Posts Tagged ‘health’

Should Parents and Teachers Defy the Government?

Written By: - Date published: 4:02 pm, May 16th, 2020 - 66 comments

School’s back on Monday, but the medical community is still struggling to understand covid 19

Bigot’s Billboard

Written By: - Date published: 8:58 am, October 2nd, 2018 - 284 comments

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…

Written By: - Date published: 10:24 am, June 11th, 2018 - 48 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 10:02 am, May 8th, 2018 - 22 comments

Yes, Dunedin needs a new hospital, but…

The mess that the new government inherits

Written By: - Date published: 11:47 am, October 23rd, 2017 - 51 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:04 am, August 31st, 2017 - 48 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 9:18 am, August 22nd, 2017 - 45 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 2:58 pm, August 7th, 2017 - 17 comments

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?

Written By: - Date published: 9:11 am, July 20th, 2017 - 27 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 2:56 pm, June 16th, 2017 - 9 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:06 am, June 9th, 2017 - 45 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 8:13 am, May 27th, 2017 - 74 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, May 26th, 2017 - 72 comments

It was National’s best budget. Which means there are only three critical areas of failure.

Mental health needs vs. cuts

Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, April 20th, 2017 - 25 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:01 am, April 5th, 2017 - 50 comments

You could vote for three more years of “brighter future”. Or you could listen to the nurses.

Free market efficiency in health – not

Written By: - Date published: 7:05 am, March 15th, 2017 - 37 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 9:38 am, March 9th, 2017 - 98 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:57 am, February 4th, 2017 - 43 comments

Socioeconomic status is a major health risk factor. Not exactly a surprise is it.

World Water Week

Written By: - Date published: 11:18 am, September 1st, 2016 - 11 comments

Never heard of it? Neither had I.

The Mother Budget

Written By: - Date published: 6:21 pm, May 26th, 2016 - 89 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:18 am, May 6th, 2016 - 30 comments

It’s a steady attrition, the death of a thousand cuts.

Health law expert on the TPP

Written By: - Date published: 12:43 pm, March 9th, 2016 - 20 comments

We won’t be able to say that we weren’t warned.

Obesity is a structural problem

Written By: - Date published: 9:20 am, December 16th, 2015 - 59 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 7:29 am, October 20th, 2015 - 182 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 4:05 pm, October 12th, 2015 - 50 comments

Helen Kelly calls for the government “to get real about medicinal cannabis”. Seriously – what are we waiting for?

Diesel Bomb

Written By: - Date published: 11:53 am, October 1st, 2015 - 37 comments

Last Friday I wrote a post on Volkwagen gaming NOx emissions. This is a follow up.

NOx-ious shit all around.

Written By: - Date published: 7:49 am, September 25th, 2015 - 109 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 11:09 am, September 4th, 2015 - 15 comments

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

Written By: - Date published: 8:29 am, July 17th, 2015 - 75 comments

“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

Written By: - Date published: 12:36 pm, June 17th, 2015 - 53 comments

Southern DHB sacked – scapegoats for systematic underfunding of the health sector.

Elective surgery waiting lists

Written By: - Date published: 10:47 am, November 7th, 2014 - 29 comments

The Nats have been manufacturing “good news” stories in health by creating a system that turns away one third of the patients in need.

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