Wednesday, 21 April 2021 12:30

20 pieces of silver?

Written by The Hound

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A mate of the Hound reckons he's not surprised by the recent announcement the Government is 'partnering' with Lincoln-based company Leaft Foods on a $20 million R&D programme in the alternative protein sector.

He suggests that Leaft Foods founder John Penno, who made all his money setting up Canterbury dairy company Synlait and pimping it off the overseas interests, may finally be getting rewarded for helping sell the Government's deeply contentious and unpopular freshwater regulations to farmers up and down the country a year or so back.

Your canine crusader's derisive colleague believes this is all the more galling considering Penno's company probably did more to increase Canterbury's dairy cow numbers and degradation of the region's water quality than anything else in the past 20 years.

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OPINION: Mike Chapman, former chief executive of levy-funded HortNZ, has thrown out a challenge to farmers and growers to put their levy-funded industry organisations under the same scrutiny as fertiliser, electricity, labour and freight.

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A fair question has been raised about how member-funded organisations should conduct themselves when taking a public position on any given issue.

Stuffed!

The canine crusader always has his nose in the air for more media maleficence, so was pointing as soon as he saw the Stuff headline: ‘Wellington residents respond to PM saying he doesn’t need his job!’.

Civil Circus!

OPINION: It really is getting harder to lampoon government bureaucrats when they do such a good job of it themselves.

Anyone in the primary sector will know about the clowns covering the countryside in the red tape we all have to wade through.

Spare a thought then for media outfit Stuff who were threatened with fines up to $200,000 by a snivelling civil servant from the MoH for illustrating a quiz question with a photo of part of the cover of a 45-year-old copy Playboy.

As Stuff notes, “It wasn’t the Playboy cover which caused offence. No, it was the back page which… featured an advert for a cigarette brand”.

As Regulations Minister David Seymour notes, “The real scandal here is, well, no wonder we’ve got problems in healthcare when they’re doing the Stuff quiz during work time.”

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