Let’s nominate more Kiwis (green and pink) to accompany Aucklander on his one-way trip to Mars

Can you blame them for looking unfriendly? They have just heard Alf’s idea of sending them some of our little green men.

Dunno if it’s too late.

But news of an Auckland bloke maybe giving up his job at the Ministry of Social Development for a one-way ticket to Mars has prompted a thought.

Let’s get some more Kiwis on this one-way flight to Mars. Or anywhere.

Alf has particular Kiwis in mind, as will become apparent before the end of this post.

Saeed Ghandhari is the Aucklander who has just been named among 100 people who have made it through to the next selection round of the Mars One mission.

If you thought there was something sick about the public service, it turns out you probably were right

It looks like our public servants are a bunch of skivers, unless – of course – you are a leftie tosser and maintain they are stressed and overworked.

Take your pick.

Whether or not they are as healthy as workers in the private sector may well be arguable, but they are much more likely to take time off when they are (or they profess to be) sick.

The SST tells us the difference in a report today –

Public servants averaged 7.7 sick days each last year, compared with 5.3 days for workers in the private sector.

These figures apparently come from The National Employers’ wage and salary survey, based on interviews of more than 39,000 employees.

An outrage: ministry must cough up for upsetting a jailbird whose crimes include aggravated robbery

Alf will be spending some time today checking out who’s who and what’s what at an outfit called the Human Rights Review Tribunal.

We have far to many tribunals.

This one deals with claims under the Human Rights Act, the Privacy Act and the Health and Disability Commissioner Act.

Its only useful purpose – at first blush – is that maybe Alf will need a job there one day, because it provides a bit of work for some former MPs.

Its members include Keith Shirley and Brian Neeson, neither of them – in Alf’s experience – inclined to smoke the sort of stuff that would addle their brains or mix with lefties who who would convert them to their namby-pamby world view.

Alf accordingly would like to think neither of them was involved in the decision that triggered his (a) enormous indignation – no, make that enormous outrage; and (b) immediate research into the tribunal and its purpose.

It’s grim news for debtors who die: Social Welfare could catch up with you then

And goodbye to your money, too.

Here’s more evidence that the Ministry of Social Development is a soft touch.

According to its head of fraud, Mike Smith, the department is owed more than $930 million by beneficiaries.

Reporting on what he said yesterday, the Herald says half of that was due to overpayments.

The rest was largely interest free loans.

Benefit fraud debt totalled $65.6 million after $15.9 million was added to it last year – a big increase on the $11.1 million the previous year.

The ministry prosecutes about 800 people a year for benefit fraud and 95 per cent of those are convicted.

The ministry routinely undertakes data matching and data mining programmes and last year checked 538 million records.

Hmm. So not everyone gets away with money they are not entitled to. That’s encouraging.

But the Herald also mentions a recent Auditor-General report.

Bollocks about the best place to live

Bullshit often flows from the capital, and more often than not is best ignored. But the pong from today’s flow was a bit rich for Alf.

A press release from the Wellington City Council, posted at Scoop, is headed: “Wellington is the best place to live, survey reveals”.

The council spin doctors warble:

Wellingtonians have the best quality of life in New Zealand, according to a national survey released today.

The bullshit is exposed by the data in the very next sentence: