It is therefore my opinion that Russell Norman was lucky.

Firstly, he was lucky that no New Zealand police officer saw fit to move him back to where the rest of the protestors were standing (the ones the media did not focus on!). Yes, I know he is an MP and leader of the third biggest party in parliament, but he was clearly not there in that capacity. He was there as a protestor and should not have been allowed so close to the Chinese Vice-President. Of course, any police officer who moved him back would have spent the next several years in an inquiry, despite that being the correct call. Norman is most welcome to make all the protests he wants (and I have some sympathy with him on Tibet) but he should not have been granted any special privileges simply because he is an MP.

I suspect that this is a large part of the reason why the police are so reluctant to prosecute, despite a pretty cut and dried case against the Chinese. It is the police’s poor decision making around MPs that has lead to this media opportunity for Russell Norman. It is much easier just to let this blow over than to run an embarrassing inquiry into poor police procedure. Perhaps this wasn’t so much luck as a knowledge of the way the police pussy-foot around politicians.

Norman is certainly lucky in another way, however. He is lucky the Chinese were so restrained. All he received was a bit of jostling and a scraped hand . It is clear from the first parts of the video (which the TV studios have now cunningly edited out ), that Norman determinedly approached Xi shouting “Free Tibet” and pushed his way passed the guards twice before the final scuffle. Consider if this had been Obama. Had Norman approached him waving an Afghanistan flag, shouting “Long live the Taliban” (not so far-fetched) and attempted to force his way past the bodyguards, can there be any doubt that the guards would have flattened him? Instead of the undignified sight of Norman petulantly crying “give me my flag back”, we may have seen him twitching on the ground from a Taser shot or, worse, dying on parliament’s steps with several gunshot wounds in him. Now that would have put a dent in our relationship with the US.

Instead, Norman gets major media exposure, embarrasses the government and gets to act all aggrieved and outraged at the cost of a little dignity and a scraped knuckle.

Is that not lucky indeed?

Related posts:

1. Spam Journalism #33
2. Pander to their Mates
3. Too thin

Denied help for sexual abuse, dead days later

A review of new rules for sexual abuse counseling has come too late to save a South Auckland mother who died four days after her claim for ACC-funded counselling was rejected.

Counselling Services Centre manager Emma Castle said the mother-of-three’s claim for counselling for sexual abuse she had suffered as a child was rejected by ACC two months ago on the grounds that she had not suffered “a significant mental injury”.

“The counsellor who submitted the claim made it very clear that sexual abuse was the reason why she had suicidal ideation and was self-harming,” Ms Castle said. “It took them six months to make that decision. Four days after receiving notification that the ACC claim was denied, the client passed away.”

Now, the impression being given here is that this poor woman’s death is linked to ACC’s denial of her claim. Yet the language used is peculiarly flat. “Dead”, “died”, “passed away”; not “killed herself” or “committed suicide”. Only if she terminated her own life deliberately, would this be related to ACCs denial of her claim (and would seriously call into question their judgement that this lady had not suffered “a significant mental injury” – 95% of suicides have a major depressive illness). It is possible, of course, that she had fatally destroyed her health by abuse of alcohol or drugs. This certainly might be related to her history of sexual abuse and would explain the curious nature of the language used here; attempting to maintain privacy. However, while such a death would undeniably be a tragedy, it would be manifestly inappropriate to treat such a severe addiction with the type of counseling that ACC provides. ACC’s denial of claim would therefore be irrelevant to the story and the ACC review will in no way change this.

Journalists often try to pass this sort of half-information off as adding “human interest” to the story. In reality, however, they are really trying to slant the article by using human anecdotes rather than a factual argument. In most cases, this seems to be because they do not have a factual case to make, either because there is no case, or because they do not know or understand the argument. This unfortunate woman’s tragic story takes on an entirely artificial meaning, the result of which is that it becomes subject to analyses such as mine or even derogatory comment, simply because the premise behind the argument is false. This is not fair on the poor woman concerned who deserves none of this.

This sort of anecdotal innuendo might effectively counter the logical arguments of ACC, but it does nothing to uncover the true problem here. As I have blogged on a previous post, the problem is that ACC is being used to fund societal ills rather than simple accidents. The reality here is that only a complete idiot (or a government) would attempt to fund treatment for sexual abuse cases via an accident insurance scheme. Inevitably, when the insurance scheme is short of cash – around about NOW – they will start to act more like the insurance scheme they were set up to be. They will insist that there is an accidental event and an injury. While absolutely no-one would dispute that sexual abuse is accidental (in the sense that no-one, except a very small selection of consenting adults, would deliberately seek it), it is the injury that causes so much problem. As with any injury, it has to be clearly defined and coded (just as a knee injury would be) and there can be no pre-existing condition. Patients with a history of previous mental illness before the abuse and patients who have no definable mental health problems will be excluded. The difficulty in establishing these things will inevitably result in enormous delays. This is simply not acceptable.

The solution to this is to remove the funding for sexual abuse and give it directly to the mental health services. They should be much better able to determine proper priority and treatment and are not constrained by an act that is clearly designed for accidents rather than abuse. I do not know whether the Mental Health or Drug and Alcohol Services could have helped this woman, but I do know that they could have done a much better job than ACC. They were no help at all. And could never have been.

Related posts:

1. Accidental Rape?
2. ACC and Sex
3. Mental Problems

“It’s a bit frustrating for somebody in my job who spends half their time trying to get the media to take seriously the fact that we might be in electricity crisis next year, which nobody is interested in. And suddenly [the media] getting all worked up about what somebody says on a blog which I don’t think is entirely true.”

What a wonderful idea. Criticise the media and the blogger all in the same sentence. Mr. Chauvel has a political acumen only surpassed by Mr Goff.

Free tip: Next time apologise unreservedly and then pleasantly and good-naturedly deflect all approaches by the media to re-ignite the issue.

The silly, trivial affair was not an entire wash-out. We did, in fact, learn three things:

1. That we should never again to take any notice of main stream media when they complain that bloggers are just “parasites”. This year bloggers have supplied the MSM with this item, “Climategate”, Name suppression and a number of other stories/trivia.
2. That Phil Goff has little control over his caucus. Can you imagine Clark allowing one of her MPs to make so many elementary mistakes?
3. That a 30 minute news bulletin will be a blessing. 60 minutes of this sort of crap is exactly 60 minutes too long.

Related posts:

1. Trivial Pursuit
2. The Mac is Back
3. Not OK

I feed my son marijuana

While most parents are focussed on warning their children about the dangers of drugs, mum-of-three Mieko Hester-Perez is happily dishing up marijuana to her 10-year-old son.

The 35-year-old is unapologetic – proud, even – of her practise of regularly feeding Joey the addictive drug. She believes her hash brownies have improved the autistic boy’s development, and may even have saved his life.

Joey was diagnosed with autism at the age of 16 months, which Mieko claims was due to immunisation when he was nine months old.

It goes on to be one of those lovely heart-warming anecdotes that mean precisely diddly-squat in the world of medicine.

Evidence that vaccines cause autism: None

Evidence that marijuana is a useful drug in autism: None (not counting this anecdote)

Evidence that cannabis exacerbates mental health conditions: quite compelling

Evidence that journalist and mother have the same IQ: Almost indisputable.

There are many medical uses for cannabis but this is not one of them. I am very happy that this lady appears to have been lucky with her bizarre pharmacy and her son has apparently improved. However, this is no more an indication for medical marijuana than I am Chinese.

Related posts:

1. Pot Makes You Potty
2. Why the Bong is Wrong
3. Choose Your Poison

Study finds vitamins boost mental health

People with mental illness made “remarkable” improvements by taking a daily dose of nutritional supplements rather than conventional medicines, a trial has found.

The work by a Canterbury University clinical psychologist has shown the potential that consumption of the right micronutrients, such as vitamins, minerals and amino acids, could have for helping a range of mental health problems.

Cue hordes of depressed people rushing off to the vitamin store to cure their depression…

There is only one problem with the above opening lines. It gives entirely the wrong impression. Of course the journalist who wrote this can claim that this impression is erroneous. After all, he carefully used weasel words such as “potential”, “could have” and “range”. But there is no doubt that the opening line supports the heading. And the heading is simply claptrap.

Firstly, this is a tiny trial of 14 people, so it is hardly a definitive study. Compare that to the literally tens of thousands of people involved in trails of medications such as Prozac.

Secondly, the mental illnesses studied here were ADHD and Severe Mood Dysregulation (similar to but less severe than bipolar disorder). Both of these are usually paediatric diagnoses although this trial was with adults. Presumably, they all therefore had long-standing diagnoses. Both of these problems are unusual in that have been shown in other studies to be strongly related to diet. It is therefore dangerous to drawn any conclusions from this study about other mental illnesses. I was particularly concerned to read this:

“Most of the individuals were in a moderate to severe depressed state at the start of the trial,” Dr Rucklidge said..

“At the end of the eight weeks, the mean score on the depression measure fell in the normal non-depressed range, which is a fairly remarkable change in such a short time, especially as many had not experienced such improvements with other conventional treatments.

This is exactly the sort of statement that should be avoided. It gives the impression that vitamin therapy is an effective form of treatment for depression and yet there is no evidence for this beyond Dr. Rucklidge’s tiny study. It is well within the bounds of possibility that both the placebo effect and the simple act of engaging in continuing assessment of these people lead to their improvement. Yet a mental health patient will read this and take themselves off their medication to “try vitamins”. They will not ask their GP first (trust me on this), they will simply do it.

Guess who will be cleaning up the resultant mess. Not Dr. Rucklidge.

When will doctors stop promoting inconclusive, often unpublished studies and journalists learn to ignore self-serving clinicians?

Related posts:

1. Vitamin Victims?
2. Mental Problems
3. Attractive Option