The Amphibious One posts a long interview with Paul Drain on how wonderful the Cuban Health System is. This is not the first time I have seen left-wing articles on how wonderful (and cheap) the Cuban Healthcare system is. Such articles are usually full of unflattering comparisons with the US Healthcare system and the somewhat [...]

The amphibious one over at Frogblog has pointed out the extraordinary consensus in the blogosphere of the matter of Simon Power’s knee-jerk dismissal of the findings of the Law Commission’s report on Controlling And Regulating Drugs (PDF). While everyone is unanimous (including me) in their opinion that Power has been far too dismissive of the [...]

My little amphibian friend over at FrogBlog is having a whine (or would that be a croak?) at ACC proposed increase in motorcycle levies. He dismisses this ACC explanation as “spin”. As usual with the motorcycle debate, there is much heat and misinformation, but I thought ACC’s new release was remarkably non-spin, considering the amount [...]

I see that question time was filled with references to the UNDP Human Development Report on Human Mobility and Development and a book called The Spirit Level. No Right Turn and FrogBlog are also terribly excited about the report, as if inequality is the only thing that matters. They probably get this idea from the [...]

Gordon Campbell waxes lyrical on the plan to cut ACC benefits to seasonal workers, dwelling on the evils of ideology (National’s, of course. Socialist ideology is not evil in Campbell’s book). My little amphibious friend at FrogBlog uses Campbell’s diatribe as the basis of one of his “Gutting ACC” posts. The only problem is that [...]

A small, green amphibian over on Frogblog is doing a series on National’s “gutting” of ACC (If only!). Yesterday, he was griping about the plan to cease compensation for people with hearing losses under 6%. Apparently this is not “fair”. How it can be fair to compensate people for a barely noticeable hearing loss is [...]

Frogblog has a long post by Kevin Hague entitled Outsourcing Health No Solution arguing that public hospitals should be used to maximum capacity before outsourcing operations to the private sector. Superficially, this sounds like a reasonable argument but, as we look in more depth at Hague’s discussion, it is easy to see that his arguments [...]

Spam Journalism: The spurious use of sensational headlines to add spice to an otherwise pointless article. (MacDoctor definition) This particular piece of spam has been exciting the left wing blogs all day. Truck group gave $95,000 to MPs Trucking lobby group Road Transport Forum gave nearly $100,000 in donations to political parties and candidates for [...]