Stuff reports:

Both ACT and National hold the position that 14 per cent of councillors are already Māori, which is equal to the proportion of the general population.

However, Jackson says, “95 per cent of them would not be advocating a Māori view’’.

“You advocate a Māori view, you forget about getting up on the council.

“Seymour is a classic example of absolutely being Māori, like Simon Bridges is, but neither of them ever advocate Māori positions, so they’re a total waste of bloody time,’’ Jackson told Newsroom.

This is very telling.

First of all there is no such thing as “a Māori view” as there is a diversity of views with Maoridom, just as there is within all cultures and races.

So what Willie really means is that unless you agree with his personal view of what is a Maori view, then you’re not a real Maori.

In response to Jackson’s comments that he was a “total waste of bloody time” on Māori kaupapa, Seymour says that’s a perfect example of why you shouldn’t “start classing humans by their race”.

“Māori don’t have to have a particular ideology,” he told Newsroom.

It was Seymour who advocated for and got charter schools across the line under a previous National-led government – Jackson benefited from that policy after helping to set up one of the Auckland-based Māori schools.

The Labour Party subsequently ended the policy.

“Willie Jackson was happy to be a sponsor and receive money under ACT party policy. I’d love Willie to tell us if that was a Māori position or not,” Seymour said.

Exactly.

Piers Morgan doesn’t hold back:

Here we had the Duke and Duchess of Privacy flinging out the filthy family laundry for the delectation of tens of millions of people all over the world, whilst simultaneously bleating about press intrusion.

They moaned about the terrible pain of their royal titles but were also outraged their son Archie wasn’t allowed to be a Prince.

They told of their constant trauma from nasty newspaper stories, but repeatedly insisted they never read any of them.

They claimed they were forced to sign gazillion-dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify because Prince Charles cut off their allowance, despite Harry inheriting millions from his late mother Princess Diana and having his entire life bankrolled by the Royal Family.

And so, it went nauseatingly on.

In the middle of a pandemic that has already taken over 2.5 million lives, a staggeringly rich and entitled couple living in a $14 million sun-kissed California mansion wanted us all to know that THEY are the real victims around here.

Meghan even compared her former life living in a palace to the crippling freedom-robbing existence of coronavirus lockdowns, which must have sounded so empathetic to large families living at the top of tower blocks with three kids they’re trying to home-school and no job to pay for food.

‘I couldn’t even meet my friends for lunch!’ wailed the Duchess of Delusion, who flew to New York for a $500,000 baby shower with all her new-found celebrity pals, then flew back to London like any good eco-warrior on George Clooney’s carbon footprint guzzling private jet.

The sense of entitlement was so strong. Demanding their children be HRHs when the children of other siblings of monarchs (or heirs) are not, such as Princess Margaret, Princess Anne and Prince Edward.

Complaining they lost the financial support of the Royal Family, after they decided to pull out of being working royals.

‘Nobody told me how to curtsy or sing the British national anthem,’ wailed a 39-year-old woman, married to someone who can probably help with both.

Heh.

In terms of the claim that got lots of attention about concern over the colour of her children, this article notes that Markle and Harry contradicted each other over when the alleged conversation happened.

The massive change in behaviour and attitudes by Prince Harry used to baffle me, until I listened to a US podcast about a domestic violence survivor. She was a very senior executive, but her partner manipulated her but by bit to isolate her from all her friends and family, so that the only person she still had a strong relationship was him. And then he got her to move away to another city.

Note I am not suggesting Markle is physically abusive in any way, but that what she has done with Harry is pretty textbook psychological manipulation.

Not that at the end of the day I care that greatly. I like the UK Royal Family as a British institution but I strongly support NZ becoming a Republic. Then their antics will matter even less to us.

Meet Michael Parker. He had an ex-girlfriend. This is what he did to her:

• Got angry as she wouldn’t do his washing
• Dragged her to bed by her hair
• Stomped on her head
• Rubbed cat faeces into her face and hair
• Bound her hands with tape
• violated her with a bottle of mayonnaise
• Kept the bottle in place with more tape
• Forced a ball into her mouth and wrapped tape around her head
• Poured water over her to simulate drowning
• Tied an extension cord around her neck to a door handle
• Pushed a pen deep into her ear
• Threw a needle with syringe at her
• Burnt her buttocks, legs and arm with a butane gas torch
• Told her he was going to eat her skin

She probably only survived as she escaped. Sadly she is thought to have killed herself since.

He was sentenced to nine years in jail for this vicious torture and assault. Thanks to the three strikes law he is ineligible for parole. Otherwise he could have a non-parole period as short as just three years.

Now you might say perhaps this was a one off. He was just having a bad day, and he should keep parole eligibility as he might not offend in future.

Well he has 48 previous convictions including threatening to kill, assault and unlawful sexual connection. I think it is safe to say he is going to keep on offending.

And here is were three strikes gets even better. The next time he does something like this he won’t get nine years with parole eligibility in three years. He won’t get nine years. He’ll get the maximum sentence of 20 years.

But when Labour repeal this law, he will go back to getting a series of shorter sentences with parole eligibility.

Remember this animal and his poor victim, when Labour repeal the three strikes law.

Stuff reports:

The Ministry of Health plans to ramp up surveillance testing for Covid-19 by hiring a private company to swab the saliva of border workers.

Director-General of Health Dr Ashley Bloomfield on Thursday said the ministry wanted to use saliva tests for asymptomatic surveillance testing of border workers, likely swabbing twice a week on top of the routine use of nasal swabs.

Saliva testing for Covid-19 has yet to be substantially adopted in New Zealand, despite its use in countries like Australia and the United States.

A Government-appointed review in September said “saliva testing as a complementary methodology should be introduced as soon as possible”, and the ministry was in the early stages of a trial by February.

It shouldn’t have taken six months for this modest step.

Two universities in the US have managed to stay open by doing daily saliva testing of all staff and students.

You can get a result from a saliva test in around 90 minutes.

I’m told that if you did saliva testing in MIQ every day, then seven days of testing would give you just as much confidence about locating someone with Covid-19 as doing nasal swabs on Day 3 and 12. This means you could half the time people spent in MIQ which would double capacity.

The Stuff headline:

Gender bias in medicine still putting women’s health at risk

And the intro:

Mentally, physically and biologically, men and women are simply not built the same way. It sounds obvious, but we have only really begun to understand why.

These differences have not been reflected accurately in the field of medicine. Women’s health has too often been considered a niche area — even though it involves roughly 50 per cent of the world’s population.

What we do know is that being female puts us at higher risk of some of the most challenging conditions. Autoimmune diseases, for example, affect approximately 8 per cent of the global population, but 78 per cent of those affected are women.

Females are three times more likely than males to develop rheumatoid arthritis and four times more likely to be diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, an autoimmune disease that attacks the central nervous system.

This is al true and I’m all for more research into arthritis and MS.

But all we ever see are articles on female inequality, even in areas where in fact men have far worse outcomes. Overall male health outcomes are:

• Seven times more likely to commit suicide
• Six times more likely to be subject to a mental health compulsory treatment order
• Seven times more likely to be a mental health special patient
• 113% more likely to be a hazardous drinker
• 67% more likely to drink drive
• Twice as likely to be a user of hard drugs
• 10% more likely to get cancer
• 74% more likely to have coronary heart disease
• 31% more likely to have a stroke
• 270% more likely to have gout
• 11% more likely to have diabetes
• Ten times more likely to have HIV/AIDs
• Four years shorter life expectancy
• 24% more likely to be a smoker
• 11% more likely to be obese
• 28% more likely to have high blood pressure
• 33% more likely to have high cholesterol
• 46% more likely to have an intellectual disability
• 22% more likely to be hearing impaired

Would be nice to have some focus on these also.

The Herald reports:

Newstalk ZB breakfast host Mike Hosking says the Prime Minister is “running for the hills” and lacks a backbone after Jacinda Ardern cancelled her regular weekly interview with him.

Instead, Ardern says she and and other ministers will now appear on the country’s top-performing commercial radio show “as and when issues arise”.

Hosking said Ardern was “running for the hills” and the Government was “over being held to account”.

“She no longer wants to be on this programme each week. The somewhat tragic conclusion that is drawn is the questions she gets, the demand for a level of accountability … [is] a little bit tough,” Hosking told listeners this morning.

“They are just over being held to account.

“Without being too unkind to some of the other players in this market, the reality is the Prime Minister enjoys a more cordial and more compliant relationship with them. The questions are more softball, she favours a more benign pitch where the delivery can be dispatched to the boundary more readily with no obvious chance of an appeal,” he said.

PMs have been doing regular slots on the ZB morning show since 1987 when it was David Lange and Paul Holmes.

The Government has obviously decided to focus on doing Facebook Live broadcasts where no one can actually ask questions, rather than do shows where a host will vigorously question you.

Stuff reports:

The number of cultural reports and their cost to taxpayers has sky-rocketed, with mixed views on whether they are a good use of more than $3 million that could have been spent on rehabilitation rather than report writing.

Figures provided under the Official Information Act show the number of cultural reports invoiced to the Ministry of Justice shot up from 346 in 2019 to 1557 in 2020. The cost to the ministry rose from $639,311 in 2019 to $3,299,373 last year.

That’s $2,200 per report and I can almost guarantee you 90% of them are identical boiler plate templates with a small amount of customisation.

“But why are we as a nation spending $3 million a year on these reports, when it would be better spent on the prisoners and rehabilitation?”

Much of what is covered in S27 reports was and is still covered in pre-sentence reports, Money said.

“Anyone who has been a regular attendee of court over the years knows full well that judges have always considered mitigating factors such as those outlined in these reports, and have usually given a 15 to 20 per cent discount to the end sentence,” she said.

“If the system was functioning properly – and I think it was – we would be able to look at all of these things without spending exorbitant sums on S27 reports. And we’d do it for both sides, so the judge understood the effect on the survivor and their family and what rehabilitation might look like for them,” she said

“It’s hard not to be cynical about this and see it as a money-making exercise for some people. I know of some people who spend hours with whānau and write good, thorough reports for free. But others really are just ‘cut and paste’ and easy money.

“From what I see, the end result is the same with or without a cultural report,” Money said.

I can only agree that we should spend more money on rehabilitation and less money on report writing.

MSN reports:

 Venezuela said it will introduce new large-denomination bolivar notes as hyperinflation renders most bills worthless, forcing citizens to turn to the U.S. dollar for everyday transactions.

The country’s central bank posted a statement on its website Friday saying it would begin circulating the new 200,000, 500,000 and 1,000,000 bills to “fulfill the current economy’s requirements” without providing further details. The 1,000,000 note — the largest in the nation’s history — is worth only $0.53 cents.

What great news for Venezuela. Their socialist economy has ked to every single citizen now being a millionairre.

As Venezuela’s economy shrank for a seventh straight year in 2020

I recall the Greens spent years railing against economic growth. So here’s what you get without it.

TVNZ report:

Two cases linked to the recent Valentines Day outbreak broke the rules and went to work, despite being told to stay home. And an unusual pairing – the National Party and the Greens – both believe it is proof more support is needed.

National Party leader Judith Collins has been pondering on whether there is enough financial support available to those ordered to stay home.

Her party is now calling on the Government to pay 100 per cent of a person’s wages for two weeks if they have been told to self-isolate.

“The idea really is to make it easier for people to do the right thing and recognising that a lot of New Zealanders are living week-to-week off their wages and they don’t really have any spare cash to get them through.”

This is common sense. If the Government orders you not to go to work, then the Government should pay your wages for that period you are self-isolating.

Fulltime workers who need to self-isolate are eligible for almost $1200 and part-time workers $700 as a lump sum for a two-week period, paid directly to employers.

$1,200 is $15 per hour so Labour is saying that if you are forced to stay home and not work, they won’t even pay you the minimum wage, let alone a living wage, let alone your actual wage!

Stuff reports:

Former high-ranking National MP Jami-Lee Ross is behind a company planning to sell a nutritional supplement claiming to protect users from electromagnetic radiation.

They work also with a 100% guarantee. Not a single person who has taken the supplement has died of 5G poisoning.

The supplement, called Praesidium, was developed by Dr Marco Ruggiero, an Italian microbiologist known for promoting pseudoscientific treatments. His other products include a probiotic yoghurt said to treat a range of conditions including autism and AIDS, and a pill purported to reverse ageing and “extend life to unimagined lengths”.

I’d be keen for the yoghurt, but only if it is strawberry flavoured.

On an associated website called Natural Solutions, the clinic sells a range of products, several of which are linked to Ruggiero. They include a course of probiotic yoghurt that cost $695

Less keen now.

In February we replaced our 2007 Honda Civic for a 2016 30G Nissan Leaf. It is a fully electric car.

I’ll be honest and say financial motives were more of an incentive that the environmental motive. But both were factors.

The reason the electric car is so much cheaper to run than a petrol car is because petrol cars pay petrol tax and electric cars are currently exempt from road user charges. This won’t last forever, but I doubt they will bring in charging until a much higher proportion of vehicles are electric. So buying now rather than in five years makes financial sense.

If you travel 20,000 kms a year (suburban commuter according to EECA) a typical petrol car will cost $4,480 in fuel.

The Nissan Leaf will do around 6 km per kWh. So 20,000 kms is 3333 kWh and an average cost at 15c is $500. If you get night rates, even lower.

On top of that the Nissan Leaf engine is much simpler, and servicing costs tend to be significantly lower also.

So financially the higher purchase price should be compensated for after a few years of lower running costs.

In terms of driving it, I find it great. I love not having a noisy engine. In fact the hardest part of driving it is working out if the car is actually turned on or not, as it is so quiet. Accelerates and handles well. Possibly need a slightly firmer touch on the brake.

For a small fee, the inhouse Japanese system can be modified to English and include Apple Carplay, which is excellent.

Charging is a lot less hassle than I thought it would be. It is literally as simple as push a button and plug it into a wall socket.

We still have a second car, which we use for longer trips as you don’t want to tell young kids they have to wait 20 minutes while we get a fast charge. But for 95% of our activities, the Leaf is working well. For a one car family, it could be a challenging purchase, but for a two car family we find it is working well.

Battery degradation was my big concern before purchasing but there’s a lot you can do to slow this. The big lessons are:

• Avoid fast charges unless essential. The overnight charge at home is best
• Only charge the car when the remaining range is not enough for your next day’s activities. I will try and charge it only when it is at 30 km or less.
• Using economy mode can extend range significantly
• Turning off the air conditioning and opening the window can give you an extra 7 km or so per charge
• As the battery degrades you don’t need to replace the entire battery but can just replace individual cells

Our battery State Of Health was 90% when we brought the car which is pretty good. That means the maximum range should be 160 km rather than 180 km. But I’ve actually found we are still sometimes getting 180 kms off a single charge.

So I’m an electric car convert. I like having a gauge that tells you kms of range left rather than an fuel indicator that is very approximate. They are undoubtedly going to be the main cars around in a couple of decades, or less. Especially as the technology for batteries will only get better, and the costs will come down.

The recent Trends in International Mathematics and Science study results for New Zealand are a two-pronged problem. New Zealand students being the worst placed among English speaking nations is problematic for both their employment futures and also their ability to be an effective actor in the modern economy. The second problem is that those results will have a huge and ongoing effect attracting international students to this country. If New Zealand is seen to be the worst English speaking STEM nation it will affect both the quality and quantity of students who come here – and have a major impact on schools and Universities in terms of funds. That again will reinforce the negative cycle for domestic students. We need to do things that are urgent, effective and internationally credible/visible.

There are three keys even before the need for the Royal Society panel appointed by the Ministry look at the complexities of classroom practice.

Firstly, as a society we need to massively reinforce the role of parents as first teachers. Aspects like – the reading of many books to children, increasing the amount of conversation between the humans in the house, and significant use of positive language for effort children put in. In the home the subjects of Maths and Science also need to be supported and spoken of well. Many parents imply that if they were “useless” at Maths and couldn’t see the point that the children will follow suit. Parents need to learn with the child and speak of possibilities and progress. All parents should also consider how much screen time their child engages in.

Secondly; every teacher from Year 1 – 8 should have at least NCEA Level 2 Maths and NCEA Level 1 Science. If you don’t have proficiency in those subjects, even when teaching the youngest school students, you do not know how to set up the foundations for effective learning. We have a life-long qualifications structure. Those teachers without those levels could be required to get them within three years.

I enjoyed Maths as a student up until thirteen years of age. All of my teachers had assumed that ability was intuitive and those in my stream were taught very little of method with no emphasis on being rigorous. My attitude was also poor. By Year 13 I had quit the subject so chose what I hoped would be a descriptive degree major – Economics. My despair and desperation at the level of statistics, calculus and algebra drove me to go right back to the beginning of Maths learning and build a new foundation brick by brick. I therefore ensured an “aha” type understanding and ability to apply concepts up to the needed level.

Therefore, the third intervention is that if you are a student of the subject (or guiding one at all levels) there is a very trusted method that works and makes the subject much easier than many currently experience it.

1. Be well organized for every school day. Sleep well. Eat breakfast. Have all books and equipment you need for school. Dress well. Start the day with a great attitude.

2. Be positive towards the subject and teacher regardless of the approach of others.

3. Pay MASSIVE attention in every class. Make good notes. When you don’t understand – ask questions (during or after class). FOCUS is everything!

4. Take all of your books home each night and, with pencil in hand, review the lesson for the day. Practice the hardest problems until you go – “uh ha!”

5. Once a week write summary/study notes for the past week and practice some more.

6. Always do your set homework.

7. Always aim for excellence/100%! This doesn’t mean getting things right first time. It involves seeking help, correcting, doing it again, and again. When each level gets MASTERED move onto the next one.

If students follow this process then what they are learning will be increasingly locked in. When they get towards exams/assessments they will know things well. Many children consider themselves “bad at Maths” but genius is about effort!  

Alwyn Poole

Villa Education Trust (NZ)

New Plymouth Mayor Neil Holdom writes:

And so we now turn to Wellington, where Andy Foster, a centre-right career local government politician, was elected mayor of a council with an established Labour-Green voting bloc.​

I’d describe Foster as more centre than center-right.

Rumour has it that, within days of his win being confirmed, the Labour-Green bloc walked into Foster’s office, laid out their demands, including the appointment of a deputy mayor, and effectively signalled their intentions to dominate the next three years in office with their party political manifesto.

The Local Government Act requires elected members to keep an open mind right up to the point of making a decision, based on the proven theory that the highest-quality decisions are achieved by considering all available information right up to the last minute.

Those who make decisions early tend to disregard information that doesn’t align with their thinking and often miss a trick. But the bloc within council that confronted Foster wasn’t there to be open-minded, they were there to project political power and drive their agenda, regardless of the information from management about the actual issues they might face, or the views of their peers or the wider community.

Holdom highlights a good point.

I certainly think there are many areas in which Foster can be a more effective Mayor. There are very different skill sets to being a Mayor and a Cr.

But it has to be recognised that there is a bloc of Councillors who are devastated that Justin Lester was defeated by Foster, and their priority is to get Eagle or Lester (or another Labour person) elected Mayor in 2022.

This means they don’t want WCC to generate good stories. That will help Foster. They want there to be an unrelenting series of bad headlines about the Mayor, so they can take it back next year.

This is what happens when party politics enters local government. Blocs of Councillors act more as an opposition party than part of the Government.

The structural fix for this would be the London model where the Mayor has huge executive powers and basically appoints all they key people, and the Councillors act more as a Parliament scrutinising and checking.

But the model at the moment is the worst of both worlds, now we have entrenched party politics in the major cities. Councillors are both Governors but also opponents of the main Governor. It doesn’t work.

So sure you can blame Foster for some of what has happened, but you shouldn’t overlook there is a bloc whose job is to try and make negative headlines for him so he loses the Mayoralty.

This recording of Far North Mayor John Carter doing a radio interview while he evacuates his neighbours is classic John Carter.

John has always been one of the most hands on politicians I’ve met. I once gave him a lift from Auckland to Whangarei and he spent the entire time on his phone talking to constituents about their issues.

Great to see he hasn’t changed.

Ayesha Verrall is seen as one of the potential stars of Labour. She authored the independent review into Covid-19 tracing as an infectious disease specialist (incidentally the Government is absolutely failing to meet the targets she said they should meet) and she became a Minister immediately after being elected to Parliament last year.

The only two other major party MPs who have done this in the MMP era are Steven Joyce and Margaret Wilson. And the question is whether Verrall will be a Joyce or a Wilson.

Joyce served nine years and was Minister of everything, having been Minister of Transport, Comms, Tertiary Education, Economic Development, Infrastructure and Finance etc. He was seen as one of the best performing Ministers.

Margaret Wilson looked great on paper with her background as a Law School Dean, but she struggled so much with parliamentary processes etc that she ended up being shifted sideways to Speaker after just four years as a Minister.

An early issue for Verrall (she is Associate Health Minister with responsibility for public health issues) is the Government’s commitment to have NZ smokefree by 2025, which is defined as fewer than 5% smoking tobacco. This target was actually championed by the Maori Party under National and if Labour doesn’t make the target, I have no doubt the Maori Party will make it an ongoing issue.

It is almost non controversial to state that reduced harm products such as e-cigarettes and vaping are essential to hitting the target. Even ASH says so.

Yet the Government is promoting regulations that are so flawed that they will actually make it harder to achieve the smoke free target. The suspicion is the Minister didn’t get into the detail.

The proposed regulations are here. Some issues with them:

• The draft regulations have accidentally banned nicotine salt. This is despite their own consultation document saying there is no evidence nicotine salt is more harmful than other nicotine and they think it should be available
• The draft regulations accidentally ban mint and menthol flavored vapes which means dairies can only sell tobacco flavoured vapes
• The draft regulations accidentally ban heated tobacco products by applying the same compound limits on them as e-cigarettes

None of this is deliberate as the consultation document doesn’t say it wants to ban these. It’s just the details are so badly drafted that they have huge unforeseen consequences. The end result might be an Associate Minister passing regulations that doom any chance of meeting their smokefree target.

So this is going to be a good test of the Minister, as to whether she is a Joyce or a Wilson.

A guest post by my good friend Ele Ludemann:

When you’re pregnant you have  hopes and dreams for your babies and their futures that you probably aren’t fully aware of unless you lose them.

Some of ours were dashed when our sons were diagnosed with degenerative brain disorders and died, Tom aged 20 weeks, and Dan 10 days after his fifth birthday.

Life with the boys who had multiple disabilities and passed none of the developmental milestones wasn’t easy, nor was coming to terms with their deaths.

Many people who learn about Tom and Dan say they couldn’t cope if that happened to their children. I’d probably have thought the same until I had to. Then, the only alternative to coping was not coping and through necessity, I coped.

That doesn’t mean I always did it well. There were some very long nights and some very dark days; nights when I fell into bed exhausted but couldn’t sleep, days when it felt like I was stuffed full of dark clouds and was ready to burst. But even at the very worst of times I had the love and support of my husband, wider family and friends, shining light against the darkness of despair.

And our sons, who could do so little, taught us so much: how blessed we are to have that support; that people are people regardless of what they can or cannot do and that ability isn’t a right it’s a privilege

Our response has also been governed by the knowledge that it would only compound the tragedy of our son’s difficult lives and early deaths if being bitter and twisted and focusing on what we’d lost stopped us appreciating and enjoying all we still had and could have.

And we still had their older sister who gave us the joys and challenges children provide.

None of those challenges were major until nearly four years ago when she was diagnosed with low grade serous ovarian carcinoma (LGSOC), a type of ovarian cancer that is frequently incurable.  Jane, at just 32 years old, was told with current treatments her life expectancy was likely to be only five to 15 years. 

Not letting what we’ve lost with the lives and deaths of our sons, blind us to what we still have is, of course, easier in theory than practice and it has been harder still to focus positively in the wake of Jane’s diagnosis.

There’s been a lot of tears, a lot of prayers and a lot of swears. There are nights of restless sleep when I wake to find the nightmare is real, and days when I cry easily and often. But again we’ve got wonderful support from family and friends, and just as she gave me a reason to not just survive but live a full life when her brothers died all those years ago, Jane’s example is providing an inspiration for me now.

If it’s hard for me as a mother, how much harder must it be for her,  a young woman living under the cancer sword, facing what it’s already cut from her life, the pain of that and the knowledge that it could take so much more?

She could have sunk into depression and stayed there. She could have chosen to focus only on herself. Instead she is doing much, much more.

She is fighting not just for herself but for all the other women around the world who share her cancer, many of whom are young like her.

What will determine whether women like our daughter live or die is research. Rare cancers like Jane’s, account for almost half of all cancer deaths yet receive just 13.5% of research funding.  The limiting factor isn’t science, it’s the money for the scientists to study it that’s lacking.

When Jane was diagnosed there wasn’t any way to donate directly to her cancer anywhere in the world. She knew that had to change if she and other women were to survive. She liaised with doctors,  researchers and charities around the world and founded Cure Our Ovarian Cancer – a registered charitable trust, that facilitates donations for low-grade serous cancer research in New Zealand, and internationally.

Jane spends most of her days connecting with women and researchers around the world, fundraising for research into her cancer. Through COOC and it’s partner charities, she’s helped raise more than $300 000 in less than three years.

She’s humbled by the public’s generosity, but also overwhelmed by how far is left to go. Tens of millions are needed if change is to happen in time for women living with he disease now. But as Jane says, “How can I do nothing? Knowing that in 10, 20, 30 years time, women will continue to die in droves without research. You just have to try.”

We’re in awe of everything Jane is doing while living with this awful cancer. It’s heartbreaking but as a family we are committed to helping in every way we can. We’ve funded four research projects in the US and NZ and continue to do what we can. But this problem is too big for one family to solve by ourselves. That’s why Jane founded COOC and is putting so much effort into advocating for the changes needed to get earlier diagnosis and better treatments.

Ovarian cancer strikes one in 70 women and is the 5th most common cause of female cancer death in New Zealand. Yet we  knew almost nothing about the symptoms. For two years Jane was told by doctors her symptoms were not serious, until she required emergency surgery from cancer complications. This experience is far too common, leading to too many late diagnosis and much poorer life expectancy.

Ovarian cancer kills 182 New Zealand women a year – that’s more than die on our roads. The government spends $1 billion annually trying to reduce the road toll but most years spends nothing to reduce the toll that ovarian cancer takes.

Each week about eight women are diagnosed with the disease and they will learn their outcomes will probably be no better than those for women diagnosed with breast cancer 40 years ago.

Changing that requires increased awareness among women and GPs, better access to tests, treatments and clinical trials and more funding for research.

Jane is fronting a petition seeking that change. It is nonpartisan and has the support of Cure Our Ovarian Cancer, Ovarian Cancer NZ, Talk Peach and the NZ Gynaecological Cancer Foundation.

Please sign to help bring about the changes that are needed to save lives: https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/petitions/document/PET_99389/petition-of-jane-ludemann-for-cure-our-ovarian-cancer

You can read Jane’s story at janehascancer.com and learn more at cureourovariancancer.org 

If you’re like me, you’ll probably cry as you read this post. And hopefully you’ll also do what I did and sign the petition. It’s a great cause, so feel free to share the petition with your friends and networks.

Donald McNeil is the award winning NY Times reporter who was sacked in 2021 because of his alleged behaviour in 2019 as a scientific expert on a student trip to Peru.

He has blogged in four parts what happened. It seems clear he is guilty of not being woke enough for a group of students who see the world in black and white.

His posts are lengthy but worth reading if you have the time.

Also the woke cancel culture didn’t end with McNeil.

One of the issues around McNeil was whether it was appropriate for him to have used the N word in a non derogatory sense (he was asked a questions about a 12 year old being suspended from school fur using it in a video).

Over at Slate, an award winning podcast host Mike Pesca has been sacked or indefinitely suspended. What was his crime? On an internal slack discussion channel for journalists he expressed the view that in some circumstances a white person can use the N word. Now Pesca never used the N word. He merely expressed a view that sometimes it can be appropriate to use it, such as a direct quote from someone. Anyway that was enough to get him effectively sacked.

This (now deleted) tweet from Maori Party co-leader Rawiri Waititi proclaims caucasians as an archaic species that is becoming extinct.

As of 8 am Thursday I have not seen it reported in a single media outlet.

Now imagine an ACT MP had sent a tweet where he or she said Maori are an archaic species that is becoming extinct. Do you think there would be no reporting of that?

On the contrary media would be camped outside the ACT Party offices demanding to know if the MP has yet been sacked. It would be leading every news bulletin in the country.

Now to make it clear, I think Waititi’s tweet is stupid, not harmful. My issue is the double standard.

UPDATE:

Hilariously the tweet is now being blamed on a junior staffer. When National used that line around a petition being removed from a website (and staffers are far more likely to be running a website than tweeting on behalf of an MP) it led to weeks of stories mocking them, and demands that the staffer be identified etc.

But it’s now almost 11 am and still not a single story on the tweet.