The Northern Advocate

One-stop shopper: Retail therapy won’t help this patient

Taking a leaf out of mum’s book and finding a way to focus on the positive

In 1605, Thomas Middleton wrote a play called A Mad World, My Masters. Four hundred and nineteen years on, little has changed.

I wanted a jacket for walking in winter, a jacket that would keep me warm as I set out but that I could unzip and even tie around my waist as I worked up a sweat.

I thought perhaps a jacket made of polar fleece.

The world divides into those who like to shop for clothes and those who would rather have their fingernail­s removed with pliers.

I believe the two camps may actually be separate species. We in the pliers’ camp look across the divide in wonder.

It seems to us that those who like to shop for clothes already have all the clothes they need for several lifetimes, and we don’t understand why they want more. Or why, when they shop, they go haphazardl­y, like herbivores on the plain, wandering from store to store in the hope of finding something nice, testing cloth between finger and thumb with a poulterer’s pinch and holding things briefly up in front of themselves, before tossing them aside.

We in the pliers brigade are like the carnivores on the plain. On the rare occasions we buy clothes, we do not wander. We identify a target and conduct a raid. The aim is to be in and out and gone.

So it was that in pursuit of a jacket I settled on one of those outdoor clothing shops that have proliferat­ed in recent years. They sell hiking boots that have more technology than Apollo 11, and trousers that wash and dry themselves in seconds and can be turned at the touch of a zip into a pair of shorts or a four-wheel-drive recreation­al vehicle, all of which are invaluable qualities in the wilds of the supermarke­t carpark.

I do not like these shops but then I do not like any clothes shops. My worst horror is the changing cubicles. Everything about them depresses me, from the walls of particle board to the bristle carpet, the prisoner bench, the detritus left by previous occupants and that lingering aroma of eau d’underwear.

And as a pair of trousers I am trying on comes to a juddering halt at the thigh, I just want out.

I might mention here, in the hope that other retailers may follow its example, that I have found the perfect store for sports shoes. Once a year or so, looking neither right nor left at the displays of shoes, I march straight to the cash desk where stands the store’s proprietor. I announce that I want a pair of shoes for walking on the roads or for playing squash or for scrambling on the hills and he listens, and he nods and he sits me down and measures both my feet and goes away and then returns with a single pair of shoes that he places on my feet himself and even ties the laces of.

The shoes fit my needs and my feet, and I buy them. Now, that is service and that is shopping.

Anyway, I parked outside the outdoors store and breathed in deep and marched through the sliding doors and met a stroke of luck. For there on a table just inside the door and prominentl­y displayed lay a pile of fleecy jackets, zippered, light-weight and on special. They were two for $99.

I found one in old-man colourless, and posed briefly in front of a mirror. It was not a thing of beauty, but then I am not a thing of beauty, either. It would do and I was done.

I took it to the counter, where a young, unnaturall­y cheerful assistant scanned the ticket. “That’ll be $138,” he said. I pointed out the sticker saying two for $99.

“But that’s for two,” he said helpfully.

“I don’t want two.”

“You have to buy two to get the deal. One is $138. It says that in the system.”

“How about I pay for two but only take one?”

“You have to take two.” “Can I give the second one to you?”

“I’d have to ask my manager.” I felt the pliers clamping down on a nail.

“Don’t bother,” I said, bought a second jacket I didn’t want or need, and ran — with Thomas Middleton chuckling in my ear.

"My worst horror is the changing cubicles. Everything about them depresses me, from the walls of particle board to the bristle carpet, the prisoner bench, the detritus left by previous occupants and that lingering aroma of eau d’underwear. "

This weekend is the anniversar­y of my mother’s death. She died on Queen’s Birthday. It’s now called King’s Birthday weekend (a little hard to get used to, but we all seem to have embraced it). Speaking of mothers, we had a rerun over the 80s mother of all Budgets that was Ruth Richardson’s baby. But was Budget 2024 really comparable?

I know there are people who are very unhappy with the Budget results.

There are cuts to Māori developmen­t, the omission of 13 cancer drugs that were promised and are not being funded (although there seems to be a reactive u-turn on this). First-home buyers who were already struggling to raise a deposit having their grants whipped away. The disability sector on the surface appears to have come out unscathed and supported with the allocation of $1.1 billion over the next four years.

I know Disability Support Services has been running into deficits in the past and this may not be an increase in reality.

I know the devil is always in the detail but really, I feel somewhat relieved. Here is what other people have said in the sector.

New Zealand Disability Support Network CEO Peter Reynolds said, “We see the $1.1 billion allocated in the Budget to ‘address demand’ as code for meeting growth or inflation costs only. No one’s support quality or availabili­ty will increase. It sounds like a lot of money but unfortunat­ely, it won’t cover providers’ cost increases for very long.”

Disability Rights Commission­er Prudence Walker said, “The $1.1 billion over five years to address cost pressures for Whaikaha Ministry of Disabled People was urgently needed to ensure sufficient support for disabled people to participat­e in community.

“Many disabled people are simply doing their best to survive and have been devastated by recent abrupt changes to their delicately balanced support structures. I urge the Government to co-design supports for disabled people and remember, people have a right to contribute to their own advancemen­t.”

When I asked the prominent and outspoken disability advocate Dr Huhana Heke for her take on the Budget, her response was, “While I am pleased there is funding for disability, it is simply what’s already needed and with health and education cuts impacting disabled as well, especially as there is no effort to restore the funding they cut in March. It is time disabled claim their autonomy and stand for Parliament to have our own voice for our communitie­s.”

Whilst I am very aware that New Zealand has a long way to go before we have a non-disabling society and that this will require significan­t resources, I find myself taking a leaf from my mother’s book who was always the eternal optimist, always finding a way to focus on the positive. The Budget could have been far worse — to be honest I’m somewhat relieved.

While recent increases in volume and inflationa­ry pressures seem to be addressed by this Budget, there are still impairment­s unfunded such as ME/chronic fatigue syndrome, Tourette’s, ADHD and long Covid.

Maybe we need to rethink how disability supports are funded. The support disabled people get from ACC when their disability is a result of an accident is gold plated in comparison with Whaikaha’s funded services. How about using the same model of levies? How about a kick-start from ACC’s investment portfolio of over $47b and its even greater stash of reserves?

One can only hope . . . and keep taking a leaf out of my dear old mum’s book!

"While recent increases in volume and inflationa­ry pressures seem to be addressed by this Budget, there are still impairment­s unfunded such as ME/chronic fatigue syndrome, Tourette’s, ADHD and long Covid."