By Britomart Station I sat down and wept

The Morning Report Supercity debate [audio - it goes on a bit] was not quite as bad as I had expected. I had expected it to be something like a re-run of the Fifties celebrity panel game What's my personality disorder? But it seems the candidates had a period of meditation before the show, or perhaps it was just a little too early in the morning. Instead of fighting, they entertained us with their unrealistic visions for Auckland's public transport. Since none of these involved airships, submarines or hovercraft, I quickly lost interest.

The tragedy of the supercity mayoral race is that the smartest man in the room - Mike Lee - left the room. I know he goes on a bit - I once left a welcoming speech he was giving at a Labour Party conference in Takapuna, walked the length of Hurstmere Road and back, returned to the Bruce Mason Centre and found he was still talking. But still, he has the smarts. He also runs a Regional Council which might easily have taken on the responsibilities of the super city without the need for creating the mess we are in now. Just think: we need not have had that silly Royal Commission, all that fuss about that idiotic plan to create iwi aldermen, all those boards and wards, Rodney Hide's violence to said boards and wards, the creation of corporate fiefdoms and the state of unpreparedness we now are in. We could have had the ARC, loaded.

Perhaps we might have gotten a monorail as well.

Sonntag aus licht

How sure of themselves yet how entirely fictional most monuments are. If one inspects the memorials of Washington, for instance, what contradictory messages one receives. the desire to symbolise something towers over the specific content, yet small incongruities collect and make their commentary on the blankness, tallness and monotony preached in such enclaves.

The two poles of a monument are the personal and the impersonal, a confiding saint's or great man's cell - the relic monger's haunt - against a battlefield memorial, biting its tongue, imposing silence. Even among anti-monuments once can set the garrulous Oldenburg against the mute Christo. One of the latest monuments brings the two ends of the scale somehow in touch. the Vietnam Memorial in Washington is all words not images, embarrassed not assertive, using no rhetoric hollow or otherwise, yet speaking exhaustively. It forms the universal utterance these structures usually seek without finding.

Harbison, Robert.
The Built, the Unbuilt and the Unbuildable :
In Pursuit of Architectural Meaning.
London: Thames and Hudson, 1991.

Yes, yes, but how does the World Trade Center Tribute in Light manage to be so utterly kitsch?

Exit through the crèche

Concurrence payments are additional remuneration - up to about 15 per cent extra on top of salaries - that principals can get for duties performed beyond their normal responsibilities. This could include recruiting international students, running a school creche or special projects.

School boards must apply for clearance for the payments via the ministry. The cash comes from respective schools' operational funding.

Another source said one change being mooted following the audit included payments having to be authorised by the full school board in future, rather than by just the chair.

Evidence, if it were needed, of the pervasiveness and corrosiveness of managerial culture: every state school in the country relies on the teachers and other staff giving their time freely for extra-curricular activities and on the voluntary assistance of parents; yet principals demand additional remuneration for doing something that is not on the job description.

But, we will be told, it is all about the recruitment and retention of talent, about leadership. Our managers deserve and expect adequate compensation, and will go elsewhere if they do not receive it. And then where would we be? Rudderless and leaderless, unmanaged, ummonitored....

Bliss would it be in that dawn to be alive; but to be young would be very heaven.


Meanwhile, it is 1972 - taking drugs is still fun and Lemmy still has his looks:

Revenge of the Philistines

Much of Britain’s industry has disappeared. The recently vaunted financial sector is in disarray. But British universities remain world leaders. The conditions that have made this possible included, in the past, a loose, egalitarian organization, substantial autonomy for scholars and teachers, and a generous esprit de corps. Yet instead of preserving this distinguished and successful sector of British life, both Labour and Tory governments seem bent on rearing hierarchies, crushing autonomy, and destroying morale. The idea, apparently, is to reconfigure the universities on a corporate model—not, however, the democratic model used by Google and other corporations that are flourishing now, but the older one of the 1950s, which did wonders for such British industries as shipbuilding and car manufacturing.

Particularly painful is the University of London’s attempt to disperse the unparalleled collections of the Warburg Institute. Named for a supremely imaginative historian of art and culture, Aby Warburg, the institute began as his library in Hamburg, which was devoted to the study of the impact of classical antiquity on European civilization. The library was rescued from Hamburg in 1933, following Hitler’s rise to power, thanks in part to the help of British benefactors. In the midst of World War II, Rab Butler, president of the British Board of Education, decided that the institute must be kept in Britain, and that the only way to do this was to make it part of the University of London, which was in those days a great force for openness and innovation in British higher education.

In which the New York Review of Books calls for the Warburg Institute Library to be saved from The University of London.

Classics illustrated

For Stephen, here is Frank Zappa's The Perfect Stranger conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen, from Finnish television. This piece was commissioned from Zappa by Pierre Boulez.

Some might say that I am a pretentious git for posting this. But those some would be wrong. I am only posting this to see whether the new template I have chosen is wide enough to fit embedded YouTube clips. I really did not want a new template, but I have tired of manually changing the width and height of YouTube clips to fit them into the blog (I am however,grateful to Leigh of the Rushleigh Chronicles for telling me how to make such a change).



Anyway, I like it.

It's not about me

I have delayed writing anything about Christchurch, for fear of sounding prattish: we blogging types have a genetic weakness for telling every story as if it were a personal concern. I expect you do not want to read of my surprise to hear Mary Wilson when I turned on NatRad on Saturday morning, of how I spent an anxious morning worrying about Christchurch friends and the architectural works of Peter Beaven, of how I burnt my porridge. But then, you don't need me to be prattish when you have the New Zealand Herald:

All Black assistant coach Steve Hansen and his family face an uncertain future in their Tai Tapu home, renovated only two months ago. Hansen delayed his departure to Australia with the All Blacks to assess the quake damage that has left the house unliveable. It is without power and water, and engineers must assess the foundations to see if it's salvageable after cracks opened up in the walls and floors.

It worsens as it continues:

Read's wife is a geography major and had quickly realised what was happening.

The bottom of the barrel is reached here:

Debutant-in-waiting Colin Slade lost a chimney off his roof.

Yes folks, no tragedy would be complete without an All Blacks angle, and this was the best they could manage. Had Sir Miles Warren been an All Black, we might have heard more about Ohinetahi. Sir Miles and Maurice Mahoney did at least feature on Nine to Noon (audio here), the show which relishes a disaster.

Moving on, that nice Mr Key said it was a miracle that nobody was killed. No it wasn't: it was the Building Code; Don't listen to me: listen to Morning Report. Mr Key should bear this in mind the next time his ACT chums talk about removing red tape.

At least Mr Key is ready with an inappropriate metaphor:

"I think there is some good work we will have to do there but we are going to have to break down some walls that will operate between private insurance companies, EQC [the Earthquake Commission], the councils that give those consents."

Gentle readers in Christchurch: you are in my thoughts, and I am sure the thoughts of other gentle readers.

Exit through the bookshop

Clarkson said he felt "a bit hurt really".

"It was such a shock. It was horrible actually because I liked him and he came round to my house and had drinks and all that time he was writing a book," he said.

Jeremy Clarkson should have known better: you can't trust anybody these days; they all have a book in them. Quite who would buy a ghost-written autobiography of someone who is only famous for his anonymity is anyone's guess. But then, Tony Blair's Journey, mysteriously named after a naff seventies band, has become something like the best-selling book in the history of the universe, so there is no accounting for taste.

Graham Beattie has some extacts which show that Blair would have benefitted from a ghost writer:

"the blunt and inescapable truth is that though Saddam definitely had WMD, since he used them, we never found them. The intelligence turned out to be wrong ... We admitted it. We apologised for it. We explained it, even. "The mistake is serious; but it is an error. Humans make errors. And, given Saddam's history, it was an understandable error. "So the aftermath was more bloody, more awful, more terrifying that anyone could have imagined. The perils we anticipated did not materialise. The peril we didn't materialised with a ferocity and evil that even now shocks the senses."

Now read on... or, move Blair's book to the crime section.

We can at least be grateful to Mr Clarkson for revealing to us the wonder that is Witney TV; and for giving me another excuse to post this promo, in the hope that one day all bookshops will be like this one:

It's the way he tells them

In a speech to the small-business conference at Massey University yesterday Mr Williamson suggested the opposition to foreign ownership was often linked to the ethnicity of the foreigner.

But Mr Key, who has voiced concerns about foreign ownership and said he did not want New Zealanders to become tenants in their own country, said Mr Williamson was probably being flippant.

"Maurice is known for his strong sense of humour and I think it was on display yesterday," he told media in Auckland today.

Gentle readers are invited to enter the Fundy Post's Spot the Punchline and Win an iPod competition. If you can sense the strong sense of humour or feel the flippancy, send a brief description or an artist's impression to the usual address.

Home again

The house has always been a focal point of life for New Zealanders. Hospitality in the home has played a prominent part in our society. In the early days, a widely scattered and sparse population meant that friends and strangers alike were invited into the home, because there was nowhere else for them to go.

Overseas, people met in restaurants and cafes. In New Zealand, friends gathered in each other's houses for entertainment, because of the lack of communal facilities. This is a tradition which has continued into the present day not only in the country districts but in the towns and cities as well.

Because of this, there has never been any lack of interest in houses. New Zealanders spend far more personal effort, time and money than Europeans on improving and beautifying their homes. But though we are the great do-it-yourselfers, we have so far produced little that is distinctive or typical of the country in interior design.
...
People are beginning to realise that a new way of life needs a new style of living, new shapes in furniture, new things to decorate their homes, and that the things from a bygone generation no longer fit in.

There is handful of architects and designers trained in this country who are less influenced by England than their predecessors. They are trying to establish an indigenous New Zealand style.

New Zealand style doesn't mean Maori designs on fabrics or floor rugs or historic prints of the voyages of Cook on our walls, though these can have their place. It should be an expression of the way we live today, rather than how an older generation lived. It should show how were are different from the English, Americans and Australians and reflect the attitudes that make the atmosphere of Wellington or Auckland unlike that of Sydney or London.

We don't need to break completely with the past or cut ourselves off from what is happening to interior design overseas, but rather we should absorb the ideas, and then crate a style that has the stamp of local individuality.

Frequently a New Zealand family isn't strikingly different from a family in any other country with a similar standard of living. But there are nuances in our character. We are, on the whole, highly democratic, unostentatious, utility-conscious, conventional rather than individualistic, and with a fondness for that particular quality that makes us call a spade a spade. All this should be reflected in our interiors, in a New Zealand style.

Jim and Judy Siers, and Vivien Shelton.
A Guide to Home Decorating in New Zealand:
A H & A W Reed, 1971.

In which the economy goes south

So, South Canterbury.
No, me neither.

I suppose you want to know what we have bought. It is difficult to tell at this early stage, but I fear we might now own Timaru.

If only it were that simple. No, it seems what we have bought is a pig in a poke. Or rather, our government (led by a man who frankly is a sad git) looked inside the poke, saw its contents did not include the promised pig, and yet still guaranteed it.

The phrase being put around by the men in suits was "too big to fail."Hey, guess what? It wasn't. It did. Don't trust me on this; trust Liam Dann:

A lot was already wrong with South Canterbury when it had its public guarantee extended. For a start it was effectively in breach of its trust deed and had failed to file audited accounts. Having a look at the numbers is usually considered important when assessing a business decision. The Treasury - which officially makes the call on who gets in to the scheme - could have waited months before accepting the finance company. But it didn't. It rushed South Canterbury in to safety because the Government knew it was a goner without the guarantee - although in the end it was a goner anyway.

So, what do we get? Apparently, this:

South Canterbury Finance is one of New Zealand’s largest & most successful finance companies, providing finance, loans & solid investment opportunities for over 80 years. With a strong regional presence throughout New Zealand, you can trust the team at South Canterbury Finance to provide outstanding customer service and sound advice.

South Canterbury Finance have a Standard & Poor's Short-term credit rating of C (CreditWatch Negative) and Long-term credit rating of B- (CreditWatch Negative)

In short: on Internet, nobody knows you are a dog. And it helps if you have investors who are too stupid to read the small print:

In a particularly pernicious disclosure statement in the small print of its prospectus, SCF revealed how 37 per cent of its loan book was secured "by a second or subsequent ranking mortgage".

It helps further if you have a government which has the same reading difficulty. And that government is helped in its turn by a Chief Political Commentator who was taught by Dr Pangloss.So, there you are. The people of South Auckland will now be helping out the people of money in South Canterbury. When the people of South Auckland make a bad financial decision, they have to go to loan sharks, because they don't have anything to offer as collateral for a loan. The people of money (who at least had something to invest) don't have this problem; they paid for a government which will guarantee their bad decisions with its own.

Straight outta Canterbury: