Not Right

I don’t mind sounding like a broken record when referring to this pamphlet I found in the Medicare office.  Emblazoned on the cover was “Have a Medicare card – it’s you’re right”.

Please government stop peddling this message.  This is what has led to the demise of the health system.  It’s having people think of health services as rights instead of privileges.  It’s the lack of respect for health services that leads to the endless demands from the masses for government to ‘fix it’. 

Government will never be able to fix anything until there is a collective attitude adjustment, and it starts with how we regard our public services.

Continue to view them as a right then enjoy a health system that will continue to decline.  Adjust the attitude and regard health services as the huge privilege it is and you will see an improvement.

It’s up to you, not the government.

Stubborn or Just Realistic

The older generation, especially those that lived through war times, tend to be stubborn when it comes to the administration of health care.  “I’ll be right”, they say casually.

I like this attitude and more people should adopt it, however it has its flaws.

The elderly tend to only ask for help when they really, really need it.  This can result in the request coming too late for help to be effective.

Younger people need to take a leaf out of the book of the older generations.  Don’t be too proud to ask for help but be realistic.  There’s no need to be impetuous, and get majorly worked up immediately.  Just look at the bigger picture regarding your condition.  Is it really and emergency or can I wait to see my GP?  Sometimes a good sleep works wonders. 

Seems that the further we get away from war times the more spoilt we become and we don’t know how to deal with the smallest amount of suffering.

Here We Go Again

The Project covered a story about the ‘glass ceiling’ women have to break through to climb the corporate ladder. 

Natasha Stott-Despoja was on.  She claimed that we’ve had years to deal with this “problem”.  Really? Problem?  We’re still forgetting that most working women have no intent on climbing the corporate ladder.  Rather they are very willing in sacrificing some career advancement to have children.  It’s only the vocal minority that see this as a “problem”.

Some bozo was calling for quotas of women working in public and private sectors.  As if the current ‘targets’ aren’t bad enough.  Quotas and targets defeat the purpose for which they were intended.  Instead of gaining a job on merit, which is what all the complainers say they want, they will now get it potentially on tokenism.  Or there may be the continual speculation of whether it was gained on tokenism.  This would create immense pressure to perform.

Feminists want a level playing field.  But there never will be.  Men and women are different.  Why is that people continually need to be told that?  We have different aptitudes.  Men have strengths in leadership.  Women have strengths in nurturing.  This isn’t to say that women can’t lead and men aren’t nurturing.  It’s a generalisation, because it’s generally true.

A case study from Norway was shown and it featured some interesting consequences from its policy of quotas.  The policy was bound to all publicly listed companies.  So they found that many publicly listed companies got out of the stock exchange.  They also found that there were boards with women directors but it turned out to be the same women on multiple boards.  So no net gain for women in Norway.

People need to really think about what they aim to achieve by such policies and look at their potential side effects.