The Government is pushing ahead with its demand that dozens of dentists repay $20 million claimed under Medicare for treating people with chronic diseases.
Here’s how it is: Few people can afford dental service, not even preventive.
Just to open your mouth for a dentist will set you back over $70. To have any work done will cost you a lot more.
People who have low-paying jobs or none at all, especially if they have, for example, parental responsibilities, simply can’t afford to go to a private dentist.
They can go to the Dental Hospital (if they happen to live in a capital city) and wait for two or three years in some cases to complete a series of consultations.
Meanwhile, people with missing teeth can lose jobs, miss promotions or, if unemployed, find it extremely difficult to find employment. This is especially serious for people whose work involves standing up in front of people, or managing them: trainers, coaches, teachers, actors, etc. etc. etc.
What can they do? Until some time ago if you had rotting or broken teeth you could go to your GP and make a case that your dental condition was life-threatening – which it can be because, for example, of gum disease which can be linked to heart disease. Your GP could create a Patient Management Plan which included dental work.
Dentist could, with this Plan, provide their services under Medicare. The problem was that they could claim only one item at a time. Therefore some dentists, if they had to do two extractions in a sitting, chose to space them over more than one date. They weren’t claiming or being paid for work they were not doing.
And even then, if a prosthesis was needed – false teeth – only the prosthetist’s services were covered. The false teeth themselves could cost $2000, which is a lot for an unemployed person.
Older (especially pre-fluoride), less-well-paid Australians have dreadful dentition. This scheme was the only possible way to stay in the employment game, not to mention to cling onto some sort of quality of life, self-esteem and respect.
It was, frankly a crappy scheme put together by the coalition years ago. It was, in conscience, the least they could do. And they did the very least they could.
Now the Labor Party thinks even that was too much and wants to junk it.
And on top of that they are punishing dentists with fines for making it possible for that scheme to work.
The most likely reason Health Minister Plibersek has taken this action is as part of a larger strategy to claw back outgoings so that Treasurer Swan can announce his surplus in 2012. This surplus is supposed to prove his economic management credentials (and to poke his tongue out at Fatty Joe Hockey who said Labor would “never deliver a surplus”). But that Labor might win the next election, surplus or not, is a vain hope.
For Sir Roger, this action is the last straw.
With this there is no policy area remaining in which Labor can claim moral or political superiority over the coalition.
On every important issue Labor is in a panicked race to the ethics-free bottom to appease narrow-minded, ignorant, cashed-up bogans who are already, not rusted-on, but welded-on to the coalition.
Gillard today announces a tax-benefit bribe to low-income families with teenage children.
Labor has been in power for three and a half years. They could have done this years ago. Why didn’t they?
They’re in panic.
Do you think immediately, as I did, of Gillard and Abbott (not to mention almost their entire front benches) when you read this from the final chapter of Kevin Dutton’s Flipnosis?
“If experience teaches us anything, it’s this: behind the façade of assiduous, fumbling accomplishment there shimmers a realm of despicably effortless incompetence. An imperishable array of faux-pas, cock-ups and howlers that clunks into mortal existence at the whim of the cognitively challenged.”
So who is left to vote for? Who is left with the moral authority to manage a country for the welfare of its people? Not the Coalition ptui! ptui! who lost their moral compass years ago – so who is left who might keep them both honest?
He walked away. He walked back. He could not look at her. He could not look away. He began to say something. He could not say anything. What could he say? Whatever he said must appal Elenora, perhaps disgust her. Certainly discomfort and embarrass her. The last thing he wanted was to cause her pain or discomfort or embarrassment. Certainly it would embarrass him. Nothing he could say about his love for Elenora could possibly be appropriate. And, though he longed to say something of his love, he said nothing.
This was the first of what were the very few wise decisions he made from this fateful day forward.
He did not know what to do. He could not sleep. Every evening he went home delirious with desire and aching with yearning. Each night he dreamt of Elenora. Each day he woke early with anticipation and hope in his heart at the thought merely of seeing her again, even if only fleetingly.
Until this day, this butter-fingered Cupid’s tragically clumsy day, Hamgar had been upright and self-possessed, knowing and capable, confident with his students and even a little proud, for there were things, so people said, for him to take pride in. How had he deserved this terrible punishment?
Today, just a day after the failure of industrial negotiations between itself and the Unions, and with people still furious only three weeks after CEO Joyce gave the finger to its entire customer base, the Prime Minister and Australia generally, the Qantas social media uber-geniuses began a twitter campaign with the hashtag #qantasluxury, asking tweeple to tweet “creative” ideas about – um – Qantasluxury, in order to win, honestly, a pair of Qantas pyjamas, and a “luxury amenity kit”.
What happened next was salutory. Derisory tweets were flying within minutes and hours later as Sir Roger now dips his quill it is still the No. 2 trending topic in Australia.
Within an hour, the hashtag was trending across the country, but the tweets were not quite what management expected.
@GrogsGamut tweeted: “#QantasLuxury- when the passengers arrive before the couriers delivering the lockout notices do”.
ABC radio’s PM presenter Mark Colvin, @Colvinius said: “Getting from A to B without the plane being grounded or an engine catching fire. #qantasluxury”.
And @the-aaron-smith said: “#qantasluxury is chartering a Greyhound bus and arriving at your destination days before your grounded Qantas flight”.
Social media expert James Griffin from SR7 said that, by about 1pm, Australians were sending out 51 tweets a minute on the hashtag. Most of these were tweets making fun of the idea of #qantasluxury.
But Sir Roger’s favourite response is not on twitter:
In less than a heartbeat it was done. The Cupid’s, Bertrand’s, tiny arrow was buried deep in his heart.
Cold as deep blue ice. Hot as white hot gold.
From this moment there was no hope of Cupid’s cruelly-barbed steel ever being removed without tearing his heart out with it.
And Hamgar looked up.
And there was Elenora.
And he loved her.
Suddenly.
Unexpectedly.
Astonishingly.
Unforeseeably.
Unasked-for.
Unrequitably.
Unrequitably, for he knew Elenora. She was a good woman, a private woman, with a love and a home and family of her own.
From his grey hair to his brown sandals Hamgar was shocked, ashamed and confused.
Hamgar was ashamed because he knew his hair was grey. While Elenora’s hair was shiny and black. She was young. She could not love him, he knew. Indeed she hardly noticed him.
He could not love her. It was impossible.
And yet he did. Suddenly and shockingly he loved her with his entire being.
Hamgar did not know what to do, where to look, what to say. It made no sense. Why Elenora? She was nice; she was friendly enough in her way; he had always liked her. Indeed, from the moment he first met her on the day she joined the workshop he had had that feeling you get, don’t you, when you feel you have known someone all your life, in a pleasant, comfortable sort of way. He had always thought Elenora was pretty, it’s true. And she was clever, it’s also true, with a quick and sometimes wicked wit. Yet these things are not on their own enough to lead to Love.
But the Elenora he now saw was beautiful and wonderful and he longed and ached for her, with his body and his mind; with his heart and his soul; with the parts of himself that we will not mention here.
In his daze he forgot where he was; he did not care where he was. He forgot what he was doing. He cared not at all what his life had been, what his life had meant before this moment. There was nothing else but the wondrous Elenora, standing in front of him, blissfully unaware of what felt to him like the volcanic eruption of his heart.
Desire and Doom tore him between them on their torturers’ rack.
There was no way forward. There was no way back. What was he to do?
Today as Hamgar was admiring Elenora’s miniatures, Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
His little wings began trembling with excitement.
His arrow slotted onto the string and with frowning concentration Bertrand began to draw it slowly back.
But his cute little pudgy fingers couldn’t hold the arrow and suddenly out twanged the arrow towards the ground. Through the nets and the draped hangings it flew. Straight into the breast of Hamgar, who looked up in astonishment to see before him the face of Elenora.
And so began the Tragedy that Hamgar’s life from that moment became.
– Aims at Unions’ Gooleys and Shoots Self In Heart
Alan Joyce, a person who appears not to properly grasp the iconic emotional attachment of Australians to the airline he “runs”, and fresh from his greedy, stupid, unearned ~70% pay increase to $5,000,000 a year, has lost no time in proving how little he deserves to be paid at all.
Anyone who has any true, properly developed people skills and understanding of ethical negotiation would have sorted this industrial dispute long ago. But he has apparently grown up with a belief in confrontation and win-lose styles and no ability to persuade, lead, inspire or any of the other qualities which many people on $50,000 a year have and that someone who is paid $5,000,000 a year should be required to have at the highest possible level.
Apparently he claims to be protecting the airline from having its brand trashed by the unions.
As Nick Xenophon says:
“Alan Joyce doesn’t need any help trashing Qantas’ brand.
“He’s done a pretty good job so far and this bizarre move appears to be the next phase in a plan to gut the flying kangaroo.”
As for his pay rise, Sir Roger heard a Qantas shareholder opining that Joyce had done a “pretty good job” and another saying he thought there was a chance Joyce would probably do all right in future.
Any senior executive of a public company will tell you that the CEO’s prime directive is to maximise the return to shareholders. And yet Joyce has been rewarded for presiding over:
and a massive loss of confidence in what was Qantas’s huge and statistically undefeatable advantage – its unrivalled reputation for safety.
Sir Roger recommends everyone try the Joyce Manoeuvre with their own boss.
Go to your boss and request a 70% pay rise on the basis that some people think you have done a “pretty good job” and that you think there’s a chance you will probably do all right in the future. Tell him/her that there’s a public precedent that’s been set by Alan Joyce.
And if it’s good enough for the Qantas board to reward him for that, it’s got to be good enough for your boss to reward you even better in advance for being at least competent.
In the aftermath of his very public News of the World disgrace¹, as Rupert displays the abject decency and compassion he so miraculously discovered, today he has gone even further.
Rupert Murdoch is determined to protect us from drivel, lies, bias, distortion and bullshit.
He has today selflessly erected a paywall around his “flagship” Australian newspaper’s online presence. The intention is to discourage ordinary, intelligent, clean-living Australians from subjection to the cesspool of The Australian‘s politically fanatical, right-wing-agenda-driven garbage of writers like Greg Sheridan.
If you want to be lied to online by Rupert’s nest of sycophantic fools, folks you’re going to have to pay for the privilege. And Rupert’s betting you won’t. That’s how he plans to save the planet from the horrors he unleashed on it and nurtured for so long. And it’s heartwarming – isn’t it? – to see some pretence of morality in the malignant old cunt?
And soon you’ll even have to pay to be lied to if you want to wallow online in the Murdoch sewage works – the Terror, the Fail and the Hun.
Who else wants to pay to eat Rupert’s warm vomit? He’s gambling that you will say, “NOTWorth any money”.
¹BREAKING NEWS:
News is just emerging of plans for a movie about Rupert’s harrowing ordeal in the News of the World fiasco. The movie, to be called The Great Disgrace, is slated to star Steve McQueen’s skeleton as Rupert, and with James Murdoch played by that Gestapo guy in Raiders of the Lost Ark whose face melts like wax when confronted with the Holy Spirit.
Hamgar never really noticed the fat little Cherubs flying around, or sitting on the beams above him. For as long as he could remember, Cherubs had always been everywhere, so common that he no longer saw them, and if he had, well, they were nothing to do with him at this time in his life. The Cherubs, he would have thought, if he did think about them, which really he didn’t, were looking at the young ones, the pretty girls and the handsome boys, not interested in him at all.
And to tell you the truth, they weren’t.
Now Bertrand was a special kind of Cherub called a Cupid. And he was trying really hard to be a good Cupid and to remember all of the instructions he had been taught by his tutors and his mum. But the trouble was, you see, that being that special kind of Cherub called a Cupid he didn’t just have to remember how to fly around and sit in the rafters and on the top of columns. He had to manage a little bow and arrow as well. And he had to do that while he was flying.
You can imagine how difficult it would be for you, remembering to flap your little wings and watch where you were going all the while holding on to a tiny bow in one hand and your fistful of fiddly little arrows in the other. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone and it was all the more difficult because, being a Cupid, and very young, and very new to it all, and his fingers being a bit Cherub-cute and pudgy, holding his little bow and arrow with his fat little fingers was difficult. I mean, had the bow and the arrows been a little larger it might have been easier for a novice Cupid to manage them. But Bertrand wanted so much to get it right. Every chance he got, he’d sit and practise with his little bow and arrow. But it was so hard. He’d take an arrow out of his quiver and try to hold it in place on the bowstring. He’d even flutter his tiny wings as he tried to pull the arrow back a little. But almost always it just went “plop!” onto the floor.
So on this particular day, Bertrand was sitting in Hamgar’s workshop practising as usual and not getting very far as usual, his arrows plopping about into the nets and hangings that were suspended about the workshop. Down below him Hamgar was, as usual, working away, teaching his pupils and now and again chatting to his fellow artisans. It was just a normal day and Hamgar was quite unconscious of Bertrand’s presence above him. Had he looked down, Bertrand could not have seen very much of Hamgar but his grey hair and his shoulders.
Also in the workshop that day were many others as always. Among them Maria the seamstress was there this day, and Alad the painter, and Melina, his voluptuous artist’s model, and ElenoraTrulov, the sculptor of perfect Russian miniatures, and Kira the romantic poet, all busily pursuing their crafts.
When it happened, Hamgar was idly admiring the fine decorative brushstrokes of Elenora’s miniatures, as he often admiringly did. Above him, distracted and frustrated, Bertrand was struggling with his bow and arrow.
And today Bertrand, unnoticed by the artisans below, was beginning to get it.
If only, for Hamgar’s sake, that he hadn’t only almost got it
Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.
It was a long, long time ago, of course, back when there were cherubim and seraphim flitting about everywhere and the Great Masters could paint their portraits. I know they were real because I have seen photos of their pictures and I have seen ceilings in great palaces and grand cathedrals with their likenesses brushed into the plaster, the cherubs flying around while with saintly patience the great masters painted them from the life.
There was a little Cherub whose name was Bertrand. His cheeks were rosy and his little red mouth was pouty and his golden hair was curly and he had the cutest little wings fluttering on his back. But Bertrand was a disaster waiting to happen (and it did). It’s true he was cute but as cherubs go he wasn’t very good at cherubbing. The truth is he was a bit flustered most of the time. I don’t know why. Perhaps he hadn’t been properly trained. Perhaps he was a First Reserve Cherub, or a Probationary Cherub, or a Work Experience Cherub. Something like that, whatever they had in the olden days. Or perhaps he just hadn’t had breakfast yet.
Anyway Bertrand was a bit nervous and uncertain and clumsy. But he tried. He really did. “More haste less speed,” his mother might have said, if Cherubs have mothers. He tried really hard. Perhaps he tried too hard. Yes that could have been what it was. Perhaps that was the reason he made the terrible mistake.
So one day Bertrand was flying around in the rafters of the workshop where an older man, an artisan and teacher named Hamgar, worked.
Hamgar was a good man for the most part, as men, for the most part, go. He was no saint. He left that up to others who liked fun less than he.
But he was mostly kind and thoughtful and cared about the wellbeing of others, not just his own. He enjoyed using the special skills he brought to his craft and he enjoyed passing them on to others. He joked and people liked him, more or less.
Hamgar’s workshop was busy. Others were there, too, men and girls all busy with their own craft. Some had worked there for a long time, some were new and some, like Hamgar, had worked there for what seemed a long time but really was not so long after all in the scheme of things. If there is a scheme, which, frankly, is a bit doubtful, don’t you think? That’s certainly not how it turned out, anyway. Later on, after “it” happened, Hamgar would search desperately for such a scheme, some sort of meaning to things, however vague, some point to it all, all the pain, something that made the slightest sense whatever.
From time to time over the next few weeks Sir Roger will be sharing the tragickly true mediæval story of Hamgar and Elenora whose secret he unearthed only recently. Today he offers the introduction.
The Extraordinary Tale
Behind The Discovery Of The Tragic Love Story
Of Hamgar, Elenora And Bertrand
More than one hundred years ago during renovations to the mediæval Castella della Zenzeropane in the Italian province of Rigatoni workmen discovered in the cellar a scarred and battered, ancient wooden chest. The chest, with all the other rescued artifacts of potential value, was shipped to “temporary” storage where it remained forgotten and unopened until just a few years ago. Only on the death of the son of the castle’s owner did his grandson, flicking through yellowed leaves of ancient documents, discover the accounts for the storehouse where the chest had lain covered in dust for a century. He realised that here was a veritable storehouse of potential treasures which had remained undisclosed for generations and in a moment of curiosity he determined to learn what secrets may lie hidden there. At long last he creaked open the chest and in the dim light was disappointed to find it apparently empty. As he began to close the lid a ray of faint sunlight flickered on the brass clasps and dashed briefly into the depths of the chest, revealing for the briefest moment what seemed like a dark red leather lump. Surprised, he opened the chest again, felt into the bottom and grasped what turned out to be a leather bound volume.
He studied it and carefully prised apart its pages. It was an ancient illuminated manuscript such as the monks used to create by candlelight in mediæval monasteries. The text was entirely in Latin. The grandson loved it and kept it and afterwards displayed it on a golden lectern. But he never knew what it said because no-one these days reads Latin. It looked like a Bible story so that would do for most.
However, I happened two years ago to be visiting the old Castella della Zenzeropane and noticed the ancient book on the golden lectern and asked what it was about. Finding that no-one knew anything more than they could see, I began attempting to decipher what I could in my rusty schoolboy Latin. Something about the words told me this was a special book but I could not tell why. I offered to have it translated at my own expense. When the translation was eventually done I was astonished to learn the beautiful, romantic, tragic, true story which unfolded. It was a story of the unrequited love of one who had not been seeking love at all, who was shot in the heart by cupid’s dart and fell instantly in love with, well, the wrong person. Mortally embarrassed by his love he could find no panacæa for his agony.
So many parallels in the story show that what is now known to science often was already known to be true by the wise.
Cupid’s love dart, said the sages, is instant, unforgiving and irreparable. Science now knows that we fall in love in less than one fifth of a second. The deed is done and our fate is sealed before we even recognise it has happened.
We humans have forever told stories of star-crossed lovers, people who fall in love with the wrong people. Science has discovered that the Australian jewel beetle (Julodimorpha bakewelli), will become so enamored with a small brown beer bottle, believing it to be a magnificent female jewel beetle, that he will try to mate with it – so vigorously that he dies trying to copulate in the hot sun rather than leave his love.
This is the tragedy of the hero of this ancient story locked in a chest in a dungeon for hundreds of years and only brought to life by accident upon accident – a hero impossibly and improbably in love, with no possible means to save himself.
Here is the opening page from the ancient manuscript which had lain in the dungeon for so many years.
Next time, Chapter 1 of Hamgar & Elenora & Bertrand’s Tragick Mistake.
The Obama administration’s secret legal memorandum that opened the door to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born radical Muslim cleric hiding in Yemen, found that it would be lawful only if it were not feasible to take him alive, according to people who have read the document.
The memo, written last year, followed months of extensive deliberations and offers a glimpse into the legal debate that led to one of the most significant decisions made by President Obama — to move ahead with the killing of an American citizen without a trial.
The memo provided the justification for acting despite an executive order banning assassinations, a federal law against murder, protections in the Bill of Rights and various strictures of the international laws of war, according to people familiar with the analysis. The memo, however, was narrowly drawn to the specifics of Mr. Awlaki’s case and did not establish a broad new legal doctrine.
Pardon me?
Who in America needs any special new legal case to execute an American citizen? They’ve been doing it for hundreds of years and loving it. There’s a tacit competition, a dick-measuring competition – especially in Texas – to see who can be the most brutal executioner (they would say “strongest” or “toughest”, or god help us “most resolute”) and accumulate the most dead by their hand in the execution of American citizens.
In his six years as Governor of Texas George W. Bush famously, notoriously, presided over 152 executions – including that of Terry Washington, a mentally retarded man of thirty-three with the communication skills of a seven-year-old.
When he had washed his hands of the Governorship, Bush’s magnificent, towering, 152 judicial murders were more than for any other Governor in the recent history of the United States.
But on 2 June 2009, Texas reached the Glorious Milestone of its 200th execution during the term of Bush’s successor James Richard “Rick” Perry (or “Bigus Dickus”).
And by 10 August 2011 Texas had carried out 234 executions since Bigus Dickus became Governor.
So who needs any more, especially secret, legal niceties? Americans love killing their own. It’s what they do, It’s who they are and how they define themselves. Everyone knows and understands that. No need to pretend it’s a bit of a moral struggle, Mr President. “Off with their heads”, or “juice in their veins”, or in this case “drones in their bones”, is just Business As Usual, Standard Operating Procedure in the ethical/legal/social environment of your country.
Astroturfing is a form of advocacy in support of a political, organizational, or corporate agenda, designed to give the appearance of a “grassroots” movement. The goal of such campaigns is to disguise the efforts of a political and/or commercial entity as an independent public reaction to some political entity—a politician, political group, product, service or event. The term is a derivation of AstroTurf, a brand of synthetic carpeting designed to look like natural grass.
Astroturfers attempt to manipulate public opinion by both overt (“outreach”, “awareness”, etc.) and covert (disinformation) means. Astroturfing may be undertaken by an individual promoting a personal agenda, or highly organized professional groups with money from large corporations, unions, non-profits, or activist organizations. Very often, the efforts are conducted by political consultants who also specialize in opposition research. Beneficiaries are not “grass root” campaigners but distant organizations that orchestrate such campaigns.
Back in May of last year the much loved Channel Nine commentator Ray Warren was up front about the amount of money he had lost through gambling over the years and said something needed to be done. “It annoys me,” he said frankly, “that gambling, as a vice, gets swept under the carpet as a destroyer of people and families. It hasn’t been attacked in the same way as tobacco. Certainly, you can bet safely, unlike smoking, but it is a very serious problem, and it annoys me that many people don’t realise how serious it can be if you let it get out of control. I’ve seen some very good friends of mine end up in psychiatric homes, others in jail, and it’s very sad what can happen.”
That was last year. Last week at the Semi-final he said:
“Not only has the Manly football club been doing great work on the field this season,” Rabs starts off, “they’ve also been very busy working with the community off the field.” He goes on to detail the commendable programs run by the Sea Eagles, being paid for by pokies, and then says the technology for the pre-commitment legislation is “untested”…
BIASED CALL
Cue Phil Gould, still as part of what is meant to be football commentary: “Yeah, the proposed mandatory pre-commitment that they’ve put forward is a rubbish policy. It won’t work. It won’t solve the problem they say they’re going to target, and it will do irreparable damage to the hospitality industry. It won’t work and it will hurt.”
This is all astroturfing – political advocacy of a corporate agenda (the clubs, hotels and pokies industry) masquerading as just good old blokie home-grown, barbie-conversation, grassroots personal opinion. Some guy from Ch 9 (I think) said he didn’t give them a “script”, just (wtteo) “some dot-point talking points”. For goodness’ sake, you employ people like Gould and Warren because they can take dot points and turn them into a script live on air, because they can take thin air and turn it miraculously into 3D bullshit. You pay them hundreds of thousands of dollars a year (if not millions) to do it. “Oi give ‘em dot points but I never ment ‘em to acksherly tork abowed ‘em. Yaw as fuggin’ shocked as Oi em! Oi mean, there sposedter jist sit there lookin’ like obese dickheads so the orjance ken oidennify with ‘em! Thass wot we pay ‘em for!”
Alan Jones is a master Astroturfer, feeding to his ignorant and needy audience the corporate/political agenda bullshit on which they grow, and then trying to sell the mushrooms he harvests as fresh green grass. And the climate change deniers’ arsenal is full to overflowing with fake “concerned citizens’” groups and bogus “Institutes” and “Coalitions”. But it is mostly made up of lies and distortions. Which brings us back to Phil Gould’s rant.
Here is Sir Roger’s advice on asylum seeker/immigration policy for Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and the rest of Australia’s panicked, “pragmatic” [=unethical, immoral and stupid] political elite who are slavishly, and in terror, reacting to the unholy self-righteousness of the christian right, the egomaniacal commentariat and the ignorant unwashed. It comes straight from the bible so it might resonate with Abbott at least:
