Bottom feeders are winning

There are many kinds of research: there is the type that tells us 100 per cent of all divorcees were previously married and that clothes washed in cocoa will not be as white as those washed in water and detergent.

We see the results of that kind of research all the time and wonder what enabled those “researchers” to get funding. We also think they would be better employed as fast food staff than waste their energy and our money and gullibility on such trivia.

Then there is real research, where scientists, for example, have isolated the bug that causes bowel cancer. Not just a bug: the bug.

The one, which, if defeated at the time of recognition, could save lots of people months of suffering and possible death, as well as save the health system a fortune in treatments.

Or those intrepid scientists hoping to be able to recognise future dementia patients long before diagnosis. And the other scientists who are discovering ways to treat — or even cure — dementia while in its almost undetectable early stages.

Those examples are real, useful research.

Think of the thousands of people who could be saved from diseases that cause needless suffering for them and their families.

Those are only two examples of the many kinds of valuable research going on behind the medical scenes — and they all have one thing in common: Funding is crucial but ridiculously hard to get.

Too often their muchneeded financial resources are dependent on charitable giving while much less worthy recipients are rolling in it.

Australian banks and their mega profits are an example of money going to where it is neither needed nor deserved, while scientists struggling to save the planet and its people are receiving a pittance.

When did the human race turn so topsy turvy?

When did we decide that those most deserving of our money are those least likely to get it?

When did we decide that greed should be rewarded with funds that could be of more use in a thousand different places?

We need our researchers more than we need overly comfortable chief executives. We need the results of wellfunded research more than we need billionaires who spend their dough on the trappings of wealth.

“Oh look, another mega yacht. That’s handy!”

We are seeing our taxes disappearing in too many wrong directions and companies focused on profit to the exclusion of humanity.

There are drug companies extorting money from the sick and holding the terminally ill to ransom. They have decided their primary mission is to make huge amounts of money. Curing illness is secondary and merely a means to excessive wealth. We can do better than this.

If money was channelled in the right directions, we would all be a lot better off.

They have been called “bottom feeders” and Whanganui is, thankfully, so far devoid of them.

They are wheel clampers, and they should be made illegal.

Large cities are the breeding ground of this creature, where they prey on the vulnerable and extort huge money from people who have either parked in the wrong place, or, as in some cases, are quite legally parked. As our insane laws stand, that does not matter.

They still have to pay the predator.

It’s a vile practice and businesses that employ their services should be boycotted.

Clamping is the practice of securing large, metal devices to the wheel of a vehicle, preventing it from being driven. The clamps can be applied if the motorist has broken a parking rule, real or imagined.

Clamping is a lucrative practice because it is unregulated and, to all intents and purposes, legalised piracy.

Clampers demand cash to release the car and in amounts considered excessive and extortionate. Heaven knows what happens if people are unable to pay these bandits.

In the UK and in some US states the practice of clamping on private land is illegal. Mostly, only local authorities have the power to clamp a vehicle, and that is a measure used sparingly.

In New Zealand, anyone can employ clampers to terrorise their car parks, such as supermarkets and private businesses.

The people they employ to carry out such a “job” are rarely open to reason and rational thinking seems to be overridden by the desire to make easy money. They, and the “job” they do, are immoral.

Why we allow such a practice to continue unregulated is beyond comprehension.

That it even exists is in contrast with all right thinking.

There is a code of conduct — believe it or not — for clamping, but evidently few clampers comply with its precepts.

If it ever comes to Whanganui, or if anyone comes here bent on starting such a practice, I would hope there would be such an outcry that it would stop immediately.

Whoever called them bottom feeders hit the nail on the head.