Going back to the future

A new radio station has been brought to my attention with the appropriate name of Magic. (105.5 FM if you’re curious). For septuagenarians and others, the music has a magic quality; it’s the sounds we grew up with.

The music is melodic, the words have a clarity not evident in much of today’s popular music and the lyrics generally talk of love between members of the opposite sex or other interesting themes like tips on playing poker (Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler”) or a seaman desperate to abandon ship (The Beach Boys’ “The Sloop John B”).

And they’re not asexual. Lulu sings “I’m a Tiger” with a sensual growl that would stir the blood of most young men and Nancy Sinatra does the same when she tells us her boots were made for walking.

Today’s pop offerings couldn’t hold a candle to the music of the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s which Magic’s strapline claims they “keep alive.” As someone recently said, “It’s called rap music because the “c” accidently fell off the printer.”

I know I’m right about this, except I had the same argument with my parents about their music when I was growing up.

After I left college my father in his wisdom sent me to Palmerston North to learn the trade of my ancestors under the guidance of another Master butcher. I used to do deliveries around the city on a bike with a basket on the front that Granville in Open All Hours would have been proud of. A regular recipient of our fine meats was a Mr Sandys who sadly was bedridden. His wife was a wonderful pastry-cook and would regularly have a hot morsel for the butcher-boy from her well-appointed kitchen.

The garage at the end of their drive was padlocked and I looked through a crack in the door one day and espied a 1926 Austin Seven coupe which I immediately coveted. Mrs Sandys wasn’t sure if her husband would part with it and she ushered me into his darkened bedroom on a number of occasions where protracted negotiations took place until he finally agreed to sell me the vehicle for 100 pounds. My weekly take-home pay at the time was six pounds and tuppence so one hundred pounds was a small fortune to a relatively penurious butcher-boy.

However I had opened a Post Office savings account when I was at primary school which had a credit balance of around one hundred pounds and so I purchased my first car.

I painted “Shake, Rattle and Roll” on the driver’s door, a popular song of the time performed by Bill Haley and the Comets that aptly described the ride caused by the superannuated springing system.

With the hood down I’d hoped it might be a chick magnet, though I’m not sure that expression was actually in vogue then. It didn’t have the desired affect; though I’m blaming the driver for that, not the car.

The point of all this is that the automobile industry has gone ahead in leaps and bounds in the intervening years; the Austin Seven could in no way compare with the car I drive today.

So how come the music’s not as good?

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Are we missing the boat?

News, either via newspaper or television, is just a form of entertainment. Advertisers throng around it to get their own messages across and we blindly follow. A few short weeks ago the news seem to consist almost entirely of incredibly distressing images of the exodus of refugees fleeing war-torn Middle Eastern countries looking for a better life in the more prosperous European Union nations.

No doubt the evacuation continues apace, but we’ve moved on to other headlines like the Chris Cairns trial and the Rugby World Cup. Both occurring in Great Britain where I suspect most of the populous won’t be the slightest bit interested in either event.

For Europe the influx of refugees will either be a feast or a famine. The saying goes that economic growth is essentially productivity combined with workers and when numbers for both are rising steadily, countries prosper. In wealthy countries, like most of those in the European Union, populations are shrinking and in Germany, who has charitably agreed to take hundreds of thousands of the fleeing migrants, the population is predicted to shrink from 81.3 million as of today to around 71 million by 2060. So there may be method in what is perceived to be their generous madness.

In his book, How migration shaped our world, Ian Goldin, the Director of Oxford University’s Martin School says “Migrants are a disproportionately dynamic force globally. Innovative and entrepreneurial, they create a higher-than-average number of patents in many countries and start businesses more frequently than the locals. In the 19th century, a third of the population of Sweden, Ireland and Italy emigrated to America and other countries and the U.S. is the best example of how dynamic a country of immigrants can be.”

New Zealanders in general and Winston Peters in particular seemed reluctant to accept more refugees or immigrants especially if their culture is not akin to ours. Those opposed to bringing in more foreigners imagine a cabal of unskilled refugees being a burden on our social welfare system and lowering wages by their seemingly uncanny ability to live on the smell of an oily rag.

Just last week the managers of Auckland’s Indian restaurant chain Masala were heavily fined for employing migrant workers for long hours at $2.64 an hour, so there is some substance to the fears expressed.

With a shortage of housing in Auckland where most of our new arrivals seemed destined to settle, and the fact that many people in this country are struggling to make ends meet, it is understandable that there is a reluctance to encourage more refugees than the agreed quota.

But migrants could provide a long term economic boom and we certainly need something to kick-start our moribund economy. According to Goldin, if rich nations around the world were to admit enough migrants to expand their labour force by a mere 3%, the world would be $356 billion richer – not only because of the productivity gains in the wealthy countries, but because migrants send so much money back home.

But fear not, none of this debate is ever going to make the prime-time news.

“Apparently one in five people in the world are Chinese. And there are five people in my family, so it must be one of them. It’s either my mum or my dad. Or my older brother Colin. Or my younger brother Ho-Cha-Chu. But I think its Colin.” - Tommy Cooper

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The pitfalls of liquidity

When I was a youngster my father used to give me advice about the perils of drinking. Not to totally warn me off the demon drink; but “Stick to beer” he used to say. I noted, somewhat sardonically, that despite this homily he did enjoy the occasional whisky himself. He warned me off spirits, but kept his greatest dehortation for the imbibing of wine. “People who drink wine,” he opined “Were destined to become alcoholics.” To emphasise the point he reminded me that back then they actually called alcoholics “winos.”

However we’ve recently found out that the real “demon drink” is Coca-Cola. Infused with the 21st century’s most despised poison, sugar, it is causing obesity and diabetes.

Sugary carbonated beverages have always been readily available to the unsuspecting populous, why they have only recently become dangerous to consume is not explained.

Last week on Seven Sharp the two giggling Gerties that front the show interviewed the CEO of Coca-Cola Australasia wanting to know what he was going to do about his deadly product. Looking lost for words, the best answer he could come up with was that he was reducing the size of the cans. Pretty well every product on the supermarket shelves are going down in size, but being sold at the same price, so his solution is hardly revolutionary. The Seven Sharp hosts trotted out the old hoary chestnut about Coca-Cola being cheaper than milk; it’s not of course, but the media never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

My father was a generous supplier of fizzy drink to our household, sometimes buying the rare Schweppes product from Moore Wilson’s, but more often the mixed range from the Wairarapa Aerated Water Company better known by its acronym WACO. Schweppes seemed to only have one flavour, an orange product called Palato whereas the WACO range was far more extensive with the usual orange, raspberry, lime and lemon varieties and also cola, creaming soda and a blue coloured concoction appropriately called blue lagoon.

But the locals were soon overwhelmed by the brash American juggernaut and the Coca-Cola range caused the small bottlers in New Zealand’s town and cities to shut up shop leaving us with Coke, Fanta and Sprite and a less colourful world.

Then wine suddenly gained new respectability. After the government paid vintners to pull out all their vines because the wrong varieties had been planted a revitalised industry built up to serve a thirsty throng who had never had the cautioning words of my father ringing in their ears.

Sophisticated marketing was the key and the best wordsmiths available were summoned to compose sentences for the labels. An example: “Mouth filling, fresh and supple with good depth of cherry/red berry spice flavours and finely integrated smokey oak aromas abound.” This on a bottle of Pinot Noir from Nelson that a dinner guest assured me was an “audacious little wine, which left a subtle hint of gooseberry and passion fruit on the palate.”

I seriously considered having him committed.

So which is the lesser of the two evils; sugary drinks or drinks served with sugary sentences?

Both are deadly in the long run, I suspect.

“Is it possible to get a cup of coffee-flavoured coffee anymore in this country? What happened with coffee? Did I miss a meeting? They have every other flavour but coffee-flavoured coffee. They have mochaccino, frappaccino, cappuccino, al pacino…coffee doesn’t need a menu, it needs a cup.” – Dennis Leary

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Taking care of business

Lots of new words and phrases continually enter the lexicon. “Going forward” springs to mind, now in prolific use instead of saying “in future” like we used to.

The Prime Minister is fond of saying “at the end of the day” and its usage is now widespread.

“At this point in time” entered the glossary many years ago and is still heard regularly, but is merely an affectatious way of saying “now.”

A new word we will have to come to grips with is “Uber.” According to my trusty old Chambers dictionary uber means prototype and the word is now being used as a brand name for an amateur taxi service. And so a painful change is in the offing for taxi operators with a system that effectively lets anyone become a taxi driver using their own car through a proprietary mobile payment and passenger matching system.

Rapid technological change is more often than not distressing for those affected and the outcomes are littered along the highway of broken dreams with companies like Kodak, Betamax and the former mobile phone giant Nokia.

As far as I am aware this new technology has not yet reached the Wairarapa, but I suspect it is only a matter of time. It is a disruptive element that threatens the taxi industry worldwide and has been greeted with outrage by the incumbents. The anger is understandable when you consider that taxi drivers have made significant investments in their vehicles and their licenses.

Those who welcome the competition however point out that New Zealand has the unenviable reputation of being the most costly place in the world to catch a cab, despite the industry being deregulated in 1989. Christchurch, Queenstown, Wellington and Auckland all rank in the top ten of having the most expensive fares in the world.

Incidentally, Uber does not do casual pick-ups. You cannot hail a Uber down in the town. You have to pre-register and order one through an app on your smart phone.

And so now “Uberization” has become a buzz word that applies to other ideas that use the uber-style of marketing services. This, by the way, is described as “trapping a series of innovative processes, phone-enabled geo-location payments and driver management distribution, into an app-accessible service.”

A bit long-winded, but likely to be a future formula for many forms of commerce.

The latest Uber service has surfaced in New York and involves standing in a queue for a customer who simply doesn’t have the time or the inclination. In the Big Apple Robert Samuel, the founder of The Uberization of Everything.com has a team of “dudes” who wait in line for Broadway shows, sample sales, tech releases, popular nightspots and even brunch waitlists.

Samuel recently spent 48 hours outside an Apple Store waiting for the iPhone 6s for a client. He was first in line, slept in a fold-up cot for two nights, had pizza delivered to his spot and “snagged” $1000 for his trouble.

At this point in time and going forward, at the end of the day it’s not a bad way of making a living.

“No one can possibly achieve any real lasting success or ‘get rich’ in business by being a conformist” - John Paul Getty

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Time to wave the red flag

There’s an old story, popular back in the 1950’s, about a young British lad walking along the footpath when a Rolls-Royce passes and splashes him with water that had accumulated on the roads edge. As the car speeds away he shakes his fist and declares “One day I’m going to bring down the ruling class.” On the other side of the Atlantic a similar situation. A Cadillac speeds past a young man, drenching him with gutter water and the boy smiles and says, “One day I’m going to own a Cadillac.”

The Aesop-type fable was meant to illustrate the difference in attitudes between the two countries. Post-war America was enjoying audacious prosperity while Britain was being dragged down by the intransigent labour unions that held sway until iron lady Margaret Thatcher and her conservative colleagues took control of the treasury benches.

And so now it looks like a giant leap backwards for mankind if new British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn can convince United Kingdom constituents to allow him to lead them to the Promised Land.

First up might be a name change.

Totally against the monarchy, presumably he would want to rule over a United Republic as opposed to the United Kingdom. He was criticised by Labour front benchers recently when he refused to sing the national anthem at the Battle of Britain memorial service in St Pauls Cathedral.

Also a conspiracy theorist, Corbyn believes 9/11 was “manipulated” to make it look like Osama bin Laden was responsible to allow the West to go to war with Afghanistan.

So the Rolls-Royce crowd will be looking on with fear and loathing, but so too are the Cadillac aficionados.

Hillary Clinton thought she was in for a stress-free ride to the Democratic nomination and subsequently becoming the first women president of the US of A. But then an extreme left-wing Democratic candidate pops up to make inroads into her initial lead and is drawing just as many enthusiasts to his rowdy rally’s as extreme right-wing Republican candidate Donald Trump.

America’s newest postulant is Bernie Sanders, a 74 year-old Senator from Vermont who describes himself as a democratic socialist and is taking the same tack as Corbyn, offering a progressive utopia of free higher education, health care for all, bolstered wages and chastened billionaires. Using the internet wisely and without beaming any TV ads he addresses huge audiences including a recent gathering of 28,000 faithful followers in Maine. Despite his age, commentators say his freshness beats incumbency and the perception of sincerity is appealing.

And so our two great allies are risking prosperity for a surprising return to a tired old order.

After failing miserably in Eastern Europe, Cuba and North Korea, Marx’s socialist nirvana could be resurrected by those who have learnt nothing from history

Meanwhile in New Zealand the left-wing luvvies, full of sound and fury, are demanding a strange new flag that signifies nothing and is about as far away from the corporate branded version that John Key had hoped for as you could get.

If the boring Red Peak becomes the chosen ensign, the Prime Minister will feel like he has been drenched by his own BMW.

“For us in Russia, communism is a dead dog, while for many people in the West, it is still a living lion.” - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

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The hand that rocks the cradle

One-time rugby league star Graham Lowe committed an unpardonable sin when he described Jacinda Ardern on the Paul Henry Breakfast as being “a pretty little thing” and “would look good as a prime minister.” The twitterati and other sections of the social media erupted and Graham sensibly laid low until the furore died down.

While the comments enraged many of her colleagues, Ms Ardern was not drawn to respond.

Mr Lowe was born in another era and while most have sought to cope with the times that Bob Dylan reminded us were a-changing, Mr Lowe may well have got too many bumps on the head during his stellar career to recognise the subtle amelioration.

There was a time when flattery got you everywhere when dealing with the fairer sex, but they’ve seen through the male veneer and now justifiably demand a level playing field in gender communication.

Last week, on the other side of the world, 27 year-old Staffordshire barrister Charlotte Proudman was incensed with a response from award-winning human-rights lawyer Alexander Carter-Silk to a Linked-in advertisement she had posted on the internet which included a head and shoulders photograph of herself.

Carter-Silk, many years her senior, posted that he was “Delighted to connect; I appreciate that this is probably horrendously politically incorrect, but that is a stunning picture”.

Ms Proudman, perhaps not as astute as Jacinda Ardern, was swift to respond. “I find your message offensive,” she shot back; “I am on Linked-in for business purposes, not to be approached about my physical appearance or to be objectified by sexist men. The eroticism of women’s physical appearance is a way of exercising power over women. It silences women’s professional attributes as their physical appearance becomes the subject. Unacceptable and misogynistic behaviour; think twice before sending another woman (half your age) such a sexist message.”

She then posted the two-way transcripts on the internet and the response throughout Britain made Graham Lowe look like an amateur at offending women. Uncharacteristically, I thought she had a point. I have no argument with what she did. A young woman should be able to post an advertisement about herself and her professional attributes on a business networking site without having to suffer the unwanted attention of men commenting on her appearance. However it turned out that by publically shaming the over-enthusiastic flatterer meant the reaction was not necessarily to her liking.

Not even the sisterhood backed her unconditionally. Writing in the Daily Mail Jan Moir said “Ms Proudman had presented herself as equal part heroine and victim, something only Joan of Arc had successfully pulled off in the past. To prove what an excellent feminist she is Carter-Silk has been humiliated and she has been vindicated”

Ms Proudman regarded the critical judgement by many as demonising, but as one commentator put it “If you cover yourself with honey and climb into a sewer, don’t expect any sympathy if you come out covered in cockroaches.”

After 52 years of married bliss the female that rules the roost in our household is a half-poodle, half-shitzu called “Molly.” She’s a pretty little thing….

“There are three kinds of men, the handsome the caring and the majority” - George Coote

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Solving Auckland's problems

I’m full of admiration for the My Masterton campaign, launched in February by the Masterton District Council in partnership with the Wairarapa Times-Age to increase jobs and population in the district. The newspaper offered $100,000 of “in kind” advertising; presumably this will be in the northern regions where their parent company owns The New Zealand Herald.

The District Council has a large graphic sign on its building set to indicate job increases. To date it would seem none have been signified, but its early days yet and it would churlish for us all not to get behind the campaign to endeavour to depopulate Auckland.

If we don’t succeed in this, the city of sails has the propensity to bring us all down.

If you are a saver the latest interest rate decrease announced by the Reserve Bank Governor last week is not much of an incentive for you to maintain your frugality, but much of what happens in New Zealand’s financial sector is determined by what’s going on in Auckland.

A promotional TV commercial was filmed in Masterton last week which presumably will be played to the whole country with Auckland as its focus.

There was time when TV advertisements were regional. Now they are beamed to a NZ-wide audience and many of these promote Auckland-based stores or services. Are you ever going to get the opportunity to buy a half-price vacuum cleaner from Godfrey’s well-stocked carpark for instance?

As I see the overflown TV views of the new housing estates in Auckland I wonder if they’ve thought about the whole package of facilities that make up a community. Masterton can offer ready-access to handy well-established schools, medical centres, churches, supermarkets, crèche’s, live theatres and movie theatres, restaurants, an art and history centre, splendid parks and reserves and an adequate public transport system.

Passage to all of these is just a short unhindered drive - and for many, within walking distance.

If Aucklander’s made the switch they would be amazed at the spare time they suddenly found they had. Most currently have to get up at dawn to get to work on time and return well after dusk. Meanwhile their mortgage repayments on a modest three-bedroomed home costing in excess of a million dollars don’t bear thinking about.

What I fail to see though is any significant growth or demand for new housing happening in Masterton. The Wairarapa Property publication, posted in our letterboxes each week, seems to be offering more and more reasonably-priced local homes for sale, many of them at least half the price of a similar dwelling in Auckland. However there is little evidence that these bargains are being snapped up by enthusiastic outsiders.

To exacerbate the problem Masterton’s retail hub is struggling, caused in part by internet shopping sales and also large superstores with free car parking locating on the town’s fringes.

Given that shopping is now an essential form of entertainment for many, anyone contemplating a shift to the regions will want to see a thriving retail centre.

And living in a small town can have its drawbacks. Ever since I put a Neighbourhood Watch sign on our front gate every Tom, Dick and Harry comes in and wants to know the time!

“The higher the buildings, the lower the morals” - Noel Coward

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