Hug a polar bear

The Herald reports:

Prime Minister John Key says several of Labour’s “hug a polar bear” programmes are on the hit-list as the Government tries to cut costs.

Mr Key said his ministers had uncovered several ineffective programmes with the “nicest, friendliest sounding names” during detailed reviews of their departments.

“The ‘hug a polar bear programme’ will survive. It doesn’t matter what recession occurs, it sounds like a really nice name.

“But the reality is if you look below the surface, the hug a polar bear programme might not do that much for polar bears. And if it doesn’t, then we shouldn’t continue to fund it.”

Just like the carbon neutral public service programme that saw the Environment Ministry’s carbon foootprint increase!

Key made this statement in a speech to a Wellington Chamber of Commerce breakfast yesterday. It was a huge turnout – 360 people, and John gave a very engaging speech which ranged from entertainign to highly informative

Maybe this was in the news elsewhere, but John spoke of how the four Australian-NZ banks are now all amongst the top 20 biggest banks in the world, and one of them is in the top 10. This will help protect us. He also talked about how the US Government is probably going to start printing money to buy back the junk debt, and that there will be some real inflationary problems down the track.

I was the guest of Huria Anders and was at a very interesting table with several Ngai Tahu executives (including Mark Soloman) and Tariana Turia. By coincidence I had a meeting later that day with another Maori Party MP, so it has been a very multi-party week with meetings with both Labour and Maori Party!

Back to Key’s speech, he also revealed a fascinating tidbit. John writes a personal reply to every letter he gets from a kid.  He said he just thinks it means more to them than a type written response saying “the PM has seen your letter”.  He told a very funny story abour one of the letter writers who sent him $3.20 of his pocket money and asked John to get rid of the bed bugs. John said he sent the money back less $1.20 tax 🙂