MacDoctor

The MacDoctor has made it clear on a number of occasions that he prefers the Supplementary Member system of voting. He likes the way it preserves the cut and thrust of the FPP-style electoral vote instead of the rather insipid take-it-or-leave-it attitude prevalent in MMP. While the electorate vote is still important for individuals and small parties, it loses its meaning for the larger parties under MMP. They then become tempted to make deals like the infamous tea-party at Epsom. There is more authenticity and accountability in a winner-takes-all contest that actually matters in the final seat allocation. SM also caters to the proportionalists amongst us by providing proportionally allocated seats as well. The net result is a system that provides many of the good things from both FPP and MMP.

Be that as it may, New Zealand has voted to keep MMP (Much More Peters). This is not a particularly surprising result to the referendum. I suspect that New Zealanders in general don’t care a whit about voting systems and want to avoid the fresh pain of trying out a new system when they are barely used to MMP. Clearly, National did not consider this something worth fighting over, as their sole contribution to the debate seems to have been John Key mentioning that he prefers SM. One hopes he meant Supplementary Member…

Key now says that he thinks MMP is a bit “weird”. By this he means that you can have nearly 50% of the popular vote and still be struggling to put together a government. This is because MMP is very democratic and, unfortunately, democracy does not necessarily deliver good government. Consider the hypothetical situation where everyone could vote on every piece of legislation. This would be perfect democracy. It would also be chaos. People are self-interested and would vote almost exclusively for the comfortable instead of the necessary.

We need good government to make the less palatable, hard decisions. This is why FPP and SM, while less democratic, often (but not always) provide better government. Pure democracy needs to be tempered. This is one of the reasons why, regardless of voting system, governments have terms of office. This further mitigates democracy and allows actual governance rather than mob rule.

New Zealand has opted to keep a proportional system. We will now have to live with that. The consequence of this will be that those hard decisions will be harder to make. Some will be impossible. On the other hand, no one party will be able to follow hard line ideology, as they will find their coalition partners baulking. Swings and roundabouts, maybe.

At least we get to tweak MMP. Already you can see positioning going on, with people talking about lowering the threshold and removing the electoral seat “lifeboat”. MacDoctor says that we should avoid tinkering and FIX the system. He has two suggestions to put into the mix:

The first is that, if we are going to have proportional representation – even with its inherent disadvantages – the very least we can do is make sure that it is really proportional. This means that the threshold needs to go completely. It’s function was to place a barrier to prevent “joke” parties and single interest parties entering parliament. I think we can safely say that this strategy has failed miserably. This election sees Harawira, Banks and Peters in parliament while the relatively sane Conservative party sits outside with 2.6% of the vote. This is clearly not proportional. Besides, it might be fun to have a stoner from the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party in the house…

The threshold merely serves to arbitrarily keep minor parties out. It does NOT make it easier to govern. It fact, Key might well have benefitted from the Conservatives being in parliament on this occasion.

The electorate lifeboat would automatically be redundant if there was no threshold.

The second thing that distorts MMP is the Maori seats with their inherent potential for overhang. Without the threshold there is no longer any particular reason to keep racially designed seats (if there ever was a good reason). I am certain that if the Maori party pitched itself at the party vote, it would find its seats in parliament pretty much unchanged, and perhaps improved. Bear in mind that the low percentage showing in the Maori party vote is entirely because the vote is not actively sought. Frankly, the MacDoctor finds the current system as it stands intensely paternalistic and patronising and wonders how the Maori people stand it.

These two things would sort out most of the problems with MMP, leaving only the governance issue. But that is clearly a fight for another day…

Like Helen Clarke, Goff and his sidekick Annette King have decided not to wait around for the night of the long knives and have resigned. Unlike Clarke, Goff is not naming a new leader – no one would listen to him anyway. There will now be a brief squabble between flea-bitten curs for the bone that the electorate threw away.

Expect David Shearer and Andrew Little to stay well away and take rabies shots. Until Labour purges itself of its toxins (you know who you are), anyone accepting the leadership is unlikely to survive. This is not necessarily a bad thing as the candidates at present are part of the problem.

This will be the MacDoctor’s only comment on Labour’s leadership because, frankly, I DON’T CARE.

Additional

And already I’m wrong. It looks like Shearer will be making it a threesome. Damn still not given.

(apologies to Country Joe and the Fish)

John Key says that the election provides National with a mandate for asset sales. He is right.

Many people from both the left and the right are complaining that the “majority” of the country (i.e of a few polls) do not want asset sales and that Key should now test this by a referendum. The left, of course, would love this as it enables them to set the government’s agenda. Those right-wingers who want this are simply confused as to the purpose of an election.

An election does not enable you to choose a selection of policies that you like (unless you vote for a single-issue party like Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis). The Party mechanism provides you with a package of policies and you must vote for all or nothing. It would be an exceedingly rare event that a voter finds every policy of a party to be entirely acceptable to him/her. I suspect even John Key does not like every single policy of National (though he is expected to say he does in public).

If we have a referendum on every policy that is not universally popular, government would come to a grinding halt. A referendum is an expensive, cumbersome vehicle for democratic processes. Even the Swiss, with their binding referenda have very precise rules on how these things can be held. A referendum has it’s place. It is particularly useful when an unpopular policy is introduced after an election, particularly where the policy has large social implications, such as the smacking referendum.

That is not the case, though, for assets sales. Regardless of whether you agree with them or not, there is no doubt that National explicitly stated EXACTLY what they intended to do after the election. Labour also diligently campaigned against asset sales so that the position of both sides was made abundantly clear. It is therefore not possible for voters to say that they were unaware of National’s intentions. Moreover, National has built a sizable portion of its economic recovery plans into this policy – it is not a mere addition that can be dispensed with. Much of National’s manifesto revolves around the sales. To remove asset sales from National’s plans would be to extensively revise their manifesto and, frankly, commit political fraud. They would be saying one thing and doing something radically different.

I, for one, would not be happy to vote for one thing and get something entirely different. Part of Key’s popularity is that he has proven reasonably trustworthy for a politician, going back on very few promises in his first three years, despite very trying circumstances where temptation would have been high. Now would not be a good time to do anything except stick to his word. While the MacDoctor would prefer to see National sell those assets in their entirety, he appreciates both the reasons why this is politically difficult and why Key must stick to doing exactly what he has promised.

So that was the New Zealand elections. Excuse me while I yawn.

While the pundits will all be gasping with shock and horror at the “sudden” rise of New Zealand First (The Winston Peters Party), there should be no surprise at that result. The history of MMP is that small parties in coalition government take a pasting in the following election. Coupled with the Peters-driven scandals of the 2008 campaign it was small surprise that NZF did not make it back into parliament in 2008 – but it only missed out by a whisker. History also tells us that this depressant effect on small parties is transient, as NZF itself has experienced before. Consequently, it was not a shock that Peters is back, though I, personally, did not expect such a good result for him.

The person to “blame” for the size of Peters’ resurgence is, of course, not John Key (although the media-manufactured “storm-in-a-tea-cup” did not help) but Phil Goff. For those who were paying attention to Peters’ campaign, he was relentlessly on-message against asset sales. All the effort (by Labour) put into scaring the public as to National’s intentions regarding asset sales translated into extra votes for both Labour and NZF, but Peters was by far the biggest winner.

Weirdly, it was all about trust. Labour has a history with asset sales, some of it quite recent. Their caucus was still full of MPs who has participated in such things. Winston, on the other hand is consistently xenophobic and could always be relied upon to oppose those sales. He is highly unlikely to change his mind on this. While Winston is exceeding malleable about many things, particularly if they enhance his personal power, he is very careful to ensure that he preserves the tools that are the basis of his power – the fears of the elderly and the undercurrent of New Zealand’s parochial xenophobia. He can be relied to be always consistent in these things. He can be trusted to oppose asset sales

Consequently, while Goff may have attracted a few votes his way with the strong campaign against asset sales, far more votes – Labour ones included – will have percolated to New Zealand First. Goff can now retire, comfortable in the knowledge that Key will be thoroughly irritated for the next 3 years. After all, his (Key’s) stance on pensions was designed to reduce Peters’ momentum and now that is all wasted. Surely a bitter pill to swallow.

Additional

Actually, there was one surprise this election. The size of the vote for the Conservative Party. For a newly-formed party with no established branding, that was a very respectable vote. And an excellent example of why the 5% threshold is manifestly unfair. It would make no difference to Key if the Conservatives took 3 seats (they would be a natural coalition partner) but at least the people who wanted a conservative voice in parliament would have one.

Disclaimer: I did not vote for the Conservative Party.

Extra Note:

Yes, The Mac is back! A combination of ennui and exam pressures have kept me away. Thanks to all who noticed I was gone. Both of you.

Now here is a very bad idea.

“Only students doing courses that benefit the economy should receive interest-free loans, according to a suggestion from a leading accountancy group.

“The idea in KPMG’s Agribusiness Agenda 2011 was prompted by “long-term decline” of graduates entering agriculture.”

While I have sympathy for the agribusiness sector, because it is increasingly difficult to interest young people in the sector, I have nothing but horror for the idea of government attempting to pick winners in education. Exactly how will politicians and educationalists determine which degrees would be “useful”? The very fact that both I and the sub-editor at Stuff need to place the word “useful” in inverted commas tells the story. Trying to determine what part of tertiary education will have the most economic impact is an exercise in gross stupidity. Governments are notoriously bad at picking winners.

This is not a debate about whether there should be interest free student loans or not, but a debate about the fruitlessness of trying to predict the future. Youngest MacDaughter has just received her BA in Film and Media Studies. There is no doubt that this would be considered “inferior” in economic benefit to, say, viticulture. Yet I would challenge you to name a single viticulturist who has done more for the economy of the country than Peter Jackson (and, no, Jackson was never a film student, but that is not the point). Now, Youngest MacDaughter may never be the next Jackson (though the proud father in me says she has what it takes), but it would be impossible, at the beginning of a degree course, to determine the value (in economic terms) of her education.

Eldest MacDaughter (who takes her own sweet time about these things) has nearly completed her BA in Anthropology and Archaeology. I can bet you whatever you like that neither of these subjects will make it to an “economically  important” list. Yet who knows what contribution to society she may make and whether this learning will have any bearing on that. Eldest MacDaughter like to write. Her education has certainly improved her story-telling abilities. Her language is better, her plots more logical and her characters more believable. Will she be the next JK Rowling? No-one knows. But her education will have contributed to this, if she does.

Okay. Enough proud father stuff.

Government should be in the business of removing barriers to education, not erecting them. I have little problem with the current interest-free student loan scheme and believe that, in the long run, the large expense involved will prove to be worthwhile. Be that as it may, the state must avoid trying to pick educational winners because, frankly, it has no idea what it is doing. While there are certain professions that lend themselves to determining numbers, such as medicine, even this is a dubious practice, leading, as it does, to shortages of personnel, if the professional body underestimates its need (note that it is not in the interests of the said body to over-estimate the need, so oversupply is rarely a problem!).

Surely the best thing would be for the state to provide as level a playing field as possible to allow entrance to tertiary education and allow the industries themselves to pick which subjects they find most valuable to themselves? This is not the same as the current scholarship and bursary system which provides funding based on academic merit (in itself worthwhile), it is a system where a company or industry body offers to pay fully for education and provide work after graduation in return for some sort of bonding. If KPMG want more agribusiness graduates, then they should fund them themselves and provide them a place to work after graduation. This ensures that the industry not only gets its graduates, but retains them long enough for them to be useful to the economy and the industry. It allows the guesswork of what is “useful” to be taken away from clueless government and educationalists and place squarely with the people most likely to know – the leaders of the industries themselves. This would remove the “lottery” aspect of the choice of degrees and ensure that the “economically important” degree subjects are properly used.

I’m sure some of this is already going on. However, it should be extended to all industries, including health and education. Why don’t DHBs or even hospitals fund medical and nursing education, to ensure their supply of graduates? Why do we put up with the clinical training boards making bad guesses as to hospital requirements? Why is there always a shortage of teachers when the teaching colleges have plenty of extra capacity?

I suspect that if all industries pulled their weight in this respect and ceased whining about how the government and the universities don’t produce enough graduates that they like, the government would feel much less pressure to cancel the interest-free student loan scheme. The government could also provide some funding to encourage industries to provide this sort of graduate funding and placement. However, this should be at the level of an incentive, rather than a heavy subsidy as it is actually in the industries interests to do this and they should need little encouragement.

So how about being part of the solution, KPMG?

My friend ScrubOne suggests that my next post will be on this. Who am I to argue with such wisdom?

“A deluge of abusive drunks is straining Wellington Hospital’s emergency department, clogging its systems and demoralising staff to such an extent that at least one doctor is considering leaving her job.

“Nurses say they dread night shifts at the department and have told of constant verbal abuse and occasional physical assaults, damning research by Otago University reveals.”

After nearly 30 years working emergency departments, the MacDoctor’s initial thought on reading this article was the über-sympathetic “harden up, ladies”. After all, drunken idiots at two in the morning are what emergency medicine is all about. Being verbally abused by 18-year-olds who have spent the entire day exterminating their few remaining brain cells is, of course, the joy of every ED staffer’s life. What would we do with ourselves, at that time in the morning, if we didn’t have some moron trying to spray us with his/her blood? How else could we get to practice suturing moving lacerations?

All sarcasm aside, my next thought was why do we tolerate it? Surely, in any other situation, if a person was screaming at you to go away and trying to beat you off, would you not consider that they did not really want your help? Consider that the law determines that a drunk person is still responsible for their decisions. If you get into a car and drive drunk, you cannot argue that you were out of your mind at the time. Why is this seen differently in an emergency department?

I suspect it is because we forget that we don’t have a duty to provide care, we have a duty to offer to provide care. People have the right to refuse. And bouncing around the ED waving their fists would be prima facie evidence of a patient’s refusal of care. Instead, we nobly attempt to provide care to an uncooperative adult. Technically, this is assault. Consider:

““They always swear at us. I’ve been hit once by a drunk patient but that was because I was trying to sew up his head.””

Indeed. From the drunk patient’s point of view the doctor was attempting to stick needles in his head for no reason. It it unsurprising that he leaped to his defense. Not that I am blaming the doctor for this. She was doing her best for her patient. But combative drunks are notoriously ungrateful.

Take it from an old hand at this. If a drunk patient is unco-operative, there is always a nice, quiet jail cell where they can go and rest until they have  slept off the booze. Suturing up a wound the following day does not produce as nice a result as immediate closure, but so what? The patient has indicated to you that s/he would like a lousy-looking scar by their very combativeness. Unless you have very strong reasons to suspect a dangerous head injury, or some other life-threatening problem, in the drunk person, there is no need to provide any medical service that might put you or your nurses in harm’s way.

Zero tolerance works. The regular drunks soon learn that an emergency department is not an extension of the pub, where they can carry on brawling. For the younger ones, waking up in a police cell is not a pleasant experience for them. And if staff do get assaulted, they should make sure they lay assault charges without fail. Part of the problem in our EDs is the staff let minor assaults slide as “part of the job”. But this merely sends the message that this sort of behaviour is acceptable and emergency staff are just “part of the brawl”. We need zero tolerance for all forms of aggression in the emergency department (note: this does not, of course, include the truly mentally ill – although the police are often invaluable in restraining such people so that we can sedate the patient properly)

Part of the patient bill of rights says that they should be treated with respect, but respect is a two-way street. If you are aggressive and rude, expect to wake in a cold cell in pain and with scant sympathy in the offing.

What is it with those on the left and tax avoidance? Arranging your affairs so that you pay as little tax as possible is a normal business practice, as long as it is legal. In New Zealand we have recently had plenty of people moaning about the use of trust structures and offshore accounts, as if these things are somehow immoral.

The MacDoctor will tell you what is really immoral – politicians who spend our tax dollars without reference to the fact that it takes us a great deal of effort and hard work to earn it.

This is not a New Zealand phenomenon. A new liberal advocacy group is accusing Apple of being a tax “cheat” because they are spearheading an initiative to lobby for a flat 5% tax rate on repatriated earnings. The group, US Uncut, say that Apple and similar large corporations don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes – by which I suppose they mean the full tax rate.

““Our rallying cry is, ‘we all pay our taxes, and why don’t they?’” said Ryan Clayton, a co-founder of US Uncut. “At the same time as we’re firing firefighters, teachers and cops, it’s just really irresponsible for them to not be paying their fair share of the public burden.”

“In its fiscal year 2010, ending in September, Apple reported income of $18.5 billion and paid $2.7 billion in income taxes, or about 15 percent.”

What complete tosh. No-one is firing firefighters, teachers and cops because companies are not paying their share of tax. Cuts are being made to public services because the US government (federal and state) spends far too much money on welfare, health plans and, in the federal’s case – war. Cuts are being made because the US is in a deep recession brought on mostly by hare-brained statism ideas such as extending mortgages to people who could no more afford them than fly to the moon. It is little to do with companies legally avoiding tax – they have been doing this for a hundred years or more. The US government has bankrupted itself through poor management, not evil corporates.

Besides, Apple is not asking for more tax loopholes or even lower taxes per se. Apple is simply suggesting that companies would be more likely to repatriate their earnings to the US if the US did not charge them an exorbitant sum for the privilege. Bear in mind that, for the most part, Apple has already paid taxes overseas, often at a lower rate than the US. They have no pressing reason to give a third of their profits to Uncle Sam. So the net result of the current US tax policy is that this money stays overseas, to the detriment of the US economy.

What groups like US Uncut do not seem to get is that the government is currently receiving no tax dollars at all from these billions of dollars (perhaps as much as a trillion dollars) of overseas earnings. If they accept Apple’s suggestion, they could be earning an extra $50 billion and boosting the US economy by a trillion dollars – money that will find its way into new jobs and businesses that will easily generate the “lost” taxes (that the US is not getting anyway).

But this was never about cuts in fire fighters, teachers and cops, was it? It was always about the blinkered ideology of the left that sees all corporate activity as evil and wishes to tear it down.

An article in the HoS today shows the stupidity of the idea of “menacing breeds”. A child was bitten, and significantly injured, not by a Pit-bull or Bull-mastif, but by a Fox Terrier. This particular animal has not been put down and is still allowed to be around children – because it is small.

While there is no doubt that a big dog attack is far more likely to result in serious injuries and even death, small dog bites outnumber big dog bites by a very large margin. Based on his ED experience, the MacDoctor would estimate this margin to be of the order of 10 to 1, possibly greater, if one excludes police dog bites (which are not, to all intents and purposes, accidents).

Small dogs are vastly more excitable than large dogs. They are far more likely to suffer the fate of the poor dogs in the picture above and be dressed up and treated like toys or, worse, like children. They are far more easily intimidated by strangers and much more likely to be hurt by unsupervised children. Consequently, they are far less predictable than large dogs. The vast bulk of ACC expenditure on dog bites will be from small dogs (though that does not stop people from using the ACC figures as an argument to control large breeds).

In general, people forget that dogs are animals and tend to interact with them on a human social level; talking to them, pampering them and treating them almost as equals. Unfortunately, dogs are pack animals and their social interactions consist mainly in establishing hierarchy. If the dog owner does not establish him/herself as the leader, then the animal’s behaviour will be much less controlled and may possibly be dangerous. Sadly, the sort of people who like to own Pit-bulls and Bull-mastifs are often the sort of people who are masking their own inadequacies by having a large animal. The net result is a large, uncontrolled animal. Add in the fact that many of these idiots like to goad their (uncontrolled) dogs to scare their friends/neighbours/gang members and you have a dog attack just waiting to happen.

The reason why you should always approach a strange dog with caution is because you have no idea how strange the owner is.

There are, of course, some dogs that are inherently dangerous. A combination of bad breeding, poor ownership and/or illness will make an animal insane. Like this one?:

Scary isn’t it? I’m sure the photographer though this was a great picture of a ferocious dog. And perhaps it is. Sadly, however, this animal is actually chewing the bar of its cage because it is literally scared out of its mind. It has been ripped away from all familiar surroundings and is now locked in a cage that smells of frightened animals and death. I would be scared too.

If this dog had been a small breed, it would have been released to its owner by now. Because it is “menacing” it lingers in a cage, becoming more insane by the day.

I read that his owner is trying to get him back and I wish her luck, as she seems a responsible owner. Unfortunately, at this stage, it may be better to put this poor creature out of its misery.

The title of a great Led Zep song and a piece of advice that the Invercargill man – who is issuing death threats to Coca Cola workers for “poisoning his wife” – should take to heart.

The man claims his wife was poisoned by Coca Cola and this is possibly true – but only because she was drinking 10 litres a day and eating no food. I have no idea of the cause of her death but malnutrition would be my first thought.

The MacDoctor does not like laying blame based on the scanty information provided by newspapers but in this case it seems pretty clear that responsibility lies clearly at the doorstep of the husband. He must have realised that his wife’s behaviour was highly abnormal. How could he not? And he was in a position to get his wife some help and chose not to.

While this man might be attempting to put blame on Coca Cola’s intensive marketing and “addictive” product, the reality is that millions of New Zealanders enjoy the drink and do not develop bizarre addictive behaviours. The MacDoctor agrees it is nutritional trash but calling it “poison” is unjustified.

I am sad for this man’s loss, but he needs to come to terms with his own grief and guilt.

I have to say, I much preferred the WHO when they were only a rock and roll band and not a teeming hive of health BureauPrats*. This week, a meeting of the terminally stupid (otherwise known as the International Agency for Research on Cancer – IARC) issued a statement that flies in the face of logic, reason and decent scientific research. They decided to classify radio-frequency electromagnetic fields as “possibly carcinogenic to humans”.

To date there is not a single decent study that actually supports this conclusion. There are some anecdotal associations. And then there is the  Interphone study, a large case-controlled study that came to this conclusion:

“Overall, no increase in risk of glioma or meningioma was observed with use of mobile phones. There were suggestions of an increased risk of glioma at the highest exposure levels, but biases and error prevent a causal interpretation. The possible effects of long-term heavy use of mobile phones require further investigation. (emphasis mine)”

This is the study that the Who panel bases it’s flimsy conclusion on. On the possibility that there might be an association between brain cancers and very heavy cell phone use – although this study does not demonstrate that. Bear in mind that this is a VERY large study, but even a study this large could not demonstrate an association with any statistical meaning. In addition, this study has a major methodological flaw in that it established the extent of cell phone exposure by getting people with brain tumours to recall their past cell phone use. This exposed the study to serious “recall bias” because people with tumours unconsciously tend to exaggerate their exposure, desperately trying to work out why they are afflicted by this terrible disease. This means that it is very likely that the association between cell phone use and tumours (already not statistically significant) is likely to be less robust than the study findings.

This is in keeping with the large Swiss and Danish studies which showed no increase in the incidence of brain tumours over a 20 year period, despite a massive increase in cell phone use. These studies were effectively ignored by IARC. The recent US epidemiological study confirms the same result. There is simply no credible evidence that cell phone use causes brain tumours.

A recent study in JAMA did demonstrate that 30 minutes of exposure to EM radiation causes significant increases in brain activity, but this is a long way from showing any evidence of carcogenicity or genotoxicity (cancer formation or genetic damage).

It therefore seems to me that a sensible comment from the WHO would have been simply to state that there is insufficient evidence to make a definitive statement. In placing EM radiation into the nebulous “2b” classification (“Possible” – but no hard evidence available or mechanism of action postulated), the WHO have merely provided endless fodder for the flakes.

For example, Campbell Live last night featured Sue Kedgley, the Green’s resident anti-technologist, making the bizarre assertion that Telcos were acting like the tobacco companies in denying “the evidence”. In actuality, the Telcos are doing the exact opposite. The tobacco companies insisted that the association between cancer and smoking should be proved beyond all doubt. In order to muddy the scientific waters they commissioned small, poorly constructed studies to produce lingering doubts about the association. Eventually, of course, they had to bow to the overwhelming scientific evidence that smoking does indeed cause lung cancer.

Telcos, on the other hand, have the weight of evidence on their side. They have no need to produce “defensive” studies because every decent study is saying the same thing – that there is (at the moment) no evidence of an association. It is “possible” that, with longer exposure, more evidence of carcogenicity may accumulate, but this is pure conjecture, not science.

In addition to Kedgley, there was a “Biologist”, one Bruce Ratley, who was implying that researchers might be fudging their results in order to avoid their funding being cut off. While funding bias is a real phenomenon, there is no funding bias evident in this case. The only study of the ones mentioned above that has significant funding from the Telcos is the Interphone study itself. The study upon which the WHO basis its silly statement.

There are times when it is best to stay silent and await the accumulation of evidence before speaking. Making proclamations, however guarded, simply allows an excitable media and an even more excitable bunch of crackpots the opportunity to exaggerate and sensationalise the issue to the detriment of an increasingly (falsely) alarmed public. All this does is bring the actual science into disrepute when, down the track, the evidence shows that the was never a cause for concern.

*BureauPrat: Professional scientist/clinician who has joined the forces of the damned administrative workforce.