It’s not that New Zealand is not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, its reality is just different from yours.

This is the country where the leading academics think the solution to high teenage pregnancy rates is to fit all girls with IUDs before they become sexually active.

Mass birth control for young girls in New Zealand has recently been compared to childhood vaccination campaigns. You can imagine the scene. Your 10 year old daughter gets her routine jabs at school, and while they’re at it they wack in a Jadelle, copper IUD or Mirena just for good measure. Whatever happened to “kids being kids for longer” in New Zealand?

Of course, now that your daughter is fully equipped she can be as sexually active as her male associates need her to be. RIP the age of consent. RIP any hope of controlling the country’s STI epidemic (they gave up on Hamilton years ago).

Get the feeling that birth control is up to females in New Zealand, that there’s something very gender specific about responsibilities? What does this tell you about the status of Kiwi women and Kiwi children? Moreover, where’s the discussion about testosterone implants and progesterone injections for males?

Meanwhile, the country’s Prime Minister has told his loyal subjects that they’re not being ripped off with the high price of dairy products.That he’s come out and made such a statement probably means they are. Dairy prices are dropping across the world but Kiwis are still paying through the nose for milk – now a “luxury product” in New Zealand.

The high prices have been attributed to the milk processors and retailers “creaming it” Sainbsury, UK sells milk for 98c to $1.51 NZD a litre; Coles, Australia for $1.25 to $1.50 AUD a litre; and Countdown, NZ is churning it out for $1.56 to $2.75 (source). Hardly surprising that it’s cheaper to drink cola (you wouldn’t want to drink the water anyway).

If you needed an explanation for the country’s diabetes and obesity epidemics that’s it right there. Read NZ milk pricing isn’t ‘perverse’ or out-of-whack, Prime Minister John Key says.

And finally, a study has found rickets in nearly 60 New Zealand children. A third of the cases were from Auckland and Northland. This is probably a conservative number. An earlier study in 2013 estimated that one fifth of NZ newborns are at risk of rickets.

Kiwi kids are more at risk because food is not supplemented with vitamin D and poorer families can’t afford to buy milk. This is a REALLY great place to be a kid.

Maybe the schools should be offering free milk with those IUDs.

Also in today’s news –

Havelock North boy injured in a bottle attack on his way to school

Four teenage girls film themselves hooning down NZ streets with police in hot pursuit

Mass brawl at schoolboy rugby match puts 15 year old in hospital in a serious condition

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