Growing old disgracefully

We all know what it’s like. When you’re a kid the time span between one Christmas and the next seems interminable. As you age, the gap narrows until it gets to the stage where you’ve barely paid off your credit card from last Christmas and the next one is upon you.

And then there’s the sameness about it all. The same music; Jingle Bells, Snoopy’s Christmas, and John Lennon’s anti-war song And so this is Christmas.

Jingle Bells clearly represents the sound of the cash registers in the busy shops where crafty retailers cunningly add sixty percent to the recommended retail price, remove it and then advertise “sixty percent off.”

Everybody loves a bargain.

And always the controversy. This year it was Race Relations Commissioner Susan Devoy who caused a stir when she agreed with the Auckland Regional Migrant Services policy of avoiding the word Christmas by referring to “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” so non-Christians wouldn’t feel excluded.

It was of course a storm in a teacup. Secular New Zealand has never really taken Christmas seriously. For instance they pronounce it Krist-miss instead of its real name Christ-mass. They parade our towns and cities with colourful floats which almost never include a Christ figure; they even call them Santa parades.

“Santa” is derived from Saint Nicholas, but “Old Nick” was a name in ancient English folklore for the devil. Fundamentalist Christians will even suggest that Santa is an anagram of Satan.

A bridge too far perhaps, but you’ll get my drift.

Then there are the carols. “And man will live for evermore” one of them expounds “because of Christmas day.” But don’t get too complacent. According to the church’s sole text book, the Bible, only believers will get to live for evermore.

The Parable of the Sower, documented in three of the four Gospels suggests that only twenty-five per cent of mankind or one in four will become true believers. The last census recorded that forty-nine per cent of New Zealanders said they were Christians which means we may have already exceeded our quota by twenty four per cent.

Perhaps the final straw are the Christmas crackers. This is where the Chinese get square on us for the insidious poll taxes of old and more recently Phil Twyford’s dubious claims about their alleged house-acquiring habits. Comprising tiny valueless plastic toys, cheap as chips paper hats and conundrums that were hilariously funny when we first heard them in the primers they will be producing a profit margin of around five hundred per cent.

Time then to go out and buy the family presents.

Shopping is so foreign to me that last week I went to a furniture store to look for a decaffeinated coffee table. And I’m convinced Sunday is the day God took off from creating the world to take Mrs God around Briscoe’s

I never knew what to give my father for Christmas so one year I gave him $100 and told him “Go and buy something that will make your life easier.”

So he went out and bought a present for my mother.

“I bought some batteries, but they weren’t included, so I had to buy them again.” - Steven Wright 

Read More...

Donald's trumpeting causes angst

Apparently there is a petition circulating around Britain barring Donald Trump from ever entering the country. So far this has attracted 430,966 signatures. Another petition doing the rounds is asking the government to close all the UK borders until ISIS is defeated and this one has garnered 443,769 signatures. The sheer irony that one appears to contradict the other will likely have been lost in the process.

Donald Trump’s declaration that if elected president he would ban Muslims from ever entering the country “until we can work out what the heck is going on.” has justifiably sparked widespread condemnation from free-world leaders, uncle Tom Cobbly and all, but amongst America’s conservatives, his popularity increases daily.

It’s not as though there’s a dearth of credible aspirants for the Republican Party’s nomination lining up against him. Texas Senator Ted Cruz, African-American neurosurgeon Ben Carson and Cuban-American senator Marco Rubio would all give the Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton a run for her money, but all three are lagging in the polls due to Mr Trump’s populist pronouncements.

To tap into the apprehensiveness of America’s and to some extent the world’s trepidation of the potential carnage caused by a terror group who appear to have no fear of death is clever politics, however distasteful.

America as we know it was birthed by its liberal immigration policy poetically expressed on the plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty that reads: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”

Most Western nations, observing America’s success story, followed suit

Today we have to rely on governments using sophisticated surveillance systems to sort out the wheat from the chaff as far as immigrants are concerned as some seek to destroy our way of life.

Paris has clearly shown that despite having a secret service agency that would probably make our GCSB look amateurish, the French were woefully inept at containing terrorist attacks on at least two occasions.

This is a game on a number of levels, a numbers game, a time game and in the end a game that risks horrendous defeat by introducing more potential jihadists. That’s why Donald Trump has a point, however unrealistic, when he says we need to stop the flow until governments can devise a foolproof system of identifying the chaff.

Trump also gains some traction and support because the unpalatable truth is that most of us are more comfortable living amidst our own kind. Orthodox Muslims praying towards Mecca five times a day, their women wearing top-to-toe clothing and the patriarchal nature of their Sharia laws makes us feel uncomfortable.

And so although we enjoy the diversity that other population groups bring, we prefer to coalesce with our own kith and kin on a day-to-day basis.

Illegal aliens have always been a problem for New Zealand. In fact I would imagine that there will be an unmeasurable segment of Maoridom today who, when Captain Cook and his vulgar boatmen first set foot on Aotearoa, will have wished that their Rangatira’s had circulated a petition declaring that no white honkeys ever be allowed to come ashore again.

“I support making deportation for illegal immigration retroactive, and shipping Anglos back home” - Paul Rodriguez

Read More...

The perils of authorship

Last week the Nielsen Independent Booksellers ratings on the country’s Top 20 bestselling books had Bob Francis; A Story of My Town at number one. The book was up against Dan Carter: My Story which came in at number three and international superstar author Bill Bryson’s latest offering which was at four.

Local author, sports writer and district councillor Gary Caffell made a superb job of weaving the tale of Francis’s incredible life story.

The book chronicles the raft of issues facing Masterton’s longest-serving mayor which includes the Judd’s Road murders and the firebombing of a policeman’s house, but the tome has more depth and substance to it than these two widely-publicised issues.

Bob got involved in leading and supporting major strategies to combat significant social issues in the town which included gang problems, domestic violence, and poor parenting. He worked on initiating employment opportunities, had a real passion for the less fortunate and there are a great many facilities for Masterton’s citizens to enjoy thanks to the hard-working mayor’s drive and enthusiasm.

The books wider appeal will have been enhanced by the faithful recording of his stellar career as a rugby referee. He went on to become an international referee assessor and was a member of the referee selection panel at two World Cups. Devotees of our national sport in this rugby-mad nation will find the last thirty pages of the book absorbing.

However I would caution Mr Caffell and Mr Francis about going out and ordering new BMW’s at this critical stage, despite the books early success.

I have had some involvement in writing books. I’ve written two and they’re not necessarily goldmines; though to be fair mine were never in the same league as this one. Back in 2006, I wrote One Man’s Meat and sold out of all copies printed which was a first run of 600, but neither fame nor fortune followed. The all-up cost to produce the books was $10,000, but the return to the author after attendant costs had been paid was half that, leaving me $5000 out of pocket.

I was reminded of Mr Micawber's oft-quoted recipe for happiness as espoused in Charles Dickens’ book David Copperfield. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen shillings and sixpence, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and sixpence, result misery.”

I went to my bank manager and asked, “How do I stand for a loan?”

He said, “You don’t, you kneel.”

Surprisingly my first book, published in 1976, did produce a creditable profit. It was a book for the meat trade written in conjunction with my accountant Colin Croskery and was sold to pretty well all of the country’s butchers. It was a commercial success because we managed to convince suppliers to the industry to advertise in it.

Mr Micawber would have been proud of us.

Just after One Man’s Meat hit the bookstands I was stopped in the street by a fellow who told me: “From the moment I picked up your book until the moment I put it down, I could not stop laughing.”

“Someday,” he went on, “I hope to read it.”


I should have quit writing while I was ahead.

I asked my publisher what would happen if he sold all the copies of my book he had printed. He said, “I’ll just print another ten.” - Eric Sykes.

Read More...

Pillow talk leaves me bamboozled

The TV channel that tends to get most of my attention bombards me each night with advertisements urging me to take out an insurance policy to pay for my impending funeral and then entices me to buy a bamboo pillow that will allow me to sleep the sleep of the just and hopefully increase my life expectancy.

You probably thought, as I did, that a bamboo pillow is made from bamboo. Wrong! It’s the pillowslip that is made from bamboo, bamboo fibre that is. The pillow itself is made from foam.

Foam with a memory, apparently. Well anyway that’s what the salesman told me, lurking behind the counter in one of those pop-up shops that come and go in those wide aisles of a shopping mall in a nearby city.

The day I visited there was a mountebank claiming to cure most of your illnesses with a multi-coloured lamp beamed on the affected part, two stalls selling a huge variety of psychedelic covers for your iPhone, the inevitable chairs that will shake your booty if you dare to stick a two dollar coin in the slot and now two competing well-stocked mini-marts selling bamboo pillows.

I was intrigued. Bamboo fibre I was told is naturally anti-bacterial, hypoallergenic, breathable, cool, strong, flexible, soft and has a luxurious shiny appearance. It absorbs and evaporates sweat very quickly and is three or four times more absorbent than cotton.

About now the well-versed young salesman pauses to draw breath and then goes on to expound that environmentally-friendly bamboo yields ten times that of cotton, without using fertilisers or pesticides. Armed with this information I wondered out loud why there aren’t more Panda’s in the world, but my cynicism is unacknowledged and the young man is now joined by an attractive dark-skinned young saleslady coming to the rescue of her colleague who is blissfully unaware that he needs rescuing.

When I express surprise that the pillow itself is actually made of foam rather than bamboo she tells me that the memory foam’s most unique quality is its temperature sensitivity, which softens the foam when in contact with the body. Memory foam, she gushes, moulds to your curvatures, cradling areas that normally receive pressure and supporting areas that typically do not. Truly miraculous.

I convey my disillusionment however given that when Susan Paul drops the bowling ball on the pillow and doesn’t break the egg beneath the accompanying spiel clearly implies that it’s the bamboo that’s the hero, not the foam.

This narrative is lost on my two young salespersons who I suspect have never had to suffer monotonous TV ads. They probably download movies or watch Netflix; I envy their innocence.

I can get two pillows for $79 they tell me, but when I suggest that having pillowcases featuring bamboo slogans and illustrations will hardly enhance the appearance of our immaculate bedroom they offer as an extra a variety of pastel-coloured bamboo pillowcases, logo free. This bumps up the price tag considerably.

I’m then told that thousands of customers swear by their bamboo pillows.

I’ll bet they do, some louder than others.

“Business is the art of extracting money from another man’s pocket without resorting to violence.” - Max Amsterdam

Read More...

The world mourns a gentle giant

The international awe with which the late great Jonah Lomu was held may have come as a surprise to many New Zealanders; even Buckingham Palace chipped in with condolences as the world lamented the loss of this rugby colossus.

I had some inkling of his potential popularity back in 1995 while holidaying in Florida. We were on a mini-bus and I recognised the South African accent of a man sitting in the front seat of the vehicle next to the driver. To initiate a conversation I leaned over and said to him “Remind me again, who won the Rugby World Cup?” He swung round and in a friendly manner demanded to know where I came from. When I told him New Zealand he said “Sorry Kiwi, we did.”

To our amazement the bus driver, who was an African-American, said “No, the real winner was rugby.”

Naturally the South African and I wanted to know just how he could make such an utterance, both assuming that no one in America would have been the slightest bit interested in rugby, but he claimed that the contest was well-publicised and widely viewed.

The conversation almost instantly turned to Jonah Lomu and his role in the triumphant All Black win over England which must have been played and replayed on sports shows to a worldwide audience. The impact of the images of that one game would have set Jonah up for life.

It’s an absolute tragedy that his life was such a short one.

Jonah didn’t feature much in the final against South Africa in 1995. The Springboks managed him masterfully that day, herding him into the middle of the field where he could be lowered to the ground by the loose forwards rather then letting him skirt the outer fringes of the field where he might have wreaked havoc.

And always, when someone as instantly recognisable as Lomu dies, there is a great outpouring of acclamation and glorification. Unlike others however Jonah received much justifiable adoration when he was alive, yet he seemed to have kept his feet on the ground and his outward humility was admirable.

Of course he wasn’t perfect. Three marriages before he turned forty seemed excessive, but my disdain for his “boom-boxed” car is perhaps more of a reflection of my lack of tolerance due to ageing than a serious misdemeanour on Jonah’s part.

But as rugby correspondent Paul Lewis wrote “He was known for the ferocity of his running on the field and his gentleness off it, a dichotomy prized by rugby people and perhaps the natural state of a Pacific Islander.”

I couldn’t possibly comment on his prowess as a rugby player; I’m not really qualified to talk about sport.

I gave up cricket when I found facing a fast-bowler was like standing on the runway at Masterton’s Motorplex and when a car is 22 yards away, trying to get out of the way.

I stopped playing rugby because of illness and fatigue; the coach was sick and tired of me.

The last time I participated in any sport was when I went skiing and broke a leg.

Fortunately, it wasn’t one of mine.

“I always say to people that you have never seen the best of me, and that’s what I mean - I’ve never been fully fit.” - Jonah Lomu

Read More...

Pleased to remember, the 5th of November

At school we were taught that a fellow with the unlikely name of Guido Fawkes had once tried to blow up the British parliament. England was closer to us then than it is now and annually we were encouraged to recall this dastardly deed and in the process make ourselves a little pocket money which we were then encouraged to blow on fireworks.

This may have been a brilliant commercial conspiracy encouraged by Nobel and his gunpowder manufacturers, and might have even encompassed our history teachers, but I suspect that it was merely a customary practice maintained over the years and we were reasonably keen to keep it going.

On November the fifth in 1940’s Masterton the early morning streets were alive with the sound of music as receptive citizenry threw coinage towards the gaggle of kids who turned up in groups of four or five every few minutes on their front lawns and projected their voices at the main bedroom which was invariably at the front the of the house.

Provided you had a credible Guy and a chorus of friends with acceptable vocal skills, money literally flew out of those windows.

We lived in Lansdowne and for weeks before the big day we would shape our Guys using our dads’ old pants and shirts stuffed with straw with a flour sack for the head. We would set off, pulling the Guy in home-made carts at 6 in the morning and this gave us two hours before breakfast and school to hound the sleeping citizenry who almost always good naturedly opened their curtains to our intrusion and threw alms into our arms.

Although we would chant “penny for the Guy” inflation had decreed that threepences and sixpences were the least you would expect, and the odd florin and a very odd half-a-crown were sometimes proffered, usually from folk who had been so overwhelmed with Guys and their choristers that they had run out of the smaller coinage.

Four threepences made a shilling and there were twenty shillings in a pound and a pound would buy a huge amount of fireworks. That night, with darkness falling at a more respectable hour than it does today, our families would gather to watch our hard-earned money go up in flames.

The climax of the evening was supposed to be the throwing of the Guy on the bonfire, but this was more often than not discouraged because it seemed a little gruesome to a community that had just come out of a world war and anyway often the clothes you used for the Guy were the same ones your father used to don to work his vegetable garden.

This word picture is starting to sound like a Norman Rockwell illustration of the era, but it’s how I remember it.

Although fireworks featured on the fifth of November this year, scaring the living daylights out of the canine and equine population, the only street merchants were the trick and treat brigade who a few days earlier were knocking on your front door demanding candy while their protective parents hid covertly on the footpath.

Oh how I miss the good old days.

Except of course, they weren’t really that good.

“If you’ve never seen a real, fully developed look of disgust, tell your son how you conducted yourself when you were a boy.” - Elbert Hubbard

Read More...

Going back to the future

A new radio station has been brought to my attention with the appropriate name of Magic. (105.5 FM if you’re curious). For septuagenarians and others, the music has a magic quality; it’s the sounds we grew up with.

The music is melodic, the words have a clarity not evident in much of today’s popular music and the lyrics generally talk of love between members of the opposite sex or other interesting themes like tips on playing poker (Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”) or a seaman desperate to abandon ship (The Beach Boys’ “The Sloop John B”).

And they’re not asexual. Lulu sings “I’m a Tiger” with a sensual growl that would stir the blood of most young men and Nancy Sinatra does the same when she tells us her boots were made for walking.

Today’s pop offerings couldn’t hold a candle to the music of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s which Magic’s strapline claims they “keep alive.” As someone recently said, “It’s called rap music because the “c” accidently fell off the printer.”

I know I’m right about this, except I had the same argument with my parents about their music when I was growing up.

After I left college my father in his wisdom sent me to Palmerston North to learn the trade of my ancestors under the guidance of another Master butcher. I used to do deliveries around the city on a bike with a basket on the front that Granville in Open All Hours would have been proud of. A regular recipient of our fine meats was a Mr Sandys who sadly was bedridden. His wife was a wonderful pastry-cook and would regularly have a hot morsel for the butcher-boy from her well-appointed kitchen.

The garage at the end of their drive was padlocked and I looked through a crack in the door one day and espied a 1926 Austin Seven coupe which I immediately coveted. Mrs Sandys wasn’t sure if her husband would part with it and she ushered me into his darkened bedroom on a number of occasions where protracted negotiations took place until he finally agreed to sell me the vehicle for 100 pounds. My weekly take-home pay at the time was six pounds and tuppence so one hundred pounds was a small fortune to a relatively penurious butcher-boy.

However I had opened a Post Office savings account when I was at primary school which had a credit balance of around one hundred pounds and so I purchased my first car.

I painted “Shake, Rattle and Roll” on the driver’s door, a popular song of the time performed by Bill Haley and the Comets that aptly described the ride caused by the superannuated springing system.

With the hood down I’d hoped it might be a chick magnet, though I’m not sure that expression was actually in vogue then. It didn’t have the desired affect; though I’m blaming the driver for that, not the car.

The point of all this is that the automobile industry has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in the intervening years; the Austin Seven could in no way compare with the car I drive today.

So how come the music’s not as good?

Read More...

Are we missing the boat?

News, either via newspaper or television, is just a form of entertainment. Advertisers throng around it to get their own messages across and we blindly follow. A few short weeks ago the news seem to consist almost entirely of incredibly distressing images of the exodus of refugees fleeing war-torn Middle Eastern countries looking for a better life in the more prosperous European Union nations.

No doubt the evacuation continues apace, but we’ve moved on to other headlines like the Chris Cairns trial and the Rugby World Cup. Both occurring in Great Britain where I suspect most of the populous won’t be the slightest bit interested in either event.

For Europe the influx of refugees will either be a feast or a famine. The saying goes that economic growth is essentially productivity combined with workers and when numbers for both are rising steadily, countries prosper. In wealthy countries, like most of those in the European Union, populations are shrinking and in Germany, who has charitably agreed to take hundreds of thousands of the fleeing migrants, the population is predicted to shrink from 81.3 million as of today to around 71 million by 2060. So there may be method in what is perceived to be their generous madness.

In his book, How migration shaped our world, Ian Goldin, the Director of Oxford University’s Martin School says “Migrants are a disproportionately dynamic force globally. Innovative and entrepreneurial, they create a higher-than-average number of patents in many countries and start businesses more frequently than the locals. In the 19th century, a third of the population of Sweden, Ireland and Italy emigrated to America and other countries and the U.S. is the best example of how dynamic a country of immigrants can be.”

New Zealanders in general and Winston Peters in particular seemed reluctant to accept more refugees or immigrants especially if their culture is not akin to ours. Those opposed to bringing in more foreigners imagine a cabal of unskilled refugees being a burden on our social welfare system and lowering wages by their seemingly uncanny ability to live on the smell of an oily rag.

Just last week the managers of Auckland’s Indian restaurant chain Masala were heavily fined for employing migrant workers for long hours at $2.64 an hour, so there is some substance to the fears expressed.

With a shortage of housing in Auckland where most of our new arrivals seemed destined to settle, and the fact that many people in this country are struggling to make ends meet, it is understandable that there is a reluctance to encourage more refugees than the agreed quota.

But migrants could provide a long term economic boom and we certainly need something to kick-start our moribund economy. According to Goldin, if rich nations around the world were to admit enough migrants to expand their labour force by a mere 3%, the world would be $356 billion richer – not only because of the productivity gains in the wealthy countries, but because migrants send so much money back home.

But fear not, none of this debate is ever going to make the prime-time news.

“Apparently one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think its Colin.” - Tommy Cooper

Read More...

The pitfalls of liquidity

When I was a youngster my father used to give me advice about the perils of drinking. Not to totally warn me off the demon drink; but “Stick to beer” he used to say. I noted, somewhat sardonically, that despite this homily he did enjoy the occasional whisky himself. He warned me off spirits, but kept his greatest dehortation for the imbibing of wine. “People who drink wine,” he opined “Were destined to become alcoholics.” To emphasise the point he reminded me that back then they actually called alcoholics “winos.”

However we’ve recently found out that the real “demon drink” is Coca-Cola. Infused with the 21st century’s most despised poison, sugar, it is causing obesity and diabetes.

Sugary carbonated beverages have always been readily available to the unsuspecting populous, why they have only recently become dangerous to consume is not explained.

Last week on Seven Sharp the two giggling Gerties that front the show interviewed the CEO of Coca-Cola Australasia wanting to know what he was going to do about his deadly product. Looking lost for words, the best answer he could come up with was that he was reducing the size of the cans. Pretty well every product on the supermarket shelves are going down in size, but being sold at the same price, so his solution is hardly revolutionary. The Seven Sharp hosts trotted out the old hoary chestnut about Coca-Cola being cheaper than milk; it’s not of course, but the media never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

My father was a generous supplier of fizzy drink to our household, sometimes buying the rare Schweppes product from Moore Wilson’s, but more often the mixed range from the Wairarapa Aerated Water Company better known by its acronym WACO. Schweppes seemed to only have one flavour, an orange product called Palato whereas the WACO range was far more extensive with the usual orange, raspberry, lime and lemon varieties and also cola, creaming soda and a blue coloured concoction appropriately called blue lagoon.

But the locals were soon overwhelmed by the brash American juggernaut and the Coca-Cola range caused the small bottlers in New Zealand’s town and cities to shut up shop leaving us with Coke, Fanta and Sprite and a less colourful world.

Then wine suddenly gained new respectability. After the government paid vintners to pull out all their vines because the wrong varieties had been planted a revitalised industry built up to serve a thirsty throng who had never had the cautioning words of my father ringing in their ears.

Sophisticated marketing was the key and the best wordsmiths available were summoned to compose sentences for the labels. An example: “Mouth filling, fresh and supple with good depth of cherry/red berry spice flavours and finely integrated smokey oak aromas abound.” This on a bottle of Pinot Noir from Nelson that a dinner guest assured me was an “audacious little wine, which left a subtle hint of gooseberry and passion fruit on the palate.”

I seriously considered having him committed.

So which is the lesser of the two evils; sugary drinks or drinks served with sugary sentences?

Both are deadly in the long run, I suspect.

“Is it possible to get a cup of coffee-flavoured coffee anymore in this country? What happened with coffee? Did I miss a meeting? They have every other flavour but coffee-flavoured coffee. They have mochaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, al pacino…coffee doesn’t need a menu, it needs a cup.” – Dennis Leary

Read More...

Taking care of business

Lots of new words and phrases continually enter the lexicon. “Going forward” springs to mind, now in prolific use instead of saying “in future” like we used to.

The Prime Minister is fond of saying “at the end of the day” and its usage is now widespread.

“At this point in time” entered the glossary many years ago and is still heard regularly, but is merely an affectatious way of saying “now.”

A new word we will have to come to grips with is “Uber.” According to my trusty old Chambers dictionary uber means prototype and the word is now being used as a brand name for an amateur taxi service. And so a painful change is in the offing for taxi operators with a system that effectively lets anyone become a taxi driver using their own car through a proprietary mobile payment and passenger matching system.

Rapid technological change is more often than not distressing for those affected and the outcomes are littered along the highway of broken dreams with companies like Kodak, Betamax and the former mobile phone giant Nokia.

As far as I am aware this new technology has not yet reached the Wairarapa, but I suspect it is only a matter of time. It is a disruptive element that threatens the taxi industry worldwide and has been greeted with outrage by the incumbents. The anger is understandable when you consider that taxi drivers have made significant investments in their vehicles and their licenses.

Those who welcome the competition however point out that New Zealand has the unenviable reputation of being the most costly place in the world to catch a cab, despite the industry being deregulated in 1989. Christchurch, Queenstown, Wellington and Auckland all rank in the top ten of having the most expensive fares in the world.

Incidentally, Uber does not do casual pick-ups. You cannot hail a Uber down in the town. You have to pre-register and order one through an app on your smart phone.

And so now “Uberization” has become a buzz word that applies to other ideas that use the uber-style of marketing services. This, by the way, is described as “trapping a series of innovative processes, phone-enabled geo-location payments and driver management distribution, into an app-accessible service.”

A bit long-winded, but likely to be a future formula for many forms of commerce.

The latest Uber service has surfaced in New York and involves standing in a queue for a customer who simply doesn’t have the time or the inclination. In the Big Apple Robert Samuel, the founder of The Uberization of Everything.com has a team of “dudes” who wait in line for Broadway shows, sample sales, tech releases, popular nightspots and even brunch waitlists.

Samuel recently spent 48 hours outside an Apple Store waiting for the iPhone 6s for a client. He was first in line, slept in a fold-up cot for two nights, had pizza delivered to his spot and “snagged” $1000 for his trouble.

At this point in time and going forward, at the end of the day it’s not a bad way of making a living.

“No one can possibly achieve any real lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist” - John Paul Getty

Read More...

Time to wave the red flag

There’s an old story, popular back in the 1950’s, about a young British lad walking along the footpath when a Rolls-Royce passes and splashes him with water that had accumulated on the roads edge. As the car speeds away he shakes his fist and declares “One day I’m going to bring down the ruling class.” On the other side of the Atlantic a similar situation. A Cadillac speeds past a young man, drenching him with gutter water and the boy smiles and says, “One day I’m going to own a Cadillac.”

The Aesop-type fable was meant to illustrate the difference in attitudes between the two countries. Post-war America was enjoying audacious prosperity while Britain was being dragged down by the intransigent labour unions that held sway until iron lady Margaret Thatcher and her conservative colleagues took control of the treasury benches.

And so now it looks like a giant leap backwards for mankind if new British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn can convince United Kingdom constituents to allow him to lead them to the Promised Land.

First up might be a name change.

Totally against the monarchy, presumably he would want to rule over a United Republic as opposed to the United Kingdom. He was criticised by Labour front benchers recently when he refused to sing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain memorial service in St Pauls Cathedral.

Also a conspiracy theorist, Corbyn believes 9/11 was “manipulated” to make it look like Osama bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war with Afghanistan.

So the Rolls-Royce crowd will be looking on with fear and loathing, but so too are the Cadillac aficionados.

Hillary Clinton thought she was in for a stress-free ride to the Democratic nomination and subsequently becoming the first women president of the US of A. But then an extreme left-wing Democratic candidate pops up to make inroads into her initial lead and is drawing just as many enthusiasts to his rowdy rally’s as extreme right-wing Republican candidate Donald Trump.

America’s newest postulant is Bernie Sanders, a 74 year-old Senator from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist and is taking the same tack as Corbyn, offering a progressive utopia of free higher education, health care for all, bolstered wages and chastened billionaires. Using the internet wisely and without beaming any TV ads he addresses huge audiences including a recent gathering of 28,000 faithful followers in Maine. Despite his age, commentators say his freshness beats incumbency and the perception of sincerity is appealing.

And so our two great allies are risking prosperity for a surprising return to a tired old order.

After failing miserably in Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea, Marx’s socialist nirvana could be resurrected by those who have learnt nothing from history

Meanwhile in New Zealand the left-wing luvvies, full of sound and fury, are demanding a strange new flag that signifies nothing and is about as far away from the corporate branded version that John Key had hoped for as you could get.

If the boring Red Peak becomes the chosen ensign, the Prime Minister will feel like he has been drenched by his own BMW.

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Read More...

The hand that rocks the cradle

One-time rugby league star Graham Lowe committed an unpardonable sin when he described Jacinda Ardern on the Paul Henry Breakfast as being “a pretty little thing” and “would look good as a prime minister.” The twitterati and other sections of the social media erupted and Graham sensibly laid low until the furore died down.

While the comments enraged many of her colleagues, Ms Ardern was not drawn to respond.

Mr Lowe was born in another era and while most have sought to cope with the times that Bob Dylan reminded us were a-changing, Mr Lowe may well have got too many bumps on the head during his stellar career to recognise the subtle amelioration.

There was a time when flattery got you everywhere when dealing with the fairer sex, but they’ve seen through the male veneer and now justifiably demand a level playing field in gender communication.

Last week, on the other side of the world, 27 year-old Staffordshire barrister Charlotte Proudman was incensed with a response from award-winning human-rights lawyer Alexander Carter-Silk to a Linked-in advertisement she had posted on the internet which included a head and shoulders photograph of herself.

Carter-Silk, many years her senior, posted that he was “Delighted to connect; I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect, but that is a stunning picture”.

Ms Proudman, perhaps not as astute as Jacinda Ardern, was swift to respond. “I find your message offensive,” she shot back; “I am on Linked-in for business purposes, not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men. The eroticism of women’s physical appearance is a way of exercising power over women. It silences women’s professional attributes as their physical appearance becomes the subject. Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour; think twice before sending another woman (half your age) such a sexist message.”

She then posted the two-way transcripts on the internet and the response throughout Britain made Graham Lowe look like an amateur at offending women. Uncharacteristically, I thought she had a point. I have no argument with what she did. A young woman should be able to post an advertisement about herself and her professional attributes on a business networking site without having to suffer the unwanted attention of men commenting on her appearance. However it turned out that by publically shaming the over-enthusiastic flatterer meant the reaction was not necessarily to her liking.

Not even the sisterhood backed her unconditionally. Writing in the Daily Mail Jan Moir said “Ms Proudman had presented herself as equal part heroine and victim, something only Joan of Arc had successfully pulled off in the past. To prove what an excellent feminist she is Carter-Silk has been humiliated and she has been vindicated”

Ms Proudman regarded the critical judgement by many as demonising, but as one commentator put it “If you cover yourself with honey and climb into a sewer, don’t expect any sympathy if you come out covered in cockroaches.”

After 52 years of married bliss the female that rules the roost in our household is a half-poodle, half-shitzu called “Molly.” She’s a pretty little thing….

“There are three kinds of men, the handsome the caring and the majority” - George Coote

Read More...

Solving Auckland's problems

I’m full of admiration for the My Masterton campaign, launched in February by the Masterton District Council in partnership with the Wairarapa Times-Age to increase jobs and population in the district. The newspaper offered $100,000 of “in kind” advertising; presumably this will be in the northern regions where their parent company owns The New Zealand Herald.

The District Council has a large graphic sign on its building set to indicate job increases. To date it would seem none have been signified, but its early days yet and it would churlish for us all not to get behind the campaign to endeavour to depopulate Auckland.

If we don’t succeed in this, the city of sails has the propensity to bring us all down.

If you are a saver the latest interest rate decrease announced by the Reserve Bank Governor last week is not much of an incentive for you to maintain your frugality, but much of what happens in New Zealand’s financial sector is determined by what’s going on in Auckland.

A promotional TV commercial was filmed in Masterton last week which presumably will be played to the whole country with Auckland as its focus.

There was time when TV advertisements were regional. Now they are beamed to a NZ-wide audience and many of these promote Auckland-based stores or services. Are you ever going to get the opportunity to buy a half-price vacuum cleaner from Godfrey’s well-stocked carpark for instance?

As I see the overflown TV views of the new housing estates in Auckland I wonder if they’ve thought about the whole package of facilities that make up a community. Masterton can offer ready-access to handy well-established schools, medical centres, churches, supermarkets, crèche’s, live theatres and movie theatres, restaurants, an art and history centre, splendid parks and reserves and an adequate public transport system.

Passage to all of these is just a short unhindered drive - and for many, within walking distance.

If Aucklander’s made the switch they would be amazed at the spare time they suddenly found they had. Most currently have to get up at dawn to get to work on time and return well after dusk. Meanwhile their mortgage repayments on a modest three-bedroomed home costing in excess of a million dollars don’t bear thinking about.

What I fail to see though is any significant growth or demand for new housing happening in Masterton. The Wairarapa Property publication, posted in our letterboxes each week, seems to be offering more and more reasonably-priced local homes for sale, many of them at least half the price of a similar dwelling in Auckland. However there is little evidence that these bargains are being snapped up by enthusiastic outsiders.

To exacerbate the problem Masterton’s retail hub is struggling, caused in part by internet shopping sales and also large superstores with free car parking locating on the town’s fringes.

Given that shopping is now an essential form of entertainment for many, anyone contemplating a shift to the regions will want to see a thriving retail centre.

And living in a small town can have its drawbacks. Ever since I put a Neighbourhood Watch sign on our front gate every Tom, Dick and Harry comes in and wants to know the time!

“The higher the buildings, the lower the morals” - Noel Coward

Read More...

Taking refuge from the refugees

I read recently that on August the 19th in the American city of Baltimore police found a 28-year-old man wounded from a gunshot. He was taken to hospital, where he died later that night. The report said this was the city’s 212th homicide victim for the year.

Baltimore has a population of 600,000. Multiply that figure by 7 and you approximate New Zealand’s population. If we Western nations all sing off the same song sheet then to keep up with the good people of Baltimore New Zealand should have an 8 month murder rate of around 1484. Apparently New Zealand had just 41 murders for the whole of last year.

If you’ll pardon the expression, Baltimore is leaving us for dead.

While we quite rightly fear the horrendous potential outcome of a nuclear war, conventional weapons are doing a darn good job in the interim.

Take the Syrian civil war. Saudi Arabia is said to be equipping the rebels with weapons; Bashar al-Assad’s firepower is supplied by Russia. The Saudis buy most of their weapons from Britain and the US, but recently placed large orders with China. Global arms and military services by the 100 largest defence contractors continue apace with worldwide sales tipped to top $US500 billion this year.

Of the 100 companies on the list, 44 are based in the US. Seven of the top ten are American, one is British, one is Italian and one is a multinational European Union conglomerate.

Syrian citizens, to avoid being slaughtered by these western-world-made weapons are leaving the country in droves and heading for Europe. Perhaps they’ll find employment in the arms factories.

In a recent broadcast however the BBC questioned the legitimacy of those who are fleeing the war-torn country. Refugees are usually the aged and infirm, and almost always women and children, whereas the majority of those leaving Syria are mostly male and of fighting age.

The next question the BBC asked was why the refugees, almost exclusively Muslim, travel to Europe when there are extremely wealthy Muslim countries much closer - like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and even Turkey or the Gulf states like Dubai, Kuwait and Abu Dhabi.

Although those fleeing the Syrian crisis have for several years been crossing into Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey in huge numbers, entering Arab States - especially in the Gulf - is far less straightforward. Officially Syrians can apply for a tourist visa or a work permit in order to enter a Gulf state, but the process is costly, and there is a widespread perception that many Gulf states have unwritten restrictions in place that make it hard for Syrians to be granted a visa in practice, said the broadcaster.

Gordon McLachlan once wrote a book about New Zealanders calling us The Passionless People, so perhaps our prime minister’s initial reluctance to absorb more refugees was genetically-based. The well-spoken and well-dressed asylum seekers talk articulately of their plight on our nightly TV newscasts and look as though they will make worthy citizens, however we mustn’t lose sight of the fact that charity begins at home.

But at least the Syrians will be a lot safer here than in Baltimore.

“One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.” - Dame Agatha Christie

Read More...

The government is here to help

While Auckland expands and the regions stagnate the government has a grand scheme to encourage more migrants settle in the outer reaches of New Zealand. Like so many government initiatives this one is bound to fail. The problem is people like vibrant cities and the diverse culture they provide.

The Third Labour Government once came up with a plan to “decentralise” New Zealand. One of the first benefactors of this strategy was Masterton. In 1976 the Government Printing Office was relocated to a huge purpose-built structure in Ngaumutawa Road. It was initially to employ 150 workers which would be gradually increased to 600. The extra employment never occurred; the precious politicians wanted instant access to print and the operation inevitably went back to Wellington. This allowed Auckland tow-truck driver and panel beater Graham Hart to buy the building for a song which launched him on his journey to becoming New Zealand’s richest man.

Today the imposing building houses privately-owned company Webstar who employ 135 staff and operate 24 hour days, seven days a week printing telephone books and unaddressed mail.

So the outcome wasn’t all bad.

Assuming the influx of print workers to Masterton the government also purchased land in Manaia Road with an entrance off South Road to cope with the extra housing needed. No housing was required - or built - and the bare entrance land eventually became the site for Central School.

Another Third Labour Government initiative was suspensory loans, offered to overseas companies to locate here and export their products. In 1974 Phillip Morris took up the offer and built a huge cigarette manufacturing plant, again in Ngaumutawa Road. If the company stayed for ten years the loan didn’t have to be paid back. Phillip Morris upped sticks and went back to Australia not long after the ten years was up.

In 1980 the Masterton Rotary Club sponsored a Vietnamese refugee family to Masterton. I employed the hard-working couple for a decade, but they missed the opportunity to fraternise with people of their own culture so they shifted first to Melbourne and now reside in Austin in Texas.

When Ian Buchanan and I represented Wairarapa on the Greater Wellington Regional Council we frivolously suggested the council should relocate its head office to Greytown, which we calculated to be the dead centre of the region. Our colleagues laughed off our suggestion, though they agreed it was the dead centre, emphasising the word “dead.”

The regional council operated out of a shonkily-built multi-story mirror-glass edifice in the heart of Wellington which they had bought brand-new for $13 million in 1987 just prior to the sharemarket crash. It was valued at $9 million a year after the crash. It has since been assessed as a severe earthquake risk so the council have shifted to converted sheds on the Wellington waterfront and the glittering tower stands idle.

The moral of the story I guess is that you can’t force people to relocate where they don’t want to live. If we want Syrian refugees to come here then there will have to be lots of them so they can create their own community.

I know where there’s some bare land in Manaia Road.

“A simple way to take measure of a country is to look at how many want in, and how many want out.” - Tony Blair

Read More...

The highs and lows of modern life

The all-male cabal that runs NZ Incorporated, Key, English and Joyce assure us that the rock star economy is still rocking despite declining dairy prices and a falling dollar. It’s a line they must take to keep our spirits up whether it represents the real position or not.

This is not how governments normally operate. Famed cultural critic and satirist H. L. Mencken reckoned the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

Meanwhile serial protestor Claire Bleakley, who cut her teeth on expostulate action earlier this century opposing the use of 1080 and is president of GE Free NZ, recently led her fellow dissidents around the metropolitan streets of Featherston protesting against the elusive Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Mr Groser, who sounds and looks like someone right out of the kids card game Happy Families, assures us he won’t sign the dreaded document until he’s convinced it’s in New Zealand’s best interests.

The populace has often been unnecessarily alarmed. In 1970 Hal Lindsay wrote the best seller The Late Great Planet Earth warning us that we would never get to see the dawn of the new millennium. Not long after that international think tank The Club of Rome said we were about to run out of oil and the end result would be catastrophic for the world.

We now know the world is awash with oil and at a new low of $40 a barrel American petroleum barons are laying off staff and plugging their wells until the price gets back up to a level where they consider it is worth extracting.

Last week The Wall Street Journal warned of another recession looming as the Dow Jones plunged and said the US, with a balance of payment deficit in the trillions, has no money left to stop the outcome really biting hard this time around.

I’m starting to sound like The Club of Rome myself and H. L. Mencken will have thought that I should have gone into politics, but I suspect the real threat for the world today is the propensity for some very clever people to hack into significant computers. Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, now both living in forced exile, have done so to devastating effect, but the real risk lies with ISIS types breaching the world’s banking system.

And already would-be adulterers are running scared because the Ashley Madison website has been skilfully sabotaged.

Twenty-two thousand New Zealanders are said to be implicated, many of them Aucklander’s who are probably wanting to emulate the antics of their meandering mayor.

Apparently 85 per cent of adultery aspirants are men, but only 15 per cent are of the fairer sex. Just how Ashley Madison was going to achieve partnership pairing is a mystery, unless the ladies were going to be asked to do multiple shifts.

American comedian Dave Barry once asked his audience: “Do infants have as much fun in infancy as adults have in adultery?” It was a rhetorical question, but if asked, I would have said, “No, they probably don’t.”

“No passion so effectively robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” -Edmund Burke

Read More...

Anatomy of a murder

A quaint expression once used when a young lady weds a man considered not to be her equal was that ‘she’d married below her station.’ In today’s egalitarian society the saying has all but disappeared from the vernacular, but I’m going to reinstate it by suggesting that Millie Elder-Holmes married below her station.

Except of course she didn’t marry Connor Morris; she was merely his partner.

Back in the good old days when the ‘below her station’ was in common usage “partners” were usually people you went into business with.

Videos at the housewarming party Ms Elder-Homes and Mr Morris were attending, taken just prior to the altercation that eventuated in his demise, show Morris verbally abusing his attractive partner and gesturing towards her in a frightening manner.

It’s hard to understand how some women find this sort of behaviour appealing.

The late Mr Morris had taken on celebrity status simply by his association with Ms Elder-Homes and as a result the trial of the man accused and eventually convicted of murdering him dominated our TV newscasts nightly over recent weeks.

The accused, Michael Murray, who had used a sickle on a pole to strike his victim, was seen each day sitting in the dock looking for all the world like a possum caught in the headlights of an oncoming car.

I couldn’t blame him. Connor Morris was a prominent member of Auckland’s feared Head-Hunter’s gang. There are apparently over a hundred Head-Hunter gang members languishing in our ghastly jails.

The trial was something of an insight into modern Auckland society. Michael Murray had spent the day of the murder at theme park Rainbows End with two of his children aged 10 and 12 from a previous “relationship”. He took them back to a sleepout he often used at his sister’s home at 401 Don Buck Road where they had takeaways for tea, then played Guitar Hero on PlayStation. Murray’s present partner lives at another address, not disclosed for fear of reprisals, with their three-month-old daughter.

After playing Guitar Hero Murray smoked cannabis with his brother in an adjoining sleepout.

We hear a lot about our low-waged economy, but Mr Murray, a labourer who mainly builds retaining walls, can afford a day at Rainbow’s End, takeaways, a PlayStation and smoke cannabis while presumably paying child support for his two older children.

Meanwhile at 425 Don Buck Road Connor and Millie were at a housewarming party at his sister Cymmion’s home when some of the guests decided to go to get some pineapple juice to replenish their cocktails from a service station down the road. Connor wanted cigarettes so they agreed to buy those as well. They bumped into guests from a 21st birthday party bash at 403c Don Buck Road which was next door to where Mr Murray was entertaining his children and smoking cannabis.

The rest, as they say, is history.

From the comfort of my living room I had concluded that Murray was guilty of manslaughter rather than murder. The jury of course heard more than I did and decided otherwise.

But then again a jury is really just twelve people chosen to decide who has the better lawyer.

“Murderers are really very agreeable clients. I do think murderers get a very bad press.” - John Mortimer

Read More...

A Disney view of the jungle

When we were first married we built a home on a 200 acre farm our meat company owned in Norfolk Road. I decided to assume the role of laird of the manor and to do this I needed to buy a rifle and go hunting. Rifle as in a 22 calibre model commonly known as a “pea” rifle, and hunting as in rabbits. The back of the farm bounded the Waingawa River where there were rabbits galore.

Mr Harold King, notable gunsmith from King and Henry, sold me a brand new rifle at a modest cost and I proceeded to the riverbed site and took aim at my first wild animal. It wasn’t difficult; there were plenty to choose from and my first shot hit the target, but didn’t kill it; it was now writhing in agony in front of me. I knew what I had to do, but hated having to do it. I put the front end of the barrel between the rabbit’s pleading eyes and fired the fatal shot. I discovered there and then that I could never be a hunter; I was a wuss.

There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that due to the career I was born into, over the next thirty or so years I was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of sheep, cattle-beasts and pigs, but couldn’t bear the thought of actually killing an animal myself.

So you will have concluded by now that I wouldn’t have had much sympathy for the American dentist who paid $US50,000 to go to Zimbabwe and shoot a majestic lion and then find himself hounded by the vociferous and sometimes ghastly sections of humanity who flood the new phenomenon known as the social media.

But there are always two sides to every story, and sometimes only one side gets told.

A Zimbabwean named Goodwell Nzou, writing to the New York Times, had this to say: “Did all those Americans signing petitions understand that lions actually kill people? That all the talk about Cecil being “loved” or a “local favourite” was all media hype? Did they choke up because Cecil was murdered or because they confused him with Simba from the Lion King?

“In my village in Zimbabwe, surrounded by wildlife conservation areas, no lion has ever been beloved, or given an affectionate nickname. They are objects of terror.”

He went on: “Recently a 14 year-old boy in a village not far from mine wasn’t so lucky. Sleeping in his family’s fields, as villagers do to protect their crops from hippos, buffalo and elephants that trample them, he was mauled by a lion and died.”

Americans tend to romanticise animals by giving them actual names and then hastily join a hashtag train and turn an ordinary situation - and there were nearly a thousand lions legally killed over a decade by wealthy foreigners who paid serious money to prove their questionable prowess - into to what seems to Zimbabwean eyes to be a maniacal media maelstrom.

Nzou concluded, “We Zimbabweans are left shaking our heads, wondering why Americans care more about African animals than about African people.”

How things change. At the dawn of time if you killed a lion and could fix peoples teeth you would be the king of everything.

“I like animals as much as the next guy, but if I’m hungry, I’ll eat a panda sandwich.” – Howard Stern

Read More...

Change for change sake

The Prime Minister wants to change the flag, Andrew Little wants to change the national anthem and the leader of the opposition, Winston Peters, doesn’t want to change anything, except perhaps the number of Asians we allow to settle in our Godly of nations.

Meanwhile Masterton’s lady Mayor goes on the airwaves exalting the good citizens of the town to buy locally and support our business people. It’s a good message; and timely too.

With no data to confirm this, I suspect the only growing enterprises at the moment are the courier companies whose vans are seen speeding around the town delivering goods from countries afar. If Mr Key and Mr Groser’s claims are to be relied upon, and the Trans Pacific Partnership is passed into law, these goods are likely to become even more competitive.

I walked up the main street of Hamilton one Saturday morning recently looking for somewhere to have lunch. Provided I liked Asian food the choice was overwhelming, but the number of empty shops was surprising and distressing. The once buoyant Victoria Street has all but died. I asked the locals what had happened and they told me the Tainui people, bursting with money from well-managed investments, had recently built a huge shopping centre at Te Rapa with acres of free carparks. They said no one wants to feed parking meters these days and so many main street businesses had failed.

Local retailers here are facing the same problem. Masterton’s pseudo-mall, the Warehouse sells most everything and as a result you can get a park in Queen Street pretty well whenever and wherever you want. But you pay.

The shopkeepers want the council to consider a parking regime-change allowing the first ninety minutes free.

They cite the story of a town in West Wales called Cardigan where vandals smashed all the parking meters and the council can’t afford the 22,500 pound bill to have them repaired.

This has led to a surge of visitors to the town centre with shop owners claiming sales are up by 50 per cent. The small retailers, who were still paying exorbitant property taxes, and seeing an ongoing decline in business, have long blamed parking meters pushing shoppers away from local high streets to out-of-town superstores.

And so change is in the air, the flag, the anthem and perhaps the parking meters.

But it was recently brought to my attention that the biggest change facing my generation is Facebook and not really coming to grips with just how it works.

An old friend emailed me last Friday with these claims:

“Presently,” he said, “I am trying to make friends outside of Facebook while applying the same principles. Therefore every day I go down the street and tell passers-by what I have eaten, how I feel, what I have done the night before and what I will do tomorrow night. Then I give them pictures of my family, my dog, and me gardening and spending time pruning roses. I also listen to their conversations and tell them I love them.”

And apparently it works.

He said “I already have three persons following me: two police officers and a psychiatrist.”

To change and to change for the better are two different things - German proverb

Read More...

Farewell to an old friend

A couple of weeks ago I received a letter from the editor of the Dominion-Post. In the first paragraph she thanked me for my ongoing support as a subscriber - and so I have been, for more than fifty years - and then went on to inform me that the price was increasing and I needed to change my automatic payment - upwards.

In a fit of pique I emailed back and cancelled my subscription.

It wasn’t really a fit of pique; I have been contemplating doing this for some time. The price rise in low-inflationary times when interest rates are understandably going down just triggered a decision already made.

My reasoning was valid. My day starts when I wake at around 6 am and I grope in the dark for the iPad on my bedside table. I go to settings and tone down “display and brightness” in the predawn room and then proceed to read the NZ Herald online. Once absorbed, I then go to the Dominion-Post app which for some curious reason calls itself “Stuff.”

Ironically, by just adding “ed”, this is what I have told them to get, in respect of their price rise.

Next I go over to Twitter and read the front page of the Wall Street Journal which has loaded overnight.

I then spring out of bed - that’s an exaggeration - and go into the spare bedroom and jump on the treadmill, and in between monitoring my heart-rate and adjusting the speed and slope I watch my old friend Paul Henry strut his stuff (there’s that word again) on the strategically-placed television set in front of the exercise machine. By the time I have showered and dressed and presented myself at the breakfast table I’m full to the brim with news; much of it bad.

Mr Henry even has a segment called “Five things you don’t need to know today.”

So the trip to the front gate to pick up my Dominion-Post is really superfluous. In inclement weather it is sopping wet even though it arrives each day bound in a plastic bag that is obviously porous. On these occasions I have to set up a drying rack in front of the gas fire and by the time it dries out I have lost my appetite for reading it. I generally just it fold it up and put it in the recycle bin.

And so I fear for the future of the daily newspaper, something I have looked forward to all my adult life. I can’t imagine why the publishers have allowed me to read it for nothing on a variety of devices. But it’s too late to draw back; no good locking the stable door once the horse has bolted.

I’m aware that there is a school of thought that believe there’s nothing quite like the look and feel of a real newspaper. I suspect this group were once closely aligned with the Fish and Chip Shop Owners Association. Now that nanny state has insisted on plain paper wrapping I regard this assertion as null and void.

“A newspaper is lumber made malleable, it is ink made into words and pictures. It is conceived, born, grows up and dies of old age in a day.” - Jim Bishop

Read More...

Multicultural hotel comes good

A few weeks ago we ventured north to attend a significant birthday of a close relative and we decided to break the journey with an overnight stay at a resort town equidistant between the starting point and our destination. I looked up the internet to select a resting place and resolved to throw caution to the wind and go more upmarket than I would normally do. A five star hotel was offering a special at $199 a night and I decided it was past time when the heirs to Conrad Hilton’s empire could become partners in my credit card’s debit balance.

We arrived at the imposing establishment and entered the expansive reception area where an exceptionally wide desk offered the choice of three receptionists. An Indian man, an attractive young Asian woman and a more mature lady whom I was later to discover was of South African extraction and was, I gather, the assistant manager.

I can’t for the life of me think why I opted for the young Asian lady, but she was most welcoming and having taken an impression of my credit card proceeded to tell me that the room I had booked online was at the back of the hotel and did not afford the sort of scenery that I might I have expected from such a picturesque province. There was an available room she allowed in the recently upgraded heritage section of the hotel that was larger, better appointed and had a balcony with glorious views over the scenery that the area is noted for.

She then disclosed that this particular room would cost me a mere $55 extra. So $199 had now become $254, but how could I in all conscious turn down this goddess’s offer and so after the final flutter of her false eyelashes I agreed to the upgrade.

It was that weekend when New Zealand’s weather was most inclement and unaccounted-for road closures due to flooding meant the journey took more than an hour longer than we expected. So first up, once we had settled in to our superb room, was a cup of tea. No sign though of tea bags or coffee sachets, so we rang housekeeping and complained. The condiments were in a black box next to the hot water jug, said the disbelieving supervisor, but given that the shelving unit was black these are often hard to find, she conceded.

“Feel around”, I was advised, “They are sure to be there.” So I felt around - it was a bit like looking for missing Mayalasian flight MH370 - but I assured the doubting housekeeper that there was no black box in sight or even out of sight.

Eventually a statuesque Fijian lady arrived at our door with a black box chock full of a variety of teas and coffee options and after a careful search herself, reluctantly admitted that indeed no black box had been in the room.

Later, while waiting for a lift, the South African assistant manager approached us and apologised for the lack of tea and coffee and wanted to know did we have any other complaints?

I walked in where angels fear to tread and said there was. The bathroom door into the bedroom’s ensuite was made of solid glass. Frosted certainly, but the opaqueness dissipated somewhat when the light in the bathroom was turned on. Attending to ones ablutions was a private affair, I said, and given that the toilet was situated next to the door I didn’t think this was a particularly good architectural feature.

She was mortified; she could fix the beverage lack, but replacing all the bathroom doors was a little more than even a room charge of $254 could stand. She fled back to her desk.

Just before retiring that night the Fijian housekeeper knocked at our door and presented us with a bottle of wine, and some chocolates. This, she said, was an extenuation for the lack of tea bags and coffee sachets.

The next morning we woke to an envelope that had been pushed under our door with a letter from the assistant manager enclosed apologising for the inconveniences we had encountered. To compensate she offered my wife and me two fully-cooked breakfasts at no charge in their award-winning restaurant whose supervising chef was none other than MasterChef judge Simon Gault.

I don’t know what the breakfasts would have cost had we actually paid for them, but I suspect they would have more than covered the $55 extra we were charged for the room with the view.

And the moral of the story?

If you’re going to complain at a hotel, make sure it’s an expensive one.

“Do Not Disturb” signs should be written in the language of the hotel maids. -Tim Bedore

Read More...

The NZ Greek connection

When I was in my early twenties I went to live and work in Sydney. In a butcher’s shop obviously and the first culture shock was how hard my colleagues laboured. I thought we worked hard in our shop back home, but I had to step up a notch to keep up with the Aussies. We started work at 7 each morning finishing at 5 Monday to Friday. The shop was open Saturday mornings from 7.30 to 12.30 but not everyone needed to work Saturdays as much of the preparation had been done.

In fact the bosses reward for working hard Monday to Friday was to offer you Saturday morning employment. We were all keen, but only the hardest workers were taken on. Eventually I got up to speed and was invited to do the Saturday morning shift which, wage-wise, was at time and a half.

Once we’d cleaned up on a Saturday we would repair to the pub for a few beers and a counter lunch; then we were off to the footy. Unlike New Zealand where the pubs closed at six, back then in Oz they stayed open till ten. So it was a night out on Saturday, usually at one of the well-appointed rugby league clubs and often a barbecue on Sunday after playing golf on a public course.

I soon came to the conclusion that the Aussies worked hard and played hard.

It was decades later that kiwi retailers decided they too would like to open on Saturday mornings, but the Shop Assistants Union wouldn’t have a bar of it. Strikes were held all over the country; even my own staff went out on strike and were only placated when I promised I would never force any of them to work on a Saturday.

This meant that for the rest of my retail life I mostly manned the shop on a Saturday with help from my family.

Aussie was subsequently to become a haven for New Zealand workers wanting to seek a new life and they moved across the Tasman in their tens of thousands. Most caught the Australian work ethic, but a disproportionate number found that the Aussie climate, in Queensland particularly, was conducive to living on the dole and going surfing and the name “Kiwi bludger” entered the vernacular.

The Australian government eventually decided enough was enough and cut out all welfare payments for New Zealand migrants, even though they still had to pay full taxes on their earnings. Entry was tightened up and passports were re-introduced.

There was often talk of an economic union with a single currency between the two countries, but the Australians were too canny to agree to that. The Australian dollar has always been worth more than its kiwi equivalent and I have generally considered this discrepancy was in direct relationship to how hard people toiled in each country.

So I see parallels with the situation in Europe. I could never fathom how the one currency, the Euro, could apply when work attitudes of varying countries are so diverse. For the dour hard-working Germans to have the same value currency as the Greeks or other questionable European nations seemed an implausible concept.

Although it was response to their socialist Prime Minister’s clear instructions I was shocked to see the Greeks dancing in the streets after overwhelmingly voting “No” to austerity measures that would allow them to pay back the debts they owed.

I imagine they will pay a high price for this moment of mad frivolity; it’s as if the realities of lending and borrowing between nations are just a grand fiction which can be written off without repercussions.

The handsome yet delusional Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras blames the European Union for Greece’s problems, but the voters and their spendthrift ways and their addiction to an unaffordable lifestyle is the real culprit.

What we are witnessing is not just a struggle about repaying money owed, or regional power or even democratic accountability. This must surely be the endgame for the mistaken belief that socialism can actually work. This failed Marxist theology is being continually promoted by sadly misguided left-wing fantasists, some of whom are now leading Greece and its hapless inhabitants into economic ruin and political chaos unless Europe’s hard working economies bail them out once again. No one seems to want to reassess the last fifty years and own up to the fact that to tax the rich and redistribute money that does not exist is never going to work and it never has.

The internet humourists have come up with their own answer. The new Euro they reckon will be printed on Greece-proof paper.

"Voters have some responsibility for the choices they make. That is what distinguishes mature democracy from the students union." - Janet Daly

Read More...

Have we squandered our freedom?

I recently ventured south for the day to see the sobering exhibitions at Te Papa and the old Dominion Museum commemorating a century since New Zealand’s entry in the First World War in 1915. Man’s inhumanity to man was clearly on display in these brilliantly assembled exhibits, one by Sir Peter Jackson and the other by Weta workshops.

World War One was supposed to be the war to end all wars. The expression was no doubt a sincere belief that the horrors of this disastrous conflict - so graphically exposed in these two cleverly contrived expositions - were of such magnitude that no nation would challenge another nation ever again. It was also considered that the defeat of Germany, whose citizens were seen as the heirs of Prussian militarism and therefore inherent warmongers, would herald the end of expansionism in the centre of Europe.

After the war, measures were taken to ensure everlasting peace, the most important being the formation of the League of Nations, plus a number of treaties that sought to limit military power.

World peace was of course to be a pipe dream, especially in the constant utterances of beauty contestants.

I remember in the TV series Head of the Class when history teacher Mr Moore tells his pupils that they will conclude their study on World War I, the “war to end all wars” and begin their study on World War II, “the war to end that theory.” American sitcom writers often expressed the situation perfectly. There was an episode of M*A*S*H where Colonel Potter remembers his fallen friends who died in “the war to end all wars” and one who died “in the war after that,” while Hawkeye Pierce describes the Korean conflict as “the latest war to end all wars.”

There were tumultuous times between the two world wars. The roaring twenties were followed by the great depression which ended when America’s wheelchair-bound president introduced the New Deal programme and in so doing heralded a new era of government interference in our lives that continues to this day. Roosevelt then changed the course of the Second World War by committing his country to fight in all theatres after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.

Masterton was full of American servicemen from about 1942 onwards. They camped at Memorial Park and the Solway Showgrounds and danced the night away with the local lasses in their canteen situated about where Bullick-Blackmore trades today. They were then shipped off to fight at Guadalcanal where huge numbers of them perished.

Post-1945 was like the calm after the storm. I recall reading where it was considered that the horror of the death and destruction the planet had suffered had brought people to their senses and there was now going to be goodwill towards citizens of all nations and that we would never see another world war. Peace it was thought might rein forever.

And there was a sort of surreal serenity after the war. The 1950’s on reflection were idyllic. Full employment and wages were such that mums didn’t have to work; one income sustained a family. A modest house on a quarter acre section was in reach of almost all and workers had Saturday and Sunday off.

In this country rapes and murders were few and far between, drug-taking was unheard of, and we didn’t need to lock the doors of our houses or our cars. A small coterie of affable policemen kept law and order in a confined police station on the corner of Lincoln Road and Chapel Street in between having cups of tea and reading the newspaper.

The film industry in Los Angeles kept us entertained and it seemed the Americans were living the good life too, with their idyllic nuclear families and their picket fenced homes, driving their flashy new cars and enjoying a whole new range of household appliances. To cement this image Bing Crosby crooned about those dear hearts and gentle people who lived and loved in his home town.

Years later this era was recreated in a television series aptly named  Happy Days.

All of this freedom of course came at the expense of the young men who had sacrificed their lives so that we could enjoy the post-war prosperity. In New Zealand those who did return came home as heroes and were well-received and well-treated. Many of the rural returned servicemen were granted re-hab farms and another war, this time in Korea, caused wool prices to reach record heights which meant the country prospered and we were able to maintain a very high standard of living.

But I fear we have let it all slip away. The happy days were perhaps only conferred on a few privileged countries in the world and a frighteningly fundamental group of people called jihadists saw what we did as a form of decadence and resolved that our way of life should be stopped dead in its tracks, literally.

Indeed there were excesses that inevitably came with freedom and perhaps we should have more rigidly adhered to the standards of the past and firmly re-directed those who chose to stray from the moral absolutes. Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but we might also have been more altruistic to those in the world who could only look on our affluence from a distance with hatred and envy.

The two Wellington exhibitions are a stark reminder that we have learnt nothing from history. 

More than 150 wars have been fought since the end of “the war to end all wars,” and the carnage continues.

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I know World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." - Albert Einstein

Read More...

Wairarapa enchants Auckland

It’s not often that Wairarapa is accused of punching above its weight, but I suspect that might have been the impression given to a glittering array of Aucklander’s a couple of weeks ago when Wairarapa connections staged a charity night at the SkyCity convention centre.

The glamourous guest of honour was the Queen’s granddaughter Zara Phillips, but I suspect the real accolades belong to Catriona Williams founder of the CatWalk Trust for which the glitzy evening was held. Catriona, who became a tetraplegic after a horse riding accident, founded the trust in 2005. The full name of the trust is the CatWalk Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) Trust and it exists to raise funds to support the body of scientific opinion which says a cure for SCI will be found.

The list of patrons Catriona has managed to assemble for her trust looks like a who’s who of New Zealand’s most admired sports men and women. They include Richie McCaw, Sir Brian Lochore, Aaron Slight, Sir Mark Todd, Sarah Walker, Dion Nash, Toni Street and Lance O’Sullivan. Ms Phillips is also a patron and a personal friend of Catriona’s. On the evening the royal visitor wore a floor-length black silk gown with sequined detail, paired with black heels and her short blonde hair was loose. Crikey, now I’ve become a fashion editor! But if Zara is so chic I’d like to talk to her and ask why she hasn’t spoken to her mother about experimenting with a new hairstyle.

Champion Masterton superbike rider Aaron Slight set the evening alight when he roared into the convention centre astride an electric motor cycle with Seven Sharp presenter Toni Street riding pillion. Ms Street and TV One breakfast host Rawdon Christie were the celebrity MC’s.

800 people attended, mostly prominent Aucklander’s, but Wairarapa, Hawkes Bay and Waikato were also represented.

$420,000 was raised for the Trust on the night, most of it from an auction of donated goods and services.

First up was Zara Phillips’ buzzy bee which opened at $1000 and sold for $6000. At this stage Auckland’s houses are looking comparatively cheap.

Another sought-after auction item was a gliding outing with Richie McCaw which after spirited bidding sold for $15,000. McCaw was an apology on the night; a rugby game the next day was given priority and a video link to the function had to be canned as it was well past his bedtime when the hook-up was eventually established.

One interesting auction object was called “The CatWalk Cooker.”

Catriona designed it and a neighbouring farmer agreed to make it up. Local firms came to the party. Firestone provided the truck tyre rims, Tulloch Contracts the important wheel and Agtech some scrap metal. Master Blaster did the sand blasting, the Heat Shop provided the paint, and neighbouring horses the shoes.

The farmer described it thus: “The cooker consists of a matching pair of truck tyre rims. One has three lugs on the narrow side, and forms the bottom; lying on its wider end. The other rim sits with the narrow end placed on top of the other, within the retaining lugs. A conical disk forms the grate, sitting inside the top rim, with the pipe acting as a chimney. It collects the ash and needs to be reasonably clean, both to collect the ash and ensure it allows air flow. The wheel then goes on top, with the side with lugs attached lying downwards to keep it in place.”

Confused? Well the bidder’s weren’t. An Australian happily paid $2000 for it!

During the evening a debate was held with the moot “If you’re not first, you’re last.” Three with local connections Viv Fauvel, Charlie Meyer and Mark Chittick were up against Grant Sharman, Dion Nash and Heather du Plessis-Allan. The local team won and Viv Fauvel was said to be the standout comedienne on the night.

The evening did have its serious moments. Two specialists on spinal injuries spoke. Dr Rick Acland is a former Catwalk board member and is now the Trusts medical patron. Rick was previously the director of the Burwood spinal unit and is internationally sought-after SCI consultant whose focus is on pain management. Simon O’Carroll is a director of the Catwalk funded SCI Research Facility at the University of Auckland. Dr O’Carroll is the principal investigator of a research project which aims to ‘block’ the transfer of neurotoxins at the time of injury using small protein molecules in order to significantly reduce the damage spread and therefore decrease the consequences of SCI.

They told the audience that spinal cord injuries were costing the country countless millions annually, but both were confident that it is not a question of if, but when there will be a cure. Catwalk chairman Scott Malcolm said he hoped in ten years’ time we will all be trying to remember what wheelchairs looked like.

This was the tenth anniversary bash of a trust that had its genesis in the Wairarapa and has grown to the stage where it is hugely admired both nationally and internationally. Catriona and a group of friends competed in the 2010 New York marathon and in 2013 they cycled up to Base Camp at Mount Everest. In the ten years since its inception the Trust has raised over 5 million dollars for spinal cord injury research.

No wonder the Aucklander’s were spellbound.

“Your body is not who you are. The mind and spirit transcend the body.” - Christopher Reeve.

Read More...