What would yiz be wanting?
24th July 2010
Revelations that some restaurants are charging customers “cakeage” for bringing their own birthday cakes lifts the lid on dodgy practices in the hospitality industry. Unreasonable charges, like crummy waiters, make a lovely grumble but the reality is that restaurants do this stuff because we let them. New Zealand diners are wiltingly passive. We have no backbone in the face of sloppy service and rortish prices. We plead to be ripped off.
Our salvation is in our own hands. To illustrate let me take you back 25 years to the Greymouth Motor Lodge and one man’s culinary crusade.
As a young TVNZ reporter in the 80s I spent a lot of time on the road with a film crew. Our cameraman was Cedric Heward; sandy-haired, 30-something, tight-jeaned and just camp enough to be particular about his personal comfort.
Cedric was the first person I ever met who complained in restaurants. He made a point of it and could find a dozen faults before we’d even sighted a menu: the furniture wobbled, the décor shrieked, the temperature was too this or that.
Cedric was not petty. He maintained we owed it to our burgeoning tourist industry to lift standards. As he said, “I can shut up and go away vowing never to return or I can mention the problems and give them a chance to prove to me why I should return.”
On one memorable trip we were staying at the Greymouth Motor Lodge, the Coast’s finest hostelry. We assembled, half a dozen of us, for breakfast. The restaurant faced the car park on one side and a concrete block wall painted camouflage green on the other. Outside a dismal rain was falling.
Our waitress was Gail, who was about 18, slatternly but striving to rise above herself. She stalked over to our table and greeted us in West Coast vernacular: “what would yiz be wanting?”
After some discussion most of us would be wanting bacon and eggs. Cedric quizzed Gail. Were the eggs battery or free range? Was the bacon grilled or fried? He was polite, prefacing his questions with “excuse me,” “can you help?” and the like. I observed that this was more irritating to waitresses than if he’d simply been rude.
Eventually we came to drinks. Coffee or tea satisfied most of us, but for Cedric hot drinks were a passion.
“Excuse me, do you have Earl Grey?”
“Who?”
“Or Orange Pekoe? Jasmine? Apple and cranberry scented fruit basket?”
“I’ll ask Warren.”
Gail sloped off to ask Warren. Warren was the manager but that morning he was filling in for the chef who’d failed to return from his possum traps. Warren’s beefy face could be seen through the serving hatch to the kitchen. He had large forlorn moustaches and looked like a walrus on a small screen TV.
Gail returned. “Warren says it’s Bushells.”
“Thank you,” said Cedric. “In that case just bring me some hot water and I’ll make my own.”
Cedric unzipped his money belt and fetched out three or four small boxes of tea bags. Gail eyed the boxes uncertainly, turned and padded back to Warren. There was a brief conference and much waggling of the walrus moustache. Gail returned.
“Warren says you’ll have to pay cuppage to make your own tea.”
“Pardon me?” replied Cedric.
“He says it’ll be $2.50 for the cup.”
Cedric stiffened. “Excuse me,” his voice was tense, the rest of us nervously shuffled our toast. “Excuse me, tell Warren this is not Tiffany’s and I won’t pay through the nose to make a decent cup of tea.”
More discussion with the walrus. Gail returned.
“Warren says this is the Greymouth Motor Lodge. We serve Bushells or you pay cuppage.”
Cedric drew himself up to his full sandy-haired, tight-jeaned height. His eyes swept the room and lighted on the forlorn carpark and the concrete block wall. “I suppose he’ll be charging me for the bloody view as well,” he commanded, and stalked out.
What was achieved? Who knows, but I like to think Cedric brought a little light to the hospitality trade that morning and spared future diners the perils of fringe pricing – corkage, cakeage or cuppage.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Sunday, July 11, 2010
The private well and the public good
10th July 2010
The relationship between water and wealth in Mid-Canterbury is nowhere more striking than in the appearance of irrigation storage reservoirs. From the air our district looks like a water wonderland, the familiar patchwork of paddocks and shelterbelts now flecked with a new patchwork of glittering ponds, some the size of small lakes.
I assume giving up farmland to large ponds is economical for irrigators but I wonder if it is much of a leap forward in how we manage water. Do these lakes capture water that would otherwise be lost? Or do they simply gather water that was already allocated from, say, the RDR and which previously was spread through border dikes but now is sprayed onto the land by centre pivots and rotor rainers?
This gathering of water into reservoirs is a visible symbol of power in the debate over water use. It says, “this water is mine. I have harvested it, stored it and will use it as I see fit.” It privatises a resource that, when it flows in our rivers or settles in our aquifers, is a public good.
The privatisation of water is not confined to farming. The small yellow signs saying ‘private well’ that pop up on suburban lawns confer the same privilege upon the householder who thereby gives himself licence to suck up public water and throw it around with abandon.
The sustainability of these practices may be about to come under closer scrutiny. In this week’s press it was pleasing to see Ashburton Mayor Bede O’Malley encouraging us to put our names forward to join the Ashburton Zone Water Management Committee.
According to Canterbury Water, a stand-alone directorate of Environment Canterbury, the committee will work with locals to develop a wide-ranging plan for water resources in our district. Water zone facilitator Barbara Nicholas says the committee “will need to be able to deal with the complexities of water issues” to help implement the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) in Ashburton District.
On the face of it this all sounds rather jolly. One imagines a committee of farmers, householders, business people and local politicians happily weighing private interest and public good and balancing the fine equation to everybody’s advantage.
But there is something in this proposal that doesn’t stack up. Why are we now forming a committee to develop a “wide-ranging plan” for local water management? Isn’t this the purpose of the CWMS and, if not, what has been the point of all the work and politics invested in that Strategy?
The local committee’s brief is to help implement the CWMS and there is a devil of detail in that little word “help”. In fact the proposition asks more questions than it answers. What substantive role does the local committee play? Will it have the power to decide between conflicting interests in water use? How will committee members be appointed? Will it be a fair representation of all stakeholders?
It is difficult to avoid seeing the local committee as window dressing, a trickle down of power like the last few drops from the aquifer. Mr O’Malley’s endorsement of people-power raises suspicion in itself considering his role in the infamous ‘letter from the Mayors’ that caused us to lose our right to a democratically elected Environment Canterbury. He is not the only Mayor in the region who, as local government elections approach, is hurrying to prove himself a friend of democracy.
Recent events at ECan tempt the conclusion that the future of Canterbury’s water resource has been stitched up between big business and the political Right. A local committee will be, at best, a very small voice in a room filled with commissioners and corporates, both single-minded in regarding water only as a path to prosperity.
Nevertheless, we should support the local committee. Even a small voice is better than we have at present. The committee’s small voice can claim a few column-inches in the local press and may in time grow to be influential. At the very least it may become a watchdog to expose the worst practices and to move forward our collective awareness of the fragility and finiteness of our water resources.
10th July 2010
The relationship between water and wealth in Mid-Canterbury is nowhere more striking than in the appearance of irrigation storage reservoirs. From the air our district looks like a water wonderland, the familiar patchwork of paddocks and shelterbelts now flecked with a new patchwork of glittering ponds, some the size of small lakes.
I assume giving up farmland to large ponds is economical for irrigators but I wonder if it is much of a leap forward in how we manage water. Do these lakes capture water that would otherwise be lost? Or do they simply gather water that was already allocated from, say, the RDR and which previously was spread through border dikes but now is sprayed onto the land by centre pivots and rotor rainers?
This gathering of water into reservoirs is a visible symbol of power in the debate over water use. It says, “this water is mine. I have harvested it, stored it and will use it as I see fit.” It privatises a resource that, when it flows in our rivers or settles in our aquifers, is a public good.
The privatisation of water is not confined to farming. The small yellow signs saying ‘private well’ that pop up on suburban lawns confer the same privilege upon the householder who thereby gives himself licence to suck up public water and throw it around with abandon.
The sustainability of these practices may be about to come under closer scrutiny. In this week’s press it was pleasing to see Ashburton Mayor Bede O’Malley encouraging us to put our names forward to join the Ashburton Zone Water Management Committee.
According to Canterbury Water, a stand-alone directorate of Environment Canterbury, the committee will work with locals to develop a wide-ranging plan for water resources in our district. Water zone facilitator Barbara Nicholas says the committee “will need to be able to deal with the complexities of water issues” to help implement the Canterbury Water Management Strategy (CWMS) in Ashburton District.
On the face of it this all sounds rather jolly. One imagines a committee of farmers, householders, business people and local politicians happily weighing private interest and public good and balancing the fine equation to everybody’s advantage.
But there is something in this proposal that doesn’t stack up. Why are we now forming a committee to develop a “wide-ranging plan” for local water management? Isn’t this the purpose of the CWMS and, if not, what has been the point of all the work and politics invested in that Strategy?
The local committee’s brief is to help implement the CWMS and there is a devil of detail in that little word “help”. In fact the proposition asks more questions than it answers. What substantive role does the local committee play? Will it have the power to decide between conflicting interests in water use? How will committee members be appointed? Will it be a fair representation of all stakeholders?
It is difficult to avoid seeing the local committee as window dressing, a trickle down of power like the last few drops from the aquifer. Mr O’Malley’s endorsement of people-power raises suspicion in itself considering his role in the infamous ‘letter from the Mayors’ that caused us to lose our right to a democratically elected Environment Canterbury. He is not the only Mayor in the region who, as local government elections approach, is hurrying to prove himself a friend of democracy.
Recent events at ECan tempt the conclusion that the future of Canterbury’s water resource has been stitched up between big business and the political Right. A local committee will be, at best, a very small voice in a room filled with commissioners and corporates, both single-minded in regarding water only as a path to prosperity.
Nevertheless, we should support the local committee. Even a small voice is better than we have at present. The committee’s small voice can claim a few column-inches in the local press and may in time grow to be influential. At the very least it may become a watchdog to expose the worst practices and to move forward our collective awareness of the fragility and finiteness of our water resources.
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