Hard News: Key Questions
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Not quite on topic, but a question about John Key. Sky Kiwi quotes him as telling Rui Chenggang* - and assuming John Key doesn't speak Chinese, I guess I'm back-translating Sky Kiwi's translation of what Key said:
"If you were a Chinese tourist and you went into a New Zealand supermarket and bought 20 cans of infant formula for your own child to drink, no problem, we welcome you."
And Sky Kiwi comments: "Big Brother Key is so tough! But.... how to get it all back to China?"
And I ask, well, now with these sweet visa deals for the wealth on China Southern and Air NZ and all your drumming up of Chinese business, tourism included, how much formula is going to be left for Kiwi kids who need it?
This current government's attitude towards China is about the only thing I like about them, but geez....
*famous Chinese TV journo/anchor, just in case. No idea how well known he may or may not be outside China.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
how much formula is going to be left for Kiwi kids who need it?
I'd assume the factories can make as much as they can sell. I suspect the only reason to restrict supply is that Fonterra don't want to undermine their Chinese partners, the sale of bulk milk powder being a much bigger business than retail cans of formula.
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
I'd think that exposing a clear analysis of what had being done would result in the supplier losing all its export business, getting the arse sued off it and going bankrupt in fairly short order. Others would probably be chastened into not trying it on again.
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
No Rich, you misunderstand what I was ranting at. There's a huge grey market in imported formula here - Chinese expats and tourists/travellers buying up as much formula as they can in Hong Kong, NZ, Australia, Europe, North America, wherever and sending it back to China to be distributed amongst friends and family or sold on Taobao (i.e. Trade Me à la Chine), to the point where Hong Kong has banned people from taking any more than, I think, 1.8kg of formula out of Hong Kong and there are reports of buying limits, as in "2 cans per customer max' or whatever, in many places worldwide because of Chinese people buying up all the formula they can get for grey market shipment back to China. Thing is, nobody trusts the Chinese dairy companies (which is why Yili and Yashili want to build plants in NZ) or Chinese supermarkets (who knows if what's on the shelf really is imported or not?), but Japanese and Western brands are trusted.
And of course, this "grey market" export from NZ is actually black market, considering NZ law supposedly only allows those registered as dairy exporters with the MPI to export any dairy product by any means, including post or their checked in luggage on a flight.
And then John Bloody Key apparently tells Rui Chenggang that he's totally cool with Chinese tourists buying up all the formula they can get in NZ. Great.
#1 If the supermarket shelves are stripped bare by Chinese people cashing in on John Key's promise, what do Kiwi kids drink?
#2 Is he really encouraging Chinese people to break NZ law by illegally exporting dairy products?
#3 What happens when Chinese people attempting to cash in on his promise run into supermarket buying restrictions or the law? People were pissed off by Hong Kong imposing its infant formula export restriction.So it's not about what the factories can produce, but a combo of how supermarket shelves can be stocked and the sheer imbalance of demand from a population of one point something billion increasingly affluent people extremely (justifiably!) paranoid about the safety of products they feed to their kids both swamping smaller markets and bumping up against the niceties of NZ law.
So if Sky Kiwi was reporting accurately, it was a bloody (typically?) stupid thing for Key to say.
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Rob Stowell, in reply to
paranoid about the safety of products they feed to their kids
Breast-feeding? (Genuine question: does the formula go to babies, or toddlers? Is it in addition to breast-feeding in China or replacing it?)
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Chris Waugh, in reply to
Breast-feeding? (Genuine question: does the formula go to babies, or toddlers? Is it in addition to breast-feeding in China or replacing it?)
All of the above. The dairy companies are really aggressive in marketing their product - and corrupt, paying off hospital stafff to get names and numbers of expectant mums (and yes, that happened to my wife). Plenty still breastfeed, but the marketing plays up on all the fears - is my breast milk enough? what will get my kid the edge in a hypercompetitive society? Major bamboozling with (pseudo-)science, an alphabet soup of chemicals, and often the "100% pure, clean, green, pollution-free New Zealand-sourced milk", and images of smart, healthy, happy, strong, pale-skinned (seriously!) babies.
And you get the full range of purely breastfed till WHO recommended 6 months and breast beyond that to mixture of breast- and bottlefed to purely bottlefed (for all the reasons) from birth, and for all possible reasons, well-informed, poorly-informed and uninformed.
It's kinda stressful being a parent here.
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Ross Mason, in reply to
Major bamboozling with (pseudo-)science, an alphabet soup of chemicals, and often the “100% pure, clean, green, pollution-free New Zealand-sourced milk”, and images of smart, healthy, happy, strong, pale-skinned (seriously!) babies.
And you wonder why there are strict rules on advertising formula here.
We do have a major major moral dilemma that has been around for years but has had been little spoken of. That is, we produce the milk, ship it overseas for others to make into formula. The Dairy Industry have taken the view along the lines of "We only make the guns". Admirable. But is seems that we are now allowing others to come in and make it here, using the Kiwi brand, and we can - again - morally bankrupt ourselves because "we" are not making the stuff.
What are we doing to our future generations? The WHO have very good reasons that convinced a damn big slice of the world to put in rules on advertising of formula.
"lack of breastfeeding—and especially lack of exclusive breastfeeding during the first half-year of life—are important risk factors for infant and childhood morbidity and mortality". In particular, the use of infant formula in less economically developed countries is linked to poorer health outcomes because of the prevalence of unsanitary preparation conditions, including lack of clean water and lack of sanitizing equipment.[
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In case people haven't seen it:
Greens' complaint a 'political stunt': Key"They can go off to the police. It's another political stunt," Mr Key told media in China, where he is leading a business delegation.
"They probably get an issue a week from the Greens. We might just have to expand the police's capability."
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Rich of Observationz, in reply to
#1 If the supermarket shelves are stripped bare by Chinese people cashing in on John Key's promise, what do Kiwi kids drink?
I doubt that will happen. I've worked for a supermarket firm, and while NZ supermarkets ostensibly don't supply non-retail customers, in practice supermarket owners (as in New World/Pak and Save) are only too happy to sell wholesale - if you back a truck up to the loading bay and take a pallet straight from the supplier, they just saved $$ on the costs of conventional selling. There's even options in the software to do just that. If they run low, they can always import some.
#2 Is he really encouraging Chinese people to break NZ law by illegally exporting dairy products?
Well, as a free marketeer he probably thinks those laws are daft but can't be bothered repealing them. Even as a non-believer, I don't quite see why we have laws about what you can export? If Chinese people want to enrich NZ by buying our products retail instead of wholesale, why should we stop them?
#3 What happens when Chinese people attempting to cash in on his promise run into supermarket buying restrictions or the law? People were pissed off by Hong Kong imposing its infant formula export restriction.
Why don't they go to the EU, where there are no export restrictions and the flights are probably cheaper? Is EU milk seen as dodgy also?
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Jarno van der Linden, in reply to
Why don't they go to the EU, where there are no export restrictions and the flights are probably cheaper?
They are. Over the last week there have been several stories in the Dutch news media about Chinese people buying up large amounts of formula from supermarket shelves over there and shipping it to China.
I don't know the origin of the products targeted, but I would not be surprised if it has "Made in NZ" on it. -
(Also, there’s a perfectly good reason we don’t let the GCSB spy on us even if it would be more efficient, and it’s because they are the external spies: no monolith, as a le Carre character would say.)
I suspect somewhere in there is an answer along the lines of "this is a networked system, so NZ spies don't spy on NZers... but Australian spies can and do". Echelon consists of several countries and there's a lot of information sharing going on.
I, personally, do not subscribe to the Keith Locke school of thinking that NZ lives in a totally benign environment in which the only threats to NZ come from our intelligence services’ existence.
I don't either. But it's a leap from that reality to the GCSB and the way it's been set up and run as the solution. There are other possible answers.
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Gee Whizz Bang Noodle - after saving the planet from disaster with the visit to China - I really thought Key was going to announce that Bronagh was going to head the GCSB - and that this was a step up in security from school friend to sweetheart.
This is however, how your civil liberty is eroded, little by little, bit by bit.
http://johnkey.co.nz/archives/1639-PM-announces-next-steps-in-response-to-GCSB-report.html
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Wow. I'm so glad the Mr Key and his mates are protecting us against attack by these guys.
Obviously we need a Top Secret Agency With Special Powers to protect us against petty vandalism to websites and the like. Stupid of me to think that we'd actually be better off if information on that sort of thing was shared to assist the people actually responsible for preventing such activity.
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"Weapons of Mass Destruction" ? Here? In Good 'Ol Enzed? Where? What? The mind boggles. Hmmm...lets see....Maybe someone is collecting sheep knuckle bones and sending them to Gaza for the Palestinian's slings. Maybe the waste Bull Semen is being spread around the water supplies of ....well...anywhere really. Maybe our pure 100% milk is truly dangerous. Did Key read my post on formula? Afterall, it was a baby food factory that the US of A blasted to kingdom come in Sudan wasn't it? Dangerous stuff and we produce masses of it.
Hands up all of you who have visited Al jazerra on the net? You are a "person of interest".
Hang on. We produce the best aluminium in the world. Perfect for "Tube Guns" of mass destruction and much better than those shitty British ones they tried to give..er...sell for oil to Iraq.
What else. Wood. Timber. Think about the energy we are handing to the world. We export logs. LOGS! They burn! They are made from nuclear powered Suns. They are made into flaming torches and for stacking around poles for burning witches. Don't worry, they are stockpiling them for that wee exercise in the not too distant future. We have already started with stonings and prison and mass rape.
Give us a break John Key. You have taken a leaf out of General Colon (sic) Powell's book and are peddling fantasy. He learnt his lesson and has admitted it.
This is classic bullshit to justify the "need" to change the law. Go search for a scruple. You haven't got any.
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Islander, in reply to
This is classic bullshit to justify the “need” to change the law. Go search for a scruple. You haven’t got any.
Indeedy.
Our* leaders*are not so much squirming as engaging in desperate distortion & distraction tactics...Soon, soon, may this selfish lot be shot over the moon - of sanity & a social consiousness&conscience decision into the light of realistic social welfare-
which is - isnt it?
what ANZers are all about?
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Ian Dalziel, in reply to
these guys...
Cybermen!
Dyson with death - Pah!
the big news is Blake's 7 is back,
with a Kiwi at the helm
(fresh from directing Green Lantern ) -
Damn: I grabbed the wrong link about Colin Powell although it was close!!!!
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So if I paraphrase from Key this morning on the radio, foreign people [who the GCSB can already spy on] want to get there hands on New Zealand's Weapons of Mass Destruction technology. To know what these people [the GCSB can already spy on] are doing, the GCSB have to be able to spy on New Zealanders.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
Colon (sic)
That's how it's pronounced.
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Kumara Republic, in reply to
So if I paraphrase from Key this morning on the radio, foreign people [who the GCSB can already spy on] want to get there hands on New Zealand’s Weapons of Mass Destruction technology.
What kind of WMDs exactly? The Paul Holmes CD album?
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David Hood, in reply to
What kind of WMDs exactly?
I am depressed to think they may be talking about the Bruce Simpson DIY Cruise Missile, that could be stopped by pretty much any basic countermeasures.
I hope what they would be talking about is attempts to use a NZ subsidiary of a global defense company to access that companies information (something like Raytheon). But that is hardly "our" WMD technology.
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Steve Barnes, in reply to
Wow. I’m so glad the Mr Key and his mates are protecting us against attack by these guys.
I think he is one of those guys.
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Matthew Poole, in reply to
I hope what they would be talking about is attempts to use a NZ subsidiary of a global defense company to access that companies information (something like Raytheon)
That's a point. Rakon make RF receiver crystals that can be used in missiles.
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Or maybe one of these guys.
Actually "Those Guys" are one.
The hive mind of the far right.
"For the advancement of the Individual, we are the Individual" -
Sacha, in reply to
the GCSB have to be able to spy on New Zealanders.
and for the benefit of foreign citizens, not us. Hmm, didn't he say that would be verboten?
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