Not ultra, nor all that fast

Ultra-fast broadband availability is a government initiative to bring fibre optic technology to New Zealand homes, schools, hospitals, Marae and businesses. The cost was originally thought to be around $1.35 billion, but I suspect that figure will have escalated from when the plan was first unveiled some years ago.

The theory was that by boosting the capacity of around 98 per cent of New Zealand’s computers this would increase economic activity and productivity.

Apparently Masterton and Oamaru were the first towns in the country where the roll-out was completed.

I’m led to believe that the government has set aside $15 million for homeowners to access the new technology at no cost; once that amount has run out then you will have to pay for your own connection.

Businesses it seems are to pay for the installation themselves.

I decided to take advantage of this generous offer and rang my internet provider Spark to see if I might join the queue.

After finally getting through, the pleasant man at the end of the line seemed excited that I was taking up the offer and said they would attend to the request as soon as possible.

Initially two men from Chorus came and spent a couple of hours endeavouring to get a cable into our house via the underground telephone facility stationed outside on the footpath. It seemed there was a blockage in the cable tubing.

They said they would send someone more versed in the intricacies of advancing cables and a few weeks’ later two men from Downers arrived to examine the problem. They had driven up from Lower Hutt. They too failed to make the connection and said they would come back in a week or so and find another solution.

In the end they ran the cable along the fence and dug up a concrete path alongside our garage eventually leaving the exposed cable alongside the garage wall ready for the next step in the procedure.

A couple of weeks later two men from Chorus turned up and took the cable through the wall into the garage, up into the ceiling cavity and then down to my office to connect to the Wi-Fi modem alongside my PC. Underneath my desk they attached a couple of plastic boxes on the wall, one with constantly flashing coloured lights. They both looked, and probably were, expensive.

Now let me get this clear. I’m not complaining about any of this. The technicians were skilled and diligent and were the sort of people you don’t mind having in or around your home. It was a neat installation and virtually invisible to the naked eye.

What worries me though is the cost for this placement which the government in their infinite wisdom have kindly paid for.

I worked out that about 28 man hours were involved. Let’s say both Chorus and Downer’s invoice the government at a charge-out rate of $65 which would seem reasonable. We would arrive at figure of $1820. Add to the costs a couple of trips from and to Lower Hutt plus the cables and a variety of plain and flashing boxes and the whole installation must have been worth well over $2000.

All this so a couple of old-age pensioners can get a faster internet connection.

But now here’s the rub. I can’t determine any discernible difference in my internet reception or indeed any improvements to the tasks I perform on my computer.

I’m told if I were to download movies I would see the advantage immediately. But I don’t download movies, or at least I haven’t to date and if I did, how would that increase the economic activity of the country?

It’s not as though I don’t have enough gadgetry in the house to take advantage of this well intentioned government initiative. Apart from the PC that I am using to write this column we have an Apple laptop computer, two iPads, two iPhones and an Apple TV.

An Apple TV incidentally is not a TV as such, but a small square device that sits alongside your TV and wirelessly transfers the picture from your iPad on to your TV screen.

I’m starting to see why Apple is now the world’s largest company with a market capitalisation of $US700 billion, but ultra-fast broadband has made no difference whatsoever to the operation of their devices scattered around our home.

I suspect ultra-fast broadband is only of any real value to those commercial enterprises that download lots of large files and it would have been more rational to offer the free connection to these companies.

To spend $15 million on citizens to download movies seems a tragic waste from a government that is struggling to get its books back into surplus.

Mind you, it’s probably better than spending millions of dollars on a silly boat race in Bermuda.

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” - P. J. O’Rourke

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Identifying bad men in our midst

There are a number of emails doing the rounds that compare the Islamic State with the murderous Nazi regime of World War Two. The emails remind us that the German people in general were later to say that they didn’t realise what was happening around them at the time and were therefore powerless to do anything about it.

The emails then postulate that the rank and file Muslims should be doing something about the radical element within their ranks and be halting the jihad that seems to be gaining frightening momentum.

A compelling argument perhaps, but totally unfair and unrealistic.

I thought about this last week when I was watching the widely-acclaimed New Zealand film The Dark Horse. This true story concerns the plight of a Maori man named Genesis Potini who has mental health issues and is released from a psychiatric ward into the care of his older brother, Ariki.

Ariki is the head honcho of a major criminal gang in Gisborne and leads a violent lifestyle.

Genesis is a skilful chess player and gets involved with a group of at-risk youngsters and sets up a junior chess club in Gisborne. He instructs them well and convinces his protégés that they are worthy of attending a National Junior Chess Tournament in Auckland.

One of them actually wins the championship.

Ariki has a teenage son named Mana and Genesis teaches his nephew to play chess. Mana’s father is not having any of this and toughens his son up with a brutal beating. He then sends him off with one of the more sadistic members of his gang to “get patched” by committing a violent home invasion and robbery at the home of an unsuspecting suburban family.

The portrayal of the gang is hugely disturbing, and tends to induce flashbacks to the film Once Were Warriors which twenty years ago graphically exposed some of the harrowing features of life for a certain section of our community. The Dark Horse reveals that in the interim not much has changed and is yet another film about Maori failure and life at the bottom of the heap.

The unkempt gang house is about as sordid as you could possibly imagine. Life there seems to revolve around acts of violence, with members sitting around continually sucking at pint bottles of beer and smoking cannabis.

Furious that his mentally disturbed brother has taken Mana to the chess tournament in Auckland Ariki evicts Genesis from the gang house and he ends up homeless, eventually curling up on the steps of the memorial on Gisborne’s Kaiti Hill; an obelisk resembling a giant chess piece.

Watching the film I started to wonder if the gangs aren’t our very own version of the Islamic State.

A long bow to draw you might say, but there are some alarming parallels.

The home invasion as depicted in The Dark Horse was an act of terrorism, certainly for the family on the receiving end who were brutally violated. The gangs don’t behead their perceived foes, and tend to kill each other rather than slaughter innocents, however the manufacture and sale of methamphetamine and other mind-bending drugs is a form of death, spiritually and mentally at the very least and for some physically as well. They don’t have the religious fervour to blow themselves up; nonetheless they tend to dress in black, often wear face masks and carry weapons and flags.

I guess the point I want to make is that no one is blaming the majority of the law abiding Maori community for this sore that festers in many of our towns and cities, nor are we asking or expect them to do anything about it.

So it’s a bit rich to ask the vast majority of law-abiding Muslim folk to take up the issue with those members of their particular brand of worship who terrorise in the name of their God.

Our gang problem is quite rightly in the hands of our police force and we must, along with other nations both Western, and Middle Eastern, collectively use our professionally trained armed forces to fight the evolving evil that is the Islamic State.

Our government will likely commit us to this course in the not too distant future. Although I wish we didn’t have to go we should heed British philosopher John Stuart Mill who said in an address to the University of St. Andrews in 1867: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”

“No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.” - Mary Wollstonecraft

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The house that Jack built

Back in the sixties I was a member of the Masterton Jaycees. To the uninitiated, Jaycee is an abbreviation for Junior Chamber of Commerce, though back then we knew little about chambers, and even less about commerce. But we were a dedicated band whose basic aim was community service and leadership training. We were more successful at the former. Many community projects were completed, but around 1965 we were at a loss to know what to do next, so we surveyed the town to see what the general populace wanted.

We suggested three projects in particular: a soundshell on one of the islands in the park lake - we had already built a bridge to the island and completed the miniature railway there - a coloured water fountain, or a town clock. Overwhelmingly the citizens voted for a town clock. This had more to do with the fact that Carterton had at that time just built their own splendid town clock and the Masterton people were a trifle envious. 

The town’s previous clock had been atop the post office, but was declared unsound after the 1942 earthquake and was removed and put into storage. The Jaycees could get no enthusiasm for building a clock and took about as much notice of the survey as the three Wairarapa councils are taking of the Local Government Commission’s recommendation that we join a super city.

But I digress.

Later in life I joined the Masterton Rotary Club, an older and more conservative version of the Jaycees. In 1975 they were looking for a project to mark their fiftieth anniversary. Those previous Jaycees, who had graduated to Rotary as I had, reminded the rest of the members of the earnest desire of the citizenry of the district to have a town clock. So the good Rotarians, ignoring the fact that almost all of mankind have timepieces attached to their wrists, agreed to the suggestion.

The clock from the old post office was deemed unworkable, but the bells were in good condition so they were to be included in the project. The site was chosen; in the middle of the road on the Queen Street intersection with Bannister and Perry Streets. The bewildered Borough Council at the time had decided that upon arriving at this particular intersection from the east or west you could only go one way along Queen Street, either north or south. I have a sneaking suspicion that the traffic design consultants the council employed had previously worked for the Edsel division of the Ford Motor Company.

To finance their project the Rotarians amazingly decided to build a house, then sell it, and with the proceeds get someone to build them a town clock. Why they just didn’t build the clock tower itself instead of the roundabout fashion they chose I’ll never know. Perhaps there was something in the water at the time that caused decisions like that one, and disrupting the flow of main street traffic so most visitors bypassed the town; but again, I digress.

Keen Rotarian and local solicitor, the late Tom Cunningham, who was at the time developing the top end of Titoki Street, generously donated a section in that subdivision. Architect Neil Inkster, designed an attractive two storied home and another member, master builder Merv. Brown agreed to supervise the construction of the dwelling. Retired gift shop owner Jack Whiteman, who was suffering from the debilitating Parkinson’s disease, chose to stay on site all week preparing for the membership to do the building at the weekend.

Mr. Whiteman’s contribution was such that we named the building “The House that Jack Built” and he was awarded a Paul Harris fellowship, Rotary’s highest honour, for his dedication. The house still stands today of course; it looks splendid, and the present owner does it great credit.

I can’t say the same for the clock.

It, and its appendages, had a checkered career. It was thought that the bells would upset the commerce of the town if placed in central Queen Street so a separate bell tower was built next to the park gates. They were connected by an underground cable to the clock. The clock was a plain-jane of an edifice, its four faces suspended on a scaffold-like structure probably fashionable at the time.

It had a unique feature; all four faces told different times.

People in the vicinity of the park gates hated the bells. The engineering firm who had designed the structure did not know that you can’t suspend bells directly to concrete with steel attachments; apparently there needs to be seasoned wooden beams in between. The resonance was unbearable and although they only chimed during business hours people working in the area were driven to distraction by the cacophony and in the end they had to be disconnected from the temperamental clock.

Another feature of the whole project was to bury beneath the bell tower time capsules that were due to be opened in April in the year 2000. Local folk were invited to purchase a “capsule,” - actually plastic screw top biscuit canisters - and put in memento’s to be opened in the first year of the new millennium. Back in 1975 the year 2000 seemed light years away but twenty five years later when the capsules were dug up the response from those who had buried them was underwhelming. Given the rather short passage of time, the opening was a complete anti-climax.

I’m not sure what the moral of this story is; maybe it’s simply that time flies. Certainly the clock went quite quickly. When Masterton’s main street was sensibly returned to its former glory the two-timing four-faced clock was taken down to allow two-way access. No one batted an eyelid.

A few years ago the chimeless bell tower was quietly dismantled, largely unnoticed.

But I wouldn’t want to belittle the Rotary Club’s efforts to celebrate its fifty year milestone. The club gained tremendously from the skills learnt and the fellowship gained by building a house together, which is probably the real monument to its first half century of existence. The Masterton Rotary Club continues to give sterling, but often unheralded, service to the community.

Sadly, the Jaycees went the way of the clock and the bell tower.

“Time wounds all heels.” - Groucho Marx

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Ten good reasons to stay home

An Australian friend recently sent me a cutting out of his local paper with a headline that said: “10 reasons why kiwis are kicking our backsides.” Actually it didn’t say “backsides”, but rather the plural of a four letter word beginning with the letter “A” which I thought was unsuitable for a family newspaper; ours that is, but obviously not theirs.

The article was accompanied by a large coloured cartoon of a kiwi appropriately kicking a kangaroo.

The author is Angela Mollard who apparently was once a native New Zealander, but crossed the Tasman some years ago and now appears to be wistfully looking back.

Her first reasoning is that we don’t have Attention Deficit Disorder when it comes to prime ministers and we play the long game politically. She tells her readers that John Key has just begun his third term while Helen Clark enjoyed nine years as the country’s first elected woman prime minister. Whereas Julia Gillard has largely sunk without trace, she says, Clark is being touted as the next head of the United Nations.

She was impressed with the way our rugby bosses handled Aaron Cruden’s missed flight to Argentina following a drinking session. Cruden was dropped from three tests and told to stay home. On returning to the squad he was benched for a match because his replacement was playing so well.

She compares this with the shenanigans over Kurtley Beale, whose text message scandal rumbled on, leading to two resignations, a $45,000 fine and the most turbulent episode in Australian rugby history.

She says we sell ourselves well with our “100 per cent Pure New Zealand” slogan and reckons that no visitor is in any doubt of our countries splendour. Air New Zealand’s inflight videos, featuring the All Blacks and the Hobbit, have gone viral on YouTube.

It’s a case, she says, of knowing who you are and what you’re proud of.

Aussies, she writes, have no ruddy idea.

She says when we boast “homemade” we mean it. Our wine is excellent, the craft beer is beery, and coffee is our national religion after rugby. But for her it’s our morning and afternoon teas that really excel. Not for us the mass-produced hydrogenated muffins and fridge-odoured caramel slices that fill the Aussie cafes, but by using the century old Edmonds baking bible we make scones and slices from scratch.

In New Zealand, she says, woman play sport. They play it in Australia too, but you’d never know it from watching television. In NZ netball is not only broadcast live, but its stars, along with Lydia Ko and Valerie Adams, appear in the glossies.

In Australia you only make the mags if you’ve had a juicy marriage break-up, a drug scandal or a dodgy text message exchange.

And she reckons we Kiwis are thrill seekers. Whereas in Oz you can’t visit a beach or a pool without a sign warning you against every possible activity short of breathing, we apparently view any body of water as a means to adrenalin. Having had the imagination to tie an elastic rope to our feet and jump, we’ve developed extreme flying foxes, mega swings and the sort of jet-boating that leaves your stomach in your mouth.

In New Zealand, she writes, race relations matter. Grievances are redressed through the Treaty of Waitangi, Maori culture is upheld in schools where the national anthem is sung in both languages and to have “mana” - which she describes as honour and respect - is to have it all.

She told her readers that we liberal New Zealanders didn’t see gay marriage as a threat, so we legalised it.

And we garner no special favours. Whereas in Australia they continue to endorse MPs who misuse their allowances and spend union funds on prostitutes, she was impressed that a New Zealand cabinet minister was fined $2000 last November after he bypassed airport security to board a domestic flight.

She sites our coinage as the tenth and final example of why the Muldoon IQ utterance is starting to gain some validity. They make complete sense, she says. The $2 is larger than the $1 and we withdrew the worthless 5 cent coin completely.

Despite her own compelling arguments Ms Mollard is not coming home anytime soon. She cites the high price of mangoes and says “the accent sucks.”

At the last Australian general election concern was expressed about the number of illegal immigrants there are in the lucky country. The government thought there were about sixty thousand.

Aboriginal sources said it was more like twenty two and a half million.

“New Zealander's moving to Australia raises the IQ of both countries.” -Sir Robert Muldoon.

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