Some meandering Sunday morning thoughts

Most of what I put up on my blogs is written by others. I suppose I am lucky that I do regularly find stuff that I agree with or find interesting. Every now and again, however, I do put up something that is entirely written by me and today is one of those occasions. And, seeing it is a quiet, relaxed Sunday morning, I am just going to meander a bit.



I was just listening to the superb "Sea pictures" by Sir Edward Elgar (pic above). I am lucky to have a CD on which Dame Janet Baker is the contralto and she does a superb job. The poems Elgar chose to set were drawn from quite obscure poets for the most part and my favourite song is "Where corals lie" -- written by a little-known Scotsman. I was born where corals lie (by the sea in tropical Queensland) so maybe that has a little to do with it. Following "Corals", however, is a song which is set to a poem ("Swimmer") by Adam Lindsay Gordon, a highly esteemed Australian poet. And that sparked the thought that I should have a poetry evening for the more profound Australian poets. I have already had an evening for the Australian balladeers -- Lawson, Paterson, Dennis etc -- at which the inimitable Michael Darby starred, but, much as I love the balladeers, they are not the whole of what Oz poetry has to offer. Writers like Gordon, Kenneth Slessor etc are also in my view outstanding.

Michael Darby is coming up from Sydney in a week's time to give us his renditions of English poetrty so I am somewaht inclined to give him the job of introducing my son to the more profound Australian poets as well. And I may do that. I put on a poetry evening at my place once or twice a year to help fill in the gaps in my son's education. He went right through High School without even hearing the names of such greats as Wordsworth and Coleridge.

On the other hand, is it not a little broad to look at a whole class of poets? Poets are intensely individual. So should I not also have an evening devoted to a particular poet? In one sense I do that every year of course -- on January 25 when I have a Burns Night -- a ritualized celebration of the birth of Robert Burns -- and next year I even have an old Kiwi friend coming up to help with the festivities who does a reasonable Scottish accent. I gather that his Dunedin origins account for that. So I will dragoon him into reading most of the poems.



But in my strange way, there is also a religious poet whom I very much like: Gerard Manley Hopkins. See the icon above (an icon of the pre-computer sort). And I am not alone in that liking. There are actually Hopkins literary festivals in some places. I could of course have an evening devoted to Hopkins in which I did all the reading. There are plenty of his poens that attract my enthusiasm. But while my poetry nights are mainly for the benefit of my son, I like to get a little extra out of them myself as well. So I would rather like to have a Hopkins enthusiast to do the honours. And the obvious enthusiast would have to be a Jesuit -- which is what Hopkins was. But does the Society of Jesus even exist in Brisbane? I suppose it might. I will have to look into it.







Self-aggrandizing hospital bureacrats waste public money

Staff at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital are outraged that $100,000 was spent buying highly specialised neonatal equipment, which is sitting idle during a new round of cost-cuts. The Health Department was unable to stop RPA administrators recently spending public donations to set up a fetal laser surgery unit, despite medical staff saying it was unnecessary and potentially risky for mothers and babies. No fetal laser surgery has been performed at RPA since the equipment was bought, and sources say obstetricians are unwilling to refer patients to an inexperienced unit. The nearby Royal Hospital for Women has successfully provided intrauterine laser surgery for NSW and New Zealand patients since 2003. Only about 15 procedures take place each year.

RPA staff say there is a lack of clinical governance at the hospital and the decision raises questions about the waste of scarce health dollars. The hospital is already under siege after the resignation of executive director Di Gill on Friday and the ongoing public furore at the closure of the 20-bed women's ward. It will no longer be a women-only ward. "There are a lot of upset people in gynaecology at RPA because they wasted money on lasers which don't need to be bought, yet they're closing the women's ward," said a clinician who did not want to be named. "Some doctors are egotistical and it's about them, not what's best for the patient, and you have to wonder about the governance of the hospital."

A spokeswoman for NSW Health confirmed it had urged clinicians at RPA to work with existing services at RHW. Victoria and Queensland each have a centralised fetal laser service to treat rare conditions such as twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and amniotic band syndrome. "As the service at RPA is new, the Department has asked the Area Health Service to ensure clinicians work together across both sites to ensure high standards of patient care," the spokeswoman said.

The RPA expects to treat up to 20 cases a year of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a life-threatening condition in which there's an uneven blood flow between identical twins.

John Smoleniec from fetomaternal medicine at Liverpool Hospital, said spreading cases among multiple hospitals will lead to a dangerous dilution in procedural experience and eliminate the capacity to monitor success and complication rates.

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Some practical policing in NSW

Squeegee men and bill posters beware - you could soon be fined



In an internal notice, police officers have been encouraged to issue fines of up to $400 for washing car windscreens at intersections or putting up posters on power poles. But NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione, who is championing the initiative, said it is not a revenue raising exercise, instead insisting it is what the community wants to feel safe. He does not expect his officers to drop everything else but Mr Scipione wants them "to know what their powers are" in case they come across such crimes. "They are clearly crimes," he said. "While they might not be the biggest [issues] they are often the most important when it comes to the community."

Mr Scipione said he ranked this with other "quality of life issues" such as noise, car hoons and alcohol-related crime. People being approached in their cars at intersections or walking through streets "just covered" in posters may feel like they are in a dangerous situation, he said. So the crackdown is about "making people feel like they are being looked after".

Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research director Don Weatherburn said while people often express a great deal of concern about minor crime such as vandalism and graffiti, there is little evidence that cracking down on it reduces serious crimes.

Mr Scipione's initiative comes as the City of Sydney Council has announced it will start fining bill posters from tomorrow, targeting mainly large entertainment venues, who have been warned to stop the practice. They could face council fines of up to $1500 for a corporation and $750 for an individual. Bill posters wash into stormwater drains and damage the environment, said a council spokesman. In the past four years, the council has paid $6million to remove hundreds of thousands of posters from poles, hoardings and signs.

Council of Civil Liberties president Cameron Murphy sees the clampdown on bill posters as a restriction of freedom of speech. He said: "Do you really want to live in a community where we are fined, bankrupted or arrested for putting up posters without having cleared it with council or the police commissioner or another person in authority first?" Mr Murphy cited the proposed powers against demonstrators during APEC and the raid on Bill Henson's exhibition as examples of "a pattern" of police initiatives. It was the role of the police commissioner to ensure tolerance of different views to build relationships with community groups, he said.

In a recent Police Gazette, Deputy Commissioner Dave Owens reminded officers of the "value of issuing infringement notices" that can be issued as on-the-spot fines under the NSW Protection of the Environment Operations Act. People washing windscreens at intersections face a maximum fine of $53 while those who put up bill posters can be fined $200, with corporations facing a fine of up to $400.

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Obesity inquiry told extreme health programs too risky

A rare burst of realism

Some dieting and exercise programs may do more harm than good, a parliamentary inquiry into obesity has been told. A submission by the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research, co-written by Professor Fiona Stanley, warned that "toughening up" exercise and diet programs wasn't the answer to the obesity epidemic. The submission was presented to the inquiry on Friday.

"We fear that there is a risk, if exercise and diet strategies are taken to extremes, that they could cause harm to some people," the experts wrote. "Extreme diets may have unwanted side effects. ''While high levels of LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol have been linked with heart disease, low levels have been linked with depression and attempted self-harm." [Both links are likely to be epidemiological nonsense but it is nice to have one cancelling the other out]

The institute's submission criticised other arguments presented to the Inquiry into Obesity in Australia. It said some recommended diet and exercise programs "had never been properly tested and (were) based on some measure of faith or belief". "Where evidence is weakest is regarding the question of what works to reduce obesity. Some trials of increased exercise and/or various diets show limited benefits, if any."

The submission questioned experts' calls for "toughening up" strategies that had not shown any impact on the rate of obesity. Increasing the "dose" of strategies - such as mandating exercise through schools or further reducing fat content in fast foods - could be futile if the strategies were flawed. "There may be some element missing, or some flaw in the strategies or the ideas underlining them, that prevent them being successful or lead them to be ineffective," it said.

The report recommended new policies should be trialled first. [What a revolutionary idea for the food Fascists!]

The House of Representatives Health Committee is holding national hearings and will make recommendations to the Government next year. Committee chair Steve Georganas said there had not been enough monitoring and tracking research in recent years, but there were successful programs that could be rolled out across the country. "No one advocates over-strict diets,'' he said. ''It's about a healthy lifestyle, not flogging people to death. ''There is evidence of many programs working. [What sort of evidence? Not double-blind, I'll warrant] ''But there's no easy solution. ''We need people to eat less and exercise more, but getting the whole society to change their habits is very difficult." [And improper]

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