Swiftian Medical Care

A rightwing British think tank has proposed a £20 fee for patients to see their doctor:

Patients should be charged £20 to see a GP in a bid to limit demands placed on the health service, a centre-right think-tank says.

The Social Market Foundation said forcing people to pay a fee for an appointment could help the NHS cope in the tight financial times ahead. (1)

I think it is a fantastic idea.

If you are such a vile pauper you can't afford twenty quid to see the doctor, then it is good that you sicken and die sooner rather than later, so as to avoid the cost of maintaining such an unproductive member of society into dotage.

Thankfully, I no longer dwell in sentimental Britain with its parasite class of blood sucking scroungers voting themselves more freebies at every election, but in forward looking, lean and mean New Zealand, where visionary polices, such as making health care beyond the reach of paupers, are already in place.

And why stop there? Obviously, the only way to stop the parasitical scum voting down such sensible ideas is to make voting a paid for privilege, not a right as those sappy liberals insist it should be. And probably, some form of licensing on reproduction, in case the Morlocks try to build up the numbers to stage a revolt.

I am, of course, taking the piss. In case anyone thought I was being serious, even for a nano-second.

One lesson I have learned - albeit bery slowly - is that some people take everything VERY SERIOUSLY.

1 - "Call for £20 charge to see doctor," unattributed BBC article, published 18th of July, 2009. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8156279.stm)

David Garrett - liar or fool?

Below is a transcript of the comments made by ACT MP David Garrett, speaking on Morning Report, Friday 17th of July, 2009 (1). He was in debate with Jim Boyack, discussing the comments by Dame Sain Elias, around penal reform, particularly an anmesty for some prisoners.

I've preserved it as it is interesting as a summary of the Garrett/ACT/rightwing view on the purpose of prisons, and their preferred tactics. It has been lightly edited for interruptions, questions, hesitations and the like. After each paragraph, I ahve included my own comments in square brackets.

I don't think it's a sensible idea at all. We've already got a bizarre, Orwellian sentencing act which converts every sentence handed down by a judge in New Zealand into something less. What this is suggesting is that there will be a further cut, so the ten year sentence that's already three and a half under the sentencing act, now becomes, on a whim, get out of jail tommorrow. That's an outrageous precedent. Now, can I just come back a second. Mr Boyack used the word 'observed,' twice in those answers. Dame Sain has done way more than observe. She has suggested - one could even say directed - the executive that this would be a good idea to give half the jail population a Get Out of Jail card. That's far more than simply observing something.

[I think you meant 'Orwellian ACT,' Dave. Orwell describedaa world where meanings were reversed, lies became truth, war became peace. You're the one altering meanings here. Elias did not suggest, direct or observe that it would be "a good idea to give half the jail population a Get Out of Jail card". She made no suggestions about how such a scheme could be implemented. She said she wasn't in a position to do so (2), but that the disadvantages of confining prisoners in overcrowded, degrading, unsafe jails had to be considered. Your cheap rhetorical flourishes do you no credit, though I suppose you're not really aiming them at me. Still, talkback radio is the correct home for this sort of nonsense.]

My view is that we actually need more imprisonment, not less. The experience in the United States has been that when they abandoned the"Criminal as a sick person who needed therapy" model in the late seventies and went to the "If you do this you get locked up" model, sure, the prison population grew there, but crime, and violent crime in particular, plummetted. Now I think the "Head in the sand" thing or "The elephant in the room" is perhaps that we need to consider the unpleasant reality that violent crime is at a level we have never seen before and we need more jails.

[Actually, Dave, the according to the FBI, the crime rate soared between the end of the seventies and the millenium. In 1970, the incidence of general crime was 3984.5 per 100,000 population. Every year after that, except for 1972, it was higher, until 2004 when it finally fell below the 1970 level. 1970, incidentally, had a higher rate than any year recorded in the preceeding decade. So, the Golden Age you claim did not exist. In fact, it was the longest period of sustained high crime in the USA on record.

Violent crime, which you claimed "plummetted," did nothing of the kind. It also soared, from 461.1 incidents per 100,000 population in 1974, climbing steadily through the late seventies, exceeding 500 incidents per 100,000, through the 80s, where it passed the 600 incidents per 100,00, and breaking 700 incidents per 100,000 population in the 90s. By the mid 1990s, it began to tail off, but it is still far higher than it was in the early seventies, or at any time before.

So - unless you just invented that bit about the USA abandoning rehabilitative programs in the late 70s (and I think you probably did), the data confounds you. Things got worse, not better.]

Only a fool would say that we shouldn't try to rehabilitate prisoners to prevent reoffending. We've got a five year recidivist rates of, I think, seventy per cent plus, so absolutely we need to do more in that regard, but we also need to accept that there are some people who are habitual criminals who will keep on reoffending, whatever you do, and they need to be banged up and left banged up.

[Actually, the 60 month recidivism rate is a sniffle over 50%, as of 2002/3which is still far too high, but far less alarmist than your off-the-cuff claim (4). Elias mentioned this in her speech. You did read the speech, didn't you, Dave?

And by admitting that you agree more needs to be done to reduce the recidivism rate, you legitimize Elias's comments. She is pointing out that when prisoners are imprisoned in over crowded, degrading prisons, where little is done to help prisoners - many of whom have identified mental illnesses and personality disorders (5) - they are more likely to reoffend. So a spectacular own goal, Dave. ]

We need to face up to the fact that our experiment with treating criminals as people who need therapy has failed, it's failed abysmally. We've got a revolving door prison system wherehabitual offenders rack up ten, twenty, a hundred convictions in the case of some of our worst killers or people who've become killers, like Mr William Bell. I think it takes some bravery to simply say, well, look, this experiment has failed. The Americans did it twenty five years ago. We are where the Americans were in the late seventies when they abandoned that model and said, "No, you'll get a chance, sure, in fact you'll get two, but you won't get a hundred and two, and once you've demonstrated that you're intent on a life of crime, you can stay in jail. Now that's what they did from the late seventies on, with "Three strikes" and with "Zero Tolerance," right across the states, in fact, and right across the states what we've seen is a plummetting in crime rates. Now, okay, they've paid a price. They've paid a price in greater levels of imprisonment, but far less than was predicted. The same alarmist predictions about the 'Three strikes' law that are made here were made in California and other states and they didn't happen.

[If I were you, I wouldn't keep going on about the alleged change of emphasis in the USA in the 1970s, Dave. It really doesn't do your cause any good.]

Garrett provides a super-simplified model of crime, where criminals are criminals because of the perceived laxity of the justice system. Increase the consequences, he claims, lock up offenders, and the crime rate will fall. This is, of course, grotesquely reductive. Crime is a social phenomenum, and the crime rate rises and falls in relation to social factors beyond the penal code - otherwise, the USA would have the lowest crime rate in the developed world, as it includes some of the most savage sentencing and most brutal jails. But the experience has been quite different - Crime has increased, from rates already higher than most other decveloped countries would tolerate, to figures in the 80s and early 90s, that were absolutely beyond belief.

Now, were I as reductively minded as David Garrett, I'd posit that the (alleged) change in policy caused the surge in crime from the mid seventies to the early years of this Millenium. But it isn't as simple as that. If it comes down to anything, it comes down to the economy, stupid. The USA is a country that has grown more unequal of the last fifty years. The crime rate has risen - roughly - in relation to the Gini coefficient. Though that in itself is too simplistic. On top of that, there have been booms and busts, times of increasing unemployment and times when it has fallen. And there are plenty of other factors, beyond the economic, all of which combine to create a very complicated situation.

But Garrett - and, by extension, ACT and the right - prefer to reduce, simplify and misrepresent. They will also try to present every problem as being the result of liberalism, political correctness, human rights, government, and so on. They don't miss an opportunity to start spitting out the tired lines and lies, regardless of how little resembleance they have to the truth. This is entirely predictable - as soon as they have to admit things are complicated, they lose their kneejerk appeal factor. People debating with them need to have the information to hand, and pull them up on their inconsistencies and outright untruths.

Which begs the question - when Daid Garrett went on Morning report, he either didn't know that he was talking nonsense, or he knew it, and he said it anyways. So is he a cynical liar or a blethering fool?

1 - The audio is available at http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/morningreport/20090717 a the time of blogging. It is the segement broadcast at 7.25, titled, "Chief Justice criticised for commenting on prison numbers."
2 - "Blameless Babes," a speech delivered by Sian Elias, the Chief Justice, to the Wellington Branch of the New Zealand Law Society, Women in Law Committee, 9th of July, 2009. Reproduced in full by TVNZ. The comments on amnesty are in paragraph 42. (http://images.tvnz.co.nz/tvnz_images/news2009/justice-nz/chief_justice_jails_speech.pdf)
3 - Courtesy of www.disastercentre.com, viewed 17th of July, 2009. (http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm) The statistics here are based on the FBI's Uniform Crime Report. Try as I might, I can't find a more helpful compilation of the data, on a mor ereputable site. I carried out spot checks against the Bureau of Justice records (http://bjsdata.ojp.usdoj.gov/dataonline/Search/Crime/State/RunCrimeStatebyState.cfm), and Disaster Centre appear to be accurate.
4 - Elias, op. cit., paragraph 14.
5 - Elias, op. cit., paragraphs 39-41.
6 - 'Gini coefficient - US income Gini indices over time,' wikipedia article, viewed 17th of July, 2009. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#US_income_Gini_indices_over_time)

Uncharacteristic

Usually, the Independent is can be relied on to be accurate in its reporting, and resist hyperbole, but Kim Sengupta and Nigel Morris succumbed to a fit of the Daily Mails reporting on the current difficulties experience by the British army in Afghanistan:

Plans to reinforce the beleaguered British force have been drawn up after Downing Street consulted senior military commanders. (1)

Beleaguered? Really? I thought we were taking part in a massive assault on a Taliban stronghold, not beseiged.

Even more depressingly, it appears that accuracy is abandoned altogether later on, when they claim:

... Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, also delivered a rebuke to the Prime Minister by contradicting his insistence that no British soldier had died because of the helicopter shortage. (2)

Note the use of indirect quoatation. For something as significant as the Air Chief Marshall calling the Prime Minister a liar, you would expect a direct quotation to be used to verify the claim. This does not happen. Later on in the article, Stirrup is quoted, but his words do not say what Sengupta and Morris have claimed he said, though the interpretation they placed on them might mislead the reader into thinking otherwise:

Sir Jock said ... "In this situation where you have lots of improvised explosive devices, the more you can increase your tactical flexibility by moving people by helicopters then the more unpredictable your movements become to the enemy. Therefore it is quite patently the case that you could save casualties by doing that." (3)

Which is very different from what Sengupta and Morris represent him as saying. Without reference to a specific incident, the claim that he is refuting Gordon Brown's claim that "no British soldier had died because of the helicopter shortage" is at best an error, at worst a deliberate misrepresentation.

Given the degree of difference between what was actually said, and what was reported to have been said, I am inclined to think the latter is most likely. The Independent doesn't often make silly mistakes like that. The newspaper has had a long-standing - and honourable - editorial policy of opposing the hare-brained adventurism of the Afghan and Iraq incursions. Perhaps maintaining that line has lead to battle fatigue setting in, and the principles of accuracy and honesty being ... neglected.

1 - "Brown snubs Dannatt in talks on reinforcements for Afghanistan," by Kim Sengupta and Nigel Morris, published in The Independent, 18th of July, 2009. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brown-snubs-dannatt-in-talks-on-reinforcements-for-afghanistan-1751556.html)
2 - ibid.
3 - ibid.

When the going gets tough, the Tony starts running

.... away from their responsibilities, into the safe, snuggly security of Euro-office. For it seems that Tony Blair is to be Britain's official candidate for the EU presidency (1).

After shouting, "Dear God! No!" and thanking my lucky stars I'm no longer in Europe, I couldn't help wonder why the erstwhile envoy for the UN, EU, USA and Russia to the Middle East is looking for a new job.

The Middle East, after all, seems no more sorted out than it was when Blair took up the position in 2007. Could it be that Blair has realised that the region's problems are too much, even for his spectacular ego, and that generations of hatred, racism , bigotry, violence and injustice can't be resolved with some blinking, an insincere smile and a bit of spin?

Silvio Berlusconi is quoted as saying Blair had the "ideal personality" for the job (2). Apart from the (presumably) unintended comedy of Berlusconi vouching for anyone's character, this tells us everything we need to know about Blair's putative candidacy. Berlusoni likes him, so he must be unfit for office.

1 - "UK 'backs Blair for EU president'," unattributed BBC artilce. published 15th of July, 2009. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/8152099.stm)
2 - ibid.

Another stray thought

Why is it that the term 'social experiment' is only applied to leftwing initiatives?

Any attempts at intervention, redistribution, is dennounced as 'social experiment,' possibly including the words 'politcally correct,' 'metropolitan,' 'liberal elite,' 'Wellington,' if the dennouncer wants to convey extra disapproval.

But it is a meaningless term, because any policy foisted on us, whether by the PC or unPC elite in Wlellington, is a social experiment. What was the neo-liberal reforms of the 80s and 90s other than a massive - and disasterous - social experiment? Those decades left us with unemployment, soaring drug use, alcoholism a social underclass and a prison population that would have been unthinkable before Roger Douglas got his bloody hands on the levers of power.

We're seeing it again, in the laissez-faire approach to recession management. Faced with a massive social problem in the making, the government has done nothing, in the hope that everything will somehow sort itself out. It is a foolish, ideological, stubborn refusal response. So lets call it what it is - a social experiment.

Prison numbers set to reach new high

According to Judith Collins:

The number of prisoners behind bars in New Zealand is expected to be the highest ever within weeks, Corrections Minister Judith Collins says.

At Monday unlock this week, there were 8434 people in prisons or police stations - just 23 below the previous peak of 8457 prisoners on 17 September 2007.

[snip]

The strong growth in the prison population began in 2003 when the prison population stood at less than 6000. It is forecast to rise to around 10,700 by 2016. (1)

This will, of course, get an awful lot higher, especially with the number of unemployed sky rocketing. The recession - and, more importantly, the government's refusal to actually do anything constructive about it - will mean all the bad numbers go up. Prison population, drug use, domestic violence, dead children ... Worse, not only will the numbers get high but they will stay high, as the social wreckage continues to ruin lives for years or even decades afterwards.

The reason that numbers have been increasing steadily is the consequence of the 'reforms' of the 80s and 90s, and the failure of the last government to effectively counter the social ruin left by those two decades social experimentation. The consequences aren't apparent immediately, but become clear over the coursr of a generation. The children of parents who have succumbed to alcohol, drugs, ennui and desapir don't show up in the prison system immediately, but they are now. The children who grew up in the shattered families and dying towns, without hope, are now old enough to be locked up.

And now we're repeating the mistakes. Long after John Key has become just a political byword for inaction and ineffectiveness, people will still be living with the consequences of his government's ideological and pig-headed refusal to take action to mitigate the effects of the recession.

The fact that the prison population has been trending upwards since 2003 raises a less important, but still interesting issue - how on Earth did Labour manage to let itself be so outflanked on law and order? I despise simplistic rhetoric on crime, and the obsession with bums in cells of the rightwing punitarian demagogues, but the empirical data was there, to show that Labour was actualy quite psychotically, probably stupidly, tough on crime. Yet they allowed themselves to be painted as limp wristed, PC idiots intent on reforming P addled triple killers with crochet classes.

Of course, Labour couldn't really dust off the old Bristish Labour party slogan about being "Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime.' Because they weren't very effective - that they left the prison population higher than it was when they came into government, after almost a decade in power, is evidence of that damning failure.

"Tough on crime, pretty ineffective on the causes of crime because we're too scared of being portrayed as limp wristed wets on this issue, and too gormless to get our message across effectively, and too generally known to be dishonest to be believed when we do make the effort," might be about right.

1 - "Prisoner numbers set to be highest ever," press release by Corrections Minister Judith Collins, 14th of July, 2009. (http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/prisoner+numbers+set+be+highest+ever)

Film Commssion stuffed with business apparatchiks

The terms of service of five members of the New Zealand Film Commission's board will end in June this year.

The members giving up their positions are the Chair, David Cullwick, Vanessa Alexander, Andrew Cornwell, Wendy Palmer and Shane Simpson. Three of the out going members of the board have film industry experience that I'm aware of: Vanessa Alexander (1), Andrew Cornwell and Wendy Palmer (both 2).

This means the board will shrink from its current eight members to six. The three new members do not appear to have any industry background. They are identified Patsy Reddy, Rhiannon Evans and Charles Finny. Their credentials are described thus:

Patsy Reddy will be the new Chair. She has held a number of corporate directorships including Telecom, New Zealand Post, Air New Zealand, and Sky City Entertainment, along with a broad range of creative and community sector governance roles.

[snip]

Charles Finny has a held a range of positions in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade and is a regular commentator one economic, environmental, and trade policy. He is the CEO of the Wellington Regional Chamber of Commerce.

[snip]

Rhiannon Evans, from Christchurch, has relationship, analytical, and commercial experience with investment banking in New Zealand and London. (3)

These people may have temendous skills and enthusiasm for the role, and may be very successful. But it makes me very uncomfortable to see the balance of the board being shifted so markedly, and industry experience and connections being treated so casually.

I don't want to sound reuctive, and I'm resisting the temptation (thought 'tis hard) to suggest this is some rightwing conspiracy with the goal of running the New Zealnd film industry on a strictly commercial basis and the limp wristed artists can go hang, along with the 'vision.' But investment banking and telecommunications is not like film-making, and vice versa. I would be concerned if the board of Telecom was made up of bearded artistes and down-at-heel writers. Likewise, I'm concerned that half the board of the film commission is now made up of non-industry business men and women.

There may be further appointments as the board can have between six and nine members. Another member, director and producer Tainui Stephens will give up his position before the end of the year. It is essential that he is replaced with someone with similar industry expereince, and any further appointments have industry experience.

1 - Biographical sumamry of Vanessa Alexander, published by NZonscreen.com, viewed 13th of July, 2009. (http://www.nzonscreen.com/person/vanessa-alexander/biography)
2 - Biographical summaries of the members of the NZ Film Sales Advisory Committee, including Andrew Cornwell and Wendy Palmer. Viewed on the 13th of July, 2009.
3 - "New appointments to Film Commission," press release by Christopher Finlayson, publihsed by beehive.gov.nz, 13th of July, 2009. (http://www.beehive.govt.nz/release/new+appointments+film+commission)