Hillary Clinton

Hillary Clinton's life - struggles, failures, as well as achievements - is a retrospective mapping of women's lives in the last half of the 20th century. The facts might read as a tick-list of: "First woman to be . . ." but her progress is not about a single theme known as "Feminism". It's a bold, infinitely complex and as yet unfinished flow through some 60 years of breakneck change. Faced with the dismaying rise of flirty, dirty Sarah Palin, a woman who declares that all she ever needed to know was learnt on a basketball court, we cling to the idea of a woman of substance, whose eloquent life is making the impossible possible.

I can't say it any better than Helen Elliott, click the link and have a look for yourself.

I try to read the NZ Herald and Stuff everyday, yet for whatever reason you just can't read speech like this there.

Paul Henry

He is unloveable, callous and to the right of Genghis Khan, but at least he is authentic.

Go Paul!

Economic Freedom

HK is the World's top city when it comes to economic freedom. NZ is third, not bad!

Hospitals

Prof Harry Rea gave a Grand Round lecture at Middlemore a few years ago. He eloquently talked about how his grandchildren might ask him the following..

Granddad, did you really worked in a ward where no one had time to answer telephone calls, patients have to wait for long time to be taken to toilets, and there are always all these people milling around the few computers in the nursing station but they don't really have time for you? I heard that when you're sick, you're likely to see 20 or more new faces in one day, some of them introduce themselves, some don't. And even if they introduced themselves, you don't really know who they are, what they do, and why you're seeing them. How embarassing must it be, especially when you're in those hospital issue PJs....

So why aren't I surprised when I read this piece from the Royal NZ Herald? Because what she described is all too familiar to any healthcare workers in New Zealand, and dare I suggest, any public hospital worker in the Western world. Why restricting to the Western world? Because in the Developing world, for example China, India, Vietnam, you don't even get the basic treatment if you have no money.

Now, the Surgeons say the appendix was not inflamed, but the mum reckons it was. Who do you believe? Probably the surgeon. But yet again, it proves the point. It is not the fact that matters, it is the perception that counts.

World should emulate NZ

"Countries around the world should aspire to be as prepared as New Zealand for massive natural disasters like the Christchurch earthquake, former Prime Minister Helen Clark says."

Whilst the above statement is true, comparing Haiti to Christchuch is like trying to draw parallel between the Pope and Richard Dawkins....

"You will never get them back once you have lost them. They are a piece of you."

It may well be Daniell doesn't have a mother or extended family. But if she does, then may be supporting her family to support her may be an alternative to the model.