Profiteers and wages the leeches of the ages

I must confess I kinda stole the title from Marc Bolan for this blog. I hasten to add, there are no royalties due as my title is really quite different to the Tyrannosaurus Rex album, in content and it is only the rhythm of the title that is similar.

This week I am getting stuck into those greedy bastards who prosper from the shredded remains of the rest of us.

The thing about profiteers is they aren’t really all that smart. They think they are because they make a quick buck, but in most cases they could make a lot more of their precious bucks by taking a longer term view.

A glorious example is that Vile little man who claims to be the Minister of Health. Minister is a noun and a pronoun derived from a verb which means to wait on, care for, look after, see to, accommodate, serve, supply, aid, help, assist or support – whew!

I see very little evidence that Toenail is caring for our health, or looking after our health system. Nor is he accommodating it, serving it, supplying it, aiding it, helping it, assisting it or supporting it. A cynical person (do we know any of those) might say he is certainly seeing to it..... Seeing to it that most of us never get any timely health treatment. And as for waiting on it; it is the sick that are waiting on it and for it.

The Vile one tells us his measures are to save us money and gleefully fronts up before compliant press (usually to be found in his own general geographical area) to tell us how well his waiting lists are working. Of course he deftly avoids mentioning all those who have been refused a place on the waiting list because the under-resourced system can’t handle them, and he also fails to appreciate that saving money on a $2000 operation now is only a saving if you don’t later have to perform a $10,000 one because the patient has deteriorated while awaiting surgery.

Another of the genius strokes this Minister (most) Vile has pulled is to stop the DHBs from wasting money treating foreigners who have no entitlement to our public health services. Great idea, you might say, until you realise that he has hired people in every DHB to check on this. Given there are 20 DHBs in New Zealand that would mean there are 20 ‘Eligibility Review Officers’ or possibly ‘Eligibility Co-Coordinators’ and possibly more bum-stiffs and hangers-on associated with them. I don’t know how much was being spent on ineligible people but it would seem over $100,000 p.a. is being wasted on these people.

That might sound harsh, but when you consider that to prove our eligibility, all we have to do is submit evidence of NZ citizenship or possession of the appropriate category of visa, you might wonder why it can’t simply be handled by whoever sends out the letters already.

However the Vile one is not the only poodle in the kennel shitting all over us. Muzza McGillicuddy, the Minister of FAT is doing an amazing ‘do as I say, not as I do’ turn. Mighty Muzza, the man who dropped so many passes over the World Cup that he should have made the Black Caps (cruel), is cutting the fat at MFAT. But is he? He says he is, and he is a Minister so we should believe him, right? Wrong. I don’t know where Muzza learned his maths, but it would seem to me that chucking out 300 MFAT staff (despite the fact many are probably a waste of space) is a weird immediate move when you are set to spend $900,000 on upgrading an Olympic sized swimming pool for the consular staff in Japan. Furthermore we now learn these guys already have a considerable ‘complex’ in which their pool is housed and another $93,000 was to be spent on a badminton court, a gymnasium, and hot and cold running geisha girls. (Okay I made that last one up). Muzza has since decided the expenditure is unwarranted, but only after he had been sprung and publicly shamed over it.

It seems to me that flying a bunch of MFATs back to enjoy some RWC 2011 games wasn’t the best way to save money either. Nor was taking an expensive Air Force charter plane for a one-day meeting in Vanuatu, if Philgoshisthatthetime has his facts right.

Other supersavers in this government include Paula Bumfat who has figured out that beneficiary bashing and trying to force people into non-existent jobs is a thrifty habit and Heck Yeah Pariah who is saving us money on character and reference checks for teaching staff.    

Meanwhile while all of this saving is going on it would seem the only ones not trying to save a dollar are our councils who think nothing of splashing out on quarter and half million dollar salaries for their CEOs (read Cash Eating Oafs).

Of course, I nearly forgot. Things aren’t actually all that bad. Bill (Nospeakada) English approved a whole $0.50 per hour increase for the lowest wage earners. Wow, a whole $20 per week before tax. Let me see now what can they do with all this money? That’s $20 less roughly 20 percent for PAYE which brings it down to $16. Those who don’t know about these things would say that means low wage earners could save $832 per year – and they’d be right – if you are not a person on the minimum wage. Because if you are a person on the minimum wage it is almost certain you have been running a deficit in your budget and this will probably only reduce that slightly. By the way, before anyone passes judgement on those running such a deficit, just remember they are only doing what governments all over the world have done for decades. The only difference is that if they start printing their own money or issuing notes of credit they can’t back up, they go to jail.  

I don’t want us to be number one

Well congratulations to us. New Zealand has had shameful placings in so many world tables lately, such as child poverty, the gap between rich and poor and youth suicide statistics. But now we have the chance to be winners again – and so soon after the RWC too.

So what are we winning? Well I think we are in the running for several trophies at the moment.

First of all our government should win the award for the most cynically rigged election since the last fiasco in Russia where Vlad the Imputin arranged for his mate to caretake the Presidency while he slid into the PM’s chair for a term so he can then jump back into the seat his mate has kept warm for him until next year. The National Disgrace Party started the fiasco by hand-picking the candidates of their potential coalition partners to ensure they were all on the same page. What the book was, we can only speculate, but it will have had something to do with silencing dissenting views and enriching themselves at our expense.

Because of the fact we have no written constitution to fall back on it would seem the party in power can do whatever they like. For example they are able to choose the date of the election, which obviously means they can arrange for it to be held at a time that is convenient to them.

This year they were able to play an absolute blinder in that regard by beginning the campaign straight after the RWC. This meant the whole thing was rushed through while everyone was still enjoying the ABs’ win and were probably still a little light-headed. It also meant that policy releases could be timed to perfection; that is to say they could be released at the last possible moment so nobody had enough time to check them out properly before they had to cast their vote.  

Then Jianqi decided he was too important to debate the issues with anyone other than Phil Goshisthatthetime. Phil foolishly took his cue from Jianqi and said well I won’t if he won’t. Television for some unfathomable reason also decided to get onto that particular bandwagon and gave the two twats what they wanted instead of giving the public what they wanted; namely a debate between all the major party leaders. The channels should have invited all the major party members to the debates and made a point of ridiculing anyone too pussy to turn up.

But once again – our political system allows this sort of nonsense, where candidates like STP (Simon the Pixie) and Toenail Vile can refuse to front candidates meetings in their own electorates and instead hold their own little bullshit fests with all the party faithful cuddled up close and cosy. Dissenting views are not what these people want at THEIR meetings. Heavens above if you allowed that, the entire fabric of their smug and selfish society would unravel and some of that poor underclass might turn up and stink the place out.

Then of course there was the teapot saga where Jianqi mobilised the force of the law to gag the press, sent the solicitor-general to ‘guide’ the High Court and goodness only knows what or who was sent to ‘advise’ the Ombudsman that his role has now changed overnight to that of Protector-of-things-the-government-doesn’t-want-you-to- know.

As you might have guessed our other table topping achievements also spring from this so-called election. The first of these is the neutered state of our press. In 2009 the freedom of our press was judged to be one of the best in the entire world. The annual international survey by Freedom House ranked our press freedom at a score of 14 where 1 is the top and 100 the bottom. The highest ranking in that survey was 10 shared by (not surprisingly) Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. Only nine nations did better than us in that survey. We beat countries such as Ireland, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and USA. But that was before the Samovar incident. It was bad enough for Jianqi to threaten and intimidate our press over that matter, but it was far worse that they listened to him. What a bunch of nutless wonders. They just rolled over like big pussies to have their tummies rubbed instead of scratching the little shit’s face. November 2011 – the day the NZ Press committed sideways.

Finally the biggest trophy we will probably cart off will be decided this Saturday November 26. If my guess is right and so is the government we elect, then we will qualify for the dumbest nation on the planet.

Jianqi was publicly caught out in the following lies:

Standard & Poors have said they will downgrade our credit rating if there is a change of government

I didn’t lie about GST or Kiwisaver – it’s a dynamic environment

I can’t recall what was said in my meeting with John Banks followed by There’s nothing on that tape that is important and then It’s nothing to do with me what the police do (about the tape)

I have treasury advice that we can keep the asset shares in Kiwi hands

We have no plans to hold back on police recruiting

If the country returns this slimeball and his ragtag bag of greedies to the treasury benches then it rightly deserves the title of the most stupid nation in the world.

I can only hope that Kiwis wake up and the NZ press discover they only suffered severe bruising and still actually have everything intact and lift their game to ensure his ride is a very brief and bumpy one.

Place your bets

I’m not usually a betting man, apart from my weekly Lotto ticket. And even that should be called a donation rather than a gamble, because up to this point it seems to be an entirely one-way street; I buy a ticket and am lucky if even one of my numbers comes up. The result is of course a donation to the Lotteries Commission. I don’t know why I don’t just set up an automatic payment and save the time of purchasing the ticket, as well as the weekly disappointment around 8pm each Saturday.

However this week, I am fired up with a few tips I have and think I should at least share some of these ‘sure things’ with those of you kind and patient enough to be reading these ramblings.

Now I should preface this with the advisory that you might not be able to get terribly good odds on some of these tips at the TAB. In fact some you might not be able to get any odds at all, unless you count the odd looks you get when you ask to place a bet on them. However, I believe life is for living and who cares what the boring people think? Life is for living and having fun.

My first tips are for the Rugby World Cup 2011:

1.      New Zealand will win the cup and I believe they will do better than the 1987 team. To do this they need to win by 21 or more points. At the time of writing this was a fairly good bet considering the All Blacks’ dominance at $3.30.

2.      Wales will beat Australia in the third and fourth place final. I think it will be fairly close which is a shame because if they win by 13 or more they will pay $6, whereas at under 13 they are paying $3.20

3.      The Rugby World Cup 2015 will be a very different beast to the 2011 one. Look out for changes to the turnaround time during pool play and a change at the top of the IRB.

4.      My long shot bet here would be the SANZAR countries, Argentina and the Pacific Islands leading a breakaway movement that will see the entire cup re-jigged and something like the mess that happened with the Packer circus emerging as the IRB lick their wounds in the aftermath of 2011.

My next bets centre on the Rena or RENA as I prefer to think of her (Really Environmentally Nasty Atrocity).

1.      The ship will break up before all the oil has been removed. I know that is hardly Nostradamus territory, but I just thought I should record it since so many with a vested interest in happy outcomes prior to a general election keep defending the inactivity of Maritime NZ and making out they have taken the best approach, which clearly they have not.

2.      The effects on wildlife in the Bay of Plenty will be measured in months at the very least, and quite conceivably in years. This is NOT a five minute wonder.

3.      The Rena skipper and his 2IC will get a pissy fine of a few thousand measly dollars that will disappear into that black whole known as the Consolidated Fund. Once the sentence has been passed the offenders will be smartly repatriated to their homelands before you can say oil slick.

4.      We, the taxpayers, and especially those of us unfortunate enough to be Tauranga ratepayers will be stumping up several times over to cover the full costs of this disaster.

5.      If re-elected, (see political predictions below) the National Disgrace Party will cite this disaster as a reason for their continued financial mismanagement.

And then there are the really political tips.

1.      National Disgrace will pitch themselves as saviours of the nation in the final run-up to the election, citing their ‘magnificent handling of the Pike River Mining Disaster 2010, the Christchurch shake festival 2010/11, and the Rena Obscener fiasco’ as examples of their ‘steady hands on the tiller – as opposed to sticky hands in the till, which is probably nearer the truth as more dodgy contracts emerge from the rubble of Christchurch. They will also claim credit for winning the RWC and say nothing about their mismanagement of the event.

2.      New Winston First will trip over their shoelaces at the start of the race and quite possibly (we live in hope), never be heard of again.

3.      The Ancient Codgers Together Party are so old with a collective age, I believe of about 98 that they might well have a couple fall off the perch before the election is over.

4.      Despite Hatfield making a lot of noise and insulting as many people as he can in a bid to make it into the Guinness Book of World Records as the most obnoxious arsehole in the most pointless party in the world, they will be lucky to retain any of their deposits. That’s always providing they stump them up in the first place. Don’t laugh; they managed to get a member (and that’s a good name for him) into the wasp nest without even being properly registered, so anything is possible. However if and when they do come up with nada, expect Shonkey to spit the dummy big time and accuse all and sundry of electoral malpractices.

5.      Finally – unless the National Disgrace gets caught in a major scandal (and it would probably need to be something as bad as an active kiddie porn ring in their caucus), they will unfortunately win the election and we will have to live with the mantra: Three more years.

All of the above are to a greater or lesser extent, risky bets, but I do have one dead cert for you; Muammar Gaddafi.

RWCRWCRWC and you can’t sue me – there I said it!

There are times when the attitude of some people towards money leaves me absolutely speechless. Well, no actually I guess it doesn’t do that so much as leave me grasping for words that do justice to their utterly stomach turning greed.

Who am I talking about in this case? Well there are plenty of candidates right now, and no, this is not a bitch about the rich from an impecunious writer. Instead it is a bitch about the extremely greedy (who also happen to be rich) by an impecunious writer.

My targets today are...(drum roll or cheese roll if you prefer)... the IRB, the NZRFU, and the National Disgrace Government.

My moan is about the upcoming Rugby World Cup and the ridiculous measures being taken to protect the interests of the official sponsors.

I can understand that sponsors who have paid the equivalent of the GDP of a mid-sized European nation to be associated with the event would not want their competitors to piggy-back onto their advertising without stumping up any dosh of their own. That’s fair enough and anyone from a rival company trying to get their advertising into the stadium deserves to get their ears clipped. But the trouble is that it doesn’t just stop there; these corporate gluttons want nobody within a whale’s sonar range of each game from advertising their company or products and services. In some cases it will be an offence if the advertising can simply be seen from the ‘clean zone’ they have defined around each venue.

Another of the most obvious and silly measures is that even some of the stadia have had to change their names because they have the names of sponsors not associated with the event. The cake tin will be known as Wellington Regional Stadium to spare the feelings of ANZ Bank who is an official sponsor.

But these multi-nationals have extremely high-level help to protect their interests. They have pressured the New Zealand Government to pass legislation to protect them. But unlike the laws they pass to (allegedly) protect you and me against home invasions, street bashings and drunk drivers, these laws will actually be enforced and probably to the fullest extent of the very severe penalties provided within them.

To the best of my knowledge our Government has two Acts of Parliament and one set of regulations currently in force to protect these already far too powerful people. The first of these is the Major Events Management Act 2007 (MEMA) and subsequently the Rugby World Cup 2011 (Empowering) Act 2010 and the Rugby World Cup (Empowering) Regulations 2010 have passed into the anus of our history.

What these laws have done apart from restricting our freedom of expression in some rather bizarre ways, is they have made officers of the New Zealand Government servants of these multi-nationals, but servants paid for by you and I. This is because enforcement of these pieces of legislation will be carried out by the Ministry of Economic Development. According to the Fairfax website this week they designated 40 staff members to ‘police stadiums (sic) throughout the country’ and to look out for ‘deliberate or malicious advertising attempts’.

Now this is serious stuff because for two months or more these 40 people who are being paid by you and I will be unavailable to do any work on our behalf and the cost won’t stop there because any prosecutions brought will also be paid for by us.

So am I making a mountain out of a slag heap? I don’t think so. The legislation provides for penalties of up to $150,000 and the indication is that for once something close to this will be sought for maters which should really be dealt with in the civil courts by litigants who are more than capable of funding such prosecutions themselves.

And some of the banned activities are just so stupid. For example I found in MEMA that a B&B cannot put an advert on their website offering special Rugby World Cup packages. Now packages like that have been offered by accommodation providers for ever and I doubt that anyone has believed those places were in any way associated with the event. It’s just a way of offering a special rate during a major event. But according to the official guide to MEMA the local B&B would only be allowed to advise they had vacancies or a special rate during September and October without mentioning the event that is the reason people are seeking accommodation.

 In another equally stupid example a bar can have a sign outside advertising ‘Team A v Team B Live On The Big Screen Tonight’ but they cannot say ‘Joe’s Bar Presents Team A v Team B Live On The Big Screen Tonight’ despite the fact they haven’t even mentioned the words Rugby World Cup 2011 (wash my mouth out). I note also that you cannot have a printed Rugby World Cup Guide brought to you by blah blah. Which means we won’t be able to get a cheap one in the newspaper unless they remove all advertising by non RWC sponsors for eight pages either side of it (sorry I just made that bit up).

Don’t get me wrong I am very pleased the RWC has come to New Zealand; although I’m pretty pissed off I couldn’t afford to get any tickets. However I will be watching it and I will be backing the ABs and I hope like hell they don’t pick any injured players this time.

I just think it’s plain wrong, however that we are dancing so frenetically to the diabolical piper’s tune.