Sunday 11 November 2018

Stony silence from Jim Mora as Penny Ashton rebuked Paula Bennett (Jan. 23, 2018)

23 January 2018 at 9:06 am
Stony silence from Jim Mora as Penny Ashton rebuked Paula Bennett yesterday; he’s possibly in for a bollocking from Richard Griffin for failing to shut her down.
The Panel, RNZ National, Monday 22 January 2018
Jim Mora, Penny Ashton, Bernard Hickey, Caitlin Cherry
This little discussion was just before the end of the show. It was pretty uneventful, until Penny Ashton made a comment about the hypocrisy of Paula Bennett. Either accidentally or on purpose, music swelled up as she delivered her rebuke….
Weighing up gastric bypass
Former deputy Prime Minister Paula Bennett has revealed she’s had gastric bypass surgery. She’s now recovering well but the news has ignited the conversation about how effective the surgery is for those strugglign with thier weight and whether it should be publicly funded. We ask the panelists what they think and Bernard Hickey tells us his experience with the operation.
https://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/thepanel/audio/2018629006/weighing-up-gastric-bypass
JIM MORA: Uh, Paula Bennett has, ahhh, revived the conversation about gastric bypass surgery. “Haters can hate,” she says of her decision to have the surgery, and she says on Facebook that she is now “at the beginning of what I plan to be a much healthier, active life. After years of weight gain and loss, I can see a clear path ahead.” And, uh, gastric bypass or bariatric surgery, uh, we’ve probably heard most of us about the success stories and possibly the lack of success stories too. The Ministry of Health tells us there were four hundred and eighty ni-i-i-i-ine publicly funded bariatric surgical procedures in the 2016-17 financial year, the largest number so far. Paula Bennett’s surgery though was private. And a lot of people have had it now, and they include Bernard Hickey.
BERNARD HICKEY: Yes that’s right. Nine years ago I paid for it. It’s had an amazing effect, and I’m sure will keep me alive for quite a bit longer and keep me away from the public hospital system.
PENNY ASHTON: Exactly.
BERNARD HICKEY: The great irony here is that we’re happy to fork out 20, 30, 40 K for a hip replacement to obviously improve the quality of someone’s life, and fair enough too. But you could easily pay the 20 to 30 K for bariatric surgery and save yourselves hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the various treatments for diabetes and heart disease and all sorts of other things that happen to people who are overweight. And it strikes me that this is a simple case of a cost benefit analysis that hasn’t been done, to work out that we would be better off if we did pay for more publicly funded weight loss surgery.
MORA: What are the pitfalls? I know you can drink the calories, and your tummy can expand again, and many of us probably know a person or two for whom it didn’t work. And you’ve just outlined the benefits. How often do you reckon it does work, from your experience?
BERNARD HICKEY: Ah, well—
MORA: Most of the time?
BERNARD HICKEY: yeah I’d have to look at the stats, I haven’t—
MORA: The stats are hard to come by and there’s some dispute as you can imagine.
BERNARD HICKEY: Yeah. I mean, I know from personal experience and from some of the people around me that it has worked. You’re right, there have been a few that it hasn’t, and it’s no substitute for, you know, eating and drinking less and doing more exercise. But the immediate effects, and certainly around diabetes reduction, and the stats from overseas where there is better data, shows that it certainly reduces the amount of really expensive hospital care that people need in later life. Not to mention the lost production and all the other things—-
MORA: Yeah.
BERNARD HICKEY: —-that you get when you’re overweight and—
MORA: And yet it would seem every time this subject comes up, Bernard, that it certainly does have its haters, people who think if you hadn’t eaten so much you wouldn’t need the surgery. And this point of view resurfaces every time.
BERNARD HICKEY: Yeah, it’s similar in a way to the debate that we have about drugs and whether it’s a medical issue or whether it’s some sort of moral issue. It’s clear, all the research shows that diets don’t work for people who are overweight. We live in an obesogenic environment. Every billboard, every shop that you walk into is trying to sell you sugar, not to mention lots of other things as well. And we’ve created a culture which is about making people overweight. So we shouldn’t be too surprised when some people become overweight. And if you’re gonna have an across the board attack on this sort of high, ahhh, high weight problems for people, because it’s not just a few people, it’s a lot of people, then you should be doing lots of things, and weight loss surgery of course—it’s a bit like the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff but along with other things it’s something that you do to attack this problem.
PENNY ASHTON: Well it feels like it’s also a little bit at the TOP, because then you’re stopping the diabetes and the heart disease and stuff, so maybe it’s the ambulance halfway down.
BERNARD HICKEY: Hmmmmm.
MORA: It’s interesting, as you say, you have to think that people may conveniently forget whatever bad habits they may have that will, you know, require public medical funding down the road. There are a LOT of things that people do that are going to require that, but there is some extra judgmental process applied to bariatric surgery.
PENNY ASHTON: Yeah. And I’d just like to say that I think, you know, Paula Bennett is brave coming out and saying this and talking about it, and I think that’s fantastic. Obviously I’m a very staunch Labour supporter but, you know, anybody that’s fat-shaming her over this and making jokes about it is terrible. Um, she did say, however, she made this comment: “People treat you differently when you’re overweight and when you’re seriously overweight from when you’re not. People have this perception of people who are overweight, that it’s all in their own hands, and they’re just greedy people and they can’t control how they eat.” My husband made a little alteration to it and put it on Facebook, that said: “People, I think people have this perception of people who are POOR, — [orchestral music swells up from this point]—- and that it’s all in their own hands and that they’re just lazy people and they can’t control how they spend.” So I’m just putting that out there for a little alternative to her thing on her Ministry portfolio.
[Extended awkward silence. Penny Ashton snickers nervously.]
MORA: How many rescues do you think you’re entitled to on the public purse, d’you think? One time tattoos removal, drug rehab. one time, gastric bypass. This is the other interesting question, isn’t it.
BERNARD HICKEY: Yeah. I, I, ummmm, you certainly wouldn’t want more than one gastric bypass.
PENNY ASHTON: No. I think we don’t live in America and we have good public health funding, which is good.
  • Sacha4.1
    23 January 2018 at 9:52 am
    “Either accidentally or on purpose, music swelled up as she delivered her rebuke”
    As you well know, that is how they end every edition of that show – it is just a signal from the producer to wrap up. No tinfoil, sorry.
    • Morrissey4.1.1
      23 January 2018 at 3:16 pm
      As you well know, that is how they end every edition of that show – it is just a signal from the producer to wrap up.
      But this was not the segment that ended the show. The segment that ended the show was the one about bus shelters in Dunedin. I thought there was something odd about this when I was transcribing it. I was pretty sure that there was no music swelling up as Penny Ashton spoke when I heard it live. Curiously, on the archived link, music appears, even though it was not there originally. I checked on other links from the same episode—such as the Mahia rocket segment—but there is no music at the end of them. But, for some reason, music has been superimposed on Penny Ashton’s voice after the live recording.
      No tinfoil, sorry.
      What is the point of that crack? Are you trying to be funny, or are you suggesting something serious?
  • Puckish Rogue4.2
    23 January 2018 at 10:09 am
    The issue i have with this is Penny is basically ignoring the issue (gastric bypass for health) and just using it as an excuse to bring up something else (poor people bashing)
    People have enough of a moral high horse when it comes to this, the old “you’re fat because you’re lazy” thing or it gives people an excuse to sanctimoniously give “advice”, just eat this and do that and you’ll lose weight kind of thing but really they don’t about the issue or person just that they get to spew out their brand bulls**t
    Personally I think gastric bypasses should be funded because it will save pain, money and productivity over the long term
    • Kevin4.2.1
      23 January 2018 at 12:36 pm
      I don’t have a problem with it being publicly funded as it will save millions down the line. What I find strange is that she will lead ‘a much healthier, active life’ AFTER the surgery.
      This is like people who go into Christmas planning on dieting in the new year… and then don’t.
      There is plenty she can be doing now, instead of waiting for the surgery hoping it will solve the problem for her.
      • Puckish Rogue4.2.1.1
        23 January 2018 at 3:10 pm
        “There is plenty she can be doing now, instead of waiting for the surgery hoping it will solve the problem for her.”
        This is the issue I’m trying to highlight, essentially what you’re saying is why doesn’t she just buck her ideas up and get on with it
        Would you say to someone with depression to just go outside for a walk and you’ll feel better?
        • Kevin4.2.1.1.1
          23 January 2018 at 4:22 pm
          Not at all.
          Just know through observing others that later usually means never.
          You do realise that you don’t just rock up to hospital and they stick the knife in? There is quite a bit of preparing for an operation like this and the mental side is just as important as the physical.
          Through my observations via the news media of Bennett over the years, her flippancy won’t get her through this.
          • Puckish Rogue4.2.1.1.1.1
            23 January 2018 at 4:29 pm
            Everybody has different coping mechanisms and, hopefully, it works out for her and she doesn’t suffer the post-operation depression
            That she realises there are certain things she can’t have (fizzy drink is no good for staples)
            That she might stop liking certain foods or indeed stop getting much pleasure food overall
            That as a result of the operation it helps her become happy and healthy
    • Gabby4.2.2
      23 January 2018 at 2:18 pm
      She’s just highlighting Pullya’s selective empathy puckfish.
      • Puckish Rogue4.2.2.1
        23 January 2018 at 3:52 pm
        Yeah she may well be but what it also does is take the focus away from the issue of public funding for gastric bypasses
  • Brigid4.3
    23 January 2018 at 11:30 am
    Poor Jim. I just don’t think he has a brain
    • Morrissey4.3.1
      23 January 2018 at 2:34 pm
      He has a brain all right, and he no doubt has empathy. What he lacks is courage and integrity.
      • Ed4.3.1.1
        23 January 2018 at 3:51 pm
        Mora puts out an outside shell of the concerned and erudite liberal.
        But he’s not.
        He is a superficial shill for the right wing.
        A grasping and greedy individual who hides the facts he has no principles, courage and integrity behind his jolly Jim persona.
        • Morrissey4.3.1.1.1
          23 January 2018 at 6:13 pm
          He never seems erudite to me, in spite of the considerable efforts he makes to use big, obscure, latinate words whenever possible. He constantly misuses the word “alluded”, and his reading seems to consist almost entirely of the New York Times(he’s often quoted the vicious right wing columnist David Brooks) and the Daily Telegraph.
          Like everyone else, he knows his show is largely trivial, even insultingly so, as we can see by his constant, pathetic assurances that the inconsequential research of the day “comes from a reputable university.”
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