Keith Johnson Wellington NZ

Playtime

2012-01-14T23:46:00.000-08:00

Smile - Surfs Up!

2012-01-11T23:43:00.000-08:00

Rolling Skies - Sweet Country

2012-01-06T22:29:00.000-08:00

[by David Frampton]

Ralph Hotere - kaumatua tā whakaahua

2011-12-31T15:12:00.000-08:00

HONOUR - MANA

80 year old, Northland born - Port Chalmers, Dunedin resident, Ralph Hotere has been appointed to the Order of New Zealand in the New Year’s Honours List for services to his country as an artist. The Order of New Zealand is the country’s highest honour and it is restricted to just 20 living members.

Ralph was the first artist of Maori descent to be given a place in the national canon by European New Zealanders [1968: ‘New Zealand Art: Painting 1950-1967’ by Mark Young]. His inclusion amongst the five hundred artists represented by full-page colour plates in ‘The 20th-Century Art Book’, published in 1996 by Phaidon Press confirmed his place as a major force in contemporary painting worldwide.

RAIN

'Rain' (1979) - see above - comprises three five-metre high banners that incorporate the poem ‘Rain’ by the Hotere’s long-time friend the late Hone Tuwhare:

I can hear you
making small holes
in the silence
rain

If I were deaf
the pores of my skin
would open to you
and shut

And I
should know you
by the lick of you
if I were blind

the something
special smell of you
when the sun cakes
the ground

the steady
drum-roll sound
you make
when the wind drops

But if I
should not hear
smell or feel or see
you

you would still
define me
disperse me
wash over me
rain

[Hone Tuwhare 1922-2008]

SANGRO LITANY

In 1962 Ralph made a pilgrimage to visit the grave of his brother Jack at the Sangro River War Cemetery in Italy. Jack was killed in December 1943, four days before Xmas, by retreating German forces which were being harried by New Zealand’s Maori Battalion. Ralph copied the ages of Jack’s fallen warrior comrades and later incorporated them in a painting that has an ancient Maori chant at its base calling them home.

WHITE DRIP

In 2003 Paul Holmes, who is one of the intellectual and ethical minnows who swim in the shallows of NZ public life, described the then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (from Ghana) as a ‘Cheeky Darkie’. Hotere responded by creating a series of artworks including ‘White Drip to Mister Paul Holmes’.

Happy New Year - ngā mihi o te tau hou

2011-12-31T03:13:00.000-08:00

[Painting by NZ Artist Colin McCahon (1919 - 1987)]

Hey New Zealand - How about This?

2011-12-29T08:51:00.000-08:00

‘NORMAL PEOPLE’ BEGIN LIFE AS WESTMINSTER INTERNS

By Victoria King Political reporter, BBC News

Representative

If you're poor, working class or lacking a proverbial leg-up, you'll never get into politics. Or so the theory goes.

But Luke Shaw-Harvey, James Wallace and Matthew Baird disagree - they're among a new batch of hopefuls several weeks in to their new lives as Westminster interns.

Luke, by his own admission, has "no money"; James didn't go to university and trained as a joiner instead; and Matthew admits his parents couldn't afford to fund the usual route to power - the dreaded unpaid internship.

All three are in their early 20s, which isn't particularly unusual for an intern, but they're joined, among others, by a 54-year-old former shop steward and a 53-year-old football coach.

As James puts it: "MPs are supposed to represent their constituents but how can they represent them when they don't really know where they've come from or what it's really like in the world?"

"I think it's important to have normal working class people who've actually been out, had different jobs and not just been to university and gone straight into politics. "

'Out of reach'

Each of the 10 interns is working with an MP. 22-year-old James pulled the longest straw, power-wise, and is now a part of Ed Miliband's team.

Before getting onto the Speaker's Parliamentary Placements scheme, he was a joiner but had been unemployed for nine months.

"I've always been interested in politics but because I didn't go to university I always thought it was out of my reach," he says.

At first I thought, am I a bit too old for it?”

Alan Kean is a 54-year-old intern. Only a few weeks into working for Esther McVey MP, 23-year-old Luke, from Stoke, has already begun his own project - inspired by his experience of being out of work.

"Being unemployed is depressing, we can't change that, but we can maybe change the way we see the Job Centre," he argues.

"At the moment when you go into the Job Centre, you come back out really demotivated. I'd lost my way and it should have helped me, but I absolutely hated going in there and it shouldn't be like that.

"I think we've got to change the perception of the Job Centre. I want to make it a career hub, not just the place where you get your benefit."

He adds: "It's going to be hard work but I'm so up for it. My MP is PPS to [Employment Minister] Chris Grayling and she says she'll have a meeting about it when I've finished my report."

'Too old'

Flying the flag for the older generation are 54-year-old Alan Kean, from Rochdale, and 53-year-old Derek Sewell, from London.

Alan says: "I was brought up in a mining village in the Midlands. I've done various jobs, usually manual , low clerical, but I've been a shop steward in various jobs and that's where my political interest comes from.

"I'd tried unsuccessfully to get unpaid work in Parliament before, so this seemed an ideal thing to apply for - although I must admit at first I thought, am I a bit too old for it?"

As well as all the factors blocking those from non-traditional backgrounds from entering politics, it's certainly true that some of those with the talent might be put off by what they see.

"I think there's a real problem with the perception of politics and Westminster," Alan says. "You only tend to see the worst part, i.e. prime minister's questions - everybody at each other's throat - or when things go wrong.

"But when you're here you see there's an awful lot of hard work going on - this place needs to project that more to the public."

The Speaker's scheme was set up by Labour MP Hazel Blears. She says she believes most people on it will naturally be of a Labour stripe because "they come form relatively poor backgrounds, they're people who don't have connections".

As she says this, Luke and Matthew pipe up to disagree. Football coach Derek says he's actually working for a Conservative, Amber Rudd, and despite being a Labour man is enjoying the chance to hear an alternative view.

Salary and accommodation

Matthew, who's 22 and from Portadown, has taken the more traditional route, coming straight from a politics degree at Aberdeen University.

"My issue was that my family simply couldn't afford to send me on an unpaid internship. I had loads of friends from London who'd done them, but because I wasn't from London it was always just out of reach.

"This effectively threw me a lifeline."

The interns are being paid a pro-rata salary of £17,500 and those who don't live in London are getting a hand, courtesy of the Social Mobility Foundation and Broxbourne Housing Association, with cheap accommodation.

Matthew admits, with a slightly sheepish grin, his ambition is to be prime minister one day, but at the moment his hands are full with constituency matters - immigration, policing - and writing Parliamentary questions.

Despite the hew and cry about unpaid internships in recent months, David Cameron has said he isn't in favour of requiring all placements to be paid - on the grounds that it would inevitably lead to a reduction in the number of opportunities available.

The PM has also said he's given an internship to a neighbour and feels some solidarity with parents who'll bend over backwards to give their kids an advantage.

Matthew tries to sound a similar note of diplomacy: "I think you need a healthy balance, I think it's important not crucify those people who can get a leg-up. It should be, like, 50/50...

But Luke steps in: "More like 90/10 to us because we're the majority.

"Most of us haven't got the ability to have a leg-up so we should be the majority.

I'm not saying you should force it, but this is a start. Why shouldn't it be a start, everything starts from somewhere."

'Many Years have passed and many things have happened' - and I'm not kidding!

2011-12-27T12:37:00.000-08:00

OUR ISLAND STORY - THE ANTIPODES

[by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall (1905) – Extracts]

For correctives and perspectives see, for example, my post of 8 November, 2010: ‘The Nature of History and the Price of Beer'.

CHAPTER CVIII: QUEEN VICTORIA — UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS

"Let no one think much of a trifling expense;
Who knows what may happen a hundred years hence?
The loss of America what can repay?
New colonies seek for in Botany Bay."

In the days of King George III there was a great sailor called Captain Cook. He made many voyages into unknown seas and discovered new lands. Among these lands were the islands of Australia and New Zealand.

It was in April 1770 A.D. that Captain Cook first landed in Australia, in a bay which he called Botany Bay, because there were so many plants of all kinds there. At that time the island was inhabited only by wild, black savages, and Captain Cook took possession of the whole eastern coast in the name of King George, calling it New South Wales.

While America was a British colony, wicked people, instead of being sent to prison for punishment, as they are now, were sent to work on the cotton plantations or farms there. After America was lost, convicts, as these wicked people are called, could no longer be sent there, and British statesmen began to look round for some other country to which they could be sent.

Then it was that Australia was thought of. It was decided to form a convict colony there. It was hoped that free people would go too, and that soon Australia would become as great a colony as America had been.

So there sailed out from England a little fleet of ships, carrying Captain Philip as the Governor of the new colony, and nearly a thousand people, of whom more than seven hundred were prisoners; the rest were officers and marines to guard the prisoners. They took with them food and clothes enough to last two years, also tools for building houses, and ploughs and everything needed for farm work.

As the ships passed the Cape of Good Hope, they stopped there to take in more food, and also animals with which to stock the farms which the British hoped to make in Australia. They took so many animals on board that the ships looked more like Noah's arks than anything else.

When the ships reached Australia, Captain Philip landed, a flagstaff was planted, and soon the Union Jack floated out to the sound of British cheers. The health of the King was drunk, and then Captain Philip made a speech to the convicts. He told them that now, in this new country, they had another chance to forget their wicked ways, and to become again good British subjects.

It was the first speech which had ever been made in the English language in that far land, and, when he had finished, the silence of the lonely shore was again broken by the sound of British cheers. So the town of Sydney was founded.

Governor Philip and his strange company of rough, bad men soon set to work. Everything had to be done. Trees had to be felled, and stones quarried and broken for the building of houses, and the making of roads and harbours. There was so much to do that little time was left for farm work, and the settlers in this new colony nearly starved. It seemed as if the people at home had forgotten them, for the food which they had promised to send never came.

Day by day eager eyes looked out vainly over the blue sea, straining for the sight of a white sail. But no ship came. Prisoners and warders alike grew gaunt and pale. Nearly all their food was gone. The Governor even gave up some sacks of flour which were his own. "I do not wish," he said, "to have anything which others cannot have. If any convict complains, he may come and see that at Government House we are no better off than he is."

Still no help came. Little work could be done by men who were starving, and the weary days dragged slowly past for the handful of white people who, utterly cut off from all others, were ignorant of what was happening in the great world, which lay beyond the blue waves.

But even in the darkest hour, they never forgot that they were Britons. "Our distress did not make us forget that this was the birthday of our beloved King," wrote one. "In the morning flags were displayed, and at noon three volleys of musketry were fired as an acknowledgment that we were Britons, who, however distant and distressed, revered their King, and loved their country."

At last, after three years, a sail was seen. Oh, what joy! Help at last, and news at last from home! But alas! the new ship brought little food, and many more convicts. It brought, however, the assurance that the little colony was not forgotten. Other ships had been sent with food, but they had been wrecked on the way.

A fortnight later another ship arrived, then another and another. The colony was saved for the time at least, although famine threatened them again more than once. At one time things were so bad that when any one was asked to dine at Government House, he was requested to bring his own bread with him.

In a few years, free settlers began to come to Australia. They were farmers, and soon corn was grown in such quantities that the colony was freed from all fear of famine. Later still, a gentleman brought wool-bearing sheep to Australia, that is, sheep which have fine fleeces, and now the rearing of sheep for their wool is one of the chief industries of Australia.

As the free settlers increased in number, they objected to having convicts sent among them, for, because of these wild, bad men, the colony began to have an evil name.

When gold was discovered in Australia, many more people flocked there. Then Queen Victoria and her government decided at last that it was not a good thing to send convicts to the colonies, and so in 1867 A.D. the last convict ship set out for Australia. After that the British shut up those who did wrong in strong prisons at home.

Australia has grown quickly into a great and wealthy country. I cannot tell you the history of it here, but although it is now called the Commonwealth of Australia, and has a Parliament of its own, it is still part of the Empire of Greater Britain.

Australia lies quite at the other side of the world from Britain, and when it is day in the one it is night in the other. And when Australians look up to the sky at night they see the stars of the Southern Cross, instead of the Pole Star and the Plough which the British see.

Yet the people in the two islands are friends and brothers, and ties of love draw them together across the ocean waves.

CHAPTER CIX: QUEEN VICTORIA — FROM CANNIBAL TO CHRISTIAN

In 1769 A.D., Captain Cook landed in North Island, New Zealand. He cut the name of his ship upon a tree, planted the British flag, and claimed the land in the name of King George III. Then he sailed all round the island, proving to himself and his officers that it was indeed an island. In January of the following year, he landed in South Island, again hoisted the Union Jack, and again claimed the land, and all the lands near in the name of King George.

For many years no white people settled in New Zealand, for it was peopled by a wild and warlike race of savages called Maoris. These Maoris were cannibals, that is, people who eat human beings. After a battle, those who were killed would be roasted and eaten by the victors.

The Maoris fought among themselves, and they fought with the white traders who came from time to time to their shores. Yet although they were cannibals, the Maoris were not nearly such a low kind of savage as the Australian, and a missionary called Marsden, hearing about these islands and their people, made up his mind to teach them to be Christian.

Mr. Marsden was working among the convicts in Australia, and one day he set sail from there, and landed in New Zealand. For the price of twelve axes, he bought two hundred acres of land from one of the Maori chiefs, and there he founded a missionary settlement. Mr. Marsden himself could not stay, for his work was in Australia, but he left two men behind him who taught the natives, and he often came back to the islands and was greatly loved by the Maoris.

For many years Britain did not acknowledge New Zealand as a colony. Dreadful deeds were done there, but when the British Government was asked to put a stop to them, the answer was that the islands were not within His Majesty's dominions. Yet at other times the Government acted as if the islands were part of the Empire.

It was only very gradually that white people went to live in New Zealand. The first colonists who came did not stay long, for the dreadful customs of the savage Maoris frightened them away again. That was not to be wondered at, for, in spite of all the missionaries could do, many of the Maoris remained cannibals.

When Queen Victoria came to the throne there were only about two thousand white people in all the islands. But, as many of these were British, it was felt at last that it was the duty of the British to do something to protect their colonists against the Maoris, and also to protect the Maoris from being cheated and ill-treated by bad white people, who went there to steal the land from the native chiefs.

So a governor was sent out from Britain who was told to make a treaty with these native chiefs. This treaty was signed at a place called Waitangi, in North Island.

The Governor, with all the principal white people, sat upon a platform which had been set up in an open space near the town. Round them sat the Maori chiefs, and behind them stood all the rest of the white people. Beyond gleamed the white of the British tents, gay with flags, which showed brightly against the background of waving green trees.

When all were gathered, the Governor spoke to the people, and, as he could not speak the Maori language, one of the missionaries translated his words to them. He told them how the great White Queen in an island far away was anxious that they should be happy and at peace. And because so many of the great White Queen's own subjects had come to live in these islands of New Zealand, she felt that she must send a governor to rule them and to see justice done between them and the Maoris.

The great White Queen asked the Maori chiefs to acknowledge her as over-lord, promising that if they did so she would protect them, their families, their people, and their goods, as she protected all her other subjects and their possessions.

Then the Maori chiefs spoke. Some of them did not want to sign the treaty. "Send the man away," said one, springing up and pointing to the Governor, "do not sign the paper. If you do you will become slaves, you will be made to break stones upon the roads. Your lands will be taken away from you, and you will no longer be chiefs."

Another chief then rose. He spoke so calmly and so well, that all the white people were quite astonished. "You will be our father," he said turning to the Governor, "you must not allow us to become slaves. You will keep all our old customs, you will not let our land be taken from us."

This chief was a very great man, very mighty in battle, so the others listened to him, and, after more talking, it was agreed that they should think about it [508] for a day, before signing the treaty. Then with cheers from both the natives and the white people, the meeting was ended.

Next day, with firing of guns and great ceremony, the treaty was signed. The great chief who had spoken in favour of the treaty signed his name as the missionaries had taught him to do, but the others made marks like the marks called tattooing with which their bodies were covered.

A few months later the chiefs of South Island also signed the treaty, and the Union Jack was hoisted amid the thunder of guns and the cheers of the people. So New Zealand became an acknowledged British colony, nearly one hundred years after it was discovered and claimed by Cook.

Many years have passed since the signing of this treaty, and many things have happened of which I cannot tell you here. New Zealand has become an important part of the British Empire. Instead of two thousand white people there are now about seven hundred thousand in the islands.

It is a self-governing colony and, like Australia, has a Parliament of its own, and in New Zealand the women help to choose the members for Parliament, just as the men do.

NOTES

UK Prime Minister David Cameron chose Our Island Story when asked to select his favourite childhood book in October 2010:

"When I was younger, I particularly enjoyed 'Our Island Story' by Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall [...] It is written in a way that really captured my imagination and which nurtured my interest in the history of our great nation."

I was also previously unaware that Queen Victoria had been a cannibal - but that's the thing about history, it constantly unfolds.

[Extracts courtesy the Baldwin Project]

Poor Standings and Ratings for Wests

2011-12-26T13:57:00.000-08:00

BRAZILIAN ECONOMY OVERTAKES UK’s SAYS CEBR

[BBC, 26 December 2011]

Well no surprise there. As I commented back on the 15th December 2009 and again on 7 September 2011 in an article about Don Brash:

‘Stanley Fisher (The New Global Economic Geography) and Angus Maddison (extensive work for the OECD) present some interesting statistics about the reddening sun, setting on the heyday of the West.

‘In 1900, the West (Western Europe, USA and ‘Western Offshoots’, i.e. Australia, New Zealand and Canada) held around 51.8 percent of World GDP. By 1950, this had risen to 56.8 percent but it fell to 46.8 percent in 1990 and 44.9 percent in 2001. It is estimated that it will have fallen to 33.2 percent by 2030.’

The CEBR forecasts the following standings for the Premier League in 2020:

1. USA – but losing relatively steeply
2. China – still No2 from 2011 but gaining
3. Japan – still No 3 but ailing
4. Russia – up from No 9 in 2011
5. India – up from No 10 in 2011
6. Brazil – steady 2011-2020 (having overtaken the UK this year)
7. Germany – down from No 4 in 2011
8. UK – down from No 7 in 2011 but having overtaken France
9. France – down from No 5 in 2011
10. Italy – down from No 8 in 2011.

We don’t have the figures for Australia and New Zealand bu I can assure you that they won’t look good.

In 2005 New Zealand was 58th in terms of GDP but fell to 62nd in 2010, having been passed by Slovakia – but at least it retained its position one ahead of Iraq. In 2005, Australia was 16th but it had fallen to 17th by 2010, still chasing Indonesia but overtaken by Turkey.

An Ageing West melting in the dawn, currency confetti flowing down -
Someone left the cake out in the rain,
I don't think we can save it, `cause it took so long to bake it,
And we'll never have that recipe again, oh no!

There will be another song for us, but we won’t sing it.
There will be another dream for us, someone else will bring it.
And we will pass the cup while it is warm,
Choking back our crumbs in turning from the sun.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

2011-12-23T12:36:00.001-08:00

Cousin Carly from Queensland

2011-12-21T11:28:00.000-08:00

Early Dawn over Island Bay

2011-12-21T10:59:00.000-08:00

'And again I see the long pouring headland,
And smoking coast with the sea high on the rocks,
The gulls flung from the sea, the dark wooded hills
Swarming with mist, and mist low on the sea'.

[from 'The Return' by NZ Poet, Alistair Te Ariki Campbell]

Small hobbits well pursued betimes

2011-12-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

MUM’S THE WORD AS HOBBIT FILMING STARTS (IN NZ)

[by Ellie Constantine, Otago Daily Times, 15 Nov 2011]

One of the biggest things to happen in the Strath Taieri and Maniototo in recent years has tongues wagging - but not to those outside the patch. Six helicopters, a giant marquee, security guards and dozens of trailers have been parked in a paddock east of Hyde for the past four days.

But ask the locals why the trailers are there, and most reply "Can't say" or "Don't know". However, use the words "hobbit", "film set" and "Sir Peter Jackson", and sly, knowing smiles cross their faces.

Filming for Sir Peter's two-part Hobbit film series started in Wellington in March and, while other locations have been closely guarded, they include areas around the Strath Taieri and Queenstown.

Otago Central Hotel owner Ngaire Sutherland, of Hyde, said she was "sworn to secrecy" about the filming, but some of those involved were staying at her establishment.

"We do have some people staying here, but we don't have the top brass. We've still got more cyclists than hobbits," she said.

Cast and crew were scattered "all round the place" providing a "boost for the area in total".

"We are bending over backwards to help them, but we don't get into much conversation because they are working ... they are doing some long hours."

Strath Taieri Community Board chairman Barry Williams said, while the filming was meant to be a secret, it was "pretty well known [as] they are all over the show".

A "base camp" had been set up on private land near Hyde, with crew arriving in the area from last Thursday. Security was tight around the camp with signs requesting "All Crew MUST wear 3 Foot 7 ID Tags at ALL times".

Filming had been delayed due to rain and the cast and crew were expected to be leaving today.

Middlemarch business owner Dave Thompson said the whole thing had been "quite amazing", but people could not say anything about it because of a confidentiality agreement. When asked if a contract had been signed, or it was a verbal agreement, he said, "Can't say."

He was also not sure when people would be able to start talking about the filming.

Northern Irish actor James Nesbitt, who plays dwarf Bofur in the films, is staying in Naseby. Kirsty Sloan, of the Royal Hotel, said he was the "biggest name" staying in the town. "We had a lot of them eating and drinking with us," she said.

She did not know where other stars, such as Martin Freeman, who plays Bilbo Baggins, and director Sir Peter were staying.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is scheduled for release on December 14, 2012 and its premiere will be staged here in Wellington.

The second film, The Hobbit: There and Back Again, is due to be released on December 13, 2013.

Revolutionary Woman

2011-12-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

FROM RED SHOES TO THE POPPY FLOWER

As Aliaa El-Mahdy also comments in her CNN interview, soldiers from the Egyptian Army have performed impromptu virginity tests on more than a dozen girls arrested in Tahrir Square.

She asks that: ‘those men in the military who conducted these tests should be punished for allowing this to happen without the consent of the girls in the first place. Instead, the girls walk around feeling the shame and most of them are forced to remain silent’.

But anyone who knows Egypt also knows that violence against women is not just about the Ancien Regime and its lackeys – it is an endemic feature of a society in which gender decencies and tenderness outside clan, class and authority boundaries are always on a knife-edge.

French journalist Caroline Sinz, American journalist Mona El-Tawahy, and South African journalist Lara Logan have all been victims while covering recent political events. In a CNN video posted on Youtube, Lara has described her utterly horrific near-death experience at the hands of 'protesters' on February 11th in Tahrir Square – it is worth watching.

Now the police beating of the ‘girl in the blue bra’ has become new rallying call for Egyptian protesters.

Hillary Clinton has it right:

“This systematic degradation of Egyptian women dishonours the revolution, disgraces the state and its uniform and is not worthy of a great people”.

“Recent events in Egypt have been particularly shocking. Women are being beaten and humiliated in the same streets where they risked their lives for the revolution only a few short months ago”.

TALL POPPIES HAVE NO STANDING

[Extract from ‘The Death of His Excellency - the Ex-Minister’ by Nawal El Saadawi, Granta 117, 19 August 2011]

'My father was a womanizing, drinking, gambling man. But he was a god in your eyes, wasn’t he? And you regarded me, your son, as the little cub who would eventually grow up to be a lion like his father.

'I did become a lion, Mother. I was a tyrant both at home and at work. The more obedient and submissive my subordinates were the more I liked and admired myself. Throughout my life, no woman or man under my authority ever opposed me.

'Except for one young woman who came into my office a month or two before the start of the revolution.

'She threw me completely off balance. This was neither because she disagreed with me, nor because she was an unemployed woman of twenty who dared speak her mind to His Excellency, the Minister.

'Much less was it because as a female she dared speak to a man or because she neglected to use my rightful title. No, she took me by surprise simply because she looked me straight in the eye, steadily and fearlessly. A decent man wouldn’t dare gaze so hard at you, let alone a woman.

'I was truly intrigued and became furious not so much at her as at myself. Anger took hold of me, so I issued a summons for her the following day. I left her standing in front of me as I sat at my desk, leaning back and chuckling over the phone line.

'I wanted to make her feel worthless. I joked and laughed away but the young woman wasn’t riled. She simply walked around the office as though I didn’t exist, as much at ease as though she were in her own home.

'She gazed at the paintings on the wall, stopped at one and said sarcastically, "The poppy flower?"

'I tried to scrutinize her features before she turned towards me, her piercing gaze boring through my skull. It was as if I were sitting there completely naked.

'Remembering my daughter’s reaction to my photo, and her expression, my anger only grew. I lost my gentleman’s manners. Waving my hand, I said loudly to her, "Who are you? No matter who you are, you are no more than a woman. Your place is in bed beneath a man."

'A normal woman would have died of shame upon hearing these words. But she didn’t blush. Nor did she bat an eyelid.

'My real tragedy lies not in losing my seat in government. My real tragedy lies in how I lost it.

'On that dreadful morning, I opened the paper but couldn’t find my name in the newly appointed Cabinet. I was suddenly a reject, as though I’d been wiped off the registers, as though I no longer had a name. The phone that used to ring day and night suddenly became mute. I was dropped by all.

'I realized that the constant ringing of the phone, though a horrible nuisance then, hadn’t really disturbed me at all. I was as addicted to it as I was to alcohol, women, power and wealth. Aren’t all these the God-given pleasures granted to us as men? I sought all God’s pleasures relentlessly, never getting my fill, even when I had forty palaces and forty women.

'Yes, Mother, I wasted God’s gifts for a trivial reason. On that miserable, fateful day, I sat at a Cabinet meeting presided over by the Great Man and I was certain that I was sitting in that chair, but I was equally certain that it wasn’t me sitting there.

'I was incapable of focusing my attention. I wanted to know how I could be sitting as I have always done while things felt quite different. I kept wondering whether it was me sitting or somebody else.

'Which one of these two people was really me? And then I realized that the cause of my dilemma was this young revolutionary woman. Ever since I laid eyes on her, I have been unable to stop thinking of her.

'She wasn’t even pretty, yet she managed to do the extraordinary: she eroded all the beliefs that we’ve upheld throughout our lives.'

[For related references and commentaries on the proper role of Women in Development and Society, see http://worldpulse.com]

No harmony unless women can dance the dream

2011-12-20T02:21:00.000-08:00

EURO CRISIS AS A GENDER EQUALITY CRISIS

It is a salutary fact on which men must constantly reflect that female equality is the best marker of a successful society.

I was struck again by this relationship in meditating on the ongoing economic crisis in Europe. Consider the map above. This classifies Europe’s regions by their employment and gender dimensions.

The European Union’s Lisbon Strategy set specific targets for employment by 2010:

• an overall employment rate over 70%,
• a female employment rate over 60%
• an employment rate of over 50% among old workers [i.e. those aged 55-64].

In 2008, one third of the European regions had reached the overall goal of 70% employment, 57% the female employment goal and 45% the employment goal for older workers.

The most balanced situation (in red) can be found in the Nordic Countries, in some city regions in Northern Germany and in the Scottish highlands, where the gender differences are only marginal.

The highest differences between male and female employment rates (in light blue) can be found in Malta, southern Italy and in some Greek regions, with a gender gap of up to 30 percentage points.

And when you look at the light and dark blue areas in aggregate, you see a basic reflection of the productivity and welfare expenditure imbalances that threaten the weaker old accession states in the European Union which are the focus of the Euro Crisis [Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain & Ireland].

Extending the analysis across to the southern shores of the Mediterranean to North Africa and the Levant, I am sure that the imbalances would be all the more acute - and the economies all the more parlous or skewed.

If the Arab Spring is to mean anything long-term, it must embrace female equality.

Which brings me to Cairo's Aliaa El-Mahdy - who has with immense bravery put both her clothes and their contents on the line for a New Order.

EGYPT’S LADY GODIVA – WHY I POSED NAKED

Aliaa has released a photo of herself that shows her naked apart from a pair of thigh-high stockings and some red patent leather shoes. She took the picture herself using a timer. When the photo was posted on Twitter, her followers jumped from a few hundred to more than 14,000.

She describes herself as an atheist. She posted the photo because she is ‘not shy of being a woman in a society where women are nothing but sex objects harassed on a daily basis by men who know nothing about sex or the importance of a woman’.

‘I like being different. I love life, art, photography and expressing my thoughts through writing more than anything. That is why I studied media and hope to take it further to the TV world too so I can expose the truth behind the lies we endure everyday in this world. I don't believe that we must have children only through marriage. It's all about love.

‘Most Egyptians are secretive about sex because they are brought up thinking sex is something bad and dirty and there is no mention of it in schools. Sex to the majority is simply a man using a woman with no communication between them and children are just part of an equation. To me, sex is an expression of respect, a passion for love that culminates into sex to please both sides.

‘I am not positive at all unless a social revolution erupts. Women under Islam will always be objects to use at home. The (sexism) against women in Egypt is unreal, but I am not going anywhere and will battle it 'til the end.

Many women wear the veil just to escape the harassment and be able to walk the streets. I hate how society labels gays and lesbians as abnormal people. Different is not abnormal!’

[from Mohamed Fadel Fahmy for CNN November 20, 2011]

Petula Clark – Still Gorgeous at 79

2011-12-18T11:16:00.000-08:00

LOOKING UP AN OLD GIRL FRIEND

Many of us browse the Internet listlessly on wet weekends trying to find cyber-snippets about friends from distant days and lost loves. It was nice for me then to catch up with Pet. Let’s see – she was 25 when I was 13 – maybe she would take a second glance at me now?

THEN AND NOW

[by Kevin Courtney, The Irish Times, Saturday, December 17, 2011]

Irish Retailers are braced for a bad Christmas. It’ll take something special to get consumers back on to the high street and into spending mode. Enter The Saw Doctors, with a new single that may entice fans to jump on the bus marked An Lár. The Tuam band has recorded a version of Petula Clark’s 1960s classic Downtown , and they’ve recruited Clark to persuade shoppers to forget all their troubles, forget all their cares.

The video for Downtown, directed by Eugene O’Connor, features Davy Carton, Leo Moran and the lads strolling around Galway’s Shop Street, and cuts to the 79-year-old Clark, whose segment was filmed in Paris.

The band got the British singer involved after finding out that their producer, Philip Tennant, knew Clark’s manager. A few phone calls later, and the Shams found themselves in the studio with a true British pop legend. “She didn’t seem fazed meeting us, as she’s worked with Muppets before on The Muppet Show,” Leo Moran told the Belfast Telegraph.

With 68 million record sales to date, and her career still going strong, Clark is on course to be a formidable pop diva right into her 80s. Just last month, she performed at the Casino de Paris, unveiling five new songs, including the rather enchanting Pour Etre Aimeé de Toi, which she co-wrote with Charles Aznavour.

Clark’s career began during the second World War, when she entertained British troops on BBC radio broadcasts at the tender age of nine. She initially wanted to be an actress, and starred in so many movies in the 1940s and 1950s she became known as the “British Shirley Temple”.

By the late 1950s she was looking beyond British shores and towards breaking European and US markets, recording songs in French, German, Italian and Spanish. France and Belgium were quick to fall for her English charms; Jacques Brel was so taken with her, he gave her one of his songs.

She married Frenchman Charles Wolff in 1961 and made Paris her home. The couple have three children and two grandchildren. By 1964, however, she had hit a fallow period in her career, until composer Tony Hatch offered her a little ditty he’d been working on called Downtown . The song became a massive worldwide hit, and propelled her to super-stardom.

Clark has always had a knack for adapting and surviving. In the 1970s she became a huge Las Vegas star, and then moved into country music in the 1980s, at a time when it was both popular and profitable to do so. She sidestepped neatly from Nashville to London’s West End, starring in The Sound of Music, then Blood Brothers on Broadway and Andrew Lloyd Weber’s Sunset Boulevard, making the role of Norma Desmond her own.

But Remember - Some of our Most Colourful Women are Men

2011-12-18T00:28:00.000-08:00

BRIGHT SPARK SET WELLINGTON ALIGHT

Thirty-five years ago, Wellington came face-to-face with Libidinous Excess for the first time – and liked it - in the ostensibly innocuous form of Carmen’s International Coffee Lounge. Carmen has just died at the age of 75.

Her death has led to an outpouring of grief and a celebration of her many kindnesses and her diva role as a breaker of taboos and challenger of prejudices. She has been variously described as a ‘transgender goddess’, a ‘legend’, ‘the showgirl of all showgirls’ and a ‘GLBT [gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender] icon’.

She was a pioneer and a role model for many – and also a bizarre but effective flag-bearer for Maori pride: “Moe mai ra e te kahurangi, moe mai ra”.

In a strange link back to her origins as the son of a Maori farmer from Taumarunui, where she grew up under the name Trevor Rupe, she had been able to open the ‘coffee lounge’ with money inherited from her grandfather.

She had returned to Wellington in 1968 from Sydney’s King’s Cross where she had become a notorious drag queen and sex worker facing increasing persecution by the NSW Police.

The coffee lounge was located at 86 Vivian Street – next door to the Salvation Army HQ – in a disused clothing factory that had a four-bedroom flat on the upper floor. Apparently, the establishment stayed open until 3 a.m. – a fact that was enough to scandalize 1970s Wellington in its own right.

The menu was straightforward but adequate: coffee, tea, soft drinks and a great variety of toasted sandwiches, cakes, pastries and scones. The difference was in the décor, the staff and the availability of sex.

Carmen referred to her waitresses as hostesses: “that is what they were, and with the exception of the lesbians, all my girls were boys or had been boys at some time. They had to be beautiful. That was the mark of my establishment” - "I was paid well. I was paid well under the table," she claimed later.

The hostesses were encouraged to sit and talk with customers to make them feel comfortable. Customers played the "teacups", leaving them a certain way to signal their sexual preference. Although homosexuality was illegal, various types of sexual liaison were available.

Patrons arranged their coffee cups in particular ways to indicate whether they were after a heterosexual, gay, transsexual, or drag queen encounter. Regular customers were also able to liven up their coffee by purchasing a nip of brandy.

Carmen never dressed down. She flaunted what man had given her in the form of enormous silicate breasts, pressing her beauties into sumptuous satin and heaving velvet. "I dressed up as a madam, you know, a classy madam, tits hanging out and split dresses. And all the drag queens I had working for me were very, very stunning and beautiful. They used to wear a lot of wigs, a lot of makeup and lovely miniskirts or split dresses and low-top dresses - because a lot of my girls had to have their busts done in Cairo, Egypt."

As for her personal sense of style and colour, it appears to have owed much to her namesake Carmen Miranda (Maria do Carmo Miranda da Cunha) the Portuguese-born Brazilian, samba singer, Broadway actress and Hollywood film star popular in the 1940s and 1950s, who was noted for her signature fruit bowl hat.

Carmen's other Wellington business ventures included striptease club The Balcony, an Egyptian tearoom in Cuba Street (’I had the walls sprayed with golden sand which sparkled … a large wooden elephant from Egypt stood by the doorway’), a curio shop, a massage parlour, and a brothel in a big old house in Hataitai.

Her unsuccessful 1977 bid for the Wellington mayoralty - backed by businessman Bob Jones, under the slogan ‘Get in behind’ - saw her rise to national prominence.

When she ran for mayor, Carmen campaigned for hotel bars to be open till midnight or even 2am; the drinking age to be lowered to 18; prostitution to be made legal; abortion to be decriminalised; homosexual acts to be decriminalised; sex education in schools for 14-year-olds; and nudity on some beaches.

"Bob Jones was so good to me. He was lovely when I decided to go for mayor. He gave me a big white limousine to run around in."

All the reforms she had been hoping to put through back then had finally happened, she said. "I might have psychic abilities or maybe I was just ahead of my time. I wanted gay marriage to be legalised, brothels and casinos. It's all here now."

"I enjoyed doing the campaign. I haven't seen Bob in years. He's probably better looking than me now,” she said in a 2009 interview.

Carmen died in Sydney – her home since she returned there in 1979.

As Sean Plunkett comments ‘in [Wellington] a place that was for a long time grey and conservative, Carmen was a bright flower pushing up through a crack in the pavement. Maybe it wasn't meant to be there and it disrupted the perfect order of things but she certainly helped make our world a lot brighter’.

I never knew Carmen but I did have some acquaintance with Sydney's King’s Cross in the 1960s when the mafia ran the show and the players were hustlers, pimps, hoons, queens, US Servicemen on R& R from ‘Nam’ and the odd wide-eyed innocent student like me. Oh Texas Tavern and Starlight Bar!

As Carmen once explained: "You had flower people, you had the bohemians, you had voodoo, witchcraft, and black magic. It was just the most wonderful, interesting era."

Once I was having a beer while watching a dancing troupe consisting of a man and two women. One of the girls, a leggy blonde, was absolutely stunning and we exchanged glances while she danced. However, I recoiled when she came off the stage and it became apparent that her g-string was more of a he-string. On reflection, I chided myself for being 'ungentlemanly' in my reaction.

Were men back then naive? "Naive," Carmen agreed. But it takes two to samba and the personal liberties that were taken and eventually secured led on to the tolerance and openness that we now all take so much for granted.

Another NZ Rating Shock

2011-12-17T13:25:00.000-08:00

A ROSE BY ANY OTHER NAME

I am always interested in the cross national referencing and benchmarking of cultural traits and started to rattle my keyboard when I read about the BeautifulPeople.com site where you can get ‘rated’ by peers across the globe.

But this is not for the politically correct, as you can be rejected if your stuff does not come up to scratch when you strut it.

Your photo and attributes are rated:

1. 'Yes definitely'
2. 'Hmmm yes, OK'
3. 'Hmmm no, not really'
4. 'NO definitely NOT'

- after being posted for a 48 hour provisional period online.

As can be inferred from my recent article on Wellington’s Windiness, I was not really surprised to find that NZ Women have struggled to make the grade. They dress heavy and tight to keep out the blusters and dark and dowdy in an attempt to mimic tree trunks and evade the furies.

Of the 4,900 New Zealanders who have been applied so far, only 1,274 have been accepted by ‘Beautiful People’. But that masks a considerable gender divide – while 33 percent Kiwi men were successful, only 17 percent of NZ Women were voted in by the global cyber-graders.

There may be some consolation that just 12 per cent of British males and 15 per cent of British women were accepted as members but, on the other hand, 65 percent of Swedish men and 76 percent of Norwegian women were allowed to join.

There is possibly some bias from the fact that the website was founded in 2002 in Denmark, with it only becoming available in the UK in April 2005 and in New Zealand much more recently (26 October 2011). Over a recent two week period, the site rejected nearly 1.8 million people from 190 countries.

From the total number of hopefuls, only 360,000 new members have been admitted - meaning that 83 per cent have been turned away.

The clear trends are though that Sweden, Brazil and Norway are the most beautiful overall, with applicants from Germany and the UK among the least successful.

Kiwi males rank as the sixth-most-attractive worldwide but Kiwi women aren't even in the top 10. As usual, New Zealand men rate above our neighbours across the Tasman – only 20 percent of Australian males have been accepted on the site but more Australian women (21 percent) than Kiwis have been accepted.

To defend the honour of our local ladies, I have posted a video above of Rosie Herdman providing a backdrop to a promo by NZ Band ‘Mercury Crowe’. Now Rosie is the daughter of a dear friend of mine, here in Wellington - so that I can assure you that she is every bit as gorgeous in real life as she looks on the clip. I am sure that you will rate her 'Yes definitely' – even though she is wearing black!

MERCURY CROWE

‘Set Your Mind to Fly’ – the new album from Wellington’s Mercury Crowe was released in May 2009 to over 600 eagerly awaiting fans in both Auckland and Wellington. Recorded mainly live over three days, the self-produced album sinks comfortably into a range of styles – spanning filthy blues riffs, Beatles-esque harmonies, story-telling ballads and foot stomping rock. It also marks a new rough-edged sound for the Crowe who wanted to convey the energy and space of their live shows on the new album.

Currently the Mercury Crowe group is working hard in the ‘Crowes Nest’ to produce a series of demos for what will be a forthcoming album. There will be rock, gospel backing vocals, stomp, grit, and a good dose of nostalgia.

“For all you peeps asking about gigs, we promise they’re on the horizon. Until then, we’re locked away making music for your ears” [see: http://www.mercurycrowe.com/bio/, Tuesday, 25 October, 2011].

FOR MORE ON ROSIE SEE:-

http://forums.thefashionspot.com/f52/rosie-herdman-82588.html

http://www.mhi.co.nz/model_profile.cfm?ID=194

http://cosmicliz.blogspot.com/2009/08/modelwatch-rosie-herdman.html

Now the Party's Over

2011-12-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

COUNCIL MUST FIND STRUCTURAL SAVINGS

[Editorial, Dominion Post, 15/12/2011]

OPINION: Wellington ratepayers will have a depressing sense of deja vu as the city council winds up another year in dire financial straits.

At the end of 2010, councillors went into the Christmas break contemplating cuts to services and higher user fees and levies to head off a looming budget blowout and prevent rates increasing by 8 per cent to 10 per cent.

This year they have been told – behind closed doors – that they must slash spending by $180 million over the next decade or preside over hefty annual rate rises, starting with an eye-watering 7.5 per cent in 2012.

The magnitude of savings required is in part due to the council having to find $74m for infrastructure work needed to meet legal obligations, including $44m to earthquake-strengthen buildings. It must also start finding the estimated $100m for its leaky homes liability, while its debt is in danger of ballooning from $310m to $500m by 2022.

Given those sums, the usual tinkering around the edges will clearly not be enough to bridge the gap. Reducing opening hours at suburban libraries, increasing parking fees and hiking admission charges for pools may free up a few million dollars, but that is just a tiny fraction of the amount needed each year for the next 10 years.

At the same time, Mayor Celia Wade-Brown recognises that 7.5 per cent rate rises would be unacceptable, not to mention unsustainable. Even if the council does make the savings required, rates are expected to rise by an average of close to 4 per cent next year, at a time of continuing economic difficulty for homeowners and businesses.

What is required is a full review of the council's structure and operations. That means a close examination of what its core business should be, what services it should provide, which projects and events it should fund and the resources needed to do the job.

On present figures, the council is set to spend $380m on operations next year. There must surely be scope within that for significant savings. Just as the Government has done during the recession, the council needs to examine ways to cut costs through measures such as sharing administrative, IT and other "back office" functions while taking a long hard look at everything it does.

That is likely to mean some jobs will be lost, just as National's austerity measures have seen redundancies in the public sector. It will also mean the discontinuation of some of its services and at least the deferral of some high-cost projects.

Unfortunately, that is the reality of the financial position the council faces. It is the same reality endured by Wellington ratepayers, who have had to look to savings within their own household budgets in these tough economic times and who have a right to expect the same from their council.

'Last of the Summer Wine' (hopefully)

2011-12-14T19:56:00.000-08:00

DROWNING OUR SORROWS OR STILL IN PUNCH BOWL MODE?

'Dear Keith,

'As the year draws to a close I want to pass on one more heartfelt thanks for your support and efforts during the campaign. The strength of support in our membership is what really sets the Labour Party apart.

'We've all earned the chance to have a break and recharge the batteries over summer, and what better way to do that than with a beautiful glass of New Zealand wine.
Luckily it's not too late to order a case of 'RED White Wine' for the Christmas break!

'This limited edition Savignon Blanc 2010 has been produced especially for the NZ Labour Party by Lawson's Dry Hills, one of New Zealand's finest wine makers. This edition of RED White Wine also retains its exclusive label deisgned (sic) for the Labour Party by NZ artist Dick Frizzell. Each bottle is perfect as a gift or to enjoy with family and friends over the festive season.

'A case (12 bottles) is just $196, including free delivery anywhere in NZ, it's a great price for such a great wine! And even better - each case sold helps to fund Labour's 3 year fightback to win in 2014. Click here to download the order form, and if you can scan and email it back to us (or just email all the details) at office@labour.org.nz by tomorrow (Friday 15th) we'll make certain it's delivered by Christmas.

'Our office here at Fraser House will be closed for January, from Thursday 22rd of December until Monday the 30th of January. If you need anything, please do get in touch before then'.

All the very best for the holiday period,

Chris Flatt
General Secretary

News, Opinion and Freedom of Speech

2011-12-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

ARE BLOGGERS JOURNALISTS?

[by Chris Crum WebProNews at: WebProNews@ientrynetwork.net]

Oh, how many times will this whole blogger vs. journalist debate come up? Will there ever be consensus? Does the title even matter?

Earlier this week, we looked at a U.S. court that ruled an Oregon blogger is not a journalist. Shaylin Clark reported on the story, where Obsidian Finance Group sued blogger Crystal Cox for defamation. Cox runs some blogs that talk about legal and financial issues, including one called Obsidian Finance Sucks.
As Clark wrote:

"… she has taken issue with the behavior of Obsidian Finance and Kevin Padrick, co-founder of the company. In one post in particular, posted late last year, she accused Padrick of fraud, of dishonesty with Obsidian’s shareholders, and the abuse of his position as the company’s chapter 11 trustee for personal gain.

The post acknowledges that Cox had already received a cease-and-desist from Padrick’s attorney. In response to Cox’s refusal to comply, Obsidian sued for defamation. Cox, who represented herself in court, argued that she was a journalist, and that the information in her post had come from a confidential source, insulating both her and the source from liability.

Judge Hernandez wrote in his ruling that internet blogs are not covered by the statute in question, which defines media of communication as “any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

He further argues, citing state statute, that the protections of Oregon’s journalism shield law do not apply in civil defamation suits, meaning that even if he accepted Cox’s argument that being a blogger made her a journalist, she would not be protected by the shield law.

OK, so the protections of the shield law don’t apply here. Fine - the issue isn’t so much about this case. It’s about the judgement that:

“Internet blogs are not covered by the statute in question, which defines media of communication as “any newspaper, magazine or other periodical, book, pamphlet, news service, wire service, news or feature syndicate, broadcast station or network, or cable television system.”

And there it is. Where exactly is the line that turns a blog into a “news service”? When it has no opinion? Show me a news service that doesn’t have any opinion whatsoever. Even if you can show me one, there are plenty that do and are still likely considered news services in this case.

Is it about the format of the site? The ratio of unique news to commentary?

Content on the web is becoming more and more about who it’s coming from. Not the organization that publishes it. That’s why Google is using authorship markup, tied to people’s Google profiles. That’s why Facebook launched the subscribe button.

Do you think former TechCrunch writers Michael Arrington and MG Siegler (granted Siegler still contributes a column, but is not one of the main authors on the site anymore) are not getting their content out there to their audiences anymore without the news service brand of TechCrunch (or is that a blog?)? That’s clearly not the case if you follow tech news at all.

Are people that happen to post their content on blogs not considered journalists even if the majority of their content is breaking and/or unique news?

Of course many traditional news sites like the Wall Street Journal or New York Times also have their own blogs.

No, not all blogging is journalism, but if you ask me, not all so-called “journalism” is either. There just isn’t a clear line.

It’s about reporting what’s happening. It’s about credibility to some extent, but even that is debatable, because breaking news comes from average people all of the time via Twitter and YouTube. They’re not setting out to report news. They just do. Citizens sometimes give stories in their rawest, purest form. Is journalism about spin? If so, bloggers can do that too.

The point is it’s just not so black and white. That’s why news readers let you follow “news services” and blogs. That’s why people use Twitter as a tool for news. That’s why Facebook is making itself a better tool for journalists. That’s why Techmeme includes tweets.

News is news. Sure, people need to establish trust and credibility with the content they’re consuming, to sort through it all, and determine what is fact and fiction, but there are plenty of people to help us do that. Are those the real journalists? If so, consider that many of them are also bloggers.

YOU CAN REGISTER YOUR OPINION AT THE WebProNews SITE

[Also see my previous posts in 2011: November 19th; September 24th; September 18th; April 17th; April 16th; April 14th]

It ain't half windy, Mum

2011-12-09T17:03:00.000-08:00

FLIGHTY

On 2nd April 1998, Argentina’s President Carlos Menem was due to arrive in Wellington for a State Visit to New Zealand. Jenny Shipley our 36th Prime Minister, but first woman ever to occupy the role, was primed and ready to welcome him on the tarmac at Wellington Airport. But the Presidential Aircraft operated by the Fuerza Aérea Argentina [National Air Force] was unprepared for the blustery buffeting that the plane received on the inward flight path.

The story goes that Menem led a prayer meeting among his accompanying officials and their spouses before losing all hope of survival and ordering the pilot to veer away to seek a calmer set down. The aircraft then headed north to Auckland where it landed safely unannounced. Jenny Shipley then promptly boarded the regular Air New Zealand service to Auckland so that she could welcome her guest.

All this came as no surprise to Wellingtonians who are used to arriving home on what suddenly appear to become paper planes about to spiral at the mercy of savage cross winds.

Wellington really is windy – so much so that it has a substantial ‘Specific Design Zone’ where a rigorous code is enforced to prevent chunks blowing off houses or the disappearance of the dwelling itself. Generally speaking if you have a good view (and many views are magnificent), you need to adapt your posture and your habits. While the barbecue may not blow away, your garden furniture is all too likely to land upside down in the neighbouring flax bushes.

And you may want to think again about adopting small fluffy dogs like the Lhasa Apso – mine once started to blow away before I grabbed it.

As for the classic white dress shot revealing Marilyn Monroe’s girdle as she warms her cockles over the subway grate, that would never happen here. Wellingtonistas are world renowned for the dowdiness of their dress, focussing on trousers or long pencil skirts with boots - usually in black or tan. They worry that if they leave airspace, they will either provide a free lingerie show or risk becoming airborne.

This has led to some undiplomatic incidents. In 1991, French ambassador Jacques Le Blanc drew criticism when he said Wellington women dressed like soldiers, carrying backpacks and wearing enormous walking shoes – and the elegant lady Colombian ambassador Lola D'la Cruz-Mattos was next, saying New Zealand women were afraid of colour and dressed as if they had been to a funeral - "in Colombia, we celebrate our femininity by being bold with colour."

The truth is that Wellington women have adapted their form to the environment, and have also subconsciously adopted camouflage in the hope that the wind will mistake them for a tree trunk.

For the record, as recently recounted by Tom Fitzsimons in the Dominion Post:

• The highest gust every recorded in Wellington was 248km/h
• Wellington’s average wind speed is 29km/h - this compares to 18km/h for Chicago
• Winds topped gale-force for 233 days of the year in Wellington’s windiest year
• In 1968, winds gusted at over 200 km/h as the Interisland Ferry ‘Wahine’ sank just inside the harbour with the loss of 53 lives
• Wellington recorded an October during which only one of its 31 days did not suffer from gale force winds.

All comes from being smack in the path of the Roaring Forties. These race around the Southern Ocean unimpeded – only to be thwarted by New Zealand’s land masses. Fortunately for the winds, there is a gap between New Zealand’s two main islands - the Cook Strait. Unfortunately for Wellingtonians, their city is built in the gap.

‘Suprema a Situ’ maybe – but we need 'Iactati Tempestate' in brackets.

Migration - It might be hard, but you'll get by

2011-12-08T19:50:00.000-08:00

BETWIXT AND BETWEEN

As someone who has had spells as an expat in Asia and who twice left England to settle in Australasia [Australia 1967 and New Zealand 1991] I have suffered mightily at times from homeland heartache and sundered loyalties. Ergo, I have done more than my share of pondering on the nature of personal affinities to places.

See for example my posts:

• Hearts Ease and Solastalgia, February 11, 2010
• Balikbayan solastalgia / rekwerdo na Pilipinas, August 10, 2010
• Plus ça change - 'Genre de Vie', February 12, 2010
• Dairy Farming in South Cheshire - the Past is another Countryside , June 08, 2010

I felt then that I could not let Darren Gaffney’s sad confession of overwhelming love of his country Ireland go without comment, as he commits to return from Australia [the upper photo shows Darren & girlfriend Carol at the Twelve Apostles Rocks on the Great Ocean Road in Victoria, Australia - and its companion shows my son Peter & I at the same location].

I thought that Darren and Carol and others might enjoy a wonderful poem by another Irishman David McKee Wright (written in 1900) which tackles the same set of emotions. Have a read of Darren’s renewal of faith with Ireland and then David McKee’s poem ‘Our Cities Face the Sea’, with its allusions to Ballynaskeagh and Wellington.

“I GOT HOMESICK - ALL I WANT IS TO BE HOME IN IRELAND AGAIN”.

[Darren Gaffney found he missed home more, not less, as the years passed. So he ‘felt a huge weight lift’ after deciding to move back to Ireland from Australia for good next year. The Irish Times - Friday, November 25, 2011]

I’VE BEEN back and forth between Ireland and Australia three times over the past four years, and I have tried to make a good life for myself down under. A few of my Irish friends are marrying Australian girls and settling into long-term careers, and I could go down a similar path. But I’ve decided to turn my back on it all and go home in April.

My adventure started in 2007, when I went travelling with some friends for a year on an Australian working holiday visa. I spent some time working in an Irish bar in Melbourne and on a farm in Western Australia, and played some open mic-nights. It was a very easy 12 months, full of fun.

I had been working as an electrician for seven years before I left, when the economy was flying in Ireland. There was a huge amount of work at that time, and I thought I would be able to slip straight back into that life when I got home from travelling. We arrived back in the summer of 2008 to 60 days of consecutive rain. Lehman Brothers fell in September, and it soon became apparent that things weren’t going to be so easy after all.

After a difficult winter, I decided to go back to Australia when I was offered an electrician job in Darwin. After a few months I had my own van and tools, my electrical licence, and a nomination from the company I was working for, and had no problem getting permanent residency. At that stage, it felt like I could be there for a long time.

But I got homesick, and with the homesickness came dreams about Ireland.

I was very positive and happy most of the time otherwise, but after having these dreams I would wake up and my day would be totally disjointed and I couldn’t focus. I tried to combat this by keeping busy, but I just couldn’t shake it.

Having been home for six months I had re-bonded with my friends and family, and when those connections were broken again, I obviously found it difficult to get to grips with being so far away from everyone. I played the guitar, ukulele and harmonica with a band of friends at home. Music was a huge part of my social life that was almost completely missing from my life in Darwin.

I tried to stick it out there for as long as I could, but after 18 months, while I was home for a month’s holiday to be best man at a friend’s wedding, I decided to stay in Ireland. I just couldn’t leave. But the construction industry had completely collapsed by that stage and I couldn’t find work, and last April, after eight months on Social Welfare, I decided to give Australia one last shot.

This time I took my girlfriend, Carol, with me. I thought having someone close would make the move much easier, and we both got good jobs in Melbourne. But I started to become very impatient, and was losing my temper easily. Carol told me I was like a different person out here to who I was at home. Two months ago, she asked me if I wanted to go back, and as soon as she said it, I felt a huge weight lift. That was exactly what I wanted, and I’ve been walking on air since.

The thought of coming home with few job prospects makes me really nervous. We know we’re facing a tough time ahead. We’ve both decided to focus on courses on offer here for the remainder of our time, so we can take new knowledge back with us to Ireland. Carol’s a graphic designer and is looking to do an illustration course, and I am thinking of a solar install and design course. Renewable energy is an up-and-coming industry, and I am excited about the prospect of getting involved.

My mother cried down the phone when I told her I was coming back.

Because I am a resident here, she thought I would be gone for at least four or five years. She said to me “You’re Irish, you want to come home to your country, so just do it. It might be hard, but you’ll get by.”

That encouragement meant the world to me. She’s right: there aren’t many opportunities in Ireland at the moment, but you have more of a chance if you are willing to be adaptable.

I’ve certainly had an adventure here. There is natural beauty to be found everywhere, from the stunning coastlines to the arid national parks. But nothing compares to home, where I have all the support and friendship and family that I could ask for. I know you can’t get by on that alone, but for my own happiness, I think that is far more important than having a good job. I’m 29 now, which I know is still young, but these connections mean more to me as I get older.

I have friends at home without work at the moment, who feel anxiety because they are still living there while others have emigrated to sunnier places and seem to be having a great time for themselves. But emigration is not successful for everyone.

I’m in Melbourne and I’m working, and I know some people mightn’t have much sympathy for me, but all I want to do is come home, to be in Ireland again with my friends and my family, regardless of the employment opportunities. Life is too short.

OUR CITIES FACE THE SEA

Jack came from Cornwall, and Pat from Donegal
‘Arry came from London, the first place of all
Sandy came from Aberdeen, and Tom’s native-born,
But they’re all mates together in the lands of the morn.
Pulling, pulling on the one rope together,
Bringing up the future with a golden tether,
Cousin Jack and Cockney, Irishman and Scot,
And the native is a brother to the whole blooming lot.

He worked in Gabriel’s Gully, he was there at the Dunstan rush,
He was first when the reefing opened and the batteries started to crush;
He was favourite ever with fortune, and whatever he touched would pay,
And his life was a song with the chorus, “I’m going Home someday”.
And he made his home on the hillside, where the city faces the sea,
And he saw the houses rising and the children on his knee,
And he toiled, and laughed, and was happy, as the years went rolling by;
For we take our homeland with us, however we change our sky.

He thought of a far-off village, and a steeple grey with years,
The cottages white in the sunshine, and a parting day of tears,
He saw the gardens blooming, with lavender around the beds
And the doors that were bowered with roses that nodded over their heads;
He heard the thrushes singing, and the sparrows chirping at morn;
He saw the joy of hay-time, and the poppies that starred the corn;
But up on the bush-covered hill-side the years went laughing by;
For we take our homeland with us, however we change our sky.

He left the windy city for the home beyond the sea, -
He would spent his age in the village beneath the old roof-tree;
He would hear again the ringing of the mellow Sunday bell,
And the folk would gather round him for the tales he had to tell,
The glamour of days long faded he would gather again anew;
He would see the happy meadows and the daisies washed in dew –
He went and he saw, and he wearied, and ever his thoughts would fly
To another and dearer homeland under another sky.

He had learned the charm of the mountains, the breath of the tussocks he knew;
He had lived in a land of sunshine, under skies of cloudless blue;
And the charm of the old had faded, as the charm of the new had grown,
Till he hailed the windy islands with their flax and fern as his own.
Till he thought with a tender longing of lake, and mountain, and plain,
And the digger’s camp in the gully, with its toil and its laughter again.
The old land could not hold him, as its ways were sere and dry;
For we take our homeland with us in youth when we change our sky.

Our cities look to the ocean, the homeland is far away;
The ships come sailing, sailing and anchor in the bay;
Oh tender the ties that bind us to the land our fathers knew,
And rich the storied record of a people strong and true;
Our thoughts will linger fondly in the North-land far away,
But our own land, our homeland is where we live today.
For together in toil and laughter the years go rolling by,
And we take our homeland with us, however we change our sky.

Jack came from Cornwall, and Pat from Donegal
‘Arry came from London, the first place of all
Sandy came from Aberdeen, and Tom’s native-born,
But they’re all mates together in the lands of the morn.
Pulling, pulling on the one rope together,
Bringing up the future with a golden tether,
Cousin Jack and Cockney, Irishman and Scot,
And the native is a brother to the whole blooming lot.

Pulling, pulling on the one rope strong
Bringing up the future with a shout and a song,
But the tides rise and fall, and the steamers come to call,
And the cities face the sea, and the winds are blowing free,
But out across the ocean is our home after all.

DAVID McKEE WRIGHT

David McKee Wright was born in the town of Ballynaskeagh, County Down, Ireland, on 6 August 1869, the second son of William Wright, a Presbyterian missionary, and his wife, Annie McKee. His mother remained only briefly in Ireland following his birth and he was cared for by his grandmother, Rebecca McKee, until his parents returned from missionary work in Syria. Annie Wright died in 1877, shortly after the family had moved to London.

David was educated at the Glascar School, Ballynaskeagh, then at Pope's School, London, and the engineering section of the Crystal Palace School. Illness kept him at home for much of his youth; he read voraciously and began to compose poetry. He ran away from his family on three occasions, in part because of his unhappiness at his father's re-marriage in 1880.

The evangelical, scholarly and philanthropical tastes of his family also oppressed him and they mocked his interest in poetry. At the age of 17 Wright was diagnosed as having a spot on the lung and in 1887 was dispatched to New Zealand in hopes of a cure. In Christchurch Wright was briefly reunited with the family of his uncle, David McKee, and his grandmother, who had emigrated earlier.

He then journeyed to the Aparima River and Lake Manapouri, and was employed as a shepherd and rabbit-catcher at Puketoi station and later at Scobie Mackenzie's Hakataramea Valley Station.

From 1890 he contributed verses and stories to the Otago Witness, and from 1892 to the Christchurch Press. He also attacked the Liberal government, and in particular the minister of lands and agriculture, John McKenzie, in political commentary and satirical prose and verse.

In 1895 Wright replied to critics of the Otago Witness's practice of featuring local writers in an annual supplement: he attacked the view that 'no good thing can come out of New Zealand', and henceforth more strenuously asserted New Zealand themes in his writing.

At the end of 1896 his story 'Mates: a tale of the golden coast' won the Otago Witness Prize Competition, being the first of numerous major prizes to capture. Aorangi and other verses his first collection of poems, appeared in 1896, but was not well received.

At the beginning of 1897 Wright moved to Dunedin and enrolled as a student at the University of Otago. His academic results were barely adequate, but he was awarded the first Stuart Prize for poetry for the poem 'Queen Victoria, 1837 - 1897'. He failed to make a success of his studies for the Presbyterian ministry and at the end of his first year he took up outfield preaching at Alexandra and Clyde.

Wright's poetry flourished after the publication of Aorangi, and from April 1896 he produced a series of works for the Otago Witness. Twenty-four ballads were collected at the end of 1897 in the volume Station ballads and other verses. Their favourable reception established Wright as a New Zealand poet rather than the local 'Otago Bard'.

'The poems were characterised by good cheer and moral earnestness. Wright identified country life with manly virtue and womanly purity, and town existence with industrial strife, crime and effeminacy. His most bitter invective was directed at grasping sheep station bosses, and at strikers, whom he generally portrayed as work-shy'.

Wright continued as a preacher, moving from Oamaru to the parish of Newtown in Wellington in 1900. His poem 'Wellington' was printed in gilt and black lettering on the glass sliding doors of two of the city's trams for many years. But a troubled period followed as unhappy marriage and an unsuccessful foray into publishing sapped his energy and finances.

By 1907, his life was in ruins and his family's belongings were seized and his library and furniture sold. In despair, he took a lease on Crown land in the Baton valley, south of Motueka, where he cleared a patch of bush and erected a cabin. His wife refused to accompany him. Three years later he upped and left New Zealand, settling in Sydney, where he fathered 4 sons and 2 daughters to different partners.

So far as is recorded he never returned to Ireland for a visit but his interest and attachment never waned and he published his most important volume, 'An Irish Heart' in 1918. He died in 1928 at Glenbrook, in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, Australia, having achieved modest success with his writings.

[Incidentally, Patrick Brunty, the father of the Brontë Sisters was another cleric from Ballynaskeagh]

NZ Leadership Contest - 'Poor economy a drag on Labour fortunes?'

2011-12-07T16:58:00.000-08:00

IN THE WRONG PLACE?

As someone who has taken years of interest in both UK and NZ politics and who reads the online editions of both the UK Independent and the Dominion Post every day, I am always on watch for parallels and counterpoints. To some extent what is happening in the UK can be used as a ‘control’ against which one can deduce deviations or residuals that are specifically Kiwi.

So I held this in mind last night when I went to NZ Labour’s ‘Two Davids’ [Shearer-Cunliffe] Road Show at the Wesley Church in Taranaki Street. As one of the faithful, I had been invited to listen to the rivals duel for the leadership of the NZ Labour Party as it attempts to rebuild from an intensive shellacking by voters in our recent General Election.

I don’t bother asking questions much anymore at shindigs like this, having become fascinated by trying to read the reactions of members of an audience. But the question that I had in mind was this:

‘How is it that Labour has struggled to gain a foothold and any traction whatsoever with voters when the NZ Economy is in poor shape and deteriorating?’

Normally voters punish failure and the absence of any obvious punishments of Right of Centre incumbents is a conundrum that is affecting virtually all Western Democracies.

Andrew Grice takes up this point this morning in the UK Independent, noting that:

‘Ed Miliband is under pressure to fine-tune Labour's stance on the economy amid growing evidence that the party is failing to win the political argument over cutting the deficit.

‘Several Labour frontbenchers believe the party must urgently come up with an answer to the criticism by David Cameron and George Osborne that Labour's recipe for Britain's debt crisis is to borrow even more. "It is doing us a lot of damage," said one frontbencher. Another said: "We need a rethink. We are in the wrong place on the economy."

‘The concern amongst Labour MPs will be heightened by the latest poll of polls by The Independent showing that the party has gained no ground despite a month of gloomy economic statistics that have called the Coalition's cuts strategy into question’.

Clearly perceived economic competence has become a make and break issue.

Indeed UK Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne has mocked UK Labour's moderate stance, ‘claiming that the only other European parties that wanted to slow the pace of deficit reduction were Communists and the French Workers' Struggle Party’.

WHEN I KNEW YOU WERE COMING, I TRIED TO BAKE A CAKE

NZ Labour seems to me to still rather wishfully ‘assume a cake’ as far as the economy is concerned and then get down to giving it away. This didn’t work for Marie Antoinette and I don’t think that it will work for Labour.

Hardly surprisingly, Labour supporters at last night’s meeting generally unpicked the cake, as plays were made for its sugar and spices by the Party’s social and ethnic constituencies and factions. My sense for what it’s worth is that, for the next decade or so at least, this is dying politics for the Left of Centre (as evidenced in part by the hiving off of the Maori Party) and the increasing appeal of Right of Centre politics across gender lines and sexual preference boundaries.

And in any event, if Labour keeps its word about its commitment to education and equality of opportunity, these social segmentations can be expected to continue to dissolve.

Walter Nash, who was the NZ Labour MP for Hutt 1929-1968 and NZ Labour Prime Minister 1957-1960 had his own straightforward recipe:

• We have obligations towards the young because if we fail to provide for them, we fail to provide for the future.

• We have obligations towards the old and infirm because their work in their earlier and more fruitful years has made it possible for us to enjoy the standards we enjoy today.

• We have obligations towards the sick and the ailing because they cannot care for themselves.

• And it is our duty to ensure that those who do the useful work of the world enjoy the full reward of their toil.

It is the latter ingredient that holds the key to Labour’s revival.

As was pointed out again last night by Grant Robertson at our meeting, voters are influenced by Fear and Hope – but it is also the mix and timing of the rise and bake that is crucial in many ways to electoral success. So let’s start by trying to make sure there is bread on the table when people get home from work - and then try to give everyone a slab of cake.

Looking at the cake in terms of the electors – I see these as falling roughly into a 5:50:25:20 Model. That is 5 percent are 'Fat Cat's on a roll and loving every minute of the ongoing redistribution of income and wealth; 50 percent are relatively ‘Secure but Fearful; 25 percent ‘Threatened and Fearful’; and 20 percent are ‘Marginalized’.

Large numbers of the Marginalized [the unemployed, school leavers, retrenched older workers etc.] face declining economic conditions and are increasingly losing faith in the relevance of politics to their daily struggles. A surprisingly proportion of them did not vote at all in NZ’s recent Election.

The Threatened and Fearful include ageing workers, small business owners, pensioners and people who cannot get a secure foothold on the property and savings ladders. A good proportion of these people voted against Labour here in New Zealand because their entitlements appeared to be threatened (e.g. pensions), their aspirations may be being curtailed (e.g. for home ownership) or because they believed they opted for stability or ‘something different’ in desperation.

As for the Secure but Fearful, they are willing to hope that things will get better but only after a period of enforced retrenchment. They are looking for new ideas while keeping a close watch on their wallets. Some of them will be tempted to believe in ‘High Tech’ or ‘Clean and Green’ visions but most will take the more prosaic view that nothing can be done until expenditure is brought under control and public and household debt levels have been reduced.

So how do the candidates stack up?

SIZING UP THE WINNERS AT THE BIRD CAGE (I.E. RACE COURSE ‘PADDOCK’)

After last night’s Meeting, I toddled along to Molly Malone’ for a pint of Guinness with an old friend, so I’ll temper my personal views somewhat with his observations. Generally, both of us were fairly upbeat and pleased with the performance of all four speakers (David Cunliffe with nominated Deputy Nanaia Mahuta, and David Shearer with nominated Deputy Grant Robertson).

Given the sensitivities around reporting the Meeting, I’ll centre my remarks on the candidate’s own presentational pages at Labour’s own Blog ‘Red Alert’ [http://blog.labour.org.nz/2011/12/06/david-cunliffe/ etc.], through the lens of my own personal assessments (which have only been moulded in small part by last night’s Road Show).

Having said this, I should make it clear that the mainstream media missed nothing. Everything was very orderly and convivial at the Meeting and there were no significant fluffs, faux pas or fights.

Nanaia Mahuta

She is a uniquely and refreshingly Kiwi presence who is a sort of Princess in the Pie Shop. On the one hand she has strong links to the Te Kingitanga (Māori King Movement), being the daughter of Sir Robert Mahuta, who was the adopted son of King Korokī and the elder brother of Māori Queen Te Atairangikaahu, while on the other hand she was brought up in the North Island coal mining and power station community of Huntly where she claims to have learned straight talking and working class community politics.

And I like the way she talks about the Environment and the Economy:

‘Young people are thinking in a different space where the new economy is critically linked to better environmental stewardship. Green growth, renewable energy generation, alternative fuel, clean-tech solutions, and labour intensive green jobs are a natural range of policies for a progressive Labour movement. For Maori, the concept of kaitiakitanga is strongly felt and can be complimentary to this different way of doing things.

‘To say that New Zealand is a great place to live, inequality and child poverty must be tackled head on. It’s my strong view that we must look for new and dynamic solutions. The Labour model for growth and wealth creation is just as important as sharing prosperity through better paying jobs for our people. Getting people into good paying jobs lifts families out of dependency.

‘We have to look for solutions that are more targeted and support families towards transformative change. That will mean a greater emphasis on front-end investment where the benefits will be gained over time rather than immediately. This will mean that the old guard of economic thinking must go. This means a strong emphasis on job rich, high skilled, high paid employment for everyone.

She worries about her ‘crossover appeal’ with European – Pakeha New Zealanders and has been unjustly tagged as a ‘tick box’ female-Maori accessory. However, in my view, she is obviously competent, speaks well and has definite charisma.

Given the crossover appeal of Winston Peters, I see nothing for her to worry about in terms of ethnicity as long as she is inclusive in her comments and demonstrates cultural competence in dealing with mainstream New Zealanders. Her gender is a very definite advantage in a party that struggles to adequately represent women.

She is a new light who deserves to do well. My only adverse comment is that she has swallowed too much public sectorese and social entrepreneurship gobbledegook. She should ditch terms like ‘pathways’, ‘wrap-arounds’ and ‘integrated case management’ in favour of telling the story in everyday terms.

David Cunliffe

He is the rather bumptious but boyish person who would have one half of the room under his spell at a drinks and nibbles evening and the other half looking at their watches. If he fails at politics, he can always make a living as a TV Presenter or Talk Show compere. He has an illustrious CV which includes top notch tertiary qualifications (e.g. Harvard), working as diplomat and business consultant, and having served as Minister of Health and Minister for Communications and Information Technology in the previous Labour Government.

Although he has a very irritating way of talking down to his audience about economics like a fourth form teacher: “On the one hand supply – stretches out right arm; on the other hand demand – stretches out left arm – Get it?”, he has also something to say about the real issues:

‘Here are the principles that would guide my leadership. First, our mission is to serve New Zealanders, not ourselves. Second, Labour must be true to its core values as a social democratic party. Third, we must rebuild a modern Labour Party together. Finally, we must create a winning team with integrity and purpose.

‘In order to achieve this we must earn the confidence of New Zealanders. We must reach out to communities we have lost touch with. The loss of votes in 2011 to other parties shows we need to rebuild our relationship with working Kiwi families, including middle income earners and small businesses.

‘We must be clear that women, Maori, Pasifika and those most disadvantaged in New Zealand should also feel that Labour is their political home. Labour is the party that will work hardest in their interests. Right now these people don’t think it is, and many did not turn out to vote.

‘I will bring about a new era in Labour, one built on our founding values but also one that is more modern, agile and responsive to the New Zealand of today and tomorrow. I will lead a Labour Party that looks and feels like New Zealand, is true to our core values, that is reunified and rejuvenated and that will win the confidence of New Zealanders in 2014 to serve with purpose, integrity and passion’.

Personally, I was impressed with his presentation and responses at the Meeting though I do not find him particularly likeable. But he made some very sensible noises about the need to build modi operandi with the other Opposition Parties, in particular with the Greens but also with Winston Peters who he envisages as an attack dog sinking his teeth into John Key’s ankles. For my money, he was the winner on the night.

David Shearer

Last Thursday, I reprinted Tracy Watkins’ gushing paen on David Shearer in this Blog:

‘David Shearer is the candidate from central casting. Mr Shearer is all the things John Key was when he arrived in Parliament as an assured and confident rookie. He's a political newbie, meaning he carries no baggage from past administrations; he's the anti-politician, which means the public instantly warm to him, and he has a back story that only a Hollywood script writer could dream up – in his own words, he has stared down a Somali war lord's gun barrel and braved the bombs of Baghdad to deliver humanitarian aid’.

‘On Sunday as his colleagues earned themselves no favours defending the campaign strategy, he was the first to front-foot Labour's failures – and he is not hide bound by tradition or ideology’.

‘But there will be one thing on his side that makes his bid so compelling – with a back story like his, he will have the voters' interest. And it is a long time since Labour could say that’.

Now I have been thinking about all this, especially as he and I share career histories that include significant commitments to Overseas Development in the field. I was actually shot at by Druze forces in South Lebanon at one point, went through the EDSA Revolution and then the bloody Honasan Coup in Manila, and like David have spent time in Gaza trying to help the Palestinians.

The trouble with all this, as I know only too well from personal experience, is that by and large Kiwis are an insular and inward-looking lot who will pay polite attention when you recount your exploits the first time but who rapidly come to regard something so far from their own experience as about as interesting as the discards from a stone-cold Hangi (Maori earth oven).

So when he claims that: ‘I’ve worked in extreme pressure – sometimes life-threatening. I’ve built teams, led sensitive political negotiations in some of the world’s most dangerous places, and renewed services like schools, hospitals and power stations with a multi-billion dollar budget’, I worry that people will start to yawn.

Alas his policy prescriptions seem vague and highly generalized. As for the economy, he concentrates on redistribution and says next to nothing about growth, except for the need for New Zealanders to up-skill and raise productivity.

He seemed tired and flagged noticeably towards the end of the meeting and I was irritated by his deliberate antagonism towards Winston Peters and his fellow Opposition ‘NZ First’ MPs. And as he wandered between microphones, forgetting questions, I began to dread his drubbing in Parliament by Peters and Key.

Grant Robertson

If in some senses David Shearer has a ‘dream back story’, Grant suffers from a distinct blank page in that regard. He witters on about how he has filled almost every position in the Labour Party known to boy or man, which will please the devotees and the inner circle but which unwraps like a piece of cold cabbage from the Hangi for most New Zealanders.

He makes much of his organizational skills but was it seems the architect of Labour’s recent election debacle – and promises more and better of the same.

‘For me this leadership contest is about putting together the team that can win the 2014 election. It is only through winning that election that we can put in place the programme that will see the Labour values of fairness, equality and opportunity for all become a reality’.

He goes on:

‘I have always tried to act in what I believe to be the best interests of the Party and the people we work so hard to represent. It is in that spirit that I am putting my name forward as Deputy Leader in this contest’. This is in possible counterpoint to David Cunliffe’s comment that ‘our mission is to serve New Zealanders, not ourselves’.

Again, Grant makes much of masterminding a Review of the Party and its organization. Personally, I would not trust someone who has been so closely involved with recent events on the ground to do this with objectivity and balance. Nor do I see the point of having a Deputy Leader being so closely engaged in the Review, when as Deputy Leader of the Opposition, he should be concentrating on besting the Government across the board in Parliament. Time was when the Party organizers were backroom boffins who worked tirelessly largely out of sight – and there were good reasons for this.

He wants to ‘enrol, engage and inspire the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who did not vote at this election’ and one has to ask: Why pray was this not done 2008 – 2011?’

He also wants to address are the recruitment and nurturing of talent, particularly women, in the party and the process for selecting candidates both in constituencies and on the list. Well that’s very praiseworthy though if you want a contrarian view you can see my post of Monday, November 28 'The NZ Labour Party Leadership Struggle - The Candidate's Story'.

This time around I only note that the giggling young men two rows in front of me at the Meeting looked askance and feigned wide-eyed but mocking acquiescence when he committed to increasing the influence of women.

Having said that I have to be fair and report that he spoke well – and that my friend at Molly Malone’s still sees him as a potential Prime Minister.

SO WHAT’S MY PICK?

Perhaps unusually, I have shifted camps from David Shearer’s Big Tent to David Cunliffe’s Onward Caravanserai – not that it really matters where I park my dromedary.

Getting back to the Main Case outlined in my opening paragraphs, is NZ Labour still ‘in the wrong place’ on economic issues and on winning the 2014 Election? On the basis of last night’s Meeting I would argue that it is still coming to terms with the recipe and floundering in the kitchen. It is very hard though to ascertain how far what is said in gatherings of this type would translate into actually policies when In Government.

I would like to chat to David Cunliffe about the economy under Chatham House Rules – if I could get a word in edgeways. But please, if you do get chosen Mr Cunliffe commit to using the next three years to get the policy costings properly sorted before the next campaign starts!

Rising Tide of Local Authority Debt may threaten the Harbour City

2011-12-06T16:22:00.000-08:00

DEBT WASHES IN AS COUNCIL LARGESSE DRIES UP

Hamish Rutherford gives the new centralized borrowing facility the Local Government Funding Authority (LGFA) a good write-up in today’s Dominion Post. He endorses borrowing in bulk by New Zealand’s 11 regional councils and 68 territorial authorities, in the expectation that the LGFA will lend ‘at least’ $1 billion in its first year of operation, clipping 40 basis points (0.4 per cent) off interest payments on individual local authority bonds.

So far so good – but he also footnotes that councils currently hold debt of $5 billion and that borrowings are projected to increase to $11 billion over the next decade, based on long-term plans. And a quick review of the figures available online suggests that his estimate of current borrowings may be far too low. One source has the figure at $7.02 billion in the year ending June 2010 (up from $1.93 billion in 2003).

As for interest payments, these rose from $140.5 million per year in 2003 to $377.8 million per year in 2010. More recently, the authorities recorded a record combined deficit of $127 million in the March 2011 quarter (Statistics NZ) – a 65 percent increase on the previous quarter.

At the same time, rates and user charges are on the up and up. In the year ended June 2010 as compared to 2009, rates rose by an average of 6.2 percent and operating incomes rose by 7.5 percent – while the value of assets failed to keep pace, rising at an average of 4.2 percent.

Consistent with the trend Wellington City Council has hefted its rates and it raised $25 million in March for a five year bond paying 1 percent over the three month bank rate.

Fine when the 3 month bank rate is 2.86 percent but not so fancy if interest rates balloon and float up.

As for Wellington’s finances, they are VERY hard to read.

Back in my post of Sunday, May 30, 2010 ‘Wellington's Leaky Buildings & Leaky Finances’, I did some ‘back-of-the envelope’ calculations which attempted to explore the implications of funding the Council’s accumulating obligations.

This suggested that Borrowings as a Percentage of Equity might have to rise from about 4 percent in 2010 to 6 percent this year and that the Borrowing to Income Ratio might have to rise from 71 percent to 92 percent.

According to the most recently Quarterly Statements the Borrowings as a Percentage of Equity figure is now 4.9 percent and the Borrowing to Income Ratio is 72.9 percent. Are the figures being ‘massaged’?

Again a year ago in the Dominion Post [27/10/2010], Dave Burgess noted that:

‘Wellington City Council managers are being asked to trim spending, with 10 per cent cuts suggested for some departments.

‘It means job losses and service cuts are being considered as the council looks to control ballooning debt, forecast to hit $360 million next year.

‘But the council is also facing a huge bill to fix the city's leaky homes, with chief executive Garry Poole admitting last week that its liability has increased to an estimated $100m. Just $18m is included in council budgets to fix the problem.

‘Council managers have been asked to look at ways to cut spending. It is understood that those cuts could be up to 10 per cent in some departments.

‘Rates rises appear likely to help cover the looming cash crisis, assets could be sold, and millions could be added to the council's debt, which in 2000 stood at $214m. Earthquake strengthening work is also a looming cost’.

And Councillor Bryan Pepperell was reported as urging the council to use forensic accountants to identify savings from within the organisation, arguing that the Council's books should be opened for public scrutiny so people had a clear picture of the its financial health.

Back in June of this year, a concerned friend drew my attention to the fact that the public had been excluded from the June Audit and Risk Management Subcommittee Meeting’s discussions on:

• Risk Assurance
• The Risk Assurance Audit Plan
• The Summary of Financial Incidents
• The Council Debtors’ Report

These decisions were largely justified on the grounds of ‘protecting information where the making available of the information would be likely to unreasonably prejudice the commercial position of Council’.

However, representatives from Audit New Zealand were in attendance.

What pray was All that About?

[And don't tell me that Rate Payers will also be asked to fund the earthquake strengthening of private property - either heritage or just old.

If, for example, WCC gives a grant to the Chow Brothers to earthquake strengthen the elegant Edwardian Albermarle / Mayfair building in Ghuznee Street so that it can return to its historic function as a brothel -

I WILL GET REALLY CROSS!!]

Book Review: Rosemary McLeod’s ‘A Girl Like I’

2011-12-03T15:30:00.000-08:00

SYNOPSIS

Mandy McQuade had an innocent ‘perfectly ideal’ childhood, in the small town of Mangakuna in New Zealand’s Wairarapa Valley in the 1950s. This included applying Chinese burns and arm locks on small boys Roger and Jeffrey to coerce them into taking down their pants to play ‘mothers and fathers’ and then divesting them of their clothes and chasing them around the local streets.

Blonde with blue eyes and pink cheeks and a clear complexion, with the cutest little dimple on her cheeks, Mandy practises kissing on the lower classes. Local car mechanic Ray is smitten and buys her a cheap identity bracelet. But when Mandy comes of age in a black bra - and flees dad's lawn mower showrooms and the family sheep farm in 1969 to take up residence at Wellington’s Victoria University studying Arts - she leaves all this behind never to look back.

Following a clue that repetitively using words like ‘Golly’, ‘Wee’ and ‘One’ is an unstamped passport to becoming a 1960s Chelsea-Kelburn Clone Ranger, Mandy squeamishly tea bags herself into student debauchery, ‘not knowing where to look’ when a friend of her first boyfriend Nigel has icing and cream pavlova rubbed over what ‘you might call his private parts’ at the end of a curry supper.

‘I mean it looked all wrinkly and funny coloured and not at all as big as I’d expected’.

But, after a 4 am black coffee at Nigel’s student flat, she goes ‘the whole way’, rising early to make-up because she would have hated ‘a chap to see a girl without her face on’. The upshot being that she and Nigel had ‘a super time for the next two years’ with the smart set in the fast lane until she accidentally-on-purpose forgets to take her pill and gets banged up.

Failing to precipitate a proposal, she has to settle for a free trip to Sydney and a fabulous shopping spree to celebrate the fact that she had suffered the indignity of having a strange doctor look at her private parts – only to confirm that she had never been pregnant in the first place.

Then, in the tradition of picaresque Fallen Women novels like Moll Flanders, Fanny Hill and Angelique and the Sultan, she slips slowly into depravity. Afraid of being considered frigid, she feigns that it is beautiful and meaningful to share her body.

Her trials include bedding a poet who passed on pubic lice, winning the Miss University Beauty Contest, joining the Spartacist-Leninists to temporarily lose her bourgeois inhibitions, studying the Tibetan Book of the Dead in a patchouli-drenched hippy commune, shagging bi-sexual flat mates Becky and Carol, and trying to bonk Dave the husband of her best friend Miriam. Along the line, she acquires and deserts ‘red and scrawny but true-to-life’ baby Maui – never to mention him again.

‘I could just see myself in the mirror in the lounge and I looked so pathetic I could have moved a heart of stone. I looked like one of those old movie stars that I even wondered if perhaps I had a talent for the theatre as well as everything else’, she sighs.

But never to be downed for long, she ‘stopped wearing a bra so that all the men I met would be able to tell by the way my delicate shell-pink nipples stuck out at them that I was free of the torture instruments men have invented to deform and mutilate the female body’.

Tragically, this attracts the unwanted attentions of a mysterious gang of halal-slaughter mutton buyers from Doha who also double as White Slavers. Drugged and shipped out of Tauranga in a container, she is fortunately befriended by the Barbarello the transvestite Philippine cook who cares for her and imparts a desperate tantric secret.

Having safely navigated the Suez Canal, the ship founders during a thunderstorm as lights lure it to the rocks. Briefly detained by the wreckers, Mandy quickly escapes with Barbarello’s help but both are captured by the notorious French Privateer D'Escranville.

D'Escranville tries to woo them both but when Mandy rejects him he commits to stripping her naked in the public slave market and selling her to the highest bidder, thus beginning the most infamous seraglio slave auction of all time. Mandy is slowly divested of her cute little broderie anglaise petticoat and matching panties as the Knights of Malta’s Order of Hospitallers, Brierley a rich merchant, the Grand Eunuch of the King of the Turks' harem, and numerous unsavoury others engage in a bidding battle for her.

The Knights of Malta are forced to drop out and, as Mandy stands naked, the famous pirate Rescator appears and kills off the auction with a bid of 35,000 piastres - enough to buy an entire flock of Perendale sheep. On Rescator's ship Mandy is reassured by his gentlemanly manner but when a fire breaks out among the moored ships, Mandy becomes the chattel of the notorious Mezzo Morte. Delighted by her secret knowledge, he hands her over to Osman Bey, chief eunuch of Mulay Ismail, the Sultan of Morocco, as a gift.

The sensuality and idleness of the harem begin to affect Mandy, who is terrified she will weaken and give in. She is revolted by the Mulay Ismail's cruelty and his disregard for the lives of his Christian slaves but is attracted by his magnetism. Heroically, she must become the first woman to escape from the impregnable harem and journey across the pitiless desert to freedom.

Alas despite all her adventures, she muses that she has never had ‘one of those orgasms the other girls keep talking about’ and fears that she will die defiled but unfulfilled.

Meanwhile, Ray the Mangakuna mechanic has worked nights, saved and wound up with an entire fleet of stock trucks. After emptying the slurry sump, he sets out for a lonely and late but self-funded Overseas Experience. Signing with Adventure Tour operator Contiki in London, he travels in a battered and crowded bus down through France and the Iberian Peninsula skiting about the All Blacks winning the World Cup and wicking off all the Aussies.

Avoiding overboarding by the Berowra Creek boys and evading Mezzo Morte on the crossing to Tangier, Ray is accosted by a blonde-haired peasant girl at a coke and cous cous stop on the road to Marrakech. When she asks for his loose change and tries to trade favours for a spliff, he is fascinated and enthralled by her authentic Kiwi accent and then shattered to discover she is of noble birth....

[Published 1976 by John McIndoe Limited, Dunedin, price ten shillings and sixpence]

EXPLANATION

As a sad old wanker, I have become besotted with cultured pearl and pageboy framed silver-haired vixen 61 year old Rosemary McLeod who regularly taunts me from the pages of the Dominion Post and the Sunday Star Times. [Can she still lodge a pencil between her headlights?]

Rather than stalk her like one of Rebekah Brooks' boys, I decided to be more mature and just read up on her - for more on my obsession see my post of Sunday, June 20, 2010 'Grumpy Old Man grapples with Grumpy Old Woman'.

With Shane Jones Riding Shotgun - You Could Be On To Something Tracy

2011-12-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

KEY-LIKE QUALITIES GIVE SHEARER THE EDGE

[by Tracy Watkins, Dominion Post, 02/12/2011]

David Shearer is the candidate from central casting.

The last time we had one of those was when John Key took over the National Party leadership in 2006. Look where he is now.

With the withdrawal of rival David Parker from the Labour leadership contest, the darkhorse is now the frontrunner to replace Phil Goff.

Mr Shearer is all the things John Key was when he arrived in Parliament as an assured and confident rookie. He's a political newbie, meaning he carries no baggage from past administrations; he's the anti-politician, which means the public instantly warm to him, and he has a back story that only a Hollywood script writer could dream up – in his own words, he has stared down a Somali war lord's gun barrel and braved the bombs of Baghdad to deliver humanitarian aid.

He has more rough edges than Mr Key, who arrived at Parliament with a similarly impressive back story as a self-made millionaire investment banker from a humble state house upbringing.

But given the constituency Labour needs to woo back – the battling blue-collar worker and struggling business owner – that is probably not a bad thing for Labour right now.

And Mr Shearer has many of the same qualities that marked Mr Key out on his arrival. He relies on his instincts – on Sunday as his colleagues earned themselves no favours defending the campaign strategy, he was the first to front-foot Labour's failures – and he is not hide bound by tradition or ideology.

But his one black mark is that he has failed to make a mark since arriving in Parliament, despite those impressive credentials.

He may not have the leadership in the bag – yet – but the Cunliffe camp look to have been out-maneuvered and out-gunned.

But there are risks. Mr Cunliffe is a far more polished performer and a two-week leadership contest could expose Mr Shearer's weaknesses.

And even if Mr Shearer survives that, a bear pit awaits. He could inherit a divided caucus. He will have the attention of National in a way Mr Goff never did. And he will have the attention of a resurgent Winston Peters. There are two ways his leadership could go – the route John Key took is one; the route taken by Don Brash is the other.

But there will be one thing on his side that makes his bid so compelling – with a back story like his, he will have the voters' interest. And it is a long time since Labour could say that.

Cheshire Lad Painted Over

2011-12-01T01:18:00.000-08:00

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

Two year ago, on December 4, 2009, when this Web Log was just Web Twig, I ran an early story under the heading 'Love will tear us apart' - the Wellington link’, about our ‘Ian Curtis Wall’ in Mt Cook.

Ian was the vocalist and lyricist, of the edgy Manchester Sound band Joy Division between 1976 and 1980. Moody, manic and later prone to convulsions, he blended morose, melodramatic hyper-sensitivity and romanticism with punk. He committed suicide when internal demons, the excessive expectations of others and a tortured love affair ‘tore him apart’.

He and I share a common origin in the UK, with both of us being Cheshire Lads.

In 2009 I explained that:

‘A wall on Wallace Street in Wellington, New Zealand, had the words "Ian Curtis Lives" written on it shortly after the singer's death. The message is repainted whenever it is painted over. A nearby wall on the same street on the 4th January 2005 was originally emblazoned "Ian Curtis RIP", later modified to read "Ian Curtis R.I.P. Walk In Silence" along with the dates "1966 - 1981" (sic).

‘Both are referred to as "The Ian Curtis Wall". However on Thursday 10 September 2009, the wall was painted over by Wellington City Councils anti graffiti team. The wall was chalked back up on 16th September 2009, even if the dates had been muddled - Curtis was born in 1956 not 1966. The Council may now just turn a blind eye. The wall was repainted on the 17th September 2009 - this time with correct dates.

'The wall has achieved a cult status in Wellington and further afield. It is mentioned on Ian Curtis' Wikipedia page and has two Facebook fan pages - the Ian Curtis Wall Appreciation Society has 144 members and the Ian Curtis Memorial Wall, Wellington, New Zealand page has 48 "Likes".

FANS FOUND WANTING

Fast forward to 2011. A couple of months ago the Wall again disappeared – this time it seems at the hands of Wellington City’s ‘Anti-Graffiti Team’. As Wellington City Council's spokesman Richard MacLean said Joy Division clearly wasn't everyone's cup of tea:

"Our graffiti crew clearly doesn't like the band, or has never heard of them," Mr MacLean said.

"We won't be surprised if the name pops up again though a lot of Ian Curtis' original fans are now approaching an age where they might struggle to muster the wherewithal to get the job done."

I went back today to see if it had been re-instated. It seems Maclean was prescient in suspecting that it might pop back up and also that its graying fans would likely falter in wielding the paint brushes deftly enough to do a good job.

Sure enough, a version has re-appeared – with some strangely blue tints and a lot of dribbles and smudges.

Raging and bobbing against the dying of the light, let’s let Ian have the Last Word

NEW DAWN FADES

A change of speed, a change of style.
A change of scene, with no regrets,
A chance to watch, admire the distance,
Still occupied, though you forget.
Different colours, different shades,
Over each mistakes were made.
I took the blame.

Directionless so plain to see,
A loaded gun won't set you free.
So you say.
We'll share a drink and step outside,
An angry voice and one who cried,
'We'll give you everything and more,
The strain's too much, can't take much more.'

I've walked on water, run through fire,
Can't seem to feel it anymore.
It was me, waiting for me,
Hoping for something more,
Me, seeing me this time,
Hoping for something else.

Island Bay's Creative Talent - Two More Stunning Examples

2011-11-30T23:33:00.000-08:00

JORDAN ALEXANDER

Jordan is a typical multi-facetted, multi-tasking Gemini from Canada. Immaculately qualified, with degrees from Queen’s University at Kingston and Windsor University, Ontario and a PhD from the University of Auckland, she has held a number of high level public service research and management posts in the transport and housing sectors here in Wellington.

She is also one of Island Bay’s irrepressible entrepreneurs, embracing innovation and constant personal reinvention.

Now she is developing a new concept in personal care at the Experiences Day Spa. This is a boutique retreat located in her stylish aquamarine house on the idyllic waterfront in Island Bay - just 10 minutes from Wellington’s CBD.

As one of her customers, I can vouchsafe that you will bliss out as stress and tension melt away. The delicious luxury treatments from Aotearoa and beyond feature the best natural and organic products available.

Embrace decadence, by healing and becoming healthy. Love life, laugh freely and shine!

Aroha nui.

[As far as I know, Jordan doesn’t supply Canadian Canoe trips across the Bay to our Island ‘Tapu Te Ranga’, which is in plain sight across the road from the Spa - but I’m sure that she will be happy to help you offload your kayak if you want to paddle off exploring for treasure].

SUE PRESCOTT

Sue is Island Bay’s very own Fashion Designer. She is a lecturer at Massey University who studied fashion and textiles at Manchester Metropolitan University, settling in New Zealand in 1992.

Having an eclectic bent she recently gutted a man’s kimono and re-sleeved it with fur for an Oscar Wilde meets Isadora Duncan look.

She has not so fond memories of a black PVC vinyl sari that she slipped - zipped herself into before a show – but which proved one size too small.

‘Even if something is new I still alter it or change it. I see potential in everything and potential always grows and that's how I live my life and how I bring up my children.

‘I would say I am an experimental, eclectic and expressive dresser. I don't adhere to trends but am drawn to colours and fabrics, unable to resist a sometimes intoxicating fusion of unlikely prints, textures and colours together in both fashion and interiors’.

She has won numerous awards, including taking out the 2011 Free Parking Space reserved for the Island Bay School ‘Yummiest Mummy’ (Tall Category).

Early Summer Snaps

2011-11-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

Start of the Golden Weather - Summer 2011-12

2011-11-29T23:00:00.000-08:00

The NZ Labour Party Leadership Struggle - The Candidate's Story

2011-11-28T19:36:00.000-08:00

THE DISCONNECT

Reviewing the NZ Labour Party’s ongoing leadership battle, the Dominion Post makes the point this morning that:

‘With all the potential candidates there are questions about how well they connect with Labour’s grassroots and the suburban and provincial voters the party needs to win back’.

‘The party’s problems do not stop with muddled policy. Labour’s preoccupation with gender and ethnic balance and the influence of powerful sector groups has robbed the party of two of its most promising newcomers ... who were mystifyingly ranked behind a gaggle of has-beens and never-was’s on the party list.’

In the same edition, under the headline, ‘Labour’s in trouble till it tackles candidate-selection policy’ John Burke lays the blame on ‘a systematic process that has been in place since 2002 to strengthen the party’s Left-wing by preferring, primarily candidates from the left’, ending ‘I believe that Mr Goff already knows this and Labour head office doesn’t want to know’.

In my view it is not that simple. Here in Wellington, we have one prominent local Labour MP whose biggest claim to working class solidarity is having worked in the packing section of a supermarket during the University vacation and another whose major mode of fund-raising is the Wine Auction.

[Just for the record, during my youth I spent months working as a hospital orderly and intermittent years farm labouring – but do not believe that this qualifies me to talk on behalf of the dispossessed. My commitment to left-of-centre politics is a personal one based on ethics].

Getting back to the grass roots, one of my friends is a self-employed craft builder with a wife whose job has just been restructured. He is gambling on finishing off the temporary family home and selling it at a profit before moving everyone to Christchurch to chase work. He voted NZ First.

He believes that the Labour Party is simply not interested in Kiwi Battlers like him – and that its apparent Leftism is vote buying on a ‘politics of envy’ ticket by Fat Cats.

And of many of the hard scrabble but aspiring families in Island Bay that I know [quite a few of which have mortgaged the family home to promote innovative businesses], very few will have voted Labour this time around.

There is no doubt in my mind that most swinging voters like candidates to whom they can relate on the grounds of background and life experience.

On the 14th March of this year, after I had been a delegate at St Ann’s Hall, Newtown on the local List Ranking exercise, I wrote the following email to one candidate:

‘Dear Mike

I am writing to express my regret that you were not selected at a much higher level on the Labour List – and to express my thanks and support for your nomination. I can only say that as a delegate (Wellington South) I did try to get you a better hearing.

Sadly, the party gives insufficient value to business skills and life experience in its rankings. Nor does it give enough weight to the demonstration of personal principles and the willingness to sacrifice to live up to these ideals.

I could say a great deal more about this but it would serve little purpose!

Thanks again for standing and good future fortune with your career.

Best regards

Keith Johnson’

This particular candidate [like Masterton Mayor Bob Francis, as mentioned by John Burke] had an impeccable Labour genealogy, a real-life CV and a young family. He was deliberately relegated to last on the list.

You can glimpse more of the problems in Labour’s initial campaign video.

It was touching that West Coast Good Keen Man Damien O’Connor opened the batting but it will be remembered that he was the one who accused Labour of being ‘dominated by self-serving unionists and a gaggle of gays’ who were turning off voters. But cast in the Wellington Belt Way as a blokey rightist homophobe, he was the only Labour candidate to win a rural and largely working class constituency seat.

As the video unfolded, I waited baited breath to see Damien tip-toe hand-in-hand with Central Wellington MP Grant Robertson (he of the supermarket hols pocket-money job) into the tumbling Westport surf. It didn’t quite happen – but then good drama is often about anticipation. Now ‘Leftist’ Grant is being touted widely among the Wellington scribbling class as a possible World First Gay Prime Minister (well, after Iceland’s current premier and a veritable legion of undeclareds).

At the close, I doubt that the average viewer of the video was left with any stronger message than that everyone in the Labour Party truly believed that Michael Joseph Savage was NZ’s collective incarnation of Gandhi, the Dalai Lama and the Once and Future King. Will the rightful inheritor of this crown kindly step forward and pull the bloody sword out of the bloody stone!

What seems to have got lost in the trimming and tracking is the need to build trust with the electorate through basic things like honesty, good judgement and integrity. [Come to think of it, that’s how Wat managed to dislodge Excalibur!]

Some of the ways in which the disconnect can work in practice are illustrated by my own story.

THE HEFFALUMP TRAP

Last year, as a surrogate Yummy Mummy needing to get out of the house a bit, then forgetfully un-disillusioned with politics, I decided to renew my monthly attendance at our local branch meeting of the NZ Labour Party.

The gathering was generally miniscule – even though I live in what is considered by outsiders to be a major hot-bed of Labour activity. But I was still surprised to find that the leading light was a chubby, fresh-faced 19-year old poppet with intermittent unsuccessful enrolments at our local university and good connections with its Labour Club - let’s call him ‘Marcus’.

A couple of months later, Marcus let it be known that he intended to put himself forward as the Labour candidate for the forthcoming Local Council Elections – no one demurred. The mandatory selection process was then set in process and there was a call for nominees. Marcus told everyone that Labour was determined to run two candidates (for the 2 seat electoral ward) and that the powers-that-be had selected an outsider as the second nominee.

However, it seemed that there might have been potential difficulties for the second nominee in obtaining permission from their public sector employer to run for public office. At this point Marcus, who considered himself to be the self-evidently electable nominee, rang me and asked me whether I would also put my name forward so that both slots on the ticket would be guaranteed filled.

I said no – I was not interested in seeking election. However, he was very insistent and cast it as my duty as a member of the party. Eventually, I reluctantly agreed.

When the selection process took place, I naturally (at least naturally to me) decided that I did not want to appear to be a complete nonentity on the platform. Never being one to do things half-heartedly, I prepared my address with care. While the other candidates talked about street-lighting and rubbish-collection, I rode a couple of hobby-horses – Caring about Costs & Caring about Community:

‘We have just been through 10 ‘Good Years’ during which the current Mayor and her predecessor have been able to spend relatively freely – and promise relatively freely. New sports complexes, ice skating rinks etc. have become elements in a bidding war for votes at Elections.

‘Now that we are in a different economic and financial climate, this has to stop. I strongly doubt that many members of the current Council have grasped this fact – or that they are capable of adapting their mindsets to the new realities’

....

‘Average voter turnout for Local Council elections is only around 40% - we need to make local government more accessible, relevant and engaged in real participation. There is a lot of money at stake – and there are lots of things that can and should be done to help the not so well off and increase community caring and pride.

‘One example is community housing – this is a special interest of mine – I used to work for Housing New Zealand Corporation in the Policy Unit.

‘Community and public housing makes an enormous contribution to the welfare of groups like mental health consumers and refugees – it needs to be safeguarded. And the provision of housing needs to be better targeted and managed etc’.

Although I fear that my message fell largely on deaf ears, I did not fulfil my expected role as a clear also-ran. Consequently, internal Labour politics, factionalism and vendetta led to my selection as a candidate at Marcus’ expense.

AN UNGRACIOUS GUEST AND THE ORCS AND DWARFS

Meetings then commenced for all the Local Council candidates. However, there was an insistence from local Labour MPs and their staff that the meetings should be chaired by a young man who had their trust – another product of the Labour-Factional machine.

Subsequently this gentleman became the subject of the Dominion Post’s headline ‘Parliament staffer stole thousands from MP’ [12/09/2011].

The staffer in question then requested that I put forward my campaign plan for his review and I invited him over for dinner [which, incidentally I cooked – I only hope that the quality of the chicken soup was not the spark for his contempt]. Anyhow, obviously acting on orders from above, he asked me to restrict my campaign to running for second preferences to the other Labour candidate.

Taken aback, I explained that I could not commit family resources and the loyalty of friends to an also-ran campaign. And being a firm believer in the competitive democratic process and the Labour Party’s commitment to social democracy, I suggested that, having been selected, both candidates merited equal treatment

At the end of the meal, I nearly choked when my guest volunteered that campaigning among the deprived and impoverished in Wellington City Council and HNZC housing estates was ‘a waste of effort as they rarely vote’. I was therefore pleased to hear that Marcus was canvassing people in social housing in the recent General Election but disconcerted by his revelation that ‘they are just like us’.

In any event, it was made very clear to me that I would receive a minimum of recognition and assistance during the campaign. While the resources of local MPs, Unions and University / Youth Labour groups were made available to the other Labour candidate, I ended up essentially working on my own, supplemented by some generous assistance towards the end by some kind-hearted, fair-minded ladies [including my long-suffering wife].

At one point, I complained to a friend and local Labour activist who subsequently appears to have lost his life to stress from over-burdening himself with good causes. As a lawyer, he was convinced that what was happening was totally in breach of the Labour Party’s Constitution and therefore open to legal challenge. However, both he and I were realistic to know that this was not an option.

Being a hard man to put down, I picked up the challenge, walking up to 400 kilometres to drop my card in almost every one of the 12,000 letter boxes in the electoral ward, chatting to people who I saw in their gardens or on the street. I also ordered and put up my own electoral signs.

Outside the zoo on one occasion, thumping in some posts, I was amused at being accosted and asked why I was working on my own.

‘Where are the Labour Orcs and Dwarfs’ persisted the bystander?

[Incidentally, one of these, Kurt Sharpe, is frozen in social media amber at the base of this blog, reflecting his delegated task of monitoring its peregrinations on behalf of the Inner Circle]

All this would not have been so bad had not my signs been persistently vandalized while those of my fellow Labour candidate remained largely pristine. At one point, one of my lovely ladies went into the Wellington Central Labour Office in Willis Street and complained about his – only to be met by scathing indifference and questionable dumb ignorance.

In the event, I came out with 1,200 votes [about twice the number of votes received by the sole party-supported candidate in the ward in 2007 - and somewhat more than were recently received by Don Brash in the North Shore constituency] - but my fellow Labour candidate was elected.

MOVE ON

I had in the old argot ‘been done like a Dog’s Dinner’ by the Wellington Labour elite, even though having spent about $12,500 of my own money [much missed I might add] and scorched a lot of shoe leather, I personally declared a draw.

I would have appreciated being thanked by the Party for working on its behalf but no, the best I got was that I had performed ‘creditably’. So what? I hear you say - just another victim of politics, it’s a dirty game – ‘time to move on’.

Except that there is an ongoing Leadership Contest and it’s now the time of the Party to pick itself up and reinvent itself.

And here I hope against hope that personal honesty, good judgement and integrity will now be given their due in the choice.

As none other than Don Brash has noted of Michael Joseph Savage:

'He has been referred to by one commentator as “the sainted politician of the decade”. And he certainly did have some saintly qualities.

'His Government was the architect of the modern welfare state in New Zealand and ... was seen as hugely beneficial to most New Zealanders.'

'He was a life-long bachelor who boarded with old friends, and he neither smoked nor drank. He persuaded his colleagues in the Cabinet to share their ministerial salaries with the back-bench members of his Caucus, so that all Labour MPs received the same remuneration – and I don’t under-estimate that achievement!'

Now there's a place to start.

Wellington City Browns Off Labour

2011-11-26T12:56:00.000-08:00

THE REAL WINNERS IN WELLINGTON CITY

The Dominion Post is has the headline this morning ‘New Zealand blue, Wellington red’, with the following comments:

‘Despite National's strong showing in the party vote, Labour came out on top in many Wellington seats.

In a hard-fought battle in Wellington Central, Grant Robertson convincingly won for Labour over National's Paul Foster-Bell, with a margin of more than 5000.

Labour's Annette King retained her Rongotai electorate, which she has held with little competition since 1996.

Ms King said tonight had been full of ups and downs.

"It has been a rollercoaster ride watching colleagues win and lose. You feel very upset for members who lose. Together there have been some tight races in there."

With no seats lost to National in the Wellington area, Ms King was excited with how things had turned out.

"I am delighted for Wellington. We are still red."

But, if we take a hard look at the Party Votes, things look a little different.

When you aggregate the numbers for National, Labour and the Green Party, the latter is the clear winner.

In 2008, Labour had 38.2% of the 3-Party Vote in Wellington Central and the Green Party took 22.8% - this time around the figures were 28.6% Labour and 28.6% Green. In neighboring Rongotai, Labour's 2008 share of 46.9% fell to 37.6% this year – by contrast, the Greens increased their share from 18.6% in 2008 to 25.3% in the current election.

The 35% increase in the Greens' Party Vote in Ohariu between 2008 and 2011 also looks ominous for Labour.

The Green Party strategy is clearly to slowly strangle Labour in Wellington City through steady grass roots growth before shooting upwards towards the constituency sunshine.

Russell Norman was virtually invisible as the Green candidate for Rongotai – but expect him to appear above the canopy, ready to flower, in 2014 - or before then if Annette King decides to throw in the trowel.

'Dear God No - Not the Baubles of Office Again!'

2011-11-26T04:52:00.000-08:00

He's the Man with the Miser's Touch

2011-11-23T22:50:00.000-08:00

RED KEN SAYS ALL BETS OFF

At a conversation this afternoon in the Island Bay Library, my mate Ken, glowing red with his Charles Chauvel T-shirt and fresh from canvassing in the 2011 NZ General Election, assured me that the tide is turning and that we can confidently look forward to a left-of-centre coalition government next week.

Setting aside my personal preferences and trying to be objective about the overall national mood, I retain some doubts. I also have concerns about the savage anti-politics hangover that would result from the party with the largest number of seats being excluded from government – as well as doubts about the stability of any government based on horse trading from the second string stable.

My sense is that most New Zealanders recognize the Smiling Assassin behind John Key’s blokey-matey ordinariness - and rather like it. Hating politicians in general, they tend to endorse those who emanate quiet menace, gift-wrapped – and I suspect many also gamble that it is no bad thing to put the nation’s finances in the hands of a poker-faced former bond trader.

Let’s see ....

UNFLAPPABLE KEY SET FOR CRUSHING WIN IN NEW ZEALAND

[Reuters, Taupo,NZ, Wednesday Nov 23, 2011] - The resort of Taupo on New Zealand's North Island, a magnet for tourists thronging ski slopes, fishing holes and thermal spas, looks certain to back Prime Minister John Key's National Party, far out in front of the pack ahead of Saturday's election.

Key led National to an emphatic victory over the Labor government in 2008 and sits atop a seemingly unassailable lead. With a 26-point gap over Labor in a Reuters poll of opinion polls, he is playing the credibility card - a safe pair of hands amid crisis and debt in Europe and the United States.

"What is happening overseas is further proof that without a strong and stable Government, you can't reduce debt or have a stable economy," Key told a campaign rally.

That seems to resonate in Taupo, 350 km (220 miles) north of the capital Wellington, with residents' fortunes tied to visitors and to farming and forestry. Like most voters, they face the anxieties of recession, job losses and the flow of people to neighboring Australia seeking a better life.

Anita Carruthers says Key looks best placed to deal with the threats to the standard of living of her children and grandchildren.

"The things that have knocked us around haven't really been their fault, they've been a pretty safe pair of hands," Carruthers said as she gazed at boats bobbing in Lake Taupo's white-capped waves in the spring sunshine.

Key's affable, calm demeanor and his ability to read the country's mood looks set to keep the party in power with a higher share of the vote.

Key, 52, gets credit for steering the nation of 4.4 million through a series of crises, if not unscathed at least with less damage than most other developed economies.

Over three years, the country has had credit rating downgrades by two agencies, seen official net debt hit 23 percent of gross domestic product and posted a record budget deficit.

Buffeted by global financial turmoil, it has also had its second-biggest city devastated by two earthquakes, and been struck by a colliery disaster that killed 29 miners.

PM'S STANDING UNAFFECTED

None of which had dented Key's standing.

"He has been a reassuring figure for many people during times of crisis, and it seems to be his ordinariness, he comes across as a normal Kiwi and that has appeal," said Auckland University political scientist Ray Miller.

And for a politician with relatively limited experience - nine years in parliament and five years as leader - he has shown himself an adept performer in debates.
When confronted during a sterile campaign by a long list of promises from Labor leader Phil Goff he retorted: "Show me the money" -- a line borrowed from the movie "Jerry Maguire."

National's one significant weakness appears to be its plan to sell minority stakes in several state power companies and the national airline, which surveys show is unpopular with voters.

Center-left Labor, led by the boyish-looking 27-year parliamentary veteran Goff, has played up fears the assets will end up in foreign hands. But the party remains far behind.

"Goff has probably surprised by how good a campaign he has run, but he's suffered by being compared against previous (Labour) leader Helen Clark, who was a dominant performer," said Miller.

Of the minor parties, the Greens appear to have eaten into Labour's vote and on current trends will double their representation. Two parties now supporting National -- ACT and United Future -- risk disappearing from parliament.

Under New Zealand's proportional voting system a party needs either an "electorate" or constituency seat, or at least 5 percent of the nationwide vote to get into parliament.

The system has always delivered a coalition government, with National holding 57 of 120 seats in the outgoing chamber. But National's current ratings would secure an outright majority.

Some pundits are speculating about a return of the mercurial Winston Peters, leader of the economic nationalist New Zealand First Party, thrown out of parliament in the 2008 election.

Polls give it an outside chance to return, which could yet force Key to form a minority government with support again from the small Maori party.

The New Zealand Election - As Others See Us

2011-11-22T02:43:00.000-08:00

STORM IN A TEAPOT TRANSFORMS NEW ZEALAND’S SLEEPY ELECTION

[by Kathy Marks , UK Independent, Monday 21 November 2011]

It was a lacklustre election campaign whose result seemed a foregone conclusion: victory for the New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, at the polls this Saturday. Then a freelance cameraman left a tape recorder running on a café table where Mr Key was meeting an ally, unleashing "Cuppagate" – a row about politics, privacy and media ethics.

Bradley Ambrose says he inadvertently left the device behind, inside a bag, following a photo-opportunity with Mr Key and John Banks, an ACT party candidate. The Prime Minister, however, has complained to police that a private conversation, held over a cup of tea, was illegally recorded, and has accused the media of "UK-style News of the World tabloid tactics".

Neither the Herald on Sunday newspaper nor the TV3 channel, both of which have copies of the "teapot tape", has released its contents. But Winston Peters, leader of the rival New Zealand First party, who appears to have a transcript, claims the two men criticised the ACT leader, Don Brash, and made disparaging remarks about New Zealand First's ageing supporters.

It's hardly sensationalist stuff, and – despite dark hints by the Herald on Sunday – is unlikely to alter the election outcome. But the row has dominated the headlines, frustrating Mr Key's crusade to paint himself as a safe pair of hands at a time of economic uncertainty, as well as attempts by the opposition leader, Phil Goff, to win over voters by dyeing his hair and donning motorbike leathers.

This week police are expected to execute search warrants on the Herald and TV3, as well as two news organisations that interviewed Mr Ambrose about "Teapotgate". Mr Ambrose, for his part, has accused Mr Key of defaming him. Tomorrow he is going to court to seek a ruling on whether the café conversation was private.

Opinion polls suggest Mr Key's centre-right National Party, which has governed in coalition with ACT and two smaller parties since 2008, will win an outright majority. Nevertheless, the Nationals may need ACT, and the event in the Auckland café was designed to encourage voters to support Mr Banks.

NEW ZEALAND GENERAL ELECTION 2011

[Political Compass at: http://www.politicalcompass.org/]

Given the Kiwi tendency to confuse critical thinking with the national no-no of "negative thinking", National's up-beat election posters probably hit the popular mood. While short on substance, the slogan Building a Brighter Future invariably accompanied by a shot of the ever-smiling John Key, should help deliver a second term.

This time around, harsher cutbacks and a more full- throttle neoliberal agenda can be expected. By contrast, Labour's Phil Goff, widely seen as decent but unexciting, features less prominently than local candidates.

Both parties count on a certain level of voter amnesia.

While in Europe and the US there's an unprecedented public backlash against banks and investment houses, New Zealanders are poised to re-elect a Prime Minister who made his career fortune as an executive with the scandal-ridden firm of Merrill Lynch.

Labour similarly counts on short-term memory with its No Asset Sales slogan. It was under Labour in the 1980s that asset sales and neo-liberalism were introduced to New Zealand. The Finance Minister responsible has since found an appropriate home in the far right ACT party.

Market forces, having won the economic and political battles in New Zealand, increasingly dominate the cultural front as well. Business reports are now as frequent as sports and weather reports.

Even the Green Party, to the consternation of some of its supporters, is this time outfitting its co-leaders in conservative attire more appropriate to real estate salespeople. The apparently business-friendly Greens nevertheless offer a significantly left alternative to Labour. The two parties might gain sufficient support to form a coalition government, with the participation of the Māori Party.

Both main parties have made awkward attempts to tap into the recent World Cup fever. The All Blacks' victory in this rugby-obsessed nation will inevitably — if inexplicably — give the government an electoral boost.

With the ideological gap between the main parties narrowing, issues of identity politics have largely replaced the great clashes of vision that older New Zealanders remember. Politicians of conviction seem increasingly outnumbered by politicians of mere career.

NOTE

The underlying theory of the Political Compass is that political views may be better measured along two separate and independent axes.

The Economic (Left-Right) axis measures one's opinion of how the economy should be run: "left" is defined as the view that the economy should be run by a cooperative collective agency (which can mean the state, but can also mean a network of communes), while "right" is defined as the view that the economy should be left to the devices of competing individuals and organisations.

The other axis (Authoritarian-Libertarian) measures one's political opinions in a social sense, regarding a view of the appropriate amount of personal freedom: "libertarianism" is defined as the belief that personal freedom should be maximised, while "authoritarianism" is defined as the belief that authority and tradition should be obeyed.

You can take the test yourself at the Political Compass Website to get a psephological diagnosis. As shown on the diagram above, I am obviously a mixed mince, plus orange rind and angelica, nut-encrusted fruit cake. Readers of this Blog, you have been warned!

Possibly Premature

2011-11-21T16:16:00.000-08:00

NZ TREASURY APPOINTS AUSTRALIA’S LAZARD TO ADVISE ON ASSET SALES

SHARECHAT.co.nz Tuesday 1st November 2011

The New Zealand Treasury has appointed Australian investment banking firm Lazard Pty as an independent adviser for asset sales.

The National Party has said that if it wins a second term in government at the Nov. 26 election it will sell minority stakes in Mighty River Power, Meridian Energy, Genesis Energy and Solid Energy and reduce the Crown’s shareholdings in Air New Zealand to raise $5 billion to $7 billion. The Government will keep at least 51% of shares.

Lazard's Australian team includes former Australian Labor Party leader Paul Keating, who is listed as chairman of corporate advisory international. Lazard's managing director in Australia is John Wylie, who worked on the privatisation of Qantas and the selldown of power companies by the Victorian government.

The appointment of Lazard until December 2012 is conditional, according to a notice on the Government's electronic tenders service.

The mandate is for the design of, and participation in, the pre-qualification process for sales advisers, including joint lead managers and other parties, and subsequent appointment of sales syndicates.

Lazard will also provide independent quality assurance of the sales programme advice prepared by the Crown adviser and independent advisory services during the consultation and execution phase for each transaction, the notice says.

No value of the contract was stated.

In July, Treasury said it appointed Deutsche Bank and Craigs Investment Partners as the Crown's sole financial advisers for preparatory work on extension of the mixed ownership model. That contract period was due to end prior to the November general election.

World Banking Off-Key

2011-11-20T19:14:00.000-08:00

ARE WE TALKING ABOUT THE SAME THING?

You may be finding it hard to relate the $100 that you draw from the Cash Dispenser to pay for everyday necessaries with:

1.Washington's wrangles over reducing the nation’s public sector deficit by between $US1.2 trillion and $US1.5 trillion over the next decade
2. The €1.125+ trillion ‘Big Bazooka’ that may be wheeled out to blast the Eurozone Debt ‘Tower of Terror'.

If so, draw some comfort from Samuel Butler’s comments on ‘Musical Banks’ in ‘Erewhon: or Over the Range’ (1872).

MUSICAL BANKS

'So far, however, as I could collect anything certain, I gathered that they have two distinct currencies, each under the control of its own banks and mercantile codes. One of these (the one with the Musical Banks) was supposed to be the system, and to give out the currency in which all monetary transactions should be carried on; and as far as I could see, all who wished to be considered respectable, kept a larger or smaller balance at these banks.

On the other hand, if there is one thing of which I am more sure than another, it is that the amount so kept had no direct commercial value in the outside world; I am sure that the managers and cashiers of the Musical Banks were not paid in their own currency.

.............

'Moreover these institutions never departed from the safest and most approved banking principles. Thus they never allowed interest on deposit, a thing now frequently done by certain bubble companies, which by doing an illegitimate trade had drawn many customers away; and even the shareholders were fewer than formerly, owing to the innovations of these unscrupulous persons.

For the Musical Banks paid little or no dividend, but divided their profits by way of bonus on the original shares once in every thirty thousand years; and as it was now only two thousand years since there had been one of these distributions, people felt that they could not hope for another in their own time and preferred investments whereby they got some more tangible return; all which, Mrs Nosnibor said, was very melancholy to think of.

Having made these last admissions, she returned to her original statement, namely, that every one in the country really supported these banks. As to the fewness of the people, and the absence of the able-bodied, she pointed out to me with some justice that this was exactly what we ought to expect.

She might say what she pleased, but her manner carried no conviction, and later on I saw signs of general indifference to these banks that were not to be mistaken. Their supporters often denied it, but the denial was generally so couched as to add another proof of its existence. In commercial panics, and in times of general distress, the people as a mass did not so much as even think of turning to these banks.

WHEN THE MUSIC STOPS

'A few might do so, some from habit and early training, some from the instinct that prompts us to catch at any straw when we think ourselves drowning, but few from a genuine belief that the Musical Banks could save them from financial ruin, if they were unable to meet their engagements in the other kind of currency.

In conversation with one of the Musical Bank managers I ventured to hint this as plainly as politeness would allow. He said that it had been more or less true till lately; but that now they had put fresh stained glass windows into all the banks in the country, and repaired the buildings, and enlarged the organs; the presidents, moreover, had taken to riding in omnibuses and talking nicely to people in the streets, and to remembering the ages of their children, and giving them things when they were naughty, so that all would henceforth go smoothly.

“But haven’t you done anything to the money itself?” said I, timidly.

“It is not necessary,” he rejoined; “not in the least necessary, I assure you.”

.................

'And yet any one could see that the money given out at these banks was not that with which people bought their bread, meat, and clothing. It was like it at a first glance, and was stamped with designs that were often of great beauty; it was not, again, a spurious coinage, made with the intention that it should be mistaken for the money in actual use; it was more like a toy money, or the counters used for certain games at cards; for, notwithstanding the beauty of the designs, the material on which they were stamped was as nearly valueless as possible.

Of course every one knew that their commercial value was nil, but all those who wished to be considered respectable thought it incumbent upon them to retain a few coins in their possession, and to let them be seen from time to time in their hands and purses. Not only this, but they would stick to it that the current coin of the realm was dross in comparison with the Musical Bank coinage.

Perhaps, however, the strangest thing of all was that these very people would at times make fun in small ways of the whole system; indeed, there was hardly any insinuation against it which they would not tolerate and even applaud in their daily newspapers if written anonymously, while if the same thing were said without ambiguity to their faces—nominative case verb and accusative being all in their right places, and doubt impossible—they would consider themselves very seriously and justly outraged, and accuse the speaker of being unwell.

Few people would speak quite openly and freely before them, which struck me as a very bad sign. When they were in the room every one would talk as though all currency save that of the Musical Banks should be abolished; and yet they knew perfectly well that even the cashiers themselves hardly used the Musical Bank money more than other people. It was expected of them that they should appear to do so, but this was all.

BANKER’S UNABLE TO SING DIFFERENT TUNE

'The less thoughtful of them did not seem particularly unhappy, but many were plainly sick at heart, though perhaps they hardly knew it, and would not have owned to being so. Some few were opponents of the whole system; but these were liable to be dismissed from their employment at any moment, and this rendered them very careful, for a man who had once been cashier at a Musical Bank was out of the field for other employment, and was generally unfitted for it by reason of that course of treatment which was commonly called his education.

In fact it was a career from which retreat was virtually impossible, and into which young men were generally induced to enter before they could be reasonably expected, considering their training, to have formed any opinions of their own. Not unfrequently, indeed, they were induced, by what we in England should call undue influence, concealment, and fraud.

Few indeed were those who had the courage to insist on seeing both sides of the question before they committed themselves to what was practically a leap in the dark. One would have thought that caution in this respect was an elementary principle,—one of the first things that an honourable man would teach his boy to understand; but in practice it was not so.

I even saw cases in which parents bought the right of presenting to the office of cashier at one of these banks, with the fixed determination that some one of their sons (perhaps a mere child) should fill it.

There was the lad himself—growing up with every promise of becoming a good and honourable man—but utterly without warning concerning the iron shoe which his natural protector was providing for him. Who could say that the whole thing would not end in a life-long lie, and vain chafing to escape? I confess that there were few things in Erewhon which shocked me more than this.

30,000 YEAR DIVIDEND

'The saving feature of the Erewhonian Musical Bank system (as distinct from the quasi-idolatrous views which coexist with it, and on which I will touch later) was that while it bore witness to the existence of a kingdom that is not of this world, it made no attempt to pierce the veil that hides it from human eyes. It is here that almost all religions go wrong.

Their priests try to make us believe that they know more about the unseen world than those whose eyes are still blinded by the seen, can ever know — forgetting that while to deny the existence of an unseen kingdom is bad, to pretend that we know more about it than its bare existence is no better.

This chapter is already longer than I intended, but I should like to say that in spite of the saving feature of which I have just spoken, I cannot help thinking that the Erewhonians are on the eve of some great change in their religious opinions, or at any rate in that part of them which finds expression through their Musical Banks.

So far as I could see, fully ninety per cent of the population of the metropolis looked upon these banks with something not far removed from contempt. If this is so, any such startling event as is sure to arise sooner or later, may serve as nucleus to a new order of things that will be more in harmony with both the heads and hearts of the people.'

BACKGROUND

Erewhon is a mythical land that provides the setting for cautionary fantasy (the country's name is an anagram of ‘nowhere’). Samuel Butler commences the book by drawing on his experiences in the early settlement of Canterbury, New Zealand, between 1860 and 1864. In particular, his description of the journey ‘over the range’ is based on his exploration of the mountain headwaters of the Rangitātā River in 1861.

But [as with the World Debt Crisis] reality fades slowly into the surreal and grotesque.

During his exploration of the headwaters of the river, the hero stumbles into a topsy-turvy world that provides counterpoints for contemporary social attitudes to criminal punishment, religion and cultural hubris – and an excellent platform for satire. The Erewhonian’s worship Ydgrun [i.e Mrs Grundy] - the incomprehensible but all powerful goddess of convention, propriety and humbug.

Threats to the ‘Democracy of Distribution’

2011-11-18T20:00:00.000-08:00

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN JOURNALISM IS EVERYWHERE?

By Mathew Ingram, Bloomberg News, November 18, 2011

Are citizen reporters who use social media a threat to normal news sources? Should journalists be licensed? What happens to freedom of the press?

RANDOM ACTS OF JOURNALISM

When the Arab Spring demonstrations were under way in Egypt’s Tahrir Square and reports were streaming out through Twitter and Facebook, it was easy to feel superior to the Egyptian government. How could they not realize that information can no longer be contained by blockades or even Internet blackouts when everyone has the power to publish?

Now the authorities in New York City and elsewhere have been gettinga dose of that medicine, with the Occupy Wall Street protests being tweeted and live-streamed. As the Associated Press learned this week, to its chagrin, we all have newswires at our disposal now.

One of the things the NYC police have been trying to do to keep a lid on the protests is corral and/or exclude journalists from certain areas—and in many cases even arrest them—and then argue that only “registered” journalists are allowed to move freely (in an Orwellian move, the New York police restricted them to what they called “Free Speech Zones”).

As Elisabeth Spiers of the New York Observer noted, the rules that govern who can be considered an official journalist for police purposes are convoluted and in some cases even contradictory, since they require that someone report on events before applying for a permit—events that they should not have been reporting on without a permit.

CAN YOU REGULATE WHO IS A JOURNALIST?

New York’s attempts to regulate the practice of journalism seem as antiquated as attempts in other jurisdictions, such as Quebec, to create an official licensing system, an idea that in some cases is supported by traditional journalistic organizations for fear their livelihood is being threatened by “citizen” reporters or bloggers.

But as journalism professor Jay Rosen has argued many times, the practice of journalism gets better when more people are doing it, and nowhere has that become more obvious than in places like Tahrir Square—and now in Zucotti Park and similar locations.

Among those who seem to see this as a threat are traditional news sources such as the Associated Press, which chewed out its reporters this week for posting to Twitter about their colleagues’ arrests in New York.

The AP said later that its response was driven by concern for the safety of its reporters rather than a desire to save the news for its customers—but the news service failed to explain why the memo from a senior editor mentioned only the rule about not scooping the wire and said nothing about concern for its journalists.

As Jon Mitchell at Read/Write Web described in his post about the use of social media around the Occupy protests, real-time news via Twitter, Flickr, and other services, when combined with curation tools such as Storify (which was developed by former Associated Press foreign correspondent Burt Herman) can produce a powerful form of journalism that equals—or even exceeds—what traditional sources can provide.

Are there errors and omissions and other flaws in this kind of real-time reporting by nonjournalists? Of course there are. But they tend to get corrected just as quickly as they would in the mainstream media, if not faster.

One of the real threats to traditional journalism that come out of this phenomenon (if there are any) is that the ability to report and publish and broadcast the news in real time from events such as the Zucotti Park protests can turn anyone into what journalists have traditionally been: namely, a trusted filter for the news.

Mitchell describes how one college student created a summary of the event that got tens of thousands of views in a matter of hours and was embedded by the Washington Post. Does that make him a journalist? Of course it does—in exactly the same way that Pakistani programmer Sohaib Athar became a journalist by live-tweeting the raid on Osama bin Laden, something NPR digital editor Andy Carvin described as a “random act of journalism.”

FREEDOM OF THE PRESS MATTERS

As Mitchell points out, Storify, by selecting and curating the most interesting reports produced with its aggregation tools, is coming close to being a news source that competes with newspapers and other traditional media outlets. So what are mainstream media entities doing to compete?

Are they just telling their journalists not to post to social media networks, as AP and others have done—or are they trying to take advantage of these tools? The BBC has an entire news desk set up to process and fact-check reports that come in via Twitter, YouTube, and other networks, a process that applies traditional journalistic processes to these new information sources.

That’s a smart approach, and one that other media outlets could learn from.

The disruption of journalism by the “democracy of distribution” (as Om has called it) is also one of the reasons why laws such as the Stop Online Piracy Act are a real danger. What if a site like WikiLeaks or a citizen-journalism service is accused of using copyrighted material in a news report? Their site could be removed from the Internet and shut down by payment companies (as WikiLeaks has been) without even a court hearing to prove their guilt.

Freedom of the press becomes a lot more important when everyone is the press — or rather, when the Internet itself becomes the press.

So what does the world look like when journalism is everywhere? We are beginning to find out. And while it may be a frightening prospect if you are a traditional media company, there is a lot to be optimistic about if you are just interested in the news.

A world where everyone is a journalist may be a bit more chaotic and a bit more complicated than the one we are used to, but it will also be a bit freer, and that is clearly a good thing.

------------------------------------------------------------
November 15, 2011

Committee on the Judiciary
United States Senate
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Chairman Leahy, Ranking Member Grassley, Chairman Smith and Ranking Member Conyers:

The undersigned Internet and technology companies write to express our concern with legislative measures that have been introduced in the United States Senate and United States House of Representatives, S. 968 (the “PROTECT IP Act”) and H.R. 3261 (the “Stop Online Piracy Act”).

We support the bills’ stated goals -- providing additional enforcement tools to combat foreign “rogue” websites that are dedicated to copyright infringement or counterfeiting. Unfortunately, the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites.

We are concerned that these measures pose a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job-creation, as well as to our Nation’s cybersecurity.

We cannot support these bills as written and ask that you consider more targeted ways to combat foreign “rogue” websites dedicated to copyright infringement and trademark counterfeiting, while preserving the innovation and dynamism that has made the Internet such an important driver of economic growth and job creation.

One issue merits special attention. We are very concerned that the bills as written would seriously undermine the effective mechanism Congress enacted in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to provide a safe harbor for Internet companies that act in good faith to remove infringing content from their sites.

Since their enactment in 1998, the DMCA’s safe harbor provisions for online service providers have been a cornerstone of the U.S. Internet and technology industry’s growth and success. While we work together to find additional ways to target foreign “rogue’ sites, we should not jeopardize a foundational structure that has worked for content owners and Internet companies alike and provides certainty to innovators with new ideas for how people create, find, discuss and share information lawfully online.

We are proud to be part of an industry that has been crucial to U.S. economic growth and job creation. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report found that the Internet accounts for 3.4 percent of GDP in the 13 countries that McKinsey studied, and, in the U.S., the Internet’s contribution to GDP is even larger. If Internet consumption and expenditure were a sector, its contribution to GDP would be greater than energy, agriculture, communication, mining, or utilities.

In addition, the Internet industry has increased productivity for small and medium-sized businesses by 10%. We urge you not to risk either this success or the tremendous benefits the Internet has brought to hundreds of millions of Americans and people around the world.

We stand ready to work with the Congress to develop targeted solutions to address the problem of foreign “rogue” websites.

Thank you in advance for your consideration.

AOL Inc.
eBay Inc.
Facebook Inc.
Google Inc.
LinkedIn Corporation
Mozilla Corp.
Twitter, Inc.
Yahoo! Inc.
Zynga Game Network

[See also my posts of April 14, April 17, September 18 and September 24, 2011 and WebProNews [WebProNews@ientrynetwork.net], 18th November, 2011]

Meanwhile Moated Communities Prosper

2011-11-18T00:16:00.000-08:00

NATIVES FACE ANOTHER EXOTIC INFLUX

As New Zealand’s Prime Minister John Key has noted with approval:

“The cruise industry is the fastest-growing segment of global tourism, with average annual growth at 8.7 per cent for the past decade, and the South Pacific is one of the fastest-growing markets.”

In 2013, the region expects 120 cruises carrying 375,000 passengers.

This growth is creating problems and opportunities.

Industry giant Carnival Australia (a P & O company) has announced it will base the 2,124-passenger Carnival Spirit in Sydney, Australia in October, 2012 and begin offering 8- to 12-night voyages to the Pacific Islands as well as 13-night sailings to New Zealand. This will be the first time that a ship has been based in the Southern Hemisphere.

At 85,000 tons, the ship is so big that it cannot fit under the Sydney Harbour Bridge. And Sydney's port facilities could hit capacity as early as 2013 if a new terminal isn't built to cope with growing demand.

Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd has called for the New South Wales government to scrap plans for a new $60 million terminal upriver from the Bridge and redeploy the expenditure to Circular Quay - and this suggestion is receiving a sympathetic hearing, given the importance of cruise-related expenditure to the city.

As for Wellington, 98 cruise ships are due to visit in the coming season - up from 60 in the 2010/11 season. Some 150 - 190,000 cruise visitors are expected in the 2011/12 cruise season – over six times the number of passengers the capital was welcoming five years ago.

The passengers who are equivalent in number to the population of Wellington city - are expected to inject about $32 million into the region's economy over the six-month season. Carnival Australia estimates that the total benefit to the city of each cruise visit, including passenger spending, port fees and providoring, is around $500,000.

One of the new visitors to Wellington waters will be the 292m-long Italian liner, Costa Deliziosa ( February 16 2012) - and the 90,000-tonne, 294m long Cunard Queen Elizabeth is due on the 22nd of February.

There is a marked trend towards larger and more luxurious liners – with some (e.g. the 43,524-tonne The World) providing more than a hundred all-year apartments for their rich patrons.

To welcome the visitors, the Wellington City Council has just completed a $4 million refurbishment of of the Waterloo Quay, including a sheltered canopy, wider footpath lined with New Zealand’s Xmas tree – the pohutukawa. The port authority has also updated its dedicated cruise terminal.

Elsewhere in the Pacific, attempts are being made to open up contacts between the luxury cruise patrons and the equally exotic indigenous peoples of some of its more remote islands.

For example, Carnival Australia is working with the community in Aneityum, Vanuatu, on a pilot shore tour programme. New Zealand aid and assistance is being offered to assist in these types of developments – which may provide a whole new dimension to the kinds of cultural confrontations that previously led to Cargo Cults.

These have flourished intermittently across the Pacific as the indigenous people sought to emulate the ‘magic’ that brought ships and planes to the islands with their goods or ‘cargo’. One of these was the John Frum (i.e. John ‘from’) cult of Vanuatu, which took hold in the wake of the influxes of materiel associated with US troop movements in WWII.

The cults can include symbolic activities like the building of ‘ritual’ airstrips and the rejection of westernization through abstinence from participation in the waged economy.

I was enormously privileged to be able to view a totally authentic Cargo Cult ceremony at a village in the Finschhafen Peninsula, Papua New Guinea in 1972. I was conducting field research on the potential for developing an indigenous beef cattle industry.

In this case models of machines and goods (including I particularly remember airplanes) were worn as head-dresses by men who danced in pairs, with the intention, I was told, of the articles reproducing through symbolic ‘matings’.

Quite what the long-term impact of substantial inflows of super-rich cruise tourists will be on the relatively poorer natives of Wellington, also remains to be seen.

Capitalism without Bankruptcy is like Catholicism without Hell

2011-11-17T20:12:00.001-08:00

....
"and you can tell how screwed up Europe is when the Head of the Central Bank is Italian and the Pope is a German."

Economists Ring the Changes

2011-11-15T23:04:00.000-08:00

MICE WITH BELLS ON

On the one hand you have a brilliant economist who used to be the Head of the IMF – on the other hand a brilliant economist who used to the EEC’s Competition Policy czar. Now, the first is on the verge of being turfed out by his wife (along with his designer after-shave) and is apparently chewing his finger nails until they bleed - while the second has become Prime Minister of Italy.

Economists it seems are ruling the world – unless they have been caught ‘taking a little thing to the clubs in Vienna on Thursday’, or asking a mate: ‘Can you come to a great swingers' club in Madrid with me (and a bit of stuff)?'

But I am still touched in the faith accorded to Mario Monti as the saviour of Italy and Lucas Papademos as the saviour of Greece.

As the Editors of Bloomberg News gush:

‘Americans are fond of deriding European technocrats. Yet it’s the technocrats -- a cadre of economists with international experience -- who have accepted the challenge of stabilizing the continent, putting aside personal or political interest. They are Europe’s best hope’.

[Though come to think of it, George Papandreou, Greece’s outgoing Prime Minister was also, well ... an ‘internationally-respected economist’].

Setting aside objections as to the legitimacy of technocratic coups by unelected but super-numerate caudillos, is it likely that good will come of it?

Frankly, I doubt it.

To start to get a fix on this, let’s go back 40 years and eavesdrop on ‘famous international economists’ Partha Dasgupta and Amartya Sen as they try to help the Minister of Industries develop a publicly funded Pulp and Paper Mill in the mythical country of Sarania [UNIDO ‘Guidelines for Project Evaluation, 1972].

“Sir we have prepared two alternative designs of the Pulp and Paper Mill Project. Under Alternative A, the investment will be located in the District of Guptania where well-developed infrastructure will keep investment costs to a minimum. Alternative B locates the project in Sendash, which is poor and undeveloped, though equally well-endowed with forest resources.

Our analysis shows that the net benefits of the alternatives are essentially equal because the lower financial costs incurred under A would be offset by the employment benefits secured at Sendash. Which alternative will you implement?”

Minister

“Well, I’m certainly inclined to the Sendash alternative. Offhand, an extra capital outlay of $2 million seems a small price to pay to generate $1 million of employment and consumption benefits per year for Sendash.”

Economists

“Well, in that case, you can see from our drawing [showing initial marginal utility trade-offs for the alternatives] that your choice implies a combination of i and W somewhere to the northeast of LL, which is to say that for social rates of discount ranging from 0.20 down to 0.10, the implied value of W is at least in the range 0.72 to 1.80.

That is, if we can reasonably put the social rate of discount in the range 0.10 to 0.20, then choosing Alternative B implies that $1 of income generated in Sendash has a social value equal at the very least to $1.72 to $2.80 to income generated in Guptania.”

Trade-offs between efficiency and distribution objectives can clearly be matters of exquisite arbitration to economists.

And in the case that I quote above, they scurry into the wainscot as the political fur starts to fly, with them being:

“Roughly in the position of the mice in Aesop’s fable who found their ingenious plan of putting a bell on the cat to warn them of his presence foiled by the lack of a suitable means of implementing the plan”.

It is one thing to say that something should be done, but quite a different matter to do it.

Eliminate the cats though and you run the risk of ending up with a cacophony of campanology-challenged half-blind mice.

NOBODY’S PUSSY CAT

Of course conventional politicians are highly suspect in a profound crisis.

New Zealand’s own pig farmer Minister of Finance Sir Roger Douglas had a few things to say about this to the Mt Pelerin Society while he was called away from his farrowing crates to save the country during the 1984 – 1990 Lange Government.

He started from a low regard for your ordinary ‘lolly-scramble / candy shower’ politicians, who he said:

‘Ignore structural reform because they think they are in power to please people, and pleasing people does not involve making them face up to the hard questions.

‘They use the latest polls to fine-tune their image and their policies, in order to achieve better results in the next poll. In other words, their aim is really to be in perpetual power.

‘Their adherence to ad hoc short-term policies which focus on their own immediate problems, rather than the country’s long-term opportunities, leads to accumulating difficulties over time’.

And he detailed in a radical prescription for feral feline adjustment, cast as Ten Principles:

1. For Quality Policies you need Quality People

Policy starts with people. It emerges from the quality of their observation, knowledge, analysis, imagination and ability to think laterally to develop a wider range of options.

2. Implement Reform in Quantum Leaps, using Large Packages

Do not try to advance a step at a time. Define your objectives clearly and move towards them by quantum leaps. Otherwise the interest groups will have time to mobilise and drag you down

3. Speed is Essential – It is Impossible to Go Too Fast

Speed is essential, and it is impossible to go too fast. Even at maximum speed, the total programme will take some years to implement. The short-term trade-off costs start from Day One.

4. Once you start the Momentum, Never Let it Stop Rolling

Once you start the momentum rolling, never let it stop until you have completed the total programme. The fire of opponents is much less accurate if they have to shoot at a rapidly moving target.

5. Consistency + Credibility = Economic Confidence

Continuous credibility is essential to main public confidence in structural reform and minimise the costs. The key to credibility is consistency of policy and communications.

6. Let the Dog see the Rabbit

Let the dog see the rabbit. People cannot co-operate with the reform process unless they know where you are heading. Go as fast as you can but where practicable, give them notice by spelling out your objectives and intentions in advance.

Where programmes can or will be implemented in stages over time, publish the timetable up front.

7. Never Fall into the Trap of Selling the Public Short

Do not mistake the fears of the politicians for ignorance, lack of guts or lack of realism on the part of the voting public.

8. Don’t Blink: Public Confidence Rests on your Composure

Relaxed, matter-of-fact composure is essential every time you face the public. Their confidence is always based on yours.

9. Incentives, Choice, Contestability: Get the Fundamentals Right

Government’s role is to create a framework that widens their opportunities for choice, improves the incentives to productive activity and sees that their gain benefits society as a whole.

10. When in Doubt, Ask yourself: ‘Why am I in Politics?’

Genuine structural reform, carried right through fairly and without compromise, delivers larger gains in living standards and opportunity than those achievable by any other political route”.

..................

The downsides of all this were permanent scars on the nation’s trust of the political process and of the NZ Labour Party in particular that will, if ever, heal ridged, red and ugly – together with Sir Roger’s own unseemly descent to junkie status in a sordid addiction to perpetual reform.

However, he was the un-belled, fine spray tom cat that New Zealand needed if it was to avoid bankruptcy in the mid-1980s – and he would likely agree with Marty Linsky that ‘leadership is about disappointing your own people at a rate that they can absorb’. Like Mrs Thatcher, he wasn’t ‘a cosmetic politician just changing make-up to suit the times’.

He pushed aside the text books and became an action cat.

By contrast, the problem with econocrats is that they are likely to combine the perfectionist tendencies of economists with the prevarication that comes so naturally to bureaucrats.

This means that risk taking and adaptation to risk may be baffling to them. And as creatures who are generally credited with being one sausage short of a barbecue in the charisma stakes, it is equally difficult envisaging them becoming rallying points for new beginnings, after building a consensus about setting aside the past.

So I wish the ‘internationally renowned’ economists lots of luck as they step into the limelight – but best hide the cheese.

SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY

Monti, M., 2004, ‘A Reformed Competition Policy: Achievements and Challenges for the Future’, Brussels: Center for European Reform.

Papandreou, G.A., 2009, ’Progressive Governance: Greece and the New International Order’, London School of Economics

Papedemos, L. and Stark, J., (editors), 2010, ‘Enhancing monetary analysis’, European Central Bank, Brussels

Strauss-Kahn, D., 1977, ‘Economie de la famille et accumulation patrimoniale’, Paris: Editions Cujas

NOTE

Incidentally, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government still has Lucas Papademos down as a Visiting Professor of Public Policy, teaching ‘PED-231: The Global Financial Crisis: Policy Responses and Challenges’, from 23rd January 2012.

‘This course examines policies aimed at the prevention and management of financial crises in the light of recent experience.

Topics covered include:

• macroeconomic and micro-financial causes and contributing factors to the global financial crisis
• the role of central bank policies in crisis management and prevention; fiscal stimulus packages and bank support schemes
• financial regulatory reform and the G20 process
• systemic risk and macro-prudential supervision; the fiscal legacy of the financial turbulence and the economic recession
• and the European sovereign debt crisis’.

Harvard obviously has a low expectation that Lucas will survive more than a couple of months as the Prime Minister of Greece. However, his practical (but short-lived) experience should provide some interesting teaching examples from the Real World.

A World Debt Firestorm?

2011-11-14T17:24:00.000-08:00

FACING A BURNT OUT FUTURE

Better perhaps that we not know but inevitably speculation has begun about what may happen if the world’s multiple economic crises are not contained. Sparks from older blazes in the dry Mediterranean are still hot and we are getting sudden break outs like the one that threatens Italy. If all these fires coalesce and burn along a broad front, an uncontrollable economic inferno threatens.

Actually, the analogy of a wild fire is quite useful – if you imagine that the landscape in the South has been parched bone dry by trade imbalances, poorly conceived expenditures and excessive draw downs from public reserves. And as all new growth shrivels, fear sets in and risks rise.

Attempts to contain the first fires involve attempting to defend lock, stock and barrel amid showy water drops from already depleted resources – and as these fail real estate, farms and mines are threatened.

At this point strategic decisions are made and cordons and fire breaks are activated. There is also a growing devil take the hindmost attitude and less fortunate areas are given hostage to the wind. The supposedly safe areas become crowded with resources to protect and the resources of protection. Nevertheless, as a solid fire front starts to form, the speculators begin to run the danger of encirclement.

At this point, risks become totally unquantifiable. Areas can be passed over in the sheer speed of events, other areas are suddenly enveloped in fire balls, and the front itself creates climatic conditions that both feed its energy and contain within them the seeds of its own destruction.

Eventually, the crisis simply runs out of the fear that fuels it – leaving some scars that never heal, along with some miraculous rapid re-growth as the rain of common sense sets in.

So let’s recast this in economic terms:

• Overwhelmed by ever increasing interests demands on bonds, fiscal shortfalls, and massive social unrest on enforced budget stringency, one of the local fires [Greece?] burns out of control. The country leaves the eurozone and - wherever possible - financial resources flee as well. The country is impoverished over night and requires international intervention to avoid melt down.

• Similar fire storms threaten across the landscape of weaker states. Meanwhile, a wave of contagion hits the rest of the eurozone. Banks across the continent, which hold the threatened and repudiated debts, implode. Burned investors panic about the likelihood of further sovereign eurozone defaults and shun bonds. The liabilities of already impaired nation states become so onerous that the nationalization of banks cannot protect depositors. Bank credit collapses.

• Capital floods into possible / temporary safe havens [like Germany] but this creates chaos in the currency markets. Rapid hikes in exchange rates ruin major exporters who are in any event facing rapidly contracting world markets. Currency oscillations driven by panic and speculation ruin small countries like New Zealand, which like other commodity-based economies also faces a massive slump in prices for primary products.

• The countries that survive best by hook or by crook become traumatized and damaged by deflation, recession and appreciating but wildly fluctuating exchange rates. Elsewhere inflation takes hold on an unprecedented scale.

• Internal conflicts are exacerbated by growing poverty and joblessness – external conflicts by intense competition for solvent markets. The survivor countries face massive pressure from immigration, heavy domestic demands for isolationism and increasing xenophobia. The damaged seek satellite / feudal status from the richer countries for protection.

Large countries [USA?] face internal conflicts and possible dissolution as they are part survivor – part basket case. Elsewhere new blocs emerge on a makeshift basis with these gradually settling into new realities. International Politics reverts almost entirely to self-interest and potentially violent recrimination is a commonplace.

WHAT CAN WE DO?

Perhaps it is worthwhile considering the advice of Dr July Messer [Nature Conservation Council of New South Wales, 2002] on bushfire control [somewhat amended]:

‘Vigilance and precaution on the part of homeowners, local communities and governments, followed by commonsense planning about how homes, businesses and infrastructures are managed and funded, are the most effective measures to protect activity and resources from debt contagion.

The rest of the options fall a long way behind and can carry a huge social and economic price tag’.

Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs

2011-11-12T20:36:00.000-08:00

COMMON SENSE AMERICA

‘In the following pages I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments and common sense; and have no other preliminaries to settle with the reader, than he will divest himself of prejudice and prepossession, and suffer his reason and his feelings to determine for themselves; that he will put on, or rather that he will not put off, the true character of a man, and generously enlarge his views beyond the present day’.

So says Tom Paine in his ‘Thoughts on the Present State of American Affairs’ [Common Sense (1776)].

Clearly then for Paine, the application of common sense in public affairs was the exercise of reason, foresight and idealism within an open mind.

In the light of this, I was bemused by Sophia Rosenfeld’s pairing of Herman Cain with Tom Paine [New York Times, November 11, 2011].

She notes that ‘common sense’ has become a mantra on the American Right, with Michele Bachmann claiming that “everything I needed to know in life I learned in Iowa”; Rick Perry claiming of the solution to our current discontents “it’s not magic, it is actually common sense”; and Mitt Romney announcing “I believe we can save Social Security with a few common-sense reforms.”

But Cain is the most ‘commonsensical’ candidate of all, it seems:

‘In Cain’s telling, it is not just business executives and management types who embody “common sense leadership” and “common sense solutions.” It is also the Founding Fathers, whose Constitution set forth a limited number of “first principles” to which government should return. Ditto for Cain’s own father, a chauffeur in the Jim Crow South, who had little formal education but “a Ph.D. in Common Sense.”

‘Even Jesus receives a shout-out from the candidate. In a widely circulated blog posted last year on Red State, Cain casts the son of God as a prophet of contemporary conservatism who “taught without a script” and espoused “common sense parables” that “filled people with promise and compassion, his words forever inspiring”— without the benefit of a universal healthcare system, food stamps, unemployment benefits or any other government program.

‘But in the hands of Cain, common sense also signals a second populist theme, one that seems to run directly counter to his deeply partisan and often fiery political message. That is transcendence. Common sense also means those basic principles and assumptions upon which we can all agree — or would agree if we only got all the self-proclaimed experts and professional politicians out of the way.

Cain wants us to believe he is espousing nothing more than the everyday wisdom that is the shared property of all genuine Americans, regardless of differences of class, religion, and, most significantly in his case, race. He may be a black man ranting against the government, a position that, history suggests, would likely land him on the political left. But his appeal to nothing more than common sense, when punctuated with humorous quips and blatant “misstatements” delivered in the cadences of a preacher, suggests that Cain refuses to think in today’s divisive terms.

The attraction of common sense as the foundation for political wisdom has long been that it says we’re all in this together — yet we can figure it out on our own, with only the basic resources we all naturally possess (another of Cain’s many self-help books is “C.E.O. of Self: You are in Charge”). And when that happens, we won’t need politics any longer.

Sounding a populist chord that actually does go all the way back to Paine and 18th-century America, Cain offers up a radical political philosophy and promises it is the self-evident conclusion of a “professional problem solver.

”Like Paine, he is the ordinary but singular man (and gifted rhetorician) who will finally get us beyond all our great divisions — rich and poor, white and black, right and left — and tell us how to fix a broken system’.

By this she subscribes to the view that Paine simply argued that: ‘Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state is a necessary evil’.

But a simplistic ‘common sense’ interpretation of these words was very far from what Paine actually intended. To him, America was no less than the world’s best hope for igniting an international social democratic revolution.

As a long-time admirer of Tom Paine, I have been previously goaded into defending him from omissions and slurs - see my post of Wednesday, 7 September 2011, ‘The Birth of the Welfare State: Beatrice Webb in 1886 or Tom Paine in 1791?’

In this I note Tom’s extensive prescriptions for state intervention as set out in ‘Rights of Man: Applying Principle to Practice’ [Chapter 5 — Ways and Means of Improving the Condition of Europe Interspersed with Miscellaneous Observations], 1791.

These include:

• ‘To pay as a remission of taxes to every poor family, out of the surplus taxes, and in room of poor-rates, four pounds a year for every child under fourteen years of age; enjoining the parents of such children to send them to school, to learn reading, writing, and common arithmetic; the ministers of every parish, of every denomination to certify jointly to an office, for that purpose, that this duty is performed’.

• ‘To pay to every such person of the age of fifty years, and until he shall arrive at the age of sixty, the sum of six pounds per annum out of the surplus taxes, and ten pounds per annum during life after the age of sixty’.

• 'Were twenty shillings to be given immediately on the birth of a child, to every woman who should make the demand, and none will make it whose circumstances do not require it, it might relieve a great deal of instant distress.'

... etc, etc.

At the same time, Paine was an internationalist who would have been able to pronounce Uzbekistan and who would have known and regretted that China was a nuclear power: “The world is my country, all mankind are my brethren, and to do good is my religion”.

Overall, it seems clear to me that he wrote Common Sense to stall any attempt at reconciliation with Great Britain and promote his aspiration for America to become the first truly modern country, fully honoring human rights: ‘Tis not the concern of a day, a year or an age; posterity are virtually involved in the contest, and will be more or less affected to the end of time, by the proceedings now’.

This of course is highly romantic and impractical, as Howard Fast comments in a review:

‘On the surface, he was writing a practical book for practical people; actually he wrote a flaming call to arms, based on the 18th Century philosophy of natural rights, and we may thank God that the people who read it were not exclusively practical’.

Let’s beware a commonsensical view of Paine’s ‘Common Sense’. His tract is dangerously heretical, full of calculation and heavily focussed on making the reader think for him or herself. It is also sublimely idealistic.

So it’s OK for Sophia Rosenfeld to conclude that Herman Cain is really just another down home corn cob blowhard on the porch:

‘It’s really only garden-variety populism, a form of pandering and anti-intellectualism that has a long history in America, from Andrew Jackson to Sarah Palin, and which has often been used against comparatively cerebral political opponents, from John Quincy Adams to Barack Obama’.

But please, leave Tom Paine the hell out of it!

It was worthwhile - wasn't it?

2011-11-10T17:19:00.000-08:00

ARGUMENT

You can’t argue with a dead man

You can’t lift his head from the mud
Wipe the mud from his eyes
And wrangle with him
Over kings and empires,
Proletarians and popes.

Ask his opinions of a red star
Or a crooked cross
And he’ll not tell you.
No stars shine in his black sky.
His only cross, the index to his grave
And he’ll not know of that.

You can look at him helplessly,
You can think:

“Once he chattered
And grew indignant over pots of beer,
Grew red in the face,
Or laughed
And said: “You lovely bastard, you!”

‘Once he looked at sunsets
Once he plucked grass in the dawn,
Shook it
And watched the falling iridescent dew
Flash in the dove-grey light:
”It’s cold” he said, “It’s clean”.

‘Once he spoke of Brahms.

'Once he said: “Let’s go on a shicker”

‘Once
He said: “Next time I’m on leave
I’m getting hooked –
She has brown hair, and it’s curly
And a funny way of glancing over her shoulder
And smiling.”

But now,
Now you want to argue with him.
You want to say: “You died for something great –
You died for a Cause.
Wasn’t it worthwhile to die for a Cause?
Wasn’t it?”

Lay his head in the mud again,
Wipe the blood from your hands.

You can’t argue with a dead man.

John Quinn [Battle Stations, Sydney (1944)]

IN MEMORIAM: 'Armistice Day' / 'Poppy Day'

NOTE: 'Shicker' = liquor / to get liquored up [Traditional Australian word, also formerly reasonably common in New Zealand. Now rare in both countries]

Keep it Swedish Stupid

2011-11-10T01:17:00.000-08:00

SWEDEN’S TOUGH LOVE OF BANKS IS WORLD MODEL

[by Johan Carlstrom, Bloomberg News - Nov 10, 2011]

Sweden’s bank rescue model has protected taxpayers, turned a profit and left the Nordic country less indebted than when the financial crisis started in 2007.

It’s the opposite of what’s happening in the U.K., where the government’s debt burden has doubled in the past four years and taxpayers are still footing the bill to bail out banks.

“In 2006, when I became prime minister, the U.K. and Sweden had the same ratio of national debt to gross domestic product,” Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, 46, said in an interview. “The U.K. has now doubled and Sweden has gone below 40 percent and this is linked to dealing with the banks.”

As lenders across the globe resist stricter regulatory controls they say will hurt earnings, Sweden’s commitment to enforcing rigorous standards has paid off. Companies like Stockholm-based Nordea Bank AB (NDA) are better capitalized than most of their European and U.S. rivals, and have better access to funding markets and a lower risk of default.

Tougher controls enacted during the Swedish banking crisis of the 1990s also have protected the state budget, which will be in surplus this year.

“We introduced a lot of fees in the system, we increased transparency,” Reinfeldt said Nov. 8 during an interview in Stockholm’s Rosenbad, his Art Nouveau-style waterfront office building that used to be the headquarters of Nordiska Kreditbanken before it was acquired in 1917 by a local competitor. The corridors leading to Reinfeldt’s office are hung with pictures of Swedish cabinets going back to the 19th century.

Cover Risk

“We increased regulations to secure that they have better control, that they cover their own risk,” said Reinfeldt, who did his compulsory military service as an Arctic ranger and holds a degree in business administration and economics from Stockholm University. “We have a surplus when it comes to taxpayers, which distinguishes Sweden from many other countries.”

Sweden’s debt will shrink to 36.5 percent of GDP this year from 40.2 percent in 2007. In the U.K., the public debt burden will widen to 84.2 percent in 2011 from 44.5 percent, the European Commission estimates.

The Nordic nation’s economy will expand 4.4 percent this year and 3.8 percent in 2012, the International Monetary Fund said in September. Output in the U.K. will grow 1.1 percent in 2011 and 1.6 percent in 2012 and the economy of the combined euro area will grow 1.1 percent in 2012, while U.S. output will expand 1.5 percent in 2011 and 1.8 percent in 2012, the IMF estimates.

Reinfeldt ended 12 years of unbroken rule by the Social Democrats in 2006 to become prime minister on promises to ease the world’s highest tax burden and protect the country’s cradle- to-grave welfare system. The Social Democrats had built the model while in power during six of the previous seven decades.

Seizure of Carnegie

The Stockholm native, who’s married with three children, gained a second term last year, becoming the longest serving conservative premier since 1930 after presiding over the fastest economic rebound in the European Union.

Since the financial crisis erupted in 2007, one Swedish bank -- Carnegie Investment Bank -- was wound down after it became clear state support wouldn’t keep it solvent. The government seized Carnegie in November 2008, and resold it three months later for 2.3 billion kronor ($344 million), recouping the value of the original state loan.

Reinfeldt’s guarantee program, which backed as much as 1.5 trillion kronor of bank obligations, will bring in a 5.8 billion-krona profit by 2015 when the loans expire, the nation’s debt office said in its latest report in August.

Market Value

In the U.K., where the government bailed out Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc (RBS) and Lloyds Banking Group, the total outstanding support explicitly pledged to Britain’s banks stood at 456.3 billion pounds ($730 billion) at the end of March, or 31 percent of GDP, the National Audit Office said in a July report. The amount was down from a peak of 1.16 trillion pounds.

Three Swedish banks occupy the top four slots of European lenders with the highest price-to-tangible book value, which strips out goodwill and other intangibles. By that measure, Nordea is valued at 1.15 by equity investors and Svenska Handelsbanken AB is at 1.22.

The price-to-tangible book value median for European lenders is 0.79, data compiled by Bloomberg show. London-based Barclays Plc trades at a ratio of 0.52 and Royal Bank ofScotland is at 0.41. Germany’s biggest lender Deutsche Bank AG is valued at 0.68 and Citigroup Inc. trades at 0.61 in New York.

Sweden now wants to enforce stricter capital standards than those set by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, and plans to introduce the measures ahead of Basel’s 2019 deadline.

Income Parity

Reinfeldt said maintaining income equality through all economic cycles is key to preventing imbalances that disrupt growth. The government also is shelving state assets sales after reaching its target for reducing debt, he said.

Even after four rounds of income-tax cuts, Sweden has the second-highest tax burden as a percentage of GDP after Denmark, and one of the world’s highest levels of income equality, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

“A good society does not have huge differences,” Reinfeldt said. “If you build trust among people, and I think you need that, then they shouldn’t get far apart from each other.”

Wall Street Occupies New Zealand

2011-11-09T20:32:00.000-08:00

POLLS: NEW ZEALAND HEADED FOR LOPSIDED ELECTION

[Associated Press, November 9, 2011]

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Polls indicate New Zealand could be headed for its most lopsided election result in 60 years.

Two weeks before the country's general election, incumbent Prime Minister John Key's center-right National Party appears to be on target to win a majority of the popular vote and could enjoy unprecedented powers. No one party has won a majority of the popular vote in New Zealand since 1951.

Key, a former currency trader who became prime minister in the last election in 2008, is promising to turn government deficits into surpluses within three years, in part by selling minority stakes in four publicly owned energy companies and Air New Zealand, the government's national carrier.

Key estimates the sales will raise up to 7 billion New Zealand dollars ($5.5 billion).

WHO IS JOHN KEY?

[Special report by Brendan O’Hagan on National leader John Key, Financial Times / Sunday Star Times, 03/02/2008] - EXCERPTS

FIRST LIFE: As a money trader in London it's speculated John Key was earning $5 million a year - that's $96,000 a week.

20 years ago, he worked closely with a famed currency trader who mounted a brutal speculative attack on the Kiwi dollar. The attack, which has entered forex (foreign exchange) trading legend for its scale, audacity and profitability, prompted Reserve Bank alarm that the currency would collapse.

It was a world in which Key moved easily, swimming with the financial sharks. And while every other contender for the job of prime minister in New Zealand has lived their life on the public stage, either as a politician or on the margins of public life, Key's pivotal adult years have been entirely offstage. More than any other contender in modern political history, he is an unknown.

His critics say the number-crunching, daredevil skills of his old job will not necessarily transfer to politics. However former colleagues say that what made Key an outstanding success in the brutally Darwinian business of banking was not his foreign exchange skills although they were more than acceptable.

"I suppose a lot of FX [foreign exchange] guys do tend to be inward looking, but John is a lot broader than that. He has real leadership skills. That was what made him really stand out."

Leadership in this environment has parallels with politics. Careers can be over in a flash. Backstabbing is rife. And forex is replete with swaggering male egos and self-regarding adrenalin junkies.

But unlike politics, the monetary rewards are immense. Yearly bonus payments for top traders are worth many times the base salary. In London, industry sources say, Key would have been earning $US2.25 million a year ($5m at 2001 exchange rates around $96,000 a week).

Key's colleagues say his ability to hold a demoralised team together was most evident in 1998 and 1999 when Merrill suffered big losses as a result of the Asian crisis. Morale plunged, and the bank risked losing many of its best staff to rival firms.

Key rallied his team in London around him and kept them inspired enough to stay at the bank rather than bolting for the door. He still sacked dozens fewer than 100 as Key recalls it but in banking terms that was considered trifling.

At that time, says Kelly, Merrill Lynch was facing losses of about $1.5 billion to $2b in just three months.

"It became clear that our bonus pool was going to be pennies. But John really rallied his FX groups around him. He was a real champion a big reason we were able to move forward. He was one of the few people [at that level] we kept on," says Kelly.

Again, the parallels with politics are interesting. Under a series of leaders, National in opposition has been undisciplined, divided and demoralised. Under Key, discipline and focus has tightened.

Key's relentless climb to the top has been well documented. He started his career in forex in 1985 with Elders Merchant Finance in Wellington. It was the year the New Zealand dollar was floated, putting him in at the ground floor for profits from what became one of the world's hottest currencies for speculators.

These were heady times, and the "kiwi" was a new, small and untested currency, vulnerable to the vast washes of capital circling the globe. The Reserve Bank was unsure how much volatility the kiwi could withstand.

Key proved a successful "price maker", setting Elders' price for the kiwi from moment to moment, and attracting large flows of orders to buy and sell. He was headhunted by Bankers Trust to head their 30-strong dealing room in Auckland in 1988. Sources say Key was soon earning $1m each year in salary and bonuses, more than 30 times the average wage at the time.

He formed what was to be a lucrative relationship with 32-year-old currency trader Andy Krieger, based at Bankers Trust in New York, who began putting hundreds of millions of dollars of business through Key's dealing room.

Krieger was the man who a few months earlier had entered forex legend with a massive speculative raid on the kiwi. As Krieger later explained in his book The Money Bazaar, he believed the kiwi was overvalued, and began betting on a fall, selling the New Zealand dollar heavily. Once the currency had found what he believed to be a floor, he bought again at a much lower price, making a profit on the transaction.

This is standard stuff, but Krieger staked so much on the bet, it was said to be more than the entire money supply of New Zealand. And the size of his sell orders, hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, allied with the relative scarcity of New Zealand currency in circulation, meant he was able to push the kiwi down.

The "play" sent the kiwi plunging 5% in a single day. Krieger claims he helped trigger a fall in the New Zealand dollar against the US currency from 66c to 59c, before getting out with his profits. In a 2004 article The Economist listed Krieger's speculative attack as one of the best financial trades in history.

Krieger's outrageous bet made hundreds of millions of dollars for Bankers Trust, but in New Zealand, Reserve Bank officials were alarmed by the yo-yoing of the dollar.

"The bank was concerned whether the relatively fledgling foreign exchange market might be damaged with negative consequences for the economy," a former senior Reserve Bank official told the Sunday Star-Times.

"It appeared to us there was a person taking positions in the New Zealand dollar, probably with a view to collapsing the currency at some point, or at least making it drop sharply," he said.

What happened next is the stuff of forex lore. Traders around the world still delight in retelling the story of the trader who frightened a government of a New Zealand politician ringing Krieger's bosses in New York to yell, "get the f--- off our currency, you little f---er!" This is seen as the worst thing a government could have done. A government must never show fear it only convinces traders they are on to a sure bet.

A phone call was made, but it may not have been quite as colourful as the legend. The finance minister of the day, Sir Roger Douglas, says he never made a call. But the Reserve Bank official clearly remembers staff taking the unusual step of ringing New York, asking why Bankers Trust "seemed hellbent on creating instability in New Zealand by the activities of this dealer".

So what does Key think of the swaggering trader seen by the Reserve Bank as a threat to the national interest? Asked if he admired Krieger at the time, Key says, "yes, I think at the time, yes, he was a very intelligent guy.

"He was a pioneer, in the sense he was one of the few people in the world who understood the options market before it was really established. He blazed a trail and that gave him a strategic advantage early on."

Key says he does not believe a moral issue arises for the traders who make these speculative attacks on currencies, or for the dealing rooms that carry out their orders. "I don't really see it as a judgemental business. You're simply executing orders for people.
--------------------------------------------

The high stakes and tribal nature of investment banking mean the head of a successful team, such as Key, is often hated by others in rival teams. And those with sufficient character to rise to the top are often aggressive, forceful individuals with polarising personalities.

But Key managed to make himself appear relatively inoffensive to the widest possible number of people. Perhaps this makes him bland, indeed, one former trader describes him as "a bit of a clone".

He is likely, too, to have gained an extra layer of blankness from his training as a trader. Traders must learn the art of the poker face, to show no emotion even in extreme situations, and to guard their inner self.

The only tangible sense in which Key asserted a persona of his own was in his accent. "We sometimes felt he would lay on his Kiwi accent so thick in meetings that none of us could understand what he was saying it was kind of deliberate," says Kelly.

In London Key lived, with his family, in Barnes an affluent leafy suburb that tends to attract hardworking sensible families rather than flashy types. And unlike many of the high-earning young men in banking, Key was not known to indulge in any vices such as visits to London's racier quarters.

At least some of this impeccable behaviour may have been due to the knowledge that one day, what was off-stage would be on public show.

"I always had a long-term view of going into politics, so I suppose I was always careful," says Key. "I mean, I got offered all these rinky dink tax deals, but I always paid my taxes. I am naturally quite conservative."

Safe and bland perhaps, but the very fact of Key's survival and success in investment banking suggests he is tough. It is a competitive and brutal business, in which the weak are kicked out early.

During Key's brief spell for Merrill Lynch in Sydney in 2001, he helped fire 500 staff as part of savage worldwide retrenchment by the bank. In the past, Key has appeared proud of his ability to sack without feelings. He told Metro magazine: "They always called me the smiling assassin."
-----------------------------------------------------

"I was really fascinated by politics. It always has been part of my view that politics really is a calling or you wouldn't go into it, because it's demanding and potentially has a toll on you and your family," he says.

But he wanted to make a bundle first.

"I always thought there was a sequence of events, part of it was going into business and me making some money. Actually it would be the same advice I would give someone today. It's better to go in with some financial independence, and you also have some real life skills."

Key still sometimes meets his former colleagues. In October, some of the most powerful fund managers in the City of London gathered in a smart conference room at Merrill Lynch's London office, in the shadow of St Paul's cathedral, to discuss the state of New Zealand's economy over breakfast.

The star of the breakfast was Key, the currency poacher now hoping to be elected gamekeeper.

"There was a lot of interest from the fund managers in New Zealand," Key says. "The main focus, though, was the kiwi they asked where that is going."

Key told the meeting he thought the kiwi was going to hit 80c against the US dollar.

Key may have given the fund managers some insights into New Zealand, but he would also have been gathering information in return. Traders habitually smell out the landscape and their adversaries before they act.

Many believe that in the next five years New Zealand and its currency will face a scary ride from the high-rolling crowd Key once belonged to.

Forex dealers may have their blind spots, but some observers think Key as prime minister might have the poker-faced skills to manoeuvre the currency to safety, skills the Reserve Bank lacked when faced with Krieger.

"The kiwi and the aussie are joint contenders for the dubious title of `peso of the South Pacific'," says Satyajit Das, the Australian expert on financial markets and trading culture.

"In the past attacks by luminaries such as Andy Krieger have moved the currency significantly. So it might make sense to have a FX trader running the country. At least, he should be able to defend the currency."

Frontier Flaws - William Colenso (1811 - 1899)

2011-11-09T16:36:00.000-08:00

BOOKS ARE NOT ABSOLUTELY DEAD THINGS BUT DO CONTAIN A POTENCY OF LIFE

‘However, in all matters involving human relations Colenso's career was an unhappy one. Despite his genuine concern for the Maori people he saw them as fickle children, and his behaviour towards them was overbearing.

He could be crudely undiplomatic and insensitive to their traditions and sense of honour. His narrow religious views and self-righteous behaviour offended his missionary colleagues. The charges of a lack of spirituality he aimed at critics earned him the undying enmity of Bishop George Selwyn.

In politics he revealed a lack of skill and an uncompromising nature. With his quick temper and capacity to harbour a grudge he often descended to bitter and vindictive personal attacks. Unsympathetic to moral laxity in others, when his own great tragic moment came there was no one to sympathise with him’.

So ends David Mackay’s short form Biography of William Colenso, a founding influence on New Zealand through his early work as a printer, missionary, explorer, naturalist, and politician.

Colenso was born in early November 1811 and a 2-day Bicentennial Conference is now in progress in Napier, celebrating his life and achievements.

William was the eldest child of Samuel May Colenso, a saddler and town councillor of Penzance, and his wife, Mary Veale Thomas, the daughter of a solicitor. Apprenticed to a printer at St Ives in 1826, he was well placed to take up a position in 1834 with the Church Missionary Society in Paihia in the Bay of Islands prior to British political intervention in Aotearoa.

He ran the small printing press form which he produced substantial issues of biblical tracts and other publications in Maori. The release of the Maori version of the New Testament in 1837 excited so much interest that a Maori leader purchased one with the only gold sovereign that had been seen in New Zealand at that time.

By 1840 Colenso had produced over 74,000 copies of various books and pamphlets. He also printed the Maori version of New Zealand’s founding document the Treaty of Waitangi on 17 February 1840. His cautious representations to Lieutenant Governor William Hobson that many Maori were unaware of the meaning of the treaty were brusquely set aside.

His growing enthusiasm for natural history had been boosted by Charles Darwin’s brief visit to the Bay of Islands on the Beagle in 1835 and he then sought further training and advice. As a Maori speaker, he thrived as an explorer, starting with skirting the coast between Paihia and the Bay of Plenty in 1838.

This and subsequent journeys gave him ample scope for collection though he adopted the rather unsystematic practice of stuffing botanical specimens down the front of his shirt while on the move.

Colenso then sought ordination and, after being persuaded to marry Elizabeth Fairburn, the daughter of another missionary, he opened a new mission on Hawkes Bay near present day Napier.

As Mackay has it:

‘His parish stretched as far south as Palliser Bay and beyond the Ruahine Range to the upper reaches of the Rangitikei River. The missionary pursued unregenerates throughout this huge area with a fervour which bespoke his aggressive spirituality, his taste for travel and his need to escape from a tortuous and decaying domestic situation’.

However, his inflexible, overbearing and humourless nature led to friction with some of the foremost Maori leaders; his opposition to Maori land sales earned him the hostility of the growing number of settlers in Wairarapa and Hawke's Bay; and his haughty demeanour led to the deterioration of his relationship with his fellow missionaries and the Anglican establishment.

And as with so many evangelists who glow with self righteousness, he then carelessly put his hand on the hot stove of carnal desire – of which more in a postscript.

EARLY ENTRANTS AND ADOPTERS PROSPER

Startling then that a man who created so much ill will in his lifetime and who still gets a very mixed review, should be venerated as a founding father.

But we humans are an adventurous species and those who go first frequently prosper in terms of both the genes and memes that they carry with them into new worlds.

In the 100,000 years that stretch to the Maori colonization of Aotearoa in the 14th Century, human beings have restlessly wandered and floated into new horizons, seeking predatory face-offs with incurious and fear-free species of previously unknown birds, mammals and fish – all stocked with protein. Giant sloths, mammoths, Diprotodons, Pygmy Elephants, Dodos and Moas – you name it and we’ve scoffed and done for it.

And the adventurous (and frequently ADHD) explorers were always more attractive and exciting mates and likely to procreate more successfully. Look no further than the fact that all non-Africans are the products of a very limited number of wanderings across the Bab al-Mandeb or the Sinai Peninsula (spiced it seems with the odd amorous encounter with Neanderthals and Denisovans).

Take another example, recent reconsideration suggests that the relatively limited Y-DNA genetic heritage of North Western Europe is a tribute to the attractions of warriors from the east who brought oxen, ploughs and horse and who were able to kidnap, buy or seduce the daughters of the original hunter-gatherers – rather than the result of the survival small numbers of ancient mammoth hunters who had taken shelter beyond the ice fringes.

Similar factors also apply for females it seems. A recent study of parish records in the region of Charlevoix-Saguenay Lac St-Jean, Quebec for the period 1686 to 1960 has shown that women among the first "wave front" of migrants into a new area marry earlier and have more children than women who settle in the central "core" of a region that already has an established population.

So, as for genes so it goes for memes - if you want to make a name for yourself become an innovator, an early entrant or an early adopter.

No aspersions on William Colenso’s achievements in a harsh new environment but it’s hard to see how he could have prospered and stood out in England, given his significant character flaws.

POSTSCRIPT

William Colenso’s fall materialized in the form of ‘Ripeka [i.e. Rebecca] Meretene. She was a warm-blooded young Maori girl who joined his household in 1848. By 1850, she was carrying his child – a boy Wiremu (William), who was born on 28 May 1851. Faced with ruin as a clergyman and ridicule for his hypocrisy, he became a virtual recluse for four years before turning to politics and scholarship for the remainder of his career.

As for Wiremu, his father clearly supported him and ensured that he was educated. As ‘William’, he made what must have been an extraordinary transition from his Maori heritage and upbringing in early New Zealand to rejoining his English family in Cornwall and taking up the life of a Lodging House Keeper in Penzance, having married his cousin Sarah Veale Colenso in 1880.

And towards the end of his life, Wiremu was a man of independent means – thanks to the enterprise of his errant but indefatigable father.

The Grand Duke of Harlem, the King of Haiti and the Windsor Herald

2011-11-09T00:38:00.000-08:00

ZANY DESIGNS

Rapper Rashaad Newsome and I have quite a lot in common. Travelling in Europe in 2005, he spotted heraldry everywhere, recognizing that: “It’s completely embedded in the culture”. Like me he ended up drawing and collecting the representations of crests, coats of arms and ‘achievements’.

Unlike me, he has turned his interest into art and endeavour. Having learnt the lingo, he now classes himself as a “pursuivant” of the Royal College of Arms in London where he studied (briefly) under William Hunt, the Windsor Herald.

Lucky for him, Rashaad was given a tour of the College, archives and all. Less fortunately, the visit was not immediately memorable for Mr Hunt who, prodded into recollection eventually recalled “Oh, a chap who, a black fellow who does a lot of zany designs?”

And asked his opinions on possible overlaps between hip-hop and heraldry, Hunt commented: “I’m almost 65. I haven’t a clue what hip-hop looks like.”

This has not stopped Rashaad from adding some challenging new forms to the Armorial Rolls. His own coat of arms is described as follows:

“A square of black alligator skin with alternating shiny and matte swatches decorated with a shield patterned by gold fleur-de-lis — a symbol of his hometown, New Orleans — and a leather baseball hat with the points of a crown: urban royalty.

The frame is heavy gold rope, like the chains worn by 1980s rappers, and topped with Swarovski crystal fleur-de-lis at the corners, for added bling”.

This is in something of a contrast to the Arms that the College granted to Kate Middleton before she married Prince William:

“A lozenge suspended from a ribbon (as appropriate for an unmarried woman) showing a design currently being granted as a shield to Miss Middleton's father, Michael Middleton.

The three acorns represent Mr and Mrs Middleton's three children (Catherine, Pippa and James). Acorns were chosen because the area in which the children were brought up - West Berkshire, England - is well wooded with oak trees. Additionally, oak is a long-established symbol of both England and strength.

The gold chevron, which sits at the centre of the design, refers to Mrs Carole Middleton, whose maiden name is Goldsmith. The two narrower chevrons, which sit either side of the gold chevron, allude to hills and mountains and represent outdoor pursuits that the family enjoy together”.

COME BACK IN THREE GENERATIONS

I can splice in some quotes here from one of my old Heraldry books published in 1953: ‘Intelligible Heraldry” by Sir Christopher Lynch-Robinson Bt, and Adrian Lynch-Robinson, Barristers-at-Law, the King’s Inns, Dublin , with preface by Edward MacLysaght, the Chief Herald of Ireland:

‘Though the upheavals of the 20th Century have given wide scope to the use of spurious and bogus arms, it is remarkable that, in spite of the existence of numerous self-appointed “authorities”, who are usually little more than touting stationers, the use of “phoney” arms is probably no more prevalent today than it was at any time since the industrial revolution threw up more than a century ago hosts of novi homines who, having got rich quick, sought also to get gentle quick – without waiting for the three generations traditionally required for the process.

‘More snobbery, more nonsense and more bare-faced lying has attached itself to heraldry than any other human activity.

‘Stories of try heraldic devices being borne on the shields of Julius Caesar and the Pharaohs may be dismissed at once as pure rubbish. No recognizable signs of any heraldic system are to be found much before the end of the 12th Century, and it was not until about 1245 that heraldry emerged as a definite science on a definite plan.

‘People, and there are many of them, who boast that their ancestors bore their present arms when they came over with William the Conqueror may be safely marked down as humbugs or ignoramuses.

‘The facts are that:
• Heraldry did not exist at the time of the Norman Conquest
• The 16 oldest families in England are of Saxon and not Norman descent
• Of the 25 barons who signed the Magna Carta in King John’s time, not a single proved male descendant is known to exist today
• When an expert carefully compiled a list of arms-bearing families who had held their lands in uninterrupted male descent since the reign of Henry VII, he could only find 350.

‘It should be borne in mind that the Continental conception of nobility, which involves a separate caste aloof in blood and tradition from the ordinary citizen, has never been accepted by the British people.

‘The so-called “upper classes” were always open to everyone, and a glance through the current peerage will give ample evidence of the humble origins of a great number of the titles and armigerous classes. Similarly, some of the noblest families in England, have since the Middle Ages, relapsed into undistinguished oblivion’.

Notwithstanding, it seems that Rashaad’s exhibition of his Armorial Designs at the Marlborough Gallery in Chelsea has been a great success.

And the Royal College of Arms has serendipitously had a parallel success in the form of a charitable appeal for the Haiti Earthquake: ‘The Armorial of Haiti - Symbols of Nobility in the Reign of Henry Christophe’.

This illustrates an earlier attempt at cultural cross-over.

Henri Christophe (1767-1820), Haiti’s only king, created a court and a nobility, elevating his leading supporters to the rank of chevalier, baron, count, duke or prince, and granted coats of arms to every title-holder. The Armorial records in colour the arms of the king himself, the queen, the prince royal, the capital city (Cap-Henri, now Cap-Haïtien) and 87 men who held titles of nobility between 1812 and 1814.

As the College explains:

‘The heraldry is replete with curious beasts and monsters, and the accoutrements of war ancient and modern. The charmingly painted domestic animals and fowl, however, and the occasional, disarming appearance of more mundane items such as a watering-can, a bookcase or a rake, show that the European basis of heraldry has been taken and developed with considerable inventiveness and fantasy’.

Sorry Rashaad, it seems that Henri Christophe got there first.

Pursuivant (excerpt) from RASHAAD NEWSOME on Vimeo.

THE 4TH AND 5TH LOWER ILLUSTRATIONS ARE THE ARMS OF:

4. Irish Register of Funeral Certificates, 1604
5. Worshipful Company of Security Professionals 2010

Dead Donkeys on Wall Street?

2011-11-07T19:28:00.000-08:00

A GENERAL THEORY ABOUT ...

Way back in the 1970s at the Australian National University, when the world was young (at least for us), a bunch of wild-eyed, freshly-minted PhD Geography lecturers were prone to down tools for a day or more during vacations and convene around a blackboard trying to map out sets of overlapping mathematical functions which would describe how human interactions played out across regions and communities.

A beautiful sunlit classroom, gently sizzling gum trees, galahs flocking and a few beers to help things along – such is the very heaven to be alive.

That we dared to imagine closing off a ‘General Theory’ of this type is somewhat touching in retrospect. But then there was an ongoing ferment of activity in this area. For example, Walter Isard published his ‘General Theory: Social, Political, Economic, and Regional, with Particular Reference to Decision-making Analysis’ in 1969, and Brian Berry and Frank Horton their ‘Geographic Perspectives on Urban Systems’ in 1970.

And one of our number Mike Webber went on to kick the can down the road with a tour de force magnum opus ‘Information Theory and Urban Spatial Structure’ (1979).

At this time, if I had had a couple of goldfish, they would have been called Chorley and Haggett after the Cambridge lecturers who had taught both Mike and I at Downing Place. And our old Department continued to excite us, even though we were in Canberra’s brave new world, with the publication in 1969 of ‘Explanation in Geography’ by David Harvey.

Harvey’s book has been described as ‘a landmark text in the methodology and philosophy of geography, applying principles drawn from the philosophy of science in general to the field of geographical knowledge’.

So far so good – but then, at least to me, things began to go off the rails.

For starters, I think it became obvious in the 1970s that spatial equilibrium was an essentially weak force that was becoming increasingly ephemeral.

My own PhD thesis on production adjustments to variations in accessibility and road transport costs in the Northern Territory Beef Industry was a case in point. It suggested that demonstrable adjustment was evident from the production statistics of 1957 but that, by 1966, other factors were swamping out the effect of local ‘gravitation’ – in this case most notably the presence or absence of access to world markets in the form of demand for boned meat for the hamburger trade in the USA.

Innovation, globalization and entrepreneurship were patterns unto themselves.

And I learnt later when I worked in Nigeria in the 1970s that basing urban plans on ‘neighbourhood unit’ groupings that were scaled in line with the hinterlands required to supply different levels of schools with an optimum scale of enrollment was kind of crazy. The population was growing so fast and people were so mobile that any presumed optimality was entirely transitory.

By this time though, I was morphing into a project economist – and, when I settled in as a lecturer at the Project Planning Centre at the University of Bradford and bought a house in Bramhope, I called my two goldfish Little and Mirrlees after the ‘Masters of Shady Pricing’.

What a shame though that the quantitative revolution in Geography failed to build on the foundations that had been laid in objective inquiry. Not only that, it lost its big chance to become a proven means of cross-referencing, testing and synthesizing ideas from across the social sciences.

LET’S HAVE A REVOLUTION – WHATEVER THAT IS

By the time I came to look back at progress in Geography, the landscape had changed irrevocably. And David Harvey was again a major influence here – but by then he had done a volte face and become the prophet of those who could no longer be bothered with the increasingly slim pickings of definitive quantitative research. So he pushed the bus off the cliff into a Marxist Miasma.

Brian Martin in Chapter 4 of ‘Tied Knowledge: Power in Higher Education’ (1998) does a great job telling part of the story (excerpts below):

‘Marxist journals - and many of the top Marxist theorists - are filled with esoteric theory, abstract theoretical frameworks and special jargon. This can be seen as an adaptation to the academic system: to defend their academic positions, Marxists have made their work very scholarly and exclusive: no one else can penetrate it, so academic Marxists can claim sole right to evaluate it.

‘Academic Marxism has also adapted to academia by separating itself from political practice. Marxist theoretical tracts typically contain masses of abstruse analysis, with a few pages or paragraphs tacked onto the end dealing with 'what to do.' Unlike those writings in business or popular psychology which provide lots of practical advice, it is rare to find a practical manual for political action written by an academic Marxist.

‘There is one important attraction found in Marxism: it puts intellectuals in a privileged place in the theory itself. Intellectuals have always played a major role in socialist politics. They are the ones who can cut through the 'false consciousness' of the workers, grasp the contradictions in the mode of production and discover the points for intervention.

‘It is no coincidence that academic Marxism is opaque to the working class.’

In the light of this, I was both interested and irritated by ageing, bearded David Harvey rising from the Black Lagoon to provide a video on the World Economic Crisis (see above).

As Brian Martin observes of the general case, it is scholarly and dogmatic – long on analysis and short on practical advice.

It is also – unusually for Marxists – entertaining.

But, lest anyone be overawed, it does well to bear in mind David Harvey’s recent comments in his more formal lecture ‘The Party of Wall Street Meets its Nemesis’ (excerpts):

‘The Party of Wall Street has one universal principle of rule: that there shall be no serious challenge to the absolute power of money to rule absolutely. And that power is to be exercised with one objective.

‘Those possessed of money power shall not only be privileged to accumulate wealth endlessly at will, but they shall have the right to inherit the earth, taking either direct or indirect dominion not only of the land and all the resources and productive capacities that reside therein, but also assume absolute command, directly or indirectly, over the labour and creative potentialities of all those others it needs.

‘The rest of humanity shall be deemed disposable.

‘The coercive laws of competition force us all, to some degree or other, to obey the rules of this ruthless and uncaring system. The problem is systemic, not individual.

‘The struggle that has broken out — the People versus the Party of Wall Street — is crucial to our collective future. The struggle is global as well as local in its nature. Whose side will each of us as individuals come down on? Which street will we occupy? Only time will tell.

'But what we do know is that the time is now.

‘The system is not only broken and exposed but incapable of any response other than repression. So we, the people, have no option but to struggle for the collective right to decide how that system shall be reconstructed and in what image.

‘The Party of Wall Street has had its day and failed miserably. How to construct an alternative on its ruins is both an inescapable opportunity and an obligation that none of us can or would ever want to avoid’.

‘The Party of Wall Street is the only real enemy we have. Remove Bankers from the scene, and the root cause of hunger and overwork is abolished forever. The Banker is the only creature that consumes without producing.

'He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself.

‘Why then do we continue in this miserable condition? Because nearly the whole of the produce of our labour is stolen from us.

‘Remember, comrades, your resolution must never falter. No argument must lead you astray. Never listen when they tell you that the Party of Wall Street and others have a common interest, that the prosperity of the one is the prosperity of the others.

'It is all lies. A Banker serves the interests of no creature except himself. And among us let there be perfect unity, perfect comradeship in the struggle’.

------------------------------

Meanwhile Old Benjamin, the donkey, seemed quite unchanged. He did his work in the same slow obstinate way as he had done it, never shirking and never volunteering for extra work either.

When asked whether he was not happier now, he would say only "Donkeys live a long time. None of you has ever seen a dead donkey," and the others had to be content with this cryptic answer.

Fishing Boat 'Harbour Fireworks' Party 1

2011-11-05T12:06:00.000-07:00

Fishing Boat 'Harbour Fireworks' Party 2

2011-11-05T11:43:00.000-07:00

At the Island Bay School Fair 1

2011-11-04T19:50:00.001-07:00

At the Island Bay School Fair 2

2011-11-04T19:29:00.000-07:00

At the Island Bay School Fair 3

2011-11-04T19:07:00.000-07:00

Karori Spy's Role in the Cold War and its Aftermath

2011-11-03T23:40:00.000-07:00

OUR MATE VLAD

I am not a great fan of Vlad the Pale Emperor – I don’t trust enigmatic egotists who make patriotism their first refuge. But he has come a long way since 2000 - basically, from zero to hero. Back then, the joke was: "Will there ever be a Putin personality cult?” The answer being: “No, because for such a cult you must first have a personality."

Later the comment was that: "Yes, he is like a Sphinx, but a Sphinx without a riddle. His only known policy is to fight a war in Chechnya. Apart from that, all he has done is to call for a restoration of moral values and raise the price of vodka."

Well, he has filled the blank screen with his own images:

• Jumping into the cockpit of a fire plane to drop water to douse a blaze
• Shooting a Siberian tiger with tranquilizer darts to save a Russian TV crew
• Scuba diving in the Black Sea and serendipitously recovering two sixth-century urns from an archaeological site, etc.

In response, Russian women have been known to bare their breasts to his rippling physique and steely demeanor.

But it seems from recent press stories that he was a bit of a bad lad when he was a KGB spy in Dresden in the 1980s. Apparently, he had several affairs and his wife Lyudmila was so distraught that she confided to a western plant that he stooped to domestic violence. As for Vlad, it seems that he has commented that: ‘Anyone who can spend three weeks with Lyudmila deserves a monument.’

Putin served in East Germany from 1985 to 1990, allegedly leaving an illegitimate baby behind.

But what did he do in the 10 years between joining the KGB and being posted to Germany as a Lieutenant Colonel – apart from playing the field?

Did he spend part of this time in New Zealand?

Certainly one of his assignments was the monitoring of consular officials in Leningrad and this could have led on to overseas assignments. We know that NZ is used to test toothpastes and deodorants by US and European firms as it is great to have a small, captive market full of quiet, non-litigious guinea pigs.

What better place then for field testing Soviet spies during the Cold War and improving their English into the bargain? And is it entirely coincidental that Putin has recently endorsed Rugby as the game that Russians should adopt to develop character and toughness?

The possibility that Putin spent some of his early career at the Soviet Embassy in the Wellington suburb of Karori has led on to some pretty weird conspiracy theories.

But it would fit with the observation that he re-entered New Zealand in 1986 as a minder and translator for the Soviet team that was sent to investigate the grounding and sinking of the Russian Luxury Liner the Mikhail Lermontov in the Marlborough Sounds.

Purportedly, the picture at the start of this article shows Putin at left with the captain of the ship Vladislav Vorobyvev at right. And to bring you up to speed on the maritime disaster, I have spliced in a documentary below.

What I want to know is this: Are there any young Wellingtonians in the age range 35 to 25, who have cherubic faces, sphinx-like auras and predilections for shooting tigers?

Next time I’m in the Karori supermarket mall I’ll keep a close look-out for any Alex or Lexie who may fit the profile. And if anyone wants to come forward, I will be happy to manage the scoop – always assuming that I don’t get a mean-minded visit from some of the resident baby-faced basilisks at 57 Messines Road.

Goldilocks and the Three Beers

2011-11-02T11:31:00.000-07:00

KIWI ACCENT MAY BAFFLE NEW iPHONE

[by Claire Rogers, Dominion Post, 03/11/2011]

Apple's latest iPhone will be launched in New Zealand next Friday, but Kiwis may have to adopt an Aussie twang to get the most out of its snazzy voice-recognition technology.

The cheapest 16-gigabyte version of the iPhone 4S will sell for $1049, while the higher capacity 32GB and 64GB will sell for $1199 and $1349 respectively.

Siri, the phone's voice-recognition technology, can understand and respond to spoken questions and commands.

For example, users can ask, `Will I need an umbrella this weekend?', and the phone will pull up a weather forecast.

The technology has so far only been programmed for Australian, British and American dialects.

It can understand Kiwi accents but not with the same accuracy.

Paul Warren, associate professor at the Victoria University school of linguistics and applied language studies, said New Zealanders and Australians pronounced vowels differently, which could cause some confusion for Siri.

New Zealanders tended to sound some vowels, such as in the words "trap" and "pan", with their tongues slightly higher up in their mouths, meaning "pan" could sound like "pen" to speakers of other dialects. In words such as "kit" and "fish" they sounded the vowels with their tongues in a more central position than, for example, Australians – who raised their tongues.

"If the system is not sensitive to those vowel-sound differences then it's going to recognise the wrong word."

It was difficult to pinpoint why the countries had different accents, but it was probably due to a combination of factors, including differences in the regional and social origin of immigrants to each country, their early isolation from each other and the desire to establish national identities.

Apple said Siri could learn to recognise users' voices and its recognition of dialects and accents would improve as more people used it.

The iPhone 4S is faster and has a better camera than its predecessor, the iPhone 4.

The phone will be available through Apple's online store and Vodafone.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

We say "fish and chips", they hear "fush and chups" (OZ), "fe'esh and che'eps" (UK).
We say "peg", they hear "pig".
We say "baggage check-in", they hear "beggage chicken".
We say "pan", they hear "pen"
We say "yes and no", they hear "yiss and no'o"
We say "shoot pukekos in the pohutukawas", they "haven't a clue".

'Brian' our 'Stray' Cat

2011-11-01T23:04:00.000-07:00

ZEN CAT

Stumbling up the path
Bees were swarming on the bank -
Plaintive answering

Seeking some white fur
‘Come home then silly old cat
- better off with us’

Balanced bundled steps
Armfuls of bolt and flight -
Mind the washing line

Open the car door
Gingerly onto the back seat
Mindful kitty drop

Back home, a few sniffs
He takes immediate command
Full bowl demanded

Neither good nor bad
Wild nor free, always feline
At one either way

-----------------

Under house hermit cat
Meditatively speaking
Are you a mouse yet?

Another Sparkling Island Bay Starter - Nikkie Gibson's Hardwear Jewellery and the Zuleika Cafe and Catering Business

2011-11-01T14:54:00.000-07:00

Some of Island Bay’s Sparkling Starter Businesses

2011-10-31T15:40:00.000-07:00

I'll be working on the 'Wild Chef' Gourmet Hamburger Stand!

2011-10-31T12:22:00.000-07:00

Some Colour and Fun - Style Pasifika!

2011-10-31T10:50:00.001-07:00

Economic Forecasters Weathering the Storm

2011-10-30T23:35:00.000-07:00

CLOUDY RAIN AT TIMES

Like me, Dave Armstrong is unimpressed by NZ’s economic forecasters [Dominion Post, 31/10/2011].

He notes that according to the NZ Treasury’s forecast, the country will be balancing its books by 2015, commenting:

‘I get tired of commentators who criticise the reliability of Treasury forecasts. I find them extremely reliable - they are, without fail, always wrong. It must be fun working at Treasury. Turn up on a freezing July morning in your wet overcoat and you will be greeted by happy people wearing shorts and Hawaiian shirts because Treasury said it will be 24 degrees by mid-afternoon.

Treasury dominated the government's financial advice market in the 1980s. What Treasury recommended immediately became policy and anyone who disagreed with its mandarins was branded a fruit cake by government and media.

Unfortunately, though Treasury's free-market policies worked beautifully on paper, in reality the results were dire.’

‘The trouble with Treasury forecasts is it is difficult to forecast exactly how inaccurate and overly optimistic these forecasts will be. However, thanks to my incredible mathematical ability (I got a C for Stage 2 Algebra the second time) and a table of Treasury's 2008 PREFU, I have made stunning progress.

In 2008, Treasury forecast 2009 growth to be 0.1 per cent when in fact it was -1.6 per cent. So Treasury was out by 1.7 per cent. This inaccuracy grew to 1.8 per cent by 2011. So tracking this on a straight-line graph I can confidently predict that in 2015 real growth will be 2 per cent worse than whatever Treasury has estimated. This, of course, is assuming Treasury is only constantly wrong, not exponentially wrong.

In 2009, unemployment was 0.7 per cent worse than what Treasury had predicted the year before. But by 2011 this inaccuracy had grown to 1.7 per cent. Therefore, I can predict that by 2015 unemployment will be 3.7 per cent worse than whatever Treasury forecasts. So to get down to the Government's aim of around 4 per cent unemployment by 2015, Treasury will have to forecast 0.3 per cent unemployment that year.

But it is our deficit that is most worrying. In 2008, Treasury predicted a deficit of only $0.1 billion for 2009, when it was actually $3.9b. However, by 2011 the deficit was $16b more than what Treasury had forecast in 2008. By my simple linear calculations, in 2015 the deficit will be $40.4b higher than whatever Treasury has forecast.

But before someone accuses me of being a pesky Leftie, let's look at it another way. The 2009 deficit, though relatively small, was 39 times higher than Treasury had forecast. Yet the 2011 deficit was only 12.75 times higher. So Treasury became roughly three times more accurate over a two-year period.

Assuming this geometric trend continues, by 2015 our real deficit will be only 1.36 times bigger than Treasury has forecast. By performing a series of complex differential equations, I can confidently forecast that on August 14, 2017, Treasury will make a forecast that is correct – almost’.

ASK AN OCTOPUS

Well, as I asked in my post of the 26th October, can we really expect more when we know that experts are often on a par with dart throwing chimps, ailing octopods and frisky bull calves?

John Whitehead who was long Treasury’s No 1 Pundit before he dematerialised into a World Bank Guru in a Hawaiian shirt on 1818 H Street, gives the following explanation of his goose-bumps:

‘Economic forecasting is, and always will be an imperfect science. But having said that, a lot of the forecasting Treasury provides is remarkably accurate. However, you will only ever read about our wayward calculations. I guess that is the nature of the media beast.

It has been shown that, compared with the forecasting performance of our banks, the Treasury fares very well. An Australian journalist recently likened economic forecasting to weather forecasting, but pointed out that the weather office has several advantages over economists.

He explained that for one thing, the laws of nature are constant. The air, the land, the sea and the sun all interact in the same way they always have. A high pressure system or cold front will have predictable effects.

But when a shock such as a credit crunch or sharemarket collapse hits the economy, it’s quite a different matter’.

I am very sceptical of John Whitehead’s assertion that weather forecasting is easier than economic forecasting. And all this comes ill from a man who probably wears Bermuda shorts in Dunedin.

Be that as it may, economists have some distinct disadvantages for which they fail to adjust, viz:

• Their presence within the system makes them both actors and observers, muddying both method and objectivity
• As such, they are often beholden to some of the actors – like the Business Round Table
• And, they can be accused of rocking the boat or trying to take away the cocktails and spoil the party if they warn of choppy water ahead
• They tend to swarm like shoaling fish or follow fashion like Fritz Machlup’s wife
• They are frequently myopic and tend to look only at the entrails of their domestic economy when divining the future – and in a small economy like that of New Zealand, they are restricting themselves to the innards of a tiny mammal.

All this can be illustrated by the figure that I have placed at the start of this article. The basic graph comes from a presentation by the Director of New Zealand’s Institute of Economic Research in 2006.

Now NZIER, for which I continue to harbour some affection as an ex-employee, has a better than average record for forecasting, even in comparison to the NZ Treasury.

That said its forecasts in 2006 went wildly wrong as the world crashed into economic crisis in 2008 – as shown by the actual trajectory of economic growth that is highlighted in red.

Anyhow, one thing that I could have accurately predicted in 2008 is that the election of the right of centre National Party Coalition Government would bring renewed prosperity to economic forecasters who can make the right kind of comforting noises but who also know when to shut up.

I was not surprised then to learn from Dave Armstrong that this year Treasury spent $13 million on consultants, compared to $5.5m the previous year.

Gazing into the Pool of Cash

2011-10-30T11:41:00.000-07:00

IS NARCISSISM THE NEW CAPITALISM?

Sir Martin Sorrell's pompous defence of his £4.2m pay is almost reason enough to ban share incentives

[by Margareta Pagano, UK Independent, Sunday, 30 October 2011]

It's strange that no one bats an eyelid when Lady Gaga makes millions from singing or Wayne Rooney earns £250,000 a week for his footballing prowess.

Nor are there complaints that Downton Abbey will make Lord Fellowes a multi-millionaire or that lawyers such as Fiona Shackleton make millions from the divorces of high-profile couples.

Yet when the news breaks that the bosses of FTSE 100 companies, who provide jobs for millions and make products that we consume every day, gave themselves a 49 per cent pay increase last year, the nation goes into a collective shudder of moral outrage.

The press rages about fat cats, union officials are hauled out to protest against injustice and even the Prime Minister calls in from Australia to opine.

What is it about high corporate pay that so enrages us? We discovered last week, through an Incomes Data Services survey, that FTSE 100 chiefs earned an average of £3.8m last year. Some of the highest paid, such as Sir Martin Sorrell of the advertising giant WPP, received £4.2m, while Xstrata's Mick Davis took home £18m.

Both have been highly successful, delivering healthy returns to their shareholders, and deserve generous pay. But are they worth a 40 per cent – after stripping out inflation – increase year on year? Investors don't appear to worry that they haven't delivered the same rise to them, so should we?

Clearly we do. That's why it's important for us to ask why Lady Gaga's millions are acceptable but why we don't like businessmen and women – Dame Marjorie Scardino of Pearson made £8m – earning so much if we are to have a credible debate about executive pay.

Is it because we appreciate that Gaga and Rooney have unique talents, skills we can't replicate?

By contrast, are corporate bosses greedy and not worth the money because we don't see or understand what it is they do? Or do we think that running billion-pound global companies with thousands of employees around the world is easy-peasy? That we could all do it, given the chance?

I think that's part of the answer but there's something more subtle going on. And it's this: we don't trust them, particularly the way they construct complex pay packages that no one understands – there's basic pay, fattened by cash bonuses, and then all manner of short and long-term share incentives.

It is the swelling of these incentives that has pushed up pay – anything called Ltips or Leaps should set the alarm bells ringing. In Sir Martin's case, he was granted £50m worth of shares in 2005, which are now coming into force.

Another reason why there is so much distrust of executives – just as with the bankers – is that they are not risking their own skins, and nor do they put their own skins in the game like Gaga or Rooney. Indeed, many are not worth these pay levels but pay is pushed by the closed shop of remuneration committees and pay consultants using benchmarking criteria, and the methodology used is always upwards.

Executives defend themselves by claiming that they operate in a competitive, international free market for talent. That's patently not true. It's a distorted market fed by this closed shop. It's become too easy for directors to make fortunes because of these incentives, which are the corporate equivalent of MPs' expenses and bankers' bonuses.

Most of these incentives schemes are based on dodgy and complex measurements which, by and large, most shareholders don't understand – and, so long as the shares have been going up, they don't care. All this is giving rise to a rather uncomfortable narcissism which is infecting the corporate world and giving capitalism a bad name.

That's why it was disappointing that Sir Martin sounded so petulant when he was interviewed on the radio last week to comment on his bumper package. It was a great chance for him to explain to the public, and to show that he really was "worth it".

Instead, he came across as pompous by claiming his base £1m salary was "very low" – not the sort of remark to make when for most people real incomes are declining. What I wanted to hear was how a supermarket trolley group has become a $16bn marketing colossus creating thousands of jobs.

Instead, he wouldn't even answer whether he would do the job for less; how feeble.

So what's to be done? Government can't intervene directly, however much it might wish to. Nor should it as that would be too dirigiste. These are publicly listed companies owned by institutional investors that we, through our pension schemes, own.

Ultimately, the power is in our hands, but how are we to protest? Pull out of our pensions?

There's a much better idea, and it comes from Sir Nigel Rudd, the serial chairman; he would like to stop all share schemes, thus encouraging executives to buy shares at market price with their own money. That would be honest, transparent and put the skin back in the game. And it's achievable with a few tweaks to corporate governance and company law.

Are you a person who thinks everybody else is trying to take something off you – or one who believes that they have something to give?

2011-10-28T14:13:00.000-07:00

Going Boldly with a Twittering Display

2011-10-28T11:35:00.000-07:00

MAPPING THE POLITICAL CONTOURS OF CYBERSPACE

[by David Price, UK Independent, Friday, 28 October 2011]

William Gibson coined the term “cyberspace”, for his 1982 short story Burning Chrome to create a “a narrative engine, and a territory in which the narrative could take place”. Twenty years on, cyberspace is world’s narrative engine: and an uncharted territory to which the world is still coming to terms.

Political, industrial, and civic leaders are gathering at the Foreign Office’s London Conference on Cyberspace next week to think through the implications, opportunities and contradictions of this emerging world.

The conference will explore key themes – prosperity; social good; freedom of access and expression; cyber crime and international security – with the aim of deepening mutual understanding and beginning to outline a political, social and economic strategy to secure the benefits of cyberspace while addressing the concomitant threats to personal and national security.

The Foreign Office would like the dialogue at the event and online to be as broad as possible – and, in support of this process, Debategraph will be mapping and curating the dialogue as it unfolds live and online; a conversation to which all Independent readers are invited to contribute.

To start exploring the map – which we have seeded with the initial framework of the conference – click on the small bubbles to move deeper into the debate and on the larger bubbles to move back up. A fuller version of the map displaying the detailed expression of each idea is available here.

You can gain an insight into the range and scope of the debate by watching the map evolve here, but you are welcome to add your voice to the debate online by adding new ideas and comments to the map and by rating the ideas, or by suggesting new ideas and questions via Twitter using the #LondonCyber hashtag and/or the Foreign Secretary’s Facebook channel (both of which we will be monitoring as well).

As discussed before, the whole structure of the map is like a wiki – every aspect is provisional, and open to further refinement – and everyone can add new issues, positions, arguments and evidence to the map.

The aim is to weave together all of the arguments into a rich, transparent, non-linear structure that anyone can explore and understand quickly.

As with the other maps in the series you can keep up to date with developments via @TheIndyDebate on Twitter.