Safety

One of my pet peeves is State enforced safety. The bloody government telling us we have to be safe. Hard hat regulations in the middle of a field, fluoro safety jackets for the crowd stewards at the cricket. We even have a complete government department to look after us in this regard - OSH.

My beef is not really with OSH or its foot soldiers - especially the foot soldiers. I feel sorry for the sort of being who becomes what my father used to call a 'three pound ten a week man'. They are attired, depending on their particular function, either in a brown dustcoat with a clip board (pencil behind ear) or a cheap suit (a bowler hat is a desirable accessory) or a white coat or a uniform with inordinately decorative badges with pseudo-heraldic pretensions. Nowadays they all have those bloody ID cards in a plastic holder on a piece of ribbon hung around their necks. The Jobsworths of the world. I've long held an attitude of a mixture of scorn and pity for these sorts. OSH is but another department where they can find employment when they tire of the Council, the LTA, the MSA, the library, the Parks Department, the Cracks in the Pavement Department (Compliance Division) etc. No its not Jobsworth's fault. Thes people are delighted to retreat into the safety blankets of their compendium of 'Rules and Regulations'. They are encouraged to have no initiative what so ever and it is, therefore, very easy to enforce the regulations to often absurd lengths. Here is one of the problems - trying to apply 'all or nothing' solutions to situations that can never be solved in that way. You have to wear safety harnesses that would not look out of place on the South Col to stand on a chair to change a light bulb. 1m high or 60 stories, scaffolding is scaffolding, rules is rules, black and white. The Jobsworth can go no further and the whole thing would fall to bits if he could.

No, it's our fault. We are seemingly happy to have in place the structures that allow Mr J to do his work. No one (not even me) would argue that being a bit more safe sometimes is a reasonably good idea. Some one has mentioned commonsense some where. To that I would add trust, reasonableness, responsibility for your own actions and, most importantly, an acceptance of uncertainty.

Everything that happens to anything that lives - blade of grass, elephant, Mrs Smith at No25, me - happens according to the rules of normal distribution. It is likely that most people will be between 5'8''and 5'11' tall. But there will be a few short arses (me) and a few basketball shoe ins. Very occasionally there will be people who are 7 feet tall. Do we then make all door lintels 7'6" on the off chance that Shaq will pop round for a cuppa? Of course we don't. It is vanishingly unlikely (but not impossible) that a NBA star will be in Milford for a cup of Earl Grey and a chocolate afghan and I consequently don't alter my house. If I do get the visit then Mr O'Neill will have to bow his head to get into Obald Towers. That is the way it should be.

With OSH, and many of the other mushrooming Jobsworth employers, we have got this all backwards and as a Society seem quite happy about it. We are happy to let our legislators frame regulations (which regulate) to drown the very probable in the quest to encompass the vanishingly unlikely. We are trying to fit things that have to happen under the normal distribution curve under a square wave. We are unable to accept uncertainty and try and legislate for any eventuality, however unlikely that may be.

As an aside, we only refuse to accept uncertainty when it suits us (well you not me). Competitive sport, one of the things that makes life worthwhile, would be worthless if the outcome was certain.

So, I hate smoking as much as I hate mandatory smoke free public places. Smoke if you want to and I won't go there. I would not dream of driving not wearing a seat belt because it is a sensible way of reducing my chances of dying in a road crash not because someone tells me to. I am supposed to wear I thyroid protector when working with xrays as thyroid exposure to xrays increases the risk of my getting thyroid cancer - which is an uncommon tumour in men in their fifties - a bit. I don't wear one because they are uncomfortable. If I get thyroid cancer - so be it. I know the risk and have decide to take it. I won't sue anyone, I won't expect excessive sympathy and I also won't expect 'I told you so'

So back to the beginning. OSH - sod off.

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Killing your first marlin

The famous 'first fish'.

I first visited the Bay of Islands in 1977 on the way back home to the UK after having spent in two years in Papua New Guinea where I first got bitten by the gamefish bug. I had a copy of Goadby's 'Big Fish and Blue Water' which I had read a squillion times. It was my bible and I taught myself what little I knew from it. Going to the Bay was like a Muslim going to Mecca. I arrived in July and was a little nasally dislocated to find out that there were no marlin within a 1000 miles of Russell in July - I thought you tripped over them going to the dairy all year round. No matter, I chartered a boat for a day and went livebaiting for something called a kingfish, listened to a rugby test on the radio (which I thought was a very bizarre thing to do) and caught nothing. I came back and spent a couple of hours in the Swordy Clubrooms in Russell (don't think there were Paihia ones then) absolutely gobsmacked at what I was in the middle of. One day, one day I would be back standing by a blackboard with the light blue surround, a smile as wide as a mile on my face with a dead marlin at my side.

Fast forward twenty two years. I was determined to do this by myself. I was going to catch a marlin from my boat, by my native cunning (or lack thereof). I'm into my fourth season of trying and nix. I'm trolling off Red Head and we get a strike (had those before) but after a short while it is obvious that I have actually hooked a marlin. Now this is the real deal, it is jumping and tail walking and it is seemingly well attached to my line. Where is Tudor Collins when you need him? We fight it from a book and after about 50 minutes we have it at the side of the boat. It is quite quiet but no where near in the terminal stages of anything and I have the flying gaff ready. I am about to pull a marlin into my boat and the light blue edged blackboard of my youth is only forty minutes away. Couldn't do it. Couldn't see the point - then or now. I realised at that moment in time why I wanted to catch a marlin and it had all already happened. I told Paul to put the gaff away, reached over the side, grabbed the bill without gloves (told you it was the first one), took the hook out and felt the feeling I still feel as it swam away.

Perhaps this may explain a bit why I am so against what appears to be happening around our coast at the moment. It just does not fit, in any way shape or form, into the big picture of why I go game fishing. I try and see things from the perspective of the 'kill and grill' brigade, but I can't. That doesn't mean they are wrong, of course, - I just can't see it. I can't even see the 'first fish' thing.

( Written in February 2005)

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A380

I am often caught reflecting on the huge differences between the two places I have lived in over the past twenty five years, Singapore and The Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. Populations much the same, Singapore with a land area that could easily be swallowed up by Lake Taupo and not much else the same. Food in Singapore is the best in the world, food here very patchy unless you want to spend an arm and a leg or go to a restaurant run by South East Asians.



National approach to life? You couldn't ask for a greater difference. The Singapore pragmatic, business orientated way of running the country like a corporation and the good of the whole outweighs the rights of the individual. NZ the complete opposite. Ideology to the fore with individual bloody 'rights' paramount over everything. Theoretical ideals hold sway over the practical business of running a viable small country in the real world. Equality and respect are the sacred cows that cannot be touched. The vocal minority hold sway over the silent majority. The answer to any hard question that crops up here is to have a an enquiry involving all stakeholders. This goes on for an undefined period of time (the default unit of measurement is blocks of nine months) and it is hoped that when the report is delivered (this can be delivered in a flax basket to make it more acceptable to more stakeholders) the problem has gone away. If it has not then a second phase enquiry is ordered and we start all over again.



I lived in Singapore when in 1983 it was announced that the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit - underground railway) was to be built. The first passenger was carried in 1987. By contrast Auckland's transport woes are addressed with time lines measured in decades. The four years to build the first bit of the MRT would be taken up with arranging the RMA hearings - not having them but arranging them. We need a second harbour crossing and there might be one in twenty years time. We are destined to be left behind in the real world as this strupid approach pervades everything we do. We need a benign (or not) dictator of my choosing to run this country.

Where does the A380 fit into all this? The first one to fly commercially landed in Sydney yesterday in, surprise surprise, the Singapore Airlines livery. New Zealand is current thinking about extending the runway at Auckland so it might land here at some time in the future.

Hopeless.

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Biffo in the House

Mallard showed himself to be the sort of scrote we all knew he was yesterday. When Henare started taunting Bovver Boy about his knee tremblers behind the caucus bike sheds he didn't like it up him Mr Mannering. Mallard is an uncouth lout, has been for ever and always will be. Hypocrite only scratches the surface of the deficiencies of character this idiot displays. Apparently he hit Tau Henare. Had it been the other way around it would have been much more amusing - I would have Tau on my team in front of Pond Scum any day. Mallard has been riding for this ever since he had a go at Don Brash last year - had he asked Don to step outside, Brash would probably have thought he wanted to look at some rather racy spreadsheets - and it really couldn't happen to a nicer bloke. It is a disgrace that someone of the moral fibre of Mallard is in Parliament let alone Government.

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Explanation

Granny has not so much died but moved on to a better place.

When I wrote the first piece almost eighteen months ago I never envisaged it growing to be a regular contribution. I came to love doing it but latterly she has started to become a bit of a millstone – I’ve felt I have to come up with something most days. It is also becoming boring. You can only say Keith Locke is a pratt in a finite number of ways. You can only say climate change has nothing to do with V8 motor cars once every three months or so. Granny has become a one trick pony - and they are boring.

For a few weeks I’ve wanted to expand what I do in the Granny thread. I’ve found I really enjoy writing but the old lady in her current format was becoming very stifling. The most fun I’ve had from her was the ‘Granny on Tour’ a few months back. I do this for my enjoyment and I was tiring of it.

You may have seen my plugs for the ‘El Gringo’ thread on the Hull Truth. A few weeks back he decided to move his writings and pictures to a blog and I have convinced myself that is what I want to do. It will give me more scope to do what I want and not be constrained by the confines of just commenting on a second rate newspaper.

So I am in the process of moving all the Granny stuff to the new place. I can also put some of the other scribblings scattered over fishing.net.nz on there and everything will be neat and tidy. Some one kindly suggested I should collect the Granny stuff together and this will be an attempt to do this.

I can also discuss things that didn’t fit into the ‘Granny’ remit. Big changes are afoot in the obald life and I would like to document those in both word and pictures. I can also discuss Enkis without having to look over my shoulder to make sure I am not breaking fishing.net spam rules.

If anyone is remotely interested I’ll post the link to the blog, to be called ‘obald@home’ on this thread when it is fit to look at – couple of days maybe

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A passing

R.I.P.

Granny

03/07/06 - 23/10/07

After a short illness. Mourned by no one.

No flowers by request.

All Donations to the Obald Henriques 30 Fund.

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Ignored

Dear Leader is used to getting her own way and she is currently having raspberries blown at her from all sorts of quarters. Yum Yum - couldn't happen to a nicer bloke. As alluded to above, Banksie is wasting no time in having a go at her and is adding spice by doing it through her favourite poodle, Tizard. I wouldn't imagine that Judith has John on her Xmas card list but she really is so inept in everything she does and says that it is not really fair putting her up aginst Banks. Her attempts to have a go at him are just plain pathetic. He could eat her for breakfast and is currently doing so - all covered in Marmite. Uncle Helen is told to get nicked at home so what does she do? She does what she always seems todo when the pitch starts to take a bit of spin she buggers off overseas. Remember that foreign policy is one of her strong suits (spare me) and she can strut her stuff on the international stage showing how well the Peoples Republic can punch well above its weight on the international scene (am I really typing this bollocks?).

Remember how she was pontificating about how Frank Bananarama was going to be regarded as the leper of the South Seas at this conference currently underway? Frankie was going to be hanging around in Tonga with no one to talk to, recall that? Well the head of the Commonwealth, Don McKinnon (just remind me of his nationality) has a) invited Frankie to dinner and b) had his entrance to the chinwag announced on the PA when Dear Leader's entrance was ignored. Terrific stuff. In true diplomatic fashion Frank turned down the groceries because he was busy holding talks with people - these are the same people who Helen said would ignore him. Helen didn't go to the nosh because she was having a hissy fit.

Long may this trend of people treating our Dear Leader as the ideological bigot and inconsequential waste of space that she really is continue. Her days of doing as she pleases surrounded by sycophantic lickspittles are hopefully coming to an end. Hideous, hideous woman.

There is a chilling breakdown of the respective income tax structures both here and across the Tasman in the Herald this morning. I know Income Tax cannot be looked at in isolation but it is not pretty reading. Even before Howard's clutching at straws promises of Monday the figures confirm what we have all known for years. History Boy is shafting us with knobs on and oak leaf clusters. We compare awfully every way you look at it. The rates are higher, much higher, at every income level and the levels at which the ghastly rates kick in are also way lower over here. It wouldn't be quite so bad (well it would but try and look on the bright side) if he spent the money on something worthwhile.

Like Eden Park, eh John?

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Homegrown terror?

What the hell is going on in the Uraweras? Well how would you know. This is all more bizarre than a bizzare thing. There would appear to be an alliance between Tama bin Laden and Te Qaeda and the Totora Liberation Front if some of the reports are to be believed. Depending on who you get your information from this was either a nature ramble or sorting the stockpiles of napalm and AK47s. The truth, as always, is almost certainly somewhere in between. But how is anybody supposed to take anything with Tama Iti in the midst of it seriously? Who thinks that this tattooed idiot and fifteen of his mates could organise a nun shoot in a convent let alone cause nationwide mayhem. They couldn't take over a corner dairy far less a country.

The reaction to the AOS crawling all over the Eastern Bay of Plenty is predictable enough. How could they be so culturally insensitve as to set up road blocks on the same lines as the site of land confiscation in, wait for it, the 1860's? How could they search for automatic weapons and incendiary bombs in the full view of school buses? Of course there are truck loads of rocket launchers in the area because the local people often go into the native forest to hunt for food. I suppose they also pop down to the Four Square or Liquor King in the family Apache helicopter or A10 Warthog. And of course this sort of kerfuffle wouldn't be complete without Keith Locke sticking his beak in. He has said something but I didn't listen to what it was because it would be the same crap he always talks and it is meaningless.

Howard Broad has staked his reputation (I wasn't aware he had one) on all this storm in a teacup stuff. There will be a lot of bluster for, ooh let's see - 72 hours, charges will be laid under legislation no one has ever heard of, all involved will get legal aid and in about eighteen months time a few bus tickets will get wet. Who cares?

Banksie wants to go over the Eden Park upgrading business again. Please spare us all this. He says, quite reasonably, if Pond Scum was prepared to stump up $1 billion for a waterfront jobby why can't he (PS) raid History Boy's obscenely obese piggy bank for a paltry $50 mill. It is reckoned that the GST take alone from the 2011 World Cup will be in excess of $200 mill so the numbers don't seem too hard. Whatever the outcome of round twenty seven of this seemingly endless saga (and Banksie is not known for giving up on things) the impression we will be giving the rest of the world is that we couldn't find our way out of a paper bag.

We have recently displaced Greg Norman as the chokers of all time and adding this new accolade is hardly a good look is it?

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Madness

When will it end? The madness that is. The paper is full of it this morning.

Starting with the most trivial, Granny tried to get pricelists from London hostelries to try and work out the mechanics of the largeish bar tab. This request was declined for Health and Safety reasosns. Eh?

We move onto stab proof vests. Plod reckoned he would save a bit of dosh by measuring the boys in blue up for these in house as opposed to letting the manufacturer do it. He stuffs up - I mean how hard is reading a tape measure? - and we are in the cart to the tune of $2.7mill. There are about 6500 policemen in New Zealand that means it cost $415 to run the tape measure over the gut of a fed. I want the contract.

The real madness winner this morning however comes from a more familiar source - bloody climate change. How to win friends and influence people - especially the Kiwi bloke. Outlaw the beer fridge and large flatscreen TVs. This is what Botox & Tooth Whitening Woman and the rest of the loonies have said will happen so that we can save the vast sum of $64million dollars. That piffling amount wouldn't keep Dougie in Krug for a week. For crying out loud stop this bloody nonsense. If these dements really think keeping 60 inch TVs out of the country is going to save anything let alone the planet then they are madder than even I thought they were.

There is a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon. A Judge in the UK has decreed that if schools are to show Al Gore's fantasy film it must be preceeded by a health warning from sensible people (like me) who now have the unfortunate apellation of 'climate deniers' This judgemnt cost the plaintiff $600,000 in legal fees. That is decades of plasma screens.

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$8.7 billion

here is a picture doing the rounds of History Teacher Boy in the house yesterday. It is taken just after he has announced his obscene $8.7 billioin surplus. He is sitting there in the comfy green chair with the most nauseating of his smug, arrogant simian grins plastered to his face and is holding up four fingers. What do these fingers represent? Four percent cut in income tax for all comers? Four percent cut in company tax? Forty thousand dollars as the level the upper tax bracket will be raised? No bloody way. They represent a fourth term. That is all the little toad sees in this great pile of your and my money - a way of buying a fourth term for this odious reugnant administration. The look on his weasely little face, the malevolent lustful glare from those slit like gimlets of eyes, the smugness of a dictator about to hand out lollies to the proles - God it makes you (well me anyway) sick.

Bill English this morning predicts a session of lollynomics for the time from now to the election. You can pick it like a nose can't you. Dear Leader (as if we haven't got enough nausea on our plates this morning) then chimes in with all the 'sensible stewardship of a robust economy' BS and 'we have yet to decide how New Zealanders may benefit from our mastery of economics' crap. They are talking about giving back bits of the money they nicked off us in the first place. Everything about their tax policy is duplicitous and just plain wrong. The top rate of tax kicks in at $60,000 dollars. When I first came to the Peoples Republic I seriously thought this was a misprint. Bloody Labour assured us that this would only affect 5% of the countrys wage earners. Now $60,000 per annum hardly puts you in the queue for your own Gulfstream but this 'top earner' tax bracket now is reached by 14% of the proles - nearly one in six.

No one likes paying taxes much but I wouldn't mind so much if it were spent on good stuff - roads, high explosives for men in camo suits to chuck around the place, fighters - even hospitals. Starship is a paltry $4 mill short of some target or another and where does 25% of the shortfall come from? Cullen's wheelbarrowful of banknotes? No. Tiger's caddy stumps up with the folding varieties.

Cullen and Dear Leader are much more intent on spending our money on supporting a world wide (no less) abolition of the death penalty. Not content with passing legislation that the majority of her own country don't want (was it 80 or 85% that were against Bradford's smackng nonsense) she now want's to stick her beak into other peoples business. Apparently 65% of Septics want to keep the unfriendly injections and Ole' Sparky. Their business not mine - or the Dear Leader's. I'm sure Helen's displeaseure over the use of bullets and bits of rope is really concerning the leaders of Iran, China, Singapore etc. etc.

Speaking of China and hypocrisy - we have mentioned Dear Leader - what is with her totally lily livered stance on Taiwan. She wants a free trade deal with China. She wants it so much that she ignores China's use of the death penalty but refuses to support Taiwan (a democratic nation of a mere 23 million) in it's bid for global recognition because the PRC insist that anyone who deals with them say Taiwan are a bunch of ratbags.

And then there's increasing the tax on non biofuel petrol but no time.

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Murder

I like my murdering. I was brought up on a diet of Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. The latter wrote about seventy murder whodunnits and the library in Wewak, Papua New Guinea had all but a handful of them and I re read them between ploughing the fields and catching lots of spanish mackerel when I lived there in the mid seventies. I still reckon the Sherlock Holmes collection contains some of the best constructed plots written - Arthur Conan Doyle was a doctor of course so maybe I'm biased.

Midsomer Murders is my kind of comfy English middle class rural intrigue with the occasional lashing out of a bale hook thrown in to keep you interested. Being a cheapskate sort of a bloke I only have one Sky decoder in the house and it has become normal practice of a Saturday evening to switch over to the murdering halfway through the second half of the rugby. Imagine my horror last week when DCI Barnaby had been replaced by a program called 'Wire in the Blood'. I am yet to work out what the title is about but, assured by my wife that it was good, I watched. Gruesome this program most certainly is. You don't get murdered on this show by having an overdose slipped into your coffee. A bit of torture and then blood on the ceiling is your lot if you get selected for this one. The main thrust of the program however is the workings of a psychologist as he outwits plod and points to the killer by just having a think.

Is there a point to all this lengthy preamble? Yes there is. I out thought the psychologist on Saturday night by an hour and knew that the female police inspector was the murderer by proxy as we went into the third ad break. I am therefore ideally equipped to tell you why my next door neighbour's plane ticket to Paris for this afternoon is not looking the item of envy it did but twenty four hours ago. I am the psychological expert you need to lead you to understanding why the ABs are coming home. The Herald is full of All Black doom and gloom this morning making the Monday paper even more unreadable than usual. The ersatz Society Page is still there as are the stupid green pages - this week it's what cars 'prominent' (in their eyes, not mine) people drive.

But in there somewhere is one person who puts their finger on what came to me as I drove back from the golf club yesterday. It is the government's fault. Forget the ref (please) you don't lose to an inferior side (and that the French were) just because of two piss poor decisions (and that they were). If we were already twenty points in front, who would have given a toss. The debacle in Cardiff is the result of years of left wing, politically correct safety at all cost education and thinking.

It seems to be generally accepted that we had the best thirty players and yet they lost - again. Chokers? Of course they are. They can't handle pressure because all their lives they have been shielded from it. The ABs ran onto the pitch yesterday to not lose. They didn't run on to win because that would involve risk. All those endless and pointless pick and goes. They are a riskless way of spending thirty seconds. They don't achieve very much other than reducing the risk of losing the ball. But in a negative sort of a way they are safe. You usually don't lose much from them.

I firmly belive that this country will never win anything in a pressure situation that involves doing what the real winners do - take risks - because it is ingrained into us that is not what you do. We are an OSH driven society and that is reflected in what happened yesterday. They were not prepared to win but focussed on not losing.

Stand on the tee with a lake running down the left side of the fairway and the surest way of getting your ball in the drink is to say to yourself 'There is that big lake on the left, I must not hit it in there'. Splash - every time a coconut. 'Look at the width of the fairway 200m off the tee'. Straight down the middle.

'We must not lose to France.' Plane on Wednesday. 'The best way to score tries against this mob is to spread the ball wide because we are good at that.' Smash England next weekend. 'If we spread the ball wide we might drop a pass or suffer an intercept. Safer to pick and go even though they have defended that without problem for the last hour' Plane on Wednesday.

This is a very very difficult mindset to get out of once it has been ingrained from primary school age. Anton Oliver said during an interview last night (when he wasn't being beeped out). 'We said all week that we mustn't do things we had been guilty of all tournament and still we did them'

As I said it's all the fault of the left and of course it is in particular Helen Clark's fault.

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Rebuilding volcanoes?

Why does a so called advanced society waste food on someone like Rudman? I am astonished that eighteen months or so ago I actually used to read him. I gave the Herald just the cursory glance it merits on a Monday and my eye was drawn to his column courtesy of a 1870's lithograph or drawing or something. It was used to illustrate Rudman's current waffle and showed the Three Kings (not the gamefishing ones) as they were. The picture is a straightforward explanation as to why that area of Auckland is thus called - three volcanic cones in close proximity.

There is now only one left as man over the last one hundred and fifty years or so has quarried away two of them. He did this to advance his lot; construct buildings, use as infill prior to building roads - that sort of thing. The kind of stuff that people do as they become civilised and no longer live under fallen logs and live by eating wetas and earthworms. Looney boy Rudman is now all for rebuilding them. Got that? He wants to rebuild not one volcano but two. Have you ever seen any thing so daft in all your life? I think it might have been done in Las Vegas to turn a profit but to have someone actually suggest that it might be a good idea for 'heritage' reasons is barking even for this asylum.

The scary thing is that there are other people apart from Rudman who might think this is a good idea. Winstone Aggregates apparently are looking at something similar. Now presumably they haven't moved on from one bloke with a shovel and a wheelbarrow to nice big yellow earthmovers by playing the goat in a business sense and I can only assume some of Rudman's mates have got in their ears and shamed them into such weird thinking. Or they can see that by appearing 'environmentally sound and heritage responsible' they can increase their profits.

Can this country please be crop-dusted with a large dose of pragmatism. Where does all this stupid looking back wistfully over the mists of time come from? People wishing they were still hoisting flags on Tiri to tell Auckland what sort of ship was imminently arriving in the port - from under which stone did they crawl?. You can't turn the clocks back. Kings number two and three are now part of the pavement somewhere and that's just the way it is. Move on.

But this lust for the good old days is always selective and it never ceases to amaze me. These clowns never say 'I wish I was living in the 1870s' they just want the warm fuzzy bits. In general the past wasn't as rosy as the Rudman's view of the world would have you believe. It was a lot simpler, sure, but who would willingly go back the life expectancy that was prevelant when there were still Three Kings? Who would give up his V8 for a horse or his iPod for a pianola? Which of them would welcome endemic rheumatic fever with open arms, wax his moustaches every morning, wear spats or bathe in a tin bath in front of the fire?

Rebuild a volcanic cone, give me a break. Besides all of the above, a real builder of volcanic cones showed us how it was done and how futile our farting around with it would be last Tuesday night.

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Tony's motor

No time - Fridays are a bad day for that - but a couple of quickies.

Reports of the Nats backpeddling on the no cap on GP fees. For Pete's (not Hodgson) sake don't. Have the balls to stick with what is right. GP's are not employees of the state (much though The Dear Leader would like them and every other worker to be so) and must be the only people in business who are told by the government what they can charge for their services. All this would be fine if central subsidy was sufficient to make up their costs to real world levels but it isn't. Why do you think there is a shortage of GPs? It is a naff job from an earning a decent living point of view because the government made it that way.

I'm going to buy Pattie Boyd's autobigraphy - it looks to be a great read. Just need a long aeroplane journey to read it on. Perhaps I should go to North Carolina to look at boats.............

Tony Blair has just been delivered of his new tax payer funded car. As an ex Prime Minister he is entitled to one and he scores a seven series beemer. All the usual accesories you tick the box for in Jerry Clayton's showroom - armour plating, run flat tyres, independent oxygen supply in case of a gas attack etc., etc. Sounds like a pretty sharp price too - $250,000. Car is delivered direct from the BMW factory in Munchen and they open the truck in which it arrives in Blighty and out jump four asylum seekers. Unfortunately for our enterprising Zaoiuiuoi lookalikes the truck was being unloaded in a police yard and they got sent back from whence they came - as did the car as its security had been 'violated'.

All sorts of lessons to be learned in this little anecdote I think.

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Graeme Hick

Remember Graeme Hick? A Zimbabwean (or more correctly Rhodesian) cricketer who scored a phenomenal number of runs in English County cricket (I think he even played in New Zealand for a while - Northern Districts?) but underperformed mightily at international level. A general consensus of his career was that he was a flat track bully. Able to cane mediocre attacks on batsmen friendly wickets but less competent when the conditions and the attack were not to his liking.

The Dear Leader got a juicy medium paced half volley just outside the off stump yesterday and not surprisingly stroked it through mid off. One would expect no less. National announced that the cap would be taken off the fee for GP visits as and when the glorious day arrives when this damned government is no longer in power. Helen flashes the Duncan Fearnley and the ball crashes into the advertising hoardings. Meat and drink. 'This will lead to the underprivilged and old being unable to afford to go to the doctor and their health will suffer'. She stopped just short of painting a picture of carts being wheeled round the streets to the accompaniment of handbells and cries of 'Bring out your dead'. Some other Ministers (Hodgson probably) were egging her on for overthrows in a similar vein. Flat track bully because the faster short pitched stuff was in the other fifty one pages that she chose not to face. This contains very sensible (if a little boring) stuff like separating funding streams for emergency and elective services. But that is what bullies do is it not, they pick on the easy beats.

Key walks up quite calmly and, whilst not quite firing in a yorker, kept the rest of the over on a good steady length aimed on and around off stump. 'There is a thing called a market' and to explain such a novel idea to a socialist idealogue like The Dear Leader he padded this out by explaining it using no big words or joined up writing. If Dr X starts charging $1000 a visit the punters will go to Dr Y who will only lighten your wallet to the tune of $50.

Now I know this is a complete anathema to a regime who cannot abide a proleteriate who are allowed, let alone encouraged, to think for themselves and then make choices but it shows that some people are at last standing up and telling it like it is. We cannot live in an ideological bubble. Some may say the Nats will take a hit in the popularity over this one statement. Nonsense. The only people it will piss off are those who have bought the state line of 'We know what is good for you so do as you are told and what ever you do don't make a decision about anything in your pitiful life - that's our job.' We cannot go forward pussy footing around and ignoring the way the real world works.

It was reported earlier this week that if a young woman of the female persuasion is 'on the DPB' at age seventeen there is a 70% chance she will still be so in ten years time. This is not the way the real world works. A few years ago I was chatting to a bloke who has a more than passing influence on the way a proper country is run. He was sitting on my deck hoeing into the Marmite soldiers with a copy of the Herald in his view. 'Explain this benefit busines to me'. I, in a somewhat embarassed way, did my best and pointed out that in the Peoples Republic nearly one in three of the population recieve some form of benefit or an other from the state. This might range from total subsistance to a few trifling dollars here and there to help with 'Understanding gender orientation and ethnicity respect issues' courses. He just shook his head, let out a long sigh and turned to the football results.

We simply cannot sustain this socialist way of doing things. We are getting more and more examples of the way this damned regime wants to take us as their tenure grinds inexorably on. More and more tax on the people who work to be given to the those who can't or won't in the endless pursuit of fairness and equality. Well the people who are working and getting taxed have had a gutsful and are leving the country in their droves.

When all these people have gone and the tax take dries up where do we end up?

Where was Graeme Hick born?

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Car insurance

Compulsory third party insurance for cars takes up half the front page this morning. A fair comment on the paucity of real news. I arrived in The People's Republic of Aoteoroa twelve years ago and was astonished to find that you could drive around without insurance. This makes someone trying to bring it in hardly hot news. How can you possibly defend not having third party insurance? A few years back I had a minor low speed contact with a car turning out of a side road. The damage to my car was $6,000 which was four times the value of the heap of junk that had turned into me. Totally her fault which she admitted straightaway (to her credit) but then got all tearful and wanted her mum as she was uninsured. I was adamant that I was not going to suffer a dent in my no claims bonus as well as my pride and joy and my insurance company was very good on this front. I politely enquired of my insurers how they were going to recoup the cost of the new headlight and washer assembly from the UK. 'Oh, she'll join the endless number of people paying us off at $10 a week for ever.' It does not take an economic genius to work out that this will have a disastrous effect on cash flow and I will be paying for it with my inflated premium.

Harry Duyendhoven (or however he spells his name) has announced that the time may be right for consultation over this matter. Bollocks. Typical bloody politician weasel talk. Just bloody do it. As of, let me see, tomorrow all cars on public roads will be required to have third party insurance. Easy peasy. But they are tackling it from the wrong angle.

They are promoting it as a way of getting boy racers off the road. Naysayers say it won't work as the hoons won't be able to afford insurance and they will drive the Skylines illegally. Well if it is illegal the car gets put in the crusher (as should happen now to all the un-WoF'ed and un-rego'd numbers) and not be 'punished' by having a sticker put on its windscreen for twenty eight days. Introducing third party insurance is not about getting hoons off the road, there are already enough unenforced statutes around to do that. Break any of the myriad of laws these clowns break regularly and the full provisions of punishment available should be, but are patently not, be used.

Compulsory third party insurance should be bought in for the reason it suggests in its name - the third party. You and me. Especially me when some clown drives a rustbucket into my Jag.

And don't get all 'But the poor won't be able to run a car' because I will get all politically incorrect on you and it will involve shoe leather.

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Fiction? - maybe

As there is nothing in the Herald on a Monday (and this has got even worse today with a review of what is in this week's women's magazines) I have decided to write about just that - nothing.

In fact my latest masterpiece which I have printed for your delight and delectation is completely meaningless and was generated by a thing called the Postmodernism Generator which is a system for generating random text from recursive grammars. The trick from now on will be to spot when I am using it

Capitalist narrative and Derridaist reading

Obald,

Fishing.net.nz

1. Rushdie and capitalist narrative

If one examines redialectic capitalist theory, one is faced with a choice: either accept Derridaist reading or conclude that the raison d’etre of the observer is deconstruction, but only if poststructural discourse is invalid; if that is not the case, language may be used to entrench the status quo. In a sense, the subject is interpolated into a capitalist narrative that includes art as a paradox. The example of Derridaist reading depicted in Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh is also evident in The Ground Beneath Her Feet, although in a more mythopoetical sense.

But the main theme of Pickett’s[1] model of capitalist narrative is the common ground between sexual identity and sexuality. Marx promotes the use of neopatriarchialist narrative to challenge society.

Therefore, the subject is contextualised into a Derridaist reading that includes narrativity as a whole. Any number of appropriations concerning a structural paradox exist.

It could be said that the characteristic theme of the works of Rushdie is the bridge between culture and class. The premise of capitalist narrative suggests that the State is impossible, given that consciousness is distinct from reality.

2. Derridaist reading and subcapitalist constructivist theory

“Sexuality is intrinsically meaningless,” says Baudrillard; however, according to Reicher[2] , it is not so much sexuality that is intrinsically meaningless, but rather the dialectic, and thus the failure, of sexuality. Therefore, many theories concerning capitalist narrative may be found. Bataille’s critique of Derridaist reading holds that reality is used to marginalize the underprivileged.

It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a capitalist narrative that includes culture as a totality. In V, Pynchon deconstructs subcapitalist constructivist theory; in Mason & Dixon, although, he denies Marxist socialism.

In a sense, the subject is contextualised into a subcapitalist constructivist theory that includes truth as a paradox. Bataille suggests the use of capitalist narrative to attack capitalism.

3. Expressions of futility

The main theme of Pickett’s[3] model of subcapitalist constructivist theory is the dialectic, and eventually the futility, of neotextual society. It could be said that Parry[4] implies that the works of Pynchon are modernistic. If capitalist narrative holds, we have to choose between cultural discourse and prestructuralist desublimation.

If one examines capitalist narrative, one is faced with a choice: either reject dialectic socialism or conclude that consciousness is capable of truth. In a sense, Derrida promotes the use of Derridaist reading to analyse and read class. Capitalist narrative states that the purpose of the reader is significant form.

But an abundance of theories concerning the common ground between society and sexual identity exist. Baudrillard’s analysis of the neocapitalist paradigm of discourse suggests that sexuality serves to reinforce class divisions, but only if Derridaist reading is valid.

It could be said that the subject is interpolated into a Marxist class that includes reality as a totality. Lacan uses the term ’subcapitalist constructivist theory’ to denote the dialectic, and hence the futility, of textual class.

Therefore, Sontag suggests the use of the postdialectic paradigm of consensus to challenge the status quo. The premise of capitalist narrative implies that reality is created by the collective unconscious.

---

1. Pickett, M. A. ed. (1975) Consensuses of Stasis: Derridaist reading and capitalist narrative. University of Oregon Press

2. Reicher, R. K. W. (1981) Derridaist reading in the works of Pynchon. O’Reilly & Associates

3. Pickett, Z. ed. (1976) The Reality of Fatal flaw: Derridaist reading in the works of Cage. Yale University Press

4. Parry, O. D. (1994) Derridaist reading in the works of Eco. Loompanics

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Sagcity from abroad

Yippee. It is finally here; the tax that will toll the death knell of this odious regime rode into town yesterday. If anyone is under any illusion that all the carbon trading tosh announced by seemingly every minister the government could lay a hand on is anything but a thinly veiled extra tax then please drag yourself into the real world. Tax, tax, tax - that is all this mob knows. Well that, trying to tell us how what to think and fiddling around with things so they stay in power. Where do we start?

You can’t really go past the fact that it is all chasing rainbows. The so called point of it all is to save the planet from man made global warming and that is a load of bollocks. There is no such thing. So I’ll put my keyboard down now as there is nothing more to say. But there is. The Government thinks we all believe in the global warming bogeyman and they can therefore justify rorting more money out of us. David Parker (Climate Change Minister – give me strength) was seen on telly saying ‘Four cents a litre on petrol to save the planet - what a deal’. Pullease. How can he lay straight in bed? Are we seriously going to elect people to parliament who have the balls to stand in front of us and let such piffle dribble out of the corner of their mouths? We deserve better.

He then goes on to say the People’s Public of Aoteoroa should become a leader in the use of electric cars. Well for starters there aren’t any in existence that work anything like efficiently. Those that are produced have to get their energy from somewhere; but electric cars are good as the government can take their slice of the new electricity tax off the juice to run the chargers. Perhaps Parker has decided that New Zealand is also going to be a world leader in the production of perpetual motion machines. We will then presumably branch out into selling the world the Philosopher’s Stone so that all the lead we distil off China made Fisher Price toys can be turned into gold. Barking the lot of them.

Another Government quote, this time from Her Herself. 'New Zealand's reputation overseas is priceless'. Not what we do but what we are seen to do. So we are all going to have pay through the nose so that this damned administration looks good. Hopefully the rest of the world will wake up, see that the emperor has no clothes and that we are seen to be making pratts of ourselves. Also notice that although all this BS is supposedly meant to make us emit less carbon what it infact does admit that this ain't going to happen (and it doesn't matter if it does anyway, remember) but tax you for doing so.

And so it goes on and on. The biggest part of New Zealand's infinitesimally small contribution to global greenhouse gases comes from farm animals. So Labour exempts farmers for six years. Forests are good but only those planted after 1990. Presumably older tress have not been suitably brainwashed to toe the party line. The lower income folk (levels undefined) are to be subsidised on the admitted rise in energy charges by those pulling in a bit more dosh. How much more of this bollocks can this not inconsiderable chunk of the population (who all have a vote) stand? I suspect this is going to be the straw that finishes off the camel.

More and more devious ways to bolster the tax take which they then use to keep themselves entrenched is all this mob think of.

I try and stay away from quoting great lumps of prose from others in these ramblings (I regard it as being lazy) but I can do no better than Viscount Monckton (who is a very strange gent with a somewhat chequered history) when it comes to the Headmistress’s latest outrage. I shall therefore append what he said yesterday – and this was aimed at New Zealand.

‘A tax on jogging, cycling and swimming “because sportsmen breathe out more carbon dioxide than the rest of us”.

A bread levy “because the holes in bread are made by carbon dioxide from baking powder”.

A fizzy drinks volumetric charge, calculated by counting the size and quantity of carbon dioxide bubbles emitted when the can is opened.

A Champagne “super tax”, levied at five times the fizzy drinks charge “because tax is all about making the rich poor without making the poor rich”.

Monckton said the Government was at last making real “the dream of every tyrant – to tax the very air that we breathe”.

“From now on, every time you exhale you will be paying through the nose for it, literally as well as metaphorically,” he said.’

Maybe we shouldn’t give them ideas.

I sense that New Zealand is so over this government. Please let it be so. I really like it here and I would hate to have to leave.

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Keystone cops

If you were to ask me I would perhaps say that my wife's evening television diet shows a bias toward American cop shows - you know the sort, CSI, SVU, Criminal Intent and the like. She would reply that I spend too much time on Boat.com typing in 'Albemarle, 28-33ft, 2003-7'. Harmless affectations both. But hers might actually have some value. On Tuesday night during the Six O'clock News she said to me 'Why did the husband take the wife's car to the airport. I bet she's dead and I think she's in the boot of that Chinese News car that is behind the reporter for the whole country to see.'

That plod is not as sharp as my wife is one of the many reasons I am not married to the New Zealand Police Force. There are others. Lots of people appear to have made mistakes in this case already; which is fine. We all make mistakes. That these are making the whole country look like a bunch of plonkers in the international media is unfortunate but them's the breaks. What gets up my nose however is the retreat into 'process' to cover up the errors and, even worse, the acceptance by people that this is a legitimate thing to do. Instead of Plod coming forward and saying 'We are thick' or 'We were having a senior/blond moment' we get all this nonsense about having to have separate search warrants for the car and the house and 'we didn't have the car keys' and 'we must not investigate matters in a way that might cause distress'. Just bloody say it - 'We have been as slack as here' or 'a policeman could have told you the body was in the boot' - or not as the case may be'

The husband did a runner with the girl after collecting his passport (and his sword - eh?) from the cop shop. 'I would like my passport please' 'Certainly Sir' 'And my sword'. 'Here you are, Sir. All cleaned and sharpened. All fingerprints removed' Now I don't know about you but I do not keep my passport down at the Takapuna Police Station and one assumes it was there for a reason. It would appear that he has a protection order out against him preventing him from seeing the child and there on A3 today is Plod's own handicam showing them together in the Henderson Police Station for Pete's sake. Not only are they together in Plod's nest, he is picking up his passport (and his sword, of course). I only have my passport in my possession when I am in the act of changing countries. I'll not tell you when I am carrying my sword. It would appear that has been a bit of a blunder here. Fair enough, that happens. But just wait for the excuses to start as to why it was allowed to occur. I can guarantee they will all revolve around 'due and proper process' and not once will they say 'we stuffed up'. The same with immigration - error and we await the weasel words as an excuse.

Climate change - oh God not again. We have been down this track so many times that even I am becoming bored with the arguments. It is as plain as a pikestaff - to me anyway. However there is an article on the review page that sums up the energy production debate nicely and well emphasizes points I have been harping on about for ages. This argument is a political one and not a scientific one. The governments ideological pursuit of saving the planet is at odds with the pragmatic reality of providing the country with affordable energy supplies into the future. The fact that when all this carbon credit bollocks is bought in it will make not a jot of difference to New Zealand's carbon emissions and that at an enormous fiscal and social cost to everyone here. Yady yady ya. If you don't know all this already you are slower than a policeman in Keystone Road - the crime scene really is in Keystone Road.

I did not know that 12% of the world's power is produced by nuclear means. That is a lot. Without revisiting all the debate that was done to death last week the author on A13 puts the ludicrous 'look at Chernobyl' plea in its place. 'It is like banning cruise liners because the Titanic didn't have radar.'

I like that.

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Carbon trading/looney tunes

The day had to come when we tackled this and I had hoped I could procrastinate until Friday. However Fridays are not a good day for a half hour on the web early in the morning and we are going to have to have a look at all this carbon credits/penalties bollocks before the official announcements slated for Thursday. However Wellygogs is leaking rumours like a sieve and so I think we have a fair idea of what is afoot.

Two things. I haven't the first idea how it all works, I end up paying for it and............Three things. I haven't the first idea how it all works, I end up paying for it and, perversely, it is all good.

First thing. Not a bloody clue. If you fly somewhere you incur a carbon penalty and this is paid in money. We'll move past the why as there can be no answer to that I will accept. So who is the money paid to? The government? They seem to be in receipt of most of the money that exits my wallet so it must be them. But if a government minister flies somewhere the government pays the penalty. To the Government? Eh? As the money is going to be used to plant trees (I think) perhaps the money doesn't go to the Government at all but goes straight to Kings Plant Barn. But if I give money to Kings Plant Barn for a corokia or something (and I have bought some of these recently - SWMBO told me to) the GST component goes to the Government. So if our Dear Leader flies to London she buys $270 (going carbon penalty for a jaunt to Europe apparently) worth of bedding plants but doesn't really because she gives herself back the GST component. Maybe. And that's just the easy version. Apparently there is a carbon penalty for staying in a hotel. You get charged for lying in bed?

Who in their right mind could have thought of all this crap? The answer is no one in their right mind could have as they are all barking. A coterie of bureaucrats awash in recreational pharmacology has sat down and invented all this. And the aim of it all is to achieve something that is impossible. Who could be so daft as to believe a word of it? A majority of the country apparently - beyond my comprehension.

Second thing. Who is going to pay for all this crap? The Government, right? Wrong. You and I are going to pay for this because it will just come out of the tax take. Situation normal

Third thing. I am all for it because it is so obviously an election lead balloon that the sooner it is put in place the better. Mr Joe Average Middle New Zealander has currently had his mortgage repayments pushed through the roof because of the looney fiscal policy in the country. He is pissed off with an arrogant all controlling Government that tells him how to bring up his kids, how fast to drive, what colour fluoro jacket he must wear when changing a light bulb and generally want to control his every waking hour. Next comes all this carbon bollocks that has already been slated to put up the price of petrol and electricity. He'll love that. But there's more. Because the price of energy is going up the poor people will have to be subsidised and Mr Joe Average Middle New Zealander will pay for that as well. He not only pays for the increase in his own power bills but slips a lazy twenty in the mail box of the family on the DPB down the road. Goody goody. Now he is told he will pay the carbon penalty for Government ministers to fly round the world on various official junkets.

Excellent. Helen supplies the coffin and the nails - bring your own hammer.

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Out of Marmite

I am going to contact the Herald's subscription office today and see if I can have my arrangements changed from a six day subscription to a five day one. I am buggered if I am going to pay for the Monday edition. Today is worse than usual.

There is an opinion piece bleating about development. A woman (I think) prattles on about a motel being expanded in Epsom. Epsom is an urban part of the country and urban places are just that - 'of, pertaining to, or designating a city or town'. Motel is old and small but adequate for the populaton and traffic of the sixties or seventies (guessing here) when it was built. It is now forty years later and things have changed - there is no economic sense in just putting a lick of paint on a facility that is no longer adequte for the use that has evolved for it. Build a bigger one on the same footprint. Town planning 101 would tell you that to meet this requirement the z axis will have to be enlarged. This means the new building would have to be taller and this can be achieved by putting the extra stories underground or putting them up in the sky. I hope I'm not going too fast for you here. I am a reasonably well travelled bloke and have stayed in hotels worldwide. I have been billeted on the twelth floor, the fiftieth floor but I am yet to lay my head on the pillow in B46. That is how you do it; to make buildings bigger they become taller - upwards. Oh no, not in Epsom. The world must remain one of villas on quarter acre sections arranged down sleepy leafy avenues. Nimby to the max. Get over it woman. We, and this includes you, no longer live in the world portayed on the lids of chocolate boxes. The Haywain was painted in 1821 and I have it on good authority that the cart is no longer in the river.

The Green pages reach a new low with a quarter page devoted to how you must select garden furniture in a eco-friendly way. I didn't read it. All this tosh is rounded out with the usual Monday fare of an ersatz Society Photogapher's page near the back. The whole paper is mind numbingly facile and should be reported to the trade descriptions wallahs. It in no way resembles a newspaper. If Fairfax think I am going to pay for this drivel they have another think coming.

On a more serious note, where is the English food shop in Brown's Bay? I purchased a jar of Our Mate (proper English Marmite has this apellation in NZ for trademark reasons) in Woolworths and it will last me to the end of the week - tops. I need half kilo jars and I need them urgent like. I will not be held responsible for my actions if I can't find bulk Marmite supplies pretty bloody sharpish.

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