Wednesday 30 November 2016

The life of Brian

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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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Wednesday 23 November 2016

The great big melting pot

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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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Wednesday 16 November 2016

Get ready for the ride

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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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Wednesday 9 November 2016

Avoiding a regional civil war

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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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Wednesday 2 November 2016

Insightful rugby analysis

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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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