Health Minister won’t eat new hospital food on camera and an Environment Minister who won’t swim in Rivers

He’ll pose with the new hospital food, but he won’t eat it on camera in case he gags.

Health Minister Dr Jonathan Coleman has held a photo op of him looking like he’s eating the food described as shit by most people.

The pressures that are now erupting within Health will be too much for this barely average Minister. Tony Ryall was incredible at keeping the constant financial squeeze from showing, understanding that nothing turns an electoral quite like poor health services.

The DHBs are downing in debt, have cut every layer of fat from the system and are being asked to do yet more. The eruption that will occur in Auckland as medical staff walk off the job this month is just the beginning and a lacklustre Minister like Coleman will end up looking as out of his depth as Sam Lotu-Ilga did with Corrections.

Dunedin Hospital has had to cut back on fresh meals made at their hospital in favour of pre-heated crap sent down from Auckland.

I don’t think ‘Let them eat shit’ is as catchy as cake, but expecting nutritious, healthy and fresh food to eat while you are sick in a hospital is the same as expecting sterile gloves, surgical equipment and registered nurses. It’s not some fancy shmancy Metro top 50 restaurant want fest we are expecting here, just food that doesn’t make sick people feel sicker.

This Government has an amazing ability of taking our aspirations and expectations of basic universal services that are available to every citizen and make them seem as if we are asking for gold plated Unicorns that fart rainbows.

Nutritious, healthy, fresh food in a hospital for sick people is a fucking basic not an elitist nice to have.

Take our wondrous Environment Minister Nick Smith and his bewildering belief that it is ‘not practicle to make every river swimmable…

Making every water body swimmable is ‘not practical’ – Nick Smith
Neither a rap nor bible verse could sway Environment Minister Nick Smith to consider making waterways swimmable.

Smith visited Palmerston North on Thursday as part the Government’s nationwide fresh water consultation, the night before a new five-year plan to clean up the Manawatu River was due to be released.

As the meeting turned over to the public for questions, a range were posed of the minister ranging from swimmable waterways and the Shannon wastewater treatment plant, to a protest rap, and a reading of a few verses from the book of Genesis.

Smith fielded several questions on why the Government was not aiming for swimmable waterways.

Each time, he responded that it simply was not “practical”.

“I do not think a legal requirement for every water body in New Zealand to be swimmable is practical.”

After cheerleading for the dairy intensification that now sees many dairy farms drowning in debt, Nick says it’s not ‘practical’ to ensure our rivers can be swam in because of the dairy intensification his Government has championed.

Rivers we can swim in and food sick people can eat – we are not asking for much.