Should Parents and Teachers Defy the Government?
School’s back on Monday, but the medical community is still struggling to understand covid 19
health
Bigot’s Billboard
Anti-Vaxxers are targeting South Auckland families in their latest bid to spread the virus of ignorance. You can help needle the pricks. The Standard shows you how.
UPDATE: The billboard is coming down!
Killing Them Softly With…
In New Zealand there is sufficient evidence to show that poor peoples’ lives are cut short because of poverty related poor nutrition. While food banks are alleviating the worst impacts of hunger, their kindness may well be contributing to the problem. Food poverty is a systemic issue and requires a systemic response, a response that successive governments are able to avoid while charities continue to provide a buffer for the system.
Dunedin Hospital
Yes, Dunedin needs a new hospital, but…
The mess that the new government inherits
This post is too long to read. Its purpose is to serve as reference material, a “one stop” snapshot of where we are as a country. The mess that the new government inherits. The consequences of the nine long wasted years of National. The magnitude of the challenge ahead of us.
Shameful poverty – why we must elect a Labour led government
Two excellent but very disturbing pieces in The Herald yesterday. This crisis in poverty, housing and health is a national disgrace. It is why we desperately need to elect a Labour led government in September.
Another DHB in trouble
National found $10b down the back of the sofa for roads roads roads, but is under funding our health system to the point of collapse.
The Listener on our health system crisis
A major piece by Jessica McAllen in The Listener out today. Cash-strapped hospitals are using unsafe hardware-store versions of proper surgical-grade equipment, and reusing “single use” devices.
National reckon public health and education are a waste of money?
According to Morning Report the Nats are calling Labour’s budget for more spending on health and education “a plan to waste more money”. Tell it to the people who can’t afford private alternatives and depend on the public systems.
Health budget stuff up – incompetent
I guess English can’t be too angry at Coleman – just last year he stuffed up his own numbers to the tune of $160m per year when “explaining” why he was vetoing an extension to paid parental leave.
$2.3b Health funding shortfall
The Nats are under-funding the health sector to the tune of $2.3b. That’s a lot of real people not getting the care that they need.
The cigarette crime spree
The cigarette crime spree is a real problem for National. Their “law and order” credentials are in tatters.
Ban cigarettes, find a way to compensate dairy owners for a transitional period.
The three big fails in the budget
It was National’s best budget. Which means there are only three critical areas of failure.
Mental health needs vs. cuts
The People’s Mental Health Review report puts the deterioration of our mental health system firmly in the spotlight. Despite a 60 per cent increase in demand since 2007/08 National has been slashing funding. Lives are at risk.
Nurses ask us to vote for our health
You could vote for three more years of “brighter future”. Or you could listen to the nurses.
Free market efficiency in health – not
The idea of free market efficiency is not nearly as powerful or universal as its (often fanatical) proponents would have us believe. The sorry state of the USA’s health system is yet another compelling example of its limitations.
Roads not health
A new coalition protests health under-funding, while the cost of the holiday highway blows out. Our government has its priorities all screwed up.
Poverty and health
Socioeconomic status is a major health risk factor. Not exactly a surprise is it.
World Water Week
Never heard of it? Neither had I.
The Mother Budget
There are budgets and there are budgets. And for all the presence or absence of bright ideas, there’s a budget that threatens to subsume all others…
Pharmac underfunded and education cuts
It’s a steady attrition, the death of a thousand cuts.
Health law expert on the TPP
We won’t be able to say that we weren’t warned.
Obesity is a structural problem
Structural problems need structural solutions. Progress on this major public health issue has been set back by a decade because we elected a useless National government.
Obesity policy ignores elephant in the room
Obesity is a difficult topic to write about, but with the release of new government policy yesterday it is very much in the news. Unfortunately, unsurprisingly, National have chosen to tinker with the consequences of obesity without addressing the causes.
Medicinal cannabis
Helen Kelly calls for the government “to get real about medicinal cannabis”. Seriously – what are we waiting for?
Diesel Bomb
Last Friday I wrote a post on Volkwagen gaming NOx emissions. This is a follow up.
NOx-ious shit all around.
Been trying to get my head around the implications of Volkswagen’s rigged diesel performance tests. Predictably, and unlike most stories covering this, I couldn’t give a rat’s arse for the financial woes the company might be facing.
A schools league table that we need
The Nats have created the (spurious) data for school “league tables” so that parents can be fully informed and make choices, so they tell us. But it seems that parents don’t deserve to be fully informed about the dangerous physical health of schools. That would be just too inconvenient.
Gutting Southern health care is wrong
“Southern DHB commissioner called in to cut costs gets pay increase – to $1400 a day” – but that’s not the interesting bit…
Southern DHB sacked
Southern DHB sacked – scapegoats for systematic underfunding of the health sector.
Elective surgery waiting lists
The Nats have been manufacturing “good news” stories in health by creating a system that turns away one third of the patients in need.
Health service funding
The Nats are steadily cutting funding (in real terms) to health (and other sectors). Today, yet another doctor broke. Welcome to the brighter future.
Smokefree? Then Cut the Crap!
Apparently the government is concerned for the general health of people in New Zealand. Apparently, an expression of this concern is the roll out of policy initiatives that will result in New Zealand being smoke free by 2025.
Curing Tobacco
So tobacco is a ridiculously addictive drug that offers no accompanying high for the user. It has pretty dire health consequences and was promoted for years as harmless, chic and sophisticated and the government even gave it away to combatants during WWII by the carton load.
But now the government wants it gone.
Asbestos City
In the aftermath of the twin towers, the dust that accompanied their collapse gave rise to a health crisis in the medium/long term that continues to play out to this day. And given the prevalence of asbestos in Christchurch buildings, it just might be that the earthquake will result in a number of preventable deaths after all…
National’s newspeak
When he’s not hard at work protecting the profits of tobacco giants by helping them peddle smokes to your kids, Ryall’s having a […]