U R dmb

Human behaviour does not change much from the primary school playground to the political round table. Bullying, name-calling and sending messages are behaviours common to both spheres. Some guys just do not grow up.

The day’s Auckland story about battling mayors jostling for position during the current supercity debate is tear-inducing. The fact that their text messages to each other, complete with spelling errors and name-calling, have been published shows that the sticks-and-stones of the playground are still there in these primal egos even as they battle it out in the political slayground.

The difference is that nowadays we can judge people from their communications. There are no secrets. Secret communications, those you make when you think no-one is looking or cares, become public data.

It seems right-wing Auckland mayor John Banks, who smiled at the gullible people of Auckland and got voted back in despite having been deposed some years before, pressed the wrong button and sent a text to his much-loathed rival, North Shore mayor Andrew Williams. The text referred to “this lunitic”. I imagine Banks in an angry shaking fit pressing buttons furiously, not heeding the spelling and groping through his list of contacts looking for his co-rightist pal Aaron Bhatnagar. File under ‘A’. By christian name. Very primary school.

Meanwhile texts from others in the debate, including would-be peacemaking Waitakere Mayor Bob Harvey and soon-to-be-redundant ARC Chairman Mike Lee make them all look like a bunch of kids. Lee speaks of a group of powerful business men (who have overtones, vague non-altruistic ones, of philanthropy) invited (for politically expedient reasons known to Harvey) to a summit as “amateurs” and their thinking as “hair-brained”, although many of them are balding. Lee is erstwhile a sensible fellow, but texting, the lowest medium of them all, reduces everyone to the lowest common denominator.

We have netiquette online and there are pragmatic rules of politeness governing every other medium of personal communication. Many people have suffered from hastiness in sending an angry off-the-cuff email, including most politicos. It seems that the power of Telecoms has seen to it that there are no such rules for txting. It seems they, or someone whistleblower, are also willing to release txts to the media. The basic primal schoolkid instinct that characterises all people with a gadget in their hand emerges.

The media can now use emails, twit-twitterings, youtubings and facebook scribings as data in journalism. Now they have access to private txts from people in the public eye. We might at last be able to make political judgments based on these guys’ real behaviours and not the false rhetoric of public politics.

See this story here: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10566362&pnum=2, and below is what they want us to see and who they really are.

Picture of the Week

The multilateral G20 Summit is supposedly the most important event in history. World leaders gather together to save the globalised economy. Will they create a mega fund presided over by the IMF? Will there be one global homogenised currency? How much regulation of tax havens and golden handshakes will occur and how much local stimulation is required? Will Obama look internationally or take the Bushian default ‘America first’ stand? Will the great men (mostly, and Angela Merkel did butch things up) behave? Attention-seeking Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi did a Forrest Gump, deliberately stood beside Barrack and Michelle at photo ops, grinned and gave a flamboyant thumbs-up to the Obamas. French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s had a well-publicised hissy fit: Listen to me or I’m leaving! Kevin Rudd had one about food aboard a private plane: Why are you serving me this shit? Was repeat stand-up comedian John Key even invited?

What imaginative schemes can the world’s finest come up with? They concluded that they would take “whatever action is necessary.”

Dr. Angela Merkel: “Very, very good — (an) almost historic compromise.” Almost.

Here is the Picture of the Week. Captions, please.

“The old way of doing business.”

Barrack Obama describes as “the old way of doing business” the self-serving practices of greed, golden handshakes and executive luxury perks that characterised American – and universal – corporate cultures prior to the recession. He wants Wall Street to wake up to new ways and phase out its Gordon Gekko capitalism. It’s amazing that as soon as his inauguration was over, the real depression showed itself and the towers crumbled all over again. Even in Las Vagas, made of money, the Folies Bergere, the longest-running show in the nation, is bankrupt and the saucy can-can troupes have high-kicked their last. Time, maybe, for a musical about Karl Marx?

Obama won’t, however, endorse a punitive 90 per cent tax on bonuses to big earners at financial institutions deeply in debt to taxpayers, but will cede to a watered down version. It’s not about punishing those whose actions led to financial collapse and ruin for others, but teaching them gentle without anger. In Australia, Swan has been given a similar job of picking holes into corporate culture of “I am worth 1.86 million, you can be redundant”. It is time to re-examine the economic doctrines that economists and financiers have subscribed to for years and consign the graph of exponential increases in everything – especially my bonus – to the archives of the fire.

Barring access to one’s own culture

I never thought I’d write a post on rugby, but a combination of thinking in the new government and blinding stupidity on the part of the council drive me to it, just as a similar combination contributes to driving people out of New Zealand. The simple fact is that planning for the 2011 Rugby World Cup has been an annoyingly omnipresent part of public life and media for many years. Last week the local government admitted failure in its inability to supply the necessary rail infrastructure needed to transport the critical mass from the city to Kingland and cast more doubt on how visionary the nation can be with respect to light rail infrastructure. The usual concrete pourers revealed their complete lack of imagination and future vision instead.

But it’s worse that just transport and venue infrastructure. Auckland already knows that high-profile sports events are no longer that popular after the loss-making David Beckham game-show’ in 2007 led to the resignation of two high-powered and key instigators. But that was soccer and rugger remains the national sport. The budget blow-out for the rugby world cup has been exorbitant – mostly hosting rights and royalty costs although stadium and compliance costs skyrocketed too and the blowout is thought to be in the region of $30 million. The upshot is that at $750 a ticket, only rich overseas visitors will be able to enjoy the in-person live thrill.

Locals and other Kiwis, down in the depression financial-wise, are expected to watch it all on the box. “We’ll be watching it on TV,” said Steve Martin (not the comic actor but a Kiwi putting on a brave face) secretary for Auckland’s East Tamaki Rugby Football Club “That amount of money is just unrealistic.”

Here’s one-time player, Martin Snedden, now the RNZ 2011 chief executive: “We’ve got to rely on New Zealanders getting caught up in the event and really enjoying the fact that it’s a whole festival, it’s 20 teams, not just one team.” Demeaning patriotism and nationalistic fervour as a motive for watching the All Blacks is not going to help Kiwis. I know they want to repeat 1987 and beat France for a home victory. After all, if you take that away, what motivation is there for watching rugby? Isn’t it all about rooting for your side?

It was such a high stakes event in Kiwi culture (It is life, it is life! It is death, it is death! chants the haka) that the government even hired Ministers for the Rugby world Cup as a special portfolio. Rugby World Cup minister Murray McCully and associate minister Gerry Brownlee were “nervous about the risk around ticket revenue and tournament loss”. They will actually now be nervous for their lives. Kiwis are not going to take this one lying down. Particularly because two thirds of the shortfall will be paid by – Kiwi taxpayers. And because of the sacrifices locals in Mount Eden, who did want want the stadium rebuilt so that it could triple the noise and congestion they put up with.

The ultimate fools in the story, the overhasty New Zealand Rugby Union, who signed New Zealand into an agreement it could not afford needing infrastructure it did not have in the first place pays the other third.

Being reliant on overseas visitors coming to country that does no favours for itself in terms of self-reporting and during a depression (as it may be by 2011 if we listen to the gloom-mongers) also seems naive: “We are reliant on a significant number of overseas visitors coming, particularly for the last three weeks of the tournament,” Snedden said. The last three weeks of course are the semi-finals and the finals. As for the Kiwis, let them go to minor matches with low-ranked teams in Invercargill, New Plymouth and Dunedin, which has also been fool enough in the past fortnight to vote itself a rugby venue it can’t afford and which local revenue alone won’t be able to sustain. Rugby makes you go blind, and there’s nothing in this story that does not prove it. (See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10562870, and weep). It also clearly shows the disdain the current government has for its people and culture.

There will be blood. And there will be Schadenfreude.

Why do we have politicians?

We all know that politicians are a necessary evil and that some are more or less necessary and/or evil than others, but from time to time all of us reflect on that magical question: why do we need them? We know for sure that they can’t all be as uplifting as Roosevelt, as demagogic as Churchill, as matinee-idol charismatic as Obama or as brainwashingly charismatic as Hitler. They can’t all use a one-liner like David Lange (NZ) had done, or even Aussie’s DPM Julia Gillard.  The negatives outweigh the positives: after all, they eat up big salaries, get tons of expensive perks involving planes and hotels and free drinks, and they hardly ever do anything that we wanted. In the light of overwhelming negative evidence, let me present some reasons why we need politicians.

1. Human psychology needs a scapegoat. We all need someone to blame, to take the ultimate blame. This is the main reason for politicians. They hold the can. This is obvious in the fact that people use terms like ‘Rudd’ or ‘Bush’ or ‘Obama’ or ‘Key’ or ‘Clark’ synecdochally, as in ‘Key better do something about unemployment now or the country will go to the dogs’. This means the Pres or PM comes to stand for a bigger concept, such as the party, the whole government, or even the country, in people’s utterances. It does not matter which of these you wish to blame, the name of the top dog politician can be inserted and you feel better. The pressure on ‘Obama’, as on the man, his party and his country, is unequalled. But Obama’s the man, right?

2. Human beings need a laugh. The inanities of politicians the world round – and the things that say in some interviews or in the house – make wonderful press. George Bush is well known for his Bushisms and other Malapropisms (They are even in the comedy movie whose title only Texans can pronounce, “W”). John Key’s stand up comedy act is well known in New Zealand. We love to see the foot-in-mouth syndrome, and when it is balanced by the media quoting politicians out of context, it becomes wonderful. Perhaps this is what is happening in today’s article on politicians in The Age, ‘The comedy club that is our parliament in full cry’ (See: http://www.theage.com.au/national/the-comedy-club-that-is-our-parliament-in-full-cry-20090228-8l2e.html). When they are not funny, they are manipulated by the media in ways to make them seem funny, as in the idea of Helen Clark as an old Commie in Helengrad.

3. Different nations like to mock other nations’ politicians in order to feel that theirs aren’t so bad after all. Whenever we think of Kim Jung-Il or Robert Mugabe, or any one of the many despots in underprivileged and politically imprisoned nations on the world, we count ourselves lucky that the worst we can say about ours is that he is a stand-up comedian tryhard. In 2008, Bush was such a world focus for ‘loathe the other country’s politician’ that he nearly took all America with him, with anti-Americanism reaching epidemic proportions in popular and media discourse and many Americans, especially Sean Penn, saying that it’s understandable why people have turned on Uncle Sam (who is another synecdoche). His Dad had a similar ability to embarrass his entire nation – and there are many politicians throughout history who have performed this international function well.

4. Following the death of Princess Di, we are short of celebrities, unwilling to let Paris Hilton hog the category, and allow politicians occasionally into The Women’s Weekly. Politicians as celebrities? It seems oxymoronic. Helen Clark, the photoshopped version, made it to the cover of The New Zealand Woman’s Weekly, as have other politicians in celebrity-starved Kiwiland. I’m not sure so much that we read about them and their families and tragedies with sare as much as guilty pleasure. And if they are involved in a scandallous, especially something involving semen like Clinton’s, they are likely to make it even further down the pecking order of the press and end up in The Sun on page 3. Our desire for celebrity, especially in recession times, is stronger than ever. We are internuts, even YOU. See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=10558729

New Zealand's Best Stand-Up comedian, second from right

5. They make us feel we could do better. How often, in your anger at inane politicos, do you find yourself declaring that either you yourself, or sometimes a performing monkey, could do a better job than such-and-such a politician. well, this is one of the reasons why we need them. They help us to imagine ourselves in their situation, doing better, helping people and saving the world. We might not have as full an understanding of the budget at first, but our hearts will be in the right place. They may not be inspirational, but in this example, they could be aspirational.

6. We can joy in the downfall. Ultimately, even popular politicians lose their shine and become risible. There’s usually a moment when you can’t wait for them to be voted out, and participating in the process of getting rid of that politico gives you displaced joy and that feeling of Schadenfreude. I can remember the wave of relief in New Zealand when Piggy Muldoon was voted out after an eternity of economy- sapping ‘thinking big’ and again when turncoat Roger Douglas was ejected from the Big Brother House of Parliament. England’s relief when Margaret Thatcher, and again Tony Blair, left, both depopularised, was tangible. Never, never outstay your welcome. The canny politicians go gracefully at moments of the year when there are other things to occupy the Zeitgeist. They just slip away quietly, as Michael Cullen in NZ has announced he will do and as Helen Clark seems to have done. Just slip away, fire your speech writer, spin doctor and image consultant, and don’t answer media calls any more. Cullen and Clark deprive people of that gloat which is a vital psychological process for people in dealing with change, even change we pushed for, no matter how ill-advised we were. Yes, politicians help us feel better by providing us with the chance for smug gloating.

7. To help us with our insomnia. In The Age, Aussie politicians are accused of a cardinal crime: being boring. “Asked by journalists soon after whether he was indeed a “toxic bore”, Rudd seemed to revel in the title, launching into an exquisitely dull lecture on the restoration of private credit markets”. The article, which you should read for a laugh, asks whether being boring in question time might be a political strength. I say this: listening to these guys on the radio works better as a cure for insomnia thanreading wither The Bible or The Faerie Queen.

8. We can watch them reform into human being again. I have heard, and it may be true, that former NZ Prime Minister Jenny Shipley (‘The Ship’, ‘Big Jen’ or any other of the misogynistic, but still funny,  appellations suggesting to be overweight and female are bad things for public figureheads) has become a better person after reflecting of her years in the Hate Seat as Prime Minister of New Zealand. She once famously prosecuted  fellow for picking a daffodil from her property (but he did do it knowing it was her daffodil) and this story cemented her wicked witch status in the public psyche. On the flipside of the witch is usually a feminist, and some of her quips made it onto the internet: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/j/jenny_shipley.html.

Now, low and behold, she has lost a lot of weight (thanks to Jenny Craig, with whom she was often confused anyway), spoken about her diabetic scare, been seen on the street collecting for the Heart Foundation, travelled to Namibia for a TV reality/ travel programme – and started wearing red, Labour colours – which actually suit her while the traditional conservative blue made her look priggish and self-satisfied. Can politicians actually evolve beyond the caricatures the media creates for them?

I was prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt until I heard that this week she was heard gloating on National Radio that for her recent 57th birthday “Burt”, as she calls her husband Burton, had bought her two electric toilets for their yacht.

• With thanks to http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/spy-rachel-glucina/2009/2/27/jenny-shipleys-life-change-and-pics-dean-spanley-premier/?c_id=1501135&objectid=10559052  and  http://3.bp.blogspot.com/

“Cap” the Bureaucracy

Isn’t it lean enough already after Rogernomics, Ruthanasia and a generation of rationalisation and viability testing?

It seems that it hard times nothing is lean and mean enough. It seems that New Zealand’s world of public servants, its beloved bureaucracy, is to be reduced further with retrenchments. “This Government is determined that the focus will go on improving front-line services,” said Mr Ryall, without a single eye on budgets only on service. “Front-line” is a very wartime term, don’t you think?

The National Government is resolved to maximise efficiency. Yes, there will be cuts; 5% across the board. See: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=1055734

Here are some tolls:

• The Ministry of Social Development 475 jobs
• The Tertiary Education Commission, employer of many not-quite-made-it academics, 291
• The Conservation Department, 40
• The National Library, 32

If this ever happens in the form-happy, slow and inefficient bureaucracy that is Australia, a good quarter of the population will be redundant.  With its uncapped bureaucracy untainted by Rogernomics, this could be the biggest threat to its recessional economic times.

It’s sure in the air (or on this case on the ground), with Virgin shedding 400 today, mostly groundstaff. See http://www.theage.com.au/national/airlines-set-to-ground-flights-jobs-20090217-8a9t.html

Hard time these may be, but, judging from the Kiwi examples, some companies would deliver shorter waiting times for the over-patient Aussie public if they made their bureaucracies more efficient.

We’re having a heatwave

I noticed that the rivalry between NZ and Australia extends to the news and how the countries represent each other and their denizens. The Australians are still laughing at Kiwi PM John Key’s broken arm, which he did not realise was broken till he had shaken hands with hundreds of rugby players despite the fact that he’d fallen downstairs and had a funny pain. His dorkishness has already (‘already’ as in: he’s only been in office 5 minutes – after a vacation of about 5 weeks that is) been a major trans-Tasman embarrassment as he received so much hilarity here, and if he’s the best NZ has, then it’s game, set and match to Australia, over and out.  And then, while preaching austerity to all other Kiwis (don’t go expecting a pay rise this year, he said), he ups the salaries of himself and his cronies. Don’t say we didn’t tell you. Insert cliché, e.g. the one about leopards and spots here.

The tennis, the Australian Open, watched by millions, has depicted Melbourne as the sizzling capital of the south pacific after the poms whingeing that it was too hot and tennis tournaments should not be held here and it just wasn’t cricket. But to be fair it was not just the players who were melting, and normally rather-nice Melbournians behaved psychotically that day, and over every day when the mercury hit 43 (45 today).  (Reference: http://www.theage.com.au/national/as-train-tracks-melted-and-trees-wilted-we-all-went-a-little-bit-troppo-20090130-7u1c.html).

Most of them, with their ‘no problems’ mantra pretended it was business as usual. The rest caused a power surge on the national grid and plugged in every fan in town. The local Target department store had fans of all shapes and sizes placed beside the counters, where the sweeties usually are. I bypassed the fans because all they do is swirl the hot air around and opted for an industrial-strength air cooler for over a grand. It’s an investment, and justified because I’m not a signed-up certified Aussie and from New Zealand, where the temperature is seldom over 20. Meanwhile, power stations are exploding, rolling power cuts are in force, and the entire train network seems to have gone down with the train service providers telling people to find alternative means of getting home. But don’t worry, we’ll give you one day’s free ticket next week. No problems.

There are bush fires, power cuts, electricity crises and train failures. So many services have been cut that I could not get to work for two days. I’m a child again at 8 am, waiting to see if school is going to be closed on a snowy day. I did not go. If I had gone, on a very late train, I would not have been able to get back. Work is a 40-minute train trip away – exactly the time it takes to read an average journal article (so travel is work, you see). I had signed a work from home agreement, so it’s legal for me, though not for the unsigned, who are legion. Other train trips this week have been tragic. I’ve been stranded at obscure stations waiting for services that have been cancelled. For some odd reason, no-one thought to let the express trains stop here because they were not scheduled to, so they just trundle by. It’s the non-express ones that get canned. There’s obviously room for some accountability here rather than blaming the Minister of Transport or Mr Global Warming, the two usual suspects. (Reference: http://www.theage.com.au/national/train-system-completely-off-the-rails-20090130-7u1a.html).

Lack of lateral thinking is, it seems, a characteristic of Australian thinking. There’s a lack of flexibility in thinking and inventiveness in times of need. This is one area where Kiwis have the advantage, probably because they’ve been accustomed to hardship for a much longer period of time, and in far graver circumstances. To return to a common cliché, we came from pioneer stock; they from criminal. In Aussie, the feeling is that it’s still paradise even if it’s been a little bit poisoned and signed this week. No problems. I’ve seen this rigidity at work where there’s no action without form A (even though information to complete it is not available), and in bureaucracy where you can’t do X without doing Y and you have to wait till January 31 before Y is open. Enough about car registration. Kiwis have inventiveness and number 8 wire, where Aussies have heatwaves and cornucopiae of food.

Food for miles

Trust me to be here during what The Age today called ‘the worst heatwave in recorded history’ (31 Jan, 2009).