Doctor and activist
25/04/2020
Taiwan’s Response to COVID-19- not perfect, but better than anyone else’s. An article in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) of 3/3/20 outlines the effective approach that Taiwan took to the COVID-19 crisis, which is why they have so few cases despite their close proximity to China. It is instructive to look at what […]
25/04/2020
There has been a general acceptance that the COVID19 coronavirus came from the Wuhan Seafood market from some of the wild animals there, with a pangolin, a type of scaly anteater. It was a wet market which means that species are sold there raw. This seemed more plausible than the various conspiracy theories that it […]
25/04/2020
Senate Standing Committees on Community Affairs Inquiry into, ‘Adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia’ Terms of Reference The adequacy of Newstart and related payments and alternative mechanisms to determine the level of income support payments in Australia, with specific reference to: consideration […]
25/04/2020
I am continually appalled by Centrelink’s callous incompetence. It usually does not affect me personally, but this week it did. One of my patients, who has not been able to work for over 4 years since a bad car accident and urgent neck neurosurgery came in for a SU415 certificate so that he could get […]
03/10/2019
3 October 2019 Governments say that they want to fund research, but think that they are very clever if they can do it ‘in cooperation with the private sector’. They think that they will save money and get some inside running to a share of profits. Mostly they are played for mugs. The private sector […]
20/09/2019
20 September 2019 I grew up convinced that as knowledge spread humanity would advance. Society would become more secular and decisions would be evidence-based. I studied medicine, which tries to be a science and the people I worked with mostly had a regard for truth and willingness to listen to sensible arguments. Then I found […]
11/10/2017
11 October 2017 It is getting harder to trust people. Once we trusted our teachers, our doctors, our bank managers and our politicians to lead us. And people trusted that people could do their jobs. But we became obsessed with competition instead of cooperation. Everything had to make money. Everything was a commodity. It was […]
01/07/2017
1 July 2017 I have grave fears for this system. I am unsure even of the goodwill of some of its advocates. I was on the Social Issues Committee of the NSW Parliament and we looked at Disability services and the way that these were delivered. Basically if you ask how big the disability problem […]
26/11/2016
26 November 2016 Power, Injury and Awards. I work in medicine, treating mostly third party motor vehicle injuries and workers compensation injuries. There are much fewer of the latter because there are less employees. Many people working as couriers are ‘self employed’ contractors. One man had to pay $75,000 for the right to deliver parcels […]
09/11/2016
9 November 2016 Here is my theory. Basically democracy in English speaking countries has been taken over by private entities. There are only two entities who can win power in the UK, USA and Australia. They are called political parties. They are not in the constitution, but because they vote as a bloc, they control […]