If You Have Nothing to Say, Say It.
I am officially a Grumpy Old Man. I’ve seen it coming for a while of
course, but it’s finally been confirmed because I’ve realised that I can’t
stand cell phones. Or more
accurately (and more grumpily) I can’t stand people using cell phones.
My gripes include all the usual
stuff. Naturally it annoys me when
people leave the damn things switched on during a concert or play, but it
really infuriates me when the same knucklehead then acts all flustered and
embarrassed when the bloody thing rings right in the middle of the show.
It
absolutely maddens me when people talk so loudly on their cell phones in public
places. Why do they feel the need
to bellow? Why does everyone
within a furlong have to share in his or her (and I’m afraid it’s nearly always
‘her’) invariably inane chatter?
And
I hate with a boundless hatred the idiotic ring tones that people use. We’ve all heard the William Tell
Overture, and the Toreador Song from Carmen, but I recently heard about a dozen
bars of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Night on the Bare Mountain emanating from the top pocket
of a tattooed bloke collecting empty glasses in a pub. And at the other end of the scale, I
heard an amazingly realistic fart blast out from the cell phone of a
suit-wearing joker in a lift. And
he just smiled and answered it!
What’s wrong with a normal ‘phone ringing’ ring tone? That too confusing for these Einsteins?
What
about the numbnuts who talk or text on cell phones while driving? I’ve even seen them – and I know that
you have too – using their ‘free’ hand to scrawl a note of some apparently
vital point. Leaving them to
control their vehicle with their prehensile toes and tail, presumably. I have just two comments
for these idiots: RIP, and PDQ.
And
speaking of texting, have you seen what it’s doing to our language? The appalling abbreviations and slang
terms, and the abandonment of punctuation, together produce a nearly
incomprehensible mush of gibberish.
‘CUL8R’ etc. And like the
possum and the rabbit, it’s doing damage way outside the original habitat: I
recently read an article by a university lecturer who said that students were
submitting written papers using this very same sloppy moronspeak. Texting has trained them to think that
way. Or maybe I mean to not think
at all.
Oh,
and how about this? A teenage girl
recently sent 14,528 text messages in a month! It wasn’t a silly record attempt; it was just her normal
practice, discovered when her father examined the phone bill more closely than
usual. That’s 500 texts a
day! The report I read went on to
offer the reassuring fact that the average for teenage girls was ‘only’ 1,472
texts a month (a comparatively modest 50 a day).
On
the plus side, I do not believe all that nonsense about cell phones frying the
user’s brain with microwaves.
Although I do find quite persuasive the suggestion that while cell phone
use doesn’t cause brain damage, brain damage does appear to cause cell phone
use.
So
there we have it. Why I hate cell
phones, and why everyone who uses them is a bonehead.
But
I haven’t yet told you the absolute worst of it; the one thing that cheeses me
off more than any of the above complaints. It’s that the cell phone manufacturers seem incapable of
making a cell phone with number keys of a sensible size. We Grumpy Old Men tend to have pretty
thick fingers. And skin.
Why
I Hate Country Music
I had intended to write about politics in
this column. It’s a while since
I’ve done so, and I’ve had complaints.
Well, one complaint. I even
have a political press clipping from the NZ Herald lying on the desk before me
at this very moment, to provide inspiration. It reports on the predictable shambles surrounding the Green
Party’s parliamentary list, and the substitution on that list of someone called
Russel Norman for something called Nandor Tanczos.
(What
is with these reversible names in the Greens? Russel Norman - Norman Russel; Nandor Tanczos - Tandor
Nanczos … even the late Rod Donald was readily reversible in the name
department. Is this some kind of
weird secret Greenie code, like the Masonic handshake?)
Anyway,
the news article explained that Tandor was intending to leave parliament, but
had wished to stay until his Waste Minimisation Bill was passed. So, he had a
plan to minimise waste, and he was going to leave parliament to mark its
becoming law? The rich symbolic
potential of this happy combination seemed just too good to miss! But I chickened out. It was just too much like shooting a
sitting bird.
I
also had an absolutely brilliant Helen Clark joke for you. Tasteless, crude, deeply offensive in
every possible way … it was a real beauty! But I ditched that idea as well. Given the recent poll results, it somehow just seemed too
cruel. Bah! I’m so sentimental now that I’m getting
old.
That
left me with nothing. A blank
column. And no ideas to fill
it. At that very moment, my
radio committed an unprovoked act of Country Music. Some woman with a twangy Tennessee accent was whining
through her nose about something horrible involving a dog or a divorce. Or it might have been both.
Eventually
it ended, and the announcer announced that the song was by a famous Australian
country singer I’d never heard of called Tammy or Ellie May, and was entitled
“Be Yourself (Everybody Else is Taken)”. I’m not kidding; that was really the name of the song.
This
thrust both politics and worries about my advancing years right out of my mind,
and started me reflecting on the many reasons why I hate country music.
First
is the fact that every country singer, no matter where they are from, adopts an
appalling hillbilly accent. It’s
bad enough when the offender hails from somewhere improbable like California or
Hawaii, but when they’re from Wollongong or Te Awamutu, it’s bloody
intolerable.
Second
is the country music repertoire, which consists of one song. Every song, by every ‘artist’, is
exactly the same as every other song.
Same three pitiful chords, same lame lyrics. The only difference between a mournful ballad and a real
toe-tapper is six beers.
Third
is the absolutely awful song titles.
We’ve just considered “Be Yourself (Everybody Else is Taken)”. But there’s also “I Keep Forgettin’ I
Forgot About You” and “Her Only Bad Habit is Me” and “How Come Your Dog Don’t
Bite Nobody But Me?” and “Walk Out Backwards Slowly, So I’ll Think You’re Comin’
In” and “If The Phone Don’t Ring, You’ll Know it’s Me”. And many, many more just as bad or
worse. The great (and late) Warren
Zevon once wrote a brilliant send-up song called “If You Won’t Leave Me, I’ll
Find Somebody Who Will” and they didn’t even know it was a send-up.
So,
that’s just three reasons why I hate country music. There are many more.
Big hats. Big hair. Big belt buckles. But I know when I’ve had enough: I’ll
stop at three. And there is one
thing you can say in favour of country music singers … very few of them have
reversible names. A small
mercy.
Carbon
Dating for Dummies
This is a photograph I recently took in
Australia. It shows two coal trains, one filled with coal,
and one on its way to be filled.
Each
railcar on these trains holds 90 tonnes of coal, and each train has up to 100
cars (pulled by four locomotives).
These are just two of the dozens of such trains that run daily from the
Hunter Valley's massive open cut coalmines down to Newcastle, the world's
largest coal port.
At
anchor off that port are bulk carrier ships, often as many as 80 or more,
queuing to be loaded with coal.
Remember that giant ship that ran aground on a beach there last year? The Pasha Bulker? Carries nearly 60,000 tonnes of
coal? Well, multiply that by 80
and you have the daily queue.
Obviously,
that's a lot of coal. And quite a lot of CO2, too.
All
of which got me thinking about carbon credits. If I understand the system
properly, I am entitled to emit as much CO2 as I wish, as long as I
pay someone else to not emit an amount equivalent to the amount that I emit.
I thus become "carbon neutral", and a certified eco-warrior.
One
novel way I might do this is to pay someone to not cut down trees. Not just anyone, of course ... it's got
to be someone who has the motive, the opportunity and the means to go
a-lumberjacking. So that’s someone with poverty, trees and a big axe.
A mountain tribe in New Guinea, for example.
Of
course, I don't have to actually trek into the New Guinea highlands to woo the
would-be woodsmen. I can just pay a carbon offsets trading company to do
it for me, while I get on with burning all the coal I can manage.
That's
the way Albert Gore does it I understand ... he buys carbon offsets to neutralise
his substantial personal emissions. Well, presumably not all of his
personal emissions, just the carbon ones. The hot air remains lamentably
un-offset.
Albert
is also a believer in the sound business principle of vertical integration; the
company he buys his carbon credits from, Generation Investment Management, is
part-owned by ... well, by a Mr A Gore.
And he’s the Chairman, too!
What a remarkable coincidence.
A
less charitable commentator than myself might suggest that this appears to mean
that Albert is buying his carbon offsets from himself. In fact, several less charitable
commentators have already done so, and one of them has also begun promoting the
“Al Gore Diet”, in which Albert eats all he can eat while someone, somewhere,
agrees to go hungry.
Nobel
Peace Prize. Nice work if you can
get it.
It’s Just Not Cricket!
Summer. The best thing about summer is cricket. And the best thing about cricket is Test cricket.
Before
we move on to discussion of the best thing about Test cricket, let me just
pause here to reassure my lady readers that they’re welcome to continue
reading, even though it’s about cricket.
I know many of the fairer sex look to my columns primarily for grooming
advice, for recipes, for the latest news about Angelica Jolie, and for guidance
on what to buy your man for his birthday (the answer is power tools, by the
way; he can never have too many … in fact, if you really love him, you’ll
request power tools for your own birthday as well!) Anyway ladies, please pop open a cold one and read on with
my blessing.
OK,
the best thing about Test cricket is of course its absurdity. Five interminable days’ play, yet it’s
still perfectly likely to end in a draw.
The players slide and skid about on lush green grass, so of course the
ideal uniform is deemed to be pure white trousers and long-sleeved white
shirts. The ball is deliberately
designed to deteriorate during play.
And so is the playing surface itself; they actually pay expert
groundsmen to make it do so!
The
players occupy positions on the field apparently named by Monty Python; short
backward square leg, silly point, deep extra cover, and the ludicrously
inexplicable gully (remember, this is on a perfectly flat field). A thin man can nevertheless be wide,
while a stout fellow can be fine, and in fact often is.
Should
a batsman become unexpectedly lame during play, he is allowed to ask someone
else to do his running for him … just imagine if this wildly generous
concession was adopted by other sports; say rugby, or tennis, or horse racing!
Yes,
it’s an insane game, but it’s all glued together by certain conventions and
traditions, and of course that’s why I love it. It’s why any right-thinking bloke loves it. And a few ladies, too, although they
are strictly speaking considered to be honorary blokes for the duration of a Test. Want proof? Look at the Sydney Cricket Ground: there’s a stand at the SCG actually called The Ladies Stand
… and it’s full of blokes!
Anyway,
as I write, there’s a very controversial Test series in Australia. The touring Indians have come within a
whisker of abandoning the tour and going home in high dudgeon. Harsh words have been exchanged and at
times it’s been lawyers at five paces.
By the time you read this, it’ll be all over (one way or the other), but
whatever the outcome, it was never really about one bloke calling another one a
monkey, or another bloke calling someone else a bastard. It was about ethical behaviour … that
very glue that is the essence of cricket.
Now,
I must make a disclaimer here. I
am actually a fan of Australian cricket.
Two reasons: first, I’m an
Australian myself; and second it’s a lot easier than being a fan of NZ cricket,
which is of course an excruciating exercise in masochism, with or without Renee
Chignall.
The
nub of the current issue in Australia is one of sportsmanship, or the lack of
it. Consider the question of
“walking”. Some players, when they
know they are out, simply walk off.
Adam Gilchrist is a well-known example. But many players, in fact most players from every cricketing
country, do not walk; they wait for the umpire’s decision. A good many of them do this even when
they know they were out, and they justify it by saying that it makes up for all
the bad decisions that have gone against them. This is of course total nonsense and ethically
disgraceful. Like a shoplifter who
gets caught and then claims that he was just getting even for all the times
he’s been overcharged in the past.
If you’re uncertain, then by all means wait for the decision, but when
you know that you’ve nicked it, you’re out.
In
the SCG Test, two Australian batsmen nicked it, knew it, waited anyway, were
given not out, and went on to make big scores. And Australia subsequently won the Test. Alas.
So,
in my view it’s time to abandon this indefensible and unattractive “tradition”
of not walking when you know very well that you’re out, if for no other reason
than the fact that it doesn’t always stand up too well to the unflattering gaze
of the slow-motion replay.
Ahhhh. It’s a very sad summer when even the cricket
is just not cricket!
Unintended Consequences
One of my more eccentric hobbies is
spotting examples of unintended consequences; that’s an action or a law that
results in an unexpected and usually undesirable outcome. It happens in politics all the time. I
collect examples of these the way some people collect wines, and for much the
same reason – they nearly always improve with age, and they’re fun to share
with a few friends.
I
particularly enjoy perverse unintended consequences (PUC’s), which doesn’t mean
anything kinky; it just means that the consequence of an action is not merely unintended,
it’s the exact opposite of what was intended!
Consider
the USA’s Endangered Species Act, which requires landowners discovering an
endangered species habitat on their property to not only protect and preserve
that habitat at their own expense, but to not use that portion of land for any
other purpose! And the perverse
unintended consequence is, of course, that when any sensible farmer comes
across a rare Warbling Blue Tit’s nesting site right in the middle of his best
paddock, he has a quick look around and then kills the bloody things as fast as
he can.
Other
classic examples include rent control laws in large cities, which actually
reduce both the quality and availability of rental properties. Then there’s gun control laws, which in
several celebrated examples appear to have increased the rate of gun
crimes. And the tougher drink-driving
penalties introduced in the USA in the 1980’s … which didn’t actually reduce
drunken driving as hoped, but did increase the number of hit-and-run’s quite a
bit (it being now too expensive for drunks to stick around after an accident).
Another
favourite is the case of the ship Exxon Valdez. When it spilled 11 million gallons of oil in Prince William
Sound, Alaska, the Exxon company was ordered to spend US $2.2billion cleaning
up the mess. This included
laborious hand scrubbing of many thousands of rocks on the shoreline. The fun bit (and there always is a fun
side) was that the few sections of rocky shoreline that were not cleaned up
subsequently returned to their pristine natural state faster than the many
miles that had been hand scrubbed!
Something to do with the cleaning process having also killed vital
natural marine micro-organisms among the rocks, if I recall right. A brilliant PUC!
Closer
to home, there was Boutros Boutros-Clark’s “right to roam” nonsense. When She Who Must Be Obeyed started
raving about it a few years ago, I was one of a number of lake-edge homeowners
near Rotorua. Previously, although
we had exclusive riparian rights to the water’s edge (i.e. no Queen’s Chain),
we had all routinely permitted reasonable public access across our land. But when She’s deranged leftie
followers started to turn up and demand access as their ‘right’, we closed the
place down. When a government
suspends private property rights you are heading down a path that leads to
Zimbabwe.
And
just recently there have been two very interesting new examples of perverse
unintended consequences.
In
Newcastle, Australia, owners of a row of about six run-down Victorian era
terrace houses were slapped with a heritage order by the local authority,
preventing them from demolishing the houses, and from modifying or modernising
them in any meaningful way. All
that is permitted is strictly limited ‘period’ restoration, using authentic
original materials and fixtures.
This has of course actually made renovation so expensive as to be
impractical; the houses could not be sold or rented for enough to ever recover
the cost. So the owners now have
only one course of action – to allow the buildings to deteriorate until they
are beyond repair and then have to be demolished on safety grounds.
And
as a hilarious post-script to that story, the owners’ spokesman showed an
example of a local Federation era (c. 1900) house, hit with a similar heritage
order issued by the same heritage officer: no modifications allowed, only
certain colours of paint permitted, etc.
But this house was merely a very convincing modern replica, and is
actually only six years old!
And
finally, from just this past month, the OECD has been questioning the very
trendy shift towards using biofuels.
It appears that when all the indirect costs and processes are taken into
account (e.g. subsidised biofuel production results in less food production,
which increases food prices), ethanol and other biofuels now appear to be more
expensive and have a higher environmental impact than petroleum fuels! An OECD study now questions whether “biofuels offer a cure that is worse than the disease
they seek to heal.”
I’ll put these
new classic PUC’s down, in my Cellar of the Absurd. I’m sure they’ll seem even sillier after they’ve matured for
a few years.
How
You Hold Your Mouth
As I write this, it’s September. And once again we have watched the film
of the planes crashing into the World Trade Centre. It’s the fifth anniversary.
Regular
readers will know that I don’t stoop to political comment in this column
(except when goaded into it by the appalling Ms Boutros Boutros-Clark). But when I again see those planes crash
and those towers fall, I am even more aghast than I was five years ago at the
lunatic political and religious fanaticism involved. So it’s an anniversary that doesn’t fade away.
And
the hits keep coming: on my daily 30 minute bike ride I listen to a radio news
programme. This morning there were
a total of nine news items, and seven of them were reports of malevolent acts
of Islamic terrorism. Seven!
But
September is also the anniversary of my father’s death, and thoughts of him
lift my spirits even now.
As
is traditional with fathers, he had a couple of favourite sayings that he loved
to fit to any even vaguely appropriate occasion. And the Prince of his sayings, the one that he appeared to
believe nobody else had ever thought of, was: “You only get out of life what
you put into it!”
My
sisters and I heard this advice applied to activities ranging from sports to business to checking our tire pressures.
It was always accompanied by the hint of a smile; just the tiniest
flicker at the corner of his mouth.
And a wee whiff of challenge in his eyes too, as if daring us to
disagree. We’d groan and roll our
eyes, and pass secret glances of pity back-and-forth between us.
But
you know what? He was 100%
right. About sports, business,
tire pressures; the lot. Sometimes
I wish I could tell him that he was right all along, but it’s not really
necessary. He already knew. That’s why he told us so often.
He
had another favourite saying, and as far as I know he reserved it just for me,
and not my sisters. It was, I think,
a blokey kind of thing. I grew up
on a high country dry stock farm.
So my father was my teacher in all of the important life skills of my
childhood and adolescence. How to
ride a horse, fix a fence, start a reluctant tractor, shoot a rifle, skin a
rabbit, use a saw properly, dig a post-hole, and how to cut down a tree. And of course lots more.
Mostly
he’d teach by showing. He knew
that example beats a lecture hands down.
But he was also patient with my questions, and he never groaned or
rolled his eyes at me. What he did
do, whenever I’d ask a question that he found easier to answer with action
rather than words, was to just show me what to do while remarking that the real
secret to it was “how you hold your mouth.” That was his other favourite saying (I heard it for nearly
50 years).
I
know now that he meant there was a bit of a knack to whatever he was showing
me, and if I kept trying it would eventually just come naturally. But back then I think I took him
literally. I can remember seeing
him subdue an unruly coil of Number 8 fence wire with one hand while expertly
setting up the wire strainer with the other, and all the while my gaze was
flicking back and forth between the wire, the strainer and his mouth. Especially his mouth, because I just
could not see how he was holding it any different to when he castrated a lamb
or hung a gate or played tennis.
My
father never saw those planes bring down the towers. And I’m a little glad he didn’t, because he was a man
totally confident in what values were important in an honourable life. So he would have been simply lost for
words.
Brothers in Arms
OK, here’s my dirty little secret; I’m
actually Australian. I came to
live in New Zealand back in 1985, although these days I spend time in both
countries. But my passport still says
“Walzing Matilda”. And it always
will.
Now, bear in mind I’m making this
admission right after another Tri-Nations and Bledisloe Cup humiliation of the
Wallabies at the hands of the AB’s.
It’s not as if this is the cricket season, when I’d probably have
something to gloat about. So why am
I ‘fessing up now? It’s because
like Richard Prebble – I’ve Been Thinking.
I’ve been thinking about the sorry state
of the world, and about how New Zealand and Australia fit into it. Wars, terrorism and human misery seem
now to touch almost every corner of the world, except ours. They’ve been close; Bali, Timor, one or
two domestic crackpots each, but by and large we are so far reasonably well
insulated from the fanatics and lunatics who presently taunt the rest of the
western world.
My experience has been a little unusual;
thirty-odd years in one country and twenty in the other. So I’ve had the opportunity to look
pretty closely at what makes us very much the same, and what makes us a wee bit
different.
The first symbol of what we share is, of
course, ANZAC. No matter that
every veteran of Anzac Cove, Chunuk Bair and Lone Pine is now gone to join his
fallen comrades, we will be connected by that place forever. But the spirits of those Kiwis and
Aussies don’t march all mixed together, indistinguishable one from the other;
they march side-by-side. Their
slouch hats and lemon-squeezers are nearly the same, but not quite. They may look alike to everyone else,
but we can tell the difference.
And that’s how it is in nearly
everything. Indigenous population? Same in principle, but different in
detail. European settlers? Started out the same, but NZ had big
injections of Yugoslav, Dutch and Indians, while Australia had Italian, Greek
and Vietnamese, and so now we’re just a little bit different.
Politics? Close again, but still no cigar. Australia is brash, maybe even a little pushy, and keen to
play the modern regional power.
New Zealand is more insular, more politically-correct, and apparently
harbouring a secret longing for it to stay 1965 forever. Want some evidence of this divergence
of national political purpose? Little
Johnny Howard and Ms Boutros Boutros-Clark: Fosters versus Chardonnay.
What about sport? Surely we’re as one on the field? Well, nearly. Netball, cricket; these are much the same in both countries. We’re both pretty good at them, and
share the honours between us, while we can often beat anyone else in the world. But those are, if not actually
second-level sports, at least not in the absolute front rank. The truly defining sport of New Zealand
is, of course, rugby. But in
Australia, rugby is only a comparatively minor sport (it’s the fourth
most-popular football code). And
the defining sport in Australia is Aussie Rules, a game most Kiwis are only
vaguely aware of and couldn’t care less about. So once again we have a lot of common ground, but at the
very heart of our sporting interests we differ.
The people? It’s unwise to generalise, but of course I will do so
anyway. I would say that New
Zealanders are a little more friendly and welcoming to strangers. I think it may be something to do with
the fact that visitors are often more visible in New Zealand, so Kiwis are more
aware of their importance to the country.
And so more accommodating of their eccentricities. Australians, on the other hand, can’t
really see much point in outsiders; can’t surf, can’t drive, can’t understand a
bloody thing they say. And here’s
an interesting manifestation of this difference; Australians are more
nationalistic when they’re at home, while New Zealanders are more nationalistic
when they are abroad. I don’t know
what that means.
Second Time Around
If you are a regular reader (and you may
as well admit to it; I know who both of my regular readers are, and where they
live), you’ll perhaps be sitting back with a cuppa at this moment and wondering
what that fool has written about in this issue.
I’m not taking my usual pot-shot at
Boutros Boutros-Clark, our future UN Secretary-General. Nor am I lampooning Earth-Mother
Jeanette (described by Jim Hopkins as the Green Leader of the Joint Party). And I’m sure you’re sick of me
gibbering on about the climate change industry, and all the hand-wringing
phonies making a buck out of that.
So this issue I thought I’d do something different. It’s a story and, in the spirit of the
self-absorbed baby boom generation of which I am a member, it’s all about
me. And I warn you now, it has no
point to it … unless something occurs to me before I get to the end of this
page, there is no punch line.
About 10 years ago I decided to satisfy
an unfulfilled childhood ambition and learn to fly (in a plane, not like a
seagull). I learned at Ardmore,
near Auckland. After a few lessons
involving lurching about under the guidance of a deceptively calm instructor,
he (the instructor) interrupted a routine session of circuits with a request to
taxi over to the hangar after the next landing. I assumed he’d been caught short, but when we got there he
jumped out and said, “Go and do a couple more circuits and meet me back
here.” Then he walked away,
without even a second glance. I
was alone. Actually, solo is the
technical term. There seemed no
option, so I did as he asked, and was amazed to find that it was all too
easy. After a few immaculate
circuits I taxied over to the hangar, switched off, and looked in patronising
fashion at a couple of new students on the verandah as I sauntered into the
flight office; an intrepid solo pilot!
I could hardly wait for the next lesson,
at which the instructor made one apparently disinterested circuit as my
passenger before leaving for some more pressing engagement. And there I was, alone, and going round
and round the airfield. Land,
accelerate, take-off, couple of turns, land, accelerate, take-off, turns; the
excitement never stopped! But I
had, in my excitement, failed to notice a massive blue-black storm cloud
steadily approaching from the direction of the Tasman. And by the time I did see it, it was
less than fifteen minutes away. No
problem, I concluded; a circuit takes under ten minutes – I’ll be on the ground
before it gets here.
I did, however, fly a little faster than
normal, which carried me further from the airfield on the downwind leg. So when I did finally turn back towards
the runway, some cheeky bugger arriving from the north took the opportunity to
enter the circuit ahead of me (I assumed he had permission, but in my anxiety I
hadn’t heard it). Now, at my
higher speed, I found myself getting rather too close to him as we both
approached the runway, so the tower came up on the radio and sent me around
(i.e. do another circuit and try again).
This was not welcome news. The fifteen minutes had now become
about seven. I gave the little
Cessna full power and rocketed around the circuit as fast and as close as I
dared. But when I turned back to
the airfield, I could barely see it through the heavy rain and the gloom. And I was way too high and way too fast;
not the ideal combination for the situation. Sweat literally sprang from my every pore and I wondered if
I, too, was about to be caught short.
As you may have guessed, I landed. I won’t say safely, but I will claim
successfully. The rain was
intense, and I was very pleased that the hopeless visibility had obscured the
unconventional nature of my landing from both instructor and tower.
Afterwards someone from the tower came to
our hangar to see me. He
apologised for sending me around, saying had he known I was a student he would
never have done so. It seems that
my years in the military had given me such a familiarity with radio that I had
sounded terribly competent and experienced. So he’d sent me round, assuming I could handle it. Nothing could have been further from
the truth … I was a sheep in wolf’s clothing.
Now, the punch line. I haven’t really thought of one, except
this: they say that the first step
is the hardest, but isn’t it odd that some things are actually more difficult
the second time around?
Where's the Good
Keen Man?
What’s gone wrong with Kiwi blokes? In fact, where are all the Kiwi
blokes? All our top blokes at the
moment are actually women.
The Prime Minister, the Governor General,
the parliamentary Speaker, our top Supreme Court Judge: they’re all women. Even our highest paid business
executive is a woman. And so is
the current holder of the Halberg Sports Award.
Now I have nothing against women. In fact I like ‘em. Well, I don’t actually like any of the
ones I’ve referred to in the paragraph above (except of course for Sarah Ulmer
… she is very pleasant). But as a
general statement I think most women are OK. If they could just get out of a car in less than five
minutes they’d suit me better, but that infuriating inability is usually
balanced by one or two more appealing qualities.
And women seem to be doing all these top
jobs at least as well as any of their male predecessors. Which, I hasten to add, in the case of
politics is really no recommendation at all. Even our revered leader, Mizz H Boutros Boutros-Clark, a
person who has never uttered a single remark that I could agree with, is an
effective politician. She may be
ghastly and terrifying, but I must admit she is quite good at it.
So I cannot claim that these top jobs,
once traditionally the territory of blokes, are in any way positions for which their
female incumbents are unqualified.
They are qualified. Only
too well qualified, in a couple of cases.
And I am of course disregarding the
several more obviously extremist incursions into the male domain that have
occurred over recent years. For
example, there are now at least three female sports reporters on TV and
radio. And I recently heard talk
of a woman rugby referee! Clearly,
this nonsense is just part of some sort of mad feminist plot designed to
distract we blokes when we are at our most vulnerable (i.e. when we’re watching
sport, or listening to people talk about sport, or pretty much any other time,
really). But it won’t work,
because it’s too absurd. None of
us wants to hear some fluffy little blonde telling us about the state of Carlos
Spencer’s groin, for example. We
expect all groin reports to come from a source who’s got one, or at least had
one in the past.
Anyway, this women-on-top stuff has gone
too far. Not because we have too
many women in top positions, but because we seem to have too few blokes in any
position at all except prone on the couch. Are blokes too absorbed with rugby to be bothered with
anything else? Have we been turned
into zombies, shuffling from TV set to Bunnings Warehouse to the towrope sale
at SuperCheap?
Guys, it’s time we pulled our fingers
out. We need to get a few credible
blokes somewhere near the top of something. The last time NZ had any serious
high flyers who also stood up while in the bathroom, they ended up losing the
America’s Cup, then the IRD expressed interest in their Rarotonga activities
and they had to hurriedly reinvent themselves as foreigners. So the ball’s in our court, lads. Either we get some runs on the board
soon for the testosterone team, or the blokes of NZ are looking at suffering a
humiliating down trou. And the
real humiliation is that we may find we have nothing to show for it.
Sorry
about the weather.
Endless rain, disastrous floods, freezing
blizzards with snow to sea level, land slips, avalanches, road closures; it’s
been about as bad as it can get lately.
And I think we are owed an apology. The Prime Minister and her government
have regularly felt obliged to formally apologise for things they had no control
over.
There was the apology to the
Samoans for their colonialist exploitation. Then there was the apology for the systematic maltreatment
of 19th century Chinese immigrants. And don’t forget the apology for the Crown’s disgracefully
rough handling of gays and lesbians (some of whom will have liked it, but
that’s not the point). And most
recently the apology for appalling treatment of Maori, although that apology
does have some merit; the current government has many times forced Maori
cultural groups to huddle on freezing airport runways with no more protection
than a grass skirt, awaiting the arrival of some foreign nabob or another. That is indeed abuse, it must be
admitted, but it’s really no worse than the torture such groups inflict on the
poor bugger as soon as he steps off the plane.
One apology that’s been inexcusably
overlooked, in my view, is to the descendants of the Scottish and Irish so
cynically used against their will by the Crown to cheaply establish European
settlement of New Zealand. My own
Scottish forebears arrived in the Antipodes in chains (a fact that many readers
may have already suspected). So
where is our apology? The Prime
Minister should not forget that we tens of thousands of disenfranchised Jocks
and Micks know where all the polling booths are. And all the bars, of course.
I suspect that there will be no apology
either, if the Prime Minister goes ahead with her current plan to force rural
landowners to grant free access for what she calls our “increasingly urban society”
to all waterways via rural land.
Given the state of the rural environment lately, she’d be doing them a
big favour if she encouraged her fellow urban adventurers to experience the
great outdoors somewhere closer to home.
Her own backyard, for example.
Anyway, let’s get back to the
weather. It’s bloody awful. Relentless, inconvenient,
uncomfortable, and in many cases financially and emotionally devastating. So I reckon we are all owed an
apology. Just something simple,
like “Sorry about the weather”.
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