Ugh.
With the Olympics dominating the headlines all last week, there has been very little happening in the political world worth writing about. Or if there has, I’ve been too busy watching the Olympics to take any notice.

Our Prime Minister is most probably hoping that we’re not. Originally she was hoping the Olympics would take the public’s mind of her and her struggling Government. However, every time we sit down to watch the women’s hockey team, we can’t help but be reminded of her. Having said that, let’s hope Helen Clarke and the rest of the team do a lot better than Helen Clark and her team.

It could be much worse for Clark however. Michael Cullen, Marian Hobbs and Tariana Turia had been earlier denied leave to try out for New Zealand’s gymnastics team, on the basis that sticking their feet in their mouths in front of just New Zealand was bad enough, let alone a world-wide audience.

While the Government is currently keeping their mouths shut, the Green MPs are running around like a bunch of unsupervised five-year-olds. We have already witnessed how they preach freedom of expression only to travel to Melbourne and practice the exact opposite. Now they are returning their Spot soft toys back to Telecom because they were, according to their press release, “probably made by young girls in Chinese sweat shops.”

Yes that’s right, “PROBABLY”. They were “probably” made by little Chinese girls working for a few cents an hour. To be as exact as possible, between US15 and 28 cents an hour. With the New Zealand dollar performing the way it is, these girls could take their hard-earned money and buy a mansion and a car down here.

(This is not to trivialise the plight of the sweatshop workers. Indeed, about the only good thing unionists achieved in this country was to help bring an end to this practice. The trade union movement would have earned a positive place in history if only it had disbanded in 1900.)

However, the Greens have absolutely no proof that the toys were made by these unfortunate girls. Instead they have just decided to aim for a little publicity by suggesting that they have been. In doing so they have insulted a company that has done nothing wrong.

Of course this should not really surprise people who have followed the Greens’ progress. This is the party who also are so adamantly opposed to genetic engineering because it is “PROBABLY” bad for you. In all reality, it probably is not. The Greens point is that as they do not know if it is harmful, it should be banned. There should also be a ban on GE testing, the Greens say, meaning we will never find out if they are in fact right or not.

This stance, if adopted by the Government, would result in New Zealand falling behind the rest of the world in the vitally important field of science. Not that the Greens would mind of course, as science has often been an impediment to the weird beliefs of the green movement. In essence, science is to the Greens what economics is to Labour and the Alliance.

Let’s take this to the next logical stage. There are a lot of science graduates from our Universities every year. With the field of genetics closed off, the only place a lot of these people could go to work is overseas. This trend is already happening, with a lot of graduates from all areas moving overseas in search of more prosperous economic conditions.

It is this kind of logic that has to prevail, not the kind presented by Donald, Bradford and co. And it is important that more scrutiny is given to their policies than there is at present. Last week was soft toys, but this week could be something much more serious.

Right, that’s me finished. I was going to go back to watching the Olympics, but I have been told by Rod Donald that we are probably going to win a few more medals, so I think I’ll just read a book instead.

ENDS

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