Wednesday 14 November 2018

When will they ever learn?

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The nutty Greens are craftily convincing the gullible New Zealand public into allowing them to legislate to decriminalise cannabis for recreational use. “Decriminalise” and “recreational” are buzz words for open slather for anyone who wants to partake of the psychotic substance known as THC, but surveys show the Greens may well succeed while the sleeping giant of the so-called silent majority slumbers.

Green MP Chloe Swarbrick wants to take an even greater leap forward for mankind. She proposes decriminalising all drugs and if she has her way this means heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine will be readily available on acquiescent streets of ‘Godzone.’

Inexplicably The New Zealand Drug Foundation, whom I naively assumed where there to dramatically reduce drug habitude, agree with Ms Swarbrick’s potty proposal. And then, to complete the unholy trifecta, in weighs regularly-quoted economic commentator Shamubeel Eaqub who reckons if Chloe’s ambitions are realised the New Zealand government stands to make tens of millions of dollars of savings.

Conspicuous by their absence to mount any form of opposition to all of this are the Ministry of Health and their attendant District Health Boards (DHB’s) who have been striving for years to reduce smoking to an eventual zero tolerance goal by 2025 and will now have to deal a whole new raft of inhalers passing around ‘roll-your-owns’ with higher-rated carcinogenic elements than tobacco.

DHB’s have more cause to worry. Most are already struggling with crippling deficits, but these are likely to blow out even further. According to the Colorado Department of Public Safety (Colorado has legalised the sale of marijuana) hospitalisation rates (per 100,000 hospitalisations) with possible marijuana exposures, diagnosis or billing codes increased from 803 per 100,000 before commercialisation (2001-2009) to 2,696 per 100,000 after commercialisation (January 2014-September 2015.)


I do however sense some method in the left’s madness. The Green Party make no attempt to disguise their socialist roots and the only way to install socialism in an otherwise successful society is to drag down that society to such an extent it is willing to try something new. They will be ably abetted by comrade Jacinda who before entering parliament was the president of the International Union of Socialist Youth and was reported as saying during the election campaign that ‘capitalism was past its use-by-date,’ or words to that effect.

Jacinda and Chloe then are deadly bedfellows and these two kids are too young to know the terrible past tragedies of communism and appear to have little knowledge of the pernicious experiences of Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea. Nonetheless they need look no further than across the ocean where the dispirited citizens of Venezuela are wallowing in yet another failed socialist experiment.

Ageing and conservative, and perhaps even a conspiracy theorist, I’m probably past my own use by date. Leaving the planet (by natural causes) before all that I fear comes to pass, may be a Godsend.

“Marxist socialism must always remain portent to historians of opinion – how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and an enduring influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.” - John Maynard Keynes 

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Saturday 3 November 2018

A sermon for Saint Luke

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I was a tad surprised when I got a call from Reverend Dashfield  asking me to do the sermon tonight. His reasoning being that this was a time to celebrate the feast Saint Luke and as he was a physician and as I was on the District Health Board it seemed entirely appropriate.

On the health board yes, but I am not a doctor, though in a previous vocation I did call myself a heart, liver and kidney specialist. When customers came into the shop and asked me how much kidneys were, I’d tell them sixpence each or five for half a crown.

Now those old enough among you who remember the old imperial currency, and who can also do the math, you will see that there was no real bargain in that offer.You’d surprised however, just how many people bought five at a time.

There were other tenuous connections. Most of you probably wouldn’t know that the Reverend Dashfield’s late great father-in-law was a doctor, a general practitioner. He was Dr Berney- and as a youngster he was our family doctor.

Doctors were much venerated in those days and they deserved to be. If you were perchance to fall ill and rang your doctor, he would jump in his car and come to you. These were known as “house calls” and it’s an expression that has completely disappeared from the lexicon. If you asked today’s generation - the generation Xers or a millennials - what a ‘house call’ was they wouldn’t have a clue, any more than they’d know what a half a crown was.

My sister and my mother and I referred to him as Dr Berney, but my father called him Hugh. This was because they both belonged to the Masterton Rotary Club, and a tenet of membership is that you must call your fellow members by their Christian names. Today of course we have to call them first names, rather than Christian names, in case we cause offence.

So next I went to Google to see if in fact I was a fit and proper person to be making this address tonight. And Google sent me to Wikipedia, another 21st century name, and there I found some pretty startling information about Saint Luke.

I’m going to read what it said, word for word, and I took a screenshot of it on my iPhone to prove to those skeptics among you as to the veracity of my claims. (Screenshots, Google, Wikipedia, IPhone. If dad and Hugh Berney were still alive - and here tonight - they would think I was talking in a completely different language.)

Anyway, here’s what Wikipedia has to say about Saint Luke. Word for word remember, The Roman Catholic Church and other major denominations venerate him as Saint Luke the Evangelist and as a patron saint of artists, physicians, bachelors, surgeons, students and butchers. And I’m not kidding.

Artists, physicians, bachelors, surgeons, students and butchers. That’s a fairly eclectic mix!

So, at last I feel justified and at home in this pulpit.

And so now to the reading about Jesus and the rich man.

One of my favourite songs is “If I were a rich man” from that wonderful musical “Fiddler on the Roof.” I even have it in my iPhone, and the version I chose to download is by Roger Whittaker.

It cost me a $1.94 to download the song - and if Mr Whittaker’s version is popular worldwide, as I suspect it is, then collectively we will have made him a very rich man.

You all know the words. The lead character in the play, Tevye, is pleading with God to make him a rich man. He wants a big tall house with rooms by the dozen with three staircases. One for going up, one for coming down, and a third one, going nowhere just for show.  And the final plea, which ends the song perfectly: “Lord who made the lion and the lamb, you decreed I should be what I am, would it spoil some vast eternal plan, if I were a wealthy man.

He’s taking a risk here of course if he wants to receive eternal life.

Now I am not a rich man and my bank manager would confirm that.

But wealth is subjective. Someone in South Auckland sleeping on the streets or in their car, might well consider that comparatively speaking, I am rich. But looking for a real rich man I might point to the immediate past CEO of Fonterra, a Mr Spierings, and suggest that he’s taking a risk if he’s longing for eternal life, but to extricate himself from that accusation he might well point to Bill Gates and say “Now that’s a rich man!”

Bill Gates can’t go any further up the chain because he’s the richest man in the world.

But I reckon Bill must have read Luke chapter 18 verses 18 to 26 because he and his wife have determined that they’re going to give away all their money through the Bill and Melinda Gates Charitable Foundation.

Rotary International, the head office of the Rotary club that my father and Dr Berney belonged to, resolved in the mid 1980’s that, as an international project, they would rid the world of polio, and in recent years the Gates Foundation has given tens of millions of dollars to Rotary to ensure they complete the task - and they’re almost there.

There are just a few pockets on earth where poliomyelitis has not been completely eradicated.

Incidentally, in Dr Berney’s day, polio was more often referred to as infantile paralysis.

Now Luke tells us that Jesus said it is going to be much harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. Which on the surface seems like a rather unusual declaration.

But Jesus was not prone to say things that didn’t make sense.

I was going to bring a needle along tonight, to expose just how small the eye is, but needles are notoriously hard to find, particularly, I understand if they’re in haystacks. Incidentally when did you last see a haystack? Haystacks were abandoned long ago, along with half crowns and house calls. Now the hay is rolled up in unattractive green plastic wrapping and left out in the paddock. The plastic eventually blows away and gets caught up the fences, despoiling the environment.

Anyway, I’m sure you would have some difficulty in imagining a camel going through the eye of a needle, so this needs to be more fully explored.

In Christ’s time, the cities were walled. Jerusalem was a walled city and even today I understand Damascus still is. The main wall had a huge double-doored front gate so people and carts and donkeys and all manner of commerce could go in and out freely during the day. But at nightfall the gate was closed and locked securely so marauders could not enter and plunder and pillage the city.
The problem was, folk often needed to leave the city at night or alternatively seek entrance when arriving after dusk. So when they built the wall they created an entrance, a building block wide, so that people could slip in and out of the city at will.

Now some travelers arrived after dark on camels and the entrance, which was known as the needle, was barely wide enough for a camel. I’ve seen some wonderful illustrations in old bibles of camel owners pushing and shoving their animals, endeavouring to get them through the needle gate.

Camels of course had saddles - and saddle bags, and in the saddle bag was usually all the owners worldly goods. In an effort to shove the camel through the needle gate the owner needed to take off the saddle and the saddle bags and therefore dispose of all his worldly goods.

Therefore Jesus’s explanation was in fact perfectly illustrative.

And so I left the needle at home.

And so that just leaves me to somehow work in hospitals with Saint Luke.


In fact hospitals were originally established by the church. Not just hospitals, but all our learning institutions. The great universities - Oxford, Cambridge Harvard and Princeton were all established by the Christian Church.

But about century or so ago men started to leave the church and sought camaraderie and fellowship in organisations like Rotary Clubs, Lions, Freemasonry and a host of other secular associations where they could do their good works.

In fact one wag said: "Rotarians are a bunch of self-made men who gather together once a week to worship their maker."

There’s a bit of self-deprecation here, as, like my father and Dr Berney, I am a Rotarian.

And so eventually the government had to take over these places and whenever the government gets involved there tends to be a little bit of inefficiency, and of course you lose the volunteer aspect that was a hallmark of church involvement.

However Saint Luke the physician would be amazed to see the advances in medical science today, and our magnificent hospitals and the wonderful staff who care for our sick. You might be surprised to know that the Wairarapa hospital has 300 nurses and 45 doctors, plus a host of ancillary staff to care for the 40,000 people that live in our wider environs.

Doctors and nurses, camels and needles, and rich men and poor men. I think I have probably covered the gamut of subject material Saint Luke might have expected of me.

And so the moral of the story is this:

When you leave here tonight, before you go out the narrow front door, I want you to leave your wallets, credit cards and jewelry on the table in the foyer.

Just kidding; the government’s going to tax you to death anyway!

As for me, I’m hugely disappointed that I spent 38 years behind a butcher’s shop counter - and didn’t know that I had a patron saint!

Jesus saw that he was sad and said, It is much harder for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. –Luke 18 verses 25 -25

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