Listen... Do you want to know a secret?

Well if you promise not to tell then it is a fair bet you are not working for a department of the New Zealand Government right now. In a time when an increasing amount of data is stored about us all by the state and many other organisations, we are finding examples of how this data is not being looked after appropriately.

It is hard to imagine that this can be rocket science. The whole thing is simple really; you collect personal data you store it securely and you release it only to those who have a right to access it. All it takes for that to happen is to hire someone who can (a) read and write and (b) at least finished primary school.

Regular readers will know that I love sticking the boot into the Jianqi Government and to be fair for a nano-second they have not been the only ones on whose watch such blatantly negligent acts of disclosure have occurred. However it is also fair to say that this particular shambolic arrangement of village idiots masquerading as our leadership has presided over more leaks than a long serving public toilet attendant.

Since the little money market twerp with the slightly effeminate speech patterns and the permanent look of a possum caught in the headlights took the reins of office just lets recap what we have seen.

1.      In March 2012 we discovered that ACC (Accident Compensation Catastrophe) had inadvertently divulged all sorts of stuff about 6700 vulnerable sick and injured people including 250 sexual abuse victims to Bronwyn Pullar. In January of this year we learned that since then they have been involved in over 500 further privacy breaches and they are still breaching the privacy of Kiwi citizens at the rate of 1 per day.

2.      On September 11, 2012 we learn that WINZ (What Idiots New Zealand) sent out some great reading matter to one of their clients – only it was about another client. And just to make things even more interesting, when the recipient rang up and told them of their error and offered to bring the material back to them some cretin told them to just destroy it themselves.

3.      On 15 October 2012 we learned that the MSD (Ministry of Social Dysfunction) leave their information kiosks so unprotected that some 12 year-old kid with basic computer knowledge would be able to hack into them and of course someone did, laying bare all the secrets of many thousands more vulnerable people.

4.      On October 28, 2012 we heard that another punter had received from the IRD (Inland Robbery Department) a bunch of unsealed letters containing private tax details. Further investigations revealed that IRD had in the previous 12 months breached the privacy of 6400 Kiwis in 32 separate incidents.

5.      Now the latest breach du jour comes from the EQC (the Earthquake Cock-ups). They like to do things on a big scale, rather like the Christchurch earthquake. No little breaches by this mob, despite them originally claiming a mere 9000 people had been compromised. No; we find these geniuses have actually liberated 83,000 records which is reckoned to be every single one of the ChCh claimants. Well done them!

But I doubt we are finished with these stupid and inexcusable cock-ups yet.

Over the last six months the Government has kept persevering with the doomed NoNo Pay scheme for not paying teachers. Given that many teachers on leave have been paid and many more who have been working have not and another was sent on maternity leave well after she had passed beyond her fertile years, you would have to wonder how many breaches we have not yet heard about in this system.

But lest we think that is the end of the saga, let’s not forget several million of us have just completed a census form. Some will even have (rather foolishly) put their correct earnings information and religious persuasion an various other theoretically uncheckable bits of information into those sheets along with of course their name and current address. Imagine the fun Statistics NZ will have leaking those all over the country?

But, dear readers, there is a sublime irony in all of this. Have any of you ever tried to get a public report out of a government department or even some sensitive information about yourself? If you have you will know you are made to jump through more hoops than an Olympic gymnast and made to wait until you can no longer remember why you requested the information in the first place.

Yet every so often they have a kind of mufti day for information when they scatter it to the four winds like so many prayer lanterns to drift wherever they may and enlighten the lives of persons in places unknown.

It certainly makes the case for living in a cave in the back of beyond seem increasingly attractive.

What am I bid for this life? (Going once, going tw.....)

So how much is a human life worth in New Zealand? It might sound a silly. It all depends on the context as to the value placed on each life.

Some might wonder why I am even asking the question, but it is something we need to get our heads around because like it or not a human life is frequently assessed as having some kind of monetary value for a host of different reasons. I think we need to know the whys and wherefores of these processes because sometimes they defy any logical explanation.

For example when a life is lost through natural causes insurance companies make a payout (if you are lucky) and that amount could be considered as the value that has been placed upon that particular life. But here it is not so much the insurance company that is setting that ‘value’ rather it is the person taking out the insurance policy. However it is still a value and in most cases this will start at around $100,000 and go up from there according to the premium paid and the policy chosen.

ACC is also in the business of assessing the value of human life and their figures are a little less straightforward (as you might expect). Their calculation can involve a funeral grant of up to $4500.00 and a survivor’s grant of $4702.79, plus weekly compensation equivalent to 60% of the deceased’s earnings (roughly). There are some finer points to that, such as additional allowances for dependants other than the spouse, but the total possible amount payable is 80% of earnings. This can be paid as weekly compo or in a lump sum. Obviously the total amount depends on how much you were earning, so of course the very well paid families fare best in this situation as with life insurance. The weekly payments if you choose those, last for a maximum of five years and this is how the lump sum is also calculated. Thus if your nearest and dearest was on the minimum wage their life will be valued at about $93,000.

Accidents in the workplace are another of the areas where determinations as to the monetary worth of human life is regularly determined. In this respect the courts and the Department of Labour are involved. The courts have the power to fine an employer (although not if they are a Government Department apparently) and award compensation. Two recent cases that give an idea of how this works are the case of the worker at Safe Air Ltd (they should change the name) who was sucked into a jet engine he was doing a maintenance check on it. The company was fined $56,000 and ordered to pay his family $22,500 in compo. Thus his life was valued at less than $80K.  

DOC on the other hand couldn’t be fined when their volunteer worker was apparently swept out to sea at Raoul Island and thus they escaped at just $60K which was the payout they made voluntarily to the guy’s family.

Similarly the courts regularly assess the value of a human life when they direct careless drivers to make payments to the relatives of those they have killed through their careless or reckless driving. Currently the most you can be fined for this sort of thing is $20,000 and then only if you can be proven to have been drunk or stoned at the time. Payments for emotional harm can also be levied, but these seldom reach five figures, so the courts are less generous than the insurance companies with a human life worth basically less than $30,000 in total. It would appear they don’t believe the loss to the family is even equivalent to the minimum wage for one year (before tax).  

However it is now official that New Zealand’s lousiest bastards are the Royal New Zealand Air Force who apparently value human lives at a great deal less than any of the above examples.

You will all no doubt remember the tragic helicopter crash on Anzac Day 2010 that resulted in the deaths of three Air Force personnel and serious injuries to another. We now discover after months of red herrings about how the crash came about because of dangerous practices by a pilot who wasn’t properly trained to fly at dusk that he only did it because the Air Force top brass had been moaning about how much it would cost for the guys to stay overnight. It has taken until this week for that admission to be dragged out of the Defence Monster Jonathan Coleface. Then the prick had the audacity to try and blame the Labour Government which hasn’t been in power since 2008!

So how many much was it actually going to cost to put up four men at the Amora Hotel in Wellington which the Air Force were in the habit of using? How close were we to blowing the entire Defence budget had we accommodated these guys instead of making them fly out in dangerous circumstances they had not been trained for? Surely it can’t have been very much?

Well we now learn that the amount at stake was $149.00 per room. I have been unable to ascertain how many the rooms at that price can sleep, but it is probably two and even if it is only one, then we lost three lives and made a mess of another for the sake of less than $600.00.  I think that speaks volumes about how much the Air Force cares about the welfare of its personnel.

And by the way; if you are thinking of making a firm appointment with the reaper any time soon, for goodness sake take out a large insurance policy or find yourself a dodgy accountant to fudge your income figures – there are tons of them about at the moment – just pick a name from the court reports.

The Emperor’s new clothes and other naked truths

I’m sure you can all recall The Emperor’s New Clothes; written by Hans Christian Andersen in 1837 where two cunning weavers who actually might have been the first spin doctors (geddit) made a suit of clothes for their tragically vain Emperor.

These smart fellows realised their regent was a mirror-gazing tosspot with a hugely over-inflated sense of his own significance. So, probably to inflate the price of their work, they told him the suit they would make him would be made of special fabric that is invisible to idiots and incompetents and can only be seen by smart or important folks. Of course the self-obsessed Emperor bought their line (of garments) hook, clothesline and sinker.

When the time came for the Emperor to model his new suit (or nude suit) nobody in the court wanted to appear stupid so they all went with the ridiculous notion. All that is apart from one small boy who had not yet been indoctrinated by all the state bullshit and who yelled out that he could see the King’s willy or words to that effect. Emboldened by his childish outburst the remainder of the King’s subjects begin to admit they had thought he was stark bollocky naked as well.

Despite the fact this story is extremely old and earlier versions have been found that pre-date Andersen’s by at least five hundred years, we still have a lot of people in the 21^st Century who will accept that black is white if someone possessing apparent authority which they automatically mistake for credibility, tells them so.

An example of this can be found in the Government’s policy to sell us state assets. Whether you agree with the sale of these assets or not doesn’t matter too much because there is a major disconnect involved with this. We already own these assets; they don’t belong to the Government. Somebody must have forgotten to explain to them they are in the positions they are in ostensibly to be kaitiaki. They own neither the country nor the assets. They each own about one four millionth of them just like the rest of us. Their job is to manage them on our behalf.

Why in the name of God would we want to buy something we already owned? If the Government wants to borrow money off us, why don’t they just say so instead of trying to sell us stuff we already own.

Meanwhile all the Government PR people are busy telling us what good investments these assets are, which to a smart person raises the question of why we would want to sell them anyway.

However the PR machine has indoctrinated many with the mantra that we are in debt big-time and T.I.N.A. But of course there is always an alternative and in this instance ACC is sitting on a surplus of $3.5B, which by my reckoning is about half the amount Jianqi reckons we’ll get for the part sale of these assets. Incidentally part sale is a nonsense it’s like being partly pregnant. The correct term should be sale of a limited share release, but I don’t suppose that fits too well in a snappy headline. Alternatively they could just be honest and call it conversion.

So just to keep this in perspective; imagine if you will, the Minister for State Owned Assets streaking across your garden. Not a pretty sight.

Question: What do we call people who take possessions away from their owners and then sell them?

Answer: Thieves.

Question: What do we call people who buy these possessions?

Answer: Fences or dealers in stolen goods.

Question: What do we call people who buy back their own possessions from those who stole them?

Answer: Mugs.

And while we are on the subject of conversion, look at what the Government is doing with our free-to-air television. Before this week is out they will have dumped TVNZ7, one of the brightest hopes on our screens for a very long time. It leaves you wondering why the Government bothered plugging digital TV at all considering how few channels they will be presenting.

Furthermore this was a gigantic con-job from the beginning. When Freeview first became available just five years ago we were given a list of channels and they included TV One, TV2, TVNZ6, TVNZ7 Parliament TV TVNZ Sport and half a dozen private channels.

TVNZ Sport dropped out of sight very early in the piece and without any fanfare, TVNZ6 was changed and now TVNZ7 is to go. Therefore after promising us six TVNZ free-to-air channels the Government is now only giving us four (plus a delayed repeat of TV One).

Question: What do you call someone who sells us a product with one set of specifications, then quietly changes those specifications and continues to market the product as the original?

Answer: A fraudster.

What makes this so much worse (and this is where the conversion comes in); is that during their 50^th Anniversary celebrations last year TVNZ gave us all a preview of their fantastic new digital channel Heartland TV that would be a repository for all those wonderful dramas and programmes we have funded over the years initially through licence fees and more latterly through New Zealand On Air. It would be a fantastic idea were it not for one thing; the bastards have leased the channel to Sky so anyone who wants to see these programmes has to subscribe to a Sky package to get them.

So once again something we own has been stolen by the government and sold to the highest bidder who happens to be an overseas company. We must pay money to an overseas company to watch programmes we used to own until the Government stole them and sold them.

So at the moment we are being governed by a gang who are stealing from us and then trying to sell the booty back to us, passing off an inferior product as an earlier and superior one, and selling of our archival treasures that we paid for to an overseas company and then charging us if we want to watch them.

One or two of my friends would say this is simply business as usual under our current political system. Personally I’m still a little wary of chucking out the bathwater in case there actually is a viable baby in there. My hope is that the excesses of Jianqi and co become their undoing and the nation’s awakening all at the same time, because it is Governments such as this that offer us the opportunity to see where the shortcomings really are in our system.

But we make our politicians more accountable. And by ‘we’ I mean all of us; especially the media.  

Just because we currently hold the Rugby World Cup it doesn’t mean we have to be a nation of mugs.

Accidents in the workplace

There seem to have been a few accidents in the workplace lately but few of the people who have had them seem to be any the worse for wear. I guess it must be the healthy environment created by that bright new future that’s causing us all to have to go to SpecSavers.

The latest series of workplace accidents have happened at, ACC, which probably means they weren’t accidents at all; they were in fact pre-existing conditions. Actually the more I think about that, the more it makes sense.

ACC’s accidents began to emerge with the wholesale release of private and confidential information about ordinary New Zealanders to a lot of unsuspecting recipients including rather unfortunately for the Corporation, a feisty individual called Bronwyn Pullar.

As we all now know, Bronwyn is not the sort of woman to simply roll over and ask the corporation to roger her all over again. Furthermore their choice of Bronwyn as the recipient for these files was also stupid on the grounds she was a long term ‘client’ with a long term grievance against them. People in this position have nothing to lose and can make a Government department’s life very difficult. Bronwyn taped the whole sorry saga and left the fibbers with no wriggle-room.

But the micro-brains that have been running ACC have been left to their own devices and allowed to develop their own culture of blame against their clients, which is an interesting twist for a ‘no fault insurance scheme’.

After battling with them for almost 10 years, Bronwyn, who appears to have a perfectly reasonable claim, tooled herself up with a powerful ally in the form of Michelle Boag and met with the corporation to try and get things sorted out.

Of course as we know, they decided to fabricate the details of the meeting, leak personal information about Bronwyn to the Press, and accused her of blackmail.

Following this outrageous attack Bronwyn decided to finally allow the media, with whom she had been in contact for the last 10 years, to go public with her side of the story. The revelations that came from that interview she gave to TV3 were game-changers.

Since the programme aired only three days ago, the Chairman of ACC, John Poorjudgeofcharacter has ‘stepped aside’. He has not been fired and ACC Minister Little Bo-Tox won’t say he was asked or pushed, although her body language on TV One News told a very different story. The official blurb is that this guy is only leaving because his new job as the head (case) at ANZ National Bank would have him far too busy to bother with the malingerers at ACC (not that he ever did anyway).

So once again an incompetent person who couldn’t run a major Government Corporation efficiently and who has been caught out in more than one public lie and defamed a client doesn’t get sacked; instead he is able to move smoothly into another overpaid sinecure and nobody so much as even tells him off. Good luck to any customers at ANZ National Bank. If I knew somebody like him was moving into the top spot at my bank I’d be worried. ANZ National Bank should be too, because the man fucked up his last post and although I know banking and dishonesty aren’t mutually exclusive of one another, to have such an example out front is not a good look.

However Poorjudgeofcharacter is not the only ACC head we should soon be seeing rolling into the little basket; the mysterious Dr Burgess who is able to diagnose from halfway across town without even seeing the patient needs to bite the bullet as well. His association with ACC needs to be cut and his own ethics body might like to investigate the probity of arriving at diagnoses without consultation. He might be better off practicing in Haiti if that is the way he works.

Burgess’ unauthorised contact with the allegedly independent specialist raises ethical issues as well, and possibly privacy ones too. But worst of all is his unauthorised accessing of Bronwyn Pullar’s files after he was told he was to have nothing further to do with her files. Burgess went on to access the files on at least seven further occasions after being forbidden to do so. Staff who have done this at IRD and WINZ have been sacked. He should be too and police should be called in to determine if criminal charges are appropriate. I used to like A Clockwork Orange, but since the main characters began living out their fantasies at ACC I’ve gone right off it.

As I write this I learn that Ralph Stewart has also been shown the door by an increasingly panic-stricken Little Bo-Tox who sees her Ministerial posts under threat.

Stewart was the other wanker who told us all he had not heard Bronwyn’s tape when it was well-known her legal representatives had played it to him.

She who has been called the Crusher is obviously feeling the crush herself as she has apparently also informed two other ACC directors; Rob Campbell and John McLiskie they can forget about being re-appointed either. Of course the cynic in me (where would that be then?) says Bo-To is more annoyed these bumbling fools allowed this to get into the public arena and get some of their doo-doos all over her rather than for the nasty shit they threw at Bronwyn Pullar.

The cull-out can’t have finished yet, though because there are at least two other ACC knob-heads who should also go. Managers Philip Murch and Hans Verberne are the pair who concocted the allegation they had been blackmailed by Ms Pullar and called the cops in to investigate. Given they knew their allegations were baseless these two idiots should be charged with making a false complaint to police and then sacked as well.

So accidents or otherwise? Well I can’t help finding it extremely ironic that a corporation that spends half its time trying to deny accident victims support by labelling their accident induced injuries as ‘pre-existing conditions’ should be so accident prone themselves. A much better case can be made for their recent ‘accidents’ to be viewed as pre-existing conditions.

Your claims are well and truly denied ACC – time to remember what you were set up for.

Ruth is stranger than Richard

You know those weeks when you think you couldn’t make up the sort of stuff that has been happening, because nobody sane would believe it? Well this has been one of those weeks.

One of the odder events this week was Gezza Browneye letting fly with his idea of a satirical send up of Finland. We shouldn’t have been surprised of course because this was the same danger to shipping who called Christchurch mayor Bob Parkup a clown. A fair call you might say, but somewhat ironic coming from Oliver Hardy’s double.

Of course the Finns had his measure and according to Finnish comic, Tuomas Enbuske that measure would be three ordinary people.

But on a more serious note; you would have to question the mental capacity of someone like Gezza letting fly with an off the cuff ramble like that just to try and score a point or two over David (the) Shorn. Any half way intelligent person would know that such an outburst in Parliament would lead to consequences that included the boss having try and explain to the Finnish president - especially after he had to mumble a grudging apology to young Bob only a couple of months back following the clown comment.

Another of the stories you couldn’t make up was the ACC privacy breach saga. I don’t expect too many of us are surprised at a government department making a cock-up of such huge proportions – after all this sort of thing has happened many times before. But what many of you might have missed was a much more disturbing admission/boast alleged by Deborah Coddington who reckons Bronwyn Pullar should have just returned the files and let things alone. I can’t find the audio but Coddington claims Mary Wilson interviewed an ACC specialist claimant barrister recently who blithely said he had been receiving wrong files regularly for six years and simply immediately sends them back each time.

So who was this twerp? And is he really a barrister? If so he needs a shake-up because unless somebody makes a fuss about this sort of stuff that results in resignations and sackings, there is no incentive for them to be more careful.

In this same week we had the story of the twit in Whanganui who drove himself to court. Nothing strange in that, you might think until you learn that he actually drove IN to the court, as in up the stairs and in through the front door. He was dobbed in by a member of the public after he reversed out and had another go at finding the ideal parking spot to view proceedings. In explanation he said he was "frustrated with the failures of the system". Hmm – I should imagine after that display they will be more than happy to accommodate him, albeit not in the manner he had in mind.

Meanwhile in the good ol, USA a pilot on a JetBlue flight from New York flipped out in flight. He began ranting about an Iraqi bomb on board and how they were all going down (presumably out of the sky – if not his timing was lousy). Either he was tripping off his face or he had done one loop the loop too many. The co-pilot had to lock himself in the cabin and take control of the plane while three or four passengers had to wrestle the foaming flyer to the ground until the plane landed and he was carted off to bedlam or whatever they call it in Amarillo Texas.

But I was just thinking; how could the passengers be sure which of the two flyers was telling the truth? It could have been a very ugly mistake if the guy freaking out had every reason to and the evil co-pilot was the one who was going to ensure their collective demise.

Footnote

Lovers of the more obscure sorts of music may well recognise the title of this blog. For those who don’t; it is the title of an album by Robert Wyatt, a percussionist, pianist, singer and more who used to be in bands such as Soft Machine, Wilde Flowers and Matching Mole and was a recent collaborator with Bjӧrk. In case you haven’t guessed, it is a play on the old adage, “truth is stranger than fiction.”

And it was a very good title for Wyatt to use because he has had an interesting life. He was born Robert Wyatt-Ellidge in 1945; the son of a BBC journalist and an industrial psychologist. His half brother is Julian Wyatt-Glover; a noted Shakespearean actor who has also featured in many films including one each of the Star Wars, Indiana Jones & Harry Potter sagas. Robert began as a drummer and a pretty good one at that. But like many drummers he liked partying hard out a bit too much for his own good and in 1973 he managed to fall out of a four storey window which put him in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He gave up drumming for the most part, because he couldn’t use his feet, but simply picked up where he left off with the rest of his music and has continued to record and tour ever since.  

Knock-ons & hospital passes

Many people say rugby union is a violent game with the chance of serious injuries. But as a former player (about 100 years ago) and an obsessed fan of the game, I say you have to get things into perspective. (irony)

While it is certainly true the game is an aggressive sport, I doubt it is any more violent than our daily lives, today. In fact I would say it is less so because there are some pretty strict rules around the conduct of players during a game and pretty strict penalties are handed out for infractions.  Furthermore the game doesn’t involve anyone who doesn’t want to play.

I think it is also important to acknowledge that violence need not be of a physical nature to still be violence and frequently the non physical violence causes the most hurt. Quite apart from the obvious examples of child abuse, partner abuse and elder abuse that our society seems to be plagued with, there are plenty of examples of corporate abuse of staff, customers and investors.

Take our spectacularly failed finance companies as an example. Aorangi Securities, Belgrave Finance, B’On Financial Services, Bridgecorp, Capital & Merchant Investments, Dominion Finance Group, Five Star Consumer Finance, Hanover Finance, Kiwi Finance, Nathan’s Finance NZ, National Finance 2000, and South Canterbury Finance are just the ones who have been investigated by the Serious Fraud Office. There have been 38 others and they have all violently upturned the lives of many thousands of people who were naive/trusting enough to entrust them with their savings and investments. In many of these cases, if not all, investors’ money was treated like a piggy-bank for the directors. It is quite noticeable that few of those appearing before the SRO are destitute. For many of their investors, however it is a much different story.

Some might say investments by their nature are risky and those people were among the lucky ones who had some money to invest unlike many others who are just scraping by on a day by day basis. But a lot of these people were those ‘Mum & Pop’ investors Jianqi and his motley mob have been telling us will snap up our state assets when they go under the hammer. Many were just trying to ensure they wouldn’t need to rely on the state to make ends meet when they retired. What has happened to these people is far worse than a smack in the nose when the scrum goes down.

But the corporates and the scumbags living in (insert your favourite notorious suburb here) are just the beginning. Even more random violence and injury is caused by those in the public sector and those who pull their strings.

Our so-called social welfare services seem more geared towards warfare than welfare. ACC wriggles every which way it can to avoid paying for the treatment of people who through no fault of their own are injured. We all know of people who have fought long and hard to get assistance for rehabilitation and medical care (and I use that last term advisedly).

Our main social support organisation Working Hindrance to Innocent New Zealanders goes out of its way with various doorkeeping measures to ensure none but the totally useless get any meaningful assistance whatsoever ........unless of course you are the type of person who specialises in (metaphorically) kicking down doors and kicking arses, and can understand their regulations better than them. Which doesn’t take a lot of doing most of the time.

But ACC and WINZ are just babies at this game, really. The real masters of the cruel and unusual treatment doctrine are the masters of our glorious third world health system. This is a system so cumbersome that it can often barely manage to get out of its own way.   

Now while I am bagging the health system, I should qualify that by saying that for the most part I am not including the real health professionals. Most of them are very good, although there are some useless clock-punchers among them as well. But primarily it is the dweebs in offices on more money that most of us who dream up strategies to ensure they are able to sing from the same round sheet as the Minister.

Under the stewardship of the current incumbent (I’m sure there’s a good anagram possible there); we are told of great improvements every other week. Toenail’s grinning mug is plastered all over compliant rags trumpeting such things as how the DHB is getting more elective surgery done than ever and how nobody has to be on the waiting list longer than six months. This all sounds very encouraging. At least it would if it was even slightly true.

The reality is that people all over New Zealand are being denied timely medical interventions so Toenail and his mates can boast about how efficient they are. How does that work? It’s quite simple really. First of all they set the bar for a specialist referral high enough to exclude anyone who is not extremely ill. So rather than deal with an emerging problem, they choose instead to wait until it has not only emerged, but also gone to the second or third stage of its development. Hence a man with varicose veins that cause regular attacks of acute pain, cramps at night and eczema is told he will have to wait until he develops ulcers before he qualifies for so much as an examination by a vascular specialist. This keeps the patient off the waiting list and enables the DHB to report back to the Vile one that they are up to date with all their elective surgery. It might seem like a small point here, but I can’t help feeling varicose vein operations to relive pain and prevent thromboses don’t really sound like elective surgery to me. I would have though elective surgery would be just that. Something you want to do, but don’t need to.

The other waiting list trick the DHBs are fond of is the one where older people are kept waiting interminably, unless they can find themselves someone to advocate forcefully for them. This tactic appears to be a cynical ploy to keep them out of the system in the hopes they will fall off the perch before the need arises to do something about them.

However for those who manage to navigate their way through all the chicanes and blind alleys and scoop up all the golden apples along the way face another danger; admin mayhem. It would seem the hospitals are so busy trying to keep within the confines of what the DHBs want to report back to their shiny suited Minister that they are dropping the ball sometimes in a most alarming way.

According to the report released this week by the Health Quality and Safety Commission, there were 377 ‘serious and sentinel events in NZ hospitals last year. While that is not a huge number as a percentage of patients seen (2.7 million), it still works out to an average of more than one every day and I’ve no doubt every one of them was serious to the patients involved. The most common events that fell into this category were falls which probably suggest a lack of proper health and safety and/or supervision of vulnerable patients – the very sort of thing one would expect when work levels are high and manpower numbers are not.

The report says 86 of these people died though not necessarily as a result of the ‘events’, which seems a rather pointless statistic to publish. I would have thought it would be more worthwhile to find out how many did die as a result and print that. But we can’t upset the Minister’s plans, can we?

But there were also 25 medication errors which I find completely unforgivable and 11 cases of wrong patient, site or procedure which is really scary. But worst of all there were the 108 clinical management events which is DHBSpeak for wrong diagnoses or treatment.

If you think these figures aren’t too bad, consider this: a sentinel event is only one that results in death, serious injury or disability for the patient. A disclaimer also advises the figures are not necessarily all of the events and are only those the DHBs chose to voluntarily report.

I don’t know about you, but I think I might have to dig out my old rugby boots again. God knows it can’t be any less safe on the field.