MacDoctor

The media feeding frenzy that is whirling around regarding Mojo Mathers and her request for an electronic note-taker has to be the most meaningless of this weeks media beat ups. Here is the reality:

1. Ms. Mathers will need the note-taker in order to function in parliament.
2. It is the cheapest option
3. I (the taxpayer) will be paying for it whichever budget it falls under (i.e. I don’t care “who” pays).
4. The amount required is utterly trivial (in terms of Parliamentary Services total budget).

It beggars belief that this is a news-worthy item. It is obvious that parliamentary services will work out some compromise out of its budget of $137 million. That is what we pay them to do, for goodness’ sake – run parliament. That would include making sure that MPs can take part in the debates.

The question that should be asked is not where the funding should be coming from (who really cares?), but whose responsibility was it to go and ask Ms Mathers, in a civilised fashion, what her requirements would be? Not Lockwood Smith’s, I’ll warrant. This is something that should have been up and running by the start of parliament.

Public submissions for changes to the MMP system are now open until the 31st May but the MacDoctor will not be bothering to make one. Besides my general laziness, there are two other reasons for this. The first is that the two most worthwhile changes – altering the number of seats in parliament and the provision of the Maori seats have been left out of the review. The former means that we can make no more than cosmetic changes to most aspects of MMP because reducing or expanding the number of MPs makes a great deal of difference to the argument around thresholds and ties the number of electorates to close to the current number. It would be difficult to increase the number of electorates, for instance, without reducing the proportionality of MMP.

The other obstruction, the inability to remove the Maori seats, means that increases to the threshold and scrapping the electorate lifeboat rule unfairly disadvantages those small parties not on the Maori roll. It also means that there will be a perpetual overhang in parliament.

Be that as it may, the second reason that the MacDoctor will not be bothering with a submission is that the outcome is already fairly certain. Sadly, for those advocating an increased threshold; this is not going to happen. The minor parties all have a vested interest in lowering the threshold. Left wingers will all want the threshold lowered, ostensibly because it makes MMP more democratic, but really because a lower threshold favours left wing politics. Witness that fact that National’s margin is quite tight despite having nearly a 20% lead on Labour.

I predict the final figure will either be a bland, do-nothing 4% or, possibly, 3% – giving the Conservatives a chance to be in parliament and ensuring Winston’s longevity.

I doubt that the electorate lifeboat will disappear, but there may be some rules around overt agreements between parties. As I have said, one can’t successfully argue the cessation of the electoral lifeboat rule while retaining the Maori seats, which are fought, essentially, on an FPP basis. This gives the Maori roll-based parties a greatly increased chance of gaining electorates compared to the other minor parties.

There is some move afoot to try to prevent candidates who fail to gain an electorate from coming in via the list. While this may be popular with the public, who mistakenly see it as some form of cheating, this is actually a monumentally stupid idea. All it will mean is that minor parties will cease to stand candidates at all and major parties will run the risk of losing decent candidates just because they lost a marginal seat. Bearing in mind the rather shallow political talent pool in this country, the result will be that parliament will become progressively dumber (hard to conceive, I know).

So the traffic cops are extending their 4km-only tolerance limit until the end of the month and are looking at making it permanent. This has a feeling of pre-concieved inevitability about it. Although Acting Superintendent Rob Morgan assures us that the permanent adoption “will really be an evidence-based decision”, we all know that this is complete nonsense. There is absolutely no evidence that a reduced tolerance limit will do anything except increase police ticket revenue.

Let’s face it, whether a driver is doing 104 or 110 kph will make no real difference to accident statistics. While there is good evidence in controlled accident situations (with crash test dummies) that increased speed increases the risk of fatality, there is no reliable evidence that this is true on the open road. Empirical tests such as these are done at relatively low speeds using a test bed and a solid wall. The results are then extrapolated to high speeds, an extrapolation that is not necessarily valid, given that there are a great many other factors at play in a real traffic accident.

There is also some epidemiological evidence that increasing road speed limits increases fatalities. The repeal of the national road speed limits in the US allowed states to increase limits as they saw fit. The resulting increases did see a rise in road fatalities with a 4% average increase in speed purported to produce as much as an 17% rise in fatalities. However, most of this fatality data does not take into account traffic volume. When traffic volume increases are factored in a 10mph increase in speed limits may produce a 1.3% increase in fatalities. Not insignificant, but small potatoes compared to the enormous gains made through better, safe vehicles and roads.

I am not arguing here that speeding does not cause an increase in accident fatalities, but that speed limit enforcement at the margin makes little or no difference to the accident rate. Where speed is a significant factor in an accident, it is almost certainly excessive for the conditions. I strongly suspect that the accident rate (and, probably the fatality rate) of a late-model BMW cruising at 120kph down the (very straight) N1 freeway south of Auckland is going to be much lower that the accident rate of the jalopy with marginal tyres and shocks trying to navigate the Coromandel at the posted speed limit. Similarly, the logging truck doing 95Kph between Tokoroa and Taupo is considerably more dangerous than the MacDoctor doing 110 in his 4-year-old Hyundai Sonata on the same road. Of course the idiot doing 140Kph on that road would be more dangerous than both of us, regardless of his vehicle.

I would submit that it is not particularly useful policing speed limits, in road safety terms, when it is clear that our police ignore most careless driving incidents in favour of writing out speeding tickets. From a policing point of view speeding tickets are a whole lot less paperwork than dangerous driving tickets. Most speeders pay their fine and the case is closed. Some go to court but usually the cop in question just has to provide the written proof that the camera was calibrated and that the vehicle was properly identified.  Dangerous driving, however, carries stiffer penalties and often requires the personal presence in court of the policeman who wrote the ticket. It is small wonder than, that the police prefer the simplicity of the speeding ticket, despite the fact that it contributes little to road safety.

This preoccupation with speed may well be a contributor to the reputation of Kiwis for aggressive, discourteous driving. After all, it is very rare to see anyone being pulled over for changing lanes dangerously on the freeway or even overtaking on a corner or blind rise. In fact, I cannot recall seeing anyone being issued a ticket in this country for anything other than speeding, parking or, that other favourite revenue-gathering exercise, failing to come to a complete stop at a stop sign. Anecdotally, a friend of a friend once told me they were ticketed for running a red traffic light – the only ticket I can recall ever hearing about that had something to do with genuinely dangerous driving.

If the police really wish to make further inroads on road safety, they need to stop mucking around at the margins of the speed limit and determinedly go after those few drivers who drive in a genuinely careless and dangerous manner.

I hope everyone over at the Standard has had their shots. They have someone there called RedLogix who apparently has rabies. In the interest of public mental health, I will not be linking to the post entitled “Treachery”. You can go there if you must but I don’t advise it.

In one long bizarre spasm of bilious nonsense, the clearly deranged poster brands Fran O’Sullivan an “enemy of the people” because she approves of the sale of the Crafar farms to the Chinese. Quite how approving the sale of 0.01% of our farmland to the Chinese qualifies the poor lady for execution as a traitor escapes me, but then, I am not barking mad.

Red illogic then goes on to complain that people use the word Xenophobic to mean “racist”. This may be because xenophobes are racists. That is what the word implies.

Finally, he (or possibly she) then loses all contact with reality and accuses John Key of spending six years on an MPs salary specifically to engineer this outcome. Yeah, right. There must be an evil quisling plot I can’t see. Or perhaps I first need to lose my mind before such a stupid accusation makes any sense.

And I’m serious about the rabies. Just check out the comments after red illogic’s rant. Warning: needs anti nausea drugs prior to reading.

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article.

There is never any lack of sex-related spam:

Infidelity: it’s a right-wing, meat-eaters’ thing

“If your partner supports National, has a PC, drinks Coke, eats meat, has a tattoo, smokes and is a Christian, be warned – they could be a cheater.

“Figures collected from the infidelity website AshleyMadison.com have profiled the New Zealanders most likely to sign up.

“They are most likely to be a Christian (58.7 per cent), support the National Party (33.3 per cent) and have had two extramarital affairs (13.6 per cent).”

I thought initially I was being too hard on the journalist who presumably was just writing a tongue-in-cheek spoof until the Herald produced a follow up article with a interview with the sites founder, Noel Biderman, who produces wisdom like this:

“Even in countries today, where adultery is punishable by death – there are still documented cases of it and that’s because it’s a biological drive.”

Well, yes. Its called the sex drive, not the adultery drive but let’s not spoil the fantasy that infidelity is now some sort of basic need. Sites like Biderman’s might try to dress up their intentions in risque apparel but they are still just the same as the adult dating sites that cluster around the edges of many sites on the internet. And that is precisely why none of the “data” from the site can be relied upon and why any conclusions drawn from that “data” are meaningless. It is not data, it is merely what people have said about themselves on a dating site. And as we all know – people lie.

Not only that but the journalist in question does not understand even basic statistics. 46% of people are National voters according to the only reliable poll, the election. Therefore if only 33.3% of people on the site are National voters the only conclusion you could draw (if you thought the “data” was reliable) is that National voters are less likely to be unfaithful. Similarly, the percentage of professed “Christians” on the site is similar to the percentage in the last census. Therefore Christianity is not predictive of infidelity. Of course the chances of 59% of people on a site dedicated to infidelity actually being practicing Christians is pretty low. But that’s another story.

Apparently Damian O’Connor would like to shoot my dog.

“It is about time we stopped pussyfooting around and advocated and implemented the destruction of any dog and breed of dog that is considered dangerous in New Zealand. No one is allowed to carry around a loaded gun and these dogs are just that.”

Three children have been bitten by dogs in the past week and the knees are jerking big-time. Loaded gun indeed! I find this hard to swallow from a blog that packs the loaded gun of Trevor Mallard. A much more sensible take on this issue is found (amazingly) in the Herald today, from DSS Animal Management managing director, Barry Gillingwater:

““The problem is any dog, of any breed, can bite and be aggressive. It just depends on the way they’ve been brought up, and the way their owner socialises and owns them.

““If the owner has high standards and does it properly, any dog will be fine. If the owner doesn’t care, or doesn’t want to socialise their animal, you’ve got a problem.”

Barring the occasionally insane animal that will bite anything and everything, this is true of even the most reputedly vicious of breeds. I have heard that even the fearsome pitbull terrier was once known as the “Nanny Dog” because it was so good with children. This is hotly denied by some but others provide a convincing collection of photographs to back the claim. Whatever your beliefs on the matter, it is fairly obvious that any breed of dog responds well to proper nurturing and care and badly to mistreatment and restraint. I have friends with Rottweilers and friends with Dobermans. Both dogs have lovely temperaments, despite their reputations. One of the girls bitten this week was bitten by a Doberman cross.

What is needed therefore is not a change of dog breed, but a change in the thought processes of owners of dangerous (abused) dogs.

“Mr Gillingwater advocated for a public awareness campaign similar to those used to combat drink driving and smoking.

““What they did was achieve a change in social habits and a habitual change for the human animal takes quite a while, but it is possible.

““The next challenge could well be dog owners.”

That would certainly be better than most of the “solutions” I have heard:

1. Get rid of dangerous dogs: And which ones are these? I have a young Husky cross whose mother was a pure-bred Siberian Husky and whose father was a GOK dog (God Only Knows). Her face is quite Staffordshire bull terrier-like. Nothing else is remotely Staffie. Is she dangerous?  Only if you melt in water – because we have not yet cured her of wanting to lick everyone to death. Is my friend’s Rottweiler dangerous? I have seen children rolling on the poor creature, so I guess not. The Doberman is much more sensible. She runs away from children.
2. Muzzle all dogs when they are in public: Sometimes limited to the dangerous ones (see above). This is a certified Knee Jerk Response. The majority of dog attacks occur within the confines of owners properties, often within the confines of the chain the dog is shackled to. The rest are from wandering dogs who have escaped unsupervised. A very tiny minority will be partially supervised by their owners. These attacks might be prevented by muzzling. Possibly.
3. All dogs must be microchipped: Ah, yes. That worked well, didn’t it?
4. Owners must get a dog owners license: This one does have a bit of merit. Trouble is, the same people who fail to get a dog license and a microchip will be the same ones not getting a dog owners license. These people are also the ones most likely to be responsible for the majority of dogs who bite. In addition, there are quite a number of aspects of dog care that differ from breed to breed. It is uncertain that a dog owner license will be of practical value except in the most generic sense.

I do have one suggestion to put into the debate. Apart from police dog bites, in my experience the vast majority of serious dog bites (bites that have needed repair) come from restrained dogs. Dogs that have been placed on a chain, in a narrow run or in a cage. I propose to ban dog ownership unless the owner has a properly fenced property in which the dog can roam free. This will not prevent all bites, by any means, but I suggest that it will likely diminish the frequency and severity of such bites. Dogs that are restrained seem to become homicidally territorial. After all, they are pack animals used to company and do not handle solitary confinement very well. Coupled with the fact that owners who restrain their dogs rarely interact with them and you have a recipe for disaster – Mad owner, mad dog, mauled kid.

PS. No, Grant, you can’t shoot my dogs. But I have taught them your name…

That is the sort of feeling I get when reading silly newspaper articles full of sensationalist speculation as to the motives and failings of the Captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino. Of more interest is the article (not yet online) entitled “Making a Monster of Human Frailty” by Theodore Dalrymple. Dr. Dalrymple starts:

“Courage is a virtue and heroism is admirable, but do we have a right to demand them?”

He then goes on to say of Captain Schettino:

“Could he have know in advance that he was not up to the mark, that no man was less fitted than he for an emergency?”

I have heard this argument many times. Heroism can not be expected of people – this is absolutely true. But what is expected of someone like Schettino is that he should be able to do his job. Let me explain.

Let us picture someone coming upon an accident. They know some basic first aid and could probably help, but they decide not to. We could point to the faults in this person and criticise them, but we could not expect them to render assistance, as they are not obliged to. Consider, however, the same accident victim rushed into the emergency department. What would you think of the doctor if he decided to take his lunch break at that moment? Or if the nurse said that she didn’t like all that blood and left the resuscitation bay. Rightly, we would not merely criticise but condemn the doctor and the nurse for abandoning their duty of care.

The difference in our expectations of the passing stranger and the doctor and nurse, is not due to our expectation of heroism from either, but our assumption that the doctor and the nurse have both been trained to deal with these events. We do not condemn a civilian from running away from gunfire, but we would certainly condemn a soldier.

Schettino is clearly in the latter category. He is not a lay person thrust into an unexpected situation, he is supposed to be a professional who has been trained to deal with precisely this situation – a sinking ship filled with passengers that he must evacuate. There is no doubt that he has been well trained – he did extremely well initially by swinging the ship round and beaching it in shallow waters. He probably saved many lives doing this. He then promptly abandoned ship leaving 4000 people to mill around in panic. Metaphorically, the doctor took a lunch break.

No one expected Schettino to “go down with the ship”, or some such romantic nonsense. No one expected him to attempt heroic rescue missions for trapped passengers. No one expected him to be a brave person.

We just expected him to do his job.

There is a point where legislation slips from being a useful, if sometimes cumbersome, tool for achieving an orderly, well-functioning society into a meddlesome mess of nanny statism and absurd zealotry. Most of us can sense it easily when it effects us and impedes our lives. It is a little harder to appreciate when the zealotry is something that benefits you; that you might agree with, at least in part. Such is the proposed piece of legislation banning smoking from Auckland’s public open-air places.

I approve of most of the current anti-smoking legislation. Stopping smoking in enclosed public places and restaurants has been a God-send to non-smokers. I well recall the days of being allocated a “non-smoking” table in a restaurant that was inches away from the “smoking area” – an area commonly in the place most likely to trap smoke in the building. I have had to sit a mere couple of feet away from a chain-smoker who alternated between his cigarettes and his asthma inhaler. But the enhancement of my restaurant pleasure is not the reason why I approve of this particular smoking ban – it is because there is ample evidence linking the inhalation of second-hand smoke, in enclosed spaces, with both lung cancer and emphysema.

Similarly, I have no problem with raising the price of tobacco to deter smokers. Again there is excellent evidence that tobacco is indeed price sensitive and thus a higher price will lead to less smoking. I accept that this will likely have a disproportionate effect on the poor, but this is not necessarily a bad thing as the poor are also disproportionally effected by the deleterious health effects of smoking. The government has thrown lashings of money into smoking cessation – there must be at least a dozen fully funded (i.e. free) ways to quit the habit – so one can only assume that those who still smoke choose to do so. I have no particular drive to question this choice – if someone wishes to get their jollies puffing away on smoldering tobacco so be it. Just so long as they do not claim “poverty” while burning through $200-$300 a month. Or worse, claim “child poverty”.

Both of these interventions are driven by reasonably good evidence. However, there is no evidence at all that the minimal amount of second hand smoke experienced by non-smokers in the open air is detrimental in any way whatsoever. One must therefore conclude that this proposed piece of legislation is therefore being propelled by zealotry rather than reason. One must also conclude that the legislation is social engineering rather than preventative health. It is popular with the non-smoking public not because outdoor smoking is a health issue, but because it is bad manners.

No non-smoker likes to have smoke blown at him in a bus queue or on a train platform. No-one like to wade through a miasma of spent smoke when trying to leave a building – through a crowd of desperate smokers clustered under the overhang. Sit down to picnic in a public park and it won’t be long before you catch the faint traces of stale smoke wafting on the breeze. Yet, as annoying as these things may be to us of pure lung and working sinuses, there is no evidence that this is an assault on our health like the non-smoking tables in restaurants.

It would be nice if our fellow humans who occasionally like to breath burning paper would show a little consideration and restrict their smoking to some remote island off our coast or, preferably, quit, but people are entitled to strange habits as long as they are not inflicting harm. Indeed, it is likely that if we restrict their smoking to their domicile, it is likely that the biggest suffers in health terms will be the children trapped in the houses and cars with the chimneys.

I am all for tightening the smoking screws if it can be shown that it is necessary for the public’s health, but just sweeping the smoker into an ever decreasing corner of his/her world is not helpful, merely meddlesome.

On the one hand, it is pretty easy to define political:

On the other hand, how do you define what is political and what is merely topical? That is the question behind NZ on Air’s desire to stop broadcasters screening documentaries on political issues in the lead-up to an election. The spark for this was the documentary on Child Poverty by Bryan Bruce screened by TV3 four days before the last election. The MacDoctor has not seen the documentary, but apparently it was emotive and heavily slanted towards the sorts of solutions favoured by the Left (i.e. Lots of Other Peoples Money). NZ on Air consider that the program may have compromised their “apolitical” stance – whatever that it.

For once, the MacDoctor actually agrees with the likes of Bomber Bradbury and the Denizens of the Standard in that any further form of censorship of political expression at elections is anathema to decent political debate and should be avoided at all costs. However, it should be observed that the stance of the Left is somewhat hypocritical at this juncture, given their near terminal frenzying over a little harmless DJing by John Key. It is also the Green’s stated policy to bring the heavy hand of government regulation (code-word for censorship) down upon media content.

One also wonders whether the Left would have been quite so upset about NZ on Air’s stance if the documentary in question had been one documenting the practices of NZ unions in an uncomplimentary manner.

Be that as it may, the MacDoctor finds the NZ political discourse to be ridiculously stifled already, without adding to the problem. Already parties are unable to spend whatever they want on advertising or media slots, despite all the evidence pointing to the fact that you cannot “buy” elections (except, of course, in the time-honoured way of electoral bribes and promises). It is practically impossible to mount any parallel campaign to get people to vote for your preferred party (unless, of course, you are a labour-affiliated union). You can’t even use your own blog-space to shill for your candidate on election day.

Having a quango going through media broadcasts, trying to define what is political and what is not will just add to the already poor quality of political debate in this country. The Broadcasting Standards Authority already has the powers to censure any broadcasting media that publishes in an overtly biased fashion, there should not be any necessity for something more. Besides, at election time almost anything will have some sort of political charge to it.

Perhaps we should ban all news broadcasts in the month before the election…

(NZ on Air: that last sentence was sarcasm, not a suggestion)

The man who was arrested after he flew into a rage when Wendy’s staff got his burger order wrong, insists he is not a violent man:

“He described the incident as a “communication breakdown kind of thing” that escalated out of control.

“The furniture removal worker, who said he was not an aggressive person, said yesterday he was ashamed for abusing staff and police but said the officer who arrested him was unnecessarily aggressive.”

The MacDoctor begs to differ Mr. Ilolahia.

“Ilolahia admitted he quickly lost his temper.

““They weren’t polite words. I called her a homosexual and the b-word and a f****** a*******. I had to shout at her, I was that angry.”

“Staff at the Lynfield store locked themselves in the office to escape the burger-lover’s rampage, as he continued shouting and pushed over a screen and a till on the counter.

“A police officer attempted to restrain the man and emptied a can of pepper spray into eyes, but it had little effect.”

And all over a hamburger…

These are not the actions of a normal person. They are the actions of a man whose temper is utterly uncontrolled, who flares up with sudden violence at the slightest provocation. You , Mr. Ilolahia, are a very dangerous, violent man.

And if you believe otherwise, you are clearly delusional.