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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Those magnificent men...and women

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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Is big oil clouding our future?

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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The fear factor for politicians

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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Be careful what you ask for

I was surprised at the speed in which the Masterton District Councillors dismissed the Local Government Commission’s (LGC) recommendation that Wairarapa join a Wellington Super City. It was apparently an acrimonious debate which saw those councillors preferring a Wairarapa Unitary Authority win the argument by six votes to four.

There were suggestions that the supporters of a Unitary Authority had not read the draft proposals thoroughly and that councillors should be careful not to paint themselves into a corner before having a dialogue with their community. I suspect however those opposing were sensing that there was no mood for a Super City amongst the rank and file who inhabit the town.

I wonder though if it has been carefully thought through. The LGC believe that Wairarapa can’t afford to go it alone and that stance has a good deal of credibility. Many people don’t realise that for the Wairarapa Council’s to combine and take over the role of the regional council would come at a huge cost for the 40,000 dear hearts and gentle people who live and love in the Wairarapa.

If the rest of the councils in the Wellington region go kicking and screaming into the proposed super city then in effect the Greater Wellington Regional Council ceases to exist and Wairarapa, out on a limb, will have to pay for its own flood protection measures, catchment and pest control, environmental issues and more importantly the trains that take many of our residents to and from the capital city.

This is the very same city where many find employment, go to for sports and entertainment events and occasionally shop in, but apparently don’t want to join.

I do have some sympathy for this view. I suspect one of the reasons we are wary of being part of a Super City is our belief that it is not working well for Auckland. In fact it may be working perfectly well in Auckland, but we’ll never know because to judge it against the old deeply divided City of Sails is almost impossible. And it doesn’t help that Mayor Len Brown is universally unpopular for reasons of his own doing and for some beyond his control.

Anyway the LGC say they have learnt from Auckland’s mistakes and their proposal identifies where Auckland went wrong and makes adjustments accordingly.

We are all working on the assumption that for the Wairarapa there are just two options. We either join the Super City or combine the three Wairarapa councils and form a unitary authority.

In fact there is a third option and that is the status quo.

We know the two Hutt’s, Upper and Lower, have no appetite for the Super City concept and neither does Kapiti. Only Porirua has signalled that it would happily buy into the deal, but that enthusiasm is coming from feisty mayor Nick Leggat, with little support I suspect from his constituents.

So the councillors of all these districts need only to get together and say they don’t want a bar of the proposal and it will be dead in the water.

Combining the three Wairarapa councils would be a nightmare. Parochialism is just as alive and well in the Wairarapa as it is in the Upper and Lower Hutt’s and other areas like for instance Tawa and Porirua.

Where, you might ask, would the main council office for the Wairarapa be? The Wairarapa’s fastest growing town Carterton has always believed it should be the centre of the Wairarapa and has thought so right from its formation when it planted itself midway between Greytown and Masterton back in the nineteenth century. So it’s not hard to imagine that they would want the centre of local government to be within their environs and have built a splendid new events centre and repaved and reformed Holloway Street to allow for that eventuality.

Conversely Greytown might consider that they are the centre of the region geographically and argue that their quaint village should play host to the combined entity. 

Masterton’s grand town hall, which has only just been branded so that photographs taken from the picturesque new town square can be recognised nationally and internationally, is starting to look redundant by the minute.

I’ve been trying to think of future use for it and I wonder if it might become a Charter School.

And the mayor? Well Masterton has the voter grunt, but given that Carterton and the South Wairarapa folk don’t hold much truck with their big brother to the north they could promote just one candidate and ensure that their representation is intact.

A council centre in Carterton and a mayor from Martinborough might be the answer to overcoming parochialism.

But Masterton has spent a small fortune on its mostly underground infrastructure of late and may be reluctant to have to help pay for the other Wairarapa towns upcoming works in this category. It can also work the other way. Masterton has spent $50 million on a new sewerage scheme, but still pours treated effluent into the Ruamahunga River. New CEO Pim Borren said recently that we should have spent $100 million and done the job properly.

Ratepayers contemplating those figures could cause our sewerage facilities to go into overdrive.

And then of course there would be a shortfall amounting to millions of dollars that the regional council would not be spending in our precincts. That council is still paying off our reasonably new train-sets; I wonder if these repayments will be passed over to us?

I was on the Greater Wellington Regional Council for three terms and was amazed and gratified at the money that was spent in the Wairarapa - far in excess of the rates we paid - from the generous Wellingtonians, most of whom I suspect didn’t realise how generous they were.

If it ain’t broke, why fix it? If our representatives can’t handle a Super City then they should join with their brethren in the south and west and demand the status quo.

Otherwise the Masterton councillors will start to look like turkeys who voted for an early Christmas.

“If you would be known, and not know, vegetate in a village; if you would know, and not be known, live in a city.” – Charles Caleb Colton

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The fall and rise of consumerism

I have never read Edward Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, though I may have been instructed to do so at some stage during my secondary school years. Therefore it is only anecdotally that I am led to believe that the fall was due to widespread immoral behaviour.

A few years ago however it was thought that if the empirical grouping of the Western democracies ever declines and falls it would likely be due to shopping. The buzz word at the time was “shopocalypse” which was coined by an anti-shopping evangelist in New York who called himself the “Reverend Billy”. He headed The Church of Stop Shopping and featured in a documentary called: What would Jesus Buy?

The Reverend Billy – real name William Talen – toured shopping malls with a gospel choir who sang cynical anti-shopping songs while the good reverend cast out demons of consumerism and exorcized credit cards.

He wasn’t a real reverend of course, but he dressed in a smart white suit and was deadly serious about his evangelical performances. He sincerely believed that Christmas had turned into a jingle hell of bloated consumerism that wasn’t merely soul-destroying, but economy destroying and even planet destroying.

William Talen disappeared from consciousness in September 2008 when the global financial crisis hit the world stage and it was revealed that the real culprit of the decline and fall of the western democracies was in fact international financiers, especially the irrationally exuberant Anglo-Saxon sort who thought they had found a way to banish risk when in fact they had simply lost track of it.

The great moderation years of low inflation and stable growth fostered complacency in the hallowed halls of the money-men. A savings glut in Asia pushed down interest rates and borrowers were encouraged to buy houses priced way above their true value and in the process inherited crippling mortgage repayments.

Much of world is still affected by the collapse of Lehman Brothers, a sprawling global bank, but sound stewardship by the Key government has meant that consumerism is getting back on track in our country although retailers now face the added competition of website sales that in most cases don’t attract the added burden of GST.

Huge distribution centres in far off lands that are hooked up to fast-flying freight planes and then on to couriers allows goods to land on your doorstep within a few days of placing an order.

Supermarkets in the main don’t suffer from the ignominy of their customers sourcing goods from overseas and I imagine their cash flows are eye-watering. There are constant queues at the checkout counters and they offer up a choice of merchandise that would astonish our forebears.

I recall my mother’s modest brown cardboard box of groceries delivered to our door each Wednesday afternoon which lasted our family of four until the following Wednesday, apart from a few minor top-ups from the corner shop along the road.

But we’ve moved on since then and the end result is mounting credit card debt and a stressed society struggling with repayments on a diet of alcohol and anti-depressants.

Recently in a $2 shop an item that caught my eye was a plastic brush and shovel on sale for $1.45. Made in China of course and I studied the product looking for flaws, but found none.

I can’t for the life of me understand how it could be manufactured, warehoused, delivered to the port, shipped, warehoused again, then trucked to the shop, unpacked, labelled, placed on the shelf and sold to the consumer by a reasonably well-paid shop assistant, allowing all those in the chain to make a profit along the way.

The western world is totally dependent on lowly paid third-world workers to sustain us in our consumer heaven at prices that keeps inflation in check. We now live in a society that, apart from the agricultural sector, hardly produces anything of real value and we rely on incomes from service industries and paper-shuffling businesses.

It looks like a house of cards with the Chinese being the dealers.

And I suspect in this environment some retailers resort to trickery. I was mystified as to how a well-known retail giant manages to stay solvent given the company promotes back-to-back sales with thirty to sixty per cent off most items.

So I did some sleuthing. I went to the store in question and chose a well-known brand of a regular household appliance and checked out the price: $219.99. However a large attached card announced: “40 per cent off.” Using my iPhone calculator I determined that this would attract a rebate of $88.00 meaning at the checkout the item would cost $132.00. Seemed like a bargain. But I went to a shop just down the road and found exactly the same item, with the same model number, on the shelf for $130.00

I’m not sure what Jesus would buy, but I would advise him to shop around.

“Christmas is the Disneyfication of Christianity” – Don Cupitt

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The modern day gossip columnist

One of this country’s abiding mysteries is how one man can capture the attention of the news media and even the House of Representatives so often and for such a prolonged period. Such a man is Cameron Slater, son of a past president of the National Party and a thorn in the side of many members of parliament, mostly from the left, but who is not averse to using his acerbic pen to berate politicians and persons of prominence of all persuasions.

It was pointed out that he was mentioned over 100 times over three sittings of parliament recently; he probably has his own button on the Hansard recorders. These days you can’t turn on the radio, or read news stories without being bombarded with negatives about Cameron Slater. Many are vying to convince the rank and file that this is some kind of anti-Christ that has come to live amongst us.

So what is it that he actually does?

He runs a blog.

To be fair, not just any blog.

He manages to attract about 240,000 readers a day which probably makes him one of the biggest “newspapers” in the country. In April of this year he won the Canon Media award for being New Zealand’s best blogger and just last month he won Netguide’s prize for “Best Blog of the Year.”

I have been a regular reader of Slater’s Whale Oil Beef Hooked. The site is most entertaining; habitually outrageous and more often than not over the top with its iconoclastic claims.

His is not the only blog I frequently visit. I also peruse The Daily Blog which is as vitriolic towards the right as “Whale Oil” is of the left and is edited by Slater’s nemesis Martyn “Bomber” Bradbury. David Farrar’s Kiwiblog is also a good read, undoubtedly right leaning, and I balance this by accessing a blog titled Slightly Left of Centre.

And then there is ex-Dominion editor Karl du Fresne’s blog, awash with common sense utterances to round off a day of thoroughly good reading.

Just like newspapers, blogs are merely a form of entertainment, but the pen is said to be mightier than the sword, hence the disquiet.

Slater first came to national prominence and attracted a whole coterie of potential readers when he exposed the dastardly dalliances of Auckland mayor Len Brown. He already had a large following at that stage, but his audience doubled during the period and has hardly diminished since.

Nicky Hager tried to bring him down with his book Dirty Politics, but like the Len Brown saga, it simply increased his devotees.

Writing in last Saturday’s Dominion-Post journalist Tracy Watkins said: “John Key is badly tainted by his association with Whale Oil blogger Cameron Slater whose brand is repugnant to most voters.”

Slater responded by publishing a most unflattering photo of Ms Watkins and said his “repugnant brand” was continuing to build to an ever increasing audience.

Ms Watkins seems to have missed the point that the Prime Minister’s association with Mr Slater was well documented before the election, but appeared not to have affected his constituency.

Slater is of course just a 21st century version of the gossip columnists of old. Nobody would admit to ever reading them, but they were syndicated internationally and helped sell newspapers and periodicals over a long period.

Names that spring to mind are Hedda Hopper, Louella Parsons and Walter Winchell. In more modern times we’ve had Matt Drudge, David Hartnell and Metro magazines Felicity Ferret.

“The Ferret” was unceremoniously retired in 2010. She was described as being daring, embarrassing, crass, irreverent, funny and just a little bit mean.

Sounds a bit like a feminine version of Cameron Slater. “The Ferret” however was said to be the social adventures of Metro staff, although Auckland café queen Judith Baragwanath was suspected of being the central contributor.

Slater is now threatening a new web-based media outlet he will call Freed. This will be a counter-punch to Dirty Politics he says and is likely to embarrass many of New Zealand’s mainstream-media journalists.

He was recently taken to court by someone who believed they had been wronged and subsequently faced substantial court costs and legal fees as a result. His staff made a plea to readers to help by contributing towards the expenses. I didn’t respond, but many must have because the fund was over-subscribed in just a few days.

A faithful readership that is generous as well; seems like a good recipe for continued success.

But Mr Slater ought not to forget the adage: “In the case of scandal, as in that of a robbery, the receiver is always thought as bad as the thief.”

“The blogs, mad and bad as they are, add richness and diversity to the political debate.” - Rodney Hide

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