Lacking the true Christmas spirit

A dear friend in England emailed me last week concerned at the ghastliness of receiving a festive email from his old alma mater, Oxford University’s Lincoln College, wishing him “Happy Holidays.” What he found particularly galling was the fact that the college was founded in 1427 by the then Bishop of Lincoln for students “who would defend the mysteries of Scripture against those ignorant laymen who profaned with swinish snouts its most holy pearls.”

He wrote that there had been much grumbling in Britain over recent years about Merry/Happy Christmas being replaced with Happy Holidays, and festive decorations instead of Christmas decorations.

Easter, another Christian celebration, had been reduced to a chocolate fest, he concluded.

I’m loath to tell him that political correctness is not unique to the “home” country and he would find the same bland greetings are being popularised in this far-flung reach of the once proud British Empire. I could also add that Christian films and programmes are conspicuous by their absence on New Zealand television and anyway they would look oddly out of place with the foul language and blasphemy that is now commonplace on our screens.

I’m certain that many Christians, even those who don’t attend church regularly, want Jesus to be part of Christmas and Easter, and feel disenfranchised when our religious festivals are turned into a huge consumer spending exercise, symbolised with a Santa figure created by graphic artists at the Coca-Cola Company.

The problem with only paying lip service to our Christian heritage is the long term effect it is likely to have on our communities. New Zealand is at risk of losing the source of its deepest foundations of a satisfied life. The traditional family model is disintegrating and the decline of religion as a personal and community value runs in tandem with disruption and unhappiness.

The social engineering that is being earnestly rammed down our throats means we mustn’t disrespect Muslims, or even joke about them, while their own traditions are marginalised as the media simultaneously bring us horrific news about Muslim extremism.

Whilst the left-wing luvvies can tell the public how they should think, they can’t control what people actually think. These are the kinds of issues that helped bring about Brexit in Britain, Pauline Hansen’s rising star in Australia and Trump in America.

“You cannot underestimate the role of the backlash against political correctness - the us versus the elite” said Kellyanne Conway, Trump’s campaign manager.

It’s a scary thought, but using the same reasoning Winston Peters could be our next Prime Minister.

A traditional hymn opens with the words: “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds in a believer’s ear” and seems to imply that to a non-believer it grates. Hence it is often used as a curse word or a derogatory exclamation. And so I suspect herein lies the reluctance by some to use any expression with Christ in it when sending seasonal greetings to secular friends.

To some extent it’s understandable, but sad.

Nonetheless I unashamedly want to wish my readers (both of you) a very merry Christmas!

“Jesus picked up twelve men from the bottom ranks of business and forged them into an organisation that conquered the world” - Bruce Barton

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The end of a sordid era

I played a prank in 1962, unofficially opening Masterton’s new Post Office from a nearby rooftop 10 minutes before the Postmaster-General Mr Arthur Kinsella was due to do so officially. I had a false beard and moustache attached intending to be unrecognisable. The incident gained notoriety nationally and even internationally and I was described as a “Castro-like” figure.

Fidel Castro was persona-non-grata at the time and I hadn’t intended to impersonate him.

I was mortified by the comparison.

Castro took over Cuba in 1959 with a rebel army, ousting right-wing dictator Fulgencio Batista. He and his deputy, Argentinian doctor Che Guevara slaughtered thousands of dissidents by firing squad and the pair ushered in socialism-induced poverty.

He died last month and the comments from world leaders were diverse. Canada’s youthful Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted out a statement expressing his “deep sorrow” about the death of the Cuban dictator and describing him as “a larger than life leader who served his people for almost half a century.” Trudeau added Castro, who was a friend of his late father, was a “controversial figure” but also said that the Cuban people would maintain “a deep and lasting affection for el Comandante.” He concluded it was a “real honour” to meet Castro’s family on a recent visit.

Reaction was scorching. Social media lit up with a satiric hashtag #Trudeau Eulogies in which posters imagined Trudeau’s farewells to other tyrants.

Donald Trump was more circumspect. He tweeted “Today the world marks the passing of a brutal dictator who oppressed his own people for nearly six decades. Fidel Castro’s legacy is one of firing squads, theft, unimaginable suffering, poverty and the denial of human rights.”

Trumps popularity in Florida, where many Cubans had fled to during the revolution, will have gone up markedly.

In his bestselling book Eat the Rich P. J. O’Rourke travelled to Cuba and found the city of Havana a place literally falling apart as the buildings had deteriorated and the roads were in complete ruin. As a result of the lack of infrastructure there were hardly any businesses, except for a few government restaurants, and even fewer private ones. Due to the dearth of employment available, people crowded the streets with nothing to do and nothing to sell since their currency was essentially valueless.

And yet despite this evidence and so many other examples there are people who still believe socialism is the nirvana. Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity in England and Bernie Sanders’ in America are both living proof that many people don’t learn from history.

The left mantra of “social justice” really means the “equality of poverty.”

I see that the post office building that I opened is now up for sale. I watched it being built from the confines our butcher’s shop over the road at the time. It was solidly constructed by Mr W. Dickson and his hardworking team of tradesmen.

Surprisingly there is no brass plaque on the premise to commemorate the opening. Had there been I’m sure Mr Kinsella would have got the credit. Neither I, nor Mr Castro for that matter, would have rated a mention.

“There has to be a balance between freedom and equality, but freedom is always more important” - Joe Klein

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What's in a name?

The long-suffering ratepayers of Auckland were justifiably outraged when they discovered their foolhardy city council had spent $500,000 to come up with an improbable slogan. The city’s proposed new global brand “Auckland, the place desired by many” was worked on by three project staff over a two year period while 115 council staff attended workshops.

To his credit the new mayor Phil Goff was not impressed.

It reminded me of a similar situation that I was involved in some years ago when I was on the Greater Wellington Regional Council. At the time the people who ran our Transport Division considered that we needed a new name to better reflect connecting the buses and trains with the metropolitan areas in our region. At the time the branding was “Ridewell” which was considered to have passed its used-by date.

The council officers engaged a PR company to come up with a suitable name. During the discussion period a number of workshops were held with us councillors to gauge our opinions. I always considered however that the PR firm had its own ideas and our views were more of a public relations exercise within a public relations exercise. They offered up many options, but always seemed to come back with URBO.

It was clear to me that none of us were keen on the name, but we were told this was in fact an inspired choice. Simple four letter names were game-changers and we were reminded of the success of SONY and the new name (at the time) for Woolworths which was DEKA. So URBO fitted the profile perfectly even though none of us actually liked it.

A final decision meeting was held with all the councillors around the table with the slick PR people ready to bully us into accepting URBO. They decided in the build-up to give us a power-point presentation showing names of other transport organisations worldwide and in the process the name Metlink, used in Brisbane city, flashed on the screen.

I was sitting next to fellow Wairarapa councillor and chairman of the board Ian Buchanan and he leaned over and said to me “Surely Metlink is the perfect name?” I agreed that indeed it was. So he proposed Metlink, but the PR boffins were quick to dismiss the suggestion saying this would be registered by the Brisbane city council and could not be used.

Ian was not convinced. He left the meeting and got our receptionist to ring the Brisbane council to see if they perchance had a copyright or patent on the name. The answer came back within minutes; they had no exclusivity and we were welcome to use it.

Ian then put the motion that the new name for our transport system was Metlink. Passed unanimously and all it cost was a phone call to Brisbane.

Auckland must have liked it too because they subsequently changed the name of their transport company to Metrolink.

So that phone call virtually killed two birds with one stone.

And we still had money in the bank.

“Ninety-mile beach was obviously named by one of New Zealand’s first advertising copywriters…it is fifty-six miles long.” - John W. McDermott

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The life of Brian

The founder of Christianity told a wealthy young man who wanted to know what he needed to do to atone that “It will be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

It seemed a strange hyperbole, but many theologians believe that the needle Jesus was speaking of was the “needle gate,” an after-hours entrance found in the walls surrounding Jerusalem. A camel could only enter after stripping off any saddles and packs and crawling through on its knees. The “saddles and packs” are presumably the rich man’s worldly goods that need to be discarded.

I was going to start this column by writing “Poor old Brian Tamaki.” But of course Mr Tamaki is neither old nor poor. Thanks to the generosity of his various adoring congregations he apparently lives in a mansion and owns expensive cars, a couple of motorbikes and a luxury launch.

All the trappings of a 21st century wealthy young man; beware then Brian, the eye of the needle.

Last week he earned the ire of the wider public when he suggested earthquakes were caused by gays, murderers and sinners. “The land actually speaks to God. It spews itself up after a while, that’s natural disasters because nature was never intended to carry the bondage of our iniquity,” he was reported as saying.

I say “poor old Brian” because he inadvertently made these comments at a Sunday evening service just hours before the devastating Kaikoura tremor. Had the quake not occurred we might never have heard about the narrow-minded utterances which he no doubt makes on a regular basis.

Later he hit out at the media for sensationalising the sermon and tried to back-track on Radio Live saying it wasn’t just gay people who were being punished for their sins, but adulterers, child-abusers and anybody indulging in “extra-sexual behaviour.”

There were immediate calls to have Destiny’s tax-free status examined and the Charities Services confirmed it will analyse the church’s dealings and see if it is guilty of breaching the Charities Act.

Blaming God for all the things that go wrong in our lives is not new and I suspect many indulge these thoughts even if they don’t say so publically. Priests, Preachers, Parsons and Pastors avoid hellfire and brimstone sermons in this modern age though the “fear of the Almighty” rhetoric seems to be lucrative for Mr Tamaki and can be underwritten by scripture.

There are advantages to accepting the churches rulings of resisting indulgence. With the oft-quoted 23rd psalm even atheists and agnostics will know believers expect to lie down among green pastures and quiet waters, have lifelong goodness and mercy, tables laden with food, and a cup that overflows. But too much of a good thing would be frowned upon.

The modern day equivalent of a camel could be Mr Tamaki’s $35,000 Harley-Davidson motorbike, side-saddles and all. A fair bit of shedding might be needed for the controversial Auckland evangelist to reach the Promised Land.

I’m presuming he will do so with gay abandon.

“Of all the bad men, religious bad men are the worst.” - C. S. Lewis

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The great big melting pot

Let me list some typically modern Anglo-Saxon names for you. Ash Dixon, Ben May, Chris Eves, Jacob Skeen, Joe Royal, Kane Hames, Leighton Price, Reed Prinsep, Shane Christie, Tom Franklin, Billy Guyton, Brad Weber, James Lowe, Jason Emery, Marty McKenzie, Matt Proctor and Tim Bateman.

The more rugby street-smart among you will recognise of course that these young men are members of the Maori rugby team that recently completed a moderately successful three-match tour of U.S.A, Ireland and England.

They played the American national rugby team The Eagles at Toyota Field in Chicago on the 5th of this month, handsomely winning the game 54 points to 7.

I watched the contest live and wondered if the good people of Chicago might have wondered just what constitutes a Maori.

The main All Black team were also enjoying the sights and sounds of America’s windy city and generously lent two of their players, Damien McKenzie and Ash Dixon’s brother Elliot, to help ensure a win for the Maori team. As a result the Chicagoans will have been further confused by the inclusion of the two fair-headed McKenzie brothers, Marty and Damien.

I noticed the Maori All Blacks were pretty unsure of the Te Reo version of our national anthem, but to be fair, they made up for this with a stirring rendition of the Haka.

The problem with the European blood coursing through the veins of so many Maori is they are tending to play the stodgy football that was, and to some extent still is, the hallmark of Northern hemisphere rugby. It still works for the Europeans; Munster beat them at their own game, 27 points to 14.

Nonetheless despite two centuries of cohabiting most Maori are still outwardly distinguishable and it’s important that the efforts being made to ensure their language and all the social and cultural values that make them such an admired people internationally are maintained. This tends to make us unique in the world and is perhaps why we are such a desirable destination for new settlers.

And so after reading and listening to both sides of the debate on the evenly-divided Masterton District Council over the appointing of two non-voting Maori representatives on a council sub-committee, I’ve come out on the side of inclusion, a surprising departure from my normally conservative nature. I’ve seen how Maori appointees have worked well on the District Health Board and I’m convinced it will have the same positive effect on our local council.

“What we need is a great big melting pot, big enough to take the world and all it’s got, keep it stirring for a hundred years or more, and turn out coffee coloured people by the score” said the hit song by the 1970s super-group Blue Mink.

The lyrics welcomed the day when all our bloods were mixed and racism was extinguished. Given the nomenclatures of a good number of the Maori All Blacks perhaps that aspiration is within our grasp.

In fact I’m now beginning to wonder if there are any full-blooded Pakeha in New Zealand.

“Purity of race does not exist. Europe is a continent of energetic mongrels.” - H.A.L. Fisher

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Get ready for the ride

An insurance company newsletter emailed to me last week had an opening sentence that read: “No one saw this coming; no one thought it would happen” referring of course to the US election results.

Well if you’d stuck with the mainstream media over the exhaustingly long election campaign that might well have been the case, but when anyone asked me who would win the US election - and very few did - I would inevitably say “Trump will bolt in.” Not that I would have necessarily voted for him myself, but the portends were all there.

The reason for my optimism for the Trump camp was my propensity to watch the Fox News channel. Fox regularly had Trump on as a guest and he came across as quite a different person to the one portrayed on CNN for instance, who disparaged him endlessly and parodied him often. It was somewhat disconcerting to see him outline his policies articulately on Fox and then watch CNN tell its audience that he had no policies.

And not just CNN. Last weeks’ Time magazine, which came out on the day of the election and were therefore unaware of the outcome, had a letter to the editor from a Peter L’Estrange of Cape Town which said in part: “I am disappointed in your magazines election coverage. Virtually all your articles are anti-Trump. For a global magazine like TIME this is not good.”

Another clue to Trump’s popularity were the tens of thousands of devotees who night-after-night queued to attend his rallies. Again not generally well-covered by the mainstream TV networks who were careful to not pan his “deplorable” followers, but tended to leave its viewers with an image of those behind the stage as opposed to those out front.

Perhaps Trump greatest attribute however was that he understood his target audience.

The Democratic Party once represented the poor and the Republicans were aligned with the wealthy, but things had changed in America, and the politicians hadn’t noticed.

Republicans were in most cases self-made business people who understood commercial realities and produced wealth for themselves, their employees and their communities.

But the wealthiest state in the USA today is Washington DC and they voted 93 per cent for Mrs Clinton. In pure economic terms they wouldn’t have a commercial bone in their bodies.

In a complete reversal of form the Democrats now represent the unproductive rich and the Republicans are more closely aligned with the small business people and the blue-collar wage earners.

The revelations of Trump’s distasteful “locker room banter” was a severe setback, but in a surprising statistic it was reported that 52 per cents of white woman actually voted for him.

Meanwhile “Make America great again” and “#draintheswamp” were two catch-cries’ that probably helped catapult him to victory.

Locally the left-wing luvvies were beside themselves. Writing in the NZ Herald Liz Marvelly said she “underestimated the power of ignorance and panic” and that “racism, xenophobia and sexism all combined into one great holy trinity.”

She decided to console herself by pouring a stiff Scotch.

Apparently the Chardonnay wasn’t strong enough.

“I think one of the great problems we have in the Republican Party is that we don’t encourage you to be nasty. We encourage you to be neat, loyal and faithful and all those Boy Scout words, which would be good around a campfire, but are lousy in politics.” - Newt Gingrich

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Avoiding a regional civil war

A few years ago, when the government were keen as mustard for us to join with Wellington and its near neighbours to form a super city, those local body cadres who rule our roosts joined together to fight the Mephistophelian suggestion. They spent a small fortune on consultant’s, instructing them to discredit the concept and to particularly pour cold water on the Greater Wellington Regional Council’s claim that it spent millions more in our neck-of-the-woods than it collected in rates.

The proposal was subsequently set aside by a plebiscite of citizens, confused by the claims and counter-claims, and encouraged by the three Wairarapa councils promising to amalgamate.

It was a clever sweetener, but I have seen little progress towards any form of merger; in fact my money says it will never happen.

The problem is parochialism, and it doesn’t just occur here. Upper Hutt and Lower Hutt didn’t want to join Wellington or even join together, despite the similarity in their nomenclatures. Porirua was the only district who was prepared to coalesce, probably bullied by their progressive Mayor who recently narrowly missed out on his move sideways to become the Mayor of Wellington.

I suspect the dilemma is where to establish the “head office.” Greytown could lay claim by being the centre of the region and Carterton will counter that by asserting they have a new civic centre ready and waiting.

Most of those living south of the Waingawa river will not want to see big brother taking the initiative, but honestly, where else? Despite its extreme northerly aspect Masterton is the commercial and service centre of the region. Many government agencies are situated in Masterton including WINZ, Child Youth and Family, and Ministry of Social Development and these have close relationships with the council. All the national banks have branches in Masterton, plus Powerco, Spark and Vodafone and a significant number of technology companies and rural-based services. The thriving Waingawa industrial complex is officially in Carterton, and yet is largely serviced from Masterton.

The two Iwi, with weighty final settlements in the offing, are based in Masterton.

Primary care health facilities are significant and the Wairarapa Hospital has staff numbers exceeding 400. Trust House with a similar employment level has its head office in Masterton and the Greater Wellington Regional Council operates out of Chapel Street with more than 100 staff, its largest presence outside of Wellington.

The point I’m trying to make is that with a population of 24,400 democratically Masterton would overwhelm the smaller towns and I don’t think they would find this acceptable. An example: at the recent local body elections, despite some excellent nominations from Carterton and South Wairarapa, no one south of Masterton was elected on to the District Health Board.

And my clear recollection is that in 1989 when the three South Wairarapa districts amalgamated, thereby losing two mayors in the process, the towns lost their sense of identity. Certainly without the gregarious Bill McKerrow Featherston became a shadow of its former self.

I detect a lack of enthusiasm from all parties charged with advancing the flawed union and if this inactivity were to continue I for one wouldn’t lose any sleep.

“The lion and the calf shall lie down together but the calf won’t get much sleep” - Woody Allen

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Insightful rugby analysis

Both my parents were keen tennis players and to enhance their skills they built a volley board in our back yard. It was quite an edifice; with a single tennis court size concrete pad in front and the height of the board itself was about the same as the cross bar of a rugby goal post. In the winter months I could use this to kick a football over and as a result I became a fairly proficient at goal kicking. At the commencement of the rugby season the coach would inevitably ask the assembled team: “Who fancies themselves as a goal kicker?” Three or four of us would generally step forward and I would often win the ensuing contest and so become the designated goal kicker. I played on the wing for a time and then as a flanker or number eight and back then it was mystery to me why the All Blacks goal kicker was always the fullback.

Surely there were locks or hookers or centres whose parents had volley boards in their backyards and had honed their skills as goal kickers to be at least as good if not better than the fullback. All this changed of course when Grant Fox came along. Overnight it was the fly-half’s who took all the kicks. It didn’t matter if they couldn’t kick their way out of a paper bag; think Beauden Barrett in the test against the Wallabies a couple of weeks ago.

If he’d managed to slot a few through the posts Michael Cheika might have looked like a real clown.

But there are a whole lot of aspects about the game of rugby today that mystify me. Foremost amongst these is the way the referees allow the halfback to put the ball under their hookers feet. The rule book says it must be placed on an imaginary line in the centre of the scrum - or words to that effect - but because the referees have universally decided to hardly ever police this law we now seldom, if ever, see “a win against the head.”

Scrums these days are always collapsing on themselves, causing injuries to the players and frustration to the viewers as the game gets held up endlessly and you can only make so many cups of tea while waiting for the restart. Penalties for scrum infringements are given by referee guesswork which satisfies no one. Add the laughable mantra “crouch, bind, set,” and then the referee indicates to the half back, often with a pat on the bottom - which I find curious - that it’s now time to put the ball into the scrum and the whole machination starts to look like the opening stanza of Morris Dancing.

And don’t get me started on the TMO’s. Stevie Wonder could do a better job than most of them.

Endless replays that the viewer scrutinises, the stadium crowd examines on the big screen and the referee observes from the field never coincide with the opinions of the TV commentators.

Somebody has got to get it right and it’s usually me, but my opinion is never sought.

If that volley board was still around I’d go and bang my head against it.

“Rugby backs can be identified because they generally have clean jerseys and identifiable partings in their hair. Come the revolution the backs will be the first to be lined up against the wall and shot for living parasitically off the work of others.”- Peter Fizsimmons

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Do as I say, not as I do

Like many of you I have a smartphone that regularly posts alerts of news as it happens with succinctly-written pop-ups. This service is an unsolicited add-on if you have downloaded the apps of NZ Herald, One News and Stuff. The brief messages are invariably tidings of bad news with murders, car crashes and violent assaults dominant.

It’s part of our human nature that compels us to eagerly absorb these catastrophes.

We read recently where suicides are reaching almost epidemic proportions and I fear our constant diet of doom and gloom wouldn’t be helping this sad statistic.

It’s no good blaming the news media, they simply serve up what the public demands. I must confess when I go into a supermarket or other places where newspapers are sold I peruse the front page to decide whether to buy or not. A salacious headline is likely to positively influence my purchase.

I had first-hand experience of this some ago. I used to subscribe to a newspaper called Challenge Weekly. This was published by some evangelistic churches in Auckland and the content was most uplifting. I had a call from the editor one day who had noted I was the only subscriber in the Wairarapa and wondered would I perhaps like to become their agent down this way and see if I might increase their reader base. I agreed, but made no sales. It seemed no one wanted to hear the good news. Sadly, I too tired of the praiseworthy narratives and eventually let my subscription lapse.

Challenge Weekly is available on line and I note that to maintain interest it is now inclined to run the occasional adverse article.

But let’s examine last week’s bad news stories. Apart from the sombre suicide statistics one correspondent believes we are on the brink of World War Three. Another news item warns us that Germany’s Deutsche Bank is teetering after receiving a $US14 billion fine from the U.S. Department of Justice which could evolve into another global financial crisis. Poor old Pumpkin Patch, once one of this country’s most admired stores, has announced its own financial crisis and owes the ANZ Bank a small fortune.

Americans are reeling over the possibility that the worst possible president imaginable might be elected to lead the free world. There is little comfort in the fact that failing this, the second worst possible person to be president will be elected instead.

Closer to home Auckland holds this country to ransom with its various crises that include house prices which must inevitably collapse to the detriment of the whole country, and poverty stricken children and citizens living in cars and on the street. They then elect a man, whose own political party didn’t want a bar of, to lead them to the Promised Land.

North and South magazine recently called them “The city of fails.”

Re-reading this I realise I am hoist by my own petard. Having complained that the media is only interested in conveying bad news stories, I have done the very same thing myself.

Reminds me of the old saying; “If you can’t say something good about somebody - then let’s hear it!”

“Though it be honest, it is never good to bring bad news. Give to a gracious message a host of tongues; but let ill tidings tell themselves when they be felt.” - William Shakespeare

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Smile, you're on candid camera

Many years ago I became acquainted with a part-Maori man named Robert who would often come into my office unannounced and tell me that God spoke to him. Initially I was sceptical, but I came to realise that the utterances, apparently from higher plain, were actually full of wisdom and were articulately expressed. So instead of looking for a reason to appear too busy to see him, I would resignedly accept his visits and listen to his dialogue.

I particularly remember on one occasion when he told me that on the previous evening God had told him that soon all crime would cease. The reason being, according to God, was the proliferation of video cameras; nothing it seems would ever be done again in secret. To some extent George Orwell had already forecast this, but 1984 had come and gone with little change in the crime rate. About this time the District Council had started installing CCTV cameras in the CBD so I thought there may be a grain of truth in this divine forecast.

I got to think about this last week when we were privy to the trial of an Australian named Gable Tostee who was accused of murdering a young New Zealand lady who had willingly strayed into his fourteenth floor apartment.

Thanks to CCTV footage the information available to the prosecution was mind-boggling. Warriena Wright’s and Tostee’s movements were readily discernible as they moved from place to place including a few minutes in a nightclub, buying beer at a bottle shop and then arriving back at the Gold Coast tower where Tostee, a carpet layer, was able to afford a luxury apartment. After Ms Wright’s disastrous fall Tostee was seen aimlessly wandering around the adjacent suburb and casually consuming a pizza on a park bench.

What God didn’t think to tell my friend Robert was that in the distant future a fellow named Steve Jobs would come up with an iPhone that not only had a video capability, but an audio device allowing the user to record conversations, secretly or otherwise.

Tostee recklessly switched on the recorder on his smartphone at some stage during the evening. Just why he would choose to do this when all manner of shenanigans were going on in his apartment has never been explained, but the outcome was that the whole evening was either filmed or recorded.

The ensuing banter and subsequent distress cries from Ms Wright, when played for world consumption in the courtroom, were particularly upsetting for her mother, Merzabeth Tagpuno.

The audio device did not just bring down Tostee. A man and his wife used it to record a ten-minute tryst between All Black half-back Aaron Smith and an unidentified young lady behind the door of a disabled toilet at Christchurch airport. Smith would have had a lot of explaining to do to his fiancée and the man who made the recording, and then blamed his wife for exposing it publically, says his marriage is also now under stress.

Meanwhile Steve Jobs is probably up there sitting at the left hand of God; they’ll both be shaking their heads and saying, perhaps in unison: “They reap what they sow.”

“If there is a technological advance without a social advance, there is, almost automatically, an increase in human misery” – Michael Harrington

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Well I'll be doggone!

I’ve recently reached the conclusion that the keeping of domestic pets is an endeavour coming to an inevitable end. Last week we learnt that the Wellington City Council have offered to desex the city’s cats at virtually no cost to their owners. If the desexing programme is successful then within a few cat generations the species will have disappeared altogether.

Game, set and match to Gareth Morgan.

Cats aren’t the first in line. Circuses have lost their animals and Napier’s performing dolphins were returned back to the ocean some years ago.

The writing is clearly on the wall and so I sat the dog that totally rules our household down after I had seen the TV news item and told her that her days as a domesticated pet would appear to be numbered. Molly is a shitzu/poodle. She gets embarrassed when people shorten her lineage by linking the first four letters and the first three letters of the two breeds and I often wonder if I should be feeding her shitake mushrooms. That aside, I said I thought that seeing the dolphins had been released from their swimming pools goldfish would soon be banished from their endless bowls, and those folk with budgies, canaries and parrots would be the next to be ostracised, closely followed by guinea-pig keepers. Cats were now unable to multiply and so it would soon be the dog-owners turn to release their pets.

Although I couldn’t give her an exact timetable, I did suggest that I would start taking her around the backs alleys of the town and teach her how to forage for food.

She seemed a bit non-plussed. She walked me over to the ranch slider where her sheepskin rug is laid out allowing her maximum sunlight during the daylight hours when she is not sleeping on our bed and then back to the TV where she watches her favourite show, Animal Planet. Finally, with a typical canine gesticulation, she motioned towards the next door cat, who just happened to be lurking on the path above our house and was about due to have its daily exercise, by being chased back to its own confines.

It was perfectly clear that although the animal rights people felt she should be returned to her natural habitat, she was supremely happy with the life she had carved out for herself at my considerable expense. To emphasise the point she patiently watched me fill her food bowl with turkey flavoured morsels that look at least equal to what we are planning to have ourselves for Christmas dinner.

You might worry that thoroughbred horses are the next endangered species, but I think not. The racing industry pays huge taxes, and the TAB is one of the government’s smartest little earners. Although publicly abhorring games of chance it hypocritically promotes visits to these government gambling dens, so it’s my contention that sporting animals will be totally exempt. If most dogs are deemed to be doomed then Molly will have wished she was born a greyhound.

Dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend, but when did you ever have your best friend spayed or neutered?

“Why is a lobster any more ridiculous than a dog - or any other creature one chooses to take for a walk? I have a liking for lobsters: they are peaceful and solemn, they know the secrets of the sea, they do not bark, and they do not eat into the essential privacy of one’s soul the way dogs do.” - Gerard de Nerval

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A fond memory

Entertainment back the 1950s, sans television of course, came in many forms, not the least being, in the summer anyway, the weekly swimming sports at the Dixon Street baths. This public swimming pool was situated opposite Trust House Memorial Park. They were known as the “men’s baths” though both men and women were admitted. Demure and sensitive women could bathe at the gender exclusive “ladies baths” which were at the northern end of Dixon Street. Despite the fact that female bathing suits became more revealing, eventually these baths lost their allure and were transformed into what we now call the Hosking garden.

A full house ensued every Tuesday at the swimming sports, due in great part to the final item on the programme, the diving. Two young men in their early teens were the attraction. One was Rex Malmo, a superb diver with a perfect physique, and Tony Ball. Tony was the antithesis of the well-coordinated Rex Malmo. After Rex had executed the perfect running one and a half somersault (for instance) Tony would appear on the board in outrageous clothing which could be a woman’s dress or a man’s suit, and with amazing dexterity run along the board and repeat the dive in the worst possible manner and have the crowd in stitches.

Other antics might include riding a bike off the board with an umbrella held aloft, or he could pretend to absentmindedly walk off the diving board into the pool, fully clothed and reading a book. Whatever, between the two of them, both great friends I gather, with their diametrically opposed performances they ensured a full house every Tuesday night.

Although he looked awkward on the diving board, to get away with what he did Tony needed to have perfect timing and a degree of athleticism that was possibly unrecognisable. This was how he escaped injury, despite the contortions of his performance.

He then used this uncanny ability to race motorbikes. At seventeen he was fast becoming a future Aaron Slight.

When not performing on the diving board or on his motorbike he was an unassuming person. He was in my class at Wairarapa College and we all had great respect for him. We would eagerly read about his exploits in Monday’s daily paper as he successfully competed on the race tracks around New Zealand each weekend.

Then the unthinkable happened. At aged eighteen he crashed and was killed in at the annual Wanganui motor-cycle meeting on Boxing Day in 1957 on what was ominously known as the Cemetery Circuit.

The funeral service was held at St. Matthew’s church on a Saturday morning; standing room only as the town and the college mourned the death of this larger-than-life figure. There wasn’t a dry eye in the sanctuary; it certainly advanced the maturing process of his classmates.

Nearly sixty years on and many will have forgotten his legacy. Anthony Charles Ball was an inspiration, and he helped brighten and influence our young lives. He was one of those characters that our communities seem sadly devoid of in these bland times.

Television, the iPhone, the iPad and the internet have all got a lot to answer for.

"I remain just one thing, and one thing only – and that is a clown. It places me on a far higher plane than any politician." - Charlie Chaplin

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The world's most expensive urine

t’s fascinating to think about the “miracle” health products promoted over the years that have come and gone. They have almost exclusively been advertised on radio and usually on those stations whose target audience is mature.

Let me run you through some of these vendibles.

There was bee pollen and then the new improved “potentiated” bee pollen. We had “Biomag;” an under-blanket peppered with magnets to ease back pain. There was “Body Enhancer” to help you shed weight (provided you also exercised vigorously, drank gallons of water and cut back on your food intake), a cure-all balm made from bee venom, (promoted by sports broadcaster Tim Bickerstaff who has since died) a hair restorer called “Follimax” and colloidal silver which I suspect if purchased would relieve you of lots of gold.

As far as I am aware most these products have exited the market as consumers became aware of the snake oil component of their claims.

All is not lost however. One door closes and another one opens.

One radio advertiser, acutely aware of a whole new and expanding market, circles in for the kill and offers an elixir that would warm the cockles of the hearts of MacBeth’s witches.

Lani Lopez sells a dietary supplement called Pez-Rez which she says is “dynamised.”

“Dynamised” must be the new word for “potentiated.”

Pez-Rez promises energy for the heart, brain, joint, prostate, breast and digestive health and supports fatigue and stress. The main ingredient is resveratrol. Popular broadcasters Leighton Smith and Mike Hosking both swear that resveratrol has improved their health markedly.

The medical profession is not convinced. One journal I read said: “Resveratrol is a stilbenoid, a type of natural phenol and a phytoalexin produced naturally by several plants in response to injury or when the plant is under attack by pathogens such as bacteria or fungi. Sources of resveratrol in food include the skin of grapes, blueberries, raspberries, mulberries and senna. Although it is often promoted as a dietary supplement there is no scientific evidence whatsoever that taking resveratrol affects life expectancy or human health.”

Professor John Dwyer is highly critical of the claimed palliative powers of these improbable potions. He suspects their sales success is due to the fact that people are simply hankering for a little “magic and mysticism,” and others think they can compensate for a destructive lifestyle by consuming megadoses of the supplements.

He accused users of listening to “misleading advertisements” and “drifting off into unscientific hands.”

General Practitioner Paul Koenig is even more scathing. He reckoned swallowing a whole host of these dubious substances is a complete waste of money and constantly reminds his patients who are concerned that their poor eating habits could mean they are missing out on essential vitamins and minerals that half the world’s population survives on rice and the odd vegetable. Only someone with an extraordinary bad diet would be vitamin deficient, he believes, and because the kidneys rid the body of superfluous vitamins quite quickly, most users are doing no more than creating “expensive urine.”

I wondered what Ms Lopez might have meant with the acronym PEZ and I came up with Perplexed Elderly Zone.

“Our body is a machine for living. It is geared towards it, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will be more effective than if you paralyse it by encumbering it with remedies.” - Leo Tolstoy  

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Contemplating a life of iniquity

I have decided that I am going to commit a crime. I’m not exactly sure just what sort yet. It will need to have an outcome that will advantage me personally, so I may rob a bank or a great train. I could lower my sights slightly. For instance it would be fun to steal say a Lamborghini, but I would probably need to go to Auckland to access one which would be a bit of a nuisance.

You may be wondering why, after a relatively blameless life I suddenly intend to embark upon such a distraction, but I have come to the inevitable conclusion that crime does in fact pay.

I’m not one of those people who think we should lock people up and throw away the key, but some of the sentences handed down these days, or not handed down in some cases, are farcical and no real deterrent.

I read recently about an accountant in Blenheim who robbed an elderly couple of $250,000, but had his sentence reduced because he had dementia. And then last week an heir to the Delegat winery fortune was given a mere $5000 fine and 300 hours of community service after brutally assaulting a policewoman. The crimes I intend to commit will involve no brutality and I reckon my whole family will willingly testify under oath that I have mild dementia; some will even go a step further and the report that the dementia is bordering on being severe.

Unfortunately I can’t remember which members of the family will actually say that.

My mother’s maiden name was Biggs and I’m thinking that the late Great Train Robber Ronald Biggs was possibly a relation, so perhaps it’s in my blood to set my sights on KiwiRail. It would be very easy to board the Wellington/Wairarapa train as it is always stopping - sometimes intentionally, often not - but I’m a bit perplexed as to where they might store all the money. I’m sure one of the conductors will willingly point me in the right direction, particularly when I tell him of my distant relative who, from memory, also ended up with dementia.

And anyway if I get caught, and even if I appear before a so-called “hanging judge,” given I have no previous convictions the most likely outcome will be home detention, which won’t faze me. I will be able to catch up on some TV programmes I’ve recorded, but never got around to watching. For example I don’t think I saw the last episode of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Also the leg bracelet will give the dog something to chew on.

I will get the lovely Nadia Lim to deliver her food bag daily and pay her handsomely from the money I stole from the train stashed under the mattress.

As I write this I am starting to get quite excited about my new career. I will use the cover of darkness in the Rimutaka tunnel to threaten the guard and rob the train and I will park my newly acquired Lamborghini at Maymorn to expedite a quick getaway.

There’s not a police car in the country that could catch me.

“I broke a mirror in my house which is supposed to be seven years bad luck. My lawyer thinks he can get me five.” - Steven Wright

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A mad Monday in Melbourne

I happened to be in Melbourne on the occasion of my 50th birthday. I was with a tour group of NZ meat retailers, about 40 in all, husbands and wives, seeing what we might glean from observing the craftsmanship of our Aussie counterparts.

My fellow travellers decided to put on a surprise party for me in the lounge bar in our hotel. I’ve should have known I was going to be the meat in the sandwich when I observed that most of the attendees had brought along their video cameras.

Half an hour into the celebrations the door opened abruptly and a rather large female burst into the room and demanded to know “Where’s Ricky!”

The revellers parted like the Red Sea leaving me in the middle of the room with all fingers pointing my way. The scantily-clad lady placed a ghetto-blaster on the floor, chained me to a chair and proceeded to strut her stuff dancing to an appropriate tune blasting from the cassette player. The video cameras worked overtime.

The raunchy Australians are apparently inclined to send a strip-o-gram to young men on their 21st birthdays; for 50-year-olds it’s a fat-o-gram.

Fortunately for all concerned our performer didn’t strip down completely, ending her erotic routine still wearing an over-burdened bra, skimpy bikini knickers and fishnet stockings.

Her final act was to sit on my knee, announcing she was going to kiss me and said if I put my tongue down her throat she would bite it off.

No such instruction was necessary.

A few months later I happened to walk into a pub in Geraldine. I was the National President of the New Zealand Licensing Trusts Association at the time and the CEO and I were visiting the South Island trusts. I was surprised at the attention I was receiving from the patrons standing around their leaners. They were all looking at me and appeared to be talking about me. One gentleman called me over and said “You’re that butcher fellow from Masterton aren’t you?” I allowed that indeed I was and he told me that the previous week I was the star on the big screen in the public bar.

It seems the local Geraldine butcher had his video camera at Melbourne and had proudly shown the pub patrons the main highlight of my fiftieth birthday party. The evening had been well advertised and was well attended

They all said they recognised me, only my face was more florid in the video.

Well it would be wouldn’t it?

This all came back to me last week when the NZRU blunderingly downplayed the seriousness of the Chief’s “Mad Monday” escapade and justifiably copped a fair bit of flak from a wide cross-section of the community.

I’m certainly not condoning what the reckless rugby team got up to with the hapless young lady with the unlikely name of Scarlette, but it occurred to me that from time to time boys will be boys and middle-aged men and women will also be boys.

But I was happy with my own conduct. Chained to a chair and with my hands tied behind my back, my behaviour was impeccable.

“Whatever they may be in public life, whatever their relations with men, in their relations with women, all men are rapists, and that’s all they are. They rape us with their eyes, their laws and their codes.” - Marilyn French

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Bridging the age gap

A delightful story I read in a Readers Digest concerned a rail commuter en-route to New York who was sitting next to a professional bridge player. The traveller took the opportunity to tell the bridge expert about a hand of bridge he had been dealt the night before and how he had acted upon it. He particularly wanted to know had he played the hand correctly, or should he have represented it differently.

The bridge man considered the question and then allowed that indeed the hand had been played exactly as it should have been. A few days later our man got an account from the bridge expert for $250.

The next day the commuter found himself sitting next to a lawyer so he relayed the story about the information he had asked for and the subsequent invoice. “Was he liable to pay the bill?” he wanted to know. The lawyer said that he was. He knew the bridge man was a professional, he had sought his advice and therefore the payment was owed.

Next day he got a bill for $250 from the lawyer.

I tell this anecdote simply as a lead in to confessing that I used to play bridge

Once you think you have learnt the game you are coerced into to joining the local bridge club in Villa Street. The internal walls of their clubrooms are marked North, South, East and West and they really take the game seriously. Gold leafed honours boards adorn the hallowed hallways and subjects other than the finer points of bridge are not up for discussion. 

There was no room for gossip.

And they use a whole new language. They have stamens, singletons and doubletons and pre-empt bids and I am accused of being an interposer. My head is spinning - “Learn from your mistakes” was a common piece of advice - and I made plenty - and suddenly I’m told I am “vulnerable,” though I hadn’t a clue why.

And it was not as though you could hide your incompetence. You move around the room travelling with the east of your west (north and south remain seated) and your progress is plotted by a cunning computer that cleverly calculates your score. The next week they post the outcome on the door so all the world can see that you came last equal. Your mortified partner, whom you unwittingly dragged down with you, is desperately looking for someone else to play with.

The trouble with the bridge exponents is that they have never moved on. The poker players now have their poker machines; clever pieces of electronic wizardry tucked away in neon caverns with spinning wheels that can relieve you of your money in comparative anonymity. But the bridge fraternity still use the fifty-two piece cardboard card set that should have been phased out with the Gulbransen radio and the DC 3.

Bridge players will often tell you they’ve taken on the game to slow down the ageing process and perhaps it works. I was talking to a bridge player other day who is nearly 90 and he says he doesn’t need glasses.

He drinks right out of the bottle.

“If you want to know how old a woman is, ask her sister-in-law.” - Ed Howe’ 

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Killing us softly

Cell phones have been around since the 1980s and since their inception there have been numerous claims as to the health risks linked to their usage.

Doomsayers suggest electromagnetic radiation can cause genetic damage, brain dysfunction, brain tumours and other conditions such as sleep disorders and headaches.

I’m starting to believe there is more than a grain truth to these dire predictions. Since I’ve had a cell phone my hair has receded, my hearing has deteriorated, my eyesight has got weaker and my memory is a shadow of its former self.

I was about to sit down and write to the core people at Apple offering to settle out of court for a modest sum in American dollars when it occurred to me they would counter-claim that my original mobiles were probably made by either Nokia or Motorola. As they had only entered the market reasonably recently with the iPhone they could hardly be held accountable. Game, set and match to Apple even before I put pen to paper.

But there are lots of other rudiments bubbling just below the surface that are more injurious to our health than the humble cellular phone. Prominent among these is obesity and its attendant disease - diabetes. Sugar is the enemy element here and corporates to blame are KFC, McDonald’s, Pizza Hut and Hell’s Pizza and just to make sure we succumb more quickly I understand Domino’s Pizzas are soon to relocate in Chapel Street.

And we’ve known about the dangers of cigarette smoking for a long time. The Smoke Free Environment Act was passed in 1990 and created a bureaucracy of consultants, lobbyists, medical specialists and service providers and there has been an almost total compliance with the legislation. But workers advocate Helen Kelly might have queered the pitch by demanding and getting medicinal cannabis. This will inevitably lead to recreational cannabis being legalised introducing a whole new coterie of smokers.

I gave up smoking when I was thirteen after failing to finish my first cigarette. My Hollywood hero at the time was Audie Murphy, a returned American serviceman and a vocal non-smoker. Had I idolised Humphrey Bogart it might have been a different story, particularly as he nearly wore the skin off his fingers making roll-your-owns at the superbly named Rick’s Bar in Casablanca.

Rolling-your-own is a mandatory feature of joint indulgence.

Alcohol, we’ve been reminded of late, is a major cause of various forms of cancer. As most people enjoy a tipple and given the outcome of 1920s prohibition experiment in America a government sponsored Alcohol Free Environment Act seems unlikely. But the risk still lingers.

And then into this cacophony of deathly prognostications walks Nigel Latta with a sobering TV documentary telling us the current superannuation is not sustainable because we are all living too long.

And so there are deadly diseases all around us and constant warnings of earthquakes, famine, wars and floods and yet we refuse to stop breathing?

Maybe we should just shut down all the pharmacies. A friend of mine was taking so many pills when he died they had to put child-proof lid on his coffin.

“Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do on a Sunday afternoon” - Susan Ertz

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The country of tomorrow

American satirist H. L. Mencken once famously said: “The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populous alarmed - and hence clamour to be led to safety - by menacing it with and endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”

I suspect there are a similar group of Cassandra-like sports journalists eager to do the same.

Before the 2016 Summer Olympics we were bombarded with negative comments telling us why the tournament was a disaster waiting to happen. This is typical pre-games reporting and the perceived wisdom leading up to the Rio extravaganza was that danger lurked everywhere. A Zika epidemic, infested waterways, a political and economic crisis and a soaring crime rate.

Alright, the Aussies found early on that the plumbing in their village was sub-standard, and some prima-donna American swimmers were held up at gunpoint by a bunch of pseudo-policemen waving badges and robbed of everything except their passports, watches and other desirable items on their personages. As far as I know the Ockers were eventually able to flush away their ablutions and of course the swimmers terrifying robbery was a work of dubious fiction.

In the event the games were a triumph and we were all reminded, thanks to the exceptional television coverage, with the colourful venues and theatrical stadium entrances, just how captivated we are every four years.

To be fair, beyond the television spectacle there are weighty issues that Brazil is facing and I too was sceptical about how the politically unstable country was going to handle the potentially damaging exposure.

I spent six weeks in Brazil in 1986 leading a Rotary Group Study Exchange team to the northern area called Amazonia. We were billeted with Rotarian families and started our study tour in Belem, an equatorial city at the mouth of the Amazon. We then journeyed into the hinterland staying in smaller towns, ending up at a city called Manaus known at the time as the murder capital of the world.

Poverty in all these areas was endemic and there was no social welfare system for the populous to fall back on. The homeless build crude dwellings, known as favelas, on land that most would find worthless. These hillside shanty towns didn’t feature too much in the gilded Olympic television coverage.

You won’t believe these figures, but back in 1986 inflation was running at 300 per cent and interest rates were 1400 per cent. The government had told the citizens to add three noughts to their currency, known as the cruzeiro, so a ten cruzeiro note became a ten thousand cruzeiro note. This is crude, but I’ll tell you anyway; banknotes were so worthless people used them as toilet paper. Toilet paper was in short supply and expensive.

Cruzeiro’s were withdrawn from circulation in 1994 and replaced with the “real.”

Brazil’s slogan was “The Country of Tomorrow” and one industrialist I met reckoned this was their problem. “Tomorrow never comes,” he said, “And so we are drifting further and further into poverty without anyone needing to redress the situation.”

Well thirty years on, from the comfort of my couch, the images looked pretty appealing.

Perhaps tomorrow has finally arrived.

“Finishing second in the Olympics gets you silver. Finishing second in politics gets you oblivion.” - Richard Nixon

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The trans-Tasman enigma

I’ve just spent a couple of week in Aussie where things looked prosperous, however I was assured by those in the know that they are in fact on the cusp of a recession. We spent a few days in a town called Ballina in Northern New South Wales where we have friends. Ballina has an almost identical population to Masterton’s and so I was keen to make comparisons. The town has a main street about as extensive as ours, but it also boasts two quite large shopping malls.

I spoke to two shopkeepers, one in the mall and one in the main street. Their rents seemed astronomical. The mall retailer was paying $11,000 a month for what I thought was a relatively small shop; the main street vendor had a shop considerably larger than the mall premise and was paying $63,000 a year. I have some knowledge of rents in Masterton’s retail area and would estimate that Ballina’s lessees are paying about three times more than they would here.

Ballina’s main street had recently been revitalised with expensively-paved footpaths and attractive street lighting and the retailer told me his rates had gone up to pay for the improvements. His new rates however where way below what CBD property owners pay in Masterton.

I’d no sooner got back when our Reserve Bank Governor lowered the cash rate to two per cent; an all-time low. As much as I don’t understand some of the economic discrepancies between Australia and New Zealand the methodology behind the Reserve Bank Governors approach to controlling inflation is even more confusing.

My bookkeeping teachers at Wairarapa College taught us that the definition of inflation was “too much money chasing too few goods.” This was the prevailing wisdom at the time and seemed to make good economic sense. The government of the day managed its balance of payments account carefully and imports were limited, hence too few goods.

Thanks to the Korean War, wool prices were at an all-time high, ergo, too much money.

Fast forward to 2016 and inflation is now running at less than one percent and so we are looking at an entirely different set of circumstances. We now have too little money chasing too many goods, so how does that work?

Our shops are chock full of all manner of merchandise, most of which is imported and much of it nonessential and yet incomes have remained pretty static for some time. The Reserve Bank legislation was originally enacted to lift interest rates to mop up any spare money that was floating around which suggests the definition of inflation hasn’t changed and yet by lowering interest rates savings are discouraged, property is king and house prices and rents are going through the roof.

Perhaps there is method in the Reserve Bank Governors madness. If we all decided to start saving nobody would show up at the shops to spend. Consumption, which accounts for about 60 per cent of all economic activity, would go down and consequently so too would incomes and employment.

No good looking across the Tasman for answers. Their cash rate is even lower than ours; and anyway, they reckon they’re going broke.

“Economics is extremely useful as a form of employment for economists” - J. K. Galbraith

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Contemplating the unthinkable

In recent times at least fifty-two percent of the populous were rejoicing at the prospect that the world would soon be run by women. Angela Merkel was well-ensconced in the German powerhouse, Theresa May bowed reverently towards the Queen, took over the reins in Britain and then went on to deliver a scathing but witty admonition to the hapless Jeremy Corbyn in their strangely-configured House of Commons.

Since then however Helen Clark’s light has faded in her bid to be the UN Secretary-General, Mrs Clinton looks to only have a 50/50 chance of taking up residence again with Bill in the White House and Marie Le Pen’s prospects in France are dismal at best.

At time of writing the most unlikely of presidential candidates, Donald J Trump, had just been overwhelmingly well-received at the boisterous Republican Party annual convention, due in good part by the performance of his family, who fortunately look more like their mothers than their father.

Ivanka was especially stunning in both speech content and in the $138 sheath dress she designed herself which was understated, but elegant. To be fair Ivanka would look good in sackcloth.

Ivanka’s handsome husband Jared Kushner is a wealthy businessman in his own right and is one of Mr Trump’s closest advisers.

The good book says ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’ which may be why America’s evangelicals seemed to have endorsed Trump despite Mrs Clinton describing him as ‘a serial philanderer.’

Most of the speakers at the Republican convention concentrated on dissing Mrs Clinton rather than highlighting the salient points of their candidate’s policies and this week it will be the Clinton supporter’s opportunity to take the stage at the Democratic convention to dish the dirt on Mr Trump. There will be plenty of opportunities to berate the controversial billionaire. Much of Trump’s rhetoric is at best exaggeration and in the many instances simply not true.

Despite this, polls show that Americans have less trust in Hillary than they do in “The Donald.” Pundits must be asking just how a country with a population of more than 300 million ended up with these two. Surely a better option would have been Matt Damon versus Clint Eastwood.

And yet Time magazine reluctantly concedes that Trump may be better suited to the politics of the moment. At home and abroad, from the collapse of the traditional Republican Party presidential field to the Brexit vote in the U.K., elites of all kinds - governing, corporate, intellectual - are facing a withering populist backlash. Trump has positioned himself against the history of leaders of traditional experience and expertise. Trump’s admirers think of their man as a 21st Century version of Ronald Reagan - a charismatic leader who had an occasionally ambiguous relationship with facts and details, reported Time.

When asked why he thought he could handle the most politically challenging job in the world Trump surprisingly quoted Lydia Ko. “On the golfing channel they said to her, ‘When you bring your club up, how do you bring it down?’ What’s your thought?’ She said, ‘I don’t know, I don’t really have a thought, it’s just something special.’ I’m a bit like Ko, I’m a natural political athlete.”

Well we’ll see; or we won’t.

“When I was a boy I was told that anyone could become President. I’m beginning to believe it.” - Clarence Darrow.

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Comparisons are odious

Back in 1978 I was walking along on my own down a street in San Francisco when I was beckoned by an African-American man who was working under the bonnet of his car on the side of the road. I felt most uncomfortable. I had seen enough TV dramas to know that blacks in America were all criminals and I was certain that I was about to become another victim of a violent crime. I was probably going to be bashed and robbed of my exiguous wallet, or perhaps even kidnapped and my family asked to pay an iniquitous ransom they couldn’t possibly hope to raise.

I was in a catch 22 situation. If I ignored his beckon and ran there is no doubt he would shoot me with a hand gun he was certain to have in his pocket and I would be lying dead on the sidewalk with passers-by doing just that - passing by.

And so I accepted his invitation with fear and trepidation. He asked me if I would sit in the car and turn the motor over so he might determine what was causing it not to go. This was even more terrifying. Was he going to push me over from the driver’s side and drive off and subsequently murder me and bundle me into the trunk?

However I did as I was asked and used the starter motor to turn the engine over without it firing. After a few minutes he came over to the driver’s side, shook my hand through the window and thanked me profusely for my help. He said he would have to get a mechanic to determine what was wrong and after a few minutes of conversation I found him to be a genuinely nice person as of course the vast majority of black Americans are.

I walked back to my hotel feeling thoroughly ashamed of myself. I had fallen for the stereotyping that I suspect still prevails in America today.

“Black Lives Matter” scream the signs as protestors, African-Americans and liberal whites, line the streets of the cities where black citizens have been shot by police recently for seemingly minor misdemeanours.

Retaliations have been swift. A lone African-American sniper gunned down five Dallas policemen and then an ex-marine named Gavin Long, (relation?) who is said to have been eager for black people to take a strong physical stance against mistreatment by “the people that run this country”, shoots two police officers and a sheriff’s deputy in Baton Rouge.

To some extent America is its own worst enemy. A couple of weeks ago I was watching a movie on Sky where the criminals were vile African-Americans torturing their victims in the most hideous manner. There was one “good” black person, part of the law enforcement team who were examining the crime, but this was a flagrant imbalance. If this is nightly fare for the rank and file American then many will still harbour the same fears I had back in 1978.

In an effort to quell the dissent U.S. authorities claimed that the number of citizens killed for the six months ending 30th June of this year is 238 white people, 123 black people 79 Hispanics and 69 others of unknown race.

America has a population of 320 million, ours is 4.5. Last week our own “unarmed” police shot two citizens.

San Francisco is looking safer by the day.

“I hear that melting pot stuff a lot, and all I can say is that we haven’t melted.” - Jesse Jackson

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A stifling regulatory environment

Six near-new, well-designed and beautifully-crafted buildings are under scrutiny accused of not meeting the stringent new earthquake codes. This should be ringing alarm bells all around Masterton’s central business district. Throw the solidly-built majestic town hall into the mix and you can’t help but conclude that government regulators have gone quite mad.

One of New Zealand’s biggest ever earthquakes occurred in Masterton in 1942. No one was killed or injured; though masonry falling off the old post office may well have caused casualties had the earthquake occurred during business hours instead of late at night.

Much of the damage was residential; many chimneys were damaged and had to be demolished. The government offered encouragement to those who wanted to strengthen their commercial buildings in the form of a tax rebate to the value of the cost of the strengthening.

The work was delayed given we were in the middle of a world war, however most of the restoration was eventually completed in the decade 1950 to 1960. Prominent among these were the Masterton Municipal Building and the Empire Hotel.

Retired Masterton architect Neil Inkster, in a submission to the Ministry of Business Administration and Employment, noted that some of the strengthened buildings have since been demolished to make way for new modern buildings and in almost all cases the difficulties encountered in the demolition and the cost of the work was far greater than anticipated. Masonry, mainly brick, sandwiched between and keyed and bonded to concrete does not make for easy demolition. This also suggests there is a good measure of strength in such ‘sandwich’ kind of structure.

Under the heading ‘Life is a Lottery’ Mr Inkster reminded the ministry that earthquakes are just one form of disaster. The worst disaster was the airline crash on Mount Erebus where 257 lives were lost, 3 more than the death toll in the Hawkes Bay quake where 254 deaths were recorded.

New Zealand’s earthquake death-toll totals to date are Mount Tarawera where 108 lives were lost in 1889, 254 in Napier/Hastings in 1931 and 185 in Christchurch in 2012. That’s an average of 4.5 a year over 126 years. It may not be a fair comparison, but about 250 people a year are killed on our roads. If the government was to apply the same standards to our roads as they are to our buildings they would all be one way or at the very least have mandatory concrete median barriers on every carriageway.

But Masterton is suffering badly from the overthought regulations. The fence on the corner of Queen and Church streets is an ongoing eyesore and I doubt that the building that was demolished there posed any real threat.

A Real Estate agent told me recently that national retailers will not rent premises that aren’t up to code; hence the town has a lot of empty shops and he warns there are more to come.

One proprietor was told it would be cheaper to demolish his single-storey central Queen Street shop and rebuild rather than strengthen it. Demolition and construction costs would require a rent that simply wouldn’t be attainable in the present retail environment.

Never mind, after the last door closes we can all move to Auckland.

“It is not easy nowadays to remember anything so contrary to all appearances as that officials are the servants of the public; and the official must try not to foster the illusion that it is the other way round” - Sir Ernest Gowers

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Unknown powers and principalities

As a youngster I had two maiden aunts who spoilt me rotten. In the back corner of my grandfather’s vast section there was an oak tree with a hollowed-out trunk where apparently fairies resided. On those rare occasions when I was well-behaved they would suggest I go and talk to these invisible creatures and a treat might magically appear on the windowsill outside the kitchen. On one occasion I espied my aunt Joan placing a chocolate bar on the said windowsill and from then on I knew there were no fairies at the bottom of the garden.

I didn’t let on of course; I milked the situation for as long as I could.

It was the same with Father Christmas. There was inevitably a smart-Alec kid in the primers whose parents were either liberal-minded or just plain mean-spirited who revealed to us that Santa was not real, but for years we still went along with putting a bottle of beer and some edible morsels beside the fireplace on Christmas Eve.

And so it came as a bit of a surprise when I found out last week that the majority of Icelanders believe in the existence of elves.

Iceland, population 320,000, hardly featured on our consciousness until a few months ago when their Prime Minister was forced to resign over revelations exposed in the Panama Papers. (Spurred on by this, New Zealand’s government-owned TV One put together a dubious group of journalists and other hangers-on to try and dig up some dirt on the leader of the government who owns them, with little success to date.)

But then Iceland’s soccer team, managed by a part-time dentist, inexplicably beat the multi-million-dollar England football prima donnas in the prestigious Euro 2016 competition and the startling information about the Icelandic propensity to believe in the paranormal surfaced.

Apparently major road constructions in Iceland are regularly diverted at great cost so not to disturb elves’ resting places and a survey, with a result mirroring Britain’s Brexit poll, confirmed that most Icelanders are convinced the little creatures exist.

Terry Gunnell, a professor at the University of Iceland, said we should not be surprised that the majority (52 per cent) of Icelanders genuinely believe in elves. “This is a land where your house can be destroyed by something you can’t see (earthquakes), where the wind can knock you off your feet, where the smell of sulphur from your tap tells you there is an invisible fire not far below your feet, where the northern lights make the sky the biggest television screen in the world and where hot springs and glaciers talk.”

The conditions described by the learned professor sound remarkably like the New Zealand encompassment so I might have to revisit my childhood. No good looking for the fairies at the bottom of the garden, my grandfather’s oak tree has long since gone, but given that elves are supposed to be Santa’s little helpers, I now want to throttle the kid in the primers (I don’t think his name was Alec) for denying me the lifelong pleasure of knowing Father Christmas was in fact the real deal.

And if it wasn’t for their inclement weather I would probably immigrate to Iceland.

“Christmas was awful when I was a kid, because I believed in Santa Claus. Unfortunately so did my parents” - Charles Viracola

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Good news for the addicted

The prime time TV show Location, Location, Location features an on-screen husband and wife team who scour urban Great Britain for a house to suit clients who all seem to have one thing in common. They want their new dwelling to be within walking distance of a café. The café culture is one of the great paradoxes of the modern world.

Walk down any main street in New Zealand today - and I may be exaggerating here – and every second shop is a café. I’m probably not exaggerating though if the main street is Greytown’s.

Coffee is the new wonder drug and hordes of people on social media will tell you that if they don’t have their morning fix and regular top-ups during the day they simply can’t function.

In recent times the Epiphany church carpark has become host to a silver-sheathed caravan offering the esoteric elixir and to my great surprise another similar mobile trailer has popped up in Ngaumutawa Road, just half-a-cup away from the Solway Primary School. Cleverly positioned, it will attract those addicts who dare to take the bypass and miss out on the delights offered in Wairarapa’s biggest urban centre.

I suspect both coffee dispensaries are doing a roaring trade.

I sort of understand the café preference where peremptory barista’s will offer up a variety of options and will occasionally throw in a chocolate fish or a marshmallow which for me is the real attraction, but to pick up a lidded paper cup of coffee while in transit seems a strange and expensive distraction.

I suspect if you’re happy with the instant variety you can probably make a cup before you leave home for less than twenty cents. You can pretty much match the barista’s masterpiece with a Nespresso capsule at 97 cents though first you need to invest in a rather expensive machine into which you insert the capsules.

One solar panel supplier is suggesting you can install his product, generating your own electricity, for less than the price of a cup of coffee a day. He’s obviously not referring to instant or Nespresso.

Last week the World Health Organisation came out with the results of a long-awaited study and announced that that there is no substantiation that drinking coffee causes cancer. But it said all “very hot drinks” are probably carcinogenic. WHO commissioned the International Agency for Research on Cancer which had previously rated coffee as “possibly carcinogenic” but has now changed its mind. It now says its latest review found “no conclusive evidence for a carcinogenic affect and some studies showed that coffee may actually reduce the risk of developing certain kinds of cancer.”

Imagine if the results had shown just the opposite. New Zealand’s retail sector would be full of empty shops and third world countries would be reneging on their World Bank loans.

If I bow to the coffee culture I’ll usually opt for the appropriately named “Long” black or else ask for a mochaccino with enough foam to be aesthetically pleasing, but not so much that it would leave a moustache.

Though to be honest, most of the time I stick to drinking water. I mix it myself. Two parts H one part O. I don’t trust anybody.

“The morning cup of coffee has an exhilaration about it which the cheering influence of the afternoon or evening cup of tea cannot expect to reproduce.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes Snr.

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Actions worsen and time softens

My earliest recollection of life is visiting my father in hospital when I was nearly three years old. I vividly remember this for two reasons. First we weren’t allowed to go into the hospital proper because he had diphtheria and was therefore isolated. I recall my mother holding me up to the window so I could talk to my father from the wide concrete window-ledge above the solid brick wall.

The main reason the memory endures however, was that my father told us of a disturbance during the night when a large contingent of Japanese prisoners-of-war had been admitted who were seriously wounded. The word ‘Japanese’ struck terror into the heart of an impressionable two-and-a-half year old.

The Japanese had come from the POW camp at Featherston. The Japanese never did invade New Zealand despite widespread fears that they would, but 800 prisoners who had been captured at Guadalcanal were brought to Featherston in 1942.

They were mostly civilians who had been drafted into the Japanese navy, but later captured military personnel were also interned at Featherston. These military prisoners regarded capture as the ultimate disgrace. In February 1943 there was a sit-down strike and a subsequent riot that saw the guards open fire, although there had apparently been no order to shoot.

Although the one-sided altercation only lasted about thirty seconds 31 Japanese were killed instantly, 17 died later and about 74 were wounded. If 91 wounded and dying Japanese had been admitted to the Masterton hospital the night before I was went to visit my father then perhaps I had good reason to be alarmed.

Of historical accounts I have been able to read on the subject there is no disclosure about where the wounded prisoners were taken. The whole incident was hushed up at the time in case there was retaliation on Kiwi POW’s in the Japanese camps.

It’s entirely possible therefore that I was the only infant in the country to have been briefed about the episode.

The hatred for the Japanese was manifest at the time and took a long time to subside. Strangely our distaste of the Germans was relatively short-lived. We happily drove Volkswagens long before we accepted Datsuns and Toyotas.

There was probably an element of racism in this attitude.

We ended the war with Japan by dropping two atomic bombs; on Hiroshima and then Nagasaki and last month President Obama visited the sites where the devastation was wrought, but purposely did not apologise for the carnage.

I suppose we should be pleased with ourselves that today we are not so barbaric. Despite what ISIS is doing to its prisoners-of-war no one is calling for the western alliances to drop a nuclear bomb on any of the terrorists’ strongholds, reasoning that many innocent citizens would be killed in the process.

And yet in 1945 that’s exactly what we did and were able to justify our actions by calculating how many of the allied forces would have perished had the war lingered.

I guess no one is estimating the number of civilians ISIS is killing. Like the road toll, a few here and a few there and it doesn’t have quite the same impact on our consciousness.

“Nature has left this tincture in the blood, that all men would be tyrants if they could.” - Daniell Defoe

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