Dear Farmers
Where’s your messiah now?
Let’s remind ourselves how we came to have such an incompetently underfunded and meaningless system to stop Mycoplasma bovis?
Biosecurity cuts = irresponsible Government
2013 – NZ Labour PartyBiosecurity border protection services have been slashed by $6 million in Budget 2013 and no amount of spin by Minister Nathan Guy will change that reality, Labour’s Biosecurity spokesperson Damien O’Connor, says.
“While funding for ‘border systems’ – that no doubt include the Joint Border Management System (JBMS) – has increased by $1 million, Budget documents show funding for border biosecurity, monitoring, and clearance is being cut from $97 million to $91 million.
“John Key’s ‘Smart Gate’ system already allows hundreds of thousands of visitors to walk across our border unchecked. This latest move will further reduce border security and inspection.
“The cuts are confirmed by a projection that income from fines will drop by 33 per cent – a clear admission that less identification and intervention will be happening.
“This is backed up by performance measures in the Budget that project a reduction in the number of goods that will be inspected or identified as biosecurity-risk goods at the border.
“At a time when every primary sector and conservation agency has identified biosecurity risk as the single greatest threat to the New Zealand economy and ecosystems, the National Government is cutting resources for frontline biosecurity services.
“The recent Auditor-General’s report identified a large number of deficient areas within Biosecurity New Zealand. This budget does nothing to address the most urgent of these.”
…well, well, well. So it was National, the Party of the Farmers, who underfunded and screwed you too.
Kinda makes this picture below look a whole new kind of stupid don’t it?
Every election NZ has the choice to either allow National to keep screwing the country up, or allowing Labour in to fix National’s damage.
“Prudent fiscal management”. That’s what National sold itself on.
Unfortunately, that “prudence” was on the back of state services; healthcare, mental health services, education, housing, DoC, police…
… oh, and bio-security.
As I blogged in 2012 on cuts to bio-security;
ref: https://fmacskasy.wordpress.com/2012/07/05/national-what-else-can-possibly-go-wrong/
I find it hard to have sympathy for farmers when they vote for the very people who made cuts to bio-security and put our agricultural sector in danger.
Stockholm Syndrome.
@FRANK MACSKASY.
Your difficulty in having sympathy for farmers ,and let me correct you here, DAIRY farmers… Again. DAIRY FARMERS. Allow me to elaborate;They are those who have clumps of permanently pregnant cows on grass who then eat the grass which makes milk in their udders which is then sucked out by a large robot machine overseen by poorly paid Philippine people which is then trucked off to enormously complex factory robots, overseen by humans using algorithms on computers, which is then dehydrated into milk powder then exported, rehydrated into MILK which is then consumed to make more Chinese people. That, dear @ Frank is the NZ/AO DAIRY farm and the industry that pollutes our waterways etc, etc.
I prefer to label those who bully and abuse DAIRY cows as cowsploiters BTW
I think the reason you have difficulty in having sympathy for actual farmers is that you don’t know that much about real, actual farming.
Having said that, I have no sympathy at all for ALL farmers. Clem Clump above is entirely typical of his breed and that is of dubious origins. I live in Southland and Otago. I was born in Gore to farming people near Mataura and there, we farmed. We had sheep for wool, lambs for meat and the odd cow to milk. Two to be precise. Sooks and Bessie. Huh? How about that? I remembered their names. Or at least the names we humans gave them. They might have called themselves The Mooster and Shit-fire for all I know.
I feel that I can say without fear of contradiction that actual farmers are as at least as dumb as Cletus above looks. But not without guile though. They’re quick off the mark to make use of a colleague in financial troubles. Most are like Jackals, they hunt in packs but will eat each other in a heart beat , and no disrespect to actual Jackals.
The problem with that, of course, is that they’re easy to manipulate. And that’s where the National Party come in. All you need is a group of isolated farmers swapping mud yarns in a cold country hall over a weak cuppa and another farmer, or two , better still, who’s all bought and paid for by The Natzo’s and he/she’ll have the hairy ear of every idiot in the room.
And Labour are no different in their indifference toward the money earners who are actual farmers. In fact, they’re quite the same as National in their desperation to contain actual farmers behind their logical fallacy fences while the fancy people in Parnell Tractors and their bankster mates fuck them at every opportunity.
And what if, say, foot and mouth got a hold here. There goes sheep, pigs and cattle… and our economy. I guess we could eat tourists? Fish and chickens? We’d find a way right?
The alternative begins to take reality… https://funnyjunk.com/Soylent+green/funny-pictures/6012976/
i don’t think farmers should be compensated or bailed out labour will get no thanks from that lot less cows the better
Short-term thinking has dominated politics and economics for decades, to the point of completely excluding all long-term planning, and the consequences are now manifesting in horrific ways, both in NZ and globally.
The latest atmospheric CO2 reading is 412.60 ppm (much as expected when no nation is making any significant effort to reduce emissions and most nations are committed to increasing them), trapping more heat than in human history.
The global sea ice cover is on the cusp of being the lowest ever since measurement commenced.
It is not only with respect to the environment that mainstream economics has been an utter disaster. It is a disaster economically. both here and overseas.
https://www.interest.co.nz/news/93747/dairy-prices-rise-us-inflation-jumps-canadian-house-prices-slump-china-electricity
Despite the writing being on the wall in HUGE LETTERS, there is still no plan (from any political party) to extricate NZ from the madness of mainstream economics or to prepare for the meltdown that is underway. Therefore, everything that matters long term will continue to be made worse.
Wow,… the longer National are out of government , – the more we learn just how BAD they were IN government…
And the lie was all held together by some hand picked media tools to perpetuate the lie.
Kinda scary , huh?
Is there egg on faces , – or is there egg on faces?
What are farmers actually pissed off about? M. Bovis or the fact that now it’s known about, they can’t just flog their infected shit as easily? the NATs would have hushed it up and let biz carry on as usual.
This mycoplasma incursion is a complete National own goal,
Thus far:
Underfunded biosecurity by National the farmers party.
Nathan Guy ministerial initial inaction then half measures.
Farmer non compliance with record keeping, non recorded animal movements.
Wait and see what the port of entry is. If indeed it was imported drug/product supplied out of area- as alluded to in a media story (import may/may not be legal depending on exact context which we don’t yet know), then guess who lobbied to free up drug prescription regulation?
Farmers.
The irony is that farmers themselves are largely responsible for the spread because some of them have ignored the NAIT system which was set up by the previous government to combat situations like this. But of course the Labour government will be to blame, as usual.
Most people don’t like to bite the hand that feeds them and vice versa
Hah!! Zero sympathy for them. Not only did they vote National, but the halfwits ignored NATE which was set up to help them track diseased animals. They are the authors of their own misfortune.
Re the coment: “Hah!! Zero sympathy for them. Not only did they vote National, but the halfwits ignored NATE which was set up to help them track diseased animals. They are the authors of their own misfortune.”
The problem with the above comment – IMO – is that the impact on the country & we – the people, is ignored by the commenter. When the farming industry suffers, the entire country suffers. Inappropriate comment IMO!
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