Rocket Lab is offering a referral bonus to staff that pays twice as much if the company hires a woman rather than a man. Photo / Trevor Mahlmann
The space race for female staff
Apropos the feature in the Weekend Herald (July 13) on Rocket Lab’s desire to attract more ladies to their employee ranks by offering employees higher bonuses for recruiting women, I suggest a viewing of the movie Hidden Figures or reading the book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly, which may be enlightening for those opposed to such preferential treatment.
Based on an event in the US’s race against Russia to put a man in space, the movie and book recount, albeit with some dramatic licence, how Nasa found untapped talent in a group of African-American female mathematicians who served as the brains behind one of the great astronautical events in US history.
They reflect the stories of three of the women, Dorothy Vaughan, Mary Jackson, and Katherine Johnson, who were tasked with making critical calculations on the launch into orbit of astronaut John Glenn, and ensuring his safe return.
The mathematicians were ultimately replaced by computers, but Jackson obtained her engineering degree and became Nasa’s first female African-American engineer; Vaughan continued as Nasa’s first African-American supervisor; and Johnson went on to calculate the trajectories for the Apollo 11 and space shuttle missions. In 2015, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
After screenings of the film in various locations around the world, in 2019, the Walt Disney Company partnered with the US Government on an annual exchange programme which brought to the United States 50 women from around the world who excelled in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers such as spacecraft engineering, data solutions and data privacy, and STEM-related education.
Through the New Zealand Space Scholarship, the New Zealand Space Agency is sponsoring students to participate in internship programmes at NASA’s Ames Research Center and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Anthony Mercer, Howick.
Food for thought
As sad as it is to read your editorial about the finish of Ponsonby institution SPQR, the entire economic system is unfortunately in redesign mode (NZ Herald, July 19).
Gone are the days when dining venues like Antoine’s and Top of the Town were drawing in customers by the vanload. The golden 90s are well and truly gone and there are just too few full pockets of cash in need of emptying into the hospitality cash registers.
An entire middle class is now scraping the barrel to find money for bank repayments and maybe a touch of refurbishment at their residences. The “tip of the iceberg” has been visible in so many different business styles, from forestry to timber exports and ... where current downturns will be so hard to reverse, if possible at all, before the inevitable sale of all remaining business assets has started.
Hospitality and retail are sadly the top-perceived luxury sectors, where cash can most easily be saved, only to be used for basic living expenses, from food to power and rent. Please, let us not fool ourselves in thinking that when the Reserve Bank eases its outlook, there will be relief, for what good will that be when business closures have actioned.
No economist needs to throw token percentage point alterations or crystal ball expectations at us, for where financial disaster has struck, these empty words only add insult to injury.
Where a government could well help is to divert hard cash away from its cushy advisers, consultants and military flamboyance, and put it where the promises were made, for the general wellbeing of all, including the already hopelessly lost victims of previous governments’ decisions, which have obviously not served the mass closures for small and medium business owners and the desperation of individuals who have lost all and have nothing to show for their decades of hard work.
René Blezer, Taupō.
Breath-taking duplicity
I smoked my first cigarette at the age of 15. Nearly five decades later acute bronchitis succeeded where hypnosis, acupuncture, a non-smoking wife and three children had failed, in helping me give up a chronic addiction.
Since then, I have been blessed to live into my late 80s in better health than many of my vintage and to be appalled at the sight of young non-smokers taking up vaping and claiming a similar addiction to a product supposedly introduced to help smokers stop using tobacco.
Now, we have a so-called Associate Health Minister - known for chairing an organisation that received funding from the tobacco sector before entering politics and on record as deploring the fact that her former funders were “on their knees” - using her powers to try to save them.
Casey Costello has defied policy advisers and other health experts in halving the excise tax on so-called heated tobacco products, which with other novel inventions of the industry, are designed to maintain addiction to nicotine and, worse, seduce young people no longer attracted to cigarettes, to “cool” alternatives.
The duplicity of this Government, which has already binned its predecessor’s ground-breaking policies to reduce tobacco use, on this issue is, excuse the pun, breath-taking.
David Barber, Waikanae.
This reeks
Why is Associate Health Minister Casey Costello inhaling so much of the tobacco industry’s dangerously toxic nonsense? Does the coalition Government simply not care about how dangerous nicotine addiction really is?
Having got rid of the acclaimed plan to substantially reduce nicotine in tobacco and vapes, it is now halving tax on deadly heated tobacco products.
It is also making it easier to buy nicotine-delivering vapes and planning to allow addictive nicotine mouth pouches. All in the absurd notion it will help people quit smoking cigarettes.
No wonder Big Tobacco is over the moon as it switches its attention to these highly-profitable new toxic products. A whole new market is being created for smokeless nicotine addiction.
This is akin to promoting more wine and beer drinking, claiming it will help heavy drinkers quit spirits.
It would be truly laughable were we not talking about disastrous health results. The whole situation reeks and is opposed by all credible health authorities.
Jeff Hayward, Auckland CBD.
Farro folly
Steve Braunias’ column on his Farro anxiety must be a joke (Weekend Herald, July 13).
If he has such an “anxiety” problem with Farro I suggest he gets counselling to remove any temptation to shop at Farro. No one is forced to shop there, as indeed, no one is forced to work there.
Farro does a great job at supporting small producers who have no chance of getting their product into the comfortable oligopoly that is operated by the larger supermarket chains in New Zealand.
Steve’s article would have been better to be targeted at the lack of competition within our banks, power companies and the larger supermarket chains etc.
Lesley Baillie, Milford.
Planet Seymour
Confirmation that David Seymour’s logic differs from mine was delivered loud and clear when he said Darleen Tana should remain in Parliament because, “We should never accept a political system where representatives who are put in there by the voters can be pushed out by other MPs.” (NZ Herald, July 18.)
So, Earth to Planet Seymour: Our political system is MMP. Darleen Tana was only “put there” because she was on the Green Party list. The Green Party no longer believes Tana represents Green values. She has resigned from that party.
The only way the integrity of the voters’ intentions can be maintained is for Tana to resign from Parliament and be replaced by the next person on the Green Party list.
Michael Smythe, Northcote Point.
Rocket Lab is making a serious mistake in attempting to hire anyone who is not absolutely the best available. The sex, sexuality or ethnicity is not as important as the quality of the candidate, having other priorities will dumb down the organisation to looking like a government department and being just as effective!
Neville Cameron, Coromandel.
You have reported that King Charles will not be visiting NZ. Good. Such a visit would have no benefit to our country and cost us taxpayers money. I understand these people don’t pay their own way.
Charlie Deam, Waiheke Island.
While our Finance Minister is busy forcing all government departments to make cost savings through job cuts and redundancies can she please start at the top and reduce the number of MPs just sitting around warming seats. We don’t need 120+ Members of Parliament for our small population. This number should be reduced to no more than 100 for the next election. Also when an MP comes in via a party list, if they break with their party they should be forced to immediately resign from Parliament. As the public did not vote them in the so-called waka-jumping legislation should not be needed.
David F Little, Whangārei.
Chris Penk’s plan to lower insulation standards to reduce the cost of housing is a lazy attempt to be seen to be doing something. The two biggest things that impact house prices are land value and the culture of house speculation that has developed in New Zealand over the past few decades. If he was a truly innovative and courageous minister he would tackle these two issues instead of condemning future generations to poor health that can come with poor insulation.
Alan Johnson, Papatoetoe.
I was shocked to see in the Herald’s “Photo of the Day” a kea with a block of ice at Prague Zoo. This is an endangered bird in NZ. Why is the kea in a zoo on the other side of the world in soaring temperatures?
Dawn Yore, Henderson.
I’ve noticed that the Griffin Gingernuts’ size had decreased again. Didn’t Griffin’s try this trick a few years ago and Fair Go picked up the story and the Gingernuts went back to their old size? What are we going to do now without Fair Go? No one to fight our battles, on our behalf, against these big companies? Griffin’s bring back the old-sized Gingernuts please.
Liz Sampson, Mission Bay.
There are reports that the numbers of overseas students and tourists in Auckland are well below pre-Covid levels. It is believed that the students have gone to Australian universities, and the tourists are going directly to Christchurch and Queenstown. Soon the cruise ships will give Auckland a wide berth. The reason is simple - both the students and the tourists want to feel safe and until law and order is restored, they will stay away.
Chris Parker, Campbells Bay.
If NZTA and AT officials were to view the Tour de France on any given day they would see immaculate road surfaces from start to finish. No ruts, unevenness, patching or potholes. Just totally smooth surfaces. They should contact the French road authorities and find out how this is achieved. After all, if a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well.
Bruce Butler, Titirangi.
After the Donald Trump shooting President Biden urged his fellow Americans “not to normalise violence”. As he was speaking bullet vending machines were being installed in grocery stores in three states.
Laurence Mallon, Te Atatū.
Naomi Sai overcame a language barrier to succeed at Flaxmere College.