Louisa is on the warpath again, this time for more sex-change funding – but at whose expense?

Alf notes with great admiration the efforts of Labour MP Louisa Wall to turn lots more blokes into sheilas and lots more sheilas into blokes.

Ms Wall, for constituents who might have forgotten, is the Labour bint who introduced the legislation that legalised same-sex marriage.

Now she is banging on about the transgender community needing more support than it is getting from the Government.

More particularly, she wants taxpayers to cough up for more transgender folk to get the surgery they crave to turn them from one gender to the other.

She said more than 60 people were on the waiting list for sex reassignment surgeries and action needed to be taken.

“These are people who are wanting access to what is a medical procedure, who can’t in New Zealand because we don’t have the surgeons.”

So it seems Ms Wall’s demands are a bit more complicated than it seemed at first blush.

First, she wants more money for more surgery.

But second, she wants more surgeons trained in the delicate art of putting nuts where a fanny used to be and vice versa.

Pigeon crap isn’t Wellington’s biggest problem – but go for a gun, if residents want eradication

Some namby-pamby tossers in the capital city want to waste a lot of public money on a chemical solution to the pigeon problem.

Problem, at least, if you don’t much like pigeons.

Alf would prefer them to the drunks and dope fiends who make bits of the Wellington city centre a no-go zone for civilized persons.

Bird crap does not make the same disgusting mess as a vomiting inebriate or junkie.

But there are people who reckon Wellington’s pigeon population is out of control.

And some of them say it’s time to look at contraception or feeding bans.

It’s a great survival story – and it should be used to promote the great health story behind butter

The marketing folk at Fonterra should be hellbent on tracking down a fellow by name of Pemba Lama.

The lad was mentioned today in this BBC report:

A 15-year-old boy who was rescued from the rubble of Nepal’s earthquake, has said he survived because he found two containers of butter nearby.

Pemba Lama was pulled free after rescue workers from Nepal and the US worked for hours to release him from the rubble of a collapsed building in Kathmandu.

Butter has been apt to get a bad press over the past several years.

Mrs Grumble found this item on the The Great Butter Debate:

Uh, oh – the Brits are moving towards reducing their health bill by hastening the ends of older patients

Actually, Alf is more likely to want to cling to life if a spunky female medic gives the mouth-to-mouth.

It won’t be too long before the Grumbles will have to give England a miss in their travel plans.

This will be highly disappointing for them, because while they don’t much admire your basic Pom they do admire the Royals. And England is where the Royals (the ones who matter) happen to live.

But age is catching up on the Grumbles and soon it looks like they might find themselves on a one-way ticket if they visited the land of Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and what-have-you and went down with a tummy bug or some-such.

Especially if their ailments led them to a stay in hospital.

If it’s cultural care you need then get yourself to Hawke’s Bay – but what about the medical care?

St Peter will be asked to take note that Alf’s arrival is somewhat premature but his cultural care in a Hawke’s Bay hospital was top-class. 

Alf read with some bemusement a newspaper report that “Maori representation of the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board’s (DHB) workforce continues to increase…”

This seems to be a roundabout way of saying the board is lifting its quota of Maori staff.

The figures certainly are there to show this is so:

At the end of January, 12 per cent of the workforce described themselves as Maori, up from 11 per cent for January 2014, a report states. The DHB, Hawke’s Bay’s largest employer, aims to help increase its engagement with Maori through a more representative workforce – Maori comprise 25 per cent of the region’s population – as well as staff training.

Alf would like to think the board aims to help increase its engagement with all people.

The health benefits from baccy taxes are obvious – but taxpayers will cough up more in the long run

Another study is promoting the line that raising taxes on cigarettes would stop people smoking, thereby saving millions of lives.

The study reckons that raising taxes would have a three-pronged benefit – saving lives, cutting smoker numbers and generating revenue.

Just one thing: a successful policy will dissuade smokers from continuing with their habit, and the more successful the policy, the fewer smokers remain to pay the tax.

So how can the Government coffers benefit from that?

Olly and his willy – excision was a bloody silly way to respond when girlfriend said he did not measure up

Alf has forgotten when he first learned it is imprudent to chop off your nose to spite your face. It has always struck him as being very good advice.

The expression is used to describe a needlessly self-destructive over-reaction to a problem – it’s a warning against acting out of pique, or against pursuing revenge in a way that would damage oneself more than the object of one’s anger

A bit of research by dipping into Wikipedia shows the phrase may be associated with the numerous legends of pious women disfiguring themselves in order to protect their virginity.

Wikipedia gives the example of Æbbe the Younger, the Mother Superior of the monastery of Coldingham. In 867 AD, Viking pirates from Zealand and Uppsala landed in Scotland.

A fry-up for breakfast is the way to avoid getting fat (and the eggs don’t have to be free-range)

The way to better health.

Alf tucked in to a typical Grumble household breakfast this morning fortified by the knowledge he was doing the right thing, nutritionally.

He would have stuck to his usual breakfast – perhaps with a 300gm portion of black pudding thrown in and lots of chips –  even if the research showed it was bad for him, nutritionally.

But it’s pleasing to know he doesn’t have to make a case for defying the experts.

The good news for him and all fans of a fry-up was communicated by the Daily Mail.

No, the GPs in Northland won’t be foregoing their fees – they will simply send their bill to taxpayers

“And I’ll extract my modest fee from the taxpayer.”

It sounds like Northland GPs have become extraordinarily beneficent, freely giving their time for the welfare of their young patients.

That’s certainly implied by a headline on the Herald website today:

Free kids’ visits rolled out in Northland.

The report explains that on October 1, Northland became the only region in the country to roll out free general practitioner visits, after-hours consultations and prescription fees for children between 6 and 12 years old.

While it will be implemented nationally next year, Northland health organisations chose to start the service early.

The newspaper hacks have proceeded to flush out some of the folk who will benefit from this scheme. Cara Collins’ family, for example

… will have one less bill to pay now healthcare for her two youngest sons is free.

Rachael the social justice martyr may be on to something with bed count but went awry on abortion

She is keeping an eye on bed numbers in Southland’s mental health unit.

Alf has been seized by a serious dose of petulance, since running through the list of ministerial promotions, demotions and what-have-you and finding his name is not there.

He is especially soured (but won’t be saying so publicly) by the favours dished out to Epsom’s MP, David Seymour, who becomes an under-secretary, and to Paul Goldsmith, who stood for National, took a dive but became an MP anyway on the party list and now is a Minister .

Eketahuna North, on the other hand, has no representation in The Boss’s ministerial team.

Bloody disgrace (but don’t let him know that’s what Alf is thinking).

So instead of writing about the ministerial line-up Alf has decided to look at the shit-stirring of another Goldsmith in the politics caper.

Could they be related?