MacDoctor

Morris Dancing With Molotov

MacDoctor — Thu, 23 May 2013 11:36:55 +0000

Judging from the majority of the comments on the IPCA review of Operation 8, the Urewera raids, few people have actually read the report. The Greens are blathering on about racism, as if that has any bearing on the police raid at all. Hone Harawira apparently wants Peter Marshall, the police commissioner, to be fired, despite the fact that he had absolutely nothing to do with the raid. Labour are curiously quiet, probably hoping nobody will notice that all this occurred on their watch. Most of the right wing blogs are emphasising the fact that the raids were considered justified, even though the execution may have left much to be desired.

After reading the report, I have only two observations. The first is that there can be no doubt that Tame Iti and his band of idiots were gearing up for violent activism of some sort. Had Labour not fluffed the construction of the terrorism act, making it nearly impossible to use effectively, Mr. Iti and co would have been locked away as our first home-grown terrorists. The clincher for this statement is the discovery of molotov cocktails at the camp site. There can be no other use for such things except violence, despite Mr. Iti’s strange assurances:

There always been some training camps of that description … and I have run civil training camps. They were never an attempt to kill or create chaos in our community. That’s the basis of the police allegation.

Civil training camps? With Molotov cocktails? What were they training for? Incendiary Morris Dancing? (Admittedly, I would pay good money to see exploding morris dancers…)

Regardless of whether you think Iti is a buffoon or a brigand, even the most clownish terrorism attempt can do substantial damage. Witness the million dollars worth of damage to the spy installation caused by three peaceniks with knives.

My other observation is that the negative aspect of the report – that the road blocks were unreasonable and unlawful – seems to have overlooked the fact that the raid was made on the basis of the Terrorism Act, however flawed that may be. The judgement of the IPCA report is entirely founded on the Local Government Act of 1974 which states that, in order to set up a road block legally, there must be public disorder, a danger to the public or an offence committed near the roadblock, none of which were deemed to have occurred (although one could argue the public danger portion). However, the Terrorism Act merely approves the use of “reasonable force” in apprehending a suspected terrorist and his “goods”. As the purpose of the road blocks was to prevent the “terrorists” and any evidence of terrorism from escaping, I would have thought the Act supported such action. Of course, the Act was drawn up with people like Al Qaeda in mind rather than oiks like Tame Iti, which is probably why it was very deficient when used for domestic purposes.

MacDoctor’s Summary: Police did a reasonable job in difficult circumstances. There were some stuff-ups and, yes, it was probably scary for the people caught in the drag net. But the people who should be apologising here are not the police, nor even Tame Iti and his ilk (although their idiocy was the reason for the raid). No, the people who should apologise are the previous government and, in particular Helen Clarke and Annette King for drafting a slipshod and highly confusing piece of legislation.

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End of Line

MacDoctor — Tue, 21 May 2013 09:35:34 +0000

The MacDoctor received an interesting survey today from Auckland University. It purported to be a survey about end of life issues but it was clearly structured to ascertain whether doctors were covertly euthanising their patients, either with excessive doses of medication, or by withholding the necessities of life. Readers of this blog will know that I have an interest in palliative care and take a dim view of the idea of euthanasia, passive or active. I find it interesting that researchers want to concentrate on euthanasia to the exclusion of the rest of the complex issue of end-of-life. To my mind, euthanasia cannot be debated until we have properly addressed all the issues that hinder the provision of adequate terminal care in New Zealand. These issues include:

inadequate funding of terminal care
inadequate training of doctors in palliative care, especially GPs
The inadequate legal position of living wills
The inadequate provision of backup care facilities (hospice, hospital hospice beds and trained caregivers) for terminal patients

Until these issues are properly and thoroughly tackled, any debate on euthanasia will be driven by the horrors of poor palliative medicine rather than the ethics and appropriateness of doctors and the state being permitted to kill their patients. Terminal care is hard work for both doctors and caregivers and expensive work from the point of view of government. But it is work that affirms the value and dignity of human life and it should not be allowed to be subverted by the “quick fix” of euthanasia.

There may well be a valid argument for euthanasia in a select few cases but let us not allow this extremely final solution to paper over the glaring cracks in the care of the terminally ill.

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Oil on Troubled Waters

MacDoctor — Sun, 19 May 2013 07:05:52 +0000

Mrs MacDoctor and I have just had a relaxing week in Vanuatu, celebrating our 30th wedding anniversary. Internet access was painfully slow, so there has been no blogging for more than a week and not much news about New Zealand. I see that I have not missed much, just another unexciting budget from Bill English. Still, he and John Key can rightly pat themselves on the back for not being stampeded into orgies of “stimulus” spending and endless printing of increasingly worthless banknotes à la Messers Obama and Bernanke. They deserve the thumbs up they received from the IMF and from Standard and Poor’s, despite the lack-luster nature of the budget.

Of more interest is the latest petition from the Greens on deep-sea drilling. When are the media going to wise up to the fact that the Greens use petitions not as a way of influencing government but as a way of generating free adverstising for themselves? Or if they are wise to it, when are they going to do their job and actually get the story, rather than the spin? While the media continue to give the greens uncritical support, they devalue the impact of all petitions as New Zealanders and the government both become increasingly weary of them.

Todays report is on the latest Green advertising stunt known as “Kiwi Bid” (are they going to offer the government and the people of New Zealand compensation for the loss of earnings and jobs from not exploring the sea bed? Nah). Much is made of the fact that two sports stars are lending their support, and there are quotes from Olympic Rower and ex-green candidate, Rob Hamill – whose sole marine expertise consists of large shoulder muscles – and Metiria Turei – whose marine expertise is considerably less.

Where is the quote from a Marine geologist? Where is the reassurance from the Government that proper measures will be taken to regulate this? Was the CEO of BP New Zealand not available for a quote on the lessons learned from the Deepwater Horizon disaster? While I realise that journalists have deadlines and often drip feed shorter articles to spin out the story into a series rather than a single item, there is no excuse for such a blatantly unbalanced article. It just gives unnecessary oxygen to a small flame of artificial outrage being generated by the Greens. Currently the attached poll would indicate that 75% of New Zealanders are quite comfortable with deep sea drilling as long as it is properly overseen.

The Green, of course, have not even a modicum of understanding of the nature of drilling as this quote from Turei shows:

There is no guarantee of safety with deep-sea drilling so we shouldn’t be doing it.

Of course there is no guarantee of safety – that would be impossible. The real question is – does the level of reward reflect the risk? To answer that, one requires some marine expertise and careful reasoned consideration, not fact-free bluster from the ignorant and blatantly partisan scare-mongering from the press.

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Charity

MacDoctor — Thu, 09 May 2013 10:17:53 +0000

The word charity was derived from the Latin word caritas (precious, costly), an attempt to translate the Greek word agape in the New Testament (1 Corinthians 13:13), a word that is hard to translate, but the phrase “extravagant selfless love” gets the flavour of it. It is a far cry from the simple alms-giving that we normally associate with the word charity.

It strikes me that the polarisation of the reactions to Family First (and Greenpeace earlier this year) losing their charitable status, is due to this slow degradation of meaning of charity. If we still saw charity as a giving of ourselves to others in need, we would not be confused about the status of organisations such as Family First and Greenpeace who provide strong advocacy, but little in the way of support of personal need.

To be charitable in any meaningful way, an organisation (or person for that matter) must be involved directly in supplying personal needs. It is not sufficient to claim that you are bettering mankind by lobbying for government action – you have to be bettering mankind directly yourself to be charitable. Anything less than this is merely a monetary donation to a “cause” – possibly worthy, but a far cry from truly loving your fellow man.

Any government, of course, likes to foster charity by providing tax incentives to the donors. So long as the organisation involved is truly charitable (i.e. provides a service) then that is one less service that the government does not have to provide. Allowing advocacy groups charitable status, provides no benefit to the government financially and leads to lobbying groups being partially funded with taxpayer dollars taken from people who vehemently disagree with the lobby in question. This is manifestly unfair.

A cause should only be backed by those who believe in it. If I like Greenpeace’s advocacy for the environment, I am at perfect liberty to sponsor them. If I agree with Family First and their take on the world, I can support them. Those who say that removing charitable status from advocacy groups deters free speech are drawing a very long bow. If a cause has support in the community, it will find backers.

It comes as no surprise that the Greens are producing a bill to change the definition of charity to include advocacy. These are, after all, the same people who want to force me to fund their election campaign (with tax dollars) despite the fact that I disagree with almost all the policy they have ever produced. Including advocacy in the definition of charitable status will soon have political organisations, unions and political parties trying to take advantage of tax deductibility.

Not all advocacy should be denied charitable status. Many organisations who are clearly charities provide a great deal of advocacy. Barnardos and The Salvation Army spring to mind immediately. These are organisation whose purpose is charitable works but who find themselves, from time to time, forced into advocacy for their charges. This is perfectly acceptable. But groups whose charitable works form a minor part of their activities should be viewed with suspicion.

Family First are an advocacy group, not a charity. There is nothing wrong with this but people donating to it should not be having their donations subsidised by the taxpayer.

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Random Thought #2

MacDoctor — Tue, 07 May 2013 09:34:43 +0000

Apropos of the state supplying food to poor children in schools. Everyone seems to assume that the reduction in learning ability seen in children who come to school without food is due to their being hungry. Thus, feeding them will improve their long-term ability to achieve academically. However, the MacDoctor has seen little or no decent research to back up this assertion. It seems to him that the drop-off in learning ability is just as easily explained by the simple fact that these children have, in general, lousy parents. It is a well-established fact that poor parenting skills and disengaged parents are powerfully correlated with poor academic achievement in children. One suspects that this is due to far more than the simple absence of breakfast.

It would be interesting to see any long-term research on supplying meals in schools, if there is any. Especially if we plan annually to drop $100 million of borrowed money on the problem …

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