In 1973 NZ joined the OECD. In 1974 NZ ranked 6th out of 26; Australia ranked 7th. The respective incomes were $6054 and $6020. But by 1984 Australia had pulled ahead by 8 percent;1994, 23 percent and 2004, 34 percent.



As for the idea that a bigger population and land mass confers greater wealth per capita, tell that to the Chinese, the Indians, the Malaysians and Nigerians. Now that idea truly is an absurdity.

Families Commission barking up the wrong tree again

The Families Commission is calling for Paid Parental Leave for fathers. A survey due to be released today paints a glowing picture of fatherhood and modern day paternal involvement, but, according to the Commission, even greater 'bonding' with newborns is required.

It is commendable that many fathers in 2009 participate in the day to day care of their children to a greater degree than in past times. I am a big fan of fatherhood. But the extra fathering is not shared equitably across the board.

A few decades ago men may not have routinely attended births, fed babies and changed nappies. But they did routinely support their families by working and putting a roof over their heads.

In 1973 only 7.6 percent of families with dependent children had an absent parent. Today around 28 percent are headed by a single parent, usually a female.

In 2008, more than 26,000 mothers received Paid Parental Leave.

In the same year over 6,000 received the DPB as first time mothers aged 28 or less. Add in those older and those having another child and the number doubles.

So probably as many as one in five new babies is not being financially supported by their father (except through Child Support). Not such a glowing picture.

And while the survey finds that Maori and Pacific fathers were the most devoted, Maori and Pacific fathers are also the least likely to fulfil the role of breadwinner. Of the 6,196 first time mothers (aged 28 or less) who went on the DPB in 2008, 43 percent were Maori and 12 percent were Pacific. Assuming most, but not all, of the fathers of their children fall into the same ethnic group, Maori are extremely over-represented.

(Of course there will be mothers claiming the DPB with partners who are very involved but as this is illegal it is impossible to quantify how many.)

So, Families Commission, what about a trade off?

Paid Parental Leave for fathers who stick around, but no DPB - at least not as we know it now. If you are serious about encouraging active and enduring fathering getting rid of the DPB would be the single-most significant step you could advocate.

Deal?

Child poverty - 'recession' the wrong culprit

Last week the release of the NZ Children's Social Health Monitor's latest report about the effects of recession provoked much angst and agitation for a stronger safety net for children. My response was that the recession isn't the problem. The DPB is.

Here is one of their graphs. It illustrates my point very well.

Thanks a lot, National

A plan to close the wealth gap with Australia is "too radical" for Finance Minister Bill English, who says bringing the two countries to economic parity by 2025 is an "aspirational" rather than realistic goal.

So catching up with Australia is only an "aspirational" goal. Not a realistic one.

What a losing attitude. Do the AllBlacks have aspirational rather than realistic goals?

By the end of this week my entry (or more accurately, a photograph of my entry) into the biennial National Portrait competition is due. Do I want to win? You bet. There probably isn't a great chance given the high number of entries and the judge being an unknown quantity. But I went out and bought best quality canvas, re-stocked my paints and brushes, chose a subject close to my heart, studied it hard, took some chances with new colours and put in the hours. In other words I am doing what I have to, to be in with a chance - at the very least.

I didn't say, well, despite getting into every competition since it began, I have never won, so why bother. Or, if I just keep on doing what I always do the result will somehow change. I am not asking people what they think and ignoring what they tell me.

I hate having a mediocre, going-through-the-motions government. I am sick of Guy Smiley and his self-professed optimism. I heard him on radio saying I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy. Idiot. A glass half full is being filled. Our glass is half empty because it is being drained. NZ is not making progress economically and hasn't for a long time. What right does he have to refuse to act in the countries best long term interests? He can slum it with the best of them, side with the losers, molly coddle the moaners. But he's no leader. He's where he is in the polls because he isn't Helen.

In 2025 I will be 66. I don't care about the f-----g super John. Put the bloody age up. What I care about is whether my kids and grand kids will want to live here, will be able to afford to live here. But if you believe achieving strong economic growth isn't a realistic goal the chances of that happening will continue to slip away.

Thanks a lot John.