Exsibilate – to hiss off the stage; to reject with a hissing sound.
Petition launched to get more vets into NZ
21/01/2021A critical shortage of vets has prompted a petition to let more into the country:
Right now, New Zealand is facing a dire veterinarian shortage. We urgently need vets from overseas, but the closure of our borders to safeguard New Zealand from COVID-19 – while of course necessary – has meant they haven’t been able to arrive.
As we enter the busy summer season, without enough vets:
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Animal welfare will suffer;
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The wellbeing of our extremely busy, stressed and burnt-out vets will only continue to be hit, at a time they should be able to enjoy some rest with loved ones; and
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Our production animal sectors could face economic harm if animals can’t be treated.
The Government has made some promising noises, but far more still needs to be done.
So far, of the 30 border exceptions the Government promised back in September, only 19 or so vets have been allowed into the country – despite many more (who meet the Government’s stated criteria) requesting exceptions to enter and being declined.
The Government’s latest decision only reconfirms its existing and public-stated policy: that only vets earning over $106,080 pa will be eligible for border exceptions.
We desperately need vets of all skill levels, salary levels, experience levels and disciplines, and we only need a small number. Only a few vets would be entering NZ at any one time – because it takes a while to find them jobs and get them registered to practise as a veterinarian here in New Zealand.
They’ll arrive in a safe and controlled manner, and not all at once like the Netflix actors or Russian fishermen. They’ll arrive a few at a time and won’t clog up MIQ facilities.
Designating vets as critical workers would reflect our crucial need for them as skilled professionals to care for our animals – in the same way that we recognise our human doctors who care for you and me.
Please sign and share this petition to urge the Government to reclassify vets as critical workers. Thank you.
You can sign the petition here.
You can read a media release here.
Sign could have stopped sticker stoush
21/01/2021Someone has laid a complaint with the Commerce Commission over New World’s Smeg knife promotion.
A frustrated New World customer who cannot get one of the supermarket chain’s promotional knife blocks has lodged a Commerce Commission complaint alleging a breach of the Fair Trading Act.
New World’s owner Foodstuffs has run a highly-successful giveaway of Smeg knives and knifeblocks over summer. But the company has all but run out of the blocks and says it cannot get any more.
The customer, an Auckland businessman who didn’t want to be named, said he believed continuing the promotion when New World knew the star attraction was unavailable amounted to misleading conduct under the Act.
Foodstuffs says it is confident it hasn’t breached the law, but Consumer New Zealand say the man may have a case – and says New World stores that have run out of stock should be posting signs to warn customers before they buy groceries in the hope of securing a knife block. . .
They are very good knives.
We usually shop at New World and with catering for a couple of Christmas parties, buying ingredients to make 21 Christmas cakes and some other reasonably big shops it wasn’t hard for my farmer and me to collect enough stickers to get all the knives we wanted.
Others have been slower to collect the stickers you get with every $20 spend and are finding they can’t redeem them.
The booklet in which you stick the stickers makes it quite clear the promotion is only while stocks last. However, shoppers probably don’t know that stocks are low or, in many cases, no more until they try to redeem their stickers.
It has probably been a very good promotion for the supermarkets if people have, as I did a few times, added something extra to their trolleys to ensure they got another sticker and I am sure I’m not the only one to be grateful to have a new supply of good, sharp knives in my kitchen.
But at least some of the good will have been undone by the disgruntled who haven’t been able to get the knives they wanted as stocks ran out.
The staff at my local warned me when stocks were running low and it’s very much a first world problem but Consumer is right. A sign could have stopped the sticker stoush by warning people before they shopped that supplies of the knives and knife blocks had run out.