health
Categories under health
- covid-19 (322)
- long covid (11)
- vaccines (11)
Nick Smith on housing then and now
Written By: - Date published: 7:02 am, June 11th, 2015 - 66 comments
In 2013 Nick Smith promised an effective housing WOF. Yesterday he said “People dying in winter of pneumonia and other illnesses is not new.” Has National ever kept a constructive sounding social policy promise?
Another death linked to cold state house
Written By: - Date published: 5:03 pm, June 9th, 2015 - 127 comments
This should not be happening in New Zealand.
NRT: Half-measures on housing quality
Written By: - Date published: 2:00 pm, June 9th, 2015 - 71 comments
I/S at No Right Turn: “Any improvement is better than what we’ve got now .. At the same time, we should recognise that this is pathetically weak.”
De Boni on privatising mental health
Written By: - Date published: 11:38 am, June 5th, 2015 - 26 comments
A superb piece by Dita De Boni on the Nats’ plans to privatise mental health. See also (and sign!) Labour’s open letter opposing the “social bonds” scheme.
The stupidest idea this Government has had yet
Written By: - Date published: 9:15 am, June 1st, 2015 - 92 comments
One News has reported that the Government is on the verge of introducing Social Bonds whereby investors in social services will be rewarded if targets are met.
Shame shame shame
Written By: - Date published: 7:12 am, March 19th, 2015 - 206 comments
Last night in Parliament National voted down Harawira / Turei’s Feed the Kids Bill, David Shearer’s Food in Schools Bill, and Phil Twyford’s Healthy Homes Guarantee Bill.
All the best Helen Kelly
Written By: - Date published: 10:26 am, February 26th, 2015 - 49 comments
“The head of the Council of Trade Unions has confirmed she has lung cancer.”
Salvation Army – State of the Nation
Written By: - Date published: 9:42 am, February 11th, 2015 - 18 comments
This morning the Salvation Army released their state of the nation report – A Mountain All Can Climb. It is mixed news, and most coverage has focused on the impact of the housing crisis.
No quick fix for diseases of poverty
Written By: - Date published: 9:23 am, January 16th, 2015 - 136 comments
The continued rise of rheumatic fever is an indictment of our society.
New figures show that there is no quick fix for diseases of poverty.
Your move, National.
Local Bodies: Neoliberal Economics Limits Food Choice in Southland
Written By: - Date published: 8:54 am, January 10th, 2015 - 62 comments
bsprout on the Local Bodies blog, provides a case study, specific to Southland. At the same time, it outlines a more general pattern that can be seen in many places, each with their own local circumstances.
A Punitive Climate of Fear
Written By: - Date published: 1:59 pm, January 9th, 2015 - 64 comments
Whatever the reason for a person’s disability if it is to such an extent that they cannot work we condemn them to a life of subsistence living with a big pay rise when, and if, they reach retirement age to 65% of the average wage!
Power poverty on the up
Written By: - Date published: 8:18 am, December 19th, 2014 - 56 comments
The government has failed to tackle NZ’s on-going housing crisis. Fuel/energy poverty is increasing, with a higher proportion of households unable to afford any heating. More Kiwis are renting than in the 2006 census, & more Aucklanders live in over-crowded households.
‘Ditch the [misleading] rhetoric’
Written By: - Date published: 9:39 am, December 12th, 2014 - 16 comments
On RNZ this morning PSA National Secretary Richard Wagstaff criticised Bill English for his misleading rhetoric about rises in “average wages”. NZ’s income and wealth gaps have increased in recent decades. The lowest income remain low; the top earners get big salary increases.
Local Bodies: Government Responsible for Invercargill Poverty
Written By: - Date published: 9:00 am, December 2nd, 2014 - 6 comments
The second annual Child Poverty Monitor was released today. bsprout on Local Bodies on poverty and inequalities in Invercargill, “provides a good snapshot of New Zealand society”.
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.
Unaffordable housing & the culture of greed
Written By: - Date published: 11:17 am, October 4th, 2014 - 47 comments
Rental housing remains unaffordable for many. The problem is the greed of investors & speculators, supported by a culture in which housing investment is seen as a way to individual prosperity.
Health service funding
Written By: - Date published: 7:44 am, September 25th, 2014 - 62 comments
The Nats are steadily cutting funding (in real terms) to health (and other sectors). Today, yet another doctor broke. Welcome to the brighter future.
Polity: When general reporters cover political stories…
Written By: - Date published: 11:19 am, August 10th, 2014 - 9 comments
You really have to ask what journalists are trained in. Clearly not learning about existing party policies. Some reporters managing to miss that Labour has been planning to extend Paid Parental Leave for 3 years.
Local Bodies: Manipulated Data and the Art of Deception
Written By: - Date published: 12:28 pm, July 28th, 2014 - 7 comments
The National led Government are desperate to present the good news stories to promote the success of the past six years of their governance. They have increased the budget and the numbers of their spin doctors to ensure that it is mainly positive messages that make into the public domain. The Government cleverly manipulates data to hide the extent of poverty the degradation of the environment and the success of our economy. Of course most of us who live in the real world know that National’s reality is a falsely constructed one.
NRT: The Greens support abortion
Written By: - Date published: 12:19 pm, June 6th, 2014 - 216 comments
Removing our absurd thirty-year-old abortion law, which effectively requires women to declare themselves mentally ill to access a basic medical procedure is great. But it also addresses availability, requiring medical professionals who object to abortion to provide an effective referral, and ensuring that women don’t have to travel hundreds of kilometres for a basic medical procedure.
Snapshot of a nation: inequality
Written By: - Date published: 8:00 am, May 24th, 2014 - 30 comments
Al Jazeera reports on damaging inequalities in Spain under “austerity”. High unemployment; 30% of children in poverty, political corruption, tax evasion & a focus on football. Suggested ways to decrease income & wealth inequalities in NZ. Update: TV3’s The Nation: inequality & Wilson & Pickett interview.
Save the Poisons Helpline!
Written By: - Date published: 10:00 am, May 23rd, 2014 - 29 comments
National are planning to merge a bunch of health helplines to save money. The 0800 POISON number could be scrapped leaving additional seconds or minutes until help is received in those most urgent of moments.
NRT: Stinkier and stinkier
Written By: - Date published: 5:29 pm, March 24th, 2014 - 37 comments
In the ongoing saga about the Problem Gambling Foundation, The Salvation Army were unaware that the Ministry of Health had decided that they would take over as the national provider. They hadn’t even applied for it. It appears that only thing driving the ministry’s decision was the complaints from the gambling industry about the PGF trying to reduce problem gambling…. Is the gambling industry is thoroughly corrupting National’s ministers?
NRT: Climate change: War, disease, and famine
Written By: - Date published: 6:01 pm, March 18th, 2014 - 38 comments
The biggest single threat to civilisation from human initiated CO2 forced climate change is going to be in food production and distribution. In a leaked version of the IPCC’s AR5 second volume ” the report predicts that climate change will reduce median crop yields by 2 per cent per decade for the rest of the century – at a time of rapidly growing demand for food.”
Polity: Fizzy drinks: Tax or no tax?
Written By: - Date published: 2:48 pm, February 18th, 2014 - 80 comments
There has been some discussion recently about whether we should tax fizzy drinks as a threat to public health. Otago University public health people say yes. Various anti-tax groups say no. Here’s Rob Salmond’s 2c worth.
Some interesting arguments
Less (inequality) is more….
Written By: - Date published: 7:19 pm, January 25th, 2014 - 40 comments
John Key seems to be trying to fudge the evidence of the damaging inequalities in NZ. I recap Bunji’s 2010 series of posts on The Spirit Level showing the benefits of a more equal society. Will this be addressed by Cunliffe and Turei this long weekend?
The politics of food: Oxfam report
Written By: - Date published: 11:08 am, January 16th, 2014 - 10 comments
Some MSM reports crow about positive economic indicators, & decreases in the time people spend on benefits. Such statistics fail to show inequalities, & struggles of people on low incomes. An Oxfam comparative international report on food security is not good news for NZ, or the world.
Poverty denial
Written By: - Date published: 9:58 am, December 30th, 2013 - 230 comments
Here & in the UK: food poverty, increases in queues to foodbanks, in diseases of poverty, a crisis in affordable housing, & struggles & insecurites of the working poor. But poverty denialists blame the poor, smear beneficiaries, & talk of (always-around-the-corner) “brighter futures”.
Thank you ….
Written By: - Date published: 8:57 am, December 25th, 2013 - 34 comments
To all those making a difference and working for a more inclusive, equal, fair and sustainable society. Special thanks to Lynn for all his work for The Standard.
‘Locked Up Warriors’: 101 East
Written By: - Date published: 8:20 pm, November 9th, 2013 - 95 comments
On 101 East on Al Jazeera. Too many people in NZ prisons, especially Maori: too many in poverty; too much money spent on prisons; not enough for low income communities; some very good community initiatives. Is this a fair representation?
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