|
(Open Letter to the Ministers of/for Health,
Commerce, Media and Communications, Public Service, State Owned Enterprises,
Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Education, Social Development and Women)
Dear Shane Reti, David Seymour, Nicola Willis, Erica Stanford, Paul
Goldsmith, Louise Upston, Penny Simmonds and Nicola Grigg,
This letter is, in part, a reponse to the
announcement in December 2023 that "The coalition government
is delivering a $5.7 million boost to emergency department security
this summer, employing an extra 200 people (93 FTE) to keep hospital
EDs safe."
It is important to be aware of the power imbalance between the relatively
powerless members of the public, on the one hand, and the relative powerful
workers in the health, retail, media, education and other service industries.
Providing the latter with security guards, cameras and so on increases
their power, as these tools will be used by, and for the benefit of,
these powerful workers -- mostly not by or for the customers or clients.
The legal profession is aware of the power of lawyers over clients,
which it formalises by calling it a "fiduciary
relationship", but most other service industries seems to be
blissfully unaware of this issue. The female-dominated service
industries have a vast capacity to feel a sense of victimhood, but they
can get away with all sorts of unprofessional behaviour, which I have
often experienced. I will now give a few examples.
-
The first example is from Hutt Hospital's emergency department.
I was once a patient there, lying on a bed in a corridor.
I did not have a serious condition, but I was in some (but not intense)
pain, so a nurse said she would get me some pain medication.
Nothing happened, so -- after a time -- I called out, "How
long does it take to find an analgesic around here?"
(An analgesic, of course, is the medical term for a pain-killer).
Shamefacedly, the nurse soon appeared with the pain-killers.
Medical people can make mistakes and can be distracted by other
tasks. Most patients would not have had the confidence or
knowledge of medical vocabulary to ask a sarcastic or joking question
in such circumstances. If a security guard had been present,
he/she might have treated my calling out as disorderly behaviour,
and I might have been in trouble.
-
The second example is from the New World Supermarket, also in
Lower Hutt. Several years ago, I was at the checkout and felt
that the female checkout worker was being rude, by not looking at
me or saying hello. So I told her so. A female customer
next to me immediately took her side and attacked me verbally.
Another female checkout worker called out some man's name.
I paid and started to push my trolley towards the exit. A
man appeared, stood in front of my trolley, put his hand on my trolley,
in order to stop it, and looked at me, saying nothing. I asked
him to take his hand off my trolley and left the supermarket.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that he might have been the store
manager, but he was wearing no uniform and no badge and did not
say who he was. His behaviour was incredibly stupid and oppressive,
but people do not generally work in supermarkets because they are
extremely intelligent! Later, two police officers appeared
on my doorstep and I was banned from that store for one year!
-
Security guards are also unlikely to be either rocket scientists
or angels. When the (then) Wellington District Law Society
was going through the process of preventing
me from becoming a lawyer, I went to their office a few times.
On one occasion, on the ground floor near the lift (elevator), there
was a butch female Maori security guard. She made a rude noise
at me. I went up to the office of the District Law Society,
where the (female) office manager seemed to be very happy about
something. This was surprising, because every other time that
I had seen her, she had been in a bad mood! So I assumed that
the security guard had told her that she had abused her power by
bullying me, making the (presumably Feminist) office manager happy.
The office manager, by the way, was the wife of the Secretary of
the District Law Society.
I could give lots more examples of this sort of experience, but I
am just trying to make a point, rather than creating a list of grievances.
It is no surprise that the Feminists dreamed
up the mythical "Power and Control"
model of family violence. After all, it is the Feminists who
have gained true power and control over so-called "liberal democracies"
by sending out missionaries to conquer the providers of information
(Ms-information) and other services to the public.
Yours sincerely,
Peter Zohrab
|
