[I doubt it is worth the effort and expense. Temm's mind is made up. A major hardware store here has just released a new cement product called Mind-Cem. One of my sources tell me Temm was at the launch, looking decidedly unwell (his left hand was trembling), but if I've only learnt one thing this week it is that blogs can't always trust their sources.]
PSC RESTRUCTURING AND JOBS. Public Service Commission PS Parmesh Chand says the current review to determine appropriate staffing levels does not necessarily mean job losses because civil servants can be re-deployed to other departments, ministries and agencies that are under-staffed.
He said the review will ensure that all expenditure relating to salaries and wages is prudently managed through the government's payroll system and that agencies do not exceed their budgetary provisions for personnel emoluments.
"As part of the Strategic Framework for Change and the need to rationalise functions and eradicate duplication, from January 1 the functions of the Ministry of Multi-Ethnic Affairs will be farmed out to different and relevant ministries already performing similar responsibilities. In other words, the Ministry of Culture will now have the responsibility of all cultural aspects, PSC will have the responsibility of the scholarships and the Ministry of Provincial Development will be responsible for rural advisory councils. Such devolution and assimilation will also assist in the removal of ethnic-based development and administration."
I STAND CRITICIZED. A reader asks "if it's entirely necessary for [me] to raise the spectre of Christians bearing false witness by using the Bible to castigate the regime's opponents. Do you really have to embrace the chronic Fijian practice of using biblical tracts to make your case? I think that in a faintly grubby secular political argument like this one, it comes perilously close to breaching that other biblical injunction about taking the Lord's name in vain." Fair enough but I though it an unambiguous way to get the message to them.
Another reader says I attack the Methodists but not the Catholics. I do not attack either. My attacks are very specific. The targets are those Methodist Church leaders who were actively involved in promoting ethno-nationalism to the point of racism and involvement in the Speight Coup.
Yet another reader thinks I was overdoing it in my reports on Bainimarama's health. I made two comments, on Friday and Monday. Both were factual and both attacked the CoupFourPointFive and its sister blogs that had been publishing false rumours of his health for a nearly a week — and have still have not corrected their misinformation. False rumour-mongering has become a major weapon aimed at destabilising the Fiji government.
Discerning readers will know that I have many reservations about Government. They have been constantly spelt out on this blog. But I support their declared aims and the general direction of their policies. A failed coup would take Fiji back to 2006 with none of its basic problems resolved.
I do, however, have some agreement with an anonymous reader whose comment, of course, I cannnot publish in the normal way. He or she writes, "The lies, half truths and the sheer nonsense that appears on blogs about Fiji politics are the result of censorship and media muzzling. Is it really necessary to have the double whammy Permanent Emergency Regulation and Media Decree? If there is nothing to hide, well let the media report. At least you have named publishers who can be held responsible for misinformation."
Finally, vinaka to another reader who thought I could have coined a new phrase with my "let sleeping blogs lie" and thought it an "apt description."
'ODIOUS INEQUALITIES.'Why not tax the rich more instead of increasing VAT? a reader asks. 'Why not reinstitute capital gains tax? Ditto or gift duty. And re-examine ‘progressive forms of taxation’ that do not put regressive tax burdens on the poor. IMF, World Bank, WTO and even the UN have presided over ‘global development’ that has led to unprecedented and odious inequality between and within countries – with the USA and the UK among the worst cases in the developed world. Inequality in Fiji continues to be of “Latin American proportions.” We have no minimum wage. The Wages Council wage orders are continuously being undermined by the business lobby and, when the government does act firmly, companies like Fiji Water shut their factories.
OZKIWI NEIGHBOURLY ASSISTANCE — STATE OF THE ART EYE INSTITUTE. The Pacific Eye Institute $NZ2.7 million building in Suva which the PM opened yesterday has been welcomed by the foreign ministers of Australia and New Zealand that provided much of the necessary funding. They said the facility would vastly improve the treatment and training of the ophthalmologists, doctors and nurses from around the Pacific who would now get eye care training in Fiji.
Australian FM Kevin Rudd said: “The new buildings house training rooms for eye-care nurses, doctors and technicians from across the region, along with operating theatres, a laser-treatment room, an optical laboratory, offices and a resource centre” and NZ FM Murray McCully said that up to 80,000 people in the Pacific were blind, and a further 250,000 visually impaired. Making a major improvement to a person's sight is often not expensive or difficult if there are qualified health professionals on hand to diagnose and treat people via simple surgical procedures. Research suggests that through better access to eye health care and treatment 75% of blindness cases are preventable.”
In 2010 PEI outreach teams undertook over 5,000 consultations and a thousand surgeries,including nearly 900 cataract removals in Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, PNG, Samoa and Fiji. Funding for their work is a key component of Fred Hollows New Zealand's $A13.5m Pacific Regional Blindness Prevention Program (PRBPP), which is funded by the Australian and New Zealand Governments in partnership with the Fred Hollows Foundation.-- Based on 2037/MOI.
8 comments:
@ Jonathan Temm......first coming then reneging?
This behaviour used to be described as "flakey". In fact, it is still 'flakey' and Mr Temm should address it with vigour. Could it be that his failing to turn up on Friday is doing us all a service? An ill thought through 'folie des grandeurs'?
Croz, as the author of the post having a dig at you about your aforementioned biblical reference, I can assure you that I didn't mean it as serious criticism and hope you haven't really taken it that way. It was meant to be tongue in cheek commentary on the national predilection for reaching for the Good Book to justify any position, reasonable or not. Of all the Fiji commentators, you remain a relative paragon of virtue and I'm hoping that come Judgement Day, we'll both wind up in the same happy place. Maybe not exactly at the right hand of the Almighty but at least a place nearby where the party is on him. Or her, as the case may be. Just so long as it's not too soon. We're told that both our own Lord and Allah are merciful, which is just as well. Keep up the good work.
I tell you what you do stand criticised for, Croz, Adopting the bloody American spelling of the word by using a "z". We need to wind back the tide of spell-check induced Yank-speak. The same goes for favour, not favor, labour, not labor and every other Goddam perversion that's overtaken our own brand of the English language. As a respected academic, you of all people should be utterly scrupulous about such matters. To paraphrase another biblical quotation, thou shouldst honour, not honor, thy mother tongue.
I thought Jonathan Temm was a pompous git until I heard he had a trembling hand. Sounds like a guy we can do business with.
Am I the only one who thinks it's weird that Frank gets to open a facility funded by Kevin Rudd and Murray McCully? Or are we to believe that miracles sometimes do happen and the blind can finally see?
@ Hey Buster ... For the record, if I'm wrong in using 'z', I'm in the good company of the Oxford and Cambridge University Presses, The Times (and the Americans). Most words ending with an -ize sound derive from the Greek and should be so spelt. A small number of words that do not derive from Greek such as advertise, surprise and exercise should be spelt with -ise. The indiscriminate use of -ise has crept in because it it easier, not because it is correct. Though you could argue that usage has made it also correct.
Come on Croz, start using criticize instead of criticise and we may as well just let the Resnicks take over. I don't give a hoot about contemporary usage. One is ours, the other is theirs! if you want to become an appendage of the US, why don't you live in Honolulu rather than Horowhenua. Can you honestly place hand on heart and tell me that your teachers in NZ when you were being educated let you spell this word comme ca? There are standards to maintain and you are letting the side down by setting a miserable example to the yoof of today. Get a grip. We speak and write the Queen's English. Anything else is treason (:
Croz, for your information, the BBC computer says NO. Thou shalt not spell the said word such. Here endeth the lesson.
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