Escaping to New Zealand
Eleanor Ainge Roy asserts that care should be taken before deciding to emigrate to New Zealand (12 August). Confusingly she says that New Zealand needs more people but urges them not to come. However, the real flaw in her commentary is the belief that discretionary migration is informed by the social merit of a particular country, when in reality it is more often based on a migrant’s desire for change.
She is correct in pointing out the darker social features of New Zealand. There are plenty more to add to her list. The real tragedy of these adversities is a nonchalance from central government about how such pressing issues should be addressed.
We are different but we are not necessarily worse, and you should be entirely clear about that difference before you take such a big step. When you are sure, please come and you will be most welcome, but please keep your dog on a lead when walking in the bush. Our native species are under threat from canines.
Patrick Alley
Auckland, New Zealand
• I didn’t choose to live in New Zealand. The majority of my fellow citizens didn’t either. Our forebears inadvertently made the choice for us. Unlike Eleanor Ainge Roy we know that those who made this choice were not convicts. Her other fact-free assertion – that we Kiwis habitually keep asking if we’re good enough due to our supposed ancestry – is double nonsense.
When Roy has taken the trouble to learn some New Zealand history I hope she will also come to regret her colossal cheek in declaring New Zealand “underpopulated”, and issuing an open invitation to the rest of the world to add to what is in ecological terms an overpopulation crisis. New Zealand has an ecological footprint of 7.7 hectares per person – the sixth-highest rate in the world. Intensive agriculture is a significant contributor to this sorry statistic, and probably to one of its latest manifestations – the awful outbreak of water-borne gastric illness that recently made over 4,000 people in one Hawkes Bay town very ill.
Anyone who emigrates to New Zealand as a lifestyle choice is likely to add to the problems of overconsumption and unsustainable production, and also to property price escalation that has taken home ownership beyond the reach of low- to medium-income earners. Those of us who didn’t choose to live here have got enough trouble on our hands trying to engage others in working on solving these problems, instead of making them worse. We welcome new fellow workers, but freeloaders – please stay away.
Christine Dann
Christchurch, New Zealand
• Eleanor Ainge Roy talks a lot of sense in her article about why moving to New Zealand is not a panacea and, more important, should not be thought of as an escape. My family came to live here 18 years ago with very young children. It was a kind of safe adventure, not exactly a journey into the unknown. Maybe a bit like going to live in a second cousin’s house: you recognise some of the furniture but it is in different places.
It is a small place in terms of population but as big geographically as the UK. People tend to be friendly because there aren’t so many people to go round: there is, while acknowledging casual and unpleasant racism – especially towards Maori – a greater respect toward other people, though society’s blights – poverty and youth suicide among them – are apparent. It would, however, be impossible to imagine New Zealand doing a Brexit and voting to leave its economic ties with Australia or China because of a xenophobic resentment about the numbers of Australians or Chinese who come here to live and work.
Most important, New Zealand even has a gentler Tory party: the likes of the not very lamented David Cameron or his awful successors vanished 20-odd years ago here. The electoral system is light years more advanced and democratic than the sclerotic British system.
David Townsend
Wellington, New Zealand
Leaders must learn to listen
I find it hard to discern the underlying message of Anne McElvoy’s 12 August piece, Elites must start listening to the people. Is it simply a plea for centrists or moderates to heed the voice of the neglected masses? But what should her amorphous “centre-ground liberals” be embracing as their guiding philosophy in an era when nothing is certain, whether due to the cumulative effects of rapid climate change, the loyalties of voters to established parties or, the elephant in the room, the demonstrated inherent instability of the global economic system?
As a senior editor of The Economist, and judging by her evident support for Hillary Clinton, may we assume that McElvoy relies on the received wisdom of the power of market forces, that a steady hand at the helm is all that is needed to steer the vessel of most major economies into safer waters? If so, she stands accused of the same fault that she levels at the elites: failing to heed the voice of reality.
In addition, her predicated new left is in fact just the remnant of the old left, exemplified by Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn, a plaintive cry to return to the certainties of a bygone age. McElvoy’s oversimplification of the phenomenon she calls the rebellious right is equally blinkered, and ignores the very different social and economic crises being experienced in countries such as France, Germany, Austria, Spain, Greece, Italy, the US and the UK.
The one really hopeful prospect comes out of Austria, where the dispute for the presidency between a flexible and forward-looking Green candidate and a representative of the extreme rightwing, scared isolationists has yet to be resolved. Our best chance is go with the Green answer, rather than stubbornly attempt to stick with the failed would-be centrists or social democrats.
Noel Bird
Boreen Point, Queensland, Australia
Selling the science of cute
Awww: the new science of cute (5 August): a new academic field? The only reason, and I’m not sure who is financing this new “academic field”, for pinpointing what makes things adorable is to be able to sell those things and make money. Who else but the toy profiteers or other children’s product manufacturers would care that smallness, roundness and lightness of colour are the determinants of perceived cuteness? And while a social analysis of cuteness by literary researchers may be of some interest to a few, a very few, why does science have to go down this rabbit hole to discover the attributes of adorability? Shame.
Robert Milan
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Say no to climate change
I completely share George Monbiot’s pessimism and frustration (12 August): since the Paris Climate Summit last year nothing much seems to have changed ... except that temperatures are climbing at an alarming rate. So why don’t we simply resolve to just say “No” to everything that contributes to climate change?
We could say “No” to cars, to long-haul trucks and to unlimited shipping; to planes, to excessive packaging and to air-conditioning. And, while we are at it, why not say “No” to pesticides and to the routine feeding of antibiotics to animals too?
Damaging activities should be made expensive and unattractive: we really don’t need unfettered, private indulgence, do we? And a “No” need not be draconian or negative: as trucks and long-haul shipping are phased out, so local economies blossom with creative jobs for everyone. And surely a local holiday is significantly more fulfilling than a weekend in Las Vegas? Or flying half-way around the world to lie on a beach.
Even the negatives have positives: If we hand-weed the fields, instead of spraying them, then the bees and the butterflies will return; if you’re riding the bus rather than the car, then you get to meet your neighbours; and, if we use significantly less oil, then we don’t need to have wars to get that oil.
We don’t need climate targets; we need to open our eyes to the fact that solving the climate problem might also solve a lot of the social and psychological woes created by a turbo-charged consumerist society.
Alan Mitcham
Cologne, Germany
Uncertainty: the new normal
It’s surely not breaking news that uncertainty is the new normal (12 August). It’s been gathering pace for over 25 years, driven by the replacement of the US by China as the dominant global power and by the faltering ability of capitalism to stabilise its economic, ecological and social crises. While denial might work for some for a while, we might have to come up with something a bit better to get us through the day, let alone the century.
Stewart Sweeney
Adelaide, South Australia
• Uncertainty is a boon to survival. If everything were predictable, life itself would become less interesting and challenging. Our brains would be pre-programmed. We could not experience the joy of surprise and, for that matter, the agony of despair. And what of our ability to adapt, and a need for change to widen experience? We seek tranquillity but reap uncertainty. All to the good.
E Slack
L’Isle Jourdain, France
Briefly
• After reading your review of books on the history of the Olympic Games (5 August), I can’t help thinking what a pity it is that all the modern Games have not been held in their spiritual home, thereby avoiding the numerous pitfalls of staging them at a different venue every four years. Wouldn’t many crises have been avoided had the summer Games been held in Athens and the winter Games on Mount Olympus?
Ted Jenner
Auckland, New Zealand
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