Posts by Bart Janssen
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So seriously does anyone know how to pronounce that? I'm not sure I even know how to start...
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When I was about 9 I had a horrible dream about driving down the Desert road on a family holiday and the whole Desert road was on fire. I woke up very upset and sleepily climbed into my parent's bed for comfort.
At that point we realised the house was full of smoke...
The clothes rack in hall had been left with a heater under it to dry the large sheets of cloth soaked in detergent that Dad sold as windscreen demisting clothes. We ended up with a patch of burnt floor tiles and a hell of a scare.
I was too young to understand just how close we had come. Looking back I can understand that my father must have felt just like you David.
PS this was in the days before household smoke alarms existed.
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They are not perfect, but they are at least providing an essential gatekeepers role.
Apologies for the rant :).
Assuming I understand you correctly and you are referring to Pharmac, I think there is a general misunderstanding of what Pharmac is required to do. They aren't gatekeepers. What they have to do is decide which treatments will result in fewer deaths. And then they recommend that government money be only spent on the least lethal treatments.
What that amounts to is that they have to decide that specific drugs will not be paid for by the government despite knowing that those drugs will save lives. That's a horrible choice to have to make and they deserve tremendous respect from every New Zealander.
Because they are literally charged with putting a price on lives they are very very price conscious. So when given the option of recommending a generic (off-patent) cheap version of a drug instead of the Louis Vuitton version they go for the cheap drug. This pisses off the drug companies who have lots of money to buy politicians.
There is nothing stopping people buying the expensive versions of the drugs in New Zealand - we have a free market. However government money is not spent on expensive fashionable versions of drugs. Or on expensive drugs of limited value.
Where drugs are of limited or poorly demonstrated benefit and yet are very expensive Pharmac is charged with making the call on which patients will get the benefit of the limited dollars, ie who will die. That's a rough job and I couldn't do it. They deserve tremendous respect and deserve to be protected from political whims.
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Eminently sensible declaration. Signed it.
Don't believe for a second it will be adopted :(.
The loss of pharmac has always been part of this government's agenda anyway and that it will cost New Zealand more than we can afford matters not a whit to Key et al.
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Is it just me, or was British television run for a long time by some seriously kinky men?
You say that like it's a bad thing?
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I'm genuinely fascinated by the media and cultural elements
Agree. I find it fascinating to see all the people who criticise the iPAD for not being something else (Steve above). But more interestingly the media who seem to oscilate between fans and doomsayers.
It does seem as though the media really have no idea how to report the news that a gadget has caught the imagination of lots of people. And it really has.
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And I am bummed out that Sunrise has gone. I won't turn on TV1 in the morning as I drink my coffee because watching Paul Henry is a danger to my TV, if they got rid of that arsehole I might watch it but by then I'll have found something on sky to be my wake up TV. -
Donna not so much
You're kidding right. She was brilliant! SO nice to have a heroine who is just so damn ordinary.
Megan
but I've never loved Doctor Who
it's Ok. Everyone is allowed to be wrong, true friends still love you despite your faults :P.
I really, really did that. Web of Fear, it may have been.
Still have a really strong visual memory of that cotton wool smothering everything ... shudder.
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William Hartnell was my first although barely registering on my consciousness.
But Patrick Troughton was the Doctor who first really registered with me. It was while he was The Doctor that I spent my time peering out from behind the couch. I still have vivid memories of that horrible web that the Yeti used...
By the time Jon Pertwee was involved I was brave enough to watch from on the couch, most of the time.
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Oh - and me and my banner made the paper. Tee hee.
Well done.
Does seem to me that the photographer picked a particularly cute section of the crowd :).
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In between mining, Derty Sesh and Paula Bennett it's been a bit of a sobering day on the ole PA system...
you forgot the cricket sigh