Paul Robeson was born 112 years ago today.
Suzanne Prentice vs Tim Shadbolt?
09/04/2010A friend’s email yesterday inlcuded an attachment saying Suzanne Prentice would be holding a media conference about the local body elections on Monday morning.
I added two and two and came up with a number indicating this meant she’d be challenging Tim Shadbolt in the election for Invercargill’s mayor.
I was tempted to blog about that but held back because I thought it would be unfair to the friend. However, the Southland Times had no such scruples and has a story saying Prentice is set to challenge Shadbolt.
The paper is running a poll which has 108 of 226 votes saying she has a strong chance and only 45 votes giving her no chance.
If only they’d asked
09/04/2010New Zealand has a low rate of organ donation for a variety of reasons, one of which may be over-sensitivity with next of kin.
Both our sons died in hospital but no-one mentioned organ donation.
It’s possible that wouldn’t have been appropriate. But although Tom and Dan had brain disorders a raft of tests in an attempt to diagnose the cause had established their physical health was fine.
The paediatricians caring for them had discussed the probability of them dying with us and if they’d asked us about organ donation we’d probably have agreed.
I can understand the sensitivity round this issue. Telling parents their baby is likely to die is hard enough without complicating matters with a discussion on organ donation.
But we would have been happy to know that the body bits which were no longer needed by our sons could have improved the quality of life for others.
If only they’d asked.
PS.
This post was prompted by posts on harvesting organs from live donors : the moral case for kidney markets at Offsetting Behaviour and organ recitals at Macdoctor.
And Kathryn Ryan discussed the issue with transplat anthropoligist Lesley Sharp and Pacific correspondent Make Field on Nine to Noon this morning.
Good politics
09/04/2010Whatever else might be said about the Whanau Ora programme appointing Tariana Turia as the Minister is good politics.
She has asked for it, she is passionate about it, she believes it will work and now she’s responsible for ensuring it does.
However, that doesn’t mean this can be sidelined as a Maori issue which doesn’t concern anyone else.
Dysfunctional families aren’t peculiar to Maori and regardless of the ethnicity of the families, if they’re dysfunctional the problems associated with that are problems for our society as a whole.
National Library’s web harvest
09/04/2010The National Library is undertaking a web harvest because:
The National Library exists to preserve New Zealand’s social and cultural history, whether in the form of books, newspapers and photographs, or of websites, blogs and videos.
The New Zealand Web Harvest 2010 harvest recognises the importance of the internet in all areas of New Zealand society and culture by taking a ‘snapshot’ of the New Zealand internet in May 2010.
The harvest will run for approximately for a couple of weeks from May 12 and will only collect publicly viewable web content.
The harvest will pick up every domain in the .nz country code, and some others from .com, .net and .org.
More information and a link to the nomination form if you have a blog, want it harvested and it doesn’t have a .nz address, are at the link above.
Hat Tip: Grant Jacobs at Sciblogs.
Public Service no place for zealots
09/04/2010“Public servants have to implement the policies of the government of the day
Many people come to government to try to support a good cause. They don’t realise the one who has to determine which good cause is to be supported is the democratically minister of the day. And quite a lot of departments, not slinging off at their professionalism but say DOC, you get a lot of people who join DOC because they know they want to save a kakapo and if not a kakapo it will be the lesser spotted whatever. And if the lesser spotted whatever is not on the minister’s list of priorities they’ll find it hard to do.
A key part of the role of senior public servants is to explain to them well it is the minister who has to take the heat in public about that and the public servant really isn’t just employed to follow their own interests and if they want to follow their interests they can go and work in the private sector like anyone else. . .
. . . No public servant should be zealous about the particular cause they’re interested in. They should be zealous about democracy and respecting the law. . .”
This is an extract from Mark Prebble’s discussion with Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon.
He was referring to central government but Kiwiblog’s posts on why ECan was sacked and ECan vs its own commissioners show what he says should also apply in local government.
Some of the officers have at times adopted more of an advocacy role than a neutral advisory role. …
The regional councillors have been replaced by commissioners. Very little has been said yet on the need for a change of staff as well but unless there is a change of attitude and/or personal the problems in ECan will continue.