Conservative governments all over the world seem to dislike public service broadcasting. George Bush targeted public service broadcasting; John Howard made attacking the Australian Broadcasting Corporation a regular sport, and now Tony Abbott has launched an all-out assault on the ABC, accusing it of being unpatriotic, and threatening to cut its funding.
Looking back, the once common practice of painting lead on to women's faces to lighten their skin seems bizarre. I suspect future generations will also consider it bizarre that for more than a century we routinely put mercury amalgam fillings into our teeth. Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal - more toxic than lead and arsenic. It's also a potent neurotoxin and cell toxin, and even minute amounts of mercury pose a significant risk to our nervous, respiratory and immune systems.
I'm delighted that Labour MP Shane Jones has shone the spotlight on supermarket tactics in New Zealand. And I'm pleased, too, that the Minister of Commerce, Craig Foss, has raised it with the Commerce Commission, as there's really no other way of establishing if the claims are true, as trading relations between supermarkets and their suppliers are intensely secretive, and suppliers are unwilling to blow the whistle for fear of losing their business and access to the marketplace.
My heart sank when I heard about Fonterra's idea to reduce the dairy industry's impact on our environment. Fonterra has come up with a strategy to make the industry more sustainable, and included it in a 10-year growth plan it has submitted to the Government.
I was somewhat startled to read a claim by our chief scientist, Sir Peter Gluckman, that antibiotic use in agriculture in New Zealand is low compared with other countries. Sir Peter was responding to suggestions that we need to drastically reduce our use of antibiotics in the face of the growing threat of superbugs that are resistant to all antibiotics.
I wonder how long it will be before our Government removes a completely unnecessary, artificial, industrial product from our food supply that is a powerful promoter of heart disease. Most doctors and public health professionals agree that artificially produced trans fats, still widely used in food, increase our risk of coronary heart disease. Like saturated fats, trans fats raise our levels of "bad" cholesterol. But they also lower our "good" cholesterol that protects against heart disease, and that's why they are considered to be worse than saturated fats for our health.
Most people will welcome Grey Power's call for an Aged Care Commissioner to tackle the rising incidence of financial abuse of vulnerable older Kiwis. This is a serious and growing problem. But why confine the role of an Aged Care Commissioner to investigating financial abuse among the elderly?
