by frog
Close Up featured Metiria last night being put through her recycling paces (all five of them that it took her to walk to the paper recycling bin). Then Rodney Hide came on to complain that it was all too much work and he had more important things to do. Isn’t  it ironic (as Dangermoose noted) that the all dancing, all swimming, king of political light entertainment should go to the media to complain that his rubbish cube is too small then, the very same day, say on television:
In a week where we’re in Parliament and a guy gets gunned down and we can’t keep our streets safe and our businesses safe we have people running around saying [at this point Hide starts gesticulates pointedly at the contents of his rubbish cube] this is your rubbish for the week.
The Greens have managed to keep their rubbish cubes from overflowing with banana skins for over a year and also got a number of private members bills passed in that time, as well as influencing a number of government policies. But if Rodney wants to blame Act’s lack of ability to take action on violent crime on his new little rubbish cube that’s his call.
Published in Environment & Resource Management | Media | Parliament by frog on Thu, June 12th, 2008
Tags: Act, close up, Metiria Turei, Parliament, Recycling, rodney hide, Rubbish
on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
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Interesting note that the three young animals who murdered a hard working small business man were all wearing hoodies. So much for $35,000 wasted on “Hoodie Day”.
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Um. Interesting. IÂ wonder how many people were wearing hoodies at th
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Those 3 in the hoodies are products of a society which encourages irresponsible birth (ie all paid up members of the Beneficiaries Union who “don’t see the good side of life”…. “Blame the system Fight”… MP Sue Bradford)
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FFS!..whats next?, “state” rubbish bin police?
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Bryan – So you would ban all hoodies and thus solve the violence problem in our communities?
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Sounds like a good idea to me Frog although I would suggest that Bryan is simply highlighting the complete waste of tax payer money on another Green party political stunt.
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Um. Interesting. How many young people wear hoodies?
Taking the 5 year granula stats NZ provisional 2008 data and extending “youth” down to 10 we have 415 350 people between age of 10 and 24
(1)
Okay. Not everyone in that age group wears a hoodie. Lets say one quarter – it’s probably more but being conservative with our guesses.
That means that these three people (If they fit in that age group???) comprise 0.001% of the population between 10 – 24 and at most about 0.003% of the population between 10 – 24 who wear hoodies.
So speaking as a member of the 10 – 24 year age bracket. Get Real. Get a life and stop discriminating against a utilitarian item of clothing.
(1) http://www.stats.govt.nz/products-and-services/hot-off-the-press/national-population-estimates/national-population-eastimates-mar08qtr-hotp.htm?page=para004Master
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Away anyone know if Rodney has the smallest car in parliament? What about MPs who don’t own cars? Are there any ? ? ?
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I have no objection to “hoodies”, I have a very strong objection to $35,000 of my money being wasted on a pointless campaign supposedly to improve their image.
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“I have no objection to “hoodiesâ€?, I have a very strong objection to $35,000 of my money being wasted on a pointless campaign supposedly to improve their image.”
I quite agree, except it wasn’t $35,000 for National Hoodie Day was it? I do object to people repeating myths to make their points.
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“So speaking as a member of the 10 – 24 year age bracket. Get Real. Get a life and stop discriminating against a utilitarian item of clothing.”
Well said Tuatara!
BRAVO !
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“The Youth Affairs Ministry is spending $35,000 on material including posters to challenge negative perceptions surrounding hoodie-wearing youth but it has sparked a debate instead about the culture hoodie wearers are trying to emulate.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/4565140a6160.html
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Bryan, the $35,000 was the cost of Youth Week, of which Hoodie Day was just a small part.
Anyway, what’s this got to do with recycling and waste minimisation, which was the topic of this thread?
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Rodney had a point. Who wants an undersized rubbish bin sitting on their desk all day?
And I noticed the Green office bin was jammed with paper. Wouldn’t it be a better idea not to hit the print button quite so often?
A ream of paper lasts me a year, because I rarely print anything out. Almost all our records are stored, and accessible, on computer.
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Blue Peter said: A ream of paper lasts me a year, because I rarely print anything out. Almost all our records are stored, and accessible, on computer.
Ditto me, BP. And I suspect the Green MPs try to print as little as possible.
But there are limits. Ever tried writing a submission on a 300 clause Bill with access to nothing other than an on-screen PDF – a recipe for paracetamol poisoning!
I can’t imagine that with often hundereds of submissions on Bills before Select Committee, MPs would be able to cope with bringing them all up on their laptops during the Select Committee hearings as oral submissions are delivered in their support. Sometimes you just need hard copies.
I think Rodney was just being childish and lazy actually. As Metiria demonstrated, it takes very little effort to separate out the reusable and recyclable waste from that which goes to landfill and put them in the appropriate bin.
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>>Sometimes you just need hard copies.
Perhaps they’re being childish, lazy, and failing to adapt to change
It can be done if you’re organized.
Guess it just depends what measures you, personally, deem important, eh…
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Another point, BP, is that most of the paper waste in my office is not stuff I print but stuff people send me. Often to my annoyance, it’s clearly been composed on a word processor, but then faxed or printed and posted to me rather than emailed.
I suspect MPs have similar experices with incoming hard copy.
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A great deal of the paper that goes across Green MP’s desks is printed by the clerks office – bills, submissions, reports – all delivered to everyone’s inbox in duplicate. The recycle bins fill regularly with paper we don’t need or want because that’s the way it’s always been done.
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Fair enough. I’m annoyed at that waste, too.
But you get my point, I think. Rodney is entitled to object, because he finds the (compulsory) process tedious and not beneficial. Likewise – in your select committee example – the person would be annoyed if you made laptop use compulsory (no printed paper allowed) The exact same arguments could be made as are being made for the mini rubbish bin (makes people think about waste, it’s a small change, it makes a little difference, takes a little more time and effort etc).
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>>printed by the clerks office…to everyone’s inbox in duplicate
So why isn’t that change being made, rather than messing around with little boxes?
Surely a big difference could be made by a) having a meeting b) pointing out we’re all in the computer age now and therefore c) we no longer need clerks wandering around delivering multiple copies of dead trees into inboxes.
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I don’t know the accurate statistics for hoodies, but perhaps we should ban the wearing of trousers.
(At a rough estimate I’d say that approximately 100% of the crims wear pants.)
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“the $35,000 was the cost of Youth Week,” still a waste of money.
I get the theory behind forcing Rodney to squeeze his apple peelings into a small box but what next: worm farms in the hallways of parliament ? turning over Parliament lawns to grow potatoes ?
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Bryan- it is not $35,000 of your money. Assuming you earn about the average wage, you paid roughly 0.014 cents for youth week. I seriously doubt you earn enough that it even cost you a cent. While I agree we should look for waste, I disagree that waste equates to “policies I don’t value”, and I disagree that we should bother with small-picture waste when we’re in a consumerist society.
As for growing potatoes on the parliament lawns- why not? The Right are always banging on about efficiency, so why waste land?
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i have part time cleaning job…offices for a large NZ organisation.
The rubbish I take away every week has to be seen to be believed.
On top of that… every few months they leave out rubbish bags jam packed full of unused or out of date booklets and leaflets ( so full they’re impossible to lift ) so NO attempt made to recycle these. The paper waste is enough to make you weep.
In the rubbish bins under desks i ALWAYS find plastic water bottles ( sometimes half full ) side by side with paper waste and food scraps
The building i clean has 3 recycling bins lying about , but only one is ever used and then rarely . If they do use them they throw plastic milk containers in – with lids on and unwashed and leave them lying about until they really start to stink ..then often i will find the same milk containers in a rubbish bag ..no one could be bothered taking out the bin !
The people in this organisation have walls chok a block full of posters with all sorts of feel-good messages, dream catchers hanging off computers, funky postcards stuck to notice boards and you’d think they would be a pretty enlightenbed bunch …but these people all seem to think that recycling doesn’t apply when you’re at work.
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yup. NZ has a waste problem, pretty simple.
we see a bin, and we full them as fast as possible.
surely mr Hyde could see that having a small landfill bin, ment ….. dont use it so much, RRR – reuse, reduce recycle….
who cares about his small car… ACT represent the extreme right wing… the biggest NZ buisnesses there are, and their overseas buddies. surely if he is an environmentalist.. he can do his bit and recycle… and if he doesnt like the new waste system, think of a better one…
and re the bin.. he could put it on the floor near his desk….
neway, ACT are getting stupider as the days go on. roger… trying to re roger the public, and rodney doing a recycling rebellion… and going on about the nanny state – who he works for and pays his parliamentary wages.
is he hates ‘big government’ why doesnt he do us a favour and leave…. or maybe the voters will do it for him this election.
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Ari: $35,000 here, $35,000 there and soon you are talking real money. Thanks to Labour’s middle class welfare otherwise known as Working For Families many people pay no net tax putting more and more of the income tax burden onto fewer & fewer of us who don’t qualify for taxpayer handouts. Increasingly we resent the lefts belief it has a right to spend our money for us on activities of dubious benefit.
I guess looking at the polls I am not the only one who feels like this, and as a consequence the Greens will be looking at least three years with their hands locked out of the public purse. It can’t come soon enough.
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Haz: Tried having a word in their ear about recycling? I suppose you don’t necessarily have much clout.
Bryan: No, you’re not, not at the national level. You only reach any significant cost to an individual with an initiative that costs millions or billions of dollars. Like I said- we should be looking at those million- and billion-dollar policies first, and we should also be looking at similarly valued parts of our country outside of the public arena if we really want to combat waste.
I think also you need to be really careful to distinguish between “frivolous spending” and spending that only has benefits in the long-term. Investment into healthier social attitudes ultimately helps do the following:
Reduce crime
Increase productivity
Increase happiness
Reduce social inequality
And that’s just the big stuff.
As for WFF- it’s hardly middle class welfare. More like sponsorship for breeding.
I’d also like to point out that anyone who uses a word that means “well-being” as a pejoritive clearly has their priorities out of whack.
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