And His Truth goes marching on

Sometimes I have to conclude that New Zealand is a confused little country. According to the 2013 census the number of people who identify as having no religion has reached 1.6 million, an increase of 26 per cent since the last census in 2006.

And yet a Massey University survey taken in 2008 found that 72 percent of New Zealander’s believed in God. The survey was of New Zealanders above the age of 18 and was said to have a margin of error of 3 per cent.

I imagine that many of the remaining 28 per cent who don’t believe in God still respect and support the comparatively liberal moral values that Christianity has imposed on the Western world and support the holiday seasons of Christmas an Easter for sensibly secular reasons.

The new census figure disclose that Catholic, Anglican and Presbyterian church membership have all contracted while Pentecostal congregations have increased.

The number of followers of Hinduism and Islam also increased.

This sort of information is always imparted around Christmas when I suspect editors tell their junior reporters to go out and find some stories to counteract this madness that we call the festive season.

I’m a little confused because from my observations the only people who don’t sing the national hymn “God Defend New Zealand” with a surprising degree of enthusiasm at a rugby test are the All Blacks themselves. And unambiguous religious services to commemorate ANZAC day are becoming increasingly popular, particularly among the younger generation.

I was talking to a nurse recently who did her training at Masterton Hospital in the 1970’s and is now a midwife attached to Hutt hospital and she told me that most patients today are generally unsure of their religious connections. They used to say Anglican, Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist or Baptist, but many now have no denominational roots and, if asked, describe themselves as either Christian or atheist.

The end result is that whereas once there was an army of church ministers swarming through the wards at all hours of the day or night looking eagerly at the religious affiliations shown on the cards at the end of the bed, the hospitals are now largely bereft of clergymen and the comfort that faith can bring has diminished.

And so, given the season, I thought perhaps we should re-acquaint ourselves with the founder of Christianity and the best explanation I have encountered comes from Swiss-born American theologian Philip Schaff (1819-1893) who said that: “Jesus of Nazareth, without money and arms conquered more millions than Alexander the great, Julius Caesar and Napoleon.

“Without science and learning He shed more light on things human and divine than all the philosophers and scholars combined.

“Without the eloquence of schools He spoke words of life that were never spoken before or since and produced effects which lie beyond the reach of orator or poet.

“Without writing a single line He has set more pens in motion and furnished themes for more sermons, orations, discussions, learned volumes, works of art and sweet songs of praise than the whole army of great men and women of ancient and modern times.

“Born in a manger and crucified as a criminal He now controls the destinies of the civilised world and rules the spiritual empire which embraces one third of the inhabitants of the globe.

“There was never in this world a life so unpretending, modest and lowly in its outward form and condition and yet producing such extraordinary effects upon all ages, nations and classes of men.

“The annals of history produce no other example of such complete and astonishing success in spite of the absence of those material, social, literary and artistic powers and influences which are indispensable to success for a mere man.”

You can’t deny His existence; dare you question His divinity?

Oxford University Don and famed author C.S. Lewis in his book Mere Christianity wrote the following: “I’m trying to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’

“That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell.

“You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come up with this patronising nonsense about him being a great human teacher.

“He has not left that option open to us. He did not intend to.”

And so two thousand and thirteen years on, during the festive season and beyond, wise men seek Him still.

Have a great Christmas!

“There are no atheists on a turbulent aeroplane.” – Erica Jong

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A New Year nightmare in the making

Weston Ten-Green-Bottles settled back on the chair in his office in Martyrdom’s imposing Town Hall and felt somewhat apprehensive. The elections were over, the new lady Laud-Mare, Linley Pattercake, was ensconced in the adjacent office and he ought to have been at peace with the world.

But there were potential obstacles on the road ahead. The Regret Theatre owner Brenton Goodloser was back on the town kownsil and was inclined to rattle cages around the table whenever he fancied. Weston noticed however that he had matured over time and now without the signature pony-tail he may have become a quieter beast.

The view from Weston’s office was bleak. He was staring at the stone walls on the old Public Rust building whereas Ms Pattercake got a birds-eye view over the splendid new Town Square that David Bored-Man had instigated and produced with help from other local philanthropists and philanthropic groups.

In another life he and Bored-Man had got themselves offside with the kownsil when he had inadvertently allowed the bustling builder to demolish the derelict dunny’s at Koora-poo-knee.

Weston had taken to wearing dark glasses whenever he looked out of the south facing windows of the building as the contrast of the bright-green freshly-planted lawn and the karitane-yellow of the newly painted Wire-rapper Times-Rage building was dazzling.

His office did have its compensations. If he lifted the double-hung window ever so slightly he would get a tantalising whiff of the burger and fried onion aroma coming from the two fast food outlets of the adjoining corners which would inevitably get his juices running.

And if he leaned out far enough and stretched his neck a tad he could see the inspiring artwork that the Rust Lands Rust had put on the side of their Starry-Eyed block in Lincoln Road.

The Multi-coloured corrugated-iron mural suited a town that seemed to have more than its fair share of corrugated iron buildings that pesky upstart columnist Licky Wrong was constantly complaining about.

Of course, thought Weston, Licky’s taste was all in his mouth.

There was some good news. According to the latest census Martyrdom’s population had gone up by 729. Back at the last census in 2006 the increase had only been 54. Weston tended not to see people in the figures, but rather ratepayer dollars and it comforted his tortured soul.

So he decided he would enjoy Christmas, but the new year was certain to bring its own challenges. Local gu’mmint Kommission chairperson Basher Horrorsin would soon report on their view of where they considered Wire-rapper’s local body directions lay. Horks Bay weren’t happy with their re-organisational plans and he feared that when the Wire-rapper draft proposals were announced the citizens would be revolting.

Weston shuddered at the thought.

All sorts of options had been submitted to the Kommission and potential outcomes could see Weston spend the rest of his natural life fishing at Lake Toe-Poor. Ms Pattercake had already prophesied that she would be the first and last lady Laud-Mare of Martyrdom.

Down the road-a-piece Carleton Mare Kim-Jong Maka and his sidekick Colon Wrong (no relation to Licky) had no such qualms. The gu’mmint had already appointed Kim-Jong to the Wire-rapper and Mower Cut Hospitality Boards and he felt certain he would also be the chosen one to lead the Wire-rapper, though Adriana Nails would be breathing down his neck.

The real risk however would be if Basher Horrorsin and his commissariat decided that the Wire-rapper should join with Das Kapital and become part of a Souper-Sitty.

In that case it would be Cecelia Wade-Green who would lead the charge of the light-headed brigade and Kownsil cars would be exchanged for bicycles.

Weston grabbed the sun glasses off his desk and decided to call it a day. In the haste to flee his office he nearly tripped over the metre-high stack of correspondence from Richard Iceberg regarding the symmetry gates, and he bounded down the stairs, bypassing the under-utilised lift installed at great cost back in 1995 by gu’mmint decree, and headed for home.

As he navigated his way through the new town square he looked fondly back at his beloved Town Hall and realised in the worst case scenario the grand old building would become redundant; it would have to find another use. An old person’s home perhaps?

Or maybe David Bored-Man would paint it shocking-pink and turn it into a museum.

“Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage.” - Richard Lovelace

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Tracing the world's money-go-round

According to the oral history of our family, my great-grandfather on my father’s side was a remittance man from England. Remittance men were the ne’er-do-well sons of well-to-do families who were banished to the colonies so not to further disgrace their kin-folk. They were sent a regular remittance to live on and this was maintained as long as they never set foot again in the old country.

My great-grandfather’s Achilles’ heel apparently was the demon drink and the final straw came when as a young man he had a night out with a friend who was a Lord, the eldest son of an Earl, whereby they both drank more than was prudent and attempted to walk back to their respective London homes in the snow. Not far from the hostelry where they had imbibed they fell over and stayed comatose all night while the snow all but buried their personages. In the morning they were dug out; the Lord was dead, but he had fallen last, and on top, and the warmth of his body had kept my great-grandfather alive.

As claimed in the family narrative, my great-great-grandfather was the biggest shareholder in the Times of London and desperate to keep the sordid story out of the paper sent my great-grandfather to the antipodes with a modest annual remittance to allow him to maintain his viability. Well anyway that’s how the story goes as told to me by my maiden aunts as I sat at their feet as a child and it may have got embellished over time.

My great-grandfather was by all accounts a big man in every sense of the word. Big in stature - he was six foot five - big on generosity and a big appetite for fun, frivolity and gambling which inferred he hadn’t learnt any lessons from his shameful conduct in Britain.

It also meant that very little of the remittance reached my great-grandmother, who struggled to raise a large family.

Now if you thought remittance men were a relic from the past, you couldn’t be more wrong. Today’s remittance men are the migrant workers who send money home to their families. In this case the situation is reversed. There is no disgrace involved and the money goes back from the colonies to the home countries.

People in the first-world societies rely more and more on migrant workers to do the menial tasks they feel they’ve outgrown. You can see this in the army of all-night office cleaners who descend on the streets of downtown Wellington late in the evening. They are almost always Pacific Islanders.

Their extended family members will be grateful for whatever help they can get from the leftovers of their meagre wages when it is remitted home.

We found out recently when their devastating storm caused us to focus on the Philippines that there are 40,000 Filipinos skilled and unskilled living in this country, apparently here on work visas to do the tasks that New Zealand’s unemployed seem unwilling or unable to do.

The Philippines is famous for sending its citizens out into the world to toil; 9.5 million of them live outside the country. I read where remittance payments sent home to the Philippines totalled $US21 billion in 2011, but it is thought that officially recorded remittances are only a fraction of the real figure.

This must be a great boost for the Philippine economy, but I’m intrigued to know just how it is accounted for in its country of origin.

We were taught at school that governments had to keep a tight rein on the money supply. To overprint money - though apparently an attractive option for the Greens - would cause inflation of the kind that occurred in the Weimer Republic in Germany and led to Hitler’s rise to power and the eventual advent of the Second World War.

But if billions of dollars are being sent overseas by migrant workers worldwide, how can the money supply be kept track of?

All of this revenue transfer is ably abetted by the international banking system that now moves money from one country to another at the push of a computer keyboard button. Just how governments account for this money and why it doesn’t disrupt their balance of payments disciplines is an abiding mystery.

Of course these days little printed paper money is involved. In our near cashless society the banks are said to be awash with ersatz money which they lend out on credit cards at rates that a few decades ago were the sole preserve of charlatans, usurers and loan sharks. The world banking system, as we witnessed in 2008, is now so convoluted that surely no-one would know how to untangle it.

My great-grandfather came from simpler times. I guess his money arrived by boat and the pound sterling would have been eagerly changed into local currency and then just as eagerly received by the local brewers.

But I must go now; my offspring have called a family meeting. Something about shipping me to England and sending me money to stay there.

I haven’t a clue what they’re on about.

“A person may be indebted for a nose or an eye, for a graceful carriage or a voluble discourse, to a great-aunt or uncle, whose existence he has scarcely heard of.” - William Hazlitt.

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A fine petishun for the gullybull

Russell Abnormal was particularly pleased with himself and so too was his co-leader Metaphor Two-rear. Ms Two-rear was grinning like a Cheshire cat; the post-persons had defied attacks by magpies and delivered the bright orange envelopes into the letter boxes of an anxious public no doubt desirous to have their say.

The bicycle express had got through.

They were going to put it up Don Key’s followers in a big way. How dare he opt to sell 49 per cent of the country’s crown jewels, a move which they and their constituents so avidly opposed? So what if the referendum cost $30 million. They were convinced that close to 100 per cent of the hoi-polloi were certain to vote “No” to the question: “Should the gu’mmint be allowed to sell shares in state-owned assets to their rich mates?”

Heck, the county didn’t need the money. Just because we are borrowing massive sums from the gnomes of Bay-Jing on a weekly basis, we can’t be too hard up, thought Metaphor. After all didn’t the Higher Celery Commission just give them all a generous pay rise?

Abnormal leant back on his leather recliner clasped his hands behind his head and thought what an inspired decision he’d made some years back when he left behind the self-imposed impoverishment of the Horse-tralian Komyounist party and set sail for Ayer-tayer-rower. Despite his falsetto voice the land of the wrong white crowd had fallen for his vexatious brand of pollyticks and he fully expected to hold the balance of power in less than a year.

Kevin Dudd would live to regret that he was never schooled by him.

Meanwhile Wonton Peters, just finishing a Chinese takeaway, straightened his tie and combed his hair for the umpteenth time as he contemplated an afternoon at the racetrack. He still had the sign with “NO” on it that he’d held up to TV journalists when they queried whether Onerous Glen had given him $100,000 to pay his legal fees. It reminded him that he was going to say “No” to the question posed in the orange envelope, despite at one stage promising to support the Prime Misery over the issue, only to have his offer spurned.

But David Cunningness was keeping shtum. What if the public recalled that Layber privatised Ayer Knew Zeeland in 1989, selling it lock, stock and barrel to Sing-a-poor owned Briar-lee investments and Sing-a-poor Ayer Lines? He remembered Layber had bought back eighty per cent of it in 2001. And then in 2002 Herr Klark, operating out of her Wasp-hive office in Helengrad, tried to sell 22.5% to Kwantas. Don Key has just sold 20% to Knew Zeelanders whereas Herr Klark had tried to sell 22.5% to those pesky Horse-tralians and in the process would have destroyed trans-Tazmin competition.

Wouldn’t the public recognise the sheer hypocrisy, Cunningness worried?

                                                      **********************

David Cunliffe may well have scored a political point with the same people who will have forgotten Labour’s record of selling off state-owned assets when he said a Labour government would instruct Treasury to pay the $3.5 million which is currently owed to the Pike River families by way of a court-ordered reparation for health and safety failings at the mine.

He said he would then use all the means at his disposal once he became Prime Minister to ensure Treasury got the money back in full from the shareholders of companies like NZ Oil and Gas and other businesses and individuals who had a stake in Pike River Coal before the firm went into receivership. “For too long,” he said, “These people have ignored their moral obligations.”

Bill English however makes the point that ACC had already paid out $5 million to the families of Pike River on the same basis of any family that suffers a work-place accident. The full support from ACC would amount to $20 million when paid.

Other commentators have said that NZ Oil and Gas has paid out $25 million since the disaster for salaries, creditors and tunnel recovery. A resolution at its annual meeting in October to pay more was lost.

It could be reasonably argued that there are few companies that would voluntarily pay $25 million when there was no legal requirement for them to do so.

Apology:

A few columns back I inferred that half of our politicians are idiots. I now withdraw that statement.

Half of our politicians are not idiots.

“I am offended by political jokes. Too often they get elected.” - Will Rogers

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Analysing a community in crisis

I’m now going to wade in where angels fear to tread; the ‘letters to the editor’ department may swell as a result.

It’s all about this Roast Busters saga. I just can’t get my head around it. For instance what is the meaning of the phrase “Roast Busters?” A play-upon-words from Ghost Busters, but what is the tie-up with the activities of the group?

Is there a teenage language out there that I am blissfully unaware of?

I Googled the lyrics of Lorde’s universal hit Royals and have concluded that the young do now speak in a dialect quite different from the rest of us.

But the Roast Busters?

First off it seems the dastardly deeds took place a couple of years ago. Back then the young men in question would have been fifteen; the girls we are told were thirteen. We were informed recently that Family Planning want condoms to be supplied to girls as young as thirteen due to the alarming number of teenage pregnancies that are occurring.

The same press release said that 14 year-olds are being taught how to put condoms on plastic penis’s as part of the secondary school curriculum.

I’m blushing as I am writing this.

So lovemaking at that level is commonplace, but the Roast Busters were ensuring success by first getting their young victims inebriated. That trick has been going on since time immemorial, but we are reliably told that in this case the sex was taking place without the consent of the young women.

In America, having sex with an underage girl is called statutory rape. In this country it has the less dramatic title of unlawful carnal knowledge. The age of consent in New Zealand is sixteen, but it varies worldwide. I note that in Spain it is thirteen, in Brazil it is fourteen, and in France fifteen.

I remember as teenagers we used to regularly buy the Truth newspaper which came out weekly on a Tuesday. Apart from the page three girls we would pour over the salacious reports of the court hearings which inevitably featured a number of young men being charged with having “unlawful carnal knowledge.”

I haven’t seen a report like that for years.

If there are vast numbers of thirteen-year-old girls getting pregnant then there must be an identical number of young men committing this crime, yet getting off scot free.

I asked a member of the judiciary some time ago why this once-regularly-reported criminal act now seemed to have disappeared of the court lists and he told me that it was not really considered a crime these days, particularly if the perpetrator was of a similar age as the defendant.

The Truth newspaper isn’t around anymore; it has of course been superseded. Teenagers can apparently find all manner of salaciousness in the form of hard-core pornography on their computers. The page three girls would have been tame by comparison.

And it’s no good me trying to defend the Roast Busters. A young lady named Amy, who said she was a Roast Buster victim, rang Radio Live where Willie Jackson and John Tamihere dared to ask her what was she wearing and was she sure she hadn’t consented. They both subsequently lost their jobs. Their first question was totally unacceptable, but isn’t it entirely possible that a young girl who has consumed too much alcohol may be incapable of saying no?

Now there is no doubt that being raped is an indescribably traumatic event for a woman. For most it is a life sentence of ongoing anguish. And yet the police person who interviewed the three complainants - and remember she was a female - found there was not enough evidence to bring the perpetrators in for questioning.

To some extent the stupid young men are a product of the times. They will have no doubt watched pornography that makes women appear like sex objects and even though the girls were under age, there was virtually no risk of them being charged.

And so we reap what we sow. Young people now have easy access to alcohol with the world’s most liberal drinking laws, and are part of a society that all but encourages sex amongst school age children and then makes no effort to charge anyone who breaks the age-of-consent laws.

If the Roast Busters hadn’t boasted on Facebook about their disgraceful behaviour, they’d still be laughing.

“Man is always much worse and much better than is expected of him. The fields of good are just as limitless as the wastelands of evil.” - Abram Tertz

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Where the emperor has no clothes

A letter to the editor and a number of personal letters and phone calls criticised a column I wrote a couple of weeks ago challenging the efficacy of global warming. I guess my trouble is that over many years I have seen “cry wolf” so many times that I've become a sceptic.

Set aside the claim the world was freezing over as postulated in the 1960’s. Next up was the Club of Rome, a group of distinguished academics and scientists who in the 1970’s claimed that the world would run out of oil before the new millennium with dire consequences for civilisation.

Greenpeace, a wealthy American multi-national and another great doomsayer recently said that the world was now awash with oil and therefore the Russians have no need to drill in the Arctic Circle for more. Some of their dopey advocates attempted to hijack the giant oil rig and are now languishing in a Soviet gulag complaining of the cold and the fact that their captors don’t speak English.

Last week the International Panel on Climate Change said that starvation, poverty, flooding, heat waves, droughts, wars and disease will worsen as the world warms from man-made climate change.

I recall back in 1986 the Wairarapa Catchment Board, the forerunner to the regional council, calculated that due to global warming the sea at Riversdale Beach was encroaching towards the land at a rate of a metre a year. The Masterton District Council panicked and put a hazard zone restriction on most of the beachfront houses. 27 years later the waves still lap the shore exactly where they always have.

I also remember being taught at secondary school that the low-lying Pacific atolls would soon be under water and uninhabitable. I’d hate to admit to you how far back that was.

But the doozey of all doom and gloom merchants was undoubtedly Paul Ehrlich who scared the living

daylights out of us all back in 1968 with his alarmist book The Population Bomb which sold in millions. Ehrlich is currently in New Zealand for a lecture tour with his new scare-the-pants-off-you tome Avoiding Global Collapse. The usual sycophants will fawn over the author and his book, conveniently forgetting that his predictions in 1968 were so far off the mark that in hindsight they look like the ravings of a man with serious mental problems.

The battle to feed all of humanity he wrote in The Population Bomb is over. “In the 1970’s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programmes embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate. We need to rapidly bring the world population under control,” he warned, “Reducing the growth to zero or making it negative. Conscious regulation of human numbers must be achieved.”

Ehrlich even floated the idea of adding “temporary sterilants” to the water supply or staple foods and expressed support for government mandated sterilization of Indian males with three or more children.

I’m thinking the Politburo in China must have bought the Chinese translation and this was their catalyst for the one child per couple policy. Apart from the words cousins, aunties and uncles disappearing from the vernacular as a result, the Chinese are now discovering that there are not sufficient young people coming along to create enough wealth for their ageing population in retirement.

Let’s just examine Ehrlich’s other predictions. In 1970 he forewarned that in ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of the coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish.

Well at least we were going to have a coastline, which will have surprised the boffins at the Catchment Board.

In a speech in1971 Ehrlich predicted that by the year 2000 the United Kingdom will simply be a small group of impoverished islands, inhabited by some 70 million hungry people. “If I was a gambler,” he said, “I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000.

“When you reach a point where you realise further efforts will be futile, you may as well look after yourself and your friends and enjoy what little time you have left. That point for me,” he said, “Is 1972.”

And so Ehrlich is back in New Zealand peddling more of this nonsense and I’ll bet he’ll find a willing audience morbidly hanging on his every word and subsequently criticising the rest of us for not preparing for the worst.

His latest rant is that Earth has too many people consuming too many things and imposing far too much stress on land and water and that only unprecedented cultural change provides any hope of averting a catastrophe.

Sounds like The Population Bomb all over again.

If I had my way I’d put him in a Russian jail.

“When I look back on all these worries I remember the story of the old man who said on his deathbed that he had had a lot of trouble in his life, most of which had never happened.” 
- Winston Churchill 

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Not a book for the faint-of-heart

My young friend Paul Henry has written a new book. It’s called Outraged and I suspect many who read it will themselves be outraged. In typical Henry fashion Paul pulls no punches and systematically slaughters all the sacred cows you could possibly think of and some of which you probably haven’t. Labour supporters, and those of the green persuasion are quite likely to organise book burning sessions and even those on the centre-right are sure to find something to enrage them.

My sensitivities were bruised with the language and I told Paul that I would have deleted the expletives. He was also critical of church goers and hybrid car owners. Last time I saw Paul I took him for a short drive in my Hybrid from where we were to where we were going. His literary agent was with us and she was amazed he would lower himself, literally, to get in it. On the journey, which was mercifully short, he found endless fault with the car, mostly unjustified.

In the book you will discover that he has an unrelenting fetish for cars and boats. Some years ago he rang me from Auckland and asked if I would go and check out a Rolls-Royce that Majestic Motors had for sale. “Take it for a test drive and let me know if you think I should buy it” he instructed. I was delighted with the commission. I had never ever been in a Rolls-Royce, let alone driven one, so I did as I was instructed. What expertise I was supposed to have in the field of Rolls-Royce appraisals I wouldn’t know, but I reported back positively and he subsequently bought it.

Last week he emailed me to say that he had just taken delivery of   Dodge Challenger SRT8 new from the States. It has a 6.4 litre Hemi V8 motor that would eat Hybrids he reckoned.

And yet he spends at least two pages of his new book complaining about the price of petrol!

The back cover of the book explains a lot about where he’s been and where his future lies so I’ll quote verbatim: “Since being kicked off TV in New Zealand, among many  other things I have written a best seller, been kicked of TV in Australia, filmed a movie in Hollywood about myself, been offered what could have been the best show on TV and turned it down, turned down a political advance that would certainly have seen me enter politics, and spent a small fortune on both boats and cars. Luckily I have never been in such demand, so obviously I hunted down a network that had just gone into receivership and immediately signed on with them.”

The network in receivership of course is TV3 and The Paul Henry Show starts in the New Year screening at 10.30 each week night replacing Nightline. Cameron Slater, in his  incredibly popular Whale Oil blog says: “At last we’ll have a reason to turn the TV back on.”

The book is embellished with drawings by his ageing mother Olive. Olive would know as much about illustrating a book as I would know about Rolls-Royce’s. However Paul reckons that as she ages her masterpieces, far from deteriorating in technique, have taken on a more Dali-esque quality. This is largely due, he says, to her failing eyesight, a crumbling mind, arthritis and a potpourri of medication.

The book is punctuated by Paul with afterthoughts using the same thick-nibbed felt pen Olive used for her artwork. The felt pen is also used for the page numbers which adds to the uniqueness of the publication.

Among other things in Outraged Paul tells us that Seven Sharp was ill-conceived and badly executed, that homosexuals should understand that they are not special just because they are gay, that Maori activists are ungrateful fools sabotaging a nation, that there are too many disability car-parks, that Sky City Convention Centre critics “queer the pitch” by misrepresenting the negatives and overlooking the positives, that we have too many tertiary time-wasters who are racking up bills at our expense and will spend decades trying to avoid repaying, that Muslims show little tolerance for other religions but are playing the long game of breed and infiltrate which will eventually bring success, and admits not all Asians are bad drivers, just most.

Something in it then for everybody to be outraged about, but I predict it will become another Paul Henry best seller bought by his critics as well as his admirers.

It was not that long ago that he was voted by the New Zealand viewing public as this country’s most popular TV personality and his outrageous speech at the award ceremony went viral worldwide on U-tube.
A lot of water has gone under the bridge in that comparatively short time.

He is coming Masterton to promote the book next Wednesday and I will be interviewing him in a local bookshop endeavouring to flesh out the mystique behind the book.

But hang on; there’s no mystique behind the book, it’s just Paul Henry being Paul Henry.

“I’ve never had a humble opinion. If you’ve got an opinion, why be humble about it.”                                                                                                                         -Joan Baez

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The left and right of global warming

Two opposing events clouded the global warming issue last week. The Blue Mountain bushfires certainly caused concern in the Lucky Country. Tony Abbott’s new administration is rich in climate change sceptics, and opponents blamed the fires and Sydney’s soaring temperatures on global warming accusing the Liberal/National coalition of having its head in the sand.

Abbott has already closed the government’s climate change department and the state funded Climate Commission which advised on the effects of climate change and is soon to dump the unpopular carbon tax introduced by the now much-despised Julia Gillard led regime.

Meanwhile NASA last week announced new record growth of sea ice saying that the ice in the Antarctica has extended over an area of 19.47 million square metres at the end of September. This is the highest since measurements began in 1979. This puts paid to those gruesome pictures and claims that the polar regions are melting and rising tides will soon swamp us all.

Lines seem to be drawn between capitalists and socialists as to the verisimilitude of global warming. I guess those tensions will always be with us.

Karl Marx reckoned capitalism would make the rich richer and the poor poorer. If someone was to gain, someone else had to lose in the free market, he surmised. The middle class, he wrote, would become the proletarians and the proletarians would starve. But the industrial revolution gave freedom to innovate, produce and to trade and the proletariat became the middle class and the middle class began to live like the upper class. And the most liberal country - England - led the way. According to trends in mankind, until then it would take 2000 years to double the average income, but in the mid-19th century the British did it in 30 years. When Marx died in 1883 the average Englishman was three time richer than when Marx was born in 1818.

Despite their obvious flaws Marx’s ideas were eventually taken up, but prominent modern socialist Robert Heilbroner in 1989 famously admitted: “Less than 75 years after the contest between capitalism and socialism began, it is over: capitalism has won. The tumultuous changes taking place in the Soviet Union, China and Eastern Europe have given us the clearest possible proof that capitalism organises the material affairs of humankind more satisfactorily than socialism.”

But Heilbroner did not make peace with capitalism. Someone he concluded would have to pay for its success. He decided it would have to be the heavy cost to the environment. After having been opposed to capitalism because it would create waste, inefficiency and poverty, a socialist could now be opposed to capitalism because it was too efficient and created too much wealth, and that it would destroy nature.

Johan Norborg, head of the political ideas at Swedish think tank, Timbro, says this argument is as popular as it is false. First of all the worst environmental problems in the world are not smokestacks. Much worse is that so many people burn wood, coal, crop waste and dung indoors for heating and cooking. Respiratory diseases kill about 1.6 million people every year. Undoubtedly the modern production of energy creates environmental problems, but it doesn’t kill someone every 20 seconds as this killer in the kitchens of the third world does.

And diseases transmitted by water kills about another 5 million people every year. Just the number of people who die from these two environmental problems is 300 times the number of dead in war every year. These diseases also happen to have been eliminated in every industrialised nation on earth.

Norborg goes on to say that people in western societies live longer lives, with better access to goods and technology, and with bigger opportunities than the kings in Marx’s day.

Oh well, said Marx’s evil apprentice Lenin, we might have got that wrong, but the working class in the West could only become richer because they are bribed by the capitalists. Someone else would have to pay for that bribe – poor countries. Lenin meant that imperialism was the next natural step of capitalism, whereby poor countries had to give up their resources to feed the West.

The problem with this argument, continues Norborg, is that all continents became wealthier, albeit at different speeds. The average Western European or American is 19 times richer than in 1820, but a Latin American is 9 times richer, an Asian 6 times richer and an African 3 times richer. So from whom was the wealth stolen?

In this country we worry about most of the goods we buy being sourced from China. It’s true that a New Zealand manufacturing worker might lose his or her job because of this, but there are other mitigating effects. A Chinese worker gets a job of course and his new income means he can spend his money on luxury goods which to him may mean a Fonterra milk product. New Zealand consumers get cheaper prices and when they do they can spend the extra purchasing power on new goods and services and so an unemployed New Zealander can get a job in a newly created sector.

Socialists tend to be atheists; Marx said religion was the opiate of the masses destined to keep downtrodden workers in their place as they waited for their rewards in paradise. Capitalists however probably believe that God has “got the whole world in His hands” and we are all safe and sound.

Is it possible then that global warming is just a new tool that died-in-the-wool-socialists are using in their centuries-old effort to discredit capitalism?

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamouring to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” - H. L. Mencken.

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The local body elections analysed

I first stood for the mayoralty back in 1992. There were three of us vying for the title; Bob Francis and myself and a lady whose name I won’t mention because I have not sought her permission to do so. In the event more than 11,000 votes were cast and in round figures Bob got 6000, I got 4000 and the lady, who was a credible candidate, got 1000.

Twenty-one years later, when the town will have grown, though perhaps not as fast as we might have envisaged, there were just over 8000 votes cast in a similar three-way-contest featuring again two males and a female.

Interest in local body elections seems to have waned in the interim and you have to wonder why.

By all measures Lyn Paterson did well. She risked splitting her votes by standing for both the mayoralty and a seat on the council, but still beat the incumbent Mr Daniell, who has run a pretty steady ship over the last six years. Mr Daniel put all his eggs in one basket, standing for the mayoralty alone and will now have spare time to spend.

Gary Caffell polled well and will wonder if it might have been more prudent for him to have also stood for the mayoralty alone. He got 3600 votes for the urban ward; some of these may well have gone to him in a single mayoralty bid.

Surprisingly Mr Daniell also lost his seat on the Trust Lands Trust after a term spanning more than twenty five years. His claim that he was deprived of the mayoralty by the “women’s vote,” was not well received, but could also apply to his departure from the Lands Trust. His place will now be taken up by newcomer Sandy Ryan.

On the District Health Board two-term incumbent Viv Napier lost her seat meaning the South Wairarapa now has no elected representative on a board that is responsible for the health of the whole Wairarapa. Mrs Napier was an exceptionally effective board member and there were other excellent southern candidates. Among these were Greytown resident Paora Ammunson who was the initial chairman of the Wairarapa Primary Health Organisation and would have represented Maori well on a board that has a strong focus on improving Maori health and also new Martinborough resident Michael Lamont. Lamont is a physiotherapist by profession and is currently the CEO of the Mangere Community Health Trust in Auckland.

This lack of South Wairarapa representation doesn’t bode well for the potential combining of the three district councils. Those communities south of Carterton who already run their affairs extremely efficiently may find their influence on a combined Wairarapa Council easily compromised.

The Licensing Trust gained two members of the fairer sex after the last one, Josephine Maxwell, left the stage in 1989. Lucy Cruickshank and Mena Antonio will no doubt add a fresh perspective to the organisation, but in the process the Trust have lost the experienced and very capable Steve Blakemore. Craig Roberts, who took local body advertising to new heights, missed out after being highly critical of the Trust’s financial reporting.

That just leaves the Greater Wellington Regional Council where first termer Gary McPhee was re-elected. Three years ago McPhee stood on the platform that the Rimutaka summit toilets would be reinstated. They weren’t and after his success this time he is reported as saying that he is keen the see the Wairarapa become a unitary authority resulting in the regional council withdrawing its myriad of essential services to our neck of the woods and in the process causing him to lose his handsome stipend.

I think I’m now starting to get a handle on why so few people vote.

                                                          **********************

I’m also starting to get a handle on why many women are reluctant to report a rape. The affair between the mayor of Auckland and his paramour was certainly not rape, but I’m surprised how the left-leaning press have come down so hard on the mistress in this case; though of course Len Brown is their darling.

Writing in the New Zealand Herald Kerre McIvor, in a rather vicious attack on Ms Chuang, said she was “no doe-eyed virgin and that it would probably be a good idea for her to give up blokes for a while and sit at home reading self-improvement books to increase her chances of finding a real boyfriend.”

Although Ms McIvor conceded Ms Chuang is single and can therefore sleep with whoever she chooses she went on to say that “she will be lucky to find a soft toy willing to share her bed with her in the future, far less a real live man.”

No support from the sisterhood then.

Don’t you just love local body politics?

“He knows nothing and thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.” - George Bernard Shaw.

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In faint praise of the salesperson

After we were married and were creating a stable of young children we were accosted one evening by a door-to-door salesman selling encyclopaedias. The brand was Britannica, but it could just as easily have been Collins. Both products were sold by slick marketers who seldom left a household without extracting a sale. If you think accost is too strong a word to describe someone who is merely plying their trade I checked my trusty Chamber’s dictionary and saw that accost means: To approach and speak threateningly; to solicit as a prostitute. Both, in hindsight, applicable in this case.

The encyclopaedia salesmen always used the guilt factor to endeavour to sign you up to buy. Your offspring, they’d reckon, would be hugely disadvantaged if you didn’t expose them to this fountain of knowledge as a reference library to propel them to the top of their class. A purchase would eventually lead to tertiary education and a life of untold wealth from a professional vocational field of their infinite choices.
In the ultimate case they might even end up as encyclopaedia salesmen.

Door-to-door salesmen weren’t confined to selling encyclopaedias. The Rawleigh’s man sold elixirs for all sorts of ailments and essences for the most discerning of cooks. Vacuum cleaner salesmen called regularly too, and with a few sweeps over what you imagined was a spotless carpet they would produce so much dirt from the bag you were often compelled to buy. The most famous brand – and the most expensive – was the American-made Kirby. I know because we bought one.

Now Sir Bob Jones always espoused the theory that if a product was any good, it didn’t need anyone to sell it. The only merchandise worth buying, he would intone, was the one you sought to buy of your own volition - like going into a shop and purchasing the product off the shelf. If someone had to come to you and talk you into buying the product then the product wasn’t worth procuring. He particularly exampled life insurance. If life insurance was any good, he’d say, then it should be called by its more appropriate name death insurance, and there would be shops selling it across the counter.
To rename life insurance death insurance of course would put paid to the industry. I think it’s almost gone anyway.

And yet sales men and women, slick or otherwise, certainly have their place. It’s even been said they are the most important people in the industrialised society. The factory floor comes to a halt if there are not sales people at the consumer end of the chain pushing the product whether the customer needs it or not.

But todays salespeople tend not to go door-to-door. They’re ensconced in the advertising agencies making ordinary products irresistible. Salesmanship now originates in the factory backrooms where for instance they plot to apply superb paintwork and added features on the new car you don’t really need.

Perhaps the best examples of the hidden hawkers are the artists and technicians who come up with enticing brightly lit graphics on addictive gaming machines.
Incidentally, we didn’t buy the encyclopaedia, even though a redwood bookshelf was being thrown in for nothing and creative methods were offered to pay for it over an extended period. We didn’t intentionally set out to disadvantage our children either; we simply couldn’t afford it at the time, despite all of the above.

And anyway we were still paying off the Kirby.

Today, families only need to invest in a computer and go online. Encyclopaedias and all the knowledge of the world can be found in a word - Google. The Google brand is now so entrenched that the noun has become a verb. Google any subject and the popular search engine will likely as not lead you to another important word in the quest for knowledge - Wikipedia.

Jimmy Wales founded Wikipedia in 2001. This community-edited  nline encyclopaedia boasts more than four million articles in over 125 languages. You can add your own knowledge on any subject to the text, so the information grows.

Wales is reported as saying: “My passion is captured in the vision statement that guides my work. Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet has free access to the sum of all human knowledge,” and he went on to say, “And by free I just don’t mean ‘free’ as in free beer, but also, free as in free speech. People must be empowered to copy, modify and redistribute - commercially or non-commercially - the knowledge that we have to share.”

This is a remarkable statement from the founder of this incredible tool and provided the knowledge sought is not destructive, it must surely have the potential to change the world for good in a relatively short time-scale.

T. H. Huxley disagreed with Alexander Pope’s claim that a little learning is a dangerous thing. He wrote: “The saying that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing is to my mind a very sad adage. If knowledge is real and genuine, I do not believe that it is other than a very valuable possession however infinitesimal its quality may be. Indeed, if a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?”

I think I just heard a knock at the door. It’s probably a guy selling computers.

“A little learning is a dangerous thing; drink deep or taste not the Pierian Spring.” - Alexander Pope.

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The good old days not that good

Those standing for office in the upcoming local body elections, having rushed to media outlets to inform the public of their excellent attributes, will have found that it was not only an expensive exercise, but they will also have been given an infinite variety of choices.

There are at least 5 radio stations and three newspapers that will have plausibly endeavoured to convince the incumbents and aspirants to choose their particular vehicle for their message. As each option tends to have its own defined audience, and as you need to reach a wide cross section of potential voters to promote your cause, they may have felt it necessary to spread themselves across the lot.

It wasn’t always like that. When I first stood for public office we only had one newspaper and one radio station and in those days the news was left entirely to newspapers. Radio stations had no news segments on the hour or half hour. They played music, advertisements and mid-morning and in the evening “serials” which in those pre-television times you found yourself fixated with.

Mums, most of whom were at home in the mornings, would tune into ‘Portia Faces Life’ or ‘Doctor Paul’ and in the evening we kids would listen to ‘Life With Dexter’, ‘Hagen’s Circus’ and as the night wore on cops and robbers shows like ‘Night Beat.’

Night Beat starred an unlikely newspaper crime reporter named Randy Stone. “I cover the night beat for the daily” he would intone in his opening stanza. Near the conclusion of the thirty minute drama, after numerous criminals had either been jailed or shot, he would noisily recall the outcome on an outdated typewriter and then yell out: “Copy Boy!” addressing apparently a young lad who would no doubt hasten the story to a grateful editor.

Radio provided great entertainment, but almost everybody got the daily newspaper. I used to do a paper run in Lansdowne and we only needed to know the names of those households who didn’t subscribe.

It was a very short list.

Today, news has become big business and radio and television stations have encroached on this once sacred preserve of the newspapers. Now each media competes for audiences and the news is packaged and presented with more gore than Randy Stone would have dreamed of.

A study conducted by the New York University made a list of ‘Journalisms greatest hits of the twentieth century.’ You might have expected news stories about new vaccines, fantastic inventions, the rise in living standards or the spread of democracy from ten per cent of the countries to sixty per cent over that 100 year period.

Well you would have been disappointed. The greatest hits were all about war, natural disasters, dangerous chemicals and unsafe cars. 

We don’t really want good news at all.

The problem with an interconnected world is there is always a flood, a war, a plane crash, an earthquake, a serial murder or starvation somewhere and with the proliferation of video cameras, now even an integral part of your mobile phone, there is a constant supply of horrific scenes to fill our TV screens and to be fleshed out later in print in our newspapers.

These disasters were always part of the world order, but by bringing them to us daily, particularly with such clarity as allowed on our modern highly pixelated TV screens, we risk imagining our world is getting worse, when in fact it is vastly improving.

In a town that has barely grown, the rise of news media outlets, despite causing unwanted increases in your advertising budget, should be applauded not bemoaned. We tend to look back wistfully as though there were better times, but life improves daily, even if we are loathe to recognise it.

When 19th century liberal historian and politician Lord Macaulay, wrote his History of England he couldn’t understand why the English always talked about ‘the good old days' and he warned later generations - and that’s you and me – not to romanticise the past.

He wrote: ‘In spite of overwhelming evidence that living standards are improving, many will still image to themselves the England of the Stuarts as a more pleasant country than the England in which we live.

‘It may at first seem strange that society, while constantly moving forward at eager speed, should be constantly looking backward with tender regret. But these two propensities, inconsistent as they may appear, can easily be resolved into the same principle. Both spring from our impatience of the state in which we are.

‘That impatience, while it stimulates us to surpass preceding generations, disposes us to overrate their happiness. It is, in some sense, unreasonable and ungrateful for us to be constantly discontented with a condition which is constantly improving.

‘But in truth there is constant improvement precisely because there is constant discontent. If we were perfectly satisfied with the present, we would cease to contrive, to labour, and to save with a view to the future.’

“Copy boy!”

“The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire” – Voltaire

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Important questions for our age

From time to time I devote the column inches of my article to searching locally, nationally and internationally for the most important questions that currently need to be contemplated.

Here they are:

1. If Oracle’s catamaran was designed and made almost entirely in N.Z., and if their CEO is Sir Russell Coutts, and if Jimmy Spittle owns a multi-million dollar home in Auckland then how come Peter Montgomery didn’t say as he concluded his commentary of the last race “And the America’s Cup is once again New Zealand’s cup?”

2. What will happen to the All Blacks if Larry Ellison sets his sights on the next Rugby World Cup?

3. If next year’s general election is fought on the notion of a David and Goliath battle between Cunliffe and Key won’t Cunliffe have the advantage given his Christian name?

4. Does anybody find it odd that the people who gave us golf and called it a game are the very same people who gave us bagpipes and called it music?

5. And while we’re on that subject, if there were no golf balls, how would we measure hail?

6. Why do vegetarians never care about the insects killed to produce vegetables?

7. Are people more vigorously opposed to fur than leather because it’s easier to harass rich women than motorcycle gangs?

8. If Good King Wenceslas ordered a pizza, would it be deep pan, crisp and even?

9. If you mixed vodka and orange juice with milk of magnesia would you get a Phillips screwdriver?

10. Did the ANZ Corporation purchase the National Bank in Lincoln Road so you could buy a pie when you walked out the front door?

11. Why are “Save the Trees” signs made of wood?

12. When will TV One finally abandon Seven Sharp and give us back a decent current affairs programme?

13. There is a lot of comedy on TV. Does that cause comedy to break out on the streets?

14. Why do we call countries that haven’t yet trashed their environment “undeveloped?”

15. Is Sir Russell Coutts another Lord Haw-Haw?

16. Why do women’s libbers have trouble with chairMAN but not feMALE?

17. How come no one said “it’s only a boat race” when Team New Zealand was winning?

18. Why don’t we refer to the Northern Hemisphere as “up over?”

19. Kim Dot Com says he will sponsor Team New Zealand next time. Will that be before or after he pays for the undersea telecommunications cable he promised us?

20. Why is it our children can’t read a Bible in school, but they can in prison?

21. Have you ever heard any one call February, Feb-roo-air-ee?

22. If Fonterra lost millions of customers worldwide after its “Botulism scare” how come they are forecasting a record pay-out for next season?

23. If you left your windscreen wipers going all the time, could you park illegally without getting a ticket?

24. What’s the difference between a pioneer and an illegal immigrant?

25. If the GH in enough is pronounced like an “F” and the O in women like an “I” and the TI in nation like an “SH” how come fish isn’t spelt GHOTI?

26. Why don’t we ever see the headline: “Psychic wins Lotto?”

27. Would you ever buy anything from Briscoe’s that didn’t have 60 per cent off?

28. If the pen is mightier than the sword and a picture is worth a thousand words how dangerous is an email?

29. If every country in the world is in debt, where did all the money go?

30. And finally, a question with an answer. Ever wondered why gorging on delicious puddings makes your kids hyperactive? Try spelling desserts backwards.

The rest of the answers I will give to you in my column of the 29th of Feb-roo-air-ee next year!

“That man is wisest who, like Socrates, realises that in truth his wisdom is worth nothing.” -Plato

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The Balmoral family are hospitable

I had just drifted off to sleep when the phone rang. It was quite late at night. My caller was the secretary/treasurer of the Amateur Newspaper Columnist’s Guild (ANCG). She told me I had been selected, presumably at random, to represent the guild by accompanying John Key and his family on their historic visit to stay with the Queen at Balmoral Castle. I didn’t have an opportunity to even express surprise. It was either yes or no and if it was yes then I was to go and get packed. I barely had time to kiss my wife farewell.

I could have gone with the press contingent in Key’s plane, but I found out it was a DC1 with a dodgy fuel pump. So I decided to fly with the national carrier of the country that breeds the world’s greatest yachtsmen and booked on Qantas It was a wise move. We had a stop-off at Dubai and I noticed Key’s propeller driven aircraft with Air-force One painted over the old TEAL markings sitting on the steaming tarmac with some confused mechanics working on one of the ancient piston engines. I wanted to thumb my nose at his entourage but they were sweating profusely and I didn’t have the heart to tell them what a difference pressurisation can make.

Getting through customs in Britain is not easy these days. They were furious about the butcher’s knives I had in my overnighter. I had brought these to give away as gifts but they were promptly confiscated. Fortunately I had also packed some genuine Taiwanese plastic tikis which proved to be hugely popular.

One official took a keen interest in the size of my nose and wanted to know if I a Jew or an Arab? I told him Rick was short for Ikey and I was congenially waved on through.

Key’s plane was still circling around Heathrow looking for a gap in the fog so I decided to get up to Balmoral under my own steam. The taxi driver, a Pakistani who spoke better English than I do, asked me about New Zealand. He said he had seen the Hobbit and was surprised how tall I was. He told me he and his family were thinking of emigrating to Godzone, but he’d read where some chap named Shearer wasn’t too keen on letting Asians own a house there. I told him Mr Shearer’s view of the world didn’t count any more and his successor, a man with the unlikely name of Cunliffe, was yet to announce his housing policy so he ought to make the move promptly before the new man lowered the boom.

I also told him about a man named Mallard who owned a house in Lower Hutt who might be keen to sell at a bargain price.

Getting into Balmoral was a breeze. I bumped into Prince Charles talking to a bed of camellias in the garden and in no time we were joined by Prince Phillip. They were both welcoming and Prince Phillip wanted to know how I’d got past the Beefeater at the gate. I told him how we’d had a friendly chat about eating beef as opposed to cutting it up for sale and he let me slip by.

Charles and Philip allowed that they were both looking forward to meeting Stephanie Key as they’d seen the racy photos of her in the Daily Mirror and they thought she’d make a great page three girl.

Philip, who insisted I call him Phil, invited me to come inside and “meet the wife.”

The Queen was most gracious.

I told her how I’d enjoyed her performance with Rowan Atkinson in Johnny English Reborn, but she told me that both her character and the Chinese look-alike were, well, look-alikes. I did my best to hide my disappointment at this shattering disclosure.

I asked did she enjoy being called a great-granny and she told me she was getting used to it. Small talk was not easy, but the two corgis, Holly and Willow, were making nuisances of themselves so I turned the conversation around to dogs. I said we owned a couple of canines and she wanted to know their names. I told her one of them thinks his name is “Down Boy” and I said the other one’s got such a pedigree that if she could talk she wouldn’t speak to either of us.

I was relieved when John and Bronagh turned up with Stephanie and Max and I was able to leave them to make conversation with the old lady.

I spent the next few days playing polo and shooting grouse.

Soon I was winging my way home and I found myself sitting next to a flaming redhead who I’ll swear was Stephanie Key. She had a packet of McDonald's fries nestled on her lap.

It’s experiences like this you normally only dream about.

“Those who dream by day are cognisant of many things which escape those who dream only at night.” - Edgar Allan Poe

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The tortured road to Damascus

During that period around BC and AD there was a young man named Saul, born in the Middle Eastern city of Tarsus whose great intellect was recognised at an early age. His father, a wealthy merchant, saw that his son was well educated, getting the most noted teacher the Jews had ever possessed, Gamaliel, to privately tutor him. Saul became steeped in Judaism, the religion of the Jews. About that time an outspoken thirty-three-year-old had been crucified for daring to proclaim that he was the Messiah and Saul was incensed that despite his death he seemed to be gathering followers at an alarming rate who were joining a faction called “The Way.”

Saul sought high priest judiciary powers to pursue this “blasphemous” sect and often stood by while followers were stoned to death for what he perceived to be misplaced faith.

On the road to Damascus to seek out disciples of The Way who were growing exponentially in that city he was struck down by an intense white light and a voice came from the presence of the light saying “Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” As Saul looked upon the radiant figure he asked, “Who art thou, Lord? And the answer came, “I am Jesus, whom thou persecuteth.” Saul was blinded by the light, but three days later in a house in Damascus he was “illuminated from within” and his sight was restored.

Saul changed his name to the Roman rendering of it, Paul, at about the same time “The Way” became known as “Christianity” and Paul the apostle or Saint Paul became its greatest advocate. He wrote most of the books of the New Testament and his words of wisdom are still heard to this day and are constantly espoused at church services and funerals.

His enchanting treatise on love is regularly read at weddings.

People who have a dramatic conversion to Christianity are often said to have had a “Road to Damascus” experience.

The road to Damascus, once paved with good intentions, would be a somewhat different experience in the 21st century. Journey down that road today and you might find yourself dodging bullets or inhaling deadly sarin gas.

The Middle East is a powder keg and the civil war in Syria is its likely fuse.

Bashar al Assad is a complex character. Even if he did assault his people with chemical weapons, which is possible, but not certain, his troops have still managed to kill 100,000 of them conventionally anyway.

The rebels are malcontents and overwhelmingly Sunni Muslims. The Assad family is of the Alawite persuasion that follows the Shi’ite interpretation of the Muslim faith and are aligned to the Ba’ath party. Syria is 70 per cent Sunni.

This is a sectarian war and has been brewing in Syria for decades.

Tensions started back in 1980 when the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood attempted to kill Bashar’s father Hafez, then the country’s president. Two years later Hafez struck back and the entire Brotherhood leadership was liquidated and so too were their families. It is believed up to 30,000 men, women and children were slaughtered in the rout.

Bashar was just 15 at the time and was never intended that he would lead his people after his father’s death. His older brother Bassel was the chosen one and Bashar, who was recognised as the weakest link in the family and had a chin to emphasise this, went to university in Damascus and was then sent to England by his father to study medicine.

According to those who knew him at university, Assad was a middling student, introverted, stubborn and moody. Ironically, it is said he can’t stand the sight of blood and so instead of studying general medicine he opted to become an ophthalmologist, enrolling at London’s Western Eye Hospital.

Meanwhile Bassel was killed in a high speed car crash while driving to Damascus airport in 1999.

British author Patrick Seale, an old Assad family friend, said after Bassel’s death Hafez attempted to instil in his second son, then only 28, the leadership qualities he felt Syria would need. “Bashar proved largely inept. Hafez was desperate to influence and train Bashar as a leader, but he was never the right type,” says Seale. The young doctor was awkward and lacked the common touch to win the loyalty of the population. “He was and still is a terrible public speaker. He blathers on in an uncontrolled way and loses his audience quickly,” says Seale.

And so this moody, introverted, stubborn, blathering individual potentially holds the fate of the world in his soiled hands.

In Armageddon-like circumstances the two sides are neatly lined up. Iran, Russia and China on one side, with North Korea probably itching to join the fray, and the Western Alliance on the other.

Not unlike the situation that triggered the “war to end all wars” nearly 100 years ago.

What we need is a modern-day Saul of Tarsus.

“War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.” - H. L. Mencken

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Glory Days - before Springsteen

The euphoria in Otago when they lifted the Ranfurly shield from Waikato was short-lived. They say a week is a long time in politics, but it is agonizingly short when you parade your heroes down Dunedin’s main street on Monday only to watch them lose the “Log’o’Wood” the next Sunday. Pity too because the Forsyth Barr Stadium is a great venue to defend the shield in any weather.

Hawkes Bay waited 44 years to have the shield back in their trophy cabinet thanks to their narrow win against Otago, but kept it for just six days when Counties Manakau lifted it in a spirited contest at Napier’s picturesque McLean Park last Saturday. Hawkes Bay Rugby Union’s CEO said the shield had the potential to boost their coffers by more than a million dollars if only they could have retained ownership.

Wairarapa had the shield for twice as long as Otago and Hawkes Bay when they won a famous victory over Canterbury in 1950.

As a ten-year-old rugby-mad kid I can clearly recall the occasion. Wairarapa were more than odds-on favourites to lose the game. I had watched them play at Queen Elizabeth Park a few weeks previous when Poverty Bay beat them convincingly.  Man of the match for me was that day “Tiny” White; the huge lock forward and legendary All Black. Unfortunately he played for Poverty Bay. So too did Brian Fitzpatrick, another All Black and later to father Sean.

The Wairarapa team left that evening for their South Island tour which was to culminate in a challenge for the coveted Ranfurly Shield against mighty Canterbury at Lancaster Park. Their record in their tour lead-up games was not too impressive either. Otago beat them 16 nil. At Invercargill Southland won 17 to 6.  South Canterbury drew with them 3 all.

Despite not being given much chance against Canterbury, the side did have some wonderful players. They were captained by the superb Maori All Black, and member of the legendary Kiwi team Alan “Kiwi” Blake, although he was concussed midway through the game and had to be replaced on the side of the scrum by Noel Desmond. Hooking was another great Maori All Black, Kingi Matthews and propping him were Neville Humphries and Les Sciascia. Hugh Mathieson and Bruce McPhee locked the scrum and Jack Ryan was the other flanker; though we called them “breakaways” back then. Wattie Waaka was at number eight.

Garth Parker was second-five-eighth outside the great Ben Couch at first-five. Couch was an All Black and a Maori All Black. He had a nifty swerve which was to later serve him well in politics. He took over the captaincy when Blake left the field.

Half back was Steve Walsh; Brian Desmond was at centre, with Bernie Patrick and John Geary on the wings. On the bench were Alan “Blue” Corlett, Keith Parker, - brother of Garth - Horrie Thompson, Martin Garrity, Bobbie Lister and Ivan Dale.

Second-five-eighth for Canterbury was Jules Houghton, later to settle here as the much respected manager of Wright Stephenson’s Stock and Station Agency.

Undoubtedly star of the day though was Wairarapa fullback Alf Mahupuka, whose dropped goal, urged on by Ben Couch when passing seemed the sensible option, slotted through the goalpost’s from halfway, just before half-time.

The second half was a torrid affair with Wairarapa desperately hanging on to their slender lead with a sterling performance from the forwards. I had my ear glued to the crackly radio at home and I vividly recall my hero for the day, my cousin John Geary, who had been a record breaking sprinter at Wairarapa College, chasing and catching Canterbury front rower Alan Couling just inches short of the try line in the last minutes of the game. This was Canterbury’s final opportunity to save the day and the underdogs came out the winners by three points to nil.

The Christchurch Press said the Wairarapa forwards won the game and “especially outstanding were J. Ryan, L. Sciascia and K. Matthew’s who frequently broke though the Canterbury forwards, hunting relentlessly with ball at toe.” The Press voted Couch, Walsh and Geary as the stand-out backs.

The citizens of Wairarapa were over the moon with the win. So too were the team They poured themselves on to the Lyttleton ferry that night and set sail for Wellington and then home to glory and a civic welcome at the Masterton Post Office.  I and hundreds of others waited for some time for our first glimpse of the shield.  The team knew how to party. Legend has it that on the bus trip home from the ferry terminal they got the publican of the Central Hotel in Petone, Ian Harvey, out of bed at about 8 o’clock on Sunday morning, demanding that he “shout.”

Harvey, an ex All-Black who had played for Wairarapa was, I gather, more than happy to oblige.

The victors arrived quite late for the reception because they were stopped by coteries of delighted supporters all the way up the valley. Fair enough; a great many of the players were from the highly rated Carterton and Greytown sides. The rugby team that finally held up the shield for the expectant Post Office crowd didn’t look as though they could win a good feed, but we understood their celebrations and excused their resultant demeanor.

Norm Faulkner, who with his brother Bob owned a sports shop directly opposite the Post Office was the team manager and the shield was proudly displayed in their window for the delighted populous to view. I’m sure the whole Wairarapa took the opportunity to glimpse the trophy. I recall going and staring at it most days.

But the display was short-lived.

Although the Wairarapa season was officially over, through some legal loophole and sleight of hand, still unexplained to the rank and file to this day, they were obliged to face a challenge from South Canterbury which they had to accept. The game was scheduled just two weeks after the shield had been won.

The South Canterbury challenge was held at the Solway Showground’s. I’ll never forget the trauma we all felt when we lost the contest in the dying minutes, 17 - 14. Man of the match on that day was the visitor’s captain and 1949 All Black, L. A. Grant. He kicked a penalty goal from halfway and scored two tries, one right on full time to give his side the victory. I despised him with all the hate a ten-year-old could muster.

Small rugby provinces have few chances to bask in glory and we were shortchanged on this occasion, but it was a fabulous fortnight. It is not generally remembered, but Canterbury also only had the shield for a two week stint, having won it off Otago on August the 16th 1950 and then lost it to Wairarapa on the 2nd of September.

Crikey, it’s just occurred to me, if Gary Caffell wins the mayoralty perhaps I can replace him as a 
sportswriter!

“Nobody ever beats Wales at rugby; they just score more points” - Graham Mourie

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