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metric system feat

SocietyJune 22, 2019

The metric system is simply, undeniably better. Won’t someone tell the US?

metric system feat

The metric system might seem obvious to us, but resisting it has started to become a point of extreme pride for Americans. Can New Zealanders help save them? Elle Hunt investigates.

With Trump gearing up for his 2020 campaign amid ongoing investigations into Russian interference, it is the question on every honest American’s lips: can the US continue to stand alone against the metric system?

Earlier this month, the country’s fearless resistance of the existential threat posed by metres and grams was applauded on Tucker Carlson Tonight during an interview with James Panero, the executive editor of The New Criterion, a conservative culture journal. No, that’s not an oxymoron. It’s a publication that alternates between comparing Trump to “frank and manly” Pericles – master orator and general of Athens during its Golden Age – and scoring cheap points against minorities.

If your expectations of Fox News weren’t already many metres – sorry, yards – towards the earth’s core by now, you might think this earnest discussion of the “tyranny of the metric system” amusingly by-the-by when the US seems – at least from afar – to be in thoroughgoing crisis, from its government and civic institutions on.

But no. Not on – excuse me while I look this up – ”World Metrology Day”. (How did you celebrate? I had a BBQ.) “Against pascals of pressure, the US stands nearly alone in maintaining its ‘customary units’ of weights and measures,” wrote Panero in his highly necessary, eviscerating takedown of metrication in the Wall Street Journal.“We should stand tall on our own 2 feet,” he concluded – alongside Myanmar and Liberia, the two other countries that do not observe the metric system.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jl5epgqHac

The Fox segment is still worth a watch, because it is hilarious: Carlson’s waxy, po-faced expression, like a recalled Ken doll; Panero’s polka-dot bowtie, reminiscent of the one worn to the ball by the strangest boy at your high school, who was almost certainly studying classics; the gravity with which they approach the discussion above the banner: “IS THE METRIC SYSTEM COMPLETELY MADE UP?”.

And that is all to be had just from the paused video, before you get to Carlson’s reference to “the yoke of tyranny” and mispronunciation of “kilograms”. “Holy shit,” tweeted someone, “the video is 100x better than the still image ever could have led me to believe.” The interview is a rare moment of unproblematic comedy, but not without questions.

My first: in what world are these people living, that even the preference for quarts over millilitres – to most outsiders, merely vaguely irritating – can be held up as a triumph of American exceptionalism?

My second: can New Zealand show them the way out?

Tucker Carlson having a normal one over the metric system (Screenshot)

New Zealand started switching from the imperial system of measurement inherited from the UK to metric 50 years ago, with the establishment of the Metric Advisory Board in 1969. A multifaceted approach was taken to counter widespread suspicion and reluctance, including nicknaming a baby girl born in 1970 “Little Miss Metric” and reporting news of her development alongside that of metrication to give the switch a human face. A press release from 19 June 1975 made clear the impact on the national game: “What used to be the 25-yard line is now 22m from the goal line.” By 1976, the switch was mostly complete.

Though traces of imperial still remain in New Zealand, in the aviation industry and sometimes in giving height and weight, metrication has largely taken root, in a relatively short period of time. In fact a Broadcasting Standards Authority complaint, made in 2001 by one Mr Fortune, argued that the use of non-metric measurements by a television show called The Private Lives of Giants constituted deliberate flouting of the law. It goes to show that, within 30 years of its introduction, the metric system had become “part of our daily lives”, wrote then-consumer affairs minister Judith Tizard in December 2006.

Like the US, the UK, relatively, has struggled to adjust. In London, I have come up against stone, pounds, feet, inches, yards, acres. There have been moments when it has felt strangely freeing, like when I realised I truly had no idea of what I weigh; but many more when it has just been annoying, like when I was running a half-marathon and realised only at the perfunctory 10-kilometre notice that I had much further to go than I’d thought.

Britain’s preference for imperial persists despite the attempt made by the European Commission in 1995 to phase it out by 2009. In 2011, the supermarket chain Asda reverted to selling strawberries by the pound (a little over 450g – not quite 500g, though!) for the first time in over a decade after a survey found that 70% of customers found metric labelling confusing. Social historian Joe Moran told the BBC at the time that the British were reluctant to let go of the imperial system because tradition is reassuring.

That New Zealand was able to more or less cast off the old system in less than a decade reflects its readiness to embrace not only change and the future, but an identity of its own. Australia, Canada, South Africa and more recently Ireland also made the transition fairly smoothly. As chef Rick Stein said in 2011, “When people prefer to use imperial over metric, I believe they are saying the old times were better.” Wasn’t that what the Brexit vote was about, too?

As leery as I am of crediting Panero as the voice of the people – or really, any person – it may be that it is the same insecurities about “global revolution” that have got him clinging to his cups. “We have no reason to be ashamed for using feet and pounds,” says Carlson – but is it the “this weird, utopian, inelegant creepy” metric system the world’s fading superpowers are afraid of, or change in general?

Maxine was lucky in the ballot and will leave her garden in Tonga behind if she can get a job. (Photo: Supplied)
Maxine was lucky in the ballot and will leave her garden in Tonga behind if she can get a job. (Photo: Supplied)

SocietyJune 22, 2019

The NZ residency ballot: A better life for Pacific Islanders, or empty promises?

Maxine was lucky in the ballot and will leave her garden in Tonga behind if she can get a job. (Photo: Supplied)
Maxine was lucky in the ballot and will leave her garden in Tonga behind if she can get a job. (Photo: Supplied)

Thousands of Pacific Islanders – including a quarter of Samoa’s population – are hoping for a new life through the annual visa lotteries. They are ready to wrench themselves from home for a New Zealand residence visa. But is the better life the ballot promises a reality? Philippa Tolley reports in this piece originally published on Radio NZ.

On the edge of the Tongan capital, Nuku’alofa, is a house surrounded by the bright-leaved plants of the Pacific, with a sow and piglets out the back and chickens wandering everywhere.

This is the house Maxine lives in with her brothers and sisters – the house she calls home. In just a few months, though, she plans to leave for New Zealand, as one of 650 people from Tonga, Fiji, Kiribati and Tuvalu granted the opportunity to get a New Zealand residence visa each year through the Pacific Access ballot.

She and three of her brothers had unsuccessfully entered the ballot once before. Not giving up, they all put their names in again and this time last year, Maxine got a call at work.

“She said, ‘You are one of the lucky [ones] that got picked this year.’ In that moment I was crying and I think it was a blessing for me and my family, because I used to pray for that.”

The Pacific Access ballot recognises the special relationship between New Zealand and its Pacific neighbours. Rather than draining the region of its most skilled people by setting qualification criteria, this scheme works on chance: anyone between the ages of 18 and 45 can put their name in and hope they are drawn.

There are opportunities for 250 Tongans (like Maxine), 250 people from Fiji, 75 from Tuvalu and 75 from Kiribati. A separate Samoa Quota provides an opportunity for 1100 people to move to New Zealand. The numbers include family – so one applicant with a family of six uses up six places.

Every year the ballots, or “lolo” as it is known in Tonga, are hugely oversubscribed. This year there were 17,000 applications from Samoa, representing 43,000 people – nearly a quarter of the Pacific nation’s entire population. The much smaller nation of Tuvalu also put in its highest number of applicants since 2014.

Maxine’s house in Nuku’alofa (Photo: RNZ Insight / Philippa Tolley)

All around the Pacific, the reasons people give for wanting to wrench themselves from their family and culture are the same: a better job, a better education, a better health system and – time and time again – a better life for their children.

It was no different for Maxine, though the decision wasn’t easy. “I used to prefer staying here because I’ve got a job and plus I’m staying with my family and I keep saying, ‘I have a job here and I can provide for us, so there’s no need for me to migrate because I don’t want to leave you guys behind.’”

Her heart was in Tonga, but the hard word to look to the future came from her father. “My dad told me that there’s no need for you to stay in a comfort zone forever – it’s about time for us to move on and get our life.”

But immigration advisers and New Zealand politicians say those hoping for a new life through the scheme can be left bruised by the experience. Overcoming the odds in the ballot is just the start of the journey – applicants then have nine months to find a job that pays enough to support them and their family, if they have one. They need to speak good English and there are police and health checks that all come with a fee.

While the ballot is equally available for all, an immigration advisor based in Nuku’alofa, Mary Nau, says trying to secure that all-important job is really hard for successful applicants to do from their home nation. Employers used to travel to Tonga but that’s tailed off and she believes many became disillusioned with the scheme when the staff they’d employed struggled with a more structured life and left their jobs.

Tongan Immigration advisor, Mary Nau, outside her office in Nuku’alofa (Photo: Supplied)

Ms Nau values family and the pace of life in Tonga over the economic rewards of living overseas, but has found it hard to convince others to come home, even though they might be struggling in New Zealand.

She would like the ballot system changed to offer more support. “Monitor those who are going to ensure that they succeed. There are people, I believe, that are struggling at the moment even after decades of living in New Zealand and the difficult thing is … [to] convince them that perhaps New Zealand is not the place for you, perhaps Tonga would be a better suit for you and your family.

“But there is a sense of pride: ‘My family will either see me as a failure or that I’ve not made it [if I return home].’ So there is a sense once they make it there, there’s no turning back.”

Maxine knows it will be difficult to turn the visa opportunity into a new life in New Zealand. She has put the word out among family already living in New Zealand to see if they can find her a job, but she realises she also has to have a “plan B”. Moving from Tonga will be challenging, she says. The environment will be different and she expects to not only look after herself, but relatives in New Zealand and her family back in Nuku’alofa. “If I get a job then I’ll try to arrange for my weekly pay, I can arrange to send around NZ$200 to one of my parents’ accounts just to support them. And I have to try to save up money in New Zealand just for an emergency.”

Maxine already has a job in Nuku’alofa in the Ministry of Finance, but her optimistic view of how well things might go in New Zealand and much spare money she may have to support the wider family, give a glimpse into how things can easily go wrong.

Pacific Peoples Minister Aupito William Sio (Photo: Supplied)

New Zealand’s Pacific Peoples minister, Aupito William Sio, says the current system creates opportunities for bogus job offers and for people to spend a great deal of money to secure work, only to arrive here to find the job isn’t what they expected it to be. But he certainly understands the pull to leave the warmth of the Pacific for more money in chilly New Zealand.

“If I’ve got a nephew sitting out in the village, which is about an hour and a half away from Apia, and he’s working there in one of the hotels for 2 tala an hour (NZ$1.15)… He sees the salary here of a minimum wage NZ$16.75 and goes, ‘Ah geez, I want to go. I want to make money,’” Mr Sio says.

“What they don’t appreciate is they’re not going to be living on their own land. They’re not going to live on their own house. They’re going to have to rent. And so all of it has to be appreciated.”

Immigration minister Iain Lees-Galloway is a supporter of the ballot system but acknowledges New Zealand’s track record in welcoming and caring for Pasifika people is hardly unblemished. “Overall, we do respect the system and respect the people. It’s not 100 percent perfect by any stretch of the imagination and, if you go back a little bit further than 10 years, there’s some really glaring examples of where we horribly let down people who had come here from the Pacific.”

The provisions required under the scheme, such as a good job, are important to make sure people can look after themselves and not be vulnerable to exploitation, he says. He’s keen to continue the special ties between this country and the rest of the region – but he too understands there is a need for change. “Clearly there is huge demand for the opportunity to come and live and work in New Zealand and we need to have a fair process for dealing with that,” he says.

“It is appropriate that we have a special set of settings for our Pacific neighbours… but saying that, I think it is timely for us to take a fresh look at our Pacific migration settings and see if it is working as well as it could for our neighbours and what opportunities there might be to do it better.”

Those who applied for this year’s Pacific Access Scheme found out their fate a couple of weeks ago. But the many thousands who applied in Samoa are still on tenterhooks hoping their name is selected in the draw next week – and that the better life it promises really does exist.