Wednesday 29 March 2017

For this is the law of the profits

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An old friend, Shine Leu, who sadly passed away last year, loved to go fishing at Lake Ferry. Shine was a fine arts teacher at a college in Taiwan and he couldn’t get over the fact that we effectively allowed vast quantities of fresh water in the Ruamahunga River to flow out into the ocean. In Taiwan, he told me, every last skerrick of the liquid gold is captured and usefully used for both agriculture and commerce.

Last week we were told that some canny overseas-based entrepreneurs want to bottle our water and market it offshore.

My first reaction, and even my second and third was to say “good on them.” Presumably they will invest in a bottling plant that will require contractors to construct on a site that will pay rates to whatever district council it is domiciled in. They will employ locals to work in the factory and pay income tax in this country and ACC levies.

Let’s hope they have a glorious picture on the plastic bottle of some mountain range where the water might start its flow and a strapline about coming from pure New Zealand.


This will potentially encourage even more tourism.

As an outcome I’d be delighted if they can make a modest profit for their shareholders.

All positive news, until the perpetually outraged stepped in.

For starters they hate the word profit; and how dare these people come in and steal our precious water. This is the same water that falls from the sky, often in the form of snow and that eventually flows out to sea.

And so we have tweets and outrage from all the normal suspects calling for bottled water exports to be banned, implying the level of exports is a threat to our water supply. At the very least they are insisting that this water be charged for.

The government, who initially had the same positive thoughts I had, bows to the pressure; unlike his predecessor, English runs with the hares and hunt with the hounds. The government has subsequently written to its water advisory group telling it to investigate the feasibility of putting a price on exported water and to report back by the end of the year.

The water required by the exporters is 8.7 million litres annually. If (say) a charge of 10c a litre was applied this would yield the government $870,000.

Given government inefficiency, it would probably cost that much to collate and collect it.

Mr English quite rightly worries that once you start charging for water it potentially opens up a can of worms as to who actually owns the water. The Treaty of Waitangi litigants might have something to say here and soon we might all have to pay for it.

I read where it takes 330 litres of irrigated water to produce one litre of milk. At 10 cents a litre that adds $33 plus GST to the price you already pay for a litre of milk at the supermarket.

I’m just wondering if the answer to all of this might be to build the bottling plant at Lake Ferry.

“Water is H2O, hydrogen 2 parts, oxygen one, but there is also a third thing that makes it water and nobody knows what it is.” - D. H. Lawrence

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Wednesday 22 March 2017

Wanna buy a new watch?

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I’m sure when many of us watched the film Blood Diamond we would have considered what a different world we might be living in if women, mostly western women, were not so enamoured with the brightly sparkling gem.

Blood Diamond featured the Sierra Leone civil war of 1991- 2002 and depicted a country torn apart by the ferocity of diamond trading.

This weeks’ Time magazine has a report on a different gem, jade, which is causing the same sort of guerrilla warfare in Myanmar. “While conflict diamonds have yielded Hollywood scripts and rap lyrics, jade has largely escaped international scrutiny,” reported Time.

Global Witness, an international watchdog that monitors natural-resource exploitation, estimates that Myanmar’s jade trade was worth $31 billion in 2014.

The insatiable desire for diamonds and now jade and to a similar extent ivory, causing the deplorable slaughter of elephants, is arguably a sad reflection on modern society.

I’m going to take a giant leap for mankind here, but the same Time magazine has a cover that opens out to a two page spread advertising Rolex watches.

One upon a time my wife and I were on a bus tour of Switzerland and the tour director asked if we wanted to buy a Rolex watch as we were in the same region as the factory. I must admit I was tempted, but the number of euros required meant we would have to cash in our airline tickets and hitch-hike home.

I was surprised however at the number of fellow passengers who took up the offer.

Now a year or so ago one of my young grandsons suggested that I should buy a new watch from his favourite website, AliExpress. I had never heard of AliExpress and anyway I’m a bit antithetical buying on the net. Nevertheless he fired up my IPad and showed me a number of attractive watches for sale from the remarkable China-based store.


One of these timepieces particularly took my eye. I was enticed by a special feature that allowed you to light up the screen. This meant if you woke up in the middle of the night unsure of the time a mere touch of a button illuminated the vital information.

The cost of the watch was hardly prohibitive $US11.40 and AliExpress proudly announced that delivery to NZ was free at that time.

When the courier came up the drive and waited patiently while I signed for the package it occurred to me that I had probably used up the $11.40 for his time alone.

I already had a perfectly good Seiko watch, but decided to wear the flash looking new model until such time as the rubber band that must surely be powering the movement finally unwound. Lots of admiring glances and comments from people and a year on the watch still keeps perfect time and the screen light still works. I have not yet had to replace the battery.

The gold Seiko sits sadly in my top drawer, abandoned.

Diamonds, jade, ivory and Rolex.

Perhaps we all need to lower our sights.

“People recognise themselves in their commodities; they find their soul in their automobile, hi-fi set, split-level home, kitchen equipment.” - Herbert Marcuse

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Wednesday 15 March 2017

Sanitising sex on the shop floor

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Back in 1976 I was appointed to a quango with the unlikely nomenclature of The Sawdust Working Party Committee. This unit was set up by the government who had decided in their wisdom that it needed to ban sawdust from butcher’s shop floors.

The entrenched little men from the Health Department had carefully scrutinised the sawdust and had decreed that it was chock full of organisms and that these little beasties were scampering up the legs of our benches, landing on the cutting area and then cunningly dropping onto the mincers and sausage machines and were eventually causing havoc in people’s stomachs. Meat eaters’ stomachs that is, vegetarians, a rarity back then, were of course, immune.

According to the Health Department, people were writhing around in pain and dying like flies. Actually I just made that last bit up, but it was panic stations all round and sawdust on butcher’s shop floors had now replaced the North Vietnamese as public enemy number one.

Of course we butchers saw it quite differently. Sawdust to us was irreplaceable. Our floors were particularly treacherous because during the day they got covered in fat and water, a lethal mix. Sawdust soaked up the excess moisture and rendered the surface skid proof. We liberally sprinkled sawdust around daily like you would feed your chooks.

To be fair, the government of the day did have some sympathy for our cause, hence they set up The Sawdust Working Party Committee; three Health Department boffins plus three master butchers selected to represent the north, mid and southern regions of New Zealand. I represented the central region. 

Three health department officials across the table from three intransigent meat retailers resulted in stalemate, so the then Minister of Health, Air-Commodore Frank Gill, called us to his office to see if he could overcome the impasse.

TV reporters were outside the minister’s office as we left and were eager for a comment, but we were advised to make no response. We looked wistfully at the cameramen, knowing that this might well be our first and last chance at a moment of fame, but we opted to do as we were told.

Poor Mr. Gill had no such advice. He approached the camera and told N.Z viewers and eventually the world that there were some problems because butchers had orgasms on their floors.

The media had a field day. It made headlines internationally and Tom Scott, who back then wrote an accompanying story with his cartoons in The Listener, arguably concocted the masterpiece of his career.


Of course we butchers were the butt of some rather uncouth jokes and banter in the ensuing weeks, but we had been giving it for years so I guess it was only fair to now be on the receiving end.

Other cartoonists besides Scott made use of their skills to chronicle our activities at ground level and “on the shop floor” took on a totally new meaning.

In 1976 there were 15 butchers’ shops in Masterton, now there are just two. However we have three funeral homes when in the sawdust era one sufficed.

There’s a message here somewhere.

“Health is what my friends are always drinking to before they fall down.” - Phyllis Diller.

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Wednesday 8 March 2017

A curious compilation of carraigeway

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When I changed from marketing meat in the middle of the town centre to becoming a signwriter in the outer fringes in Victoria Street a local businessman told me I would now discover that the commerce of Masterton is not solely focused on the central business district.

He was right of course; businesses flourish in all corners of the borough, and even beyond, but a town is often judged by its main street, thriving or otherwise.

Currently Queen Street is simply not meeting the standard. There are trees are that are too tall and dying, some of the footpaths are covered in verdigris, there are alleyways that are full of rubbish and of course there are a growing number of vacant shops.

Prominent among the empty stores is the ex-Pagani premise on the corner of Queen Street and Lincoln Road. Actually it’s not empty; thanks to the generosity of the Trust Lands Trust the Masterton Art Club have been given free use of the site to display and sell their members artwork until such times as a new tenant is found.


Club members take turns tending the shop and as my better half is one of these, from time to time I am rostered on to do a stint. It’s interesting to sit there on this busy corner and watch the passing parade of people who live and love in my home town.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of any observation is the nonsensical system that requires cars to come to a full stop at the intersection (and subsequent intersections) before being able to continue on through Queen Street. The sound of silence is regularly shattered. The constant squeal of brakes, abuse from open windows, horns tooting and near misses are commonplace and I have always wondered where the traffic consultants who designed Masterton’s curious main street system came from.

I know space exploration has failed to find any sign of life on Mars, but I am convinced these people must have been from another planet.

Some years ago three meat retailers from Waikato decided to visit our butcher’s shop. They flew to Wellington, hired a rental car and came up to Masterton. The spent a couple of hours with us, but on the homeward journey didn’t recognise the stop sign on the Queen Street Russell Street intersection and were hit by a car side on. Their rental car was written off. They were shaken, but relatively unscathed and managed to get to Wellington and fly home to Hamilton. That night one of them rang me and wanted to know what sort of municipality prohibits its main street from flowing unimpeded?

I had no cogent answer.

There is council consultation taking place now at a snail’s pace over the fate of our CBD. Common sense would see a free-flow of traffic the length of Queen Street and they might like to convince the Anglican Church Trust to abandon any plans to build a superfluous shop on the diagonal corner from Pagani, get rid of the appalling wooden fence and create a grassed area and shade trees with suitable seating.

I’m sure the Lord would approve.

“There are no traffic jams along the extra mile” - Roger Straubach

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Wednesday 1 March 2017

Who are you going to believe?

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There are a growing number of theorists in America who think 9/11 was a conspiracy. The book 9/11 The Ultimate Truth has had a number if reprints and revised editions and apparently claims the real culprits were Israeli Mossad agents working hand-in-glove with the Bush family. They point out that the Twin Towers collapsed in a controlled demolition configuration as did the next door building which housed the office of the U.S. Secret Service and wasn’t even hit. They also highlight the fact that the plane that crashed into the Pentagon (Flight73) left absolutely no trace of its existence.

However there is no explanation why, given the number of people required to stage this horrendous act of terror, not one of them has fessed up.

I thought about this last week when Pope Francis was reported as saying that Muslim terrorism does not exist. Is the Pope giving credence to the theory that the reason 9/11 plot was enacted was to turn Westerners against Islam?

Pontius Pilate said: “What is truth?” and I’m starting to sympathise with him.

Take for instance the turmoil in America. When Donald Trump was endeavouring to get the Republican nomination against sixteen other wannabe candidates, Republicans were critical of him, claiming he was really a Democrat in disguise. And so now this “closet” Democrat is the President you would think the Democrats would be delighted that one of their own had sneaked into the oval office under false pretences. Not so of course, they are marching in the streets in their thousands to have him thrown out of office.

In a speech to his faithful followers in Florida President Trump inferred Sweden was having problems with its refugee population. Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom debunked the claim, but journalist Ingrid Carlqvist, Chairperson of Sweden’s Free Press Society, reported that her country has experienced a 1472% increase in rapes, the second-highest incident of rape in the world. She claimed mass immigration and multiculturalism has brought Sweden close to collapse, specifically laying the blame on refugees from Afghanistan and Somalia.

In June last year the EU introduced an online speech code designed to stop negative commentary on refugees and immigrants. Ms Carlqvist therefore risks being crucified; figuratively, not literally.

So what is truth? Does fake news abound everywhere; perhaps even in this column?

Well, all news intrigues me. Last week a newspaper headline told us that NZ Police Commissioner Mike Bush had been caught drink-driving. A major scoop surely, except that it happened 34 years ago!


At the time he was an off-duty detective in Auckland in 1983. He was 24 years old and had been in the police force for five years. He pleaded guilty, was convicted, received a $250 fine and was disqualified from driving for six months. The incident was widely reported when it happened. Sorry Mr Trump, this wasn’t fake news, worse than that - it was old news. Did it really need to be retrieved from the archives and ingeminated?

Hands up all those journalists who haven’t had a drink and driven at some stage in their lives.

Hmm, just as I thought, not a single hand.

“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.” - Oscar Wilde

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