Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: The Honours

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  • Sacha,

    With pressure on health and social service budgets, the balance and boundaries between personal and social responsibility is bound to become an even hotter issue this year (especially after the Budget in May).

    To give another example, someone who knowingly accepts risk by choosing to play rugby can end up in a spinal ward alongside a person with spinal tumours. Both can have exactly the same degree of function, same level of existing resources and consequently need the same amount of support in everyday living. However the rugby player is covered by ACC and funded far more generously than the cancer patient.

    The ethics of health and disability have some strange features.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Sacha,

    Oh and I'll be most interested to see what comes out of the current discussions between Health Ministers Ryall and Turia about tobacco control. I'm aware that what's on the table will be challenging politically, to the credit of the public servants involved.

    Ak • Since May 2008 • 19745 posts Report Reply

  • Amy Gale,

    I don't believe making craploads of money is worthy of having a sword waved near your heard and getting to put 'Sir' on your business cards, it seems to me that having craploads of money is reward enough.

    This. Loudly.

    tha Ith • Since May 2007 • 471 posts Report Reply

  • Craig Ranapia,

    I'm not quite sure what you mean by George Best Wannabes - but liver transplants are given to anyone who needs them - including alcoholics and addicts.

    George Best was a high profile alcoholic football player who had a liver transplant and was snapped drinking again afterward by the tabloids. Plenty of chatter that he never deserved the transplant in the first place, because alcoholics bring it all on themselves and scarce resources (like transplant organs) should go to blameless grannies and kiddies.

    As far as I'm aware, no matter what the tabloids say he would never have been in line for a second transplant purely on the clinical grounds that his alcohol use would have constituted an unacceptable risk of failure. As it turned out, he didn't die because he was drinking again but due to a kidney infection caused by the side-effects of immuno-suppressive drugs

    North Shore, Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 12370 posts Report Reply

  • JackElder,

    This would seem an apropos moment for some classic Brass Eye:

    Wellington • Since Mar 2008 • 709 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    However the rugby player is covered by ACC and funded far more generously than the cancer patient.

    I wish someone would fix this, it affects heaps of people in NZ and is just unfair. It's to your advantage to try and get your symptoms classified as an accident than relating to some sort of disease or illness because our ACC scheme is so good.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    The obvious solution is to make our health scheme just as good.

    In related news, the saga of my son Joseph and his orthopaedics appointments at Wellington Hospital continues. We are at the fifth reschedule, now due some time in Feb but we're not holding our breath. It used to be October. At one point he was rescheduled twice on the same day, with two separate letters so dated - I'm keeping them in case somebody ever suggests there isn't an issue with basic incompetence at our DHB.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Alien Lizard (anag),

    Good deed for the day - a small correction to a page one entry:

    Russell as Scout Master. Can I get a tie with a toggle?

    that'd be a scarf with a woggle *

    dyb dyb dyb
    from the Bill Shankley Eagle Scout Troop

    *ps check out the plastic faux-Maori woggle
    NZ scouts can use

    The Arrrgh Complex • Since Jan 2010 • 158 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    Alien Lizard (anag)

    Is R your middle initial then?

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • 3410,

    Is R your middle initial then?

    Ha! We can but hope.

    Auckland • Since Jan 2007 • 2618 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    The obvious solution is to make our health scheme just as good.

    It might just be my 'not living in the real world' thing, but I think we have a pretty good health scheme, it's just funded the wrong way.

    Welfare, ACC etc, they don't stop paying out and put you on a waiting list or cut back treatment once they run out of money. It gets paid for and if it costs more, it costs more.

    I'm not sure why we don't have a health system like that - where the government agrees that it will provide a good standard of health care for most situations, and pays what that costs every year. At least then we'd be transparent about what we want our citizens to have and be paying the bill for that, rather than letting those more unfortunately slip through cracks and have to battle for basic standards of living.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    I'm not sure why we don't have a health system like that.

    Because it's anathema to the ideology of both major parties, and has been successfully sold to us that the status quo is the only option there is. *And* they still have to gall to claim that certain services are funded on a needs basis, as opposed to as a function of what the budgeted resources can provide.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Alien Lizard (anag),

    Is R your middle initial then?

    sadly, I am indeed lumbered with
    an initially taxing acronym...
    but wish to remain anonymous
    and refuse to die...
    so my nom de plumey-nous
    is more Second Life than the Sims.
    Be nice re: incarnation
    reincarnation can be nice
    8 - )

    The Arrrgh Complex • Since Jan 2010 • 158 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    Yeah. I suspect the fact that it would cost a crapload more vote health is the reason why we don't have it. I meant.... why does the health system work with a fixed budget, and other services work according to need. Who made that decision umpteen years ago? Why?

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • giovanni tiso,

    sadly, I am indeed lumbered with
    an initially taxing acronym...

    Lovely to have you back.

    Wellington • Since Jun 2007 • 7473 posts Report Reply

  • Kumara Republic,

    reincarnation can be nice
    8 - )

    Σ:-3

    The southernmost capital … • Since Nov 2006 • 5446 posts Report Reply

  • Just thinking,

    I know its Christmas news time and nothing ever happens (like Gaza) but to put this filler in is irresponsible at the most emotional time of year.

    "go off your meds - they don't work"

    http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/3209302/Drugs-don-t-help-depression-study

    Now on top of the booze and bill some stressed out dudes and dudeses will be adjusting their brain chemistry.

    Putaringamotu • Since Apr 2009 • 1158 posts Report Reply

  • Just thinking,

    Oh and there is another blue moon in a couple of weeks - stay tuned.

    Putaringamotu • Since Apr 2009 • 1158 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    Some things that Myers did would have been illegal had we had a takeovers code at the time.

    He would likely have been told he'd been a very naughty boy, maybe given two slaps with a wet bus ticket, and sent back to play in the corporate sandpit. This isn't mere cynicism talking, either, because we've just seen this woeful sentence handed out to a guy who wilfully and actively lied to investors and to the Securities Commission. 12 months home detention for $6.5m that's probably entirely gone? What a fucking joke.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    'Yes, you can go play in the park unsupervised. That paedophile hasn't been seen in this area for a while...'.

    Oh yeah, the world has changed.

    No, it hasn't. The perception has changed. The hysteria over paedophiles lurking behind every bush, waiting to entice a child away to their lair, is so over-blown it's ridiculous. The number of children sexually abused by a stranger is a single-figure percentage of the total. Most sexual abuse is carried out by family, or by friends of family. Your daughters are statistically safer playing in the park than they are playing in their own home, or playing at their grandparents' homes, or playing at the homes of friends.

    Stranger danger is minimal, but don't let that get in the way of your belief that the world has become a more-dangerous place. It's more dangerous to cross the road, because there are more cars. But, really, that's about it. The only real change is perception. I've never seen a shred of evidence that the world is actually a more dangerous place for children now than it was 20 years ago, excepting incidents involving road safety where increased numbers of vehicles coupled with decreased child experience (because parents insist that it's too dangerous to even teach their children about safety around roads) can only lead to a riskier environment for children.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    12 months home detention

    This for multiple convictions of crimes carrying maximum penalties of $300,000 and five years in jail.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • B Jones,

    I've never seen a shred of evidence that the world is actually a more dangerous place for children now than it was 20 years ago,

    Twenty years ago was 1990, and the memories of Teresa Cormack and Karla Cardno were pretty fresh back then. 20 years is a frighteningly short space of time - I remember stranger danger and self defence courses well before that. In fact, wasn't 1990ish the peak of the satanic abuse panic?

    Come to think of it, it was around then that the parental units first started having issues with me, aged 12 or 13, playing in the park unsupervised or accompanied.

    In any case, you have to go back more than 30 years if you're looking for a golden age of child safety. Even if it's a fake one.

    Wellington • Since Nov 2006 • 976 posts Report Reply

  • Matthew Poole,

    In fact, wasn't 1990ish the peak of the satanic abuse panic?

    Ellis was convicted in '93, so about then. And look at how wonderful that beat-up was. We got a conviction that looks decidedly shaky, especially when the interviews of "victims" are viewed through the lens of current best-practice in child interviewing. "Something must be done", "Won't somebody think of the children", etc.

    In any case, you have to go back more than 30 years if you're looking for a golden age of child safety. Even if it's a fake one.

    I can't go back very much further than 20 years before it's just hearsay. I can, at least, speak from person experience if we limit things to the mid-80s onward. Even living in South Auckland it was entirely normal for kids to disappear all day, with no fixed destination, right through the end of the 80s.

    Auckland • Since Mar 2007 • 4097 posts Report Reply

  • Isabel Hitchings,

    A big lot of what has also changed is our level of tolerance for stuff. Talk to women of my mother's generation and they all seem to have stories of the blokes that kids just knew never to be alone with. Every one knew that the village curate (for eg) ahd wandering hands you just didn't make a fuss and tried not to sit next to him at tea.

    Christchurch • Since Jul 2007 • 719 posts Report Reply

  • recordari,

    Your daughters are statistically safer playing in the park than they are playing in their own home

    Seriously? I hope not. I'm sure statistically speaking, but while they rule much of my work life, at home we also apply a consequences framework to our risk assessment matrix. Well at work too, but anyway.

    The panic response in my earlier post was based on an actual public notification in our area. Sorry if we chose to take it seriously. How up tight can you get?

    Perhaps what has changed is that I grew up in rural NZ, population 815, then moved to the 'big' city. No doubt that has flavoured my paranoia. In the end it comes down to what feels instinctively ok, and what doesn't. Swimming at Piha with my kids is probably riskier than anything mentioned here, but bugger if they're missing out on that.

    AUCKLAND • Since Dec 2009 • 2607 posts Report Reply

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