Stonehenge rocks at summer solstice
25th June 2011
As we climb the hill we join others moving in the same direction and soon we are at the edge of the crowd. We press on, working our way into the throng. The night is filled with laughter and the beat of jungle drums, the scene lit by camera flashes and blue arc lights.
We force our way to one of the stones. Nick finds an opening and eases himself to the ground, sitting with his back to the rock. I squeeze in beside him while Sylvia and Jeanie move further away across the grass.
At my back the stone is dry and warm, covered with tufts of scaly moss and a mosaic of lichen. A spider legs it up a thread of web and scrabbles into a crevice. Clouds boil overhead but the night is dry and warm.
Around five thousand years ago a group of people stood where I am sitting and hoisted this stone, hewn from a quarry in Wales more than 200 kilometres away, into the position it has remained ever since. It is massive, as tall as a house, as broad as a flat deck trailer. Is is just one of dozens forming a rough circle, some constructed as arches with equally massive cap stones, some standing alone, others lying where the arches have collapsed or where they were placed at the dawn of history.
I heard about people gathering at Stonehenge to celebrate the summer solstice so we have come to join the crowd and watch the sun rise on the longest day of the year.
I hoped to witness pagan rituals led by druids with long flowing beards and robes decorated with Celtic runes, to see near-naked women writhing in ecstatic trances to the haunting music of a panpipe, their bodies smeared with ashes or painted in fantastical designs. I wanted mist and mysticism.
Instead we finds ourselves at a rave. It's as if there was a text frenzy to every young person across southern England – prty @ s'henge! They've arrived with beer and groundsheets and camera phones and they are partying hard. The centre of the stone circle is a heaving mosh pit of drumming, dancing, shouting humanity. Periodically a wave of energy rises like a bubble of gas in a lava pool and bursts across the crowd in a cheer that rolls down the hillside.
The mood is festive, the drunks amiable and the police, dressed de rigeur in top-to-toe high viz, have little to do but fend off banter and tend the inebriated.
Near us a man with a Liverpool accent stands beside one of the stone arches like a night club tout. He welcomes each person who walks through the arch with a hug and some scouse wit.
“Come on, luv. Dis is de way in.”
“The way in to what?”
“To me f... house! Ha, ha!”
A woman dodges his embrace and he turns to us.
“Aagh, some people jus' don't get it. Ha, ha! Happy solstice!”
I wander off to watch a young man juggling with fire sticks. Jeanie, Sylvia's sister, is attracting attention. She wears a long calico shift on which she has painted a full length voluptuous nude woman, complete with nipple ring. She poses for photographs with young men and joins a group of dancers who cheer her contortions.
The first grey flecks of dawn appear. At the edge of the crowd a small group of bearded and costumed characters are chanting. They are more Dumbledore than druid and, warming to the crowd, break off chanting to lecture us on the British government's discrimination against pagans.
The dawn climbs up but at sunrise's appointed time the horizon is just a grey smear. A young man solemnly kneels and bows to the east. He leans forward slowly and vomits on the grass.
The sound of drums continues to swirl but we join the crowds wending across the grey fields. Looking back I see Stonehenge unmoved among thousands of tired bodies and a sea of flattened beer cans, plastic bags and burger wrappings, our offering to the gods of mid-summer.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Gypsies at the margin of English life
14th May 2011
In a trailer park on the edge of Exeter I meet Kenny; small, sly, seven years old. He has a permanent squint that our grandparents may have called a 'wall eye', and half a dozen very white elongated teeth that protrude at odd angles from his mouth. Kenny offers to show me his most prized possession, a slow-worm – a kind of small grass snake. “I got 'im down the back,” is the limit of his response to my questions. He grins and sidles away to where his big sister is talking with Liz, the lady from the Education Department.
Kenny is a gypsy, which is to say he falls within the category known in England as Travellers, only he doesn't travel. This trailer park of about 15 sites lies in an industrial park within the rumble of the M5 motorway. It is an official gypsy campsite provided by the Devon County Council and most of the residents have been here since the 1960s. They have fenced their sites, laid out small gardens with outdoor furniture, sheds and garden gnomes. There is a children's playground and a car park.
Gypsies have lived in Great Britain for 500 years - a proud, independent and wilfully marginalised community. For much of their history they were the caravanning fortune tellers and tinkers, the field labourers and horse breeders of these islands. Their dark skin and decoration made them slightly exotic and, therefore, not to be trusted.
In the past 50 years the network of traditional camp sites has been swallowed up by expanding towns or buried beneath motorways. Seasonal labour that sustained a traveling life has dried up or gone to new subclasses of Poles, Bulgarians and Chinese. Many gypsies, like Kenny's family, have been corralled into Council sites on the urban fringes. Others have bought small plots of rural land and retreated to them, sparring with local authorities for planning permission to erect buildings and instal services. Others remain obdurately itinerant, parking illegally on strips of private land or public byways, in a constant round of evictions and community malice.
But even when settled gypsies remain marginalised. Like Jews in the ghettoes of Russia and Poland they draw their culture and traditions tightly around them like a coat, a shield. They remain almost invisible to mainstream society.
Invisible also to the education system. Liz, from the Devon Traveller Education Service, has played a 20 year game of cat and mouse with gypsy families; coaxing, couching and corralling them into a way of learning – and a way of life – they recoil from. In every one of the 5 or 6 campsites we have visited today we have met school-age children. All the families know Liz and accept her with varying degrees of warmth. Me they regard with outright suspicion. At every site they trot out well-rehearsed reasons for their children's truancy; “his shoes got wet,” “we been at the doctor's,” or, the clincher, “we been travelling.”
Liz's job is not helped by the reluctance of many schools to accept gypsy children. In New Zealand a school cannot refuse entry to any child within its catchment area. In England schools work to maximum rolls and can reasonably claim to be full when new children turn up. Sadly, many schools are 'full' to gypsy children but not to others.
Their unenthusiasm for gypsies is not just prejudice. Gypsy students have high absentee rates. Schools in England have strict attendance targets which a failure to meet brings down the wrath of government inspectors and a thrashing in the local press. One secondary school principal who wants to do well for gypsies says he restricts his efforts to include them because he can't afford his school to become a magnet for high needs and low performing students.
Liz believes the situation is improving. Younger parents are beginning to value education as the way forward for their children. A few gypsy students are completing secondary education and a handful progress to university. Most however remain like Kenny, with wet shoes, a crooked smile and a slow-worm.
14th May 2011
In a trailer park on the edge of Exeter I meet Kenny; small, sly, seven years old. He has a permanent squint that our grandparents may have called a 'wall eye', and half a dozen very white elongated teeth that protrude at odd angles from his mouth. Kenny offers to show me his most prized possession, a slow-worm – a kind of small grass snake. “I got 'im down the back,” is the limit of his response to my questions. He grins and sidles away to where his big sister is talking with Liz, the lady from the Education Department.
Kenny is a gypsy, which is to say he falls within the category known in England as Travellers, only he doesn't travel. This trailer park of about 15 sites lies in an industrial park within the rumble of the M5 motorway. It is an official gypsy campsite provided by the Devon County Council and most of the residents have been here since the 1960s. They have fenced their sites, laid out small gardens with outdoor furniture, sheds and garden gnomes. There is a children's playground and a car park.
Gypsies have lived in Great Britain for 500 years - a proud, independent and wilfully marginalised community. For much of their history they were the caravanning fortune tellers and tinkers, the field labourers and horse breeders of these islands. Their dark skin and decoration made them slightly exotic and, therefore, not to be trusted.
In the past 50 years the network of traditional camp sites has been swallowed up by expanding towns or buried beneath motorways. Seasonal labour that sustained a traveling life has dried up or gone to new subclasses of Poles, Bulgarians and Chinese. Many gypsies, like Kenny's family, have been corralled into Council sites on the urban fringes. Others have bought small plots of rural land and retreated to them, sparring with local authorities for planning permission to erect buildings and instal services. Others remain obdurately itinerant, parking illegally on strips of private land or public byways, in a constant round of evictions and community malice.
But even when settled gypsies remain marginalised. Like Jews in the ghettoes of Russia and Poland they draw their culture and traditions tightly around them like a coat, a shield. They remain almost invisible to mainstream society.
Invisible also to the education system. Liz, from the Devon Traveller Education Service, has played a 20 year game of cat and mouse with gypsy families; coaxing, couching and corralling them into a way of learning – and a way of life – they recoil from. In every one of the 5 or 6 campsites we have visited today we have met school-age children. All the families know Liz and accept her with varying degrees of warmth. Me they regard with outright suspicion. At every site they trot out well-rehearsed reasons for their children's truancy; “his shoes got wet,” “we been at the doctor's,” or, the clincher, “we been travelling.”
Liz's job is not helped by the reluctance of many schools to accept gypsy children. In New Zealand a school cannot refuse entry to any child within its catchment area. In England schools work to maximum rolls and can reasonably claim to be full when new children turn up. Sadly, many schools are 'full' to gypsy children but not to others.
Their unenthusiasm for gypsies is not just prejudice. Gypsy students have high absentee rates. Schools in England have strict attendance targets which a failure to meet brings down the wrath of government inspectors and a thrashing in the local press. One secondary school principal who wants to do well for gypsies says he restricts his efforts to include them because he can't afford his school to become a magnet for high needs and low performing students.
Liz believes the situation is improving. Younger parents are beginning to value education as the way forward for their children. A few gypsy students are completing secondary education and a handful progress to university. Most however remain like Kenny, with wet shoes, a crooked smile and a slow-worm.
From yawn to outrage in London's theatre world
11th June 2011
Sadler's Wells, 'London's dance house', is the scene of this summer's most controversial show as twenty men, stark bollocking naked apart from flowing blond wigs, cavort across the laps and in the faces of a startled audience. It is a scene from a dance cutely titled A Little Tenderness, For Crying Out Loud! except the title is in French and the company is Canadian.
One reviewer described a tug of war as a naked dancer tried to wrest notebook and pen from his grasp. When that failed the dancer calmly removed the reviewer's glasses, gobbed a hefty mouthful of phlegm onto them and handed them back with a sneer. This reviewer considered he'd escaped lightly; less fortunate patrons were exposed to sustained assaults of close-range willie-wobbling and backside-baring.
The show caused an outrage on Twitter and business is booming. But it raises two questions. One: is this art? Two: don't theatres have rules about climbing on the furniture?
Defining art in London is as complex as the city's Underground system. Nowhere is it more obvious that art in the modern world serves two masters – aesthetic and financial. The city's artistic community strains for large 'C' creativity. Every actor, painter and dancer sheltering within these walls, every hobbledehoy with an ounce of wit, has only one desire – to become the Next Big Thing, to create the Next Big Movement, to establish the Next Big Brand.
But in London art is always – always – tempered in the crucible of hard cash. Art is an industry: the theatres, galleries and concert halls are the draw cards for millions of tourists and millions of pounds of investment so, at the end of the day, art must make a profit.
The force that mediates creativity and profit is risk. A few days ago the new director of the Institute of Contemporary Art was interviewed on BBC Radio 4. The ICA, at one time the most avant garde space in the galaxy and launching pad for Damien Hirst, Yoko Ono and the Pop Art movement, is on the ropes. The director was asked how he intended to revive the ICA's fortunes in a crowded market place. “We are going to take more risks,” he replied.
What he didn't specify was who will take the risks. Is it the artists, the investors or the audience, like the unsuspecting punters who went to see a nice evening of dance at Sadler's Wells?
In London's art world taking risks appears to be more about crossing boundaries of taste than about exploring new creative directions. Shock, sensation and outrage are invited, not as preliminaries to serious artistic debate (although that does happen, usually in the form of commentators lobbing opinions from fixed positions) but to attract the headlines and cyber-buzz that will secure the balance sheet.
For all that, the bulk of London's artistic output is determined by money-men and, like investors everywhere, they tend to stick with the familiar. West End theatres offer a conservative diet of musicals, drama and comedy. Old favourites are dusted off and given a fresh coat of paint; new shows follow the same undemanding formula. The big drawcard in the West End this summer is a centenary revival of the plays of Terence Rattigan – whose work had long ago fallen by the wayside, where it should have remained.
The major concert halls, opera houses and galleries follow the same pattern. Here are Mozart, Verdi and the Impressionists to delight the conservative and the novice, whose trip to London would be incomplete without taking in a 'show.'
Happily, between yawn and outrage there is a fertile strip of creative soil in London's art world, and after watching a ho hum production of The Cherry Orchard at The National Theatre recently Sylvia and I set out to find it.
On successive evenings we stumbled upon an Irish smorgasbord of family conmanship and, in a little walk-up theatre in Soho, a peculiar exploration of youthful awakening by four actor/musician ingenues. Neither show was flawless; both over-reached and under-performed, but we were inspired to debate their merits and messages all the way back to our hotel.
It is likely the creators of these shows see them as merely a springboard to bigger things. But if they are hoping to make the shift from Soho to Shaftesbury Avenue they should be prepared to become either more sensational or to be rubbed smooth to fit a low-risk commercial mould.
11th June 2011
Sadler's Wells, 'London's dance house', is the scene of this summer's most controversial show as twenty men, stark bollocking naked apart from flowing blond wigs, cavort across the laps and in the faces of a startled audience. It is a scene from a dance cutely titled A Little Tenderness, For Crying Out Loud! except the title is in French and the company is Canadian.
One reviewer described a tug of war as a naked dancer tried to wrest notebook and pen from his grasp. When that failed the dancer calmly removed the reviewer's glasses, gobbed a hefty mouthful of phlegm onto them and handed them back with a sneer. This reviewer considered he'd escaped lightly; less fortunate patrons were exposed to sustained assaults of close-range willie-wobbling and backside-baring.
The show caused an outrage on Twitter and business is booming. But it raises two questions. One: is this art? Two: don't theatres have rules about climbing on the furniture?
Defining art in London is as complex as the city's Underground system. Nowhere is it more obvious that art in the modern world serves two masters – aesthetic and financial. The city's artistic community strains for large 'C' creativity. Every actor, painter and dancer sheltering within these walls, every hobbledehoy with an ounce of wit, has only one desire – to become the Next Big Thing, to create the Next Big Movement, to establish the Next Big Brand.
But in London art is always – always – tempered in the crucible of hard cash. Art is an industry: the theatres, galleries and concert halls are the draw cards for millions of tourists and millions of pounds of investment so, at the end of the day, art must make a profit.
The force that mediates creativity and profit is risk. A few days ago the new director of the Institute of Contemporary Art was interviewed on BBC Radio 4. The ICA, at one time the most avant garde space in the galaxy and launching pad for Damien Hirst, Yoko Ono and the Pop Art movement, is on the ropes. The director was asked how he intended to revive the ICA's fortunes in a crowded market place. “We are going to take more risks,” he replied.
What he didn't specify was who will take the risks. Is it the artists, the investors or the audience, like the unsuspecting punters who went to see a nice evening of dance at Sadler's Wells?
In London's art world taking risks appears to be more about crossing boundaries of taste than about exploring new creative directions. Shock, sensation and outrage are invited, not as preliminaries to serious artistic debate (although that does happen, usually in the form of commentators lobbing opinions from fixed positions) but to attract the headlines and cyber-buzz that will secure the balance sheet.
For all that, the bulk of London's artistic output is determined by money-men and, like investors everywhere, they tend to stick with the familiar. West End theatres offer a conservative diet of musicals, drama and comedy. Old favourites are dusted off and given a fresh coat of paint; new shows follow the same undemanding formula. The big drawcard in the West End this summer is a centenary revival of the plays of Terence Rattigan – whose work had long ago fallen by the wayside, where it should have remained.
The major concert halls, opera houses and galleries follow the same pattern. Here are Mozart, Verdi and the Impressionists to delight the conservative and the novice, whose trip to London would be incomplete without taking in a 'show.'
Happily, between yawn and outrage there is a fertile strip of creative soil in London's art world, and after watching a ho hum production of The Cherry Orchard at The National Theatre recently Sylvia and I set out to find it.
On successive evenings we stumbled upon an Irish smorgasbord of family conmanship and, in a little walk-up theatre in Soho, a peculiar exploration of youthful awakening by four actor/musician ingenues. Neither show was flawless; both over-reached and under-performed, but we were inspired to debate their merits and messages all the way back to our hotel.
It is likely the creators of these shows see them as merely a springboard to bigger things. But if they are hoping to make the shift from Soho to Shaftesbury Avenue they should be prepared to become either more sensational or to be rubbed smooth to fit a low-risk commercial mould.
Foals Day and Night
11th June 2011
The signs appeared on the lanes shortly after we moved to the New Forest - Foals Day and Night. It was one of several mysteries, like the words 'New' and 'Forest'.
The New Forest, in England's leafy Hampshire, is a thousand years old. Its newness derives from William the Conqueror's whim to grant the forest to himself as a royal sports arcade. The forest is, of course, as old as time itself.
Then again, it isn't a forest as we conceive it. It is neither bush nor plantation, not a landscape of trees to the horizon. It is a 'forest' in a more traditional sense, possessing certainly a high density of trees but also fields, fallows, heaths, swamps, ponds and grassy plains. It has also acquired, since good king Willie's time, villages, roads, railways, manors, farms, pylons, factories and a pub on every corner.
Furthermore the New Forest is a National Park and, as a kiwi, it requires some adjustment to accommodate the idea of a National Park not as a place which largely excludes human activity but one which, by necessity, tries to maintain a balance among all its native populations, human and non-human, fauna and flora.
I must also rethink gorse. Our home sits on Bull Hill, a slight prominence at one end of Beaulieu Heath (“Bewley” to the locals). We are almost completely surrounded by wide open spaces of grass, bracken and tangled gorse. As a son of Mid-Canterbury I constantly repress an urge to strap on a spray pack or pick up a slasher and beat back the malefactor. I remind myself it is I and not the gorse that is the exotic element in this landscape - perhaps even the noxious weed.
Gorse aside, the New Forest is charming. There are in fact large areas of trees, some obviously working plantations, others skilfully contrived to seem as wild today as when William and his robber barons cavorted here. It is a place of winding lanes, thatched cottages, sudden silent churchyards in dappled May sunshine, arched stone bridges over slow-flowing streams and a gentle tumble down to the Solent, the narrow water that divides Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
The management of the Forest is a gentle tug of war between local and national authorities that has wound across two or three centuries after usurping the royal monopoly. A Verderer's Court of local worthies maintains vigilant watch over traditional commoners' rights, defending the land against the threat of enclosure, or its modern counterpart, privatisation. They have their work cut out – as recently as last year the government proposed scrapping all National Parks and selling off the public bits.
Traditional rights are many and sometimes obscure. We hold a right of pannage, which means we can release our pigs to forage in the forest for up to 40 days in November and December, to hoover up the acorns. Sylvia's sister, who lives up the road, has the right to take firewood and cut peat (the 'right' to split and stack her firewood has fallen to me this year). Rights are assigned to the property and pass with it from one owner to the next.
The most visible right of all is the right to graze livestock. The New Forest is famous for its ponies; small, gentle creatures that graze the open spaces, confined only by occasional cattle stops and fences. These creatures are not wild, each is traceable to its owner by a brand, a fluorescent collar or the cut of its tail. We are woken each morning to John Wayne sounds of whinnies and hoofbeats and they gather at the front gate at dusk to nibble the hedge or sniff a handout.
Ponies and cars compete for the roads and driving is a test of patience. This is particularly true just now when the mares are giving birth. The foals, all legs and nerves, shadow their mothers as they amble from one grazing spot to the next. There have been collisions and caution is advised: foals day and night.
11th June 2011
The signs appeared on the lanes shortly after we moved to the New Forest - Foals Day and Night. It was one of several mysteries, like the words 'New' and 'Forest'.
The New Forest, in England's leafy Hampshire, is a thousand years old. Its newness derives from William the Conqueror's whim to grant the forest to himself as a royal sports arcade. The forest is, of course, as old as time itself.
Then again, it isn't a forest as we conceive it. It is neither bush nor plantation, not a landscape of trees to the horizon. It is a 'forest' in a more traditional sense, possessing certainly a high density of trees but also fields, fallows, heaths, swamps, ponds and grassy plains. It has also acquired, since good king Willie's time, villages, roads, railways, manors, farms, pylons, factories and a pub on every corner.
Furthermore the New Forest is a National Park and, as a kiwi, it requires some adjustment to accommodate the idea of a National Park not as a place which largely excludes human activity but one which, by necessity, tries to maintain a balance among all its native populations, human and non-human, fauna and flora.
I must also rethink gorse. Our home sits on Bull Hill, a slight prominence at one end of Beaulieu Heath (“Bewley” to the locals). We are almost completely surrounded by wide open spaces of grass, bracken and tangled gorse. As a son of Mid-Canterbury I constantly repress an urge to strap on a spray pack or pick up a slasher and beat back the malefactor. I remind myself it is I and not the gorse that is the exotic element in this landscape - perhaps even the noxious weed.
Gorse aside, the New Forest is charming. There are in fact large areas of trees, some obviously working plantations, others skilfully contrived to seem as wild today as when William and his robber barons cavorted here. It is a place of winding lanes, thatched cottages, sudden silent churchyards in dappled May sunshine, arched stone bridges over slow-flowing streams and a gentle tumble down to the Solent, the narrow water that divides Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.
The management of the Forest is a gentle tug of war between local and national authorities that has wound across two or three centuries after usurping the royal monopoly. A Verderer's Court of local worthies maintains vigilant watch over traditional commoners' rights, defending the land against the threat of enclosure, or its modern counterpart, privatisation. They have their work cut out – as recently as last year the government proposed scrapping all National Parks and selling off the public bits.
Traditional rights are many and sometimes obscure. We hold a right of pannage, which means we can release our pigs to forage in the forest for up to 40 days in November and December, to hoover up the acorns. Sylvia's sister, who lives up the road, has the right to take firewood and cut peat (the 'right' to split and stack her firewood has fallen to me this year). Rights are assigned to the property and pass with it from one owner to the next.
The most visible right of all is the right to graze livestock. The New Forest is famous for its ponies; small, gentle creatures that graze the open spaces, confined only by occasional cattle stops and fences. These creatures are not wild, each is traceable to its owner by a brand, a fluorescent collar or the cut of its tail. We are woken each morning to John Wayne sounds of whinnies and hoofbeats and they gather at the front gate at dusk to nibble the hedge or sniff a handout.
Ponies and cars compete for the roads and driving is a test of patience. This is particularly true just now when the mares are giving birth. The foals, all legs and nerves, shadow their mothers as they amble from one grazing spot to the next. There have been collisions and caution is advised: foals day and night.
Sunday, May 01, 2011
Qatar lives the dream
30th April 2011
Fa'ad eases the Landcruiser to the base of the sand dune, settles his ample frame deeper into the seat, then plants his foot. We bucket up the dune's brow, tyres scrabbling for purchase in the soft sand, the vehicle pitching like a fairground ride. Sylvia is rigid beside me, arms gripping her seat in terror. For the first time all day Fa'ad grips the steering wheel with more than two fingers as he wrestles to keep control. It seems a petrol head in Qatar is much like a petrol head in Mid-Canterbury, even though he is dressed in what looks like a full length nightie and a veil.
At the top of the dune we fishtail to a halt, Fa'ad stabbing a chubby finger to the horizon. His commentary is brief but eloquent: “there Saudi Arabia, you make photo.”
We wobble from the vehicle into a blast furnace and make photo. 'There' is a landscape of sand stretching towards a shimmering horizon. Beneath us a tidal inlet cherishes a film of briny water and off to our right huddles an oasis of cellphone towers.
On this sand dune, just an hour from downtown Doha, Qatar reverts to form; a small scab of sand jutting uncertainly into the Persian Gulf, home to a few thousand Bedouin, their tents and camels, a cluster of date palms. With a long but meagre history, few could have predicted Qatar's transformation two or three generations ago. But it turned out that these dreadful sand dunes are the skin of a rice pudding. Beneath the surface is an almost limitless wealth of oil and gas.
We clamber back aboard the Landcruiser and Fa'ad rolls us down to a small beach camp. The Gulf submits to the midday heat, its salt-laden water oily and exhausted where it laps the beach. Doha's towers shimmer on a hazy horizon.
Qatar, like neighbouring Dubai, appears to be recreating itself as a theme park. Doha, the capital – and only – city is a frenzy of pulling down and building up. Freshly minted motorways snake among canyons of skyscrapers where a decade ago was only bare ground. Any one of these buildings would cause a sensation in New Zealand. Here they are hurled skyward by the dozen; wild, whacky, outrageous buildings, without rules or restrictions; 30, 40, 50 storeys tall.
I'm told many of these towers – office blocks, hotels, apartments – remain empty or only sparsely occupied for months or years after completion. They are more icon than real estate, their job is to inspire confidence in the vision of Qatar's rulers.
The vision is serious and it works. This is not the hawking, spitting, haggling, thronging, ferocious and fetid Middle East of my previous experience. It is self-consciously elegant, well-mannered and ambitious. All the world comes here: statesmen and sports stars, financiers and fashionistas. Billboards trumpeting Qatar's ambition to be the sports capital of the world, the cultural capital of the world or the airline hub of the world, are more than hollow rhetoric. Anybody who had previously failed to notice sat up and paid attention when FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to host the soccer World Cup.
The achievement is all the more remarkable considering Qatar has been a country for only 40 years and has a population of just 1.6 million. The human story intrigues when you consider that less than a quarter of the population is Qatari. The rest are expatriates who floated in on the gold rush, mostly from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.
These are the men who construct buildings, sweep roads, open doors, and the women who feed babies and wash laundry. They form a shifting, subdued underclass, firmly held in place by a visa system that allows them only a toehold. Fa'ad, has no hope of becoming a Qatar citizen despite being born here because his family comes from Palestine.
Just as Asia supplies the muscle, other nationalities, mainly European, furnish the brains. These include kiwis, like our friends who work in education, engineering and trade. They acknowledge the contradictions. As one said to me the other night, “here I earn twice as much, enjoy twice the comfort and have half the control.”
It is a compromise they seem to bear. For the price of being an outsider they enjoy tax free salaries, five star accommodation with maids, golf courses that rival St Andrews and Michelin-rated restaurants. Oh, and joy riding with Fa'ad.
Qatar has so far remained untouched by the political unrest among its near neighbours. There is no more freedom here than in Egypt or Tunisia but its rulers, shrewd judges of human nature, have spread the wealth enough to dampen any latent desire for democracy.
How long this will remain so is unclear, but Qatar's future will be determined not by fabulous wealth or outrageous buildings, but by its human story – just like anywhere else.
30th April 2011
Fa'ad eases the Landcruiser to the base of the sand dune, settles his ample frame deeper into the seat, then plants his foot. We bucket up the dune's brow, tyres scrabbling for purchase in the soft sand, the vehicle pitching like a fairground ride. Sylvia is rigid beside me, arms gripping her seat in terror. For the first time all day Fa'ad grips the steering wheel with more than two fingers as he wrestles to keep control. It seems a petrol head in Qatar is much like a petrol head in Mid-Canterbury, even though he is dressed in what looks like a full length nightie and a veil.
At the top of the dune we fishtail to a halt, Fa'ad stabbing a chubby finger to the horizon. His commentary is brief but eloquent: “there Saudi Arabia, you make photo.”
We wobble from the vehicle into a blast furnace and make photo. 'There' is a landscape of sand stretching towards a shimmering horizon. Beneath us a tidal inlet cherishes a film of briny water and off to our right huddles an oasis of cellphone towers.
On this sand dune, just an hour from downtown Doha, Qatar reverts to form; a small scab of sand jutting uncertainly into the Persian Gulf, home to a few thousand Bedouin, their tents and camels, a cluster of date palms. With a long but meagre history, few could have predicted Qatar's transformation two or three generations ago. But it turned out that these dreadful sand dunes are the skin of a rice pudding. Beneath the surface is an almost limitless wealth of oil and gas.
We clamber back aboard the Landcruiser and Fa'ad rolls us down to a small beach camp. The Gulf submits to the midday heat, its salt-laden water oily and exhausted where it laps the beach. Doha's towers shimmer on a hazy horizon.
Qatar, like neighbouring Dubai, appears to be recreating itself as a theme park. Doha, the capital – and only – city is a frenzy of pulling down and building up. Freshly minted motorways snake among canyons of skyscrapers where a decade ago was only bare ground. Any one of these buildings would cause a sensation in New Zealand. Here they are hurled skyward by the dozen; wild, whacky, outrageous buildings, without rules or restrictions; 30, 40, 50 storeys tall.
I'm told many of these towers – office blocks, hotels, apartments – remain empty or only sparsely occupied for months or years after completion. They are more icon than real estate, their job is to inspire confidence in the vision of Qatar's rulers.
The vision is serious and it works. This is not the hawking, spitting, haggling, thronging, ferocious and fetid Middle East of my previous experience. It is self-consciously elegant, well-mannered and ambitious. All the world comes here: statesmen and sports stars, financiers and fashionistas. Billboards trumpeting Qatar's ambition to be the sports capital of the world, the cultural capital of the world or the airline hub of the world, are more than hollow rhetoric. Anybody who had previously failed to notice sat up and paid attention when FIFA awarded Qatar the rights to host the soccer World Cup.
The achievement is all the more remarkable considering Qatar has been a country for only 40 years and has a population of just 1.6 million. The human story intrigues when you consider that less than a quarter of the population is Qatari. The rest are expatriates who floated in on the gold rush, mostly from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka.
These are the men who construct buildings, sweep roads, open doors, and the women who feed babies and wash laundry. They form a shifting, subdued underclass, firmly held in place by a visa system that allows them only a toehold. Fa'ad, has no hope of becoming a Qatar citizen despite being born here because his family comes from Palestine.
Just as Asia supplies the muscle, other nationalities, mainly European, furnish the brains. These include kiwis, like our friends who work in education, engineering and trade. They acknowledge the contradictions. As one said to me the other night, “here I earn twice as much, enjoy twice the comfort and have half the control.”
It is a compromise they seem to bear. For the price of being an outsider they enjoy tax free salaries, five star accommodation with maids, golf courses that rival St Andrews and Michelin-rated restaurants. Oh, and joy riding with Fa'ad.
Qatar has so far remained untouched by the political unrest among its near neighbours. There is no more freedom here than in Egypt or Tunisia but its rulers, shrewd judges of human nature, have spread the wealth enough to dampen any latent desire for democracy.
How long this will remain so is unclear, but Qatar's future will be determined not by fabulous wealth or outrageous buildings, but by its human story – just like anywhere else.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
The Other Rugby World Cup
19th March 2011
Disappointment and anger at losing the Rugby World Cup is coalescing into resolve among stricken sports fans in Christchurch.
Bob's Parka, spokesman for the city's mayor, voiced the concerns of many in Christchurch. “We've had the silt kicked out of us left, right and centre over the past few weeks and this is the needle that breaks the camel's last straw.”
Parka revealed a breath-taking plan to recapture the World Cup – and go one better. “Most of Christchurch went sideways in the earthquake and our thinking has to go that way too. We need to turn disaster into opportunity and use that to relaunch our city.”
The plan being hastily put together by sports administrators, community leaders, EQC and insurance companies is a carefully guarded secret but sources close to Parka have hinted at a major international rugby tournament to be staged in and around Christchurch at the same time as the Rugby World Cup later this year.
AMI stadium under-groundsman, Jock's Trap, compares the new tournament to Kerry Packer's cricket circus that challenged the status quo 30 years ago and ushered that game into the professional age. “The word going around is that we'll see a rival tournament of teams put together with some of the biggest names in international rugby playing a modified game that is fast, free flowing and totally crowd-pleasing.”
Looking across AMI's badly scarred grounds, Trap says the modifications to the game will probably be dictated by the state of the playing surface. “At the moment you'd struggle to hold a crazy golf tournament here so clearly we have to think away from the normal game of rugby. For example, you probably don't need an oval ball to give you unpredictable bounce. And with all those sand traps out on the pitch you'd do well to introduce golf clubs into the game.”
Starting a new tournament from scratch just months out from the official World Cup doesn't phase its backers. “The organisation's all there,” says Parka. “We just have to transfer it to the new plan.”
Parka was tight-lipped when asked how they will persuade top players to break their contracts with the IRB, but local rugby commentator Adam's Apple believes there are some very deep pockets backing the new tournament. “It's like that old movie about Watergate,” says Apple. “You have to follow the money, and when you see who's going into the meetings you start to put two and two together.”
Apple's concerns clearly point to the involvement of the EQC and insurance industry. Trap again: “why do insurance companies want to get involved in a rugby match? They're cooking something up.”
A leaked memo gives weight to their concerns. Sources close to Parka are worried that he and others in the council are being persuaded by the insurance companies to transfer their liability for the city's earthquake damage to the new tournament. They say that instead of paying out many thousands of small claims over many months or years, insurance companies and EQC will make a single payment of the total amount of damage to the city to fund the tournament.
Amy's Cott, an analyst for Robobank, says the idea is a gamble but it just might work. “It's the kind of blue-skies thinking we need to lift this country out of the economic mire. The tournament and its spinoffs could do for Christchurch what 20/20 cricket has done for India. If it works we could be the sole proprietors of the latest global sporting craze. The profits will be enormous, more than enough to rebuild the city.”
And if it fails?
“If it fails,” opines Parka, “then we're all up silt creek without a shovel, which is about where we are now, so what have we got to lose?”
19th March 2011
Disappointment and anger at losing the Rugby World Cup is coalescing into resolve among stricken sports fans in Christchurch.
Bob's Parka, spokesman for the city's mayor, voiced the concerns of many in Christchurch. “We've had the silt kicked out of us left, right and centre over the past few weeks and this is the needle that breaks the camel's last straw.”
Parka revealed a breath-taking plan to recapture the World Cup – and go one better. “Most of Christchurch went sideways in the earthquake and our thinking has to go that way too. We need to turn disaster into opportunity and use that to relaunch our city.”
The plan being hastily put together by sports administrators, community leaders, EQC and insurance companies is a carefully guarded secret but sources close to Parka have hinted at a major international rugby tournament to be staged in and around Christchurch at the same time as the Rugby World Cup later this year.
AMI stadium under-groundsman, Jock's Trap, compares the new tournament to Kerry Packer's cricket circus that challenged the status quo 30 years ago and ushered that game into the professional age. “The word going around is that we'll see a rival tournament of teams put together with some of the biggest names in international rugby playing a modified game that is fast, free flowing and totally crowd-pleasing.”
Looking across AMI's badly scarred grounds, Trap says the modifications to the game will probably be dictated by the state of the playing surface. “At the moment you'd struggle to hold a crazy golf tournament here so clearly we have to think away from the normal game of rugby. For example, you probably don't need an oval ball to give you unpredictable bounce. And with all those sand traps out on the pitch you'd do well to introduce golf clubs into the game.”
Starting a new tournament from scratch just months out from the official World Cup doesn't phase its backers. “The organisation's all there,” says Parka. “We just have to transfer it to the new plan.”
Parka was tight-lipped when asked how they will persuade top players to break their contracts with the IRB, but local rugby commentator Adam's Apple believes there are some very deep pockets backing the new tournament. “It's like that old movie about Watergate,” says Apple. “You have to follow the money, and when you see who's going into the meetings you start to put two and two together.”
Apple's concerns clearly point to the involvement of the EQC and insurance industry. Trap again: “why do insurance companies want to get involved in a rugby match? They're cooking something up.”
A leaked memo gives weight to their concerns. Sources close to Parka are worried that he and others in the council are being persuaded by the insurance companies to transfer their liability for the city's earthquake damage to the new tournament. They say that instead of paying out many thousands of small claims over many months or years, insurance companies and EQC will make a single payment of the total amount of damage to the city to fund the tournament.
Amy's Cott, an analyst for Robobank, says the idea is a gamble but it just might work. “It's the kind of blue-skies thinking we need to lift this country out of the economic mire. The tournament and its spinoffs could do for Christchurch what 20/20 cricket has done for India. If it works we could be the sole proprietors of the latest global sporting craze. The profits will be enormous, more than enough to rebuild the city.”
And if it fails?
“If it fails,” opines Parka, “then we're all up silt creek without a shovel, which is about where we are now, so what have we got to lose?”
Monday, March 07, 2011
Silt and Sausages
My mother, Drina, has departed her broken home in Dallington and joined the swelling throng of earthquake escapees in Ashburton. Among her observations of living through six months of tremors, one recurring thought is her helplessness in the grip of such random and unassailable forces.
Drina has a long memory. The last time her world fell apart was in 1940 when Hitler’s armies threw themselves across the South Willemsvaart canal and plundered her sleepy village in rural Holland. The Nazis remained for four years, but the earthquakes are far more terrifying.
At least with the Nazis, Drina says, you could see your enemy, hear him coming, grasp the length and breadth of him. A set of rules was imposed and you learned to live within them, subvert them, find the points of weakness that allowed you to reclaim some small measure of control.
There are no rules with earthquakes – and no control. Nothing prepares you for the herculean fist that smashes your foundations and has you cowering beneath a computer desk while your possessions rage through the house and the building bucks like a barrel ride. Nothing eases the small knife of terror that runs through every moment of waiting, anticipating the next after-shock, never trusting that which should be most trustworthy – the ground beneath your feet.
Helplessness, we discover, is not confined to those at the centre of the disaster. For us at the margins, whose homes are intact and lives largely untouched, there is also a feeling of helplessness, of watching a beautiful city and her people, our families and friends, torn and broken.
The desire to reassert some degree of control in these terrifying events is behind the great outpouring of assistance we are witnessing. We pare helplessness down to a single passionate syllable – help. “How can I help?” is our cry, and we come up with twenty clever ideas.
Generosity is not a uniquely kiwi trait but we have our own way of going about it. In an age of international aid teams and disaster specialists some communities might be inclined to keep away and let the professionals manage the response. Not us. Beneath the official rescue effort a thousand acts of kindness are blossoming. We bake, give and shovel. We ‘toot for tucker’ and dig into our wallets. We load the barbie on the back of the truck and cook sausages in Linwood Avenue for days on end.
Shovelling silt has become the gold standard of giving. It requires no specialist training, no permission to cross a cordon, no heavy equipment. It reaches deeply into the battered communities that have not yet seen a hard hat or USAR vest. It can be highly organised – the student volunteers, the Farmy Army – or touchingly informal, like the parent at my school who took his seven year old son to New Brighton on Sunday where the pair of them shovelled silt off the driveways of strangers.
We give because we hate watching people suffer, but also to ease our own suffering. This is our disaster too. Whatever ‘new normal’ arises in Christchurch we know our lives will also never be quite the same again and that knowledge makes us both angry and frightened.
Drina is right, the earthquake has taken not just our homes and streets, but also our most fundamental human trait - our will. The long, painful, difficult process of restoring Christchurch will not be just about renewing buildings and infrastructure but about reasserting our will over our environment, and over our deepest fears.
My mother, Drina, has departed her broken home in Dallington and joined the swelling throng of earthquake escapees in Ashburton. Among her observations of living through six months of tremors, one recurring thought is her helplessness in the grip of such random and unassailable forces.
Drina has a long memory. The last time her world fell apart was in 1940 when Hitler’s armies threw themselves across the South Willemsvaart canal and plundered her sleepy village in rural Holland. The Nazis remained for four years, but the earthquakes are far more terrifying.
At least with the Nazis, Drina says, you could see your enemy, hear him coming, grasp the length and breadth of him. A set of rules was imposed and you learned to live within them, subvert them, find the points of weakness that allowed you to reclaim some small measure of control.
There are no rules with earthquakes – and no control. Nothing prepares you for the herculean fist that smashes your foundations and has you cowering beneath a computer desk while your possessions rage through the house and the building bucks like a barrel ride. Nothing eases the small knife of terror that runs through every moment of waiting, anticipating the next after-shock, never trusting that which should be most trustworthy – the ground beneath your feet.
Helplessness, we discover, is not confined to those at the centre of the disaster. For us at the margins, whose homes are intact and lives largely untouched, there is also a feeling of helplessness, of watching a beautiful city and her people, our families and friends, torn and broken.
The desire to reassert some degree of control in these terrifying events is behind the great outpouring of assistance we are witnessing. We pare helplessness down to a single passionate syllable – help. “How can I help?” is our cry, and we come up with twenty clever ideas.
Generosity is not a uniquely kiwi trait but we have our own way of going about it. In an age of international aid teams and disaster specialists some communities might be inclined to keep away and let the professionals manage the response. Not us. Beneath the official rescue effort a thousand acts of kindness are blossoming. We bake, give and shovel. We ‘toot for tucker’ and dig into our wallets. We load the barbie on the back of the truck and cook sausages in Linwood Avenue for days on end.
Shovelling silt has become the gold standard of giving. It requires no specialist training, no permission to cross a cordon, no heavy equipment. It reaches deeply into the battered communities that have not yet seen a hard hat or USAR vest. It can be highly organised – the student volunteers, the Farmy Army – or touchingly informal, like the parent at my school who took his seven year old son to New Brighton on Sunday where the pair of them shovelled silt off the driveways of strangers.
We give because we hate watching people suffer, but also to ease our own suffering. This is our disaster too. Whatever ‘new normal’ arises in Christchurch we know our lives will also never be quite the same again and that knowledge makes us both angry and frightened.
Drina is right, the earthquake has taken not just our homes and streets, but also our most fundamental human trait - our will. The long, painful, difficult process of restoring Christchurch will not be just about renewing buildings and infrastructure but about reasserting our will over our environment, and over our deepest fears.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Are we the Lucky Country?
19 February 2011
The solo mother from Ashburton who makes her living driving a dump truck in a West Australia coal mine could have talked as eloquently as Julia Gillard this week about the special relationship between Australia and New Zealand.
It’s thanks to this that she, the truck driver, earns $130,000 a year. Leaving New Zealand three years ago with nothing after the break up of her marriage she now owns one investment property in Ashburton and is planning to buy a second.
The Australian Prime Minister’s visit to New Zealand this week was wrapped in the usual ANZAC spirit of mateship but it couldn’t help but kick a bit of Aussie dust in our eyes. We may have a special relationship but increasingly it is not an equal one.
In economic terms New Zealand has become a branch office of AustraliaCorp. In human terms we are an incubator. In the past 3 years 75,000 kiwis have crossed the ditch to join the 400,000 or so already living in the Lucky Country. We breed ‘em, grow ‘em, educate ‘em and lose ‘em to the Aussie dream. To Julia Gillard that must look like a pretty special relationship.
An Aussie jobs fair in Auckland last weekend saw thousands of people queuing up to make the shift. Their reason for wanting to go was, with a few variations, due to one thing - money. The National government’s promise to close the wage gap has blown up in its face, with Australian wages now 25-30% higher than New Zealand.
The wage gap is driven by a huge difference in productivity between Australia and New Zealand. Productivity is not measured in how hard we work. By international standards kiwis work harder than most, and probably harder than Australians.
Productivity is a measure of how much wealth is created by our labour. In 2010 each person in New Zealand generated $27,000 of wealth (as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita). Each Australian generated $40,000. In simple terms, the wage gap follows the wealth gap.
New Zealand has been discussing productivity all my adult life. As early as I can remember we’ve been exhorted to add value to the things we produce. There’s more money to be earned by turning wool into carpets and logs into furniture. Electronic goods and sometimes knowledge itself commands an even greater premium.
While this may generally be true, the growing wealth gap spanning the Tasman is not because Australia is brainier than us, or better governed, or simply bigger. Much of it is purely luck. The Ashburton woman driving the dump truck is more productive than a Methven shearer not because she’s adding value to the coal she’s carting, but because the price of coal has gone ballistic on the back of Chinese demand. Lucky Country indeed.
A recent study by the Legatum Institute hammers home the message we see in countless surveys. On its Prosperity Index Australia is the 8th wealthiest country in the world while we languish at 17th.
But the Legatum survey does something interesting. Reflecting the dim awakening in the minds of economists that GDP-based criteria are no longer enough to describe a country’s well-being, they include measures like governance (New Zealand ranks 4th in the world), personal freedom (3rd), social capital (3rd) and education (1st). In all these fields New Zealand outranks Australia. When all measures are taken into account Australia ranks 4th in the world on Legatum’s Prosperity Index and New Zealand 5th.
The solo mum from Ashburton says she will come home in about five years, once she has made her fortune. We notice many who leave our shores do not return, but if it’s the money that draws them away it is the quality of life that draws them back.
19 February 2011
The solo mother from Ashburton who makes her living driving a dump truck in a West Australia coal mine could have talked as eloquently as Julia Gillard this week about the special relationship between Australia and New Zealand.
It’s thanks to this that she, the truck driver, earns $130,000 a year. Leaving New Zealand three years ago with nothing after the break up of her marriage she now owns one investment property in Ashburton and is planning to buy a second.
The Australian Prime Minister’s visit to New Zealand this week was wrapped in the usual ANZAC spirit of mateship but it couldn’t help but kick a bit of Aussie dust in our eyes. We may have a special relationship but increasingly it is not an equal one.
In economic terms New Zealand has become a branch office of AustraliaCorp. In human terms we are an incubator. In the past 3 years 75,000 kiwis have crossed the ditch to join the 400,000 or so already living in the Lucky Country. We breed ‘em, grow ‘em, educate ‘em and lose ‘em to the Aussie dream. To Julia Gillard that must look like a pretty special relationship.
An Aussie jobs fair in Auckland last weekend saw thousands of people queuing up to make the shift. Their reason for wanting to go was, with a few variations, due to one thing - money. The National government’s promise to close the wage gap has blown up in its face, with Australian wages now 25-30% higher than New Zealand.
The wage gap is driven by a huge difference in productivity between Australia and New Zealand. Productivity is not measured in how hard we work. By international standards kiwis work harder than most, and probably harder than Australians.
Productivity is a measure of how much wealth is created by our labour. In 2010 each person in New Zealand generated $27,000 of wealth (as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita). Each Australian generated $40,000. In simple terms, the wage gap follows the wealth gap.
New Zealand has been discussing productivity all my adult life. As early as I can remember we’ve been exhorted to add value to the things we produce. There’s more money to be earned by turning wool into carpets and logs into furniture. Electronic goods and sometimes knowledge itself commands an even greater premium.
While this may generally be true, the growing wealth gap spanning the Tasman is not because Australia is brainier than us, or better governed, or simply bigger. Much of it is purely luck. The Ashburton woman driving the dump truck is more productive than a Methven shearer not because she’s adding value to the coal she’s carting, but because the price of coal has gone ballistic on the back of Chinese demand. Lucky Country indeed.
A recent study by the Legatum Institute hammers home the message we see in countless surveys. On its Prosperity Index Australia is the 8th wealthiest country in the world while we languish at 17th.
But the Legatum survey does something interesting. Reflecting the dim awakening in the minds of economists that GDP-based criteria are no longer enough to describe a country’s well-being, they include measures like governance (New Zealand ranks 4th in the world), personal freedom (3rd), social capital (3rd) and education (1st). In all these fields New Zealand outranks Australia. When all measures are taken into account Australia ranks 4th in the world on Legatum’s Prosperity Index and New Zealand 5th.
The solo mum from Ashburton says she will come home in about five years, once she has made her fortune. We notice many who leave our shores do not return, but if it’s the money that draws them away it is the quality of life that draws them back.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Ban the burger, can the coke
5th February 2011
Placing a ban on undesirable behaviour is without doubt the least effective way of stopping it. Consider the Roman Empire’s ban on Christianity (which backfired spectacularly) or the Chinese government’s ban on freedom of speech.
A ban can sometimes reduce the behaviour; enforced vigorously it may even appear to have wiped it out. But as long as the desire remains to perform the activity, imbibe the substance or conjure the impure thought the behaviour will evade or outlast the most punitive sanctions.
Nowhere is this more true than in the behaviour of teenagers. The most enduring achievement of Western Civilisation over the past 70 years may be the raising of successively more wilful generations of teens whose apparent purpose in life is to harm themselves.
So you have to roll your eyes when a recent study claiming New Zealand secondary schools are hedged with dairies and takeaway bars peddling a wave of junk food to vulnerable students is met with calls to ban such products from all outlets near schools.
While I struggle with the image created by the report of waves of students streaming out of afternoon school straight to the pie warmers and coke cabinets of surrounding food bars, and the equally ludicrous response of a ban, we do have a growing problem of obesity and associated health issues among the young, and I don’t doubt we have teens hooked on sugar and fat just as others are hooked on nicotine and alcohol.
Accepting that a ban on pies and fries will not remove the desire to eat them (and forgetting for a moment, as the authors of the study clearly have, that most teenagers can eat vast quantities of fat and sugar with nothing more serious than a few pimples) let’s imagine a response that strikes to the root of the problem – that to most kids junk food is irresistible.
Very simply, we must convince our youth of a simple proposition: junk food is bad.
Totalitarian regimes throughout history have devoted armies to manipulating social behaviour, but for a really effective strategy we need look no further than the principles of dog training, and the training of one dog in particular – Jess.
Jess (now deceased) was our much loved Labrador/Pointer bitch. When Jess was still a young dog we rented a house on a farm and Jess discovered the joys of unauthorised mustering. We realised if we wanted to come between Jess and a bullet from the farmer she had to learn a crucial lesson – sheep is bad.
So Sylvia took to walking Jess down the long gravel drive every morning, hemmed on both sides with paddocks filled with sheep. She walked Jess at heel on a tight lead and discreetly carried a short stick behind her back. She chose the early morning so she could observe Jess’s behaviour by watching her shadow and not draw Jess’s attention to the behaviour modification strategy.
Every time Sylvia noticed Jess’s shadow turning to look at the sheep she gave her a sharp tap on the backside with the stick. Jess never noticed the stick and after a while she came to associate sheep with a sore bum. The strategy improved if Sylvia accompanied the tap on the backside with a deep growl – the message for Jess being that an interest in sheep was displeasing to the head of the pack (i.e. Sylvia).
After a few months of this Jess’s behaviour was transformed. She walked down the drive looking neither left nor right and with no more interest in harassing sheep than in reading the evening paper. If occasionally she glanced at a sheep from the corner of her eye she quickly corrected herself, with a very guilty expression.
I say let’s apply the same strategy to our kids. From a very young age we should walk them daily up East Street and down West Street with a short stick and a deep growl if they so much as glance towards Makkers or KFC. By the age of 5 all desire for junk food will be eliminated. Even if the school gate is corralled with pie carts and burger barrows they will walk past looking neither left nor right. Civilisation will be saved and we can congratulate ourselves on our cunning. Simple.
5th February 2011
Placing a ban on undesirable behaviour is without doubt the least effective way of stopping it. Consider the Roman Empire’s ban on Christianity (which backfired spectacularly) or the Chinese government’s ban on freedom of speech.
A ban can sometimes reduce the behaviour; enforced vigorously it may even appear to have wiped it out. But as long as the desire remains to perform the activity, imbibe the substance or conjure the impure thought the behaviour will evade or outlast the most punitive sanctions.
Nowhere is this more true than in the behaviour of teenagers. The most enduring achievement of Western Civilisation over the past 70 years may be the raising of successively more wilful generations of teens whose apparent purpose in life is to harm themselves.
So you have to roll your eyes when a recent study claiming New Zealand secondary schools are hedged with dairies and takeaway bars peddling a wave of junk food to vulnerable students is met with calls to ban such products from all outlets near schools.
While I struggle with the image created by the report of waves of students streaming out of afternoon school straight to the pie warmers and coke cabinets of surrounding food bars, and the equally ludicrous response of a ban, we do have a growing problem of obesity and associated health issues among the young, and I don’t doubt we have teens hooked on sugar and fat just as others are hooked on nicotine and alcohol.
Accepting that a ban on pies and fries will not remove the desire to eat them (and forgetting for a moment, as the authors of the study clearly have, that most teenagers can eat vast quantities of fat and sugar with nothing more serious than a few pimples) let’s imagine a response that strikes to the root of the problem – that to most kids junk food is irresistible.
Very simply, we must convince our youth of a simple proposition: junk food is bad.
Totalitarian regimes throughout history have devoted armies to manipulating social behaviour, but for a really effective strategy we need look no further than the principles of dog training, and the training of one dog in particular – Jess.
Jess (now deceased) was our much loved Labrador/Pointer bitch. When Jess was still a young dog we rented a house on a farm and Jess discovered the joys of unauthorised mustering. We realised if we wanted to come between Jess and a bullet from the farmer she had to learn a crucial lesson – sheep is bad.
So Sylvia took to walking Jess down the long gravel drive every morning, hemmed on both sides with paddocks filled with sheep. She walked Jess at heel on a tight lead and discreetly carried a short stick behind her back. She chose the early morning so she could observe Jess’s behaviour by watching her shadow and not draw Jess’s attention to the behaviour modification strategy.
Every time Sylvia noticed Jess’s shadow turning to look at the sheep she gave her a sharp tap on the backside with the stick. Jess never noticed the stick and after a while she came to associate sheep with a sore bum. The strategy improved if Sylvia accompanied the tap on the backside with a deep growl – the message for Jess being that an interest in sheep was displeasing to the head of the pack (i.e. Sylvia).
After a few months of this Jess’s behaviour was transformed. She walked down the drive looking neither left nor right and with no more interest in harassing sheep than in reading the evening paper. If occasionally she glanced at a sheep from the corner of her eye she quickly corrected herself, with a very guilty expression.
I say let’s apply the same strategy to our kids. From a very young age we should walk them daily up East Street and down West Street with a short stick and a deep growl if they so much as glance towards Makkers or KFC. By the age of 5 all desire for junk food will be eliminated. Even if the school gate is corralled with pie carts and burger barrows they will walk past looking neither left nor right. Civilisation will be saved and we can congratulate ourselves on our cunning. Simple.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Toylets flushed with success
22nd January 2011
From the “next big thing” file, here is the background story to Sega’s latest gaming sensation, Toylets. If you missed the headline earlier this week, Toylets is a suite of new digital games played not with console, toggles or fingers, but with – urine! (no, we’re not taking the piss).
Sega has installed the games in gents’ conveniences in a small range of bars and subway stations across Japan (where else?). Games are played by directing the urine stream onto a sensor placed in the bowl or urinal and following the action on a small gaming screen placed at eye level.
Happy splashers can choose from four games. Mannequin Pis measures and records volume and flow rate; Graffiti Eraser (the fire fighter’s friend) tests control and conservation as you spray the screen clean of graffiti; Splashing Battle challenges the user to out-perform the previous pee-er; and North Wind transforms the flow into a wind blowing up a young woman’s skirt – the stronger the flow, the further the skirt rises.
Does this all sound horribly like little boys and toilets? Yes! But there is a cold commercial reality. The intention apparently is not to reduce splash, improve hygiene or even foster a sense of self-worth, but to hold the urinator’s attention to the advertising stripped across the screen. So, while relieving your bladder of the residue of many pints of beer you may be exhorted to go straight back and consume even more, a circular dance of ever-increasing consumption and expiation.
In a cunning commercial tease Sega claims to have no intention of marketing Toylets beyond the current small scale trial, which means they’ll be everywhere in six months. And you can bet they are already working on Toylets2, 3 and 4, with endless ideas for extending and expanding the original tool – I mean, game. How about a dual sensor: pee with a friend for truly interactive satisfaction. Or hands-free: the ultimate test of poise and shoe leather.
Inevitably we will see a gaming version of the old school boy favourites, height and distance. Like a fairground strongman the urinator will be challenged to ring a bell by peeing to the highest mark on the urinal or by hitting the sensor from the greatest distance.
Public toilets will become vast gaming arcades, complete with hostesses pushing drinks trolleys so players can maintain output without leaving their play station. Champions will emerge, local leagues appear, and eventual Olympic status is assured (with the advantage of instant urine samples to combat doping).
But wait! Is Toylets to be confined to males? Is this to be a rare case of anatomy over-riding equity? With vast advertising revenues at stake you can be assured that the smarts at Sega are working on this problem right now. There are certain physiological challenges to overcome for women to play while they pee (so to speak).
Forget the notorious She-Pee, that sloppy piece of hardware designed to allow a woman to urinate in a standing position. The women I know who have tried a She-Pee say it’s a plumber’s nightmare.
My bet is that Sega will go for a maneuverable toilet seat, a sort of hollow ouija board fitted atop the regular seat that allows the sitter to slide around and direct the flow onto sensors in the bowl. Alternatively women may sit astride hollowed out computer chairs and scoot around large splash pans.
However Toylets develop you can be sure that public conveniences will never be the same – and you read it here first.
22nd January 2011
From the “next big thing” file, here is the background story to Sega’s latest gaming sensation, Toylets. If you missed the headline earlier this week, Toylets is a suite of new digital games played not with console, toggles or fingers, but with – urine! (no, we’re not taking the piss).
Sega has installed the games in gents’ conveniences in a small range of bars and subway stations across Japan (where else?). Games are played by directing the urine stream onto a sensor placed in the bowl or urinal and following the action on a small gaming screen placed at eye level.
Happy splashers can choose from four games. Mannequin Pis measures and records volume and flow rate; Graffiti Eraser (the fire fighter’s friend) tests control and conservation as you spray the screen clean of graffiti; Splashing Battle challenges the user to out-perform the previous pee-er; and North Wind transforms the flow into a wind blowing up a young woman’s skirt – the stronger the flow, the further the skirt rises.
Does this all sound horribly like little boys and toilets? Yes! But there is a cold commercial reality. The intention apparently is not to reduce splash, improve hygiene or even foster a sense of self-worth, but to hold the urinator’s attention to the advertising stripped across the screen. So, while relieving your bladder of the residue of many pints of beer you may be exhorted to go straight back and consume even more, a circular dance of ever-increasing consumption and expiation.
In a cunning commercial tease Sega claims to have no intention of marketing Toylets beyond the current small scale trial, which means they’ll be everywhere in six months. And you can bet they are already working on Toylets2, 3 and 4, with endless ideas for extending and expanding the original tool – I mean, game. How about a dual sensor: pee with a friend for truly interactive satisfaction. Or hands-free: the ultimate test of poise and shoe leather.
Inevitably we will see a gaming version of the old school boy favourites, height and distance. Like a fairground strongman the urinator will be challenged to ring a bell by peeing to the highest mark on the urinal or by hitting the sensor from the greatest distance.
Public toilets will become vast gaming arcades, complete with hostesses pushing drinks trolleys so players can maintain output without leaving their play station. Champions will emerge, local leagues appear, and eventual Olympic status is assured (with the advantage of instant urine samples to combat doping).
But wait! Is Toylets to be confined to males? Is this to be a rare case of anatomy over-riding equity? With vast advertising revenues at stake you can be assured that the smarts at Sega are working on this problem right now. There are certain physiological challenges to overcome for women to play while they pee (so to speak).
Forget the notorious She-Pee, that sloppy piece of hardware designed to allow a woman to urinate in a standing position. The women I know who have tried a She-Pee say it’s a plumber’s nightmare.
My bet is that Sega will go for a maneuverable toilet seat, a sort of hollow ouija board fitted atop the regular seat that allows the sitter to slide around and direct the flow onto sensors in the bowl. Alternatively women may sit astride hollowed out computer chairs and scoot around large splash pans.
However Toylets develop you can be sure that public conveniences will never be the same – and you read it here first.
Who will be Ashburtonian of the Year?
6th January 2011
Before we consign 2010 to the dustbin of history let us reflect for a moment on the nominations for Ashburtonian of the Year. At the time of writing there are just two.
The first is the group from the District Council that has fulfilled the dream of a new industrial park to service our growing economy. These visionary men, giants of industry and commerce, have brought forth the Ashburton Business Estate from a scrubby paddock at the north end of town.
I had my first close look at the Business Estate this week in the company of my friend from Gordon’s Road and Portia, a young Doberman bitch. Portia’s excitement was palpable as we strolled down Bremner’s Road. Muscles quivering, she snuffed the warm evening air until my friend unleashed her, whereupon she shot like a bullet from a gun into the gathering dusk. It was then, as I lifted my eyes to follow her track, that I was struck by the full magnificence of the Business Estate.
Like a scene from a Cold War novel the Estate is a picture of near-perfect apocalypsis: pristine roadways, elegant kerbs and channels, streetlamps – even surveillance cameras – all curve away across an expanse of fine rippling grass towards a golden horizon unmarred by single structure. The silence is palpable: somewhere a tumbleweed blows.
Surmounting an elegantly formed embankment planted with many hundreds of small native trees, my friend and I gazed across this $20million ratepayer investment and marvelled at the vision of its creators.
“I was agin it,” my friend confided. “I thought it would be noisy and disruptive but now I see what they were really doing I think it’s brilliant. Overnight they’ve given me an 85ha dog park; I’m even thinking of bringing the horse down here for a bit of exercise.”
But we should not judge the achievement of the Business Estate’s creators simply by the earthworks. The genius is in the marketing. Even now some of Ashburton’s brainiest are fanning out across Canterbury to lure industry away from competitors like Rolleston’s I-Site or the new Dakota Park estate at Christchurch airport.
The Business Estate’s website is breathless with excitement at the inventory of companies that have almost signed up, attracted by global transport links and the nifty begonia beds that provide such a warm welcome.
By comparison the second nomination for Ashburtonian of the Year is, frankly, an embarrassment. It is the colony of black-billed gulls nesting in the Ashburton river bed. Apart from the obvious fact that a group of migratory birds can hardly claim status as true Ashburtonians there is no merit in the irresponsible behaviour of creatures that raise their offspring standing in a gravel bed up to their backsides in dirty water.
It is preposterous to contemplate that a gaggle of seabirds may attain the cover-girl status of Ashburtonian of the Year when they possess neither the vision nor the ratepayer resources of the creators of the Business Estate.
It has been suggested to me that our town is privileged to host the black-billed gulls, that we should embrace these rare birds as an icon for the district. I say how will our town slogan – It Just Keeps Getting Better – appear to the tourist or business investor driving across the Ashburton bridge into a shower of bird shit?
So the Ashburtonian of the Year is a stark choice between the gulls of the river bed and the giants of the Business Estate. The winner will have a statue erected in their honour. What will it be, a great white seagull at the south end of town or a great white elephant at the north?
6th January 2011
Before we consign 2010 to the dustbin of history let us reflect for a moment on the nominations for Ashburtonian of the Year. At the time of writing there are just two.
The first is the group from the District Council that has fulfilled the dream of a new industrial park to service our growing economy. These visionary men, giants of industry and commerce, have brought forth the Ashburton Business Estate from a scrubby paddock at the north end of town.
I had my first close look at the Business Estate this week in the company of my friend from Gordon’s Road and Portia, a young Doberman bitch. Portia’s excitement was palpable as we strolled down Bremner’s Road. Muscles quivering, she snuffed the warm evening air until my friend unleashed her, whereupon she shot like a bullet from a gun into the gathering dusk. It was then, as I lifted my eyes to follow her track, that I was struck by the full magnificence of the Business Estate.
Like a scene from a Cold War novel the Estate is a picture of near-perfect apocalypsis: pristine roadways, elegant kerbs and channels, streetlamps – even surveillance cameras – all curve away across an expanse of fine rippling grass towards a golden horizon unmarred by single structure. The silence is palpable: somewhere a tumbleweed blows.
Surmounting an elegantly formed embankment planted with many hundreds of small native trees, my friend and I gazed across this $20million ratepayer investment and marvelled at the vision of its creators.
“I was agin it,” my friend confided. “I thought it would be noisy and disruptive but now I see what they were really doing I think it’s brilliant. Overnight they’ve given me an 85ha dog park; I’m even thinking of bringing the horse down here for a bit of exercise.”
But we should not judge the achievement of the Business Estate’s creators simply by the earthworks. The genius is in the marketing. Even now some of Ashburton’s brainiest are fanning out across Canterbury to lure industry away from competitors like Rolleston’s I-Site or the new Dakota Park estate at Christchurch airport.
The Business Estate’s website is breathless with excitement at the inventory of companies that have almost signed up, attracted by global transport links and the nifty begonia beds that provide such a warm welcome.
By comparison the second nomination for Ashburtonian of the Year is, frankly, an embarrassment. It is the colony of black-billed gulls nesting in the Ashburton river bed. Apart from the obvious fact that a group of migratory birds can hardly claim status as true Ashburtonians there is no merit in the irresponsible behaviour of creatures that raise their offspring standing in a gravel bed up to their backsides in dirty water.
It is preposterous to contemplate that a gaggle of seabirds may attain the cover-girl status of Ashburtonian of the Year when they possess neither the vision nor the ratepayer resources of the creators of the Business Estate.
It has been suggested to me that our town is privileged to host the black-billed gulls, that we should embrace these rare birds as an icon for the district. I say how will our town slogan – It Just Keeps Getting Better – appear to the tourist or business investor driving across the Ashburton bridge into a shower of bird shit?
So the Ashburtonian of the Year is a stark choice between the gulls of the river bed and the giants of the Business Estate. The winner will have a statue erected in their honour. What will it be, a great white seagull at the south end of town or a great white elephant at the north?
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