I heard a story the other day about a new medical procedure that could spell some relief for people with a terminal/debilitating disease. Good news I say. Patients were upbeat. The doctors and medical community – not so much. “Don’t get your hopes up,” they say, “until more study is done.”

“Don’t get you hopes up!” Why not? You get a terminal diagnosis, what in the hell else do you have but hope? Ridiculous and it just shows how out of touch the medical communitity is with the patient population.

Why not go this route. “Sir/Ma’am you have x and it is incurable. It is probably going to make you wheel-chair or bedridden and then you are going to die. BUT WE HAVE HOPE! HOPE AND MORE HOPE THAT THE RESEARCH THAT IS GOING ON NOW IS GOING TO COME UP WITH SOMETHING THAT IS GOING TO HELP YOU BEAT THIS! AND DAMN IT WE ARE NOT GIVING UP HOPE!”

But now we get:

“You are probably going to be bed ridden or wheelchair bound and then die. There is a lot of research taking place, but don’t get your hopes up that something is going to help. Have a nice day.”

I know which one I would like to hear.

Then we have Federal Goverment on the mat being chastised for maybe sending Taliban detainees to Afghan prisons where they may/probably were tortured. What ever happened to perspective. These are Taliban fighters and I am sure there are regular Afghan citizens that would like to provide their own brand of justice on the men that have set off suicide bombs in middle of innocent civilians. The men that have thrown acid in the faces of women and girls who have dared to wear makeup. Slaughtered men and women who have had the nerve to try and provide an education to the children, boys and girls, of their communities. And the list goes on.

Does this make torture right. NO- Not in any case. But the Canadian forces have stopped prisoner transfers of detainees on numerous times and have told the Afghan government to straighten up their act or the money gets cut off. We knew some of the Afghan policies were distasteful and we knew it was going to take time to get things right.

But we have had the perspective taken away. The process is ongoing and heading in the right direction. The crimes that may have taken place are not unique to only one country in the world. But we are trying to do the best we can and in trying conditions. It is not easy to create a vibrant, country with a free and fair democracy, a free and just legal system and a strong legal economy.

But HEY. some prisoners may have been mistreated and we are BAD BAD PEOPLE.

Give me a break and a little hope please.

Until then I remain,
A Sour Kraut.

So Ringo and his groupie Graham, now say that information has changed so much in the last five months, that they can’t be expected to keep their election promises, expecially the one about balancing the budget.

I have a son who thinks this way. He does whatever he wants, when he wants, to get what he wants and then falls back on the old excuse of “I didn’t know!”. Through his short time on this earth I have been trying to teach him something called responsibility. You know, that thing you take when you screw up. Well he is not keen on the whole concept and apparently neither are our politicians.

Not that we didn’t know that before. It’s just that every time we hear one speak we ache to believe that they have our best interests at heart. Not that they are trying to say anything and everything to get into power. We also hoped that Ringo and his band would be different. Not so unfortunately. We have finance critics who say they didn’t have the correct information when they were in opposition and therefore can’t be held “responsible” for anything they said “back then”. We have deputy ministers that think it is a good idea to have meetings at expensive restaurants and bill it back to you and I.

Well, let me put it this way so all politicians can understand. If you do not have the “correct information” or are unsure you have all the “information” then just SHUT THE *&^#@ UP! You are not qualified to discuss the topic so don’t. Go into the election next time and don’t say anything since you say you don’t know anyway.

Sounds like a deal we can all live with right?

Oh and by the way, instead of wasting a lot of time and money “consulting with Nova Scotians” on how you are going to take more of our money and provide fewer services, just do what you were elected to do and provide some leadership. I am sure that at a nice $800 steak dinner with your colleagues, you can come up with a few good ideas on your own.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut

A couple things happened over the last two days that made me angry and scratch my head at the same time.

The first was an interview in CBC’s Mainstreet, regarding the increased cost of H1N1 vaccinations. The expert they were interviewing was a “Health Care Policy Analyst” who regularly consults governement on health care issues. The interview resulted from the government releasing information that the cost of vaccinating a Nova Scotia Citizen had risen from a budgeted $16 per person to $30. Yup, double! When the expert was asked how such a discrepancy was possible the experts response was vague and IDIOTIC. They said that the Health Department had “no idea that the demand would be so great”! What? The health department was the one that ordered enough vaccine to innoculate almost everyone and then some. What extra demand? Sure there was an initial rush to get vaccinated and that overflowed the initial clinics, but there is no extra demand. If and that is a BIG IF, proper cost accounting was done at the begining, the budget figure would have held true. You would know the cost of the vaccine, the cost of personell, the number of innocultations that one person can give in an hour, the cost of the rented clinic locations, the amount of time that you would have to rent those locations, miscellaneous supplies and a few other things you would have a number. If there is a big surge at the front you would actually get an efficiency where in you rental cost would go down due to the process taking a shorter time. That may be offset by personnell overtime, but it definitely should not go up.

By the end of the interview you were left with two conclusions. The system and those running/advising it has no idea what it is doing or the system is completely broken at the top and as a result we are going to keep pouring tax dollars into it with out getting increased services. This is not rocket science people. It is a business that needs to be run like one.

Then yesterday an economic advisory panel said that the province is in such bad shape financially that we have to raise taxes and an cut services. I am not big on raising taxes until the government gets its act together. If the health care system is in a management shambles and the you have to assume that other departments are not far behind. Why not clean up government and make it more efficient first? In Ontario they blew ONE BILLION DOLLARS on a health care records system that still hasn’t produced anything. In Nova Scotia we have a deputy Premiere going to Halifax’s most expensive restaurants for meetings and expensing them. The waste and inefficiency is across the board and we have to realize the system is terminally ill. If it was your cherished family pet you would lovingly euthanize your loved one. Well, we had better think of a way of taking the government out behind the shed and starting from scratch.

Until then I remain,

A Sour Kraut.

I am just at the tail end of the H1N1 flu and its Rememberance Day.

I was standing at the Cenataph this morning wondering why everyone wasn’t present. There were people in attendence who still remember a family member or friend who fought and died in the “Great” wars and there were those that have family or friends in the military today. Then there were the rest of us. Regular citizens who are humbled by the actions of young men and women who face terrifying situations with courage and bravery and often make the ultimate sacrifice. How can you not come out and show support for our past and current military personnel?

Well, apparently a lot of us can’t. Sure there are the anti-war types who find war abhorent – duh, I have never met anyone who likes war – and think that by not showing support for our veterans they are somehow making a morally superior statement. Well, nice try, but it is those war veterans and their actions that allow you to live your life of comfort while you stake claim to the moral high ground.

Then there are the people who I think are just plain lazy. These are the ones that just can’t be bothered because they are “too busy” or they have something more important to do. These do not include the people who would go if they could, but as a result of work, sickness or another committment just can’t participate.

Contrast this with the media and public hype/panic over the H1N1. People crowding clinics, running to the ER and generally acting as if the end of the world is nigh. ITS THE FLU! How come we can get or knickers in a twist over the flu and yet we can’t go to a Rememberance Day ceremony. Granted the health system and the media are mostly to blame, but lets get real for a second. Australia and New Zealand had their H1N1 flu season this past summer. Australia has a population in the 22 million range. They had somewhere in the vacinity of 247 people die as a result of complications brought on by H1N1. Now, if you extrapolate those numbers to Canada, a population of 33million or so, we should expect a death count as a result of H1N1 in the 370 range. Wow. Kind of crappy for those 370, but that number is well below the number of deaths as a result of seasonal flu. You know, the flu that is coming in January.

Get a grip people. We are upset about a flu, while we forget about young men and women who have the courage to face a barrage of bullets. But hey, they are just trying to bring peace, the rights of women so they don’t get acid thrown in their face because they wear makeup, the ability of children to attend schools, free and fair elections and little things like that. We don’t want to get the chills. Sad isn’t it.

Until then, I remain,

A Sour Kraut