The Nelson Mail reports:

    The Local Government Commission has approved the draft reorganisation scheme for Nelson and Tasman, paving the way for the two local authorities to merge by the end of the year.

    The new council, to be called Nelson Tasman District Council, would have a mayor and 16 members. All staff of both councils, apart from the chief executives, would transfer to the new council, to be headquartered in Richmond.

It’s good to see local authorities in Nelson and Tasman being pro-active about how to improve local government in their area. I wish our politicians in Wellington would do the same.

The Dom Post reports from earlier this week:

    Wellington’s smaller cities could “wither away and die” if councils in the region are not restructured.

    The warning comes from a group who have launched a website encouraging debate on local government amalgamation in the Wellington region.

    The Shape the Future website was launched in response to a lack of action by politicians.

    The aim of the campaign was to encourage ratepayers to voice their views on the future of local government in the region.

    The website’s founding sponsors are Bob Francis, the former mayor of Masterton and current chairman of the Wairarapa District Health Board, Porirua city councillor Ken Douglas, Wellington accountant John Shewan, community sector representative and Owhiro Bay resident Vivien Maidaborn and Paraparaumu company director Norrey Simmons.

    Mr Douglas, who has been a councillor in Porirua since 1998, said the current debate on whether councils in the region should be consumed by a super-city had missed the point.

    Instead, discussion should be about purpose not structure.

    “I’m supporting this approach about the need for rationalisation because if we don’t then places like Porirua will essentially just wither away and die.”

I’m with Ken Douglas on this issue. In fact I’ve gone to the Shape The Future website and signed up as a supporter. I note other supporters include the Mayor of Porirua Nick Leggett, former Labour Minister Steve Maharey, NZer of the Year Sir Paul Callaghan so it is a diverse group of supporters politically. I encourage readers who support change, signing up as supporters and engaging on what that change should be.

Ken Douglas is right to say we should focus on purpose or functions, not structure. The structure should follow.

My thinking is:

• We should define what functions are best provided regionally – water, tourism, transport etc are obvious inclusions but there are more. Let’s debate them.
• Then we should state that all other functions should be decided or provided at a local level (not necessairly the same boundaries as current) – community facilities
• After we have worked out functions, then you look at structure issues such as whether the regional body and the local bodies should be seperate entities as at present, or part of one overall Council (as in Auckland). I think people would be keen to get details about how much money is spent on our nine current Councils communicating and liasing with each other, plus enforcing rules and even prosecuting each other.
• Then we would also look at where boundaries should be at the local level. If for example we decided that we should have one entity with a regional council and several community councils, then you might have three community councils covering the area of the current Wellington City. One for the CBD and neighbouring suburbs. One for the South-Eastern suburbs and one for the North-Western suburbs.

Many of the Mayors and current Councillors (not all) see any change as a threat to their tenure. That is why we should not leave the debate to them. That’s why I’m supporting the debate.

InternetNZ CEO Vikram Kumar has a good blog post on how you can make money from zero priced products. He notes:

Accepting some people won’t pay doesn’t mean they can’t make money. Instead, they need to come up with innovative answers to the question, “How do we give people what, when, and how they want our products at a zero price?”

The answers are there but it takes effort, attention, and good ideas. Let’s take an example from another industry, the software industry.

Zero cost software

How do you make money from software without charging anything for it? It’s not simple but several models exist. For example, there’s the upgrade or “freemium” model (charge for extra features or functionality); the services model (charge for allied services, e.g. design or support or tools); the donation or funded model (customer pays what they can or want to, before or after the software is developed); the loss-leader model (gain popularity to sell other software); the advertising model (money made from advertisers); etc.

How can this be applied? Just ask Justin Bieber how he got his break. Or, read this great article in The Guardian about Gorillaz as well as the one in GigaOM where author Neil Gaiman talks about how he is selling more books in countries where his books are pirated.

The traditional business model of Hollywood is based on the 1970s, not the 2010s. It will take time, but eventually they will change.

Megan Levy reports at Stuff:

    A mother who died while giving birth to her daughter at her Melbourne home was a strong advocate for home-births, declaring in a government submission that she would be have no choice but to have an unassisted birth at home if midwives were not legally protected.

    Online tributes have been pouring in for Caroline Lovell, who died after giving birth to her second daughter Zahra at her home in Watsonia on Monday last week.

    The 36-year-old was rushed to The Austin Hospital in cardiac arrest at 10.30am, but died in hospital the following day, a report in this morning’s Herald Sun revealed. A private midwife is believed to have been assisting her during the home-birth.

Some may see me having an opinion on homebirths is like me having an opinion on hair styles!

I do tend to agree with the saying that if men had to give birth, everyone would be an only child.

Having said that, my gut reaction is that is I had to give birth, I’d want to be in a place where if things don’t go according to plan, you immediately have nearby the resources needed to ensure a safe delivery.

The death of Ms Lovell is a reminder that while giving birth is a natural process, and is not a sickness or an illness (which is why some argue should not be done in hospital), it is a process where complications can arise very quickly. While I respect those who disagree, I place more of a premium on safety over ideology.

Of course at the end of the day, I’m never going to be the person deciding.

An insightful column by Vernon Small:

    Which brings us back to the current stand-off.

    Yes, it’s about asset sales, the Treaty and the Government’s poor timing in the week leading up to Waitangi Day.

    But it is also, and mainly, about the Maori Party’s positioning.

    Goaded by Mr Harawira, and needing to deny it is National’s poodle, the party has come out swinging – and not for the first time in recent days. …

    Well, last year the Maori Party argued it needed to be at the table with National to be effective.

    But Labour, Mana, the Greens and NZ First feasted on its votes, despite its public stand over Auckland council seats and the foreshore law.

    Mr Key has shown the way forward in the current stoush; a clause that makes the Crown’s Treaty obligations clear while leaving private investors out of the mix.

    It remains to be seen whether the Maori Party will reluctantly claim that deal as a partial victory or continue to pound the table.

    However, the appearance of disunity is not necessarily instability – though it is no surprise Labour is talking that up.

    It will likely take a lot more goading from Mr Harawira before Dr Sharples and Mrs Turia finally push back their chairs and leave.

Things would be much more difficult if National had one fewer seat, and could not govern without the Maori Party. National should hope that its MPs in marginal seats are all in good health!

The Social Service Providers Aotearoa Inc. have organised a series of seminars on the Green Paper.

The Wellingtom seminar is tomorrow Thursday 2 February from 10.30 am to 4.30 pm at St Johns in the City church on Willis Street. Speakers include:

•  Mai Chen, ChenPalmer, Privacy Act: Barrier or Opportunity to Minimise Harm to Vulnerable Children?
• Dr Tony Burton, Principal Advisor, Treasury, Addressing the funding barriers to providing effective services for vulnerable children.
• Dr Ben Mathews, School of Law, Queensland University of Technology, Does the protection of vulnerable children require a system of mandatory reporting of abuse/neglect?
• Dr Nicola Atwool, Senior Lecturer, Dept of Sociology, >>Gender and Social Work, University of Otago, Does the Green Paper for Vulnerable Children reflect best practice and robust research?

Looks a very interesting line up of speakers and topics. Only $20 at attend. You can e-mail [email protected] to register.

I’m going to do a series of graphs looking at elections over time. This one I find quite good as it shows simply the change for National, Labour and the minor parties combined.

As one can see National has had quite an extraordinary run for the last three elections, growing their vote three times in a row. Something not really done before.

Labour’s drop in 2011 was in fact slightly smaller than their 2008 drop. Together though they are slightly larger than the combined National losses in 1999 and 2002.

I won’t dwell much on the third parties, as a seperate graph on them is coming. However you see how much 2005 was very bad for them.

In my blog at Stuff I blog:

I doubt I was the only person upset and angered at the story of the 17-year-old girl in Wellington whose parents tricked her into a forced marriage. She was imprisoned at home for several months, until she escaped.

Her parents have gone back to Pakistan, but the father is reported to have said he would kill her if he saw her again.

Sadly this can’t just be dismissed as hyperbole. Canada has just had a conclusion to a trial in which a father, with help from other family members, killed his three daughters and one of his wives. This was a so-called “honour” killing. Of course honour had nothing to so with it. Secret wiretaps revealed the father saying “God curse their generation, they were filthy and rotten children,” and “To hell with them and their boyfriends, may the devil s**t on their graves.”

The 17-year-old girl in Wellington may be lucky she escaped such a fate. As New Zealanders, we need to ask ourselves what we can do to minimise this occuring in New Zealand.

You can comment over at Stuff on my thoughts on how we can minimise this.

Stuff reports:

Protesters continue to vow to return to Wellington’s Civic Square after the Occupy Wellington camp was removed this morning.

About 20 police officers and 25 security guards turned up at 6.30am to issue eviction notices.

The group of about 20 people left without incident, except for swearing at reporters and throwing an egg at a journalist.

However, late this morning a protester put up a tent in defiance of an order from the Wellington City Council.

The man put up his tent about 10.30am as television camera crews looked on. It was been left there but has blown over.

How symbolic.

Are there any left now? Maybe they should just set up one national occupy site – perhaps in Invercargill.

Danya Levy at Stuff reports:

The Government is being accused of selling Treaty rights to the highest bidder following suggestions Treaty protections will not be included in new legislation to enact the partial sale of state-owned assets.

Nationwide hui begin next week for the Government to consult Maori on its plans to sell up to 49 per cent of four state-owned energy companies and further reduce its shareholding of Air New Zealand.

The Government is required to pass legislation to remove the four energy companies from the State-Owned Enterprises Act to proceed with the sales.

If a company is no longer an SOE, then its obligations are the same as any other company, such as Air New Zealand.

But in all the fuss about asset sales and Maori, I like this investigation by Cactus Kate:

Ngai Tgahu know all about asset sales so should be supporting National’s privatisation programme. Here are just two recent examples of Maori more than happy to flog off their assets to foreigners who need OIO approvals.

In 2010 they sold 1348 hectares in Kaikoura to an American couple for 7.5 million dollars. They paid 8 million dollars so made a $500,000 loss.

In 2011 they sold 18,000 hectares of forest to a Swiss owned family company for 22.9 million dollars.

So Ngai Tahu sold twice as much land as the Crafar farms. Does Labour and the Maori Party think they should have not been allowed to do so?

UPDATE: The Maori Party are saying they may quit the Government if there is no treaty clause in the legislation removing the companies from the SOE schedule. This ratchets up the pressure on the Government considerably, but it is worth noting the Government can govern without Maori Party support.

If the Maori Party walk over this, they’ll presumably lose the constitutional review, their portfolios, and I imagine Whanua Ora. The second term was always going to be more challenging for National and the Maori Party – but I guess John Key was hoping flare ups would not occur quite so quickly.

The Maori Party do need to be careful about threatening to walk over an issue. That’s a card you can play only once or twice in a term. If you try to play it too often, then it loses its effectiveness and even backfires.

Radio NZ reports:

The Labour Party says it might come as a revelation to some that not all Maori are opposed to mining and oil drilling.

Maori Economic Development spokesperson Shane Jones says there is a fossilised view that Maori aren’t interested or capable of making pragmatic decisions.

While he acknowledges there are been pockets of resistance, Mr Jones says there’s a variety of views – not a monolithic one.

He says oil is the country’s most costly import – a resource within Aotearoa.

What refreshing views from a Labour spokesperson. It would be great to see Labour come out with a policy supporting more use of our natural resources.

Tim Watkin has a thoughtful piece at Pundit on the Crafar decision:

Looking at the OIO decision, it’s interesting to note that the deal literally ticks nearly all the boxes; the only fail is its ability to bring new skills and technology to New Zealand. That’s hardly surprising, given our farmers are as good as any in the world.

It’s very clear this was not a marginal call.

The OIO writes it’s also excited by the fact SPGL has “very strong contacts with the supermarket industry” in China, will create two new NZ brands (Nature Pure and Pure 100) and is promising to spend $100m over the next five years promoting New Zealand dairy in Asia.

I actually regard the effective partnership between Landcorp and SPGL as exciting. They have the capital and contacts, and Landcorp has the expertise. This deal could have major opportunities down the road.

What of the OIO’s point about “tacit anti-Chinese bias”, you ask? This sale deserves to be a major news story because of the large amount of land lost to offshore ownership in one go. But let’s be honest, the fact the sale is going to China has ratcheted up the concern and public debate.

Some of that concern is reasonable – we can’t buy land there, China is in the process of buying vast natural resources around the world, and such purchases are made in its national interests, which aren’t necessarily ours. But some of the concern is out-and-out racism.

Last year a German firm got approval to buy 3300 hectares in Southland. Remember the public debate about that deal? No, me neither.

Did anyone complain when Harvard bought our biggest forest? Or when Britons bought up 22,000 hectares of farmland over the past two years?

Of course not all of the opposition to the sale is xenophobic or racist. There are some people who really think that it makes good economic sense to not allow even one hectare of land to be owned by an Australian or Brit. They’re wrong, but they’re consistent.

But the nationality of the buyers was a factor in this case, for many. The examples Tim gives about the German purchase, for example, is a good one.

Labour leader David Shearer in opposing the sale said this week:

“If there is going to be foreign ownership then we have to make sure New Zealanders have a real interest in it and get real value from it. Now I don’t think that this sale here gives us any return.”

The details of this deal make that a hard argument to sustain; there are clearly significant returns to New Zealand. It’s hard to imagine how, under current law, New Zealand could have done better out of this deal. The original New Zealand bidders couldn’t have offered the strategic links into Asia and, I’m sorry, I simply refuse to take seriously a Michael Fay-led anything as a champion of retaining New Zealand assets in local ownership.

The strategic links into Asia are potentially very good for New Zealand.

Having said all that, why am I still uneasy about this sale? Because ownership matters. The owner is boss, keeps the profits, controls the asset. One sale on its own isn’t the end of the world, but added together we’ve sold 170,000ha of farm land in the six years from July 2005 to May 2011, according to this very good piece in Farmers Weekly.

That rises to two percent of our farmland in the past decade, according to RNZ.

If we keep that up over the next century, that’s 20 percent gone.

And I think there is a valid debate about whether there should be some sort of limit on the total amount of land owned by foreign interests. That is preferable to railing against individual deals which in fact make good economic sense.

However I would make the point that any limit should look at more than just sales. Some of the land sold to foreign owners has been resold back to NZ owners. And some of the land sold to foreign owners was already owned by different foreign owners. What would be useful is a time series showing total foreign ownership at annual intervals. I’m not sure though that such data is easily compiled.

Dalefield School in Carterton has been one of the high profile schools agitating against National Standards. They have claimed:

Dalefield School principal Kevin Jephson said the standards would reward only those pupils “who arrive at school from extremely advantaged backgrounds such as inherited intelligence, emotional security, financial prospects and pro-active parenting”.

And in today’s Wairarapa News we read:

A Wairarapa school will come under special attention from the Ministry of Education after most of its students failed the National Standards benchmark last year.

But Dalefield School principal Kevin Jephson, who voluntarily went public about his school’s results, said the standards were invalid and inappropriate for his school.

Only 11 per cent of Dalefield’s students met the reading standard, 2 per cent the writing standard and 7 per cent the mathematics standard, he said.

One can understand why the principal has been so much against national standards.

Mr Jephson said the primary school sector had known all along the achievement components for National Standards were unrealistic for most primary schoolchildren.

Really? Well later on we read …

But Gail Marshall, principal of Solway Primary School in Masterton, said she had utmost faith in National Standards as a workable system.

The standards were trialled at Solway ahead of being rolled out nationwide.

The 2011 assessment at Solway found 91 per cent of Years 4 to 6 pupils met the reading standard, 87 per cent the writing standard and 82 per cent the mathematics standard.

“What I like about the standards is that it shows very clearly what the kids need, and we can target that. This year we’ll be concentrating on writing and maths and we can target toward that end.”

What an excellent attitude.

Now some of you might be wondering, like me, well Dalefield may be a decile 1 school and Solway a decile 10 school. So I checked.

Dalefield is decile 5 and Solway decile 6. Not a huge difference. Certainly not enough to explain why Solway is a magnitude higher in terms of the national standard.

Having said that, I would not rush to judge Dalefield. Maybe there is some genetic quirk that means all their pupils turned up to their school with inferior skills to those as Solway. Hence I would wait a year or two and see how each school does in lifting achievement over time.

If only 10% of first years at Dalefield can meet the national standard, yet by year six it is say 60%, then that is arguably a better result than a school where say 80% of first years are at the national standard, and they stay at 80% by year six.

The solution to concerns about bad comparisons or league tables, is to have good data easily accessible, such as in Australia. Let parents see how kids at a school do over time, let parents see how schools compare within the same decile etc.

But I think it is a good thing that parents of Dalefield students now know 90% of their kids are not at the national standard. It allows them to have a conversation with the school about how they plan to lift their improvement.

UPDATE: This is interesting. In comparing the two schools, Dalefield’s school roll is 16% Maori. Solway’s is 32% Maori. Solway is the one which has an 80% to 90% achievement rate, compared to under 10% for Dalefield. So that’s one excuse Dalefield can’t use.

They all look so happy and contented together!

Jo McKenzie-McLean at The Press reports:

A Christchurch retail manager who told her employer: “F..k you, I am going”, has been awarded $8000 for unjustifiable dismissal.

Yes, the $8,000 went to the employee not the employer.

The authority’s written findings state that Sullivan’s employer had “seized the opportunity” to be rid of Sullivan after a “troubled” employment relationship, including four warnings the employer says it issued for Sullivan’s abusive conduct and quality of work.

So there were four previous warnings!

“Ms Martin was negative in the way that she approached me, being abrupt. I accept I threw the rosters on the floor. I said I was sick and in my frustration I said: `F..k you, I am going!’ I picked up my bag and left. I left crying and upset.”

By her own admission, she told her boss to get fucked, she threw the rosters on the floor and she stormed out of work, not returning that day. And just because she thought her supervisor was abrupt?

Sullivan did not show up for work the following day, with her employer denying Sullivan’s claims she had been granted a sick day.

So she took a second day off also.

“There was … no raising of concerns, no discussion or real attempt to ascertain Ms Sullivan’s views about what had occurred and therefore no consideration of those views.”

The authority granted her $5053 in compensation for loss of income, and $3000 for humiliation, loss of dignity and injury to feelings.

So the employer ends up $8,000 out of pocket, because they didn’t consider Sullivan’s views enough after she had stormed out, saying “fuck you, I am going”, and after four previous warnings.  You have to feel sorry for the employer.

I’m always in two minds about posting about Great Barrier Island, as I’m worried too many people might start holidaying there, making it harder for me to holiday there. But it really is an iconic part of New Zealand that provide world class beauty, just 30 minutes flying from Auckland.

Myself and three friends stayed at Blind Bay, and you can see the view from the balcony. The weather was so nice, that we were able to drink and play cards out on the balcony until close to midnight. One can never get sick of views like that.

A couple of the locals very kindly took us out fishing over the weekend. This is their dog Max who just loves being out on the water.

Even I managed to catch a couple of fish, including this parrotfish. We also caught lots of snapper, which we had for dinner.

I loved this sight of the dog being towed along in his own boat.

After the fishing, we went to this very remote bay (basically only accessible by boat or a two hour walk) and it really was a piece of paradise. The water was wonderful.

Yum. I can never get enough crayfish. It was a perfect end to a great day out.

Also love the sunset over Blind Bay.

I love living in Wellington, and don’t think I would ever live in Auckland. But if I did, a big plus would be being able to spend more time on the Barrier. The locals are so absolutely friendly, and the scenery so wonderful.

Victoria Robinson at Stuff reports:

Schools might withhold student achievement statistics if the government does not prevent national standards information being used to create league tables, the New Zealand Education Institute says.

All schools must submit their student achievement data based on national standards to the Education Ministry by May 31.

But the NZEI said yesterday some schools might refuse to do so if the government did not prevent the information being used for league tables comparing each schools’ academic achievement.

The Government can not prevent media from seeking school assessment data and reporting it. It’s called living in a free society. The only way this could be prevented was to amend the Official Information Act to exclude school assessment data.

Anyway I have a solution for any school that refuses to submit their student achievement data. No parent should be forced to attend a school which won’t tell parents how well the school is doing, so I’d remove all zoning protection for any school that with-holds assessment data.

This would allow parents to vote with their feet. Any child at that school would automatically be guaranteed entrance into any neighbouring school, if the parents wish to have their children at a school that doesn’t suppress achievement data.

One of the posters (not commenters) at The Standard posted this over the weekend:

As you can see he calls Fran O’Sullivan a traitor, enemy and sell-out who will be shunned and reviled. This is because Fran dared to support the Crafar farm sale. It shows how demented some of the opponents have become. Redlogix of course cowers behind his alias, and would never ever dare to write such stuff under his own name – unlike Fran.

But as you can see, not content with just having Fran labeled a traitor and enemy to be shunned and reviled, a commentor Millsy calls for her to executed, saying “the likes of O’Sullivan, Key, Williamson, and Coleman will find themselves … rewarded for their treachery with a one way trip to the gallows”.

Now Millsy is just a commenter, and this is not the first time he has advocated violence against those whose political views he opposes. I of all people would say you don’t judge a blog on the basis of a comment by a commenter. I mean, after all it is possible they didn’t even see the comment (I read a small proportion of total comments on KB). If they did, surely they would delete it and at least kick him off?

But no, as you can see Red Logix (who is an author, not a commenter) effectively endorses the comment, saying that while it was a marginal call, it is okay because he said “the likes of” and that Millsy is correct in general.

Fran actually had been contributing to the thread (and kudos to Fran for standing up to people who call you a traitor and enemy) and pointed out that Millsy is Brendon Mills (easily found through Google). Now get this – The Standard deleted Fran’s comment, but left up the one effectively calling for her to go to the gallows!

Fran sums it all up nicely, with this tweet from Fran:

The Standard? Internet version of the Ku Klux Klan. Happy to string up people behind web cloak of anonymity.

There is a reason so many of their authors (not all) wear virtual hoods to hide their identities.

A ghastly story at Stuff:

For months, in an ordinary house in a Wellington suburb, a 17-year-old Pakistani was held hostage, trapped in a marriage forced on her by her parents and threatened with death.

The woman, who does not want to be identified, was married in 2010 without her consent or knowledge after her Muslim parents learned she had a Hindu boyfriend and became concerned she was too westernised.

If they think she was too westernised, they should not have moved to New Zealand.

The Wellington teenager refused to go ahead with the marriage, despite months of family threats of deportation and violence.

Then her parents took her to the Internal Affairs Department to sign what they said were visa documents but which she later found were marriage papers.

That night a ceremony was held at her parents’ home. She was told it was an engagement ceremony and, if she did not attend, she would be deported. After the ceremony she said her father told her she was married and was to go to her husband’s house in Newtown with him that night.

“I was crying all day and night. I didn’t want to get married. I don’t think any 17-year-old girl would want to get married.

“I was freaking out. I was still in shock and told the guy not to touch me. He was trying to be forceful to me sexually but, when I warned him about the police, he backed off.”

Smart girl. Smart guy also for backing off, realising we have rape laws.

For two months she was held in a kind of prison with her husband and his family. They would not let her leave the house or use the phone and always supervised her. They demanded she sleep with her new husband and have a baby.

Her own parents visited once a week but barely spoke to her.

She finally did escape, and went to the police and ethnic women’s support organisation Shakti. Her marriage has since been annulled and her parents have gone back to Pakistan.

Before leaving, her father told her he would kill her if he saw her again. “I wanted to die. My dad was saying that to his own daughter, I couldn’t believe it.”

I’m glad the parents have left, as they should be deported if they had not. I also think her “husband’s” family should be checked out. There is no room in New Zealand for people who condone forced marriages.

I don’t think our immigration laws should discriminate on the basis of religion (well except scientologists 🙂 but I do think we need to make very clear to potential immigrants that there are certain aspects of New Zealand culture and laws which are important to New Zealanders such as separation of state and religion, equal rights for women, no forced marriages, democracy, freedom of expression etc etc. And equally the message should go out that if you have a huge problem with any of these things, then you might not want to live here.

I just hope the poor 17 year old girl prospers in New Zealand, despite being abandoned by her family.

The table below lists in order what percentage of people who gave the Greens their party vote, also gave their electorate vote to the Green candidate.

This isn’t split voting, but it is still interesting to look at. Generally a Green candidate has no chance of winning the seat, so a high level of votes for a Green candidate from their own supporters tends to indicate their high personal standing with their own supporters. It also tends to happen more in seats where they are not marginal.

Catherine Delahunty in Coromandel got a very high 72% of Green voters also giving her their electorate vote. Next was Kennedy Graham in Ilam with 58%. Pauline Evans in Northland also did well with 56%.

The six seats where the Green candidate got under 23% of Green party voters voting for them were Palm North, New Plymouth, Ohariu, Auckland Central, Chch East and Waimakariri – all bar one reasonably marginal seats.

AFP reports at the NZ Herald:

An Oklahoma lawmaker has proposed legislation to ban any use of foetuses in food in one of the more bizarre twists in the emotive US battle over abortion.

The bill comes after wild rumors began circulating online and among anti-abortion groups that soft drink giant, Pepsi, was using aborted foetuses in its products.

I always wondered why I preferred Coke to Pepsi. Obviously I don’t like the taste of aborted foetuses!

I wonder if some evil Coke executive was responsible for starting the urban legend. You can just imagine the marketing team brain-storming ideas, and one of them saying “Hey, why don’t we start a rumour that Pepsi uses foetuses in their products”.

The company has denounced the urban legend as completely false.

“PepsiCo does not conduct or fund research that utilises any human tissue or cell lines derived from embryos,” spokesman Peter Land told AFP.

They would say that, wouldn’t they.

Oklahoma state senator Ralph Shortey said he has been researching the issue for about a year and is concerned there are no rules preventing the use of embryonic stem cells or fetal tissue in food and other products.

Oh my God. This is urgent. Imagine all the products out there which may have been using fetal tissue in their products. I mean, does anyone know what really is in a mince pie?

There could be other rules needed also. I’ve been researching the issue for about three minutes and there are also no rules preventing the use of human brain tissue in food products. Shockingly, not a single rule prevents a chef from cutting out his own heart, and including it in a tasty curry.