Pampering to a different world

An email doing the rounds at the moment depicts a cake of Cadbury’s rum and raisin chocolate with a halal motif on the packaging. The caption suggested that as Muslims are not allowed to consume alcohol surely the halal approval is superfluous. It was not a serious dig, and anyway I suspect rum and raisin chocolate is flavoured with rum essence rather than the distilled spirit.

I remember there was concern expressed some years ago about the halal approval symbol appearing on a variety of products, but I looked through our pantry and couldn’t actually find any commodities so labelled. Perhaps in view of Islamic terrorism marketers have decided it is not a good look on their merchandise.

Incidentally in Arabic, halal simply means “permissible” or “allowed.”

Halal came into prominence in this country back in 1979 when the New Zealand Meat Board agreed to supply Iran with 200,000 tonnes of lamb over a four year period. One of the conditions attached to this trade deal was that all stock be killed according to Sharia law. To support the contract a number of processing plants were licensed for halal slaughtering and their chains had to be reconfigured to face Mecca. If a freezing works also slaughtered pigs within its premises then it could not be licensed for halal.

Subsequently the Waingawa freezing works ceased killing pigs

Halal slaughtering involves four elements. The slaughterman must be a practising Muslim and he must face Mecca. The words “Allah Akbar” (Allah is great) need to be prayed as the animal is slaughtered and it must be killed with a sharp knife.

In the early 1980s nearly one fifth of New Zealand lamb went to Iran, however the market became untenable when Iran had difficulty paying for the meat and for a period there was a barter system of oil for lamb.

The Iranians, who tended to stew the lamb, wanted them to be totally devoid of any fat and when the trade was halted the freezer storage units throughout the country were full of skinny lambs that were not suitable to other overseas clients. Although there was a call for the meat companies to donate the lambs to poorer sections of the NZ community eventually they were ground up for fertiliser (blood and bone) and distributed back on to the land from whence they came.

Of course spiritual slaughter systems are not confined to Islam; Jewish people like their meat to be kosher. The Christian community however is too timid to ask for special favours for their food processing and anyway the New Testament is surprisingly devoid of any instructions in this regard.

Meanwhile Easter has come and gone with a variety of differing styles of rabbits and eggs with the only salute to the founder of the religion being hot cross buns and even some of these have had the crosses removed so not to offend folk of other religious persuasions or the ungodly themselves.

Mind you, it’s the Jews I have the most sympathy for. After all Moses went back to God and said, “Remind me again; the Arabs get the oil and we got the end cut off our what?”

“We are told to let our light shine, and if it does, we won’t tell anybody it does. Lighthouses don’t fire cannons to call attention to their shining - they just shine.” - Dwight L. Moody

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Economic systems up for scrutiny

It seems likely that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party’s nominee for the upcoming American Presidential elections, but Bernie Sanders is certainly giving her a run for her money. Mr. Sanders is a staunch socialist which in modern America is surely an enigma given the US’s decades-long tirade against communism.

Surprisingly, the vast majority of Mr. Sanders advocates are well-educated young people which may just mean they’re not that well-schooled at all.

In another surprise move, another dedicated socialist, Jeremy Corbyn, has taken control of the British Labour Party.

Meanwhile America’s Republican establishment are looking askance at frontrunner Donald Trump and questioning his conservative credentials. Although a capitalist of the first order himself, Trump nonetheless abhors America’s free-trade deals which he says are destroying the economy. He is determined to rewrite the rule book to make sure offshore companies return to the land of their birth.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement will certainly not be signed on his watch, he advises.

That so many of the rank and file are questioning the perceived wisdom of the way the free world has operated is a worry for those who have been running it for so long. The Republicans, who have had control of the American Senate for some time, have obviously lost favour with the middle-class who are finding jobs hard to access and wages static.

And so in defiance of the horrendous historical evidence many of these people are prepared to risk an alternative style of governance.

And yet in spite of its inherent faults, the surest way out of destitution is the free market. Wealth is the result of economic liberty, while poverty comes from economic repression. Free market capitalism may not be prefect, and at times not fair to everyone, but it does work.

Capitalism was best explained in Adam Smith’s tome The Wealth of Nations first published in 1776. He wrote about a system of markets, prices, profit and private property ownership that created a natural order of how people could live in relative comfort and prosperity.

The system would be advanced by energetic and ambitious men and women whose actions could benefit the whole of society though that may not have been their noble intentions in the first place. His famous quote was: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker that we expect our evening meal, but rather from their regard for their own self interest.”

Capitalism has been portrayed as the worst economic system apart from all the alternatives and it does have has a tendency to implode from time to time. The 1930’s depression being the worst example, but also in 1973 when oil prices skyrocketed due to wars in the Middle East and then again in 1987 when floating currencies caused the sharemarket to shed millions of investor dollars.

Meanwhile we are still working our way out of the trials and tribulations of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and although the ship has steadied there is still potentially some rough water ahead.

And Messrs. Sanders, Corbyn and Trump all have the capacity to whip up a storm that might very well sink us all.

“You can’t get a good Chinese takeout in China, and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.” - P. J. O’Rourke

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Out of sight, out of mind

After nearly six years on the Wairarapa District Health Board I still haven’t quite come to grips with just what the Ministry of Health actually does. I do know however that last week it was reported that they had gone cap-in-hand to the government for a bailout of $18 million to complete a $24 million refit to their office tower in Wellington. The refit was supposed to have been paid for out of ‘reserves’, but a miscalculation meant they were well-shy of the mark. How a cash-strapped health system believed it was able to have accumulated twenty-four million dollars in reserves was not explained.

Labour’s shadow health minister Annette King insisted the Director-General Chai Chuah resign, but he resisted falling on his sword and claimed others were at fault.

I have met Mr Chuah on a number of occasions; he is a dapper, quietly-spoken Mayalasian gentleman who cut his teeth in this country working with the Canterbury DHB and then was for seven years the CEO for the Hutt Valley DHB. I understand the he was highly-regarded by both boards.

According to their website the Ministry’s role is to promote and protect the health and wellbeing of New Zealanders. With a twenty-four million dollar refit it would appear that their own health and wellbeing is a priority.

New Zealand has twenty-one district health boards that are semi-autonomous. Often referred to as ‘hospital boards’ in fact they cover all aspects of healthcare in the areas they serve. The government, through the ministry, fund the DHBs on a per-capita basis and most struggle to live within their allocations. Wairarapa’s apportionment is just short of $130 million annually and besides the hospital itself this is used to fund mental health and addiction services - often through private providers - pay the general practitioner subsidies, provide health care for the elderly either in their homes or in privately-owned rest homes, offer dental services for primary school children and fund most prescription medicines.

Wages and salaries are the biggest cost. The Wairarapa Hospital has over 200 nurses and more than 40 doctors on the payroll and also spends a small fortune on information technology. We have outlaid millions of dollars on computer software and hardware during my term on the board and are still behind the eight ball in what is considered to be ideal.

Recently at a meeting I suggested somewhat facetiously that we would be better-off employing clerks with pencils and paper. This suggestion was (justifiably) treated with derision.

And we can’t match the Ministry on the provision of accommodation for our administration staff. Most are housed in the leaky old three-storey rough-cast nurse’s home near the entrance off Blair Street. It was built in the 1940s and has never had a refit. The staff work out of tiny offices that were once the sparse single bedrooms for the on-site nurses of yesteryear.

However I don’t think the government would welcome an application for funds for an upgrade. They will still be battling to find the eighteen million dollar shortfall for the flash capital office block rejuvenation.

Out here in the provinces, we could build a brand new hospital for that.

“Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of an expanding bureaucracy” - Oscar Wilde

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Nice work if you can get it

I wonder how cash-strapped dairy farmers are viewing their Fonterra masters moving into a new glass tower in downtown Auckland later this month. Regarded as the smartest contemporary building in the country, the Jasmax-designed glittering corporate headquarters is described as a bold statement about the dairy giant’s presence in the city.

Critics however say it continues to highlight the disconnection between head-office and the shareholders and many are asking: “Why Auckland?” Given the rural spread of its owners, does it really need to rent prime real estate in one of the world’s most expensive cities at all?

Waikato University agribusiness professor Jacqueline Rowarth said “Fonterra shareholders would rather their company was in the news because of the great job it was doing for them and the New Zealand economy than that they are renting a glossy new building in Auckland.”

The edifice cost $93.2 million to construct and is jointly owned by the Singaporean government and the Goodman Property Trust. It will house more than 1000 staff, many of whom draw salaries in excess of $100,000 annually; it has 100 bicycle parks in the basement and 189 carparks. Visitors to the building will approach the entrance via a landscaped parkland northern-plaza featuring manicured lawns and gardens that are irrigated by rainwater channelled from the building.

Fonterra, whose hopes and aspirations the whole country relies upon, has more than $7.5 billion of debt which percentage-wise starts to look a bit like the $19 trillion American government deficit.

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Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder and I must admit I am not particularly beholden to the new flag design. Despite this, I will still vote for it. The majority of those inclined to participate in the process ticked the red, white and blue Kyle Lockwood design in the first box, but because of the convoluted and flawed preferential voting system we ended up with the black, white and blue version which in my view pales by comparison.

The exhaustive procedure was all but hi-jacked by the left-wing twitterati brigade whose Red Peak option was never going to fly, but was designed to abrogate the whole project. A vote for a change looks like support for John Key and there is a section of the public who would do anything to thwart his plans. My ignominious loyalty to the right-of-centre means I will nonetheless opt for the less-than-perfect new flag.

One piece of beauty to which I am beholden however is the Neil Dawson sculpture destined to be placed precariously on Masterton’s Northern approach roundabout. But again, there are detractors. Some don’t like it at all and others like it, but want it tucked away out of sight somewhere in case some demented soul crashes their vehicle into the anchoring poles while admiring its magnificence.

Meanwhile one or two District Councillors are asking for it to be put on hold in case the maintenance of it might prove too much of an encumbrance on the council.

If this sort of attitude was prevalent in Auckland, Fonterra’s head office would be in an old tin shed.

“The key to understanding people is in its art: its writing, painting, sculpture.” - Louis L’Amour

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The welfare of the born and unborn

Abortion was made legal in this country back in 1977. Various restrictions were applied, but using the best available statistics I can find it would seem in the intervening 39 years around 500,000 terminations would have been carried out. This means half a million people never got to tread the earth on what we euphemistically call “Godzone.”

Ronald Reagan reckoned everyone who is for abortion has already been born, but I’m not making judgements here. However it’s worth thinking about how society might have fared had this not happened.

Among the aborted there will have been a number of genius’s; perhaps some highly skilled surgeons, one or two rocket scientists and even at the pinnacle, a newspaper columnist. Most however will have been ordinary good folk who would have worked hard and minded their own business. And then again there will have been criminals, some of them hardened and sadly violent.

Left to emerge unscathed, the babies will have grown into children who would have filled our educational institutes and presumably so too would their offspring. Perhaps Lansdowne, Totara Drive and Harley Street schools would still be around and thriving.

And maybe we wouldn’t have had to bring in immigrants to do all the work. Phil Twyford would be ecstatic if Asians weren’t buying up all the Auckland housing stock and maybe this would have reduced house prices in the Queen city which in turn will have meant that Bill English wouldn’t have had to agonise over the potential financial implications.

And speaking of English, these new-born’s will have been taught the universal language so when you rang Spark or Vodafone you would be able to understand what the receiver of your call was actually saying. (When I left Wairarapa College I could speak fair French, lousy Latin and great Britain.)

It’s possible that the vast majority of them might have fled to the lucky country during those halcyon days when Australia was lucky. But it was unlucky for New Zealanders who found themselves without the safety net of welfare payments. The Labour Government have always fumed over this mean-spirited action, carefully ignoring the fact that it was Herr Clark pontificating from the ninth floor of the Honey Factory in Helengrad who had decided that the reciprocal arrangements with Australia needed to be kerbed.

This is what she said at the time:

“Australia estimates that it pays NZ$1.1 billion in social security to New Zealand citizens living in Australia. There is a vast difference between that and the NZ$170 million which we currently reimburse Australia for. We do not intend to go further down that road. Our spending priorities must be to attend to the needs of New Zealanders who continue to live here in New Zealand. For that reason the new social security agreement between us will cover only cost-sharing for superannuation and payments for people with disabilities. This will represent savings over the next three years of around NZ$100 million to the New Zealand taxpayer. The New Zealand government is pleased with this outcome and we do believe it is a win-win for both countries.”

The dark side of me can’t help but think; did Mr and Mrs Clark senior ever contemplate an abortion?

“Abortions will not let you forget you remember the children you got that you did not get.” - Gwendolyn Brooks 

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