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?
Monday, December 13, 2010
WWW comes of age in Wikileaks
11th December 2010
If anybody still doubted the influence of the World Wide Web in our lives, two recent events illustrate how deeply it penetrates the machinery of society and how poorly we respond to its challenge.
A report earlier this week that the government plans to beef up security legislation, giving the SIS and other agencies greater powers to intercept and monitor emails, radiates a Big Brother chill. Mr Key argues the changes are necessary ahead of the Rugby World Cup because that event makes us a more likely target of terrorism. Critics respond that the World Cup is simply an excuse for the State to restrict our freedom.
This story is played out within the shadow of WikiLeaks. The uproar from that organisation’s release of 250,000 leaked US government emails continues to roll around the globe, gathering steam with each passing day. The furore appears to stem less from the content of the emails (which, if we assume the media has focussed on the most provocative, are hardly earth-shattering) than from how it up-ends traditional frameworks of power and privacy.
Wikileaks, like most offspring of the Web, seems a loose gathering of geeky minds. Whether they are subversives intent on bringing down the world order or champions of freedom depends on your point of view. The fact is, this small band of hackers and provocateurs wields more global power at this moment than many nuclear-armed nations. And, unlike nuclear arms or even the now-familiar terrorist threat, the most powerful nations of the world have no effective response.
The arrest in London this week of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, on charges of sexual assault is risible. Here’s an average guy whose desktop organisation has just embarrassed the world’s greatest power and most of its allies and friends, who is living openly in the middle of London with neither bodyguard nor bullet proof vest, and the worst they can do is throw him in the slammer on accusations of rape.
In Wikileaks the World Wide Web has come of age. For 15 years we’ve been told the Web has the power to radically change the world in the same way that, say, the industrial revolution did, except the Web will do it faster. Most of us have gone along thinking the Web is just another tool, like TV or air conditioning, that we can bolt onto our existing structures but essentially continue to operate as we’ve always done.
Governments have clearly thought the same. They have embraced the Web because of its enormous appetite for information while failing to appreciate that it works as a two-way mirror. Just as governments can use the Web to peer deeply into the lives of their citizenry, so can those same citizens peer right back into the heart of government. And what a black heart it is.
Assange has thrown a challenge to the establishment as fundamental as the storming of the bastille or the Declaration of Independence. Like any revolution it is defined by its ingenuity in out-flanking the mighty. The US government will strive to keep Assange in prison for the rest of his life but that will count for nothing – around the world fifty other Assanges are already sucking classified information out of government files.
When the world’s most powerful nations have had their cyber-weapons turned against them our own government may reflect on the risks of its intention to muscle-up surveillance of email traffic. Invading our privacy may backfire.
But the lessons of Wikileaks are not just for governments. Few individuals appreciate the breadth and depth of their footprint in cyberspace, or its potential consequences. And just as governments may realise the only way to keep information secure is to revert to diplomatic bags, so we each must accept that when we embrace the Web we abandon privacy.
The Web revolution will be complete when everybody knows everything, and nobody cares.
11th December 2010
If anybody still doubted the influence of the World Wide Web in our lives, two recent events illustrate how deeply it penetrates the machinery of society and how poorly we respond to its challenge.
A report earlier this week that the government plans to beef up security legislation, giving the SIS and other agencies greater powers to intercept and monitor emails, radiates a Big Brother chill. Mr Key argues the changes are necessary ahead of the Rugby World Cup because that event makes us a more likely target of terrorism. Critics respond that the World Cup is simply an excuse for the State to restrict our freedom.
This story is played out within the shadow of WikiLeaks. The uproar from that organisation’s release of 250,000 leaked US government emails continues to roll around the globe, gathering steam with each passing day. The furore appears to stem less from the content of the emails (which, if we assume the media has focussed on the most provocative, are hardly earth-shattering) than from how it up-ends traditional frameworks of power and privacy.
Wikileaks, like most offspring of the Web, seems a loose gathering of geeky minds. Whether they are subversives intent on bringing down the world order or champions of freedom depends on your point of view. The fact is, this small band of hackers and provocateurs wields more global power at this moment than many nuclear-armed nations. And, unlike nuclear arms or even the now-familiar terrorist threat, the most powerful nations of the world have no effective response.
The arrest in London this week of Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, on charges of sexual assault is risible. Here’s an average guy whose desktop organisation has just embarrassed the world’s greatest power and most of its allies and friends, who is living openly in the middle of London with neither bodyguard nor bullet proof vest, and the worst they can do is throw him in the slammer on accusations of rape.
In Wikileaks the World Wide Web has come of age. For 15 years we’ve been told the Web has the power to radically change the world in the same way that, say, the industrial revolution did, except the Web will do it faster. Most of us have gone along thinking the Web is just another tool, like TV or air conditioning, that we can bolt onto our existing structures but essentially continue to operate as we’ve always done.
Governments have clearly thought the same. They have embraced the Web because of its enormous appetite for information while failing to appreciate that it works as a two-way mirror. Just as governments can use the Web to peer deeply into the lives of their citizenry, so can those same citizens peer right back into the heart of government. And what a black heart it is.
Assange has thrown a challenge to the establishment as fundamental as the storming of the bastille or the Declaration of Independence. Like any revolution it is defined by its ingenuity in out-flanking the mighty. The US government will strive to keep Assange in prison for the rest of his life but that will count for nothing – around the world fifty other Assanges are already sucking classified information out of government files.
When the world’s most powerful nations have had their cyber-weapons turned against them our own government may reflect on the risks of its intention to muscle-up surveillance of email traffic. Invading our privacy may backfire.
But the lessons of Wikileaks are not just for governments. Few individuals appreciate the breadth and depth of their footprint in cyberspace, or its potential consequences. And just as governments may realise the only way to keep information secure is to revert to diplomatic bags, so we each must accept that when we embrace the Web we abandon privacy.
The Web revolution will be complete when everybody knows everything, and nobody cares.
Monday, November 15, 2010
Alcohol reforms miss the point
13th November 2010
Driving through Ashburton on a hot Thursday evening I notice two young women sitting cross-legged on the grass of the Borough school’s playing field, sharing a bottle of Bernadino. They are a picture of summer.
As I drive past the radio reports progress on the government’s alcohol reform bill. If it becomes law it will almost certainly remove the bottle of Bernadino from this happy scene.
The government has grazed across the 150 or so recommendations of the New Zealand Law Society to reform liquor laws in the face of growing unease about our booze culture. In doing so they have chosen to focus the spotlight of reform almost exclusively on the drinking behaviour of 18-20 year olds.
If the government’s bill becomes law this age group will face a zero blood alcohol limit for driving and a split drinking age of 18 for on-license consumption and 20 for off-license purchases. Adults will face fines up to $2,000 if they serve alcohol to young people without their parents’ permission.
Public health advocates criticise the reforms for appealing to populist sentiment while ignoring the real drivers of booze culture. They argue that 18-20 year olds comprise fewer than 10% of binge drinkers and that the reforms fail to address issues of advertising and price-cutting. Opposition speakers in parliament claim National is skirting the tough issues around alcohol law reform for fear of getting offside with middle aged voters and the powerful alcohol industry.
The focus on youth shows the government clearly bending to public pressure from recent high profile deaths of young people after binge drinking. They aim to turn back the clock on youth drinking which many believe has got out of hand since laws were relaxed a decade ago.
It’s hard to see the proposed changes to access and supervision having much effect on young people’s drinking habits. Even 35 years ago when I was just 17 and the drinking age was 21 we could still buy booze. If we couldn’t find it in Invercargill we drove up the road to Winton where they would slip us cartons of Speights from the back of the bottle store. Then we’d retire to somebody’s front room and get happily plastered, sitting on our cartons so nobody could knick our beer.
The question of supervision strikes a tender spot in kiwi culture. As a teenager I don’t remember anybody’s parents pulling me up for having alcohol in the first place, never mind the effect it was having. Perhaps they were quietly looking out for us, knowing that if they got too heavy we’d just go and drink somewhere less safe.
I took a similar approach with my own children and I am sure I would have driven them off if I had expected their friends to show up with parental permission before drinking in my home. This part of the proposed reforms will be unenforceable and probably counter productive.
What restricted my drinking as a teenager was not access or supervision but price - we simply couldn’t afford to buy a lot of booze. Alcohol was not a grocery item as it is today. It was not marketed aggressively through advertising and discounting, and there was certainly no youth market. In this context the government’s unwillingness to address price and advertising severely limits the usefulness of any reforms.
Underlying everything in this debate is our society’s deeper relationship with alcohol. I am no more of a drinker today than my parents were but that hasn’t stopped my children having the occasional bender any more than it stopped me when I was 18. For better or worse, alcohol is a rite of passage for our youth that sadly becomes a way of life for some in adulthood. As long as we allow alcohol to fill this role any law changes will be window dressing.
13th November 2010
Driving through Ashburton on a hot Thursday evening I notice two young women sitting cross-legged on the grass of the Borough school’s playing field, sharing a bottle of Bernadino. They are a picture of summer.
As I drive past the radio reports progress on the government’s alcohol reform bill. If it becomes law it will almost certainly remove the bottle of Bernadino from this happy scene.
The government has grazed across the 150 or so recommendations of the New Zealand Law Society to reform liquor laws in the face of growing unease about our booze culture. In doing so they have chosen to focus the spotlight of reform almost exclusively on the drinking behaviour of 18-20 year olds.
If the government’s bill becomes law this age group will face a zero blood alcohol limit for driving and a split drinking age of 18 for on-license consumption and 20 for off-license purchases. Adults will face fines up to $2,000 if they serve alcohol to young people without their parents’ permission.
Public health advocates criticise the reforms for appealing to populist sentiment while ignoring the real drivers of booze culture. They argue that 18-20 year olds comprise fewer than 10% of binge drinkers and that the reforms fail to address issues of advertising and price-cutting. Opposition speakers in parliament claim National is skirting the tough issues around alcohol law reform for fear of getting offside with middle aged voters and the powerful alcohol industry.
The focus on youth shows the government clearly bending to public pressure from recent high profile deaths of young people after binge drinking. They aim to turn back the clock on youth drinking which many believe has got out of hand since laws were relaxed a decade ago.
It’s hard to see the proposed changes to access and supervision having much effect on young people’s drinking habits. Even 35 years ago when I was just 17 and the drinking age was 21 we could still buy booze. If we couldn’t find it in Invercargill we drove up the road to Winton where they would slip us cartons of Speights from the back of the bottle store. Then we’d retire to somebody’s front room and get happily plastered, sitting on our cartons so nobody could knick our beer.
The question of supervision strikes a tender spot in kiwi culture. As a teenager I don’t remember anybody’s parents pulling me up for having alcohol in the first place, never mind the effect it was having. Perhaps they were quietly looking out for us, knowing that if they got too heavy we’d just go and drink somewhere less safe.
I took a similar approach with my own children and I am sure I would have driven them off if I had expected their friends to show up with parental permission before drinking in my home. This part of the proposed reforms will be unenforceable and probably counter productive.
What restricted my drinking as a teenager was not access or supervision but price - we simply couldn’t afford to buy a lot of booze. Alcohol was not a grocery item as it is today. It was not marketed aggressively through advertising and discounting, and there was certainly no youth market. In this context the government’s unwillingness to address price and advertising severely limits the usefulness of any reforms.
Underlying everything in this debate is our society’s deeper relationship with alcohol. I am no more of a drinker today than my parents were but that hasn’t stopped my children having the occasional bender any more than it stopped me when I was 18. For better or worse, alcohol is a rite of passage for our youth that sadly becomes a way of life for some in adulthood. As long as we allow alcohol to fill this role any law changes will be window dressing.
Monday, November 01, 2010
Warner Brothers presents The Hobble
30th October 2010
Smaug Warner, king of dragons, reclined on a bed of diamonds in a vast cavern deep beneath the Hollywood hills. His enormous body was encrusted with jewels and the scales on his long neck were trimmed with all the currencies of the world. Giant screens around the cavern displayed the many cash cows of Smaug’s global empire and from a hundred ATMs an unceasing flow of cash fell like gentle rain on Smaug’s back.
Faceless, Smaug’s executive, slunk into the cavern, a frown on his brow.
“Your Warneriness, I have troubling news.”
Smaug turned a malevolent eye on his servant, “trouble for who, Faceless?”
“You should see for yourself, oh Smaug.” Faceless waved a remote control at one of the giant screens. An image flashed onto the screen of a city in a distant land, bathed in sunshine. On the streets of the city a crowd was marching and shouting angrily.
“What ‘as this to do with me?” grumbled Smaug.
“It’s Muddle Earth, your Smaugness, where you sent the new cash cow. They don’t like it.”
“Don’t like it!” bellowed Smaug, “I’ll roast their hides. Who’s our man in Muddle Earth?”
“His name’s Jackass. Sir Peter Jackass. You remember, he has served you well in the past.”
“So, why doesn’t ‘e serve me well now?” Smaug stopped suddenly and a small flame flickered around his nostrils. “Faceless,” he whispered, “I think it’s time for you and me to take a little trip.”
The following afternoon at about 3pm the sky over Wellywood, capital of Muddle Earth, darkened as the great shadow of Smaug fell upon it. The enormous dragon circled the city once, twice, and landed heavily on the waterfront, crushing the national museum and upsetting coffee cups in a hundred cafes. Sir Peter Jackass was waiting to greet his master.
“Jackass”, growled Smaug, “I want answers and I want them fast or you’ve seen the last of my cash cow in this miserable place.”
“It’s the hobbles,” wailed Jackass. “They’ve got this onion and are refusing to feed the cash cow.”
“Onion?!” raged Smaug. “My cash cow will not eat onions!”
“No, no, it’s not an ordinary onion. It’s a trayed onion.”
“Enough! Who runs this country?”
“Ah, that would be me,” simpered a voice beneath Smaug’s left shoulder. A smallish man with a nervous smile stood on the waterfront. “Please don’t do anything rash, Mr Smaug, your highness. I’m sure we can sort this out.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jonkey.”
“Donkey?”
“No, your Smaugness, Jonkey.”
“Jonkey, my ass! You’ve got about 15 minutes to sort this problem or we’re out of ‘ere.”
Jonkey looked around nervously. “Will the other Warner Brothers also be coming, your Smaugness?”
Smaug lifted his head and roared with laughter. “The other Warner Brothers! You know what ‘appened to them?”
“No.”
Smaug’s giant face came to rest within inches of Jonkey. “I ‘et ‘em.”
“You ate them?”
“First I ‘ated ‘em. Then I ‘et ‘em. And that’s just what I will do with you if I don’t get some answers quick smart!”
Jonkey shuffled nervously. “We’ll do anything to keep the cash cow, great Smaug. I’ve talked with my advisors and what we’ll do is make an example of some of these troublesome hobbles, smash their onion, you know the sort of thing, and I’m sure the rest will see sense.”
Smaug looked menacingly at Jonkey. “I don’t want them to see sense. I want them to suffer, I want them to be my slaves!”
“Slaves, oh yes, I’m sure we can do that. Slavery should be no problem, oh magnificent Smaug.”
Smaug leaned closer until his smoky breath made Jonkey’s eyes water. “You believe in free trade, don’t you, Mr Donkey.”
“Yes, yes, indeed. We welcome free trade.”
“So do I, especially the free part. So ‘ere’s what else I want. You and your miserable ‘obbles will pay for all the feed my cash cow eats.”
“Certainly, great Smaug, an excellent idea,” nodded Jonkey helplessly.
“And if you take very good care of this cash cow, I may send you another one some time.”
“That would be very desirable,” glowed Jonkey.
“And then again, I might not,” grinned Smaug.
Several weeks later Jonkey stood at the window of his office looking across Wellywood. Lines of hobbles, their backs bent under huge loads, struggled beneath ashen skies towards a far hillside where the great cash cow dominated Muddle Earth. Crowds of sullen and angry hobbles clamoured at the gates.
His advisor watched the gathering crowds uneasily. “Me and the lads have been talking, Jonkey, and we think you should make yourself invisible for a while, just until things calm down. “
Jonkey sighed, “invisible? Yes, perhaps you’re right. Well, that should be easy to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a message from Smaug. He said he’ll give me a ring next week.” Jonkey smiled to himself.
30th October 2010
Smaug Warner, king of dragons, reclined on a bed of diamonds in a vast cavern deep beneath the Hollywood hills. His enormous body was encrusted with jewels and the scales on his long neck were trimmed with all the currencies of the world. Giant screens around the cavern displayed the many cash cows of Smaug’s global empire and from a hundred ATMs an unceasing flow of cash fell like gentle rain on Smaug’s back.
Faceless, Smaug’s executive, slunk into the cavern, a frown on his brow.
“Your Warneriness, I have troubling news.”
Smaug turned a malevolent eye on his servant, “trouble for who, Faceless?”
“You should see for yourself, oh Smaug.” Faceless waved a remote control at one of the giant screens. An image flashed onto the screen of a city in a distant land, bathed in sunshine. On the streets of the city a crowd was marching and shouting angrily.
“What ‘as this to do with me?” grumbled Smaug.
“It’s Muddle Earth, your Smaugness, where you sent the new cash cow. They don’t like it.”
“Don’t like it!” bellowed Smaug, “I’ll roast their hides. Who’s our man in Muddle Earth?”
“His name’s Jackass. Sir Peter Jackass. You remember, he has served you well in the past.”
“So, why doesn’t ‘e serve me well now?” Smaug stopped suddenly and a small flame flickered around his nostrils. “Faceless,” he whispered, “I think it’s time for you and me to take a little trip.”
The following afternoon at about 3pm the sky over Wellywood, capital of Muddle Earth, darkened as the great shadow of Smaug fell upon it. The enormous dragon circled the city once, twice, and landed heavily on the waterfront, crushing the national museum and upsetting coffee cups in a hundred cafes. Sir Peter Jackass was waiting to greet his master.
“Jackass”, growled Smaug, “I want answers and I want them fast or you’ve seen the last of my cash cow in this miserable place.”
“It’s the hobbles,” wailed Jackass. “They’ve got this onion and are refusing to feed the cash cow.”
“Onion?!” raged Smaug. “My cash cow will not eat onions!”
“No, no, it’s not an ordinary onion. It’s a trayed onion.”
“Enough! Who runs this country?”
“Ah, that would be me,” simpered a voice beneath Smaug’s left shoulder. A smallish man with a nervous smile stood on the waterfront. “Please don’t do anything rash, Mr Smaug, your highness. I’m sure we can sort this out.”
“What’s your name?”
“Jonkey.”
“Donkey?”
“No, your Smaugness, Jonkey.”
“Jonkey, my ass! You’ve got about 15 minutes to sort this problem or we’re out of ‘ere.”
Jonkey looked around nervously. “Will the other Warner Brothers also be coming, your Smaugness?”
Smaug lifted his head and roared with laughter. “The other Warner Brothers! You know what ‘appened to them?”
“No.”
Smaug’s giant face came to rest within inches of Jonkey. “I ‘et ‘em.”
“You ate them?”
“First I ‘ated ‘em. Then I ‘et ‘em. And that’s just what I will do with you if I don’t get some answers quick smart!”
Jonkey shuffled nervously. “We’ll do anything to keep the cash cow, great Smaug. I’ve talked with my advisors and what we’ll do is make an example of some of these troublesome hobbles, smash their onion, you know the sort of thing, and I’m sure the rest will see sense.”
Smaug looked menacingly at Jonkey. “I don’t want them to see sense. I want them to suffer, I want them to be my slaves!”
“Slaves, oh yes, I’m sure we can do that. Slavery should be no problem, oh magnificent Smaug.”
Smaug leaned closer until his smoky breath made Jonkey’s eyes water. “You believe in free trade, don’t you, Mr Donkey.”
“Yes, yes, indeed. We welcome free trade.”
“So do I, especially the free part. So ‘ere’s what else I want. You and your miserable ‘obbles will pay for all the feed my cash cow eats.”
“Certainly, great Smaug, an excellent idea,” nodded Jonkey helplessly.
“And if you take very good care of this cash cow, I may send you another one some time.”
“That would be very desirable,” glowed Jonkey.
“And then again, I might not,” grinned Smaug.
Several weeks later Jonkey stood at the window of his office looking across Wellywood. Lines of hobbles, their backs bent under huge loads, struggled beneath ashen skies towards a far hillside where the great cash cow dominated Muddle Earth. Crowds of sullen and angry hobbles clamoured at the gates.
His advisor watched the gathering crowds uneasily. “Me and the lads have been talking, Jonkey, and we think you should make yourself invisible for a while, just until things calm down. “
Jonkey sighed, “invisible? Yes, perhaps you’re right. Well, that should be easy to do.”
“What do you mean?”
“I had a message from Smaug. He said he’ll give me a ring next week.” Jonkey smiled to himself.
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Chilean miners’ ordeal is just beginning
16October 2010
It came as no surprise to hear that the Chilean miners, trapped 600 metres underground for 69 days, were debating who will have the honour of being the last person to return to the surface. They understand that, however desperate their entrapment has been, life back at the surface will be infinitely more complicated.
I imagine each miner entering the small capsule with the nervousness of an actor stepping on stage or a defendant rising to the court room. They ascend through layers of living rock that should have been their tomb and emerge, blinking and reborn, into the harsh Atacama sunlight to find themselves the stars of a circus.
A thousand journalists from across the globe have gathered at the mine head and their presence, more than the drama of the miners, has attracted politicians and celebrities, sniffing an opportunity to burnish their public profiles in the glow of a good story. Even if the miners regime for the past 69 days has included daily media training most of them will still find life at the surface more bizarre and terrifying than the warm darkness and camaraderie underground.
They are now public property and the public will demand a return on its investment. The politicians, celebrities and media have not camped outside this mine for two months just to turn away quietly after the first – or even the final – trapped miner emerges. Our heroes may have anticipated the embraces, tears and handshakes that will greet them as they step out of the cage but are they prepared for months and years in the limelight?
Family and friends will pressure them to cash in on their unique fate. Media agents will hover at the back of the scrum to sign exclusive deals for their stories. Like the All Blacks the miners will quickly be sorted into various price categories according to their physical prowess and ability to manage public life. A few individuals (the youngest, the oldest, the leaders) will command the highest fees.
Initially most will enjoy their fame and the public will not begrudge their fortune. After all, these men have suffered terribly and, by all accounts, they have no job to return to and no other means of supporting their families.
One or two will discover a talent for public life. They will appear on talk shows and gala events, with a local beauty draped on their arms. They will open shopping malls and endorse political campaigns. They may become politicians themselves, assuming the mayoralties of small rural towns in dusty corners of Chile where they will live out their days as idle figureheads, stoking petty jealousies and factionalism.
Most, however, will quickly tire of their celebrity status, yearning for life as it used to be and will never be again. Like Rip Van Winkle they will find that those 69 days underground have changed them even in the eyes of their families. Secrets have come to light. A few wives have met a few girlfriends while their men languished in the darkness and some of these relationships will go bust. In the end a few of our heroes will suffer more on the surface than they did below.
Their greatest loss will be the camaraderie. For 69 days they have proven themselves a stunningly successful team. Like soldiers returning from a battlefield they possess a unique bond forged in the heat of adversity. The means of their rescue, each man hauled out individually, breaks that bond with almost cruel abruptness. They deserved to come out together, emerging with arms around each other through the smoke and dust of a gaping hole. What a picture that would have given the world’s press! What a moment to bring closure to the tale, to frame and hang on the wall.
As it is they will be scrubbed clean, dressed in their Sunday best and posed for a picture with their rescuers. Then all will scatter to the four winds, the mine head will revert to desert and far below the chamber will crumble like Tutankhamen’s tomb.
16October 2010
It came as no surprise to hear that the Chilean miners, trapped 600 metres underground for 69 days, were debating who will have the honour of being the last person to return to the surface. They understand that, however desperate their entrapment has been, life back at the surface will be infinitely more complicated.
I imagine each miner entering the small capsule with the nervousness of an actor stepping on stage or a defendant rising to the court room. They ascend through layers of living rock that should have been their tomb and emerge, blinking and reborn, into the harsh Atacama sunlight to find themselves the stars of a circus.
A thousand journalists from across the globe have gathered at the mine head and their presence, more than the drama of the miners, has attracted politicians and celebrities, sniffing an opportunity to burnish their public profiles in the glow of a good story. Even if the miners regime for the past 69 days has included daily media training most of them will still find life at the surface more bizarre and terrifying than the warm darkness and camaraderie underground.
They are now public property and the public will demand a return on its investment. The politicians, celebrities and media have not camped outside this mine for two months just to turn away quietly after the first – or even the final – trapped miner emerges. Our heroes may have anticipated the embraces, tears and handshakes that will greet them as they step out of the cage but are they prepared for months and years in the limelight?
Family and friends will pressure them to cash in on their unique fate. Media agents will hover at the back of the scrum to sign exclusive deals for their stories. Like the All Blacks the miners will quickly be sorted into various price categories according to their physical prowess and ability to manage public life. A few individuals (the youngest, the oldest, the leaders) will command the highest fees.
Initially most will enjoy their fame and the public will not begrudge their fortune. After all, these men have suffered terribly and, by all accounts, they have no job to return to and no other means of supporting their families.
One or two will discover a talent for public life. They will appear on talk shows and gala events, with a local beauty draped on their arms. They will open shopping malls and endorse political campaigns. They may become politicians themselves, assuming the mayoralties of small rural towns in dusty corners of Chile where they will live out their days as idle figureheads, stoking petty jealousies and factionalism.
Most, however, will quickly tire of their celebrity status, yearning for life as it used to be and will never be again. Like Rip Van Winkle they will find that those 69 days underground have changed them even in the eyes of their families. Secrets have come to light. A few wives have met a few girlfriends while their men languished in the darkness and some of these relationships will go bust. In the end a few of our heroes will suffer more on the surface than they did below.
Their greatest loss will be the camaraderie. For 69 days they have proven themselves a stunningly successful team. Like soldiers returning from a battlefield they possess a unique bond forged in the heat of adversity. The means of their rescue, each man hauled out individually, breaks that bond with almost cruel abruptness. They deserved to come out together, emerging with arms around each other through the smoke and dust of a gaping hole. What a picture that would have given the world’s press! What a moment to bring closure to the tale, to frame and hang on the wall.
As it is they will be scrubbed clean, dressed in their Sunday best and posed for a picture with their rescuers. Then all will scatter to the four winds, the mine head will revert to desert and far below the chamber will crumble like Tutankhamen’s tomb.
Thursday, October 07, 2010
A late night at Auckland’s Sky City
2nd October 2010
A small boy sits on the floor in the foyer of Auckland’s Sky City hotel. He wears a green back pack and carefully eats a banana. He is oblivious to both the tide of humanity flowing around him and to the leaping architecture that dwarfs his small frame.
Sky City is not just a hotel; it is shops, restaurants, a casino, convention centre, theatre and, of course, the iconic Sky Tower.
It is not so much a building as an enormous creature sprawled across downtown Auckland. Watching the small boy I see that he and I and all the many people flowing through this place are like hapless victims of a sci-fi experiment where we have been shrunk to microbes and released into the body of a large beast.
The vastness of the organism is beyond our comprehension so we experience it as a series of disconnected but intense episodes filled with light, colour and sound. We flow through its veins and tubes, swept along on a tide of conversation, laughter, food, drink and money.
Money is, above all else, the life force of this huge creature. It gushes from ranks of ATM machines and attaches momentarily to our wallets and hip pockets like oxygen molecules to red blood cells before vanishing into cash registers, bar tabs and room service. Most of the money ends up in the casino, an enormous heart that endlessly pumps huge volumes of cash through its many intricate transactions.
I leave the boy with his banana and drift towards the casino. As I near the entrance a beautiful young woman approaches me, wearing a dress with a short silver skirt and bodice so tight it could be sprayed on. “Will you be here at 7?” she asks. I could as easily turn back the tide as say no to this woman. I nod and she attaches a small yellow band to my wrist with the tenderness of a mother bandaging a child’s grazed knee. The wristband informs me that I could win $50,000.
The casino gaming floor is a circus of flashing lights, sudden bursts of music and a deep sense of urgency like a muscle cramp. It is a largely male environment and is overwhelmingly Asian. Croupiers stand at their gaming tables like priests, intoning their various litanies. There is roulette, black jack, baccarat and games that I can make no sense of, with oriental names like wai tai and sow mai.
I watch a solitary Chinese man playing roulette. The croupier, a young Asian woman, deftly stacks up piles of grey chips and slides them over to the man. He spreads them across the numbers embossed in the felt playing surface, half a dozen on this number, ten on another. The young woman flicks a white marble into the running track over the spinning roulette wheel as the man continues to place his chips.
As the marble slows she makes a spreading motion with both hands, a silent benediction that closes the bets. The marble drops, she places a small glass talisman on the winning number and sweeps the unlucky gambler’s chips into a round hole where they vanish with the smallest clatter. The Chinese man shows no reaction. She produces several more stacks of chips and slides them across the table to him.
All around the room, at every table and slot machine, I see the same curt efficiency and lack of emotion. This looks more like work than entertainment. Nobody laughs or even speaks much. Nobody appears to notice when a troupe of stunningly beautiful women parades through the room wearing feathered head pieces and not much else.
I lose myself in a maze of poker machines and emerge later onto a balcony overlooking the gaming floor. Above me the room vanishes towards a distant ceiling lit like a constellation. I recall Coleridge’s poem about Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. From where I stand Sky City is a pleasure dome and these are indeed caverns measureless to man.
Far below me the Chinese gambler sits at the roulette wheel, his grey chips flowing into the hole in the table. Does he know how that poem ends? In this great pleasure dome does he “suck the milk of paradise?”
2nd October 2010
A small boy sits on the floor in the foyer of Auckland’s Sky City hotel. He wears a green back pack and carefully eats a banana. He is oblivious to both the tide of humanity flowing around him and to the leaping architecture that dwarfs his small frame.
Sky City is not just a hotel; it is shops, restaurants, a casino, convention centre, theatre and, of course, the iconic Sky Tower.
It is not so much a building as an enormous creature sprawled across downtown Auckland. Watching the small boy I see that he and I and all the many people flowing through this place are like hapless victims of a sci-fi experiment where we have been shrunk to microbes and released into the body of a large beast.
The vastness of the organism is beyond our comprehension so we experience it as a series of disconnected but intense episodes filled with light, colour and sound. We flow through its veins and tubes, swept along on a tide of conversation, laughter, food, drink and money.
Money is, above all else, the life force of this huge creature. It gushes from ranks of ATM machines and attaches momentarily to our wallets and hip pockets like oxygen molecules to red blood cells before vanishing into cash registers, bar tabs and room service. Most of the money ends up in the casino, an enormous heart that endlessly pumps huge volumes of cash through its many intricate transactions.
I leave the boy with his banana and drift towards the casino. As I near the entrance a beautiful young woman approaches me, wearing a dress with a short silver skirt and bodice so tight it could be sprayed on. “Will you be here at 7?” she asks. I could as easily turn back the tide as say no to this woman. I nod and she attaches a small yellow band to my wrist with the tenderness of a mother bandaging a child’s grazed knee. The wristband informs me that I could win $50,000.
The casino gaming floor is a circus of flashing lights, sudden bursts of music and a deep sense of urgency like a muscle cramp. It is a largely male environment and is overwhelmingly Asian. Croupiers stand at their gaming tables like priests, intoning their various litanies. There is roulette, black jack, baccarat and games that I can make no sense of, with oriental names like wai tai and sow mai.
I watch a solitary Chinese man playing roulette. The croupier, a young Asian woman, deftly stacks up piles of grey chips and slides them over to the man. He spreads them across the numbers embossed in the felt playing surface, half a dozen on this number, ten on another. The young woman flicks a white marble into the running track over the spinning roulette wheel as the man continues to place his chips.
As the marble slows she makes a spreading motion with both hands, a silent benediction that closes the bets. The marble drops, she places a small glass talisman on the winning number and sweeps the unlucky gambler’s chips into a round hole where they vanish with the smallest clatter. The Chinese man shows no reaction. She produces several more stacks of chips and slides them across the table to him.
All around the room, at every table and slot machine, I see the same curt efficiency and lack of emotion. This looks more like work than entertainment. Nobody laughs or even speaks much. Nobody appears to notice when a troupe of stunningly beautiful women parades through the room wearing feathered head pieces and not much else.
I lose myself in a maze of poker machines and emerge later onto a balcony overlooking the gaming floor. Above me the room vanishes towards a distant ceiling lit like a constellation. I recall Coleridge’s poem about Kubla Khan’s stately pleasure dome in Xanadu. From where I stand Sky City is a pleasure dome and these are indeed caverns measureless to man.
Far below me the Chinese gambler sits at the roulette wheel, his grey chips flowing into the hole in the table. Does he know how that poem ends? In this great pleasure dome does he “suck the milk of paradise?”
Monday, September 20, 2010
Birds of a feather flock to elections
18th September 2010
The Electoral Commission has hit upon a brilliant strategy by aligning this year’s local body elections with the Bird of the Year poll conducted by the Forest and Bird Society. Clearly local government election organisers, whose triennial event gathers about as much interest as a share in South Canterbury Finance, hope to ride the wave of voting fever generated by the prestigious bird poll.
Forest and Bird officials, concerned Bird of the Year may be sullied by association with mere, or even mayor, politics hasten to draw distinction between the two elections.
“Bird of the Year is noble democracy,” argues spokesman Colin Finch. “Voters pick their favourite bird according to virtues like plumage, song and character, not according to where they stand on sewage treatment schemes.”
Nevertheless in some parts of the country local body elections have acquired a distinctly avarian character, with candidates accused of “ruffling feathers” and “strutting like peacocks.” Journalists scrutinise candidate lists to identify pecking orders, while the few candidates of character are dismissed as “birds of paradise.”
This commentator is much too circumspect to suggest Ashburton’s election candidates seek to align themselves with Bird of the Year. As far as we know none of our local candidates is eligible to stand in the Bird of the Year election and any resemblance to birds is merely, or mayorally, coincidental.
Despite assurances from candidates that they will not encroach on the bird poll Mid-Canterbury Forest and Bird has appointed scrutineers from the political wing of the Ashburton Fanciers’ Club to oversee the local government campaign.
Head scrutineer, Wing Commander Snowy Breast, claims there are already signs of interference.
“The mayoral candidates have been challenged more than once to get their ducks in line, although any further reference to ducks may be unkind to Mr O’Malley, as the currently sitting duck - I mean mayor.”
Wing Commander Breast admits it will be difficult for any of the mayoral candidates to burnish their reputations as birds of the bush.
“At a stretch you could imagine Mrs Tasker as a wattle-throated tui in a kowhai tree, but the noble physiques of McKay and O’Malley render them definitely flightless, and probably farmyard. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Domestic poultry is in many ways far better suited to the rough and tumble of political life. If you’re in a scrap you could do worse than have a feisty cockerel or a bad-tempered gander as your friend.”
Colin Finch believes mayoral candidates will only fail if they try to gain popularity through Bird of the Year.
“Mr McKay should be particularly careful. He’s already had his wings clipped on Environment Canterbury and I’d have to say the dodo’s never been a big mover in Bird of the Year.”
In response to these criticisms Electoral Commission officials have hit back, arguing that some local body candidates are in fact birds seeking to leverage their popularity with Bird of the Year voters by standing for local government. They claim that an old rooster has been mayor of Invercargill for years and both leading candidates in the Auckland mayoralty race are turkeys.
And which of the two elections should voters pay the most attention to? Wing Commander Breast is in no doubt. “Y’know, local government has its uses but the real future of the country will always be shaped by Bird of the Year.”
And which bird gets his vote? “My vote for Bird of the Year? That would be the missus, same as always.”
18th September 2010
The Electoral Commission has hit upon a brilliant strategy by aligning this year’s local body elections with the Bird of the Year poll conducted by the Forest and Bird Society. Clearly local government election organisers, whose triennial event gathers about as much interest as a share in South Canterbury Finance, hope to ride the wave of voting fever generated by the prestigious bird poll.
Forest and Bird officials, concerned Bird of the Year may be sullied by association with mere, or even mayor, politics hasten to draw distinction between the two elections.
“Bird of the Year is noble democracy,” argues spokesman Colin Finch. “Voters pick their favourite bird according to virtues like plumage, song and character, not according to where they stand on sewage treatment schemes.”
Nevertheless in some parts of the country local body elections have acquired a distinctly avarian character, with candidates accused of “ruffling feathers” and “strutting like peacocks.” Journalists scrutinise candidate lists to identify pecking orders, while the few candidates of character are dismissed as “birds of paradise.”
This commentator is much too circumspect to suggest Ashburton’s election candidates seek to align themselves with Bird of the Year. As far as we know none of our local candidates is eligible to stand in the Bird of the Year election and any resemblance to birds is merely, or mayorally, coincidental.
Despite assurances from candidates that they will not encroach on the bird poll Mid-Canterbury Forest and Bird has appointed scrutineers from the political wing of the Ashburton Fanciers’ Club to oversee the local government campaign.
Head scrutineer, Wing Commander Snowy Breast, claims there are already signs of interference.
“The mayoral candidates have been challenged more than once to get their ducks in line, although any further reference to ducks may be unkind to Mr O’Malley, as the currently sitting duck - I mean mayor.”
Wing Commander Breast admits it will be difficult for any of the mayoral candidates to burnish their reputations as birds of the bush.
“At a stretch you could imagine Mrs Tasker as a wattle-throated tui in a kowhai tree, but the noble physiques of McKay and O’Malley render them definitely flightless, and probably farmyard. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Domestic poultry is in many ways far better suited to the rough and tumble of political life. If you’re in a scrap you could do worse than have a feisty cockerel or a bad-tempered gander as your friend.”
Colin Finch believes mayoral candidates will only fail if they try to gain popularity through Bird of the Year.
“Mr McKay should be particularly careful. He’s already had his wings clipped on Environment Canterbury and I’d have to say the dodo’s never been a big mover in Bird of the Year.”
In response to these criticisms Electoral Commission officials have hit back, arguing that some local body candidates are in fact birds seeking to leverage their popularity with Bird of the Year voters by standing for local government. They claim that an old rooster has been mayor of Invercargill for years and both leading candidates in the Auckland mayoralty race are turkeys.
And which of the two elections should voters pay the most attention to? Wing Commander Breast is in no doubt. “Y’know, local government has its uses but the real future of the country will always be shaped by Bird of the Year.”
And which bird gets his vote? “My vote for Bird of the Year? That would be the missus, same as always.”
Monday, September 06, 2010
Hubbard’s life a Shakespearian tale
4th September 2010
As I, the taxpayer, unexpectedly find myself the owner of a multitude of farms, a helicopter company and various other going concerns, along with $600 million dollars of ‘toxic’ debts courtesy of a certain finance company going belly up this week, I have resolved to take my responsibilities seriously and seek advice.
Turning to the most reputable financial advisor I know, William Shakespeare, I find Allan Hubbard has been here before me. Hubbard’s life and career are written in the words of Polonius to his son Laertes. It’s a piece of fatherly advice that establishes Polonius as a tedious advisor whose later death at the end of Hamlet’s sword is a relief to the audience. But it is a handy guide to success in business and, by the way, a window into Allan Hubbard’s rise and fall.
All that we know about Hubbard is captured in this single speech: his famous frugality (“costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy”); his loyalty (“those friends thou hast…grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel”; his reserve (“give every man thy ear, but few thy voice”); and his graciousness in adversity (“take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement”).
Ah, but then we come to the nub; “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” and, let’s face it, Mr Hubbard was both. Never mind that he conducted both with extraordinary success for 50 years, Polonius would have waited that long just to savour his downfall, and even now the crows of public opinion should be feasting on Mr Hubbard’s carcase. But here’s an unfathomable thing: from the wreckage of his life’s work Mr Hubbard has salvaged two priceless articles – friendship and the means of renewal.
Friendship is the greater prize. Polonius advises against lending “for loan oft loses both itself and friend.” Mr Hubbard has lost his lendings but retains his friends. In fact they flock to the defence of his reputation and honour. You get the feeling these are not just friends whose loyalty was secured through the government’s deposit guarantee scheme, but people who genuinely care for the man.
The loyalty of his friends lies partly in the second article – the means of renewal. Polonius cautions that “borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,” and ain’t that true. How often in recent times have we seen the flash Harries and charlatans, the ex-rugby league stars and high rollers living up large on money borrowed from guileless investors. They self-destruct when their enterprises can no longer sustain their lifestyles. Not so Mr Hubbard. A lifetime of thrift is a perfect platform on which to rebuild his fortune.
Age and ill-health may have the last say in this saga but if Mr Hubbard is to rise above his misfortunes he will need to demonstrate two further qualities promoted by Polonius. Finding himself in a fight he must bear it “so the opposed may beware of thee:” in other words, tough it out.
Finally, “this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” I would say Mr Hubbard understands this very well.
As for me, the new owner of South Canterbury Finance, when I reflect on the events of the past week I find Polonius’s measured advice drowned out by the more street-wise Mr Micawber. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
There are no prizes for guessing which side of the balance sheet we’ve landed on.
4th September 2010
As I, the taxpayer, unexpectedly find myself the owner of a multitude of farms, a helicopter company and various other going concerns, along with $600 million dollars of ‘toxic’ debts courtesy of a certain finance company going belly up this week, I have resolved to take my responsibilities seriously and seek advice.
Turning to the most reputable financial advisor I know, William Shakespeare, I find Allan Hubbard has been here before me. Hubbard’s life and career are written in the words of Polonius to his son Laertes. It’s a piece of fatherly advice that establishes Polonius as a tedious advisor whose later death at the end of Hamlet’s sword is a relief to the audience. But it is a handy guide to success in business and, by the way, a window into Allan Hubbard’s rise and fall.
All that we know about Hubbard is captured in this single speech: his famous frugality (“costly thy habit as thy purse can buy, but not expressed in fancy”); his loyalty (“those friends thou hast…grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel”; his reserve (“give every man thy ear, but few thy voice”); and his graciousness in adversity (“take each man’s censure, but reserve thy judgement”).
Ah, but then we come to the nub; “neither a borrower nor a lender be,” and, let’s face it, Mr Hubbard was both. Never mind that he conducted both with extraordinary success for 50 years, Polonius would have waited that long just to savour his downfall, and even now the crows of public opinion should be feasting on Mr Hubbard’s carcase. But here’s an unfathomable thing: from the wreckage of his life’s work Mr Hubbard has salvaged two priceless articles – friendship and the means of renewal.
Friendship is the greater prize. Polonius advises against lending “for loan oft loses both itself and friend.” Mr Hubbard has lost his lendings but retains his friends. In fact they flock to the defence of his reputation and honour. You get the feeling these are not just friends whose loyalty was secured through the government’s deposit guarantee scheme, but people who genuinely care for the man.
The loyalty of his friends lies partly in the second article – the means of renewal. Polonius cautions that “borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry,” and ain’t that true. How often in recent times have we seen the flash Harries and charlatans, the ex-rugby league stars and high rollers living up large on money borrowed from guileless investors. They self-destruct when their enterprises can no longer sustain their lifestyles. Not so Mr Hubbard. A lifetime of thrift is a perfect platform on which to rebuild his fortune.
Age and ill-health may have the last say in this saga but if Mr Hubbard is to rise above his misfortunes he will need to demonstrate two further qualities promoted by Polonius. Finding himself in a fight he must bear it “so the opposed may beware of thee:” in other words, tough it out.
Finally, “this above all: to thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man.” I would say Mr Hubbard understands this very well.
As for me, the new owner of South Canterbury Finance, when I reflect on the events of the past week I find Polonius’s measured advice drowned out by the more street-wise Mr Micawber. “Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
There are no prizes for guessing which side of the balance sheet we’ve landed on.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
The station’s not worth saving
21st August 2010
I’m being asked for money to save our railway station. I’m not immune to the request, having taken an interest in the debates that have steamed around the building for years.
I know the station. I’ve looked at it. I’ve looked at it closely. I’ve walked around it and kicked the tyres. I’ve pulled over on West Street and studied it across the rail yards. I’ve run my hands over its sagging weatherboards and whistled along the length of its platform.
And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth saving.
Rather, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth me giving money to save it.
This is not stinginess – I’m a soft touch for both worthy and unworthy causes. Neither is it a disregard for our heritage. There are buildings in our district I would give money and more to save.
But not the railway station - its liabilities outweigh its merits.
For a start it’s ugly. Try as I might I can see no architectural or aesthetic beauty in it. I accept that an old building should not have to be beautiful to be worth saving, but it helps. I also accept that it will look more attractive with some new cladding, unbroken windows and a coat of paint, but not much more. It will still be an old wooden shed knocked up on the cheap a hundred years ago.
And what about those hundred or so years? Don’t they make it worth saving? I’m not immune to the argument of age but, like beauty, age in itself is not sufficient argument for retention. Some buildings grow in stature with age: others diminish or simply become redundant. My house is a hundred years old and I consider it well worth saving because it is a good, hardworking building. It retains a purpose.
Sadly, the railway station does not have a purpose, which is why it has fallen so far into disrepair. It stubbornly resists the obvious functions for a building of its nature – retail, tourism or heritage chic. This is partly because it has been left high and dry as the commercial heart of town moved south, but also because it is not a building that draws people to itself. It has no vaulted ceilings or mosaic tiled floors to admire, no play of light upon stone, no intricately constructed window or colonnaded terrace, no splash of water from a fountain.
“Yes, but it has history”, its advocates cry. “It means something to us. Our sons embarked for war from this platform, lovers embraced, journeys that changed lives began and ended here.”
Now this is an argument I can just about reach into my pocket to support. The station is part of our story, it bears some of the burden of our collective memory. Except, once again, it remains a frustratingly mute witness to all that history. Standing on the platform evokes no sentiment, conjures no spirits, even for me who has been part of that history in my childhood, jogged through Ashburton in the hour before dawn on the night express from Invercargill, all steam and cinders, dashing into the buffet for a pie or an ice cream. The memory remains, but it’s not the building that calls it up.
Having a past is not sufficient argument for saving a building. It must also have a future. And here, perhaps, I lack vision. Should we save the station for a future not yet revealed? For that matter, do its supporters already possess a vision for its future that I am not aware of?
You see, I wonder how well this idea has been thought through. Let’s say we raise $400,000 to save the station from demolition. Then what? Do we raise another $400,000 to save it from collapse? Then raise some more to make it commercially viable? Or do we resign ourselves to the reality that it is not a going concern and keep raising money just to see it standing there?
Perhaps the future is in the past. In 20 years passenger trains may once more call at Ashburton. But I’m not gambling my money on it.
21st August 2010
I’m being asked for money to save our railway station. I’m not immune to the request, having taken an interest in the debates that have steamed around the building for years.
I know the station. I’ve looked at it. I’ve looked at it closely. I’ve walked around it and kicked the tyres. I’ve pulled over on West Street and studied it across the rail yards. I’ve run my hands over its sagging weatherboards and whistled along the length of its platform.
And I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth saving.
Rather, I’ve come to the conclusion it’s not worth me giving money to save it.
This is not stinginess – I’m a soft touch for both worthy and unworthy causes. Neither is it a disregard for our heritage. There are buildings in our district I would give money and more to save.
But not the railway station - its liabilities outweigh its merits.
For a start it’s ugly. Try as I might I can see no architectural or aesthetic beauty in it. I accept that an old building should not have to be beautiful to be worth saving, but it helps. I also accept that it will look more attractive with some new cladding, unbroken windows and a coat of paint, but not much more. It will still be an old wooden shed knocked up on the cheap a hundred years ago.
And what about those hundred or so years? Don’t they make it worth saving? I’m not immune to the argument of age but, like beauty, age in itself is not sufficient argument for retention. Some buildings grow in stature with age: others diminish or simply become redundant. My house is a hundred years old and I consider it well worth saving because it is a good, hardworking building. It retains a purpose.
Sadly, the railway station does not have a purpose, which is why it has fallen so far into disrepair. It stubbornly resists the obvious functions for a building of its nature – retail, tourism or heritage chic. This is partly because it has been left high and dry as the commercial heart of town moved south, but also because it is not a building that draws people to itself. It has no vaulted ceilings or mosaic tiled floors to admire, no play of light upon stone, no intricately constructed window or colonnaded terrace, no splash of water from a fountain.
“Yes, but it has history”, its advocates cry. “It means something to us. Our sons embarked for war from this platform, lovers embraced, journeys that changed lives began and ended here.”
Now this is an argument I can just about reach into my pocket to support. The station is part of our story, it bears some of the burden of our collective memory. Except, once again, it remains a frustratingly mute witness to all that history. Standing on the platform evokes no sentiment, conjures no spirits, even for me who has been part of that history in my childhood, jogged through Ashburton in the hour before dawn on the night express from Invercargill, all steam and cinders, dashing into the buffet for a pie or an ice cream. The memory remains, but it’s not the building that calls it up.
Having a past is not sufficient argument for saving a building. It must also have a future. And here, perhaps, I lack vision. Should we save the station for a future not yet revealed? For that matter, do its supporters already possess a vision for its future that I am not aware of?
You see, I wonder how well this idea has been thought through. Let’s say we raise $400,000 to save the station from demolition. Then what? Do we raise another $400,000 to save it from collapse? Then raise some more to make it commercially viable? Or do we resign ourselves to the reality that it is not a going concern and keep raising money just to see it standing there?
Perhaps the future is in the past. In 20 years passenger trains may once more call at Ashburton. But I’m not gambling my money on it.
Monday, August 09, 2010
Pipe dreams put Ashburton ahead
7th August 2010
Last Monday marked the deadline for companies to register interest in joining the Government’s ultra fast broadband project. So what? So, the future just got a bit closer.
Ultra fast broadband, or UFB (this industry spawns acronyms like oil gushing from a well), is the digital equivalent of an 8-lane motorway; and just as motorways unleashed the full potential of the motorcar so broadband unleashes the potential of the internet.
By comparison, the old dial-up connections that first hooked our computers to the world-wide web – and which are still a fact of life for some – are like piloting your car down a pot-holed dirt track. Dial-up’s fine for the emailed birthday greetings from your sister in Perth, but if she attaches a photo you wait…and wait…
We all cheered when broadband showed up several years ago. Accessing data at Megabyte speed lets us play around on Trademe, zip through online banking and peek at our kids’ latest holiday pics. At its best it allows us to play You Tube clips without the sound and pictures getting out of whack, but falls short of downloading movies. For users like businesses, schools and hospitals that have multiple computers accessing the internet at once broadband has become just too thin.
UFB lifts capacity from 2 or 3 Megabytes per second to as much as 100. This means that on a wet afternoon when the kids are driving me crazy I can download Shrek II in about 20 seconds and avoid carnage. For many businesses and public organisations UFB is fast becoming the minimum standard for operating successfully in the 21st century.
We all cheered again when the Government announced last year it will invest $1.5 billion to provide UFB for 75% of kiwis by 2016. Under pressure it coughed up another $300 million for a Rural Broadband Initiative to spread coverage to all but the most remote regions. The strategy will be in partnership with the telecommunications industry, which is a good thing because broadband networks cost a lot more than the Government’s commitment. Telecom claims to have already invested $3 billion in a network of fibre optic cables for broadband. They’ve been digging holes all over Tinwald in recent weeks just to prove it.
Other companies too are seeing opportunities in fibre networks, none more presciently than our own Electricity Ashburton which has been quietly stringing fibre optic cables along its network for some time and has formed partnerships with local schools and businesses. This has certainly been a smart move for our schools. Having a UFB “fat pipe” coming right to the gate pushes them to the front of the queue for further government funding to upgrade their old “skinny pipe” internal networks.
In this area Mid-Canterbury is well ahead of the pack. From my workplace at Southbridge School I look enviously across the Rakaia to the opportunities opening up for my teacher colleagues and their students in the Ashburton District. Selwyn District lags far behind in the race towards UFB. Perhaps this is due to the large shadow Christchurch city casts over Selwyn, stunting independent thought. More likely it is due to the absence of a locally-owned infrastructure company. Electricity Ashburton will be looking for opportunities to extend its network north of the Rakaia, with or without a successful bid for some of the Government pie.
At present UFB is synonymous with fibre optic cable. Fans of fibre talk it up as our biggest infrastructure investment since the national electricity grid. Others caution against flinging heaps of money at a technology that, in our fast-changing world, could be obsolete in a decade. Yesterday I was introduced to a new educational term, “M-learning.” As E-learning stands for the paraphernalia of computers and cable-based systems that serve them, M-learning stands for mobile, delivering the same services - and better - through the cell phones we carry in our pockets. How’s that for a “fat pipe” dream?
7th August 2010
Last Monday marked the deadline for companies to register interest in joining the Government’s ultra fast broadband project. So what? So, the future just got a bit closer.
Ultra fast broadband, or UFB (this industry spawns acronyms like oil gushing from a well), is the digital equivalent of an 8-lane motorway; and just as motorways unleashed the full potential of the motorcar so broadband unleashes the potential of the internet.
By comparison, the old dial-up connections that first hooked our computers to the world-wide web – and which are still a fact of life for some – are like piloting your car down a pot-holed dirt track. Dial-up’s fine for the emailed birthday greetings from your sister in Perth, but if she attaches a photo you wait…and wait…
We all cheered when broadband showed up several years ago. Accessing data at Megabyte speed lets us play around on Trademe, zip through online banking and peek at our kids’ latest holiday pics. At its best it allows us to play You Tube clips without the sound and pictures getting out of whack, but falls short of downloading movies. For users like businesses, schools and hospitals that have multiple computers accessing the internet at once broadband has become just too thin.
UFB lifts capacity from 2 or 3 Megabytes per second to as much as 100. This means that on a wet afternoon when the kids are driving me crazy I can download Shrek II in about 20 seconds and avoid carnage. For many businesses and public organisations UFB is fast becoming the minimum standard for operating successfully in the 21st century.
We all cheered again when the Government announced last year it will invest $1.5 billion to provide UFB for 75% of kiwis by 2016. Under pressure it coughed up another $300 million for a Rural Broadband Initiative to spread coverage to all but the most remote regions. The strategy will be in partnership with the telecommunications industry, which is a good thing because broadband networks cost a lot more than the Government’s commitment. Telecom claims to have already invested $3 billion in a network of fibre optic cables for broadband. They’ve been digging holes all over Tinwald in recent weeks just to prove it.
Other companies too are seeing opportunities in fibre networks, none more presciently than our own Electricity Ashburton which has been quietly stringing fibre optic cables along its network for some time and has formed partnerships with local schools and businesses. This has certainly been a smart move for our schools. Having a UFB “fat pipe” coming right to the gate pushes them to the front of the queue for further government funding to upgrade their old “skinny pipe” internal networks.
In this area Mid-Canterbury is well ahead of the pack. From my workplace at Southbridge School I look enviously across the Rakaia to the opportunities opening up for my teacher colleagues and their students in the Ashburton District. Selwyn District lags far behind in the race towards UFB. Perhaps this is due to the large shadow Christchurch city casts over Selwyn, stunting independent thought. More likely it is due to the absence of a locally-owned infrastructure company. Electricity Ashburton will be looking for opportunities to extend its network north of the Rakaia, with or without a successful bid for some of the Government pie.
At present UFB is synonymous with fibre optic cable. Fans of fibre talk it up as our biggest infrastructure investment since the national electricity grid. Others caution against flinging heaps of money at a technology that, in our fast-changing world, could be obsolete in a decade. Yesterday I was introduced to a new educational term, “M-learning.” As E-learning stands for the paraphernalia of computers and cable-based systems that serve them, M-learning stands for mobile, delivering the same services - and better - through the cell phones we carry in our pockets. How’s that for a “fat pipe” dream?
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