Wednesday 30 July 2014

Confessions of a scaredy-cat

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They say flying is the way to travel and although I’ve flown from time to time I’ve never been convinced that it is. The incongruity of being hurtled through the air at unimaginable speeds in a flimsy aluminium tube and being totally reliant on engines made in the Rolls-Royce factory by unionised British workers potentially on a Monday causes me a good deal of anxiety.

And I’ve had my share of anxious moments in the air.

The first was when I was about seventeen years old flying from Christchurch to Palmerston North one afternoon in a DC3. We were about ten minutes out from Christchurch when smoke started to ooze out from under the door in the wall that separates the cockpit from the passengers. A white-sleeved arm shot out around the door and the hand attached endeavoured to grab the fire extinguisher that should have been on the wall. It wasn’t; the bracket designed to hold the extinguisher was there, but not the extinguisher. The whole body belonging to the arm and the hand that I assume was the co-pilot then emerged and went running down to the back of the aircraft and found an extinguisher still in its bracket and ran back to the pilot’s enclosure, closing the door behind him.

The plane then banked steeply and headed back to Harewood, losing altitude very quickly. We appeared to be fence-hopping and the passenger sitting in the window seat next to me decided we were going to land in a paddock. I casually told the person sitting in the aisle across from me: “We’re going to land in a paddock.” This unsubstantiated piece of information spread around the cabin like wildfire and although there was no panic as such, I’ll swear I could hear silent prayers being offered up.

In fact we landed back at the airport, albeit at the far end of the runway and were met by two fire engines with their sirens screaming at full amplification. I have often wondered since why they needed to use their sirens; they were hardly going to encounter any traffic on the grass verge alongside the runway.

There was no stairway wheeled in to disembark us and so we jumped on to the tarmac and had to trudge a fair distance back to the terminal. It was only then that we were told we were never in danger; it was just that the radio set had caught fire. I noticed however that the toilets were getting well-used.

I had another frightening experience in a 737, this time flying from Christchurch to Wellington with the gallant pilot attempting to land in a howling southerly. After two aborted attempts we were taken back to Christchurch, put up for the night and then flown to Wellington the next morning when the weather was more clement.

An NAC pilot told my father back in the 1960s when the airline shifted its operations from Paraparaumu to Rongotai that the new Wellington airport was an accident waiting to happen. “Cross winds from the hilly terrain were deadly,” he said. Whenever I’ve needed to fly to Auckland since then I have opted to go via Palmerton North, despite the fact that there has never been an accident at Wellington, but a Dash 8 crashed while coming in to land in Palmerston North, killing a flight attendant and three passengers in 1995.

I had another anxious time in a Dash 8 flying into New Plymouth one winters night in heavy rain with an electrical storm lighting up the sky all around us. The pilot told us he was circling the airport hoping to find a break in the clouds. As my white-knuckled hands gripped the arm-rests it occurred to me if there was no break we may have to stay up there all night. Fortunately he found one.

Without doubt my worse ordeal was flying out from Belem, an equatorial city on the mouth of the Amazon in Brazil. A few days earlier I had been given a couple of sightseeing flights over the rain forest in a six-seater Cessna and had experienced electrical storms that made the New Plymouth incident seem tame by comparison.

I was flying back to New Zealand on my own via Miami. We were in an A300 Airbus owned by Varig Airlines and about an hour out our pilot told us in a voice that reeked of nervousness that there was a problem with one of the engines and that he was heading out to sea to dump the fuel then landing back at Belem. This information was relayed by a man sitting next to me from Mozambique who could speak passable English as well as Portuguese. The only word I had picked up from the pilots pronouncement was “problemo” which was chilling enough.

We were put up for the night in a grotty Belem Motel and then taken back to the terminal next morning and told that the engine had been repaired while we slept and they were ready to fly us to Florida. Some of the passengers were reluctant to board as they had been on the plane where the flight had originated in Rio de Janeiro and reckoned it wasn’t performing properly on that leg. They didn’t believe it could be fixed in a few hours and tried unsuccessfully to get Varig to get us another aeroplane. We were given no choice; the next flight to Miami was a week away so we either took the potentially faulty plane or waited another week. Most of us went on the offered aircraft which got us to our destination without further incident.

We all clapped enthusiastically when the plane landed.


I’m full of admiration for those local investors who are endeavouring to put in place another aluminium tube to fly us to Auckland. However if I need to get to the city of sails I’ll probably take the car. I accept this decision makes no sense if I have safety in mind. In every bend on the road I risk encountering a drunk driver, a tourist, someone talking on a cellphone, a drug addict, a person texting, a speed-freak, someone devoid of sleep or a boy racer.



Flawed thinking I know, but despite potential fatal injuries, at least I’ll be on terra firma.

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

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Wednesday 23 July 2014

A tale of doctors and dustmen

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When I was about 10 years old Hugh Berney took my appendix out. A couple of years later he removed my tonsils and adenoids. Hugh Berney was our family doctor; only we didn’t call him “Hugh.” In deference to his standing in society we invariably referred to him as “Doctor” Berney. These were those halcyon days when doctors were treated with respect and to some degree, awe. After all if they were going to squirt chloroform in your face then cut you open you had to believe in them unconditionally.

Your status in life was quite justifiably based on your exam-tested intellect and although we have become more egalitarian over time, the same still holds today. Top of the class folk went on to be doctors, those who struggled with the formal education became butchers or dustmen.

It was the natural order of the world.

Come to think of it, why did we call the rubbish collectors dustmen? Though some dust will have accumulated in the garbage it hardly constituted their main cargo. At the time I was having my appendix out the community didn’t create nearly as much waste as we do today. Butchers supplied their meat in greaseproof paper, drink bottles were sold back for a penny each, then washed and reused and you took your old newspapers to the fish and chip shops or the greengrocers to use as wrapping material. The plastic’s industry was in its infancy; its forerunner, bakelite, was used sparingly, mainly on car dashboards.

The town had just two dustmen back then who stuck at their job for decades. The borough council had one rubbish truck - Jimmy Kane drove it and Ted Te Huki rode on the back and manually emptied the rubbish tins - and they were made of tin - which everyone had just one of. They managed to clean up the town working just a few hours each morning.

Now back to my body parts. Once these appendages were removed my sister unkindly teased me, saying that now I wasn’t “all there.” In those days this meant you were mentally impaired. Mentally impaired people were sent to Porirua which back then was just a village, with a few houses and a mental hospital. Subsequent revelations about these asylums imply that they were as nightmarish as we imagined.

Meanwhile many scientists now question Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection because of the quite remarkable amounts of information they are finding scattered along the DNA superhighway. And yet my sixty-odd years of relative normality without the appendix, tonsils and adenoids may prove that although I wasn’t “all there” these were unnecessary appendages that never got discarded in the evolutionary process. Perhaps we weren’t created after all.

There’s even a distinct possibility that I might be the missing link.

I don’t know what Hugh Berney did with my abandoned tonsils, adenoids and appendix; I suspect Jimmy Kane and Ted Te Huki took them to the dump which later had an upmarket name-change to “landfill.” When you think about it, it sounds much better to “dump” an appendix than drop it off at a landfill.

Some cultures are a bit precious about surgically removed body parts and I recall a furore some years ago when relatives discovered that their deceased loved ones may have had their hearts and other preserved remains stored in a research facility at an Auckland hospital. They wanted the removed organs returned so they could to be placed in the casket allowing the deceased to go on to the afterlife relatively intact.

Our religious heritage has surely taught us that the body is an earthly vessel discarded at death and our souls go on in their original form to a higher place where doctors and dustmen are treated as equals.

If this wasn’t so, consider the amputees, patients with hip replacements or those who have had cancerous colons, prostates, breasts or other diseased organs surgically removed. Are their bodies any less sacred because, in my sister’s parlance, they are not all there?

I think not.

You can’t have it both ways. Either an entire body is not a prerequisite for a fulfilling after-life or else we must abandon life-saving surgery to ensure purity at death.

At least this would put an end to those hospital waiting lists.

Dr Berney told my parents that he got to my appendix just before it burst and caused potentially fatal peritonitis. It is possible I suppose that within this organ lies a chemical that when released allows the brain to show compassion and understanding for other people’s strange behaviour. Without it I may have become heartless. It’s the best excuse I can come up with for being unable to find even a modicum of sympathy for the Internet-Mana party given Laila Harre’s blatant hypocrisy and fraudster Kim Dotcom’s overt desire to bring down the present government.


And yet I had a lot of sympathy for those dustmen. They weren’t highly paid and they weren’t highly regarded, but in those simpler days they were an integral part of the body of the town.

“That all men are equal is a proposition to which, at ordinary times, no sane human being has ever given his assent.” - Aldous Huxley 

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Wednesday 16 July 2014

Solutions to a grave situation

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The two codes representing the round ball and the oval ball should be applauded for the common sense decision to settle on one major ground to showcase their contests. Exactly the opposite is happening in Wellington where the Phoenix Association Footballers want the Lower Hutt ratepayers to install a new more compact venue for them away from the Hurricane headquarters.

Westpac stadium is apparently too large and too flash for the failing football club.

Masterton’s Dixon Street complex is becoming something of a sporting enclave with the adjacent tennis and bowling clubs and a squash club just around the corner.

This is not a first for local rugby. The well-entrenched Red Star and Masterton rugby football club’s amalgamated some years ago with little outward discomfort.

Years before that the racing fraternity saw the impracticality of having three race tracks in the region and hedged their bets on Tauherenikau.

It occurred to me that other organisations might like to take note. Already the three Wairarapa district councils have shown their willingness to join forces and there are lots of others who ought to follow these leads.

First and foremost it’s got to be the golf clubs. I understand there is already dialogue taking place between representatives of the Mahunga and Masterton clubs to consider a merger.

Mind you there has been talk of this for years with neither club being willing to bite the bullet and make a move. It’s likely both clubs will be struggling financially. The park-like grounds are costly to maintain and there will be diminishing memberships due to society being in a hurry and golf being time consuming and expensive.


They should settle on the Lansdowne course. No doubt those crunching the numbers will consider that the Manuka Street site to be very saleable piece of real estate, but it is one of the towns most admired landscapes and it would be a shame to dismantle it. Mahunga is a great course, but has a less attractive lead-in and is skirted by the Waipoua River which is prone to flooding. If Mahunga is indeed a freehold property it could revert back to pasture and be farmed to the economic advantage of a newly combined club.

We then need to move on to the chartered clubs. Three for a town this size is overkill and I suspect they will not have strong balance sheets. Despite living in an egalitarian society the distinctive clientele for these clubs may find barriers to integration. With exceptions there are working men at the Cosmopolitan Club, old soldiers and their descendants at the Services and Citizens Club and business and professional men at the Masterton Club. For the latter, throw in the odd farmer.

I should also add “and women” to all those caucuses; the fairer sex invaded these once exclusive male bastions some years ago.

Well, for the sake of sound economics, the twain are just going to have to meet.

All of these clubs - golf and chartered - have been hit hard by the blitz on drink-driving. Justifiable perhaps, but if we’re not careful we’ll end up with a society that never gets the chance to meet and mingle. The world’s great problems are often solved around convivial tables over a few modest ales and this type of activity will be therapeutic. The risk for future generations is that whole communities will become insular and miss out on the sanity that accompanies companionship.

Now let’s move on. What about those two Showgrounds? Just two annual shows and hectares of land under-utilised for the rest of the year.

Perhaps that’s unfair. Both seem to attract horses and their riders on a fairly regular basis and Claireville has the well-supported hockey complex. Nonetheless there is waste and unnecessary cost and again someone should say: “Let’s settle on one and make it into a ground of national significance.”

I wouldn’t dare nominate which one. Both have been well-maintained and are a credit to their caretakers and management.

Perhaps it’s down to the toss of a coin.

There are all sorts of other options with these mergers. The Masterton Bridge Club for instance might consider selling it premises on the corner of Villa and Pownall Streets and relocate upstairs at the Masterton Golf Club. Sun would stream in all day, the views would be idyllic and their timetable is unlikely to interfere with golfing programmes. They could pay a modest rent that could assist the newly merged Mahunga/Masterton Golf Club to keep subscriptions down.

A static and aging population needs to take stock of its assets and ensure the best ones are maintained for future generations.

Ironically all we’ve done so far is reopen the cemetery gates.

“Oh, East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” - Rudyard Kipling



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Wednesday 9 July 2014

Dreaming of an unlikely future

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Legend has it that a group of world’s most prominent jurists once gathered together - I think in London - to study the Ten Commandments. They came to the conclusion that these were the most perfect set of laws ever devised.

Well given the claimed authorship, they would be wouldn’t they?

The eminent advocates went on to proclaim that if only everyone were inclined to keep these laws, we could create paradise on earth.

No more stealing, no killing, no bearing false witness, no adultery heaven forbid, and of course the tenth commandment, thalt shalt not covet thy neighbour’s goods - believed to be the one most broken - the sin of envy.

Envy is said to be what drives the free enterprise society. Coveting thy neighbour’s goods impels us all to strive for more and more and keeps the commercial sector humming.

I think about all this as I watch TV One’s line-up of prime-time reality shows that deal with a variety of crimes in our communities.

On Border Security both here and across the Tasman we are entertained as travellers devise all kinds of cunning plans to bring illegal drugs, food or other contraband into Australasia through airports awash with customs officers. The film crew then visit postal centres where sniffer dogs find illegal substances in the most unlikely places.

The Force, Women in Blue, Police Ten 7, and Highway Cops all feature an army of police men and women who have to face frightening crime scenes plus a myriad of disturbing practices, much of these fuelled by alcohol.

In Coastwatch we see our coastline plundered, mostly by indigenees or Asians, who seem to think that the common-sense laws put in place so the endangered food source can be maintained for all does not apply to them.

Water Patrol police find the same attitude by many of those boaties they pursue who feel it is their right and privilege to take the harvest from the sea in larger quantities than is allowable or in sizes smaller than the law prescribes, often endangering themselves and their passengers with too few lifejackets.

What really gets me is the cost to society as a result of these illegal practices and just how our country, or any country for that matter, can afford to pay their law enforcement people from a diminishing pool of taxpayers.

The jurists made the point that if everyone obeyed the commandments the savings to society would be astronomical.

We wouldn’t need politicians; there would be no laws to pass. Without laws we wouldn’t need a police force and we’d have no need for lawyers, nor the judiciary. No courthouses, no police stations and no house of representatives.

You’re warming to this aren’t you?

No need to lock your doors; you could leave the keys in your car, walk the streets with impunity all hours of the day and night and the Rolf Harris’s of this world would be non-existent. More families would pray together and stay together.

Presumably world peace would break out leaving beauty pageant contestants speechless and the armaments industry would die a natural death.

And yet there are downsides. Reality TV would be a thing of the past and there be no more dramas; just comedies. Newspapers would be bereft of headlines and the written word would be dull and boring.

No gossip, so conversation would be bland.

Without envy a certain amount of sloppiness may creep into our lives. If we’re not keeping up with anybody we might just let standards slide.

Politicians, policemen, judges, soldiers, sailors and airmen, although paid out of the public purse, pay taxes, and money is made round to go round.

Lawyers may not be missed, but we are constantly entertained by public figures. Hone Harawira’s iniquity and Kim Dotcom’s excessiveness are just two examples.

At our peril we forgot that they were commandments, not suggestions.

Looking back the column does read like a sermon. I must check and see if there are any vacancies at Westminster Abbey.

“If a man once indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing, and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination.” – Thomas DeQuincey

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Wednesday 2 July 2014

Pot is harmless? You must be high

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A few months ago “legal highs” were the talking point as distraught parents pleaded with the government to ban the sales. Shops selling the seductive sachets were picketed and a number of the young victims were paraded before us on our TV screens. We saw first-hand the devastating results these mind-altering substances had on those who foolishly chose to partake.

We were told that the most common effects included violent seizures, vomiting for hours, unconsciousness and stomach pains. The National Poisons Centre revealed that users described black vomit, suicidal thoughts and blacking out repeatedly after smoking the substances.

The herbal base for the synthetic cannabis is apparently made from the damiana plant.

We were shown queues of people outside the discredited stores who looked as though they could scarcely afford the graphically packaged products with names like Kronic and Voodoo.

Eventually Minister of Internal Affairs and Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne, who had initially claimed he couldn’t stop the trafficking, managed to introduce legislation that did just that.

Subsequently the discussion around synthetic cannabinoids evolved into the public sphere and it was not entirely unexpected that the talk would soon turn to the issue of allowing the legal sale of natural cannabis.

Proposers apparently think that the marijuana plant is more sacred than the damiana leaf.

Last week a Herald/Digipoll on the subject came up with some disquieting results. Just under a third of those surveyed thought smoking cannabis should attract a fine, but not a criminal conviction, while a fifth went even further and said it should be decriminalised.

Decriminalisation means of course that you’ll be able to smoke it, but the gangs will no doubt still control its manufacture and distribution.

The majority of National supporters favoured the status quo, but Labour’s drug and alcohol spokesman Ian Lees-Galloway said there was a growing mood for reform and the Green Party believe cannabis should be decriminalised for people aged 18 years and over.

I’ve never understood the lefts attitude on this issue. Surely it is arguably their constituents who suffer the most from these incredibly harmful substances.

Marijuana has been legalised for those over the age of 21 in Colorado. This is the first American state to do so and the rest of the US is watching with much interest. Colorado has a population that is not too dissimilar to ours and reports show that their new retail pot-shops are raking in more than a million dollars a day.

It’s not just cannabis itself that is for sale, but pot-infused chocolates, biscuits, creams, lozenges and tinctures. I suspect we are being softened-up for a law change with regular reports of the magical medicinal properties of cannabis.

So smoking the real thing is harmless?

Not so says the CEO of the Waitemata District Health Board Dr. Dale Bramley. He says his DHB is responsible for running drug and alcohol addiction therapy services for the Auckland region and his staff see the clinical and social impacts of cannabis use on a daily basis.


He said the link between chronic cannabis use and mental health issues is well-proven. “A substantial number of individuals presenting to our mental health services have their presenting problem complicated or worsened because of the use of cannabis. Smokers of cannabis are about 2.6 times more likely to have a psychotic episode than non-smokers. High doses of marijuana can produce a temporary psychotic reaction and in some users can worsen the course of illness in patients with schizophrenia. Numerous studies following users over time and through the experience of our DHB’s own drug and alcohol services show a link between marijuana use and later development of psychosis – those who start young and smoke heavily are at an increased risk for later problems,” he wrote in the New Zealand Herald.

Marijuana use has also been linked to other mental health problems among the young, such as depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts and personality disturbances, including lack of motivation to engage in activities they would usually find rewarding.

We should not be conveying to our impressionable teenagers that cannabis use is harmless. It’s not and it never has been. Any initiative that potentially makes cannabis more freely available will only further increase the burden of medical, psychological and social problems that cannabis use already has on our financially struggling health boards and our communities.

If the electorate does sensibly decide that marijuana shouldn’t be decriminalised it is entirely possible Russell Norman will throw his toys out of the cot and consider going back to Australia.

If so I’d happily pay his air fare. One way of course.

“Kids are no sooner off the pot than they are back on again.” - Stuart Francis

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