Is dog-wagging a form of animal cruelty? I only ask because Mr Wishart uses the phrase in his rather incandescent piece about light bulbs, a piece which takes the "dark mood of talk radio callers" to be a portent of the Government's demise. How would he notice? The mood of talk radio callers is always dark and always twitter and bisted about the Government. Somehow I doubt whether the votes of these barking mad misanthropes are central to Labour's election strategy.
Sometimes I do wonder about Mr Wishart. I would have that thought that he might pause for reflection before claiming that the Government is going to be brought down by its light bulb policy. I wonder more about his blog's regular commentators. Note the remarks of Acid Comments, who already has been poisoned by the mercury in a light bulb, although the bulb did not break; somehow the mercury seeped through the glass and out into the atmosphere, giving Mr Comments a migraine headache, a little-known symptom of mercury poisoning. As Mr Comments recalls, "after I'd finish my dinner I was having collapses, burning sensations, numbness, body weakness, etc." I blame the curry.
Then there is KevOB, who finds energy-saving bulbs to be deficient in red, a colour which makes him function better in Winter. Then there is Rick, who will buy a pallet of old-school bulbs so that he will still be wasting his money twenty years from now. Ha! That will show them! Then there is Warrick, who knows that the new bulbs "don't save you 75-80% more like 50%." There, you see, its a bloody con. Finally, there is Zen Tiger, who thinks the Consumer should choose.
Somehow it always seemed rather obvious to me that one should spend as little money as possible on electricity and that any measure to reduce the country's electricity usage would be worthwhile, on both environmental and economic grounds. But then I didn't realise, before I began reading rightish blogs, that there are people like KevOB who obviously become quite aroused by the thought of a 150 watt halogen; nor had I come across men like Rick who want to spend more, just to show the nanny state that they are free, if impoverished, men.
What they do not realise is that the nanny state is not trying to smother them, but to protect the rest of us from these morons.
If I were a girl and I wanted to be a Riot Grrrl, I couldn't think of a better pseudonym than Susan Apathy. It would be post-punk perfection. But I am not a girl and will never be a Riot Grrrl. Besides, the name is already taken: oddly enough it belongs to the Deputy Chief Executive of the Catholic Education Office.
Ms Apathy was in the news this weekend for some encouraging news: the Catholic Church in New Zealand is running out of priests and nuns. Ms Apathy has a solution, an old favourite of the Catholics: get them while they are young. "Young people are at their most idealistic in their mid to late teens," says Ms Apathy; she is encouraging Catholic schools to recruit for the Vocations.
Nothing new here, I am sure you will agree. But it is worth noting here that we are paying for these Catholic schools. Under a thoroughly dirty deal done by that nice Mr Kirk with the Catholics in 1974, the priests and nuns get to run their schools more or less as they please and we get to pay for them. The other denominations have also got into this act and so we also pay for Anglican, Presbyterian, Muslim and Hare Krishna schools, as well as a whole bunch of fundy schools and one run according to the cod philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.
You will of course have seen Mr Finnemore's post on the subject of integrated schools; I believe Mr Finnemore himself is the product of a Catholic integrated school. It is worth noting that there are no private Catholic schools in New Zealand: the deal offered by Mr Kirk (give us your votes and we will pay for the rescue of your crumbling schools) was so irresistible that the entire Catholic education system was converted. And it has paid dividends: posh schools like Baradene College of the Sacred Heart and St Peter's College are run on grounds of academic, social and religious discrimination at public expense. In short, it's a middle-class rip-off.
As a special treat to you, dear reader, here is a guest post written by no less than Mr Sam Finnemore, the hero of a thousand fights at Ian Wishart's place, as well as Books Editor at Craccum and all-round good chap.
The expression of discontent amongst fundies is not limited to the standard (but now rather rare) major-issue blasts from Family First. The conscientious fundy-watcher keeps an ear to the ground for local rumblings too. And so, I came across an interesting piece in Auckland’s second-best-known free local paper, the Aucklander, on June 4, describing the tensions between ‘God and state’ in integrated schools.
Integrated schools, of course, are what happens when a private school accepts the state school curriculum, and some controls over its roll, in return for a boost in funding and realistic salaries for teachers. It’s usually an arrangement which benefits students and institutions alike. It also happens to be a useful arrangement for religious schools, who get the benefits of the state system for their students along with the maintenance of their ‘special character’.
Well, that’s the idea. As the economic downturn bites, leaving some parents with less cash for private school fees, financial considerations are leading more private schools to consider integration as an answer. The Aucklander cites Kingsway School in Orewa, which integrated in 1998, as one institution happy with the shift. Hebron Christian College in Mount Albert has also just applied to integrate; principal Geoff Matthews says that a desire for “all socioeconomic groups to be able to attend” was part of the motivation behind the move.
But we are not concerned with these well-meaning Christians, but rather with our fundy of the day: Michael Drake, principal of Carey Christian College in Panmure. For Mr. Drake, integration is – yawn, but it’s the only appropriate paraphrase here – a deal with the Devil. “An integrated school has effectively sold itself to the state. You’ve ceased to acknowledge God as your supreme head.” Drake, according to the Aucklander, would rather see Carey Christian College turn students away than strike a bargain with the perfidious Ministry of Education.
Carey College, I hasten to say, isn’t a completely independent outpost from the pagan education system. Students study biology, physics and chemistry from OUP's Cambridge Coordinated Science textbooks , which presumably deal with recent developments in Godless natural philosophy. But this is compensated for by another suggested text, Why I Believe in Creation – ‘not required, [but] a most helpful magazine-format apologetic suitable for all grades’. There are also ‘special helps’ texts, including both a guide to English grammar and Andy McIntosh’s Genesis for Today, ‘an outstanding book [demonstrating] the importance of the doctrine of creation for life and faith, as well as for science and history’.
But the key to the Carey philosophy on integration lies in this remarkable essay by one Doctor Noel Weeks of Sydney University, which warns against:
… a two-pronged government attack upon Christian schools. The first prong is to attack any way in which Christianity may be seen to threaten the tacit government support for personal indulgence. Schools must not by discipline threaten the child’s right to self-determination They must not question teachers’ right to sexual indulgence, the litmus test of which is the right to homosexuality. The second prong is to gain total control of curriculum and enforce whatever complex silliness is dreamt up by a bureaucracy justifying its own existence.
If you are not quite clear on Dr. Weeks’ vision of the Ministry of Education parachuting gay schoolteacher special forces into private schools, รก la 1984 classic Red Dawn, there is also this:
Second, we must expect government bureaucratic systems to be corrupt and tyrannical. In spite of what they supposedly aim to achieve, the corruption of the heart subverts the organisation…We have to fight the artificial outcomes which are expected, and the attempt by politicians and bureaucrats to fill the curriculum with junk… The model I have described of personal indulgence coupled with managerialism, is basically what Scripture sees as characteristic of pagan societies: greedy and immoral populace and tyrannical kings. As a society becomes more overtly pagan, it is to be expected that it will show the dynamics of a pagan society. Our call is to recognise that and to resist it.
For now, it seems, the Christian Wolverines of Carey Christian College will carry on fighting the good fight. It almost seems unsporting to tell Mr. Drake that there are indeed many organizations which provide pure, quality Christian education, without any buckling to the needs of the state or to integrating the children of the faithful into ‘pagan’ society. They’re called churches, and they have cornered the market. Schools, being in the business of somewhat broader education, ought to be more open to compromise, if only for their students’ sake. If Carey College persists and survives, well and good. But it’s very possible that Mr. Drake’s vision of a smaller school without compromise might backfire. There often isn’t much left to render unto Caesar when your students are outnumbered by the Apostles.
It is funny, is is not, how the drones of the Religious Right drone on about the invidious nature of Rights and about the tyranny of "judicial activism," while a group called Right to Life spends a lifetime in the courts attempting to make judges change the abortion law. No, on second thoughts it is not funny at all, because this time they have in part succeeded. A judge with the unlikely name of Forrest Miller has made a judgement in favour of Right to Life New Zealand and against the Abortion Supervisory Committee.
Right to Life had claimed the Abortion Supervisory Committee had failed to properly interpret the Contraception Sterilisation and Abortion Act, so "full regard is given to the rights of unborn children". I am not sure how they got further than the car park with this claim, given that the notion of the unborn having rights is absurd. It seems Justice Miller has complex views about this matter: the abortion law neither "confers or recognises" a legal right to life of the unborn child; however, the Bill of Rights, through the abortion law, had recognised the unborn child had a "claim on the conscience of the community and not merely that of the mother".
In its defence, the Abortion Supervisory Committee said it had no power to "review or oversee the clinical decision-making process," which makes one wonder what it does do. It also denied that New Zealand had "abortion on request", and said there was no evidence of this. The Judge thought otherwise, it seems because nobody had ever been prosecuted for breaking the rules.
According to the Press, Justice Minister Annette King said it was premature to talk about the implications of the judgement. "When it is completed and a judgement is made, the Government will seek in-depth advice from Crown law on the implications." Frankly, I think she is stalling. I think nobody in her Ministry yet understands the Judge's decision. I think the true meaning of Justice Miller's judgement may be as elusive as the Higgs Boson.
So, what can we learn from this experience? Well, for a start, Rights is difficult. It is difficult to comprehend a group calling itself Right to Life demanding that the Rights of the unborn child be recognised by the Law, especially difficult when that group is a Papist plot. Protip: when a Catholic group talks about Rights, you can be sure something is afoot, because the Magisterium of the Holy Roman Church has no place for Rights. Catholicism is about politics, not philosophy: the politics of Authority. You will not find talk of Rights in the philosophising of the Doctors of the Church or in its Codicils. Rights was invented by Protestants and Atheists in the 18th Century (although, just to make things difficult, these Protestants and Atheists pretended that Rights is universal and ancient, a pretence their successors maintain to this day) and has been opposed vigourously by the Magesterium ever since. And for very good reason: the notion of Rights, of values that are independent of their creator, is anathema to the Authority of the Church. In Catholic thinking, something is good because the Pope says it is so, although a previous Pope may have said it is bad; this condition also applies to bad things - the Pope says something is bad, so it is bad.
I am, of course, no theologian but I have a notion that the notion of a Right to life is heretical. How could anyone, born or unborn, claim a Right to something that is the gift of God? As we know, the Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, but in neither case does any question of a Right arise. Burn them, I say, before this Heresy takes hold.
Interlude: we interrupt this post for a paragraph of moral perversity. Christchurch mother Tracey Hill (why are they always called Tracey - no, hold that thought) believes it is too easy to have an abortion. She should know - she had one. Now she is pregnant again, but this time she will keep the Unborn Child until it is born, and then "adopt it out." She says, "this time around, we're creating a life for someone." Note, if you will, the delicious ambiguity of that claim – is the life created for the Unborn Child or for the someone who will adopt the born child?
That said, we should move on, swiftly. Theology is a difficult matter, mostly because it is nonsensical. Rights, as observed earlier, is also difficult; whether or not Rights is nonsense is a matter of personal taste. The Right to life is particularly difficult, even for living people. When it is applied to those yet to be born, it becomes more difficult still and raises the question of whether the same Right should apply to the dead.
We could go on but, as mentioned earlier (twice), Rights is difficult. So, how do we avoid difficulty? Well, it is simple, really. What we do is we look again and then we realise that this matter is not about Rights at all. It is about sex.
You see, the men and women (mostly men) who go on and on about abortion may talk about the Unborn Child (a figure, like the Unknown Soldier, who is both real and mythical) but mostly they are concerned about sex. It is sex, of a particularly heterosexual kind, which causes pregnancies, some of them unwanted. These men and women (mostly men) do not like sex (except for the purpose of creating children) but they cannot stop it. So they try to stop people who have sex escaping one of its possible consequences, just to show them. If these people are going to have sex and the sex creates an Unborn Child, then they will have to live with it. After all, it is a gift from God.
And those people who have to live with the consequences of sex, they would be women, wouldn't they? Men, the ones with the sperm, are curiously absent from the moral landscape of the Right to Lifers, whether these men are partners, lovers, seducers or rapists. It is the women who bear the consequences and the children. The women get the blame and carry the stigma. And was it always thus? Yes it was, as the thoughts of dead catholic men show.
Who are Pop star Yulia and her husband slash manager Glyn MacLean and what do they want? I only ask because Russell Braun mentioned them. I am blissfully unaware of Yulia's music and intend to remain so, but I cannot help but point and laugh at her absurd husband slash manager, Glyn. He lurks on punk message boards; he makes threats like "we own the only company in New Zealand that licenses music in Hollywood and chances are that your record label may one day approach us to license you;" he then claims to be the injured party. Clearly he is a man to be trifled with.
For trifling purposes, we need go no further than here, an interview in which Glyn and Julia show themselves to be ridiculous and self-obsessed She gets acne; the treatment gives her depression. She suffers from Temporomandibular joint disorder: "Sometimes when I practise at home, I open my mouth and I'm doing this big note and all of a sudden I can't close my jaw." There is a solution to this problem: she could just shut up.
So could he. Obviously Yulia has made a happy man very old and sold many albums to the sort of people who think Haley Westenra is a bit wild, but nobody is fooled by this attempt to claim that nasty punk rockers are out to get her. Nobody, that is, but the Police.
At this point, matters become personal. You see, last week I was threatened by my neighbour, not on a notice board but IRL. He told me he would smash my head through a window. I called the police. The officer dispatched to this case told me that the Police do not like being called out to deal with "trivial" complaints like mine.
Obviously, the Police are very busy dealing with matters arising from acts of self-promotion by Pop star Yulia and her husband slash manager Glyn MacLean. They were also very busy this weekend protecting the stock of Louis Vuitton, who was moving across Queen Street to new premises. He had the help of two police officers, who stood guard while M. Vuitton's assets were transferred to a van. The officers were there on Saturday and again on Sunday. From which I can conclude that, if there is a price on my head, it is less than that of some tacky handbags.
Here is a song about handbags, possibly the only song about handbags in the popular canon. It was written by Mike d'Abo and is here sung by the Stereophonics.
Hey you! Yes, You! Are you one of the hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who have had a gutsful of our MMP electoral system and who, when they are given the chance, will say so loudly and clearly? No? Well, do you know anybody who is one of that number? No, nor me; funny, that.
You see, Garth George proclaims loudly that indeed there are hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders who indeed have had a gutsful of MMP. I wonder where they are. One would have thought some of them might have written letters to the Herald about it and that Garth George, when he was Letters Editor of the newspaper, would have published them. One would have thought also that the issue would have featured prominently in other parts of the Herald's op-ed pages, where strenuous argument over the merits and failings of MMP would have taken place.
Well, its funny I should mention that, because I have just done a search thingy on the Herald's website. And what I found is that the Herald hadn't published any op-eds on MMP this year, until this week; the MMP fox was started by John Key promising a referendum. As it happens, the Herald favours MMP, as does its columnist Brian Rudman, who notes that a majority of respondents to a recent poll also preferred it.
I am sorry to keep on about this but when Mr George says "there are hundreds and thousands of New Zealanders who have had a gutsful of MMP as it stands and who, when they are given the chance, will say so loudly and clearly," one must reflect that the newspaper for which Mr George works could have given them that chance, were such legions to be found. I am not a morning person and so I might have missed the demonstrations; nor am I an idiot and so I do not listen to talkback radio; but I think I would have read about the wailing, and the gnashing of teeth, in the papers - were such wailing and gnashing apparent.
But why should mere facts stop Mr George? The imaginary hundreds of thousands "understand only too well that far too much legislation has been forced through Parliament by MMP governments, both National and Labour-led, in the face of widespread public opposition." O'reilly? I wasn't here at the time, but wasn't MMP introduced because of widespread public opposition to legislation - such as the dismantlement of the welfare state - forced through Parliament under FPP?
But then, Mr George's column is not about facts, but about the Adoration of John Key. It's not just about MMP; it's also about climate change. Mr Key understands, you see, that there is no hurry to pass legislation; that's the kind of guy he is. You will also see that:
in view of all the evidence which has been gathered in the past six years showing that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are not a cause of climate change, the Kyoto Protocol is as out of date as last week's racing guide.
Oh dear. It was all going so well. Mr Key was presented as a man of courage and integrity; but then it turns out that his Boswell is barking. Mr George came to praise Mr Key, but buried him.
If you've never realised your own potential for a fine attractive build... if you're not satisfied with the way your body looks and want a really masculine, handsome body - one that makes the chicks look twice and the other guys envious - then you owe it to yourself to put the Hercules Superdyne System to the test now.
I found this advertisement in the Listener: 24th January 1981, in case you want to make the other guys envious.
If you are wondering what had happened to real men, it seems they are in Kerikeri, where the Police know what to do: the men who harrass a woman go unpunished, while their victim, "not an unattractive looking lady," is taken to the station.
Meanwhile in Christchurch, Mayor Bob Parker gets coy. Having attended a party for online women's magazine Slynkey and handed out prizes which included a vibrator, Mayor Parker then objects to a photo of the presentation being posted on Slynkey's web site."It was perhaps a lapse in taste and judgment by the designer of the site," says Parker; obviously it was not a lapse of taste and judgement by the Mayor, who describes the vibrator as a "prize of a dubious nature."
And finally, Mr Brown tells of this week's Media7. This blogeur attended the making of said programme and learned that Girlfriend magazine is far from coy. You can see Russell talking about sex with women (perhaps that would be better phrased as talking with women about sex) here
The unveiling by the NZ Herald of its porkometer must have caused concern among some male readers; surely they are not going to measure that? But no, as Mr Slack explains, the porkometer is not a device for determining shortages in the trouser department, but a tally of spending commitments by the Government and of promises by the National Party. The Herald presents the information as if Government expenditure and National's promises were equivalent, thus giving the impression that National is thrifty and Labour is spendthrift.
One could, if one were not the NZ Herald, look at the sums in a different way: policies = spending. The Government (which the Herald reminds its readers is Labour-led, just in case anyone had forgotten) responds to problems by creating initiatives which require expenditure. Meanwhile, the National Party has ideas which will require expenditure if ever they are realised. Idiot/Savant makes this point better than I could.
According to the Herald's sums, the Government has twenty initiatives, while National has three ideas. Government expenditure plans amount to $3.999 billion, while National's ideas would cost $1.635 billion. Looking at the components of the expenditure plans, one notices that National has one big idea, Fibre, (which Mr Brown analyses better than I could). According to Mr Key, other ideas will be rolled out in due course - he has made promises about his promises. Of course, Mr Key also has an even bigger idea - tax cuts - which will cost lots of money but which are strangely absent from the Herald's sums, perhaps because Mr Key has not yet said how much he would cut.
Meanwhile the Government is trying to buy votes with such obvious pork-barrel measures as a revamp of Mount Eden Prison and the development and maintenance of an electronic medicines reference book. No wonder they are behind in the polls.
Of course, cynics will say that the Herald is trying to persuade its readers to vote National. You may well think that but I couldn't possibly comment, other than to notice the Herald's eulogy to National's candidate for Auckland Central and the correspondingly sniffy piece about Judith.
Meanwhile, pedants might take issue with the Herald's claim to have invented the porkometer, given that another Herald, the Sydney Morning one, had its own porkometer for last year's Australian elections. One might also take note of the somewhat NSFW blog of one Mr Pinsky, who was using an entirely different porkometer way back in 2006.
My pursuit of happiness, knowledge and a PhD has taken me to the NZ Listener, in the back issues of which I am now fossicking. My purpose is to find articles about Architecture but constantly I am diverted by items like this one, a letter from the issue of 6th September 1980:
Sir- I do appreciate art, and I like Salvador Dali's imaginativeness. But can't I buy the Listener (August 9) without having to shove one of his nudes under the shopgirl's nose, and exhibit it in the lounge for a week? Art is art, and nudes can be culturally enriching, but I still don't want to have one displayed on the coffee-table when visitors arrive.
(Rev) Ray Galvin Auckland
Speaking of the pursuit of happiness, a few weeks back I was making my way to the library when I saw a message chalked on the footpath. It said just that: "the pursuit of happiness", in large colourful letters. My heart missed a beat: or a moment I thought that Canada's finest had reformed to play on campus. Then I realised the message was a advertisement for a meeting of the local stealth-evangelical group, Student Life. Bastards. Here is a song and a video of which they would not approve:
I don't know if this blog is read by whoever is responsible for technical support at the Office of the Children's Commission but, if it is you, I implore you to stop reading right now and take immediate action: go to the Commissioner's office, take away her computer and install Symantec Anti-Bollocks before she can write any more submissions to Parliament like this.
Normally this blogeur is sympathetic to the work of Dr Cindy Kiro and her team but, clearly, something has gone wrong with the operating system. The Commissioner might simply have stated her opinion that the law "does not need to be amended to deal with the issue of tagging and graffiti," but instead she has to tell us about Art: "for some people, graffiti and tagging are seen as legitimate art forms." Oh. Really? The last time my front door was tagged, my reaction was not to think to myself "oh my, someone has gifted me an example of a legitimate art form." My first thought, ungrateful though it might seem, was "some bastard has vandalised my door." I think my reaction is not uncommon.
I also think such a reaction is not confined to one's own property. Take, for example, Rationalist House (64 Symonds Street, Auckland), a building where I used to live and work, and for which I was responsible. It is one of the last surviving buildings of its kind in Auckland and, some years ago, it was restored by the NZARH at great expense. When I was there we spent a fair amount more, having legitimate works of art removed from its exterior. Unfortunately, it now seems that the NZARH have given up the struggle and the walls are covered with such works of art. Perhaps Dr Kiro might like to stop by some time and appreciate these works. She might find she is the lone art lover: the aesthetic appreciation of tagging is still a minority taste.
Lest I seem too harsh on Dr Kiro, I do acknowledge that she acknowledges "that graffiti and tagging can have negative connotations and outcomes for some people." It is a fine and generous sentiment on her part, to acknowledge that the some people can experience negative outcomes. Obviously, in reaching this conclusion, Dr Kiro bears in mind the many people of whom she knows who experience positive outcomes when they see tagging, people for whom this legitimate art form has nothing but positive connotations.
For such people, the experience of walking the streets of Auckland must be like that of Ruskin when he first saw Venice. Such a person, wandering through Myers Park on a Sunday morning might there chance upon the copy of Michelangelo's Moses and notice that it had been freshly adorned with a tag. Doubtless such a person would stand in mute contemplation, thinking to him/herself "how sad that the great Michel Angelo knew not the joy of the spray can, that he might have garnered his own creation with these wondrous marks; but how happy are we, that some angelic child has been seized by the Muse and added to the Italian's marble forms some delicate strokes from his can, thereby bringing to perfection the art of five hundred years past."
Such a person, his/her soul filled with the joy of discovery, might then tarry longer, to consider the history and social commentary which lie behind those designs. S/he might discern the alienation from public spaces felt by the young artist. Being perhaps of a progressive cast of mind, the observer might relieve the frown which by now has marked his/her brow by thinking of solutions to appropriately balance the rights of property owners and the rights of children and young people. "If only," s/he might think, children and young people were to be included in decisions relating to the use of public spaces."
Would that it were. Instead, we live in a land where nobody appreciates the art work of alienated yoof and where many people think that the Children's Commissioner might better spend her time doing something to prevent far too many children experiencing the negative outcome of being bashed to death by their parents.
What Philistines are we. And here is Not the Nine O'clock News:
Is dog-wagging a form of animal cruelty? I only ask because Mr Wishart uses the phrase in his rather incandescent piece about light bulbs, a piece which takes the "dark mood of talk radio callers" to be a portent of the Government's demise. How would he notice? The mood of talk radio callers is always dark and always twitter and bisted about the Government. Somehow I doubt whether the votes of these barking mad misanthropes are central to Labour's election strategy.
