Dialogue: Ned's got a lesson for the foes of GM

By GORDON McLAUCHLAN

The Green Party and its supporters did their job well by forcing the Government to have a Royal Commission on Genetic Modification. Their next task is to make sure the implementation of the controls emphasised in the report are monitored and carefully applied.

But the Greenies will be the new Luddites if now, on the principle that it is essentially unnatural, they obstruct genetic research which promises so much for the health and food supply of people in an increasingly crowded world.

They should remember that almost every step in the advancement of mankind since the first of us came down from the trees has been the result of yet another victory over the forces of nature.

Ned Ludd is described as "a simpleton" in one biographical reference work I have and as "an obscure individual" in another, but he and his early-19th-century companions were right when they predicted the spinning jenny would change the lives of their generation from workers in a cottage industry to wage slaves in battery-hen factories.

The huge misjudgment they made was to use their energy to smash the new machines rather than to try to manage the workers' place in the change.

Social and economic globalisation and genetic engineering are inexorable and those expending their energy so resolutely against them are a distracting sideshow.

The real concentration should be to force governments to make sure that globalisation is not left to the profit-driven devices of transnational corporations at the expense of the wishes of people of all socio-economic groups, and that scientists' GM research and development is closely monitored and defiant transgressions are severely punished.

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, published in 1962, shocked us into understanding the extreme and enduring damage to our environment of the wanton use of synthetic pesticides. From this shock emerged the modern environmentalist movement.

However, it was not the use of pesticides that was threatening to our environment but their uncontrolled, profligate use. To accommodate this thought just remember that DDT saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people from typhus and malaria.

To lighten up just a bit: Boag's Boys - that's what we call ourselves - start our campaign this weekend to winkle out Michelle's underperforming National MPs and bring them back alive for media training. She has told us she's convinced that most of them are alive, despite strong evidence to the contrary.

The first person we're going after is No 1 on her Most Wanted list, clandestine MP Clem Simich, who hasn't been seen since late on February 15, 1992, the fateful night on which he was elected to the Tamaki seat in a by-election after the resignation of the late Sir Robert Muldoon.

Simich, a former policeman, went underground after the election and apart from the occasional late-night leaflet drop has not been heard of since nor seen in person with the naked eye - not that people in St Heliers where he lives would be seen dead with a naked anything.

Some electorate residents have reported glimpses of him during television coverage of Parliament but our information is that the image comes from a blow-up doll provided by the National Party to all members to make up the numbers during question time if they are away napping.

"If power corrupts, he is an entirely innocent person," Brigadier Boag told us during our Mission Impossible briefing early this week. "Even when National was in government he showed neither appetite nor aptitude for it, although he did play an underground role as part of National's Knowledge Waive.

"Your mission - should you choose to accept it - is to find Clem and bring him in for media grooming. I can give you a list of safe houses he is known to have used over the past nine years. His description is that he looks like a tall Murray McCully with a similar moustache which, of course, they both use to disguise themselves as possums on the run."

Big Clem, or the Blue Pimpernel as he is known for his uncanny elusiveness, is obviously aware of our impending manhunt because he dropped a personally addressed smokescreen leaflet into my letterbox this week seeking multiple-choice answers to questions on the Treaty of Waitangi, cannabis use, my personal circumstances, my voting record, Michael Cullen's superannuation scheme, the education and health systems, paid parental leave and the proposed eastern motorway.

Boag's Boys will fling roadblocks across Tamaki Drive and other arterial roads into St Heliers from midnight on a Friday until midnight on Sunday.

We are planning a search with tracker dogs through Dingle Dell, in the affluent heart of the suburb, where a number of locals have reported that a tall, dark figure is sometimes seen at weekends hugging and talking to trees.

www.nzherald.co.nz/ge

Report of the Royal Commission on Genetic Modification

GE lessons from Britain

GE links

GE glossary