New Zealand on right track
Eleanor Ainge Roy’s report Power to people: New Zealand budgets for happiness (25 May) gives hope that there are at least some national leaders who strive to change their nation into a better place for all. New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s aim of valuing human wellbeing on a level with GDP is visionary and would surely receive support from most people. Ardern’s vision for her country reminds one of the king of Bhutan’s declarations in 1972: “Gross National Happiness [GNH] is far more important than Gross Domestic Product”. Bhutan’s four pillars of GNH are: 1) sustainable and equitable socio-economic development, 2) environmental conservation, 3) preservation and promotion of culture, and 4) good governance.
The western world can learn a lesson from New Zealand and Bhutan: there is no point in destroying the world in the pursuit of the highest GDP. The decaying economy, infrastructure and human wellbeing in the US are a good example of destructive governance. Hooray for Ardern for promoting human wellbeing as a prime value.
Bill Mathew
Melbourne, Australia
Monbiot and cancer
I cannot over-express my sympathy at George Monbiot’s appalling experiences (18 May): respiratory failure following his prostate cancer operation, post-operative infection, agonising pain, and the inability to pass urine, requiring a second catheterisation. On the plus side, he had much kindness and briefly felt part of a close hospital family. It would be a great pity if people died after reading of these horrors because they declined surgery.
I had the same operation at the Mater private hospital in Sydney in 2004 after much checking with doctor friends. The result has been excellent with no recurrence.
Good luck, George Monbiot. You are a good man and we would have missed your articles.
Richard A Evans
Exeter, NSW, Australia
Nazi ideology still a threat
I was very impressed with Géraldine Schwarz’s 27 April article, I see Nazi ideology returning to Europe. It echoes my thoughts entirely and it was published just before my trip to Hamburg, where I had been invited to speak at a demonstration.
My anti-fascist friends are trying to have an appropriate museum as part of the old Gestapo headquarters, which has now been converted into a multi-complex building. The developer has installed a small but insufficient display next to the bookshop but as Schwarz commented in her article, the younger generation need to have facilities where they can learn how the rise of fascism occurred within their own city, and how this was maintained by terror from the Gestapo and SS. It is only then that the warning signs of today can be recognised more clearly.
Ruth Stender
Storrington, UK
Keep the bulldozers running
I was thrilled to read Martin Parker’s article, Bulldoze the business school! (11 May). He clearly writes about what he clearly knows.
How can these departments in universities everywhere teach students how to more effectively fleece their fellow citizens? Parker mentions their underlying assumptions: that humans are motivated only by narrow self-interest, blind to the interests of others and to long-term consequences, and that the dominant economic model is the sole reality.
Please get Parker to write a follow-up article delineating some alternative economic models, or his ideas of what to build after we demolish business schools.
Edward Butterworth
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
• Martin Parker needs to extend his critique. It’s not just the business schools that assume that capitalism is for ever; it’s with rare exceptions the entire university system – indeed, the entire education system.
Those bulldozers are going to be busy for the rest of the century.
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, South Australia
Briefly
• I read with interest Will Hutton’s article on Abdel Hakim Belhaj and the hope that Britain’s connivance in rendition will never happen again (18 May). While I applaud the rightness of an apology to this hapless victim, and indeed any government’s apology to a victim of its reprehensible behaviour, I cannot help wondering if these apologies, which are beginning to slide glibly off the tongues of government leaders, will lead to a culture of “it doesn’t matter what we do, we can always apologise if we are later exposed”.
Kitty Monk
Auckland, New Zealand
• In your edition of 11 May, Jonathan Powell must be channelling his inner Neville “peace in our time” Chamberlain when he contends that making peace requires dialogue. You Brits tried that twice in the last century. It didn’t work either time.
Michael Goldeen
Carson City, Nevada, US
• Dandruff politics (4 May): does anyone believe that Emmanuel Macron has dandruff? This was a classic control move by Donald Trump. Show the world that you are the parent in the relationship and mildly humiliate the child with public grooming. Pathetic, really.
Maureen Bell
Kangaroo Valley, NSW, Australia
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