Friday, June 29, 2007

DH fails to invest $1,000,000 in Super

Gol-DANG it!

She missed the deadline, while equivocating on the ethics of depriving the poor of their rightful taxes.

It was a tough call, but in the end DH had to stand on principle.

Having lambasted the parasitic Packers and their imitators so often in these pages, it would have seemed like poor form to join them by robbing the poor to give to the rich. She wonder how much welfare budgets will dip from the uncollected taxes?

Oh, alright.

DH doesn't have $1M.

Here are the true state of her finances:



$225.82 a week after fixed expenses!

Not a lot left over for FOOD, holidays, entertainment, MEDICATIONS, white goods, EDUCATION, textbooks, courses, excursion, REPAIRS, furnishings, GAP FEES on glasses, dental work, doctor's visits, CLOTHES, hospitalisations, BANK FEES, memberships, subscriptions, charity donations, SAVINGS, is there?

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Howard Govt cares 2.963962 times more about being re-elected than it does about the Nation's Toothache.

How, you ask, did DH arrive at this remarkably accurate assessment?

DH has been hanging out with bureaucrats a lot lately, and has been seduced by the glamour of it all. Where once she favoured good looking fellers, she now gets off on acronyms, indices, bar charts and assessment tools. And it's giving her ideas.

See, DH has always had this problem about understanding Governmental largesse. For instance, in the last Federal Budget, Peter Costello announced that his goverment will spend $378 million over four years for patients whose dental health is impacting on a chronic medical condition

WOW!!! That sounds like a lot of money.

GEE, maybe she really misjudged those Liberals down there in Canberra when she called them cold-hearted meanies???

But what does it mean? Like how many toothbrushes will it buy you, or how many Toothbrush Distribution Strategic Services Policy Officers, Class 7-8, EFTS's will it fund? And what about if you already have a toothbrush?

And is "toothbrush half-lives" a useful unit of measure in other policy areas, like funding for the Commonwealth State Housing Agreement for instance, or is it too specific?

No, clearly what is needed is an independant largesse evaluation tool, not tied to the vicissitudes of toothbrush futures.

Any assessment tool has to use as comparison something that has ABSOLUTE value to all politicians, a measure of just how important something really is to them.

And that's when DH realised just what the Howard Governments most important and most valued expenditure items is: .

Their annual taxpayer-funded propaganda advertising cost
(or ATFUPAC for short)

Now over the past 3 years the Howard Governments has spent $850 million dollars of taxpayers money on self promotion.

Thats an annual ATFUPAC of $280 million per annum (rounded)

Now with the dental expenditure, $378 million over 4 years equates to $94.5 million per annum (rounded).

Now divide the tooth expenditure by the ATFUPAC and you arrive at the following: The Howard government cares only 33.75% as much for the nation's teeth as for getting re-elected, or conversely, 2.962963 times more for getting re-elected than for reducing the nations toothache.

No really, it's TRUE. Check the figures. This is real mathematics. If you don't believe DH, ask Ross Gittins, only Australia's top economics writer, if you didn't know. DH took a stab at figuring out his email address, emailed the whole calculation to him there, asked him to check it out, and get back to her if there was an problem. And so far he hasn't complained.

. . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . .
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You just dont geddit, do ya?

All DH can say, is that you must have learned basic numeracy at a school or university funded by the Howard Government.

Anyhow, watch this space because DH will be applying the GLET (Governmental Largesse Evaluation Tool) to the entire budget anytime soon.

Monday, June 18, 2007

Congrats to DOH on swift response to flooding

NSW DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING'S STORM RESPONSE: ALL HANDS TO THE PUMPS
Facts & figures: NSW Department of Housing
Publisher: National TSN
 
The storms and resulting floods in the Newcastle area have resulted in more than 1,700 Department of Housing homes being damaged, mainly in the Newcastle and Lake Macquarie areas.
With rehousing the worst affected residents and repairing homes an urgent priority, the Department has swung into action in many ways:
  • The Department's Northern NSW Division has established its own disaster recovery project team to coordinate action for our residents. The Department also has two staff attached to the Newcastle Disaster Recovery Centre, coordinated by the Department of Community Services, to help with re-housing issues,
  • The Department doubled the number of staff in the 24 hour Housing Contact Centre over the weekend of the floods to manage the increase in calls,
  • More than 100 Departmental staff worked on the weekend of the storm to assist the rehousing process,
  • Nine staff from other areas of the state have been seconded to Newcastle to bolster numbers,
  • There are four firms of contractors on the ground making urgent repairs
  • The Department will call all 3,700 elderly tenants in the area to check they don't have unreported problems with their homes. By Friday 15 June nearly 1,000 calls had been made,
  • A letter to the 18,000 Department of Housing tenants in the area has been sent, detailing how they should contact the Department to report damage and also asking for patience with non-urgent maintenance issues as flood damage is dealt with first,
  • The out-of-hours Temporary Assistance Accommodation Line has been extended to operate all day to help residents in the affected area,
  • Staff on the front line are available to answer questions and distribute Q&A sheets to residents answering questions about compensation matters related to the storm,
  • The Department is working with other agencies, such as Centrelink to ensure residents are able to access disaster relief payments and NSW Health to get timely advice related to any possible health concerns as a result of the floods and what the Department will need to do to ensure residents are safe, and
  • A community BBQ was held in Hamilton South, attracting 200 residents, aimed at lifting the spirits of those affected by the storms and flood.
The National TSN would like to thank the NSW Department of Housing, on behalf of the many tenants who've called or emailed expressing their sincere appreciation for the compassionate and expeditious way the Department has dealt with their issues, during very trying times.
 
Garry Mallard
Coordinator
The National TSN

Sunday, June 10, 2007

Abbott and Pell, Right to Life Hypocrites of the Year

What is it about Christianity and hypocrisy? It seems the ideal of Christian love is more easy to execute in theory than practise.

These "Right to Lifers" will fight to the last drop of semen for the right of any conceivable blastocyst to be delivered.

But they all vanish into thin air once the embryo crowns.

And you can't see them for dust should the newborn have a disability.

No, the posse is off again, galloping off to lasso the next round-bellied mare to corrall.

Oh yes, once the child has a disability, then, let them eat off $350 a fortnight.

Oh yes, and they can get their teeth fixed if some itinerant Thai buddhist dental charity comes into town.

I'd like to make Abbott live on that, the hypocritical hound!

As for Cardinal Pell, DH totally applauds his laying down the gauntlet to people who call themselves Catholics. With a bit of luck some of the will finally face up to the absurdity of their position and vote with their feet.

Read the following article, worth reprinting in full from SMH's Heckler.

As some of you may know, DH has a child on the autistic spectrum. This brilliant article tells it EXACTLY as it is. This is the way the harrow goes.

Paying the price of parenting an autistic child

  • Jasmine Smith
    June 8, 2007

"HELLO. I'm sorry you don't qualify for Department of Ageing, Disability and Home Care assistance. Records show that your private child psychologist reported that your child can speak and his IQ is not under 75. We cannot case-manage you or offer you funds. Have we sent you our handy-dandy list of places to go, things to do?"

Several times. Things to subscribe to and stuff for autism cost money and are spread from Carlingford and North Rocks and Forestville and Putney and Peakhurst and Campbelltown and Woop Woop. Nothing accessible by public transport with toddler in tow, you understand.

Indeed. The child speaks because we have scrounged $20,000 for private speech therapy, occupational therapy and more, while on a public health waiting list and riding taxis to the therapy groups. When not managing the toddler, I campaign for autism therapies to be put on Medicare.

The department is right. We are well-off. My husband has a job at the moment. He didn't for five years. That's Asperger's for you. The house is weatherproof and we own it. It has needed renovation since 1970, so we cannot sell, mortgage or rent it out. What are we complaining about?

Nothing really. Just autism. A sort of big nothing. Your child watches shadows and fluttering leaves when he should be watching the rest of his soccer team. He does a teapot dance facing away from play at the far goal when he could be striking the ball. He is a bit slower than the others.

His chances of living independently, being employed and thriving socially are diminishing with every year that he doesn't receive any sort of behavioural therapy. The education system says we're ready for the mainstream; which is odd, considering that my son is nearly seven but has yet to make a friend - unless you count sitting on kids or kissing Jack. Apparently, saving money and sticking to the Board of Studies curriculum is more important. The school says we're doing well enough and should be happy with that. They won't have to live with him when he is a maladjusted, rejected 25-year-old.

We are paying for private therapy for half the family because of the grief of autism. Moreover, we were a bit preoccupied when the only rellie living locally, my brother, started making cries for help. We have hardly had time to grieve since he committed suicide.

We don't qualify for autism therapy or the department's help. So what do we do, buy lottery tickets? Shame the odds are longer than the incidence of autism!