Wednesday 28 January 2015

Those magnificent men...and women

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Masterton’s meritorious Wings over Wairarapa air show, staged at Hood aerodrome bi-annually since 1999, was once again a triumph for its organisers. The huge crowd who attended over three days witnessed non-stop and at times heart-stopping entertainment.

Unlike the unfortunate washout four years ago, the weather was clement and the event went without a hitch.

Planes on show and in the air included a line-up of World War I aircraft manufactured at workshops in both Masterton and Wellington by The Vintage Aviator Limited who accurately restore or faithfully recreate aircraft from the 1914 - 1918 period for museums and collectors worldwide.

A dog-fight staged by these masterpieces looked frighteningly authentic.

World War II aircraft included the Russian Yaks, two Spitfires, a Grumman Avenger, a Kitty Hawk, a Corsair, a Mustang and Harvard’s who thrilled the crowd, but were inevitably upstaged by the cacophonic jets represented by the Vampire, the Venom the Strikemaster and the Albatross.

The Air Force chipped with the giant Hercules and the two seater Texan Trainers and the distinctive sound of the “Huey”, one of the RNZAFs soon-to-be-retired Iroquois helicopters, reminded you, somewhat eerily, of films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and The Deer Hunter.

Up in the commentary box Trevor Graham, who apparently flew in from the UK to describe the event, said his favourite aeroplane at the show was the Avro Anson. A chance meeting with the owner and his wife, Bill and Robyn Reid from Nelson, resulted in an offer to my grandson and me to have a look at the interior or this lovingly restored World War II British bomber. The restoration was painstakingly authentic, but the surprise was how cramped it was inside. The gunner is squeezed into a glass dome placed precariously on the top of the fuselage and his ability to swing his cannons right around the plane would no doubt mean he would need to regularly be reminded not to shoot off the tail section.


But it was more than just an air show. The huge expanse of lawn between the South Road main entrance and the airfield itself hosted a variety of food and wine cafes and an assortment of entertainment options that somewhat mirrored an A and P show. Offerings included bungee jumping, a bouncy castle, a mammoth air slide, ride-on electric cars, a “Bumpit” ball game, a V8 simulator, clowns and face painters and you could view daring stunts by the kiwi motorcycle team.

It was interesting to observe that many of the attendees were enjoying this fairground-style facility while jets were roaring overhead drowning out any possibility of polite conversation.

It was almost surreal.

There was also a marquee as big as a circus tent which housed the Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems - known as drones to the uninitiated. Inside a variety of RPAS manufacturers and users displayed their wares and offered their services, all assuring those interested that drones herald exciting advancements in a number of fields. Already being used extensively in aerial photography, in the agricultural world it is thought they could muster sheep and spray crops. I read recently where Amazon.com reckons they are about to use them to deliver parcels to your door. I just hope they get their co-ordinates right.

Sheep dogs and couriers then have a doubtful future.

Volunteers from service clubs attend to the gatekeeping and car parking at the air show and in the mercilessly hot sun this is not an easy task. Better than the 2011 event however which was cancelled due to rain bucketing down and ticket money having to be refunded.

The financial outcome of this unavoidable disaster nearly put paid to the event which up until then had been successfully run by the Sport and Vintage Aviation Society. Recognising that the iconic air show was economically important for the Wairarapa a new organisation was formed called The Wings over Wairarapa Community Trust chaired by Bob Francis. SVAS chairman Tom Williams is still the air show director, but both Tom and Bob will be at pains to tell you that all credit to the smooth running of this massive undertaking goes to event co-ordinator Jenny Gasson.

I noticed too that at least one of the jets was piloted by a member of the fairer sex and as one of the last surviving male chauvinists I find it hard to admit that women could actually run the world.

Fundamental Islamists deny their womenfolk education and in relatively modern Saudi Arabia women are not even permitted to drive cars.

Imagine the brain power going to waste that could potentially make this a more habitable planet.

Crikey, did I just write that?

My daughter will think I’ve completely lost it.

“Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels.” - Fay Whittlesey

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Wednesday 21 January 2015

Is big oil clouding our future?

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Conspiracy theorists will tell you that it’s big oil, not governments, that rule the world. The dubious claims go something like this: Imperialists in the USA and the UK sell weapons to regimes like Panama, Iraq Yugoslavia/Kosovo, Afghan/Pakistan/Taliban/Mujahidin and Saudi Arabia. They then demonise the region which they sold the armaments to and declare war on the recipients. Examples given are the Panama invasion, The Gulf war, UN Kosovo war, Afghanistan war, Iraq war etc. etc. After the war they station military bases to control the energy resources in the surrounding countries. Current US foreign policy is governed by the doctrine of “full spectrum dominance” they say and the US must control military, economic and political developments everywhere.

I’m not sure how this theory holds up now that America is producing enough of its own crude oil to make it almost self-sufficient and the price per barrel has dropped so dramatically that there may not be much enthusiasm for further oil exploration.

But the power of the oil companies was clearly demonstrated when in 1996 General Motors produced an electric car called the EV1. It was an experimental vehicle which was leased out to selected Californians to gauge their reaction. The consumer feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The punters loved it.

But suddenly, without warning, GM recalled all the cars took them out to the Arizona desert and crushed them.

The story is told in an amazing docudrama called “Who killed the electric car?”

Sadly the electric car threatened the status quo and there is no doubt big oil and their associates were instrumental in ensuring its extinction, even to the extent of bullying the Californian legislators to withdraw their 1990 law titled the Zero Emissions Mandate that required 10% of all new cars sold in the state to be emission free by the year 2003. This was the most radical smog-fighting initiative since the catalytic converter and GM was hoping to get a jump on its competitors with their electric concept car.

The sporty-looking EV1 was a revolutionary vehicle requiring no petrol, no oil changes, no mufflers, and rare brake maintenance. A typical garage visit for the EV1 consisted of replacing the windscreen washer fluid and tyre rotation. The lessees pleaded with General Motors to let them buy the cars, protesting outside the GM offices in their hundreds, but to no avail.


EV1 charging stations still dot the Californian landscape like tombstones, collecting dust and spider webs.

The Global Financial Crisis put electric cars back on the drawing boards and today the new models are looking even better than the EV1. Ever-decreasing petrol prices however may slow down their potential popularity and although I’m not a conspiracy theorist I’m wondering if this is not an oil industry ploy to once more destroy their widespread introduction.

I thought about all of this recently when my trusty old combustion-engined rotary mower gave up the ghost.

Looking at the huge range of mowers available in variety of stores in our town I settled on a moderately-priced electric model. Electric as in powered by a rechargeable battery. I subsequently have some understanding as to why the Californians were so reluctant to give up their electric cars.

I now actually enjoy mowing the lawns.

The new mower is light to push, stops and starts at will, but best of all I’m not ingesting deadly carbon-monoxide fumes as I follow it around the lawn. We own the bare section next door which I also mow and the mower appears to be able to handle both properties on one battery charge. I really have to scratch my head and wonder why anyone would want to own a conventional motor mower.

I’m beginning to suspect that the combustion engine has been kept alive and well by the dominant and dominating oil companies. There can be no other reason.

It’s heartening to know that electric cars are now readily available, although unlike my trusty new battery mower, expensive to buy.

New Zealand needs to change its fleet. We currently import three billion litres of oil for our cars every year. This costs us around $4 billion. We spend more on fuel for our cars than we do on energy for our homes. Petrol is priced at around $1.60 per litre, but charging an electric vehicles’ battery costs the equivalent of 26 cents a litre.

The biggest argument against electric cars, apart from the fact that they will lead to the demise of petrol stations and mechanical workshops, is the mileage they’ll achieve on one charge. But New Zealanders have a low average commute, with drivers in urban centres only clocking up about 22 kilometres a day. The Nissan Leaf will do 166 kilometres in one hit.

However until there are more charging stations dotted around the country you may need to own a second conventionally-powered car to go away on holiday.

My next worry of course is that the manufacturers of my new mower will turn up one day, demand its return and take it up to the desert road and crush it.

I just hope it’s fully charged so I can run them over.

“The use of solar energy has never been opened up because the oil industry does not own the sun.” – Ralph Nader

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Wednesday 14 January 2015

The fear factor for politicians

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When I was about 13 years of age I was a choirboy - cassock, surplice, boy soprano et al. It was quite a commitment. Choir practice was on Tuesday and Thursday evenings; attendance at church was at 10 am on Sunday for Holy Communion and then again at 7 pm for Evensong. The venue was the St Matthews Anglican church in Masterton’s aptly named Church Street and the pews were pretty much fully occupied for both services.

I’m not sure what brought on this burst of piety which only lasted a year or two and probably ended when my voice broke and hormonal temptations in keeping with that experience made other options more appealing. Whatever, I have never regretted the episode as it seemed to herald the possibility of an extraordinary life. Tabloid newspaper headlines of the day would regularly scream: “One time choirboy now feared gangland boss,” or: “United Kingdom’s biggest brothel proprietor an ex-choirboy,” or even: “Wealthy playboy started out life as godly choirboy,” though it’s possible I dreamed up that last one.


Moving on; in his beautifully crafted autobiography, My Life, David Lange reckoned the Methodist church was the Labour party at prayer and in Britain it is claimed that the Church of England is the Tory party at worship. I’m not convinced that these categorisations were ever really applicable, though while I was hitting the high notes at St Matthews the Methodists were congregating literally just down the road and certainly one of their clergy, the Reverend Russell Marshall, became a minister of the crown in Lange’s fourth Labour government.

A totally unsurprising aspect of New Zealand’s recent general election was that religion seemed not to be a feature of the major parties ideological utterances, campaign leaflets or television advertisements.

This is undoubtedly an outcome of an oft-quoted but slightly skewed slogan that religion and politics don’t mix. Colin Craig’s Conservatives were about as close as we got to having a Christian-based party to opt for and although Craig himself reckoned he was not a regular church-goer, his local representative, Brent Reid, was more than happy to proclaim his Christian credentials.

But like it or not, politics and religion are inextricably linked.

Religion is taken seriously and practised regularly by more than a quarter of all New Zealanders and attracts more players than rugby, yet our mainstream politicians seem to believe that its dictums ought not be seen nor heard in the halls or on the hoardings.

The religious traditions that affect and mould our lives were conspicuous by their absence in the speeches and debates that our political masters and aspirants espoused, presumably at the behest of their campaign strategists.

And yet there are whole rafts of moral issues that are of direct concern for people of a religious persuasion. Among these are taxation laws, holiday trading hours, subsidies for schools, care for the elderly and the woefully underfunded district health boards.

There was a time of course when the church and government were virtually interchangeable. The first schools and hospitals were church initiatives as was social security. The great universities - Cambridge, Oxford, Princeton, Yale and Harvard were established by the church and history shows that nations rose and fell according to their belief in the Bible.

Politicians who are agnostics and atheists could scarcely argue that Christianity is the essential foundation of Western civilisation. Most Western art, much Western literature and a good chunk of Western philosophy becomes fairly incomprehensible without at least some acquaintance with the old and new testaments.

However, perhaps as a direct result of their Christian-inspired good natures, New Zealander’s have also been pretty receptive to other religious influences. Mosques now dot our landscape and the diversity that they bring is largely welcomed. Even the Maori renaissance, with its gods and taniwhas, totally contradicting the good news the early missionaries implanted, is given more than a modicum of tolerance.

Unfortunately when the cardinal links between our religious tradition and political progress that are pivotal to this country’s understanding of itself are ignored, the human story that fused them together remains untold and leaves the field wide open for extremists to set the agenda. The end result is the worst kind of tyranny, directed by opportunistic charismatic leaders who claim with frightening audacity that God speaks to them exclusively.

The inevitable outcome is that the positive part of what faith has to offer a community and a country is totally misunderstood and to some extent ridiculed.

Canny politicians, sensing the confusion, sidestep the issues altogether and the vacuum remains.

From my limited observations it would seem that church congregations today are predominantly female. As in so many institutions the male members of the species seem to have abdicated their role to seek other more pleasurable pursuits.

Perhaps their voices broke.

“When a man talks loudly against religion, - always suspect that it is not his reason, but his passions which have got the better of his creed.” - Laurence Sterne

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