Douglas Adams, despite being very highly rated, remains underrated. His Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a masterpiece.   

Every week brings new evidence that Adams got at least one important thing right. When it comes to Britain and its former colonies like New Zealand. 
We are the true descendants of the Golgafrinchams.  

That may take a bit of explaining for those who have not yet read the books.  

Humans are not actually from earth. We did not evolve here. We landed here.  

Or, rather, we crash-landed here.  

More specifically, we were crash-landed here.  

Our ancestors, widely considered useless, were encouraged to load themselves onto an Ark Ship and leave their planet, Golgafrincham. They were set on an autopilot course to this backwater of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy, to crash upon an utterly insignificant little blue- green planet. 

Upon crash landing, the survivors held endless committee meetings.  

The Fire Development Sub-Committee undertook consumer surveys about what people want from fire and what sort of image it has for them. Actually figuring out fire could wait.  

Those tasked with inventing the wheel debated instead what colour it should be.  

With that pre-amble from the Hitchhiker’s Guide out of the way, consider today’s evidence.  

This week, BusinessDesk reported that a Woolworths in Wainuiomata will be allowed to continue to have a pharmacy. It was the right decision, in the end. But consider how we got there.  

The Independent Community Pharmacy Group had sued the supermarket – and won in the High Court in 2023. The Medicines Act required pharmacist control of the pharmacy. So the grocer had to restructure its pharmacy business. Each pharmacy inside a supermarket would have a board of three directors, two of whom would be independent pharmacists.  

A two-day appeal followed in September 2024. Competitor pharmacists worried that the District Health Boards had not adequately considered risks to health equity. Expert witnesses were lined up. Whether the DHBs had acted consistently with Treaty Principles in allowing the supermarket to dispense funded medicines was also in question.  

Finally, this month, the Court of Appeal deemed that a pharmacy in a supermarket in Wainuiomata was fine – and, even better, awarded costs against the complainants. 

But it took two years of court wrangling to get there.  

The Golgafrinchams would have been proud of New Zealand’s process.  

Douglas Adams was right about our lineage.