Now there’s not many people know that

This week I thought it was time to enlighten you, dear readers about some little known pearls I have recently become aware of. Some might make you laugh, some might make you cry, some might make you begin looking for a heavy calibre weapon and others might just make you go, “Huh?”

Not many....#1

The first of these is a bizarre contradiction I personally encountered in the last week. I recently developed an abscess under a tooth and had to go to the dentist. As is the norm, the dentist prescribed some antibiotics to help with the healing. However when I went to fill my prescription the pharmacist demanded a payment of $15 for the common antibiotic amoxicillin. I asked why this prescription cost $15 rather than the $3 that is normally charged for the same drug. What they told me was a real eye-opener as to the fiendish lengths governments go to in order to save a couple of dollars while trying to tell us all that they are backing our health needs.

It transpires that I had to pay $15 because my prescription was written out by a dentist and not a GP. My dentist is a Doctor of Dental Surgery and not just a Bachelor of Dental Surgery, which means her qualifications are the equal of my GP; and yet if he had written my prescription for the same medication it would have only cost me $3.

Either this is the height of stupidity or it is part of an evil plan to hoodwink the public into thinking the government actually cares about our health needs. After all such medications are only prescribed when there is an infection and whether that infection is in my tooth or my leg, really doesn’t much matter.

Not many...#2

This next one I saw a few weeks ago and I only saw the one reference to it so imagine not too many people know about it yet, which is probably how TAG Oil and Apache would like it to stay.

A report appeared on Stuff on January 29 that had my eyes bugging out. It turns out the Gisborne District Council has already granted some consents to a joint venture between the two Canadian oil companies to begin “activities associated with drilling shallow shot holes and seismic testing," No supwises there you might say, given the current government’s long held desire to leap headfirst into an orgy of drilling and fracking and whatever else they can think of to ensure every minute particle of ‘valuable resource is extracted from our soil, rivers, lakes, mountains, beauty spots and (coming soon to a house near you). Okay I made that last one up – but it might not be too much of a stretch for these turkeys.

But what makes this little snippet different form all the other clodhopping the government is doing in the face of substantial popular opposition is that these consents were issued without any prior public consultation at all. In fact they were so secretly approved even Mayor Meng Foon didn’t know they had been granted. GDC Councillors are defending their actions because they only have to notify consent applications if "the activity will have, or is likely to have, adverse effects on the environment that are more than minor". Of course they know this will not be the case, eh? Well they must do because TAG Oil & Apache have both assured them the fracking they will be doing and the drilling of two wells up to 2500m deep will not be a problem. When the council said they didn’t have the expertise to assess the effects, the consortium agreed to send council officials on a paid trip to Canada to consult with some experts (of the consortium’s own choosing, of course). I wonder what sort of conclusion they will come to.  GDC’s chief executive (Chief FullofBull) has defended the trip saying it was a chance for council staff to upskill. Yeah, right; only if upskilled is a synonym for brainwashed.

Not many....#3

This one is a real shocker, I think. Have you ever wondered why so many convicted sex offenders re-offend? I’m sure most of you have your own theories about this, but I recently happened upon a little nugget of information that must surely be playing a big part in this.

It has recently come to my attention that there are no mandatory programmes for sexual offenders while they are in prison. Programmes are there but the offenders can choose to take them or choose not to take them. Now that seems ludicrous to me. What better time to address their offending than when they are unable to simply not turn up to their sessions. I wonder if the expression ‘captive audience’ has any resonance with the Departments of Corrections and Justice.

And if you think that is bad; get this – when they leave prison, if they wish to do something about their rehabilitation they must pay for the courses themselves. There are no funded community programmes for those who have sexually offended against adults. So the justice system is leaving it to the good sense and consideration these people might have towards their potential victims and is also reliant upon them being either willing or able to fund such a course. Duhhh!

Not many....#4

This next one comes literally from the twilight zone. Sanwa Corp, an enterprising (?) Japanese company has come up with the ultimate accessory for those too stupid to get the fuck away from Fukushima. It is a handy little Geiger counter designed to work with your i-Phone. For just 9800 yen (or NZ$165) you can detect exactly how many thousand millisieverts you are being exposed to while simply breathing in and out.  The press release didn’t say whether the device could detect how much you were subjecting yourself to from the i-Phone, itself, but I guess that’s a market they could expand into as well. Somehow I can’t help feeling it is a bit like sticking your hand deliberately into a furnace and then hankering for a little device to go on your phone so you can morbidly enlighten yourself as to how hot that fire is that is peeling the flesh from your bones.

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades

Well Jianqi has corralled his lambs and just about got his coalition organised. And when you think of it; coalition is a good name for it since it will be putting out a lot of heat and black smoke and it will bring tears to your eyes before very long.

So what is that blinding light on the horizon? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Of course not, you silly buggers; it’s that brighter new future we were promised so many times during the last month.

What’s that? You can’t see it? With all due respect, I think you need to take the blinkers off NOW, because Jianqi’s brighter future is here and just keeps getting brighter each day.

Take the economy for example (I wish someone would...). Is that bright or what? Treasury figures are just out on the country’s operating deficit for the four months to Oct 31, 2011. Treasury gave all us voters the low down on how this would work out six weeks ago and now we find they were absolutely...wrong. It was out by 4.1 percent, which doesn’t sound much, but considering this prediction was only made six weeks ago (and half-way through the period in question) it is not particularly bright.

They tell us it was down due to lower Crown revenue and a smaller tax and GST take. So the taxation policy is working well, then...NOT. They can hardly blame the economy on Labour now they’ve been in total control for the last three years!

Maybe we should check out the brighter health outlooks instead. I see National Disgrace is promising to provide even more elective surgery. Goodness me, that sounds great. Furthermore they have a goal of all patients booked for elective surgery to wait no more than four months. Wow – two months less than now. Or is it? Actually no. The whole waiting times issue is a load of lies and deceptions.

You see the current system ‘guarantees’ patients on the list will be seen in six months, but how can they guarantee this, you might ask? Easy, I answer. If they don’t think they can see you in six months; then you don’t get put on the list. This was exposed on National Radio’s Nine to Noon programme of 10 November 2011 where surgeons told Kathryn Ryan exactly how it works and why we have Charity Hospitals in Auckland, New Plymouth and Christchurch performing much needed varicose vein and hernia operations as well as many other surgeries for painful conditions that the DHBs are ignoring.

Okay then let’s look at the brighter future for jobs. That’s always one to get everyone excited. Jianqi tells us the abolition of the youth rates lost us 9000 jobs in one fell swoop. Let’s suspend judgment on that for a moment while we check out the Nats’ brighter future answer to this.

They are going to introduce what they have dubbed a ‘starting-out wage’ which apply to 16 and 17-year-olds beginning work and 18-19 year-olds who have just come off a designated benefit as well as 16-19 year-olds in training in certain recognised industry training courses. It will be equivalent to 80 percent of the minimum wage (wow $10.40 before tax -such generosity). For new young workers this will apply for the first six months with the same employer. Which means if for some reason their employer decided to toss them out after three months (and what is to stop him/her?) they have to start again with their next employer at $10.40 for another period of six months. You see after six months the employer is obliged to pay them the adult rate, so with an easy out at three months it is easy to see what will happen to many.

So what is really giving us a brighter future Jianqi? Certainly nothing in this lot. But perhaps it is your plan for asset sales ... er sorry ‘the mixed ownership model’? Now in the lead up to the election we were told the change to the ‘mixed ownership model’ would net us $7B. That sounds quite a tidy sum, but how did the Nats arrive at it? Well, unfortunately we don’t know because they muzzled treasury and the Ombudsman before the election. I can think of only one reason why they would do that, and it has nothing to do with ‘commercial sensitivity’. It is ‘political sensitivity’ because when you discover the whole concept has been built upon figures that don’t add up, it suddenly becomes a far more worrying matter than simply losing the income from these assets. After all that pain was supposed to bring gain. But realistically what sort of gain could it ever bring other than a very brief elation rather like when you sell your house and have a whole lot of money ....but nowhere to live, because you didn’t get as much as you thought for it.

I am the first to admit that my understanding of economics is rudimentary at best, although lately I have begun to realise I share this level of expertise with those in treasury who get paid far more than I could hope to earn. So at this point I should defer to those who actually work in the money market.

Auckland financial analyst Brent Sheather, and NZ Herald business columnist Brian Fallow have both laid out a very convincing analysis of the situation You can find details of their analysis at http://gordoncampbell.scoop.co.nz/2011/11/24/gordon-campbell-financial-analysts-jump-ship-on-asset-sales/ but in a nutshell Sheather says To get these asset sales, the Government will need to price the companies at price-earnings multiples of somewhere around 14 to 16 times, which implies after-tax earnings yields of 6 to 7 per cent. The 7% is the profits of the company after tax. So the company could pay out 4% as tax free profit, and re-invest the other 3% for more growth. Either way, that’s going to be nearly twice the 4% cost [of the borrowing option.]. Again, these sums indicate that ordinary New Zealanders stand to lose by selling down the assets.

 Both commentators seem to be of the opinion their views are pretty widely shared within the financial community, who is pulling Jianqi’s chain? And more to the point; where is this brighter future coming from?

Maybe it’s coming through the communication companies who are rolling out faster broadband ‘all over the country’. Wow! But wouldn’t it be better if all of us had decent cellphone coverage and television reception first? I mean how fast does broadband have to be? You can only type or click so fast.

Or maybe it’s coming from those nice mining companies. You know the ones. . These guys bring lots of work – they are the good guys. We’ve got a mining inspector so it’s okay. The companies are responsible people. It’s just that they don’t need all that health and safety nonsense because they employ real men, not cry-baby scaredy-cats who worry about being entombed in their workplace, or blown to smithereens.

But wouldn’t our future be so much brighter if everyone just stopped complaining about silly things such as child poverty child abuse, drunk drivers, lousy employers, a failed health system, dirty dairying, degraded environment and a failed education system and just got on with helping Jianqi to help us?

Yeah, right! I might as well toss my shades away for the next three years.

Rabbits’ feet and four leafed clovers

Luck is an interesting concept. Some say there is no such thing as luck and that you make your own luck. Tantalising though that idea is, and much as I am a believer in the powers of positive thought, I think we all have to concede that luck, both good and bad do exist. How else do people win Lotto? It certainly ain’t the result of any cunning sure-fire plan, apart from the decision to actually buy a ticket. Nope, it’s just old fashioned god luck against enormous odds.

However I don’t believe luck is a totally inanimate thing. You might not be able to control it but sometimes you can work it, ride it, or learn from it.

Luck often gets a bad rap. Often it is blamed for things which have nothing to do with it. For example envy gives birth to many claims of luck intervening in matters when often it is just that the other bloke, company or whatever was more intelligent, skilful or whatever.

We usually curse what we deem to be bad luck, but so often it is a wake-up call when we are doing something stupid or wrong. Often good luck comes disguised as not so good luck. Think of the little apprentice scumbag that gets caught early in his criminal career and actually turns himself around as a result. And I am sure most of us can recall some occasion we were to have been present at, but because of what seemed bad luck at the time we were not and it turned out to be a disaster of some kind, which we were later glad to have missed.

If we get a lucky break that offers the opportunity for advancement in one way or another, few of us with argue with the idea of grabbing that luck and running with it. But how many have the wisdom to see a lucky escape as a totally different though equally important opportunity? Sadly, in my experience those numbers are much smaller.

One such apparently slow learner would have to be Daniel Rockhouse; one of only two survivors from the Pike River mining disaster. Daniel, who lost his brother in that tragedy, seems to have attached little significance to his good luck and has been working in the mines in Australia since.

Now you might think that is kind of silly, but it paled into insignificance when I read this week that Daniel had ‘experienced’ another mine collapse in Queensland’s North Goonyella mine where he is currently working. He was uninjured and according to the story wasn’t sure whether he would go back mining again. I have deliberately used quote marks and italics here because I have some serious doubts about this story.

I made many attempts to Google versions of it other than those in the NZ Herald and Stuff, neither of which said WHEN (one of our W’s is missing), this incident actually ‘happened’. Guess what? I could find only two other sites carrying the ‘story’. One was mining.com who had done a total cut and paste from Stuff and the other was 9news. There was still no word as to when this incident had actually occurred and interestingly nobody apart from our lucky miner seems to have been spoken to.

So what is going on? Is the Queensland mining community in denial or is the story a complete fiction? Either seems equally likely when you get an industry that is notoriously cagey about admitting its mistakes and it produces a ‘story’ about another industry that takes a similar stance over its own shortcomings. I doubt we’ll ever get any answers from the NZ media who seem quite happy to spend most of their time as mouthpieces for captains of industry and politicians. But if it’s true, young Daniel should take heed and stay out of that lion’s den for life. A third strike could see him walking to the great bench in the sky.

Some would say we need some luck before the event next month that none dare speak the name of, and yes we do need some, but most of all we need a good effort on the field and a strong will to win.

Lucky charm, anyone? Guaranteed to work...honest. (Well it did in ’87, anyway).