Waiting Lists

I recently saw a letter from Dunedin Hospital to a patient who is waiting for a CT scan. The WTF moment was when I saw that the target waiting time is six weeks, while the mean actual waiting time is 38 weeks.

How does a health system get this run down? How many bureaucrats do we have to sack before we can funneling more money to the people who actually look after sick people?

Corruption: it begins with the schools

This article shows that corruption begins with the schools: a uniform seller is being threatened with a High Court injunction for selling school uniforms. The sellers says that after selling uniforms for Manurewa High School for years, she was last year asked to bid for an exclusive contract and to detail "incentive options" for the school. In other words, she would have had to tender for the contract, and specify what kick-backs she was going to offer the school.

How this is not corruption is beyond me. The best thing to do would be for the Commerce Commission to smack the school board down, then for the parents to revolt and replace the entire board. New Zealand is one of the least-corrupt countries in the world, but how can we maintain that good standing if we allow stuff like this to happen?

Suck on this, Air New Zealand

For once, the little guy has won! According to this article, a man who was over-paid a total of $70,000 by Air New Zealand, over a period of several years, does not have to pay any of the money back. Moreover, the court has awarded him costs: in other words, Air New Zealand not only doesn't get their money back, but they have to pay his legal bills as well as their own.

Normally, if someone is over-paid, I'd say that the honest thing to do is to give the money back. But in this case, not only was his salary never specified by Air New Zealand, but he queried the amount he was being paid several times over several years. Every time he queried his payment, he was told that it was correct. Almost a year after the over-payment was identified, they sacked him, saying they could no longer trust him!

It seems to me like he did all he could to do the honest thing. I suspect that when the over-payments became known to the bureaucracy, they sacked him to cover their own blunderings.

Whinging Dunedin airport

The management of the airport in Dunedin are complaining about people avoiding parking fees by parking in the nearby village of Momona instead of in the airport car park. It turns out that Momona is a private village that is entirely owned by the airport, including the roads. While you might think that this gives the airport the right to whinge about people parking there, the article goes on to say that the airport is considering putting up signs in Momona informing people that it is private property. In other words, they have made no effort before now to inform the general public that the roads in Momona are not public roads.

I've driven to Dunedin airport many times (I used to live in Dunedin) and I know that there are no signs near or in Momona that say anything to the effect that Momona is private property, or that the parking there is for residents only. They are complaining to the newspapers and police without having made any effort to inform the public of the facts. This is like complaining that no-one came to my party when I hadn't told anyone about my party.

They should instead have put the signs up first, then, if people were still parking there illegally after several months, complained to the papers. This way they just look like idiots.

MPs setting their own salary - in secret

Yet another thing to get grumpy about is the salaries paid to Members of Parliament (MPs). This article tells how the New Zealand parliament is investigating a bill that would put more power in their hands to set their own salaries. While this is already ridiculous (I wish I could set my own salary, unfortunately I can't and have to negotiate based on my performance - you know, actually work for my money) the hearing is being held in secret.Now, I'm all for paying MPs well, as a preventative measure against corruption (New Zealand has very low rates of corruption, which is one of the things I love about it), but as the people who employ the MPs, and pay their salaries via taxes, we have the right to hear what is being said when they set their salaries. We should have a right to have a say in the salaries directly, but in one of the few cases of consistent parliamentary unity, MPs have always retained that power for themselves.

Stupidity from the Immigration department

Will Ricketts is a member of the band The Phoenix Foundation. Despite the group being flown around the world to promote New Zealand music, Ricketts is being denied New Zealand citizenship. This is despite the fact that he has lived in New Zealand since the age of two. The reason? Over the last five years, he hasn't spent at least 240 days of each year in New Zealand. Because he was being flown around the world to promote New Zealand music. He has been told that he can pay $470 to appeal the decision, but the Immigration department will fight it anyway.

So, the government is happy to use him to promote New Zealand, but don't want him as a New Zealand citizen. This isn't just a case of the right hand not knowing what the left is doing, it's a case of the right hand belonging to a completely different person on a completely different planet! This is obviously a case where discretion should be applied, yet the idiots in immigration refuse to use it.

This brings to mind two of my favourite aphorisms:

1) Slavish adherence to rules and regulation is a sign that one has nothing better with which to occupy one's mind

2) You don't need common sense when you have rules