100 Percent Pure Bullshit

August 10th, 2013

New Zealand has for more than a decade now been using the slogan "100% Pure" and marketing itself as "clean and green" in a seemingly successful campaign to attract tourists and boost it's trade with the rest of the world and in some cases to even charge a premium on those exports. While many kiwis may already be well aware that these images have little basis in reality, it seems that this week's Fonterra milk powder contamination scandal has opened the window to the rest of the world as well.

An article on Reuters this week talked about the sad state of many of New Zealand's rivers and the fact that New Zealand is the only OECD country that does not produce a regular national report on its environment.

Another editorial published on the Chinese news website Xinhua talked about the poor standard of New Zealand's housing and called the 100 Percent Pure brand a "festering sore".

While this may end up being very damaging to New Zealand's international branding, perhaps the saddest thing about all of this is that the reality goes far beyond the reporting in either of these articles. If they looked just a little bit deeper into New Zealand's clean green image they would find a country with carbon emissions that have increased (since 1990) at a rate second in the world only to Turkey. A country that pulled out of the Kyoto protocol and was the only developed nation not to submit a 2020 emissions reductions target to the United Nations. A country with government that has decimated it's Department of Conservation, is proposing changes to the resource management act that favour business over the environment, has allowed coal mining on the Denniston Plateau land despite the danger to endangered species and is currently looking to massively expand both fracking and deep sea oil and gas drilling despite the scientific evidence linking them directly to global warming. They would find a country that was even awarded a Colossal Fossil award at the 2012 Doha climate change conference and was described as demonstrating "exceptional blindness to scientific and political realities.... in a campaign of extreme selfishness and irresponsibility."

I guess it's no wonder John Key has compared New Zealand's '100% Pure' campaign to McDonalds' 'I'm Loving It' and said it needs to be taken with 'a pinch of salt'.

The problem Key has now is that once people start seeing that there is nothing to back up the slogans and marketing campaigns the dollars he seems to love so much are likely to dry up along with our reputation.

Maybe then it's time to gave up on the marketing campaigns for the moment and start working towards restoring this country to a place that could be honestly marketed to the world as being clean and green without the need for a pinch of salt.

References:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/06/us-newzealand-milk-image-idUSBRE97503H20130806http://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/news/communities/8757926/RMA-changes-a-threat
http://www.rtcc.org/2013/08/06/frustration-grows-at-new-zealands-climate-change-coma/#sthash.HEdiQCVb.dpuf
http://www.forestandbird.org.nz/campaigns/save-the-denniston-plateau-ours-not-mine

A Continuing List of Things That Don't Make A Lot of Sense

December 10th, 2013

John Key is about to lead a small delegation of New Zealand politicians to South Africa for the memorial service of Nelson Mandela. Why that delegation includes two members of the National Government led by Robert Muldoon who labeled Mandela a terrorist and allowed the 1981 Springbok tour to New Zealand and no one from the groups that organised the protests against the tour is beyond me.

When the Prime minister can't even man up about his own feelings towards apartheid at the time of the tour, the question has to be asked whether he is really the person that should be leading the New Zealand delegation in the first place. A response of 'I can't be bothered going into it' tells me he probably is not.

More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/yasmine-ryan/apartheid-new-zealand_b_4411734.html


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August 8th, 2013

Apparently the White House said last Thursday that it is “extremely disappointed” in Russia’s decision to grant National Security Agency leak source Edward Snowden temporary asylum in the country, casting it as a setback in the countries’ bilateral relationship.

That seems perhaps just a touch hypocritical given Russia and the US have no extradition treaty and the fact the the US have routinely refused to extradite people facing much greater charges (including genocide and war crimes) even to countries they do have extradition treaties with... more here

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July 29th, 2013

Judith Collins has always struck me as someone who is pretty sure of herself, which kinda makes her tweet today all the more disturbing: 

"So anti-GSCB hackers have closed down Government MPs websites proving what they could do to people's bank accounts."

Taking two unrelated things and deciding one somehow proves the other is not the best look, particularly when you are the Minister of Justice.

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July 23rd, 2013

John Key conveniently forgets that fossil fuels cause global warming and decides to base New Zealand's economic future on them...

John Key Sells Two Houses and Solves Child Poverty in a Single Blow!

May 29th, 2013

John Key celebrates solving New Zealand's child poverty problem 

with Minister of Labour Simon Bridges

The government announced on Tuesday that it would be Funding a food in Schools program to the tune of 9.5 million dollars over the next 5 years. Unfortunately 1.9 million dollars per year does not go very far when you have 270000 kids* in New Zealand living below the poverty line.
My maths make that about three and a half cents per school day per kid, or around a dollar per classroom and the last time I looked a box of Weet-Bix was about 5 bucks! Of course it doesn't really matter if kids don't eat breakfast on the days when they aren't at schools because you don't really want them learning anything form their deadbeat parents anyway right?

Strangely enough, if the government was looking for a way to fund the program these two state houses in Sandringham sold in March for exactly the same amount the government is planning to spend per year and given that the government owns more than 50,000 state houses, it looks like our child poverty problem is solved for at least the next 25,000 years!

Well done John!

I do have slight questions over the choice of Weet-Bix and milk for breakfast given that milk was recently discovered to be the most common food allergy for kids in New Zealand with wheat not too far behind...


* Figure from the Children’s Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group on Solutions to Child Poverty