Perspective
The Standard and Kiwiblog last night, but not for the first time, crystallised what it is to be two sides of the same political coin. Both covered Health Minister Tony Ryall’s removal* of Richard...
View ArticleNational & the tobacco industry
Tony Ryall has, once again, taken the moral low road and is refusing to ban cigarette displays in shops despite evidence that cigarette displays increase teenage smoking. This in a week that a similar...
View ArticleA bullet came to visit a doctor in his one safe place
In the United States on Sunday George Tiller, a doctor, was shot and killed as he attended church. Tiller, who ran one of only three remaining clinics providing late term abortions in the US, had been...
View ArticleSexual abuse recovery rationing by the ACC
This morning the New Zealand Association of Psychotherapists delivered an open letter to the Minister for ACC asking him to explain and justify the proposed changes to ACC’s sensitive claims policy....
View ArticleACC: tell ‘em
I have received the following communique originated by NZ Association of Psychotherapists member Kyle MacDonald; an easy means for you to tell the Minister for ACC what you think about sexual abuse...
View ArticleCurrent events
I was reluctant to post while I had the chance on ANZAC day, since there was such a good debate going on, and now I’ve (temporarily) run out of time again. So just a few quick observations. Phil Goff’s...
View ArticleAs advertised
Late last year, when the ACC ructions were underway, the professionals working in the sector warned that people would die as a consequence of the reforms mandated by the new Clinical Pathway on the...
View ArticleThings that scare me
Today I was waiting in my doctor’s waiting room and, as my older daughter played with the water machine, I espied in the hands of a kindly, grandmotherly looking woman, a copy of the July edition of...
View ArticleImpoverished
The other day David Farrar got in a pre-emptive whinge about Bryan Bruce’s Inside New Zealand documentary on child poverty that aired last night on TV3 (you can watch it on demand if you missed it)....
View ArticleSpare a thought for grumpy old men.
At an early age, I knew that I was going to be athletic-minded. I used to say to my father “I am immortal until proven otherwise!” and, much to his consternation and that of my mother, set out to prove...
View ArticleAngry losers who can’t get laid.
What do Islamic extremists, alt-Right adherents and the Incel movement have in common? Many people might say “nothing,” but the truth is that for all their differences when it comes to socio-economic,...
View ArticleRest thee well, Greg.
TVNZ journalist and news reader Greg Boyed died this week while on holiday in his wife’s home country, Switzerland. Unknown to me and many others, he was fighting depression and it appears that it got...
View ArticleInviting trouble?
Over the next few weeks New Zealand will host two major international sporting events involving hundreds of athletes and spectators gathered together in iconic settings. The gun goes off on Ironman NZ...
View ArticleA tipping point for the dotard?
I guess that we should see the silver lining in the CV-19 pandemic. It has finally done what no political opponent could do. It has fundamentally undermined Trump’s credibility and that of the...
View ArticleBetween push and shove.
The NZ government’s handling of the CV-19 pandemic has won international praise for its decisiveness and effectiveness. It is hard to argue with a response that has reduced the number of daily reported...
View ArticleA matter of definition.
Recent reports have surfaced that hospital officials in some US localities are inflating the CV-19 death count by classifying anyone who dies in their care who is not the victim of an accident or other...
View ArticleChurch, State and the weight of capitalism.
Arguments by religious folk that they are being discriminated against under the Level 2 pandemic restrictions in NZ, which limit church services to ten people or less when schools, restaurants, malls...
View ArticleRandom Retweets: Pandemic mitigation.
Introduction. I have recently seen a trend whereby people turn their twitter ruminations into op eds and even semi-scholarly essays such as those featured on Spinoff, Patreon or The Conversation. It...
View ArticleShoutout to Starship.
My son returned home this week after spending two weeks at Starship undergoing major surgery. It was dicey for a while, as he had a lemon-sized tumor removed from his anterior sternum that was putting...
View ArticleAnother forced break.
Well, the time has come yet again for my son to go back into Starship for another major surgery (the fourth in five months). The mass in his chest is growing and has enveloped his left carotid artery...
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