Banking on the future

An expression you hear a lot is that “things are not as good as they were in my day” I suppose our generation use it particularly to our offspring when we want to express our frustration about the way things are, compared to the way things were. The truth is of course we look back at the past through rose tinted glasses; we filter out the bad aspects and only remember the good bits. “My day” is a euphemism for the good parts of the past.

I reckon though that banks were better in “my-day.” For instance you always knew who your bank manager was. In fact you knew who all the bank managers were. They were important people in the town. They were big men, some quite literally, and they were invariably always of the male gender. You were particularly well acquainted with your own bank manager, though sometimes you wish you weren’t. At a function recently, in a totally unscientific survey, I asked a number of businesspeople, about ten in all, who their bank manager was. Not one could tell me.

I was reminded of all this last week when my bank took out some glossy newspaper advertisements (well coloured; not necessarily glossy) to introduce nine new “relationship managers.” These people to be collectively known as the Wairarapa Supporters Club. On close inspection however I note that only one of these “managers” actually resides in the Wairarapa, so their loyalty might be a bit suspect.

I’m not all that sure that these relationship managers are for real. They’re a nice looking lot, but I have sneaking suspicion they might be photographic models out of Los Angeles. Even their names are surreal, like Aaron and Anna. They sound too good to be true.

Now I hope this doesn’t sound ungrateful, but I would rather have had nine new tellers.

My bank has this swept up, highly polished, native wood counter with many gaps where tellers are intended to reside, but most of these apertures have jolly green signs on them that say: Next Teller Please. Directly in front of these signs is a queue of people who wouldn’t know a relationship manager if they fell over one. In “my-day” these gaps in the solid wooded counters were filled up with people who were there day in and day out and actually knew who you were. I think it was that great philosopher Alfred E. Newman who once proclaimed that most people who go into banks aren’t looking for money; they’re just looking for attention.

My bank opened its Masterton branch around 1932 and our family company was among the first to join its ranks of customers. I know this because in 1982 (give or take a year) we were invited with a select few, to the bank’s 50th birthday celebrations. We were showered with gifts, and speeches were made in our honour for our loyalty. I recall that this was a particularly proud moment for my father. Now, nearly twenty years later, when I walk into my bank to cash the company’s wages cheque the young lady behind the counter wants to know who I am and requires some form of identification. What I would dearly like to do is whip out a mirror, look intently in it and then announce that yes, it is me; “It’s meself,” I’d love to say. But probably my sense of humour has passed its “use by” date.

And then in “my-day” if you inadvertently crossed the wages cheque, thereby making it technically uncashable, you simply had to cross out the not negotiable indicator, write on it: “please pay cash,” sign the alteration, and the cheerful teller would cash the cheque. Last week I absentmindedly crossed the wages cheque and was made to go all the way back to my workplace and write out another one.

In “my-day” the army of staff was tucked away in offices beavering away at handwritten cash books, hidden from the patrons. Now bank employees are strategically scattered around the customer area, staring fixatedly at computer screens in full view of the frustrated clients waiting to be served. Ironically these computers generate more paper than the cashbooks did. Queue-weary customers just wish they’d leave their screens and fill in the vacant teller spots and reduce the lines of people that snake past their exposed desks. This is not practical of course. They have their work to do, but in “my-day” they were out of sight and out of mind, so the frustration didn’t build.

If I ring my bank I get someone in another centre; Wellington or Auckland, I’m not sure which, but it is quite a rigmarole to actually get through to the Masterton office. A friend, who is loyal to another bank, told me he rang his local branch the other day and got Sydney!

If it wasn’t so tragic it would be laughable. The banks are surely at the cutting edge of the free enterprise society; the epitome if you like of the market economy, and yet their customer ethics are akin to the worst of the government departments of yore.

It’s possible I have a psychological problem about this. I remember back before the ‘87 share market crash deciding that a change of hair style might be appropriate for the yuppie era. I told my hairdresser to fashion it like a banker’s. In the event I looked a mess, though to be fair the haircut was only half to blame. 

When I got home my wife ventured that this was the worst haircut she’d ever seen. I told her I wanted to look like a banker. “Well.” she said, “At least it rhymes.”

(First published July 21st 1999)

“The human species, according to my best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow and the men who lend” - Charles Lamb

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Not for the faint-hearted

Last week I had a game of golf. Please note I said “had a game” I didn’t say I “played a game.” That would be elevating the experience to a level I never reached. A satirist once wrote that they called the game “golf” because all the other four letter words were used up. I can empathise with the sentiment. You are probably asking why someone, with my countless years of experience dodging fruitless exercise, would suddenly take up golf. Well the Masterton Golf Club, in an effort to boost flagging membership, decided to lower the sub for new members from around $450 a year to just $100 for the first year and I can’t resist a bargain.

But they carefully omit to tell you that to play the game you need golf clubs. The pro at Lansdowne, who goes under the unlikely name of Bob McDonald, soon sorted me out a set of second hand clubs. He assured me that they were near new, one owner, low mileage etc. but I should have suspected something when I saw that the sizes on the club heads were in Roman numerals.

Now I was all set to go except you can’t really play golf without a trundler. My wife came up with a simple solution. She would buy a new one for herself and I could have her old one. It is a peculiarity of the female species that, even though you have a joint account, they have this inflexible belief that when money comes out of it for an item for their use, it doesn’t really count. Using this logic my trundler actually cost nothing. I have friend whose wife is a part time school teacher. She takes home about $13 a week after tax. Whenever she wants expensive alterations or new furniture for the house she says she will do it out of “her money.” At the last count he told me it will take about four hundred years of “her money” to pay off this years spend alone.

But I digress.

I decided to dispense with trying to look like beau brummel on the course, my slacks, polo shirt and sneakers will suffice, until I turn professional. I checked with the bank manager to see that the loan I had taken out for the cost thus far was in place and after a lengthy and protracted confirmation I was set to burn up the course.

New Members Day (nearly two hundred aspirants were encouraged by the low first year subscription) meant fours consisting of two seasoned members teamed up with two $100 novices. My fellow novice and I drew a wisecracking lawyer and the club captain. The dedicated club captain would constantly stop mid fairway and pontificate about the million dollar views, admittedly quite excellent, but his claim that this was worth the $100 subscription alone, was a trifle exaggerated. Anyway you don’t get to enjoy the scenery when you are regularly on your hands and knees in the undergrowth looking for your ball.

And that’s another cost I hadn’t factored in; buying golf balls. The pro obliged of course, but the brand he sold me had a cunning homing device that attracted them to either trees or water. A typical hole: A couple of air shots (my partners refused to accept these were practice swings) and the ball would take off feebly towards a tree (the wood homing device) then amazingly the internal electronic radar thingy would shift to a new setting and the ball, provided a connection with the club was actually made, would hive off towards the nearest lake.

The water hazards obviously had a suction arrangement at the bottom and this was connected to pipe that snakes its way back to the pro-shop. I am sure of this because when I got back to the clubhouse my balls were being offered for sale on the shop counter. I’ll swear they were still wet!

After nine holes, breathless and exhausted, I thought I couldn’t go on. My wife’s old trundler has ABS braking which is fully applied all the time and the Lansdowne golf course must have been designed by Sir Edmund (then just Edmund) Hillary. Combine the hills with the heavy Romanesque clubs and the lack of match fitness starts to show. The lawyer chooses now to tell me how after a similar disposition a couple of years ago his doctor had rushed him into hospital for a heart bypass. To punctuate the story he unbuttoned his shirt to reveal a scar stretching from his Adam’s apple to his navel. All this just to play golf!

But beginners do get their moneys worth. You hit more shots, swing more clubs, see more corners of the course, dive into more water hazards, rake more bunkers, and walk about twice as far as the more competent. You should really be paying twice the sub, not a quarter. But like the cigarette companies, they want to get you addicted, though after last week’s tribulations, they will be battling to get me.

The lawyer had the last word. I told him I’d move heaven and earth to break a hundred. He said I’d better try heaven; I’d already shifted most of the earth.

I’m surprised they could find a heart to bypass.

(First published December 30th 1998)

“Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get.” – Homer Simpson

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On tattoos, taxes and teachers

My geography teacher at school told us that New Zealand was a blessed place because of its equi-distance between the equator and the Antarctic. This meant a temperate climate that was the envy of the world because we could grow lush pastures to feed our livestock, but our temperatures didn’t get too cold for them to need housing in the winter.

As a result we managed to produce cheap meat and even though our markets were at the uttermost ends of the Earth we could still land our product in these distant lands at a competitive price.

Competitive perhaps, until loony Labour gets its grubby hands on our free-flowing water and taxes it to death.

The politics of envy are at play here. Socialists couldn’t stand the sight of someone bottling our water and sending it off-shore. The water had fallen out of the sky, but how dare these entrepreneurs get their hands on it for nothing before it flowed on out to sea. No one had noticed that for years we have been exporting wine, beer and even soft drinks (the hugely successful Karma Kola being a classic example) all chock full of New Zealand water, but out of sight and therefore out of mind.

And so Labour wants to tax our water and give much of the proceeds to Iwi. So basically they are saying New Zealanders will have to pay Iwi for products that use water. This is a major policy shift and even worse, Labour won’t say how much the tax will be. The tax will also be discriminatory. Commercial water used in the city will not have to pay, but those in the rural areas will be charged. Most major breweries will end up not having to pay the tax, while most craft breweries will. It will put up food prices for many items as well as making our exporters less competitive.

Labour are playing to the latte-sipping liberals in Ponsonby and Wellington; they simply don’t care about rural New Zealand. Ms Ardern proposes to tax farmers who have made huge financial investments in water availability to insure production against drought or to increase production or establish a new use for water.

Any water that is not treated and supplied by a local council or a government body through a public reticulation system and is used by its citizens should be free as its use benefits everyone in the country.

Ms Arden’s only real claim to fame before coming to parliament on Labour's list was to be elected President on The International Union of Socialist Youth in Britain. She has never had to face the rigours of commerce, or needed to find enough money each week to pay staff or GST or ACC levies or be mired under the overwhelming scrutiny of the new health and safety regulations.

In the cocooned environs of her charmed life she has had little experience of the everyday economic maelstroms facing most hard-working businessmen and farmers. In fact in the last news item I read regarding the new labour leader is that she is entertaining the idea of getting a tattoo. Not a white dove of peace or the white camellia of women’s suffrage, but an image of explorer Ernest Shackleton.

Just what you need to run the country.

I wish my late great geography teacher could have lived to see that in the grand scheme of things we’re not really blessed at all.

“Read my lips: no new taxes.” - George H. W. Bush

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Ageing maleness is not a pretty sight

It was a revelation to recently discover what a disgraceful employer I must have been. At one stage, at the height of my business venturing, I owned a bacon factory, three butcher’s shops and a smallgoods factory. Later on I managed real estate company and concluded my career as the half-owner of a sign factory.

Over that period, spanning some fifty odd years, I employed a large number of members of the ‘fairer sex’ (hang on, am I even allowed to say that now) and if they were of the child bearing age I invariably asked them at the employment interview what their intentions were regarding motherhood.

I was blissfully unaware at the apparent sensitivity of this line of inquiry, but last week a number of males, some with high profiles and impeccable credentials were severely castigated for asking Ms Ardern the very same question.

No matter that the new Labour leader had broached the subject herself in a recent Next magazine article that featured her airbrushed picture on the front cover.

In that homily she claimed to have no ambitions regarding the leadership of the party as she wanted have a family first.

Bob Dylan sang “the times they are a‘changing” and my generation obviously weren’t listening. In our day the potential for pregnancy question garnered important information. No sense in training applicants as meat packers, checkout operators, office staff, real estate salespersons or graphic designers if they were going to hive off and have a family.

And remember these were those halcyon days before paid parental leave.

And our misogynistic mistakes keep mounting up. Not long ago rugby league great Graham Lowe was asked what he thought of Ms Ardern and walked into a minefield when he said: “She’s a pretty little thing, isn’t she?”

I thought it was reasonable response; after all she has pretty big teeth and a pretty big mouth and the overall picture is pretty attractive and anyway in ‘my day’ to describe a lady as pretty was deemed a compliment and a much sought-after description of themselves by young women at the time.

For Lowe it was like Chicken Little’s sky had fallen. The news media and social media came down on him like a ton of bricks and he was sent to Coventry. Well actually that’s not true. In fact he went to Bradford on his own accord and bought a British rugby league team, the Bradford Bulls, presumably keen to get as far away from this country as he could.

That’s why you’ve never heard of him since.

Jacinda’s pathway to potential premiership came pretty quickly. The ageing Annette King was encouraged to step aside; I’ll bet she was a pretty little thing in her day too.

Oops, I’d better go and pack my bags; I’m off to Coventry.

“To judge from the covers of countless women’s magazines, the two topics most interesting to women are 1) why men are all disgusting pigs and 2) how to attract men.” - Dave Barry

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Paying back the piper

My first thought when I heard Metiria Turei’s bold confession about her transgressions as a solo mum was Jesus’ exhortation to the mob surrounding the woman caught in the act of adultery: ‘let anyone who is without sin among you cast the first stone.’

For instance didn’t Bill English once have to pay back a $32,000 housing allowance he had wrongly claimed on his million-dollar-plus Karori home?

Regrettably, for most people cheating on the government is a national pastime. Who hasn’t paid cash for a job knowing full well the recipient has no intention of declaring it? Or conversely how often have we received cash for a product or service that should be declared, but have remained shtum?

Admittedly in a cashless society with eftpos machines consuming the commercial world these opportunities have all but disappeared, nevertheless there is a general feeling abound that the governments money is there for the taking and no one really sees it as theft off fellow taxpayers.

However Ms Turei’s revelations deepened as the week wore on. It seemed the father of her child was well-known to the family, but not disclosed on the birth certificate and was therefore not made liable for deductions to be paid to the Internal Revenue Department. It was also thought that one of her flatmates was in fact her live-in partner. And amazingly during this time of ‘economic stress’ she stood for two political parties; first the McGillicuddy Serious Party and then the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis party.

When challenged about this by Guyon Espiner on National Radio she said beneficiaries are entitled to have fun.

She’s right of course, but if having fun includes smoking marijuana then it’s probably an expensive form of entertainment.

Anyway the Green Party is an ideal resting place for Ms Turei; they have a policy, not widely promulgated, to decriminalise marijuana.

At a ‘Meet the Candidates’ meeting a few years ago I asked the Wairarapa Green Party candidate at the time, Ms Sea Rotmann, about their near-secret policy of legalising cannabis. She said they weren’t going to legalise it, merely decriminalise it. (I was reminded of the American comedian who asked his audience what the difference was between unlawful and illegal? His punchline was that unlawful is against the law whereas illegal is a sick bird. - No, I didn’t laugh much either.)

But like it or not, the eventual decriminalisation of cannabis in New Zealand is a give-in with medical marijuana undoubtedly being used as a back door entry for recreational use.

The government, particularly via its District Health Boards, is making strenuous efforts to discourage and eventually eliminate tobacco smoking altogether and yet here is a product that is more carcinogenic and is now likely to come on stream with all of its potential medical and mental health outcomes.

This incredible step into iniquity has already happened in five U.S. states which is hardly likely to make America great again. The dimly lit neon caverns selling this ghastly product have rows of jars displaying a vast variety of cannabis heads that resemble brains in formalin.

These shops look like highways to hell.

Meanwhile Ms Turei has promised to pay back what she owes us all, presumably she will also pay the interest and the penalty interest which will be substantial.

She won’t be able to afford recreational cannabis for a while.

“Kids today are no sooner off the pot than they are back on it again.” - Stuart Francis

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