Helen Earth

Hell on earth did Helen Kelly get to have so much sway over the film industry and in particular the production of The Hobbit? Yes she is president of the New Zealand Council of Trade Unions which purports to have 350,000 members which I doubt, but surely in that role her focus should be protecting the interests of members rather than decimating the industry that feeds them? However, the rights or wrongs of the industrial issue are not the issue of this Fryday—despite the fact that Helen Kelly has fostered just about every malcontent going from women’s rights to global warming (oh please!) and her crony Robin Malcolm is almost as bad. No, the issue at issue is who is Helen Kelly? Kelly is a common name but I wanted to know if she is related to the late Pat Kelly—a staunch communist and erstwhile secretary of the Cleaners and Caretakers Union in the 70s. So, where could I find out? Wikipedia of course. But do you know what? When I went there, the page on Helen Kelly had been “deleted.” Deleted? Why does that somehow unnerve me?


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Aitken for it

I am sure there are New Zealanders out there who take the sporting rivalry with Australia seriously. I haven’t met them and nor do I particularly want to, given that they come from Hamilton. But I do derive some modicum (and no that doesn’t mean ejaculation over the Internet) of satisfaction at the look on Australian netball coach Norma Plummer’s face when her team was beaten by the Silver Ferns last night. I have nothing against Norma—I like most men try and avoid that—and I think she is good for the sport and for television, but she along with Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting exemplify everything that is wrong with Australian sport. Confidence, even arrogance, is good in sport and I wish we had more of it in New Zealand. But supercilious superiority is not. And that is what these two exhibit. Norma lost last night. So did Ricky. One is tempted to say to them get over it. But because they don’t read Fryday that’s pointless and in any case I don’t really want them to get over it. I want them and their superiority to dwell in the loser basement for a little while yet and for the Silver Ferns and their coach Ruth Aitken to enjoy all the plaudits they so richly deserve... as New Zealanders.

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When Whetu Comes Knocking

ME: So you want the job?
HE: Sure do, bro.
ME: And you think you are qualified for it?
HE: Sure do, bro.
ME: But why?
HE: Why what?
ME: Why do you think you are qualified for the job?
HE: ‘Cause it’s a choice job.
ME: Yes Whetu, but why do you think you are more deserving of the job than, say, me?
HE: ‘Cause look at me, bro. I looks and sounds like a New Zealander, don’t I? Nobodies look like they come from Aotearoa like Tangata Whenua, unless you thinking of John Key after he is off sunning in Hawaii.
ME: So you think being brown is qualification for the job?
HE: Yep.
ME: Anand Satyanand is brown.
HE: Who?
ME: Sir Anand Satyanand, the Governor General.
HE: The what?
ME: Look, are we at cross-purposes here…?”
HE: I’m not cross.
ME: You’re looking for a job?
HE Sometimes, bro.
ME: You want this job?
HE: Choice job.
ME: The Governor General’s job?
HE: The what?
ME: The…Look, what job are you looking for?
HE: His job.
ME: Whose job?
HE: Paul Henry’s job. Choice.
ME: Oh God!
HE: Free breakfasts, eh?


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Should that not be pubic places?

I feel embodied and enriched by my vicarious association with these wo-men (see previous Fryday), especially when I read what else the one on the left (in more ways than one) has involved herself with:

Research Interests
In 1985 I completed a Masters thesis in which I argued that sexual violence against women helps to ensure that space ‘belongs’ to men. In 1997 I completed a doctoral thesis titled ‘Geographies that Matter: Pregnant Bodies in Public Places’.

Over the past decade my main research interests have been in ‘geography and the body’. I’ve critiqued the (masculinist) epistemology and ontology of the discipline. I have also focused attention on the ways in which particular axes of embodied subjectivity such as gender, sexuality and maternity become entwined with space.

My current research interests are:
- maternities and space including mothers using ICT
- sex and gender studies including masculinity studies
- feminist, queer and poststructuralist theory
- 'fat' bodies: representations and materialities
- food, place and identity for migrant women
- qualitative methodologies

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Ana Kiss (My A**s)

I don't usually give Fryday over to other writers, but I couldn't resist this, which is, characteristically, from the Hamilton NZ Facebook page. Anarchist Geography?:

Two Waikato University feminist geographers have had their work acknowledged by the New Zealand Geographical Society which is meeting in Palmerston North this week.
Professor Robyn Longhurst has been awarded the society’s most prestigious award, the Distinguished Geography Gold Medal for outstanding and sustained contribution and service to geography.
Her colleague, Associate Professor Lynda Johnston has been awarded a Distinguished Service Award for her significant contribution to New Zealand geography and its community over the last five years.
They both obtained their doctorates at Waikato and have gone on to become well known internationally. The Geographical Society’s Executive Manager June Logie says it’s great to see them rewarded for many years of strategic and important work. “They are significant feminist New Zealand geographers who’ve made enormous contributions in their area of research. Their work has received much acknowledgement here and overseas and it’s great to see them.”
Longhurst and Johnston research and write about people and place and the importance and influence of gender in people’s lives. Much of their work has been a collaboration - their latest book is called Place, Space and Sex: geographies of sexualities published by Rowman and Littlefield.
Professor Longhurst says she was drawn to human geography by a previous Society medal winner Ann McGee who taught at Waikato. “When I was a student, Ann really opened my eyes to radical geographies, she even taught anarchist geography, and it became important to me to do research that brought about positive social change.”
“We’ve also had good support for our work from the university,” says Associate Professor Johnston. “Waikato’s led the way with feminist geography and given us time and space to do work that’s far from mainstream and sometimes risky. So it’s good to be recognised.”

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Kaiapoi

In my innocent years—all eleven of them before lust visited—I had a healthy respect for authority. Authority meant my parents, my teachers, Community Constable Jack Highstead and everybody over the age of 12. Of course I was brought up in Kaiapoi where innocence and respect were the norms and a rebellious streak in me meant I soon lost mine. But Kaiapoi never did. It retained its innocence and its naïveté through decades and generations. People who were conceived there stayed there, made love there, married there, had children there, and not necessarily in that order. Generations of families attended old schools there—and even, nowadays, the brash “new” secondary school. Employment was mostly mundane—Kaiapoi is not exactly replete with hit men and theatrical types—and a man could rise to prominence as a pharmacist. That was Kaiapoi’s charm and its innocence, but almost fifty years after I lost mine, it lost its. The earthquake of September 4 destroyed literally and figuratively much of what Kaiapoi stood for. Ironically it wasn’t the epicentre of the quake but it was the centre of devastation and the people of Kaiapoi have a right to be aggrieved at the unfairness of it all. I am told that many of them are still in shock and the television pictures don’t do justice to the injustice. But if Kaiapoi has lost its innocence and temporarily its charm, it has not lost its resilience. The people of Kaiapoi are bouncing back already, determined to rebuild their town and their lives. And if Kaiapoi is now to be forever remembered for its quake rather than its woollen mills, I hope it will also be remembered as the little town that rocked, then came back.

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Please Miss

One of the effects and benefits of growing older and becoming a curmudgeon is one holds teachers in less awe, respect and reverence. Not that I have anything against teachers per se, it’s just that those sentiments, stemming back to childhood when teachers were the primary authority figure, are as hard to shake as Bill English and just as irrelevant. For example and until recently I would in the unlikely event of recognising my Primer Two teacher in the street likely still address her as Mrs Grimshaw and no doubt fawn upon her by reason of her being my erstwhile teacher rather than her being something in the order of 127 years old. That’s teachers for you. They command respect. Until you reach my age. Until you read, as I did this morning, that they are bemoaning the fact that they earn on average and after 15 years experience $52871.00 per annum. And what is the reason for this bemoanment? The sum? No. It is that Australian teachers earn more ($63447.00). So? Listen teachers, there is hardly a profession in which Australians don’t earn more. Live with it. The rest of us do. Stop whinging. And while we are at it, where do you get off publishing self-authored reports stating New Zealand teachers work harder for less pay, without presenting any evidence to support that dubious contention? I am sure that kids are just as obnoxious in Australia as they are here, so I am not sure why you work any harder. And while we are at it (2) what’s with the name of your union? NZEI Te Riu Roa? Oh so very politically correct. Why not something more simple and apt such as Consolidated Union New Zealand Teachers? Now, that I like!

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Plumbing the depths

As spring has so patently sprung it is hard to write about serious subjects. So I won’t; I’ll write about Hamilton. One cannot read Hamilton’s Facebook page without falling into the full scathing scarring morass of deprivation. We in Auckland just can’t hack it with Hamiltonians when it comes to excitement. Look at what our southern neighbours are occupying themselves with this week:

• Wie Waikato Free Children Chinese (Pin Yin) Course http://www.facebook.com/ChineseClass Waikato Chinese School (WCS) will provide a perfect opportunity for children to study free Chinese
• Lainie Poon Hamilton Club Pro Shop - we are a NZRA TOP SHOP FINALIST for the Waikato!!!!! WOOOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOO!!!
• Rebecca Boulton Hoffman We are a finalist too - Bakers Delight Hamilton East Yay, yay. Woo Hoo!!!
• Sustainability divide emerges in wake of recession: University of Waikato
www.waikato.ac.nz
The economic downturn has created a growing sustainability divide, separating New Zealand businesses which “get” sustainability from those which see it as “nice to do”. That’s the key finding from a new survey by researchers at the University of Waikato Management School.
• Cameron Kay Hi Everyone Try this exercise to increase the amount of compassion in your life and the world. The expected result is a personal sence of peace. http://www.avatarjournal.com/en/home/exercises/37-ex-17-compassion.html If you enjoyed that, try these other exercises...
http://www.theavatarcourse.com/en/experience-avatar.htm...l
• Roberta Campbell Just wondering or curiosity's kills but id any1 know's Levi joey olsen just wondering if any1 could check up and see how he is or wot he's up to des day's.. hope he is welll kia ora
• Mediarts Wintec Puppetry exhibition 'Strings Attached' opens on Tues 7th 5.30pm at Ramp Gallery, Collingwood St - all welcome.
• Plumber sets sights on teaching: University of Waikato
www.waikato.ac.nz It may seem like a radical change of professions to some, but James Thomlinson says training to become a primary school teacher after five years as a plumber feels like a natural progression.
• Hamilton NZ feels like wrapping up with a nice fresh scone. Suggestions as to where to find the best scones in Hamilton...?

It was not Fryday’s intent when composing this to make you miserable. Of course not. But now that you are, because you don’t live in Hamilton, I can hope only you can make the best of your Auckland or elsewhere weekend…anyway.

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Roy--You Rock Girl!

So Rodney and Roy have buried the hatchet in something other than each other’s backs and moved on. Their mutual adulation was somewhat nauseating and in Roy’s case more than a little mocking. But any smug satisfaction she now has, she deserves—she out-mastered the old dancing master himself and her sudden appearance in Parliament ahead of time and without notice was beautiful to behold, as was the look on Rodney’s face. Hide had nowhere to hide. Last week Fryday opined that the very public falling-out would hurt Rodney Hide more that it would Heather Roy. Some readers took issue with that, citing that Heather was out of a job and Hide wasn’t. I stick by my contention—I thought then and I think now that the incident would not only lose Hide his job in the next election it would consequently lose the Act Party its place in Parliament. The big loser would be Rodney Hide. I can’t see the events of this week changing that frankly. As they say, once a loser…

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You can run but you can't...Hide

A couple of years back I was waiting at an Eden Park bar (which you do) standing next to someone I vaguely recognised but could not place. I obviously stared at him a little too long because he stuck out a rather large hand and informed me that it was good to meet me again. Okay, he is the consummate politician but the incident shows just how disingenuous Rodney Hide is; he and I had never met before. I was reminded this week of that small incident when I read of his falling out with Heather Roy. Among Roy’s complaints is that Hide is something of a bully. He denies it. But I believe it—he has bullied just about everybody in Auckland over the governance issue. And no amount of dancing, glad-handing, forced joviality and sun-eclipsing attire will persuade me differently. They are simply Jekyll masking the real Mr Hide. No doubt he will run again in the next election, but I believe this destroying of Roy—along with the Super City issue—will damage him more than it will her.

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The Rat Pack

Opposite where I live is a cemetery. Its residents are for the most part quiet. They keep to themselves and don’t trouble me. Or my dogs. Nor do I trouble them. I do not venture over there at night to wake them. I do not invoke or insult them. And there is no intent on my part to instigate Satanist ceremonies and orgies. Indeed I doubt that Helensville harbours orgies of any sort anywhere. In fact, Helensville’s principal appeal may be that its cemetery is the liveliest place in town. It’s a quiet town. Quiet as the grave. Yet we learn today that we have reason to flee—a flea. It appears that the local rats of the rodent kind are carrying typhus carrying fleas. This does not come as welcome news, nor is there consolation in the hospital board’s less than comforting claim that “less than 2% of those who contract typhoid die from it.” We have all been instructed to be on the alert for rats and do all we can to eradicate them from the town. I will participate in that campaign with enthusiasm and vigour. I don’t like rats anyway. Nor fleas. But I do like life. I honour it and my life with my wife. And dogs. I have no intent to be among the 2% and join the folks across the road—nice as they are.

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