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.
