Graham Chaplow: Nutri-bullet of hype

Graham Chaplow

With the influx of letters to the editor, texts and Talking Points about amalgamation in HB Today, and with pro-amalgamation billboards everywhere, I can't help feeling I'm in the middle of an unrelenting US Presidential-styled infomercial. A virtual House of Cards.

You know the infomercials I mean. Those long-winded TV ads pushing robotic vacuum cleaners and knife sets with enough variations on blades to make any ardent serial killer smile, and that always seem programmed to entrap stay-at-home pensioners or mums with tots once Peppa Pig or Paul Henry are done, or at night in the wee wee hours when shift workers want something decent to watch but can only find these incessant late-night infomercials with Donald Trump-pitched voiceovers, or men with Trump's comb-over hair surrounded by enough fruit to feed an army, and with blonde models by their side nodding yes at their claims; or, in the case of the worst of their ilk, literally swallowing whatever green concoction their nutri-product whizzed up, then smiling their fake smile. The Nutri-Bullet. Yes! The infomercial where I howl, "Just eat the fruit!" Well, that's how I view what the pro-amalgamation campaigners are about.

The problem with products like the Nutri-Bullet is that its makers appear so hell-bent spending millions producing their infomercial, they don't ensure the thing they've produced really works.

The way I see it, we're used as guinea pigs; that these people know their infomercial will make them enough money before their product is revealed as a crock - that's it's not as good as they claim. Well, not from what I've heard. And not according to Consumer NZ.

And those of us who've been around a while (quite a few judging by the concerned grey faces on the cover of HB Today after a recent debate), we've been through this before.

Like when Napier lost its hospital on the Hill; putting all our healthy eggs in one nutri-basket. Not that the pro camp would agree. But try talking to anyone traipsing sick relatives out to Hastings or to Palmy or the capital and back and hear what they say.

And then there was the biggest Nutri-union breaker of them all: back in the 80s, when a group of business leaders, similar to those leading the charge to build the Ruataniwha Dam, conned fruit growers into building the $45 million Omniport conveyor system with it's two huge spiralveyors, looking like two massive Nutri-Bullets. Right from the start it didn't work. It was scrapped at great cost seven years later.

And from where I sit, I see the pro-amalgamation lobbyists heading down that same track. It's the sheer number of their pro billboards where I have a problem; the big money that they've spent. The worry is that it's rich folks money behind the pro camp.

Just look at the front and back four-page advertisement last Monday on the cover of HB Today. Ten fantastical non council related ideas the pro group claim we want for our fiefdom. All looking like we'll need a Peter Jackson-styled Lord of the Rings production to pull them off. And with a titanic wad of ratepayers' money going down the proverbial nutri-gurgler in the process.

A single Bay council to rule us all would be stacked with people the pro camp want in. The average socially-minded Joe Citizen wouldn't be able to compete. The pro group's (government sanctioned) funding is a proven bottomless pit. Imagine if they get their mitts on the ratepayer's purse. How many Nutri-creations do you think they'd buy then?

-Graham Chaplow is a retiree, volunteer teachers' aide and award-winning writer.