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...

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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...

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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...

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What is happening to my world?

Many years ago an old family friend said to me: “I feel sorry for you young guys today; I reckon your father and I have lived through the best of times.” I expressed surprise at the claim. I reminded him that he and dad had lived through two world wars and a depression, how on earth could they be described as the best of times? I’m not certain what prompted his remark. Thinking back it might have been when we were going through the so-called...

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The mere males Archillies heal

It seems the CERA boss may have skillfully trivialized the complaint made by one of his female staff. In a carefully staged press conference he shed tears and admitted that perhaps sometimes his jokes were a shade bawdy, that he should refrain from calling his colleagues “sweetie” and “honey” and maybe even pull back from hugging people, despite this being something he has always done. It has subsequently been revealed that there was more...

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Cars, shoes and other distractions

In England in 1995 I espied a pair of casual shoes that appealed to me in a London shoe shop window. I found a perfect fit, but was disappointed in the price which seemed unreasonably high. The shop assistant informed me they were made in France as though the trip across the channel, which is so insignificant that hundreds of people have actually swum it, somehow allowed for the high price tag. My wife however remarked that no one ever...

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On driving me to distraction

When I was a kid the lady over the road from where we lived had a chauffeur. Mrs Mawley was a wealthy widow who lived in a grand residence called “Sway Place” on the corner of Opaki Road and Oxford Street. Later this became the home of general practitioner Dr. Blair Harvey and then The Golden Shears Motor Inn and latterly a retirement village, or as Dame Edna Everidge would unkindly say, a home for the bewildered.Mrs Mawley’s chauffeur...

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Trying to make sense of dress

I was at the Palmerston North Plaza shopping centre a couple of weeks ago looking at the directory sign that describes the shops and their location. The premises are colour coded and I counted the womenswear outlets and there were nineteen. There were just three menswear shops. So nineteen to three is apparently the ratio of importance the genders place on their outward appearance.I noticed however that department stores were separately...

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A majestic house with memories

The grand old two-storey brick and reinforced concrete Prior homestead and one-time doctors’ surgery in Perry Street is no more. In its place, almost as a complete about-face to the days of old, is a modern single-storey office block purpose-built for a computer software company. The Prior family have produced generations of doctor’s for our town, but the imposing dwelling hadn’t been in the Prior family hands for some time. I...

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Facing up to the inevitable

Having passed my allotted three score years and ten I self-consciously realise I am now a continual liability on the long-suffering taxpayer and may potentially become a burden on the health system. Retirees tend to believe that having paid taxes all their lives they deserve to live off the fat of the land - or at least the lean pickings that the state allows. The pension is no doubt an encumbrance on the treasury coffers, but is hardly...

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Thoughts on earning a living

Last week a New Zealand Herald front page article revealed that after dipping briefly following the global financial crisis the average pay of New Zealand’s top executives is rising once again. The bosses of the country’s largest firms received an average total remuneration - including base salary and incentive payments - of $1.4 million in the 2013 financial year, a 4 percent increase on 2012. Our highest paid chief executive last...

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An analysis of what went right

It seems implausible that due to our questionable electoral system a party that was only able to capture 48 per cent of the popular vote gets a win that is described as a “landslide.” You could express it differently of course. 76 per cent of the electorate did not favour Labour, 90 percent wouldn’t have a bar of the Greens, and 91 per cent didn’t want New Zealand First despite Winston being the darling of the aged and infirm.In the process...

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A cheerful chuckling chappie

Back in 1995 my wife and I visited Northern Ireland. We spent a weekend in Belfast, hardly a tourist mecca, but then again, not as bleak a city as it is often painted. Anyway its people not places that make a destination and the Irish overwhelm you with their unrelenting hospitality in both the north and the south of this enchanting country. But for all that, Belfast was a bit different. It was incongruous for instance to hear people tell...

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The Pinocchio component in politics

In the film Liar, Liar lawyer Fletcher Reede, played by Jim Carrey, falls victim to his son Max’s wish that his dad won’t be able to tell a lie for 24 hours. For the sake of the plot, the wish comes true. The moral of the story is that we all lie constantly, and not to do so and be brutally honest instead, would get us into a lot of hot water. And so we have seen politicians of all persuasions tell porkies over the last few weeks which...

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Will CGT sink Labour's boat?

Labour’s much-vaunted Capital Gains Tax is starting to look like the old much-despised death duties in disguise. When Labour introduced GST back in 1986 they sensibly resisted calls to exclude certain items of food from the tax. This would be an “administrative nightmare” they quite rightly said at the time. They are not heeding their own advice when on this occasion they have promised to exclude the family home from the new property tax....

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What is happening to my country?

Oh how I yearn for the good old days of the wooden ships and the iron men when governments were decided like horse races - first past the post. Surely everyone’s political leanings were satisfied with Labour and National, just like the Americans are happy with Democrats and Republicans and the United Kingdom with Labour and Conservatives. But no, we had to go and throw out a perfectly good system of governance and now look what we’ve...

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Prosperity is where the mouth is

A young part-Maori woman quit her job at the Whangarei branch of KiwiYo last week because the manager of the shop would not allow her to greet customers with “Kia Ora” insisting instead that she say “Hello” as prescribed in the company manual. The usual rent-a-protest crowd assembled outside the company store chanting and displaying placards and the KiwiYo’s franchise owner was forced to capitulate and apologise, suggesting his manager...

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