Category Archives: pissing money down the drain

Medical necessities – American style

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The economy’s down the toilet, the government is a squillion dollars in deficit, but never mind, can’t let that get in the way of arming the population.

A gun company has made a pistol especially for elderly people.  The company says it has won approval as a medical device for people with arthritis or other disabling conditions who have trouble squeezing the trigger on a normal firearm. 

Matthew Carmel, president of Constitution Arms in Maplewood, New Jersey, said the gun was:

"something that they need to assist them in daily living".

"The justification for this would be no more or less for a (walking aid) or wheelchair, or any number of things that are medical devices,"

 

Seniors who buy the $US300 ($460) 9mm handgun will be reimbursed by the federal government in the US.

However, a FDA spokeswoman denied the agency had formally labelled the gun a medical device, saying no determinations had been made about the weapon.

I certainly hope common sense prevails and they don’t approve it.

Never mind the fact that millions of Americans don’t have access to decent, affordable health care, but they’ve gotta have their guns, at any cost.  Sick! Stupid! Completely fucked up!

 

Ohhh! Poor little darlings

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 They clearly have plenty of time to tackle the big issues in the Queensland education system.

Teachers have been told to stop marking schoolchildren’s work with red pen because it is an "aggressive" colour, and teacher are advised to consider their pen choice because it may offend children.

This was contained in a Queensland Health document proposing "strategies for addressing mental health wellbeing in any classroom".

I trust no-one feels offended or upset by my aggressive choice of red text in this post.

Stiff shit if you do!

The wankers that actually wasted work time dreaming up this shit ought to be named, shamed and fired.

 

Amazing research finding – university students drink

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Researchers at the University of Canberra today have presented findings about students’ drinking behaviour at the university.  They have found 86 per cent of students are drinkers and almost half of them drink at harmful levels. 

The most common negative effects of alcohol use reported were:

  • vomiting,
  • embarrassing behaviour
  • memory loss.

Well. duh, students drink, and get pissed.  I wonder how much they spent on the research to establish this fact.

 

Taxpayers fucked once again

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Former Tasmanian government minister Paula Wriedt had an affair with her chauffeur Ben Chaffey.  When it went bad, he went off work and claimed damages from the Tasmanian government, claiming his employment as a driver became untenable.  His lawyers were angling for damages of up to $150,000, and threatened to pursue a workers compensation or sexual harassment claim in court if a settlement was not reached.  Mr Chaffey claimed to have suffered psychological, psychiatric and mental illness and a depressed and anxious mood as a result of the ordeal.

paulaben Ms Wriedt took more drastic action when news of the affair with Mr Chaffey, and the legal claim, became public knowledge in August.  She attempted suicide.

paulawriedt

Premier David Bartlett released a deed by which Mr Chaffey agrees not to make any further claim on taxpayers but receives $40,000, as well as $15,000 for legal costs. Mr Chaffey, married with children, will take a $20,000 pay cut to shift to a different job testing government drivers, and Mr Bartlett said the $40,000 essentially covered a reduction in earnings for two years.

Ms Wriedt, who is also suffering depression, remains on sick leave.  She was sacked from the ministry but remains in Parliament.

Mr Bartlett denied the payout was designed to avoid an ongoing scandal.   Right, sure, as if anyone but him actually believes that.

The big question I have about this whole thing is why the taxpayer is picking up the tab for the damages suffered by Mr Chaffey as a result of his and Ms Wriedt’s actions.  Surely his action is against her.  The government should countersue her for any damages paid out to him.

Not only that, but both of them should get fired for fucking around on the job …. no doubt some of their trysts were on the company’s (government’s) time.

Just wasting their breath

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A radio advertising campaign is starting this week in New South Wales to educate people not to call an ambulance for such crises as:

  • broken fingernails
  • dropped pillows
  • pizza cravings

The State Government and the Ambulance Service of NSW want to stop people who abuse triple-0 by feigning a medical emergency to get some domestic help. Paramedics are reporting increasing instances of callers faking symptoms so they can be taken by ambulance to hospital, only to skip off to the nearest shopping centre after enjoying a free ride. More people are trying to use the service when they have minor ailments, hoping that by arriving at hospital by ambulance they will receive faster treatment.

About 22,000 out of a million calls each year are for non-emergencies.  One caller requested an ambulance because he was too tired to pick up a pillow that had fallen from his bed. Another wanted help from officers because he couldn’t get to sleep. A broken fingernail prompted another emergency call.

I reckon this campaign is just a waste of time and money. Clearly those people abusing ambulance services for trivial reasons are either too stupid, or just don’t give a rat’s arse about wasting the time and resources of emergency services, so any attempt to either educate them or appeal to their sense of community or common sense is going to sail right over their heads.

More effective would be slugging these idiots for $1,000 bill for wasting the ambulance’s time.  Expensive pizza/fingernail, whatever …. might sink into their thick skulls.

Even more effective, maybe if they call and don’t have a medical crisis, they get given one.  Break their leg, beat them around the head with a bit of 4 x 2, that sort of thing.

 

Saving money – cheap petrol – crazy behaviour

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Two petrol stations in western Sydney dropped their prices today to 94.9 cents per litre, down from the regular price of $1.46.   The move caused hour-long traffic queues, with angry drivers shouting and sounding horns as their frustration mounted.  They got more angry as the stations put their price up to 139.9 a few hours later.

Police were trying to control traffic flow but said it was close to gridlock.

Carl Partridge, 21, was given leave by his boss to go and fill up quickly while the price was still below $1. But 2½ hours later he was still in the queue and the price had gone up 40 cents a litre.

"I’m pretty pissed off,"

he said.

 "They shouldn’t be allowed to do it. They put it down to 99 cents. They should do it for the rest of the day, not just for whenever they feel like it … it’s unfair."

He said he had seen at least six verbal fights in the queue. "It’s not a pretty sight," he said.

Navneet Kaur, also 21, lined up for more than an hour. She joined the queue when prices were 94 cents, but as she neared the front they had reached more than $1.39. She saved about $6 on a tank that would usually have cost her $70.

"I was so angry, it was ridiculous … it wasn’t worth the wait."

I suppose I shouldn’t be so amazed at how crazy people get over the chance to save a few dollars (I don’t understand the post Christmas sales either – I couldn’t think of much worse than queuing outside a store for hours to fight through a crowd to maybe find something I wanted at a decent discount).

When I think about it 50 cents a litre in my car works out a bit under $30 for a full tank.  Would I queue for an hour to save $30?  Not likely, I value my time way more than that.  Not to mention that many of those trying to buy would have driven some way to get in the queue, spent time idling and using petrol so they’ve probably saved themselves somewhat less than $30.  While saving money on petrol is always nice, I don’t think I’d go out of my way to do it, and I certainly wouldn’t have gotten in the queue if it was more than a few cars long.

As for the people who got into fights over it …. get a grip!

 

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Asylum seekers stay at luxury Pacific Island resorts

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Well obviously they must have been staying in 5 star luxury, given the estimated cost of the government’s “Pacific Solution” of $1 billion to process some 1,700 refugees.  A report, prepared by Oxfam and A Just Australia, which oppose the offshore-processing scheme, calculated it cost more than $500,000 per person to process fewer than 1700 asylum seekers in Nauru, Manus and Christmas Island … thats $1,830 per day.  For that I’d be expecting total luxury for those detainees.  And I thought the government was treating them poorly …must have been wrong!

“The Pacific solution is neither value for money nor humane,” said Andrew Hewett, the head of Oxfam Australia. “In six years since Tampa the cost of the Pacific solution to the Australian taxpayer has been $1 billion. We are calling on the Australian National Audit Office to investigate the full financial cost of the Pacific solution.”

By comparison, it costs $238 per day to keep someone in the Villawood detention centre in Sydney …still the price of a reasonable hotel, but not the complete luxury that our tax dollars are paying for in the Pacific.

Seriously, you have to wonder where the money goes.  Was it truly worth a billion dollars to keep a couple of thousand refugees from the middle east and south Asia out of Australia?  I can’t honestly see how any rational analysis could possibly argue it has been money well spent.  The Government has highlighted the deterrent value of the Pacific solution. However, the report quotes the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, showing a corresponding drop in the number of people seeking asylum in other Western countries due to “improved conditions in some source countries” including Afghanistan.

So not only has Australia’s treatment of refugees since the Tampa incident been absolutely shameful – its also been a fucking huge waste of money.  I wonder how much per redneck vote the cost works out at.

A lesson in budget management for the states

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The announcement by John Howard that the Federal Government will take over the funding of the Mersey General Hospital in Tasmania, should offer State governments a valuable opportunity to stretch their budgets further.

The Tasmanian Government has downgraded the Mersey Hospital in Devonport after taking it back from private owners in 2004.  But it has upgraded facilities in Burnie, 60 kilometres away, with an expanded day surgery facility, and at the main hospital in Launceston.  The federal government has decided to underwrite a community-based proposal to keep Devonport’s Mersey hospital open as a fully-operational hospital.  This will will cost taxpayers between $40 million and $45 million a year.  But it will save locals a 60km trip to Burnie for hospital care had the hospital been downgraded to an GP-run community hospital and day surgery unit under state government plans.

The lesson for State governments is of course to drive their budget dollars further by letting key services and facilities in marginal federal government held electorates go to shit, and letting the Feds bail them out.  Only works in marginal seats though, so State treasurers, why waste money on them, put your money into your own marginals, and look after the voters in seats held safely by your own party.

$135,000 for a seat at the PM’s table

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Prime Minister John Howard quickly abandoned plans to spend $540k to extend his private dining room at Parliament House, once the estimated cost of the work was revealed at a Senate estimates hearing yesterday.

Amazing coincidence isn’t it that while officials and the PM’s office had been fluffing around with the proposal since at least September 2005, the decision to scrap it happened virtually instantly it became public knowledge and politically embarassing to the electorally challenged PM.

Don’t know why it took more than 18 months to not make a decision to proceed or not, then about 5 minutes to make it under pressure from the Opposition. Actually why the hell do the parliamentary officials take anything remotely like 18 months to not even get to a firm go/no go decision point? Surely at some stage someone should have realised that “mmmm, half a million to add a few extra seats at the table, not a good deal” or even “this could be a bit embarassing for us if the voters find out about it”.

And how do you spend $540k on extending a dining room to seat 20 rather than the current 16 it can handle? $135k per seat, fuck me dead!!! So the PM can entertain guests with plates of mixed sandwiches at a working lunch. Get real!

More than $65,000 has already been spent on architect and consultant fees for the extension. This is to knock down and rebuild a few walls – how architecturally challenging could that be? And they haven’t even got to the stage of a final design and costing to have spent this. Parliamentary Services Secretary Hilary Penfold said a formal estimate would not be made until the architect put in a final design, at which stage a decision would be made on whether to go ahead with the work. She also said that the budget for the architect was actually $44,000 of which $13,000 had been spent so far.

Still whether its $13k, $44k or $65k, its still a lot of architect for a bit of internal office renovation. And a lot of time spent stuffing around to get to the point it did (or more accurately, didn’t get far at all) in 18 months. The wheels at Parliament House turn very slowly obviously. And clearly no-one until yesterday really thought “mmm, this is a bad idea” …even based on the $200 odd k original rough estimate – they’ve thought that was ok, and then it was ok to spend a decent amount of money on architect and consultant fees, and to continue work even with a $500k estimate which was seemingly also quite far from final. Who knows how much it would have ended up by the time it was finished in (lets guess at the rate they were proceeding with the project) about 2015?

Clearly these officials and political staffers operate in a world where money is no object, nor time it would seem judging by the amount of it wasted not actually getting a hell of a lot done. With crap like this happening, its hardly surprising politicians and their officials are perceived to be out of touch with reality … they routinely demonstrate precisely that!

I’ll close with Senator John Faulkner’s words on the subject:

“Four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, not including the furniture, not including the fit-out, and not including any of the consultants’ or architects’ fees. Four hundred and seventy five thousand dollars, and of course the prime minister would want it covered up.

“It is the cost of a house, of course it is. This is just outrageous.”

Electioneering on the taxpayer’s tab

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One of the things opposition parties always bag governments out for is the amount of money wasted on such things as advertising, consultants and travel. Advertising is the big one. And what do oppositions do when they become governments …cut back on the advertising? Of course, not, its snouts in the trough time for them when they win government.

When the Howard government came to power, they cut government advertising spending inherited from the Keating government in half, from about $100m to $50m. Since then its been up, up and away, according to Labor’s Penny Wong, around $1.7 billion during the 11 years of the Howard government.

It now looks like the government is about to spend another $75m telling us how good Workchoices Lite is (sorry, the workplace relations system, seeing Workchoices is now persona non grata). This is after $55m spent last year telling us how good the original Workchoices was.

This year, for ad campaigns already announced, the Howard Government will be spending $173.8 million of our money. It includes, for example, $69 million to promote the Government’s superannuation reforms and $17.5 million to promote the private health insurance rebate. The Howard government has become the single biggest advertiser in Australia … outspending the likes of Macdonalds, Coca Cola, all the banks, car companies, retailers etc. The vast majority of the advertising is purely political messages, not information about essential services, which at least has some justification. The government using taxpayers money to campaign for its re-election so blatantly is nothing short of obscene. When the Howard government is replaced later this year the first thing Kevin Rudd should do is invoice all the advertising costs to Liberal Party HQ – of course thats not going to happen, is it?

To put the size of government advertising into perspective, the Liberal Party spent around $15m on its 2004 election campaign ads. We pay for those too, through public funding of elections, but thats at least vaguely legitimate.

And its not only the federal government advertising constantly its wonders. State and local governments milk their treasuries for everything they”re worth. You can’t go past a government project site without having logos of every agency involved plastered all over it and the smiling face of the premier/minister/mayor responsible. This stuff is high priority too … I’ve seen tender documents that specify the signage to be erected by the winning bidder – saying stuff like how big the signs have to be, the logos etc to be placed on them, how big these are to be, the order they have to appear in, all that sort of junk. Amazing isn’t it, that we have public servants paid to think of shit like that!!!

Update (19/5/2007) – Surprise, surprise, Kevin Rudd is promising to do something about the abuse of government advertising. Lets see what happens after the election.