Junior Dumb Pratt Award Winner Announced

Amanda Spratt's light-weight immigration series in the Herald on Sunday has an article about the "great kiwi identity crisis." (The website lists her as Amanda APratt!) It doesn't even mention the word Maori once! Sort of like the budget. Why would any "kiwi" think that Maori have anything whatsoever to do with being a "kiwi" - or would be part of that debate? Well done Spratt. And the only people asked for an opinion were academics. The other articles were just as inane. Lazy and uninventive, cliché-ridden prose of the advertorial order. Her attitude ("thinking" is too strong a word) is perhaps what is wrong with public discourse on the subject. She suggests we should not eat pork around Muslims lest they be offended and we should have squat toilets etc. And then there's the much touted female genital mutilation that she condemns. Oh she doesn't mention male genital mutilation of course because white people and christians do that therefore it is perfectly correct and does not even merit a mention. Typical, wanton, hypocritical, cultural double-standards trotted out without any thought whatsoever. The author even won a phony-balony Qantas media award for best junior feature writer! What a joke.

There were 24 print judges: 13 NZ, 10 Aussies, 1 UK. Sponsored by an Australian Airline. What about a New Zealand award? Too much to ask? (How many Kiwi judges at the Aussie awards? - none?) So many categories that every bottom-feeder gets a gong. Pathetic. The self-congratulatory orgy of self-promotion is just distasteful. Even National Radio is doing it - pornographic!

Spratt's third-rate analysis through the prism of third-rate academics includes this gem from her "diverse future" article:

"The whitening will not last, says Waikato University population expert Richard Bedford.
A quarter of the world’s population - 2.5 billion potential immigrants - live in China and India.
The pool of white labour is far more shallow. Between them,Europe, the United States, Canada and South Africa have a potential workforce of less than 1 billion."

Fuck, really?! Only 1 billion? What a tiny pool - we better draw on that 2.5 billion immediately before they run out!

This Bedford half-wit is given full range for the rest of the apalling article:

"When Asian immigration was relatively new, he could understand some antipathy towards immigrants. "But hell’s bells, we’re nearly 10 years out from that and we’ve had a lot of migration and a lot of discussion about the role it plays."
Yet each election year, Bedford hears the same racist debate. "People have got to get their heads around the fact that the world is a lot more diverse and complex than that."

The role it plays? (Spiralling house prices?) He can't understand? If he can't understand perhaps his views should be discounted. Why is she interviewing someone who admits they don't understand? Note his indignant response that academics discussing things should equate to public acceptance as of right. He's explained it - isn't that enough? What about doing what the locals want for once?

So after thirty years and half the population are Asian does he think people will understand the role it plays and we will have got our heads around it? He seems to think the higher the immigration the more acceptance there would be. So Maori, therefore loved the massive immigration of Pakeha and should get their heads around the facts of the world and it's diversity and how complex things are? How was that experience for Maori? How did the diversity and complexity work out for them? How well did these new immigrants fit in with their society? What language do we speak again? Whose customs do we follow?

Pakeha know how the system works because they created it and forced it on the locals. Within a few decades they had taken over economically, culturally, socially and politically. And he expects those people, with that history, and that reality, to accept large-scale immigration from people who have nothing in common with them - many of them not even wanting to speak their language let alone follow their practices.

By way of illustration:
In the Herald on Sunday's View suppliment there is a picture (no link sorry) on p.8 of 35 Indian Hindu brides posing for a photograph. Every single one of them looks deeply unhappy/depressed/distant/anxious. Not one of them looks happy or in any way pleased. Their eyes are downcast or apprehensively staring to one side or a million miles off. Every single one of them. And it goes entirely without comment. If there was anything to demonstrate the differences between peoples and immigrant communities it would have been this tragic photo. They are contemplating a miserable future that is not of their choosing - it's written all over their faces, the poor bastards - it speaks a thousand words. UPDATE: Herald reports the consequences of such unhappy unions LUCKNOW, India - A young woman chopped off her husband's penis with a kitchen knife in northern India." Go, girl! I mean... that's awful, she should have more respect... etc, whatever.

Our government has absolutely no intention of stopping these sorts of practices here (forced marriage that isnot spousal-initiated genital realignment). And that is where Bedford sees us drawing our future population from. What about encouraging the people already here to have children - is that too much to ask? Cullen's miserly budget did zip for the student loan generation - the people who can't afford to have a family. The answer to the statistician (Bedford) and economist (Cullen) is to keep increasing immigation. Fiji - here we come?