The Buck Stops There

My friend Zane said it well, “[Health Minister David Clark] let the Team of 4,999,999 down.” Clearly Clark is not a team player; not only did he breach the rules of Level 4 no fewer than 3 times and was missing in action for much of lockdown, he now has the temerity to blame one of his lieutenants for the parlous state of our porous border—a lieutenant, incidentally,  who never went MIA when needed and as far as I know never breeched one of the lockdown conditions.

Clark said that Dr Bloomfield had accepted responsibility for the border situation and then implied that’s where the matter ends. It does not. It defies belief that Clark believes he has no responsibility in this matter. He may have no direct culpability (I’ll come back to that later) but is morally obligated to support his department and if that means uttering that famous saying “the buck stops here’ instead of his the buck stops there, so be it.

Clark’s actions and inactions make him in my view morally bankrupt and unacceptable as a minister or even as a member of parliament.

Now let’s turn to that other matter. Clark compounds his cowardly swipe at Dr Bloomfield and his own failure to shoulder any of the blame by then accusing our frontline people of not properly executing what he said were clear instructions from the Government.

Really, Clark?

Which instructions, Clark, about what you could or couldn’t do under Level Four were not clear to you when you went on your bike-riding jaunts? It seems to have been clear to the other 4,999,999 of us. Or was it simply that you did not properly execute them.

I don’t want to see anybody out of a job—there are enough of them already. But this minister has to step down. It’s overdue, we don’t need him, and we could do without his arrogance at this time—or at any time.

Oh, and one other message—for the Prime Minister—the buck doesn’t stop there (with Clark) either.

Not so Special, K

Life seems to be measured in redundancies and the creation of them. We glorify in issues de jour and the 15 minutes of fame our drawing attention to them gives us. Usually, I ignore them, knowing they will go away, because there is nothing more boring or indeed redundant than an issue in which Television has lost interest.

But where I do have an issue—literally and figuratively—is the current attempt to make history redundant, or at least history as spoken in European terms. The manifestation of that is the removal and threat of removal of all statues recalling past colonisation—exclusively pakeha.

People, on both sides of the discussion divide, are getting very antsy about that, aren’t they? My issue is that they are focussing on that while a far greater and much more aged issue is getting no attention at all.

I am talking about the letter k.

I ask what possible use is it? We already have the letter C, which often serves the same purpose and sounds the same. The two are interchangeable with, I suggest, C being the more dominant. I say get rid of one or the other. Tip one into the harbour. Daub one with paint. Pull it down and leave the other. I see the one we leave being C because I would hate to see a kountry kalled Kanada and at least we get rid of the Kardashians.

Anyone want to join the movement? I have television coverage lined up.

Road to recovery...without the roadblocks

The way in which we as a country have responded to coronavirus has reinforced what most of us always thought of ourselves—that for the most part we are unified, considerate, kind and pragmatic. We rise to a challenge, do what we are told (for the most part) and just get on with the job of looking after ourselves and others.

Some will say that is no more no less than most other countries are doing and unlike them we don’t have to contend with common and porous borders. True, but in these days of modern transport, isolation is not what it once was, but it is still enough to retain in us a sense of self-preservation and resourcefulness that serve us well at times like these.

However, if coronavirus has brought out the best in us, it has also uncovered some traits of ours that are less savoury.

At first, I thought Fryday should ignore them. We are after all coming out of the most draconian of Levels Three and Four restrictions and our focus now should be on rebuilding the country. But then I thought that if we ignore what happened we are failing to learn from it. If we simply sweep it under the carpet and forget about it, we have the very real danger of it resurfacing again, strengthened this time by the very real power of precedence.

I am talking about the illegal roadblocks that sprung up during coronavirus. Whilst they have been little more than inconvenient (to this point) and none of the forecast violence eventuated, they are still illegal and could in time set a dangerous precedent, particularly because of the Government’s failure to act on them.

The rationale for the roadblocks was spurious to start with, so were the arguments in favour. We were told they were set up to protect vulnerable communities. Why were “their” communities more vulnerable (and valuable) than mine? Because they are largely Maori? Latest figures showed that confirmed cases of Covid-19 among Maori are proportionately far lower than any other New Zealand ethnic group. Whereas, by comparison my age group, 70 and over, is demonstrably the most vulnerable.

It is not a question, in my argument, of them and us. It is a question of putting things in perspective and at least trying to recognise the truth as it pertains to the bigger picture.

And here we turn to chief organiser Hone Harawira's motives. They are in my view not what they seem, or he espouses. He will tell you that it is for the good of the community. Would not the case be made for a more simplistic and superficial motive: Hone needs the attention? He has been out of the limelight for so long that his now largely irrelevant. He was going that way even when he was in politics. Many of his ideas are outmoded, archaic and impractical--replaced by modern real-world ideas promulgated by smart well-educated and visionary Maori.

Hone has nothing else to fall back other than to find an issue, capitalise on it, stir up controversy and stand before the cameras. In other words, do what he does best.

So why am I giving him space? Why not just ignore him? Two reasons: ignoring him won’t make him go away. That would be like ignoring coronavirus in the expectation that it gives up and goes home to Wuhan. Better to put his motivation under scrutiny and have readers consider him either relevant or ridiculous.

The second reason is a more important issue here—precedent. Northland MP Matt King had it right when he refused an invitation from Hone to visit a roadblock to see how it operated. Matt king refused, asking what was the point?  The roadblock(s) could have been serving Devonshire teas (they weren’t) but they are still illegal, and the failure of the Government to recognise that flouting of the law by this or any sector of society is disgraceful.

And what next? What about after coronavirus? Using the original argument of “good of the community” what if Hone thinks, for example, that not enough is spent on the upkeep of local roads or spent on social services? What is to stop him resurrecting roadblocks to extract koha or donations to pay for such services? If the Government's lack of action and tacit approval is any guide, he can do so with impunity.

Far-fetched? Perhaps. But even if there is a remote chance on this one we have already embarked down a rocky road.

Questions people ask

One of my most prized office possessions is my office chair. It is a bit old and frayed now, but it still fits my bum like Michel Jackson’s glove. Sadly of late, the chair has begun to show its age in a less visual manner; the hydraulic raising and lowering mechanism has literally run out of breath. The result is that the chair, like a local council I once worked for, is continually sinking to new depths, taking me with it.
I initially contemplated buying a new chair, but then I decided to google the problem and see if there was a quick and cheaper solution. There was. The solution, involving a hose clamp costing $2.35, works perfectly and the chair has a few years more in it yet.
I am not surprised that I could google a solution. You can find almost anything on Google these days. I remember a Fryday I wrote on how to use toilet seats. When, as part of the research for that article I posed the question on Google, I got  7,690,000 responses.
So that got me thinking; what are some of the most useless questions people ask of Google? I am not the first to ask. Here is what Mobiles.co.uk found when they asked the same question:
1. Do cockerels crow when they feel like it?
2. How many toes does a rhinoceros have?
3. Why is your face on your head?
4. Why does cucumber taste like shampoo?
5. What is the average weight of a panda?
6. What is the length of spaghetti?
7. How can I grow taller?
8. Does the Mandela Effect confirm the existence of a parallel universe?
9. Can helicopters fly upside down?
10. What is the lifespan of a mayfly?
11. How do I get my husband a brain transplant?
12. Who let the dogs out?
13. What percentage of people have seen a ghost?
14. What is the funniest joke in the world?
15. How does a giraffe clean its ears?
16. What happens to old false legs?
17. Where can I find gold?
18. Why don’t ducks feet stick to ice?
19. How can I make a time machine?
And my favourite…
20: Google, where are my keys?

A Street Named Desire

CAUTION: Some words and juxtaposition of words in this Fryday may cause unintended offence.

A few years back the council invited the residents of our small side road to name the road. We promptly had a neighbourhood meeting and almost as promptly decided on a name which the council agreed to.

We intended the name we chose to be our homage to a young boy who died in the area in tragic circumstances back in the early pioneering days. It remains that. Except the name is also that of New Zealand’s most litigious and high-profile former criminal/prisoner, which was decidedly not our intent.

However, it got me thinking—what other streets and roads have been misnamed or can be misinterpreted? So I did a little research, confining myself to English names, and this is what I came up with.

I started in Nova Scotia Canada where the residents of the small community of Porter’s Lake used all their imagination to name their three streets: This Street, That Street and The Other Street.

A more descriptive name was given a road in Montana: Bad Route Road. And the residents of Gansevoort New York must have had too much on their plate when they named a road Anyhow Lane. Same goes for Idaho, which named one of its roads Chicken Dinner Road.

Nor are weird names confined to North America. Truro in the United Kingdom boasts Squeeze Guts Alley, and just down the road in Ivah Lancashire is a very silly name indeed: Silly Lane.
Elsewhere in the UK if you are not thin-skinned you can live in Crotch Crescent or Slag Lane. Castleford has Tickle Cock Bridge and if none of those appeal you can always gird your loins and choose to live in Dumb Woman’s Lane. I am too dumb to find out where that is though I know it can’t be far from Titty Ho.

We in New Zealand have no reason to feel superior. We have also come up with some fairly strange ones. With Halloween coming up you might want to contemplate moving to Vampire Street in Dunedin. And  Christchurch had Godley Avenue, which was anything but when I lived there, and Wellington gives us Handyside street, which comes in handy.

But New Zealanders pale into insignificance against Australians, whom we go to next.
However, I couldn’t leave New Zealand without making a mandatory trip to Hamilton to visit Johnnybro Place and Allgood Place; I believe Hamilton’s Hooker Street is a popular destination.

Australian street names deserve a Fryday of their own (and will probably get one) but here is a sample: we start with the quintessential Australian Beer Bottle Road in Darkan and Upperthong Street in Bullswick; we have Baldknob Road in Peachester, Pisspot Creek in Ross, while Tasmania offers (true) Boobs Flat, Crack Pot, Misery Knob and  Guys Dirty Hole.
And lastly, the place where your average Aussie reckons all we New Zealanders should live when in Aussie, but where more fittingly they should feel right at home—Wanka Road in Darby.

An Aussie by any other name…

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The European Association of Competent Authorities

The weirdly named European Association of Competent Authorities (EACA) seems to be doing all it can to show it is anything but competent.

This is deeply worrying given that its role is to promote the safe and sustainable transport of radioactive material.

To be fair, my assessment of the EACA is based solely on their website, and given that as far I know there are no recorded cases of a radioactive spill in Europe or elsewhere, they are probably competent in their core role.

But if you going to claim to be competent, it is a reasonable expectation that you would be so in all areas of your operation, including your showpiece website.

This is not the case.

For a start, the EACA home page has a panel with an ever-changing array of supposedly important information. I say supposedly because it changes so quickly there is no chance of anybody reading a panel before it changes—unless they are prepared to wait for it to cycle around again.

Then there is this, again on the home page:

“The transport of nuclear material has been successfully and safety undertaken for over 50 years without serious incident yet the transport of nuclear material continues to attract public attention, though it can be said often the public attention is not for reasons of public concern about the safety of transport.”

Really? I guess that apart from the use of “safety” it makes some kind of sense, though it is not immediately obvious and could have been structured better.

However, it is the word competent that draws my attention. It seems a strange word to use in such a context. To me, describing someone or something as competent just gets over the line as faint praise, though to describe my local council here in the Far North as competent would require a massive improvement on their part and a change of management.

 It is perhaps an irony that whilst competent is faint almost opaque praise, its antonym “’incompetent” is a devastating indictment of anybody so described.
The latter is clearly more important and aggressive than the former.

However, to return to the European Association of Competent (though not great) Authorities, maybe they should be congratulated for their restraint in not over-selling themselves. And congratulated, too, for their honesty.
It would be a little more comforting however to have someone a little more than competent handling that radioactive stuff.

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What's love got to do with it? A lot.

The secret of what makes a loving and lasting relationship remains that—a secret. There are many theories, but they also remain what they are—theories. There is no apparent certitude, nor perhaps should there be; love, the supposed cornerstone of a loving relationship, defies definition and is, in any case, fluid and evolving. As it should be; it is more sustainable that way.

What love may be by definition is constantly promulgated in literature and song but rarely as adroitly as in the sonnets of Shakespeare or the multi-authored letters from the front of the First World War. Everyone else  tends to cloud the issue. Lord Byron for example seems to equate love with lust and fails (probably deliberately) to differentiate the two.

However, love exists, regardless of how it may be defined and in what form it is found. And if we are open to it we can collectively share vicariously in its glory.

I felt that way today when I read an article about the Obamas. This week Michelle and Barack are sharing and celebrating 27 years of marriage. No doubt some of those celebrations are private and intimate, but the couple have also used social media to express their love for each other. There is no doubt in my mind what they are saying is sincere, and mercifully they are sufficiently restrained not to make it cringe-worthy.

On Wednesday I was in a tavern restaurant in east Auckland. Seated at a table near me and my companions was a couple whose barely concealed actions almost immediately evoked the oft-used phrase, “get a room”. They were constantly caressing each other; their hands seemingly everywhere. Kisses of which there were many were pecks, more forceful for their frequency than lack of longevity.

Was it love or was it lust? Without knowing this couple’s circumstances, I don’t know. Perhaps like Byron I can’t tell and don’t care, though the prurient among us would say I should.

I am going to err on the side of love. I think they were in love. People who are simply in for the lust rarely express it with such fervour in public. I believe this couple were simply expressing their love for each other and it had such intrinsic hold over them that they were oblivious to their surroundings.

They were, I think, giving literal meaning to the phrase Love is Blind.

They didn’t need a room.

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Letters From Wogistan: Dear Jacinda

The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Office of the Foreign Secretary

123 Bruce Springsteen Boulevard (third door on right). Telephone: 125.

Prime Minister Jacinda Adern

Prime Minister of New Zealand, where sheeps are

Parliament House

New Zealand

Dear Prime Minister Jacinda

Our Presidente for life Yoseph Flagrantie send you fragrant greetings from the Peoples of Democratic Republic of Wogistan.

Our Presidente make apologys. He wanted to write before but we need buy new tipe-writer ribbon. We have one now.

Presidente says he sees you every time on general store television, but worrys that something is wrong. You go everywhere but not seen in own country where the sheeps are. Are you not wanted in your country?

You are wanted in Wogistan. Presidente likes your looks. Wants to offer you job as secretary now that we have tipe-writer. Job not hard. You tipe two letters a day. But you must know how to spel. Not have to sleep with Presidente. That is sheeps job.

You say yes and we send Presidential Skoda to picks you up. You have use of Skoda on Thurdays. I, Wednesdays. And Preseidente and sheeps all other days.

Sincerely

Yoseph xxx

Yoseph Wankerstan

Foreign Secretary The Democratic Republic of Wogistan (Inc.)

Proprietor Spartacus Male Gym and Bathhouse.

If walls could talk

In all my years assiduously watching The West Wing (and its repeats) I have singularly failed to see a single fly on the walls of the Oval Office.

Yes, I know that the Oval Office doesn’t have walls; being oval, it has one wall. But you get the point and if you don’t, allow me to remind you that life for a pedant can be harrowing and best left to masochists.

Of course, there is a lot of foliage on top of the Oval Office fireplace before which visiting leaders are usually photographed with the President. Perhaps a fly could hide there, though I hear that the Oval Office is continually swept for bugs, so perhaps not.

Anyway, if there is to be a fly on the wall of the Oval Office I would like to be that fly when President Donald J. Trump meets Prime Minister Jacinda K.L. Ardern. It will either be a highly stimulating meeting or the shortest on record.

Ms Ardern has said, “I'm looking forward to discussing a wide range of international and regional issues with President Trump, including our cooperation in the Pacific and the trade relationship between our countries.”

If anything is designed to send the President to sleep or to Twitter, that is it.

So, what else? I cannot think of anybody with less in common in terms of policy positions than these two.

In fact, they only have two options for discussing global issues: either argue about them or ignore them...and each other.

I mean, what they going to discuss? Climate Change? Gun control? Immigration? Trade sanctions against Iraq? Jacinda Ardern will afterwards say she raised all those issues with the President; he will smile benignly knowing that she did not. He will say, however, that he praised the Prime Minister on her handling of the “very very terrible” mosque shootings in her country and that he received an invitation by the Prime Minister to visit “Noo Zealand.”

Left unsaid, is Donald Trump would first have to ring this week’s secretary of state to find out where New Zealand is and that he is hosted by a prime minister who isn’t strong on geography either, having earlier thought she was in China when in fact she was in Japan.

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My last opinion piece

This is my last opinion piece, I promise.

In my previous two Frydays I wrote about the blurring, sometimes deliberate, of opinion and fact and how each can be skewed to support an argument. In this Fryday I want to examine the juxtaposition of two other words that can be similarly blurred at least in interpretation but never after deliberation: arrogance and ignorance.

They are two interesting characteristics of human nature. They appear to be polar opposites, yet one can stem from the other and either can be the nurturing source. Exempla: ignorance can be masked by arrogance and arrogance can be fostered by ignorance.

They are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are far from rare among those who hold extreme views (opinions are facts) but it is rare to find them among people running our country.

However, dear readers, we found one—Kelvin Davis.

Kelvin Davis is both ignorant and arrogant. The only question is, which comes first.

This week Kelvin Davis is our acting prime minister. I don’t know why. I know that our deputy prime minister is justifiably on health leave, but I don’t know why Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is absent from Parliament at a time when she should be answering questions about what she knew, and when, of alleged sexual assaults within her party.

Instead, we are left with  (Labour Party deputy) Kelvin Davis answering questions in the House. This is a man who previously called the allegations (of sexual assault) rumours (long after they were patently not), but Davis has been a disaster before.

How did Davis choose to answer questions on this important issue when asked in Questions for Oral Answer?

In Te Reo.

Did he or anybody else give an English interpretation? No. Thus depriving 90 percent of New Zealanders who don’t speak Maori of an answer. Okay, let me deal here with the inevitable arguments that some will use to support this obfuscating by Davis: 

1. Te Reo Maori is one of our three official languages. Yes, it is, but English is the only one universally understood and an English translation should have been provided. If it had been delivered in the third language—sign language—it would have been. But, not Maori.
2. It was Maori Language Week. Yes, it was, but bullshit; common courtesy says that if you are going to make a public statement, make it in a manner that the public can understand. 
3. We should all learn Te Reo Maori. Really? I am not going even to answer that.

 No, Kelvin Davis, who has displayed his idiocy in the past, acted in a deplorable  manner displaying  both his ignorance and arrogance that no amount of argument in his favour can justify. He may think in giving those answers solely in Te Reo he is clever (arrogant) but he nothing more than a twat (ignorant).

Footnote: Fryday has written to the House Speaker asking that in the interest of parliamentary transparency all Te Reo speakers in the House provide an English translation.
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Trumpeting Trump

Last week’s “opinion piece” drew a mostly positive response. I was a little surprised, though pleased, that we didn’t get into the debate about whether or not climate change is real. I was pleased because that wasn’t the purpose of the piece. Last Fryday was about people’s propensity to present opinions as facts—and, in the example I used, a media organisation’s totally irresponsible endorsement of that.
But, this week I want to turn to another type of opinion. In fact, I don’t know if it is an opinion. I don’t know what it is. All I know is that President Donald Trump has perfected it and the nagging question I have is does he believe it?
Let me explain. The man who coined the phrase “fake news” is the world’s greatest exponent of it. But when he expresses it, what is it? When he says that his inauguration attracted a bigger crowd than Obama’s is he expressing his opinion, is he saying he believes it to be a fact, or is it a deliberate distortion?  I hope, ironically, it is the latter; if it was either of the former it would be absolute confirmation that we have a president who is delusional.
Not that I am saying he isn’t.
Of course, Trump is no stranger to hype and to self-promotion. Everything in his world is the “greatest ever” or “the best ever”. An example is his golf courses.
I am reading a book at the moment called Commander in Cheat in which the author, a Sports Digest journalist, recounts the way in which President Trump cheats at golf. It is a long book. An early example of Trump cheating the writer gives is Trump proclaiming that he (Trump) has “won” 18 club championships. Apparently, even a seasoned professional would find it hard to claim that, let alone substantiate it. Yet Trump does. How?
Well, one of the ways is that every time he opens a new course, he tries to be the first player on it, thus scoring the course’s lowest score and therefore the championship even if it is only for a matter of minutes. On at least two occasions he has claimed a course championship without even playing on the course; on one occasion he was playing on a course 80 miles away in another state, but because he achieved a lower score on the day than the championship winner on the first course, Trump claimed the championship and was given it!
On the second occasion, Trump claimed a championship without playing in the tournament because he said he had previously beaten the tournament winner three times and was “a better player". Again, he was given it.
And then he often describes his Trump courses as “the best in the world” or “the best ever”. Notwithstanding they can’t all be the best in the world, Augusta, Pebble Beach and St Andrews are not among them, and only one Trump course hosts a regular PGA event and only two are in Golf Magazine's Top 100.
And then there are the well-documented cases of the Secret Service going ahead and not so secretly improving the lie of Trump's balls; therefore giving a lie to the lie of Trump's lies.
The book goes on, but I will not. Suffice to say that the central premise of the book is that you can tell a lot about the man by the way he plays golf.
As I said, this book about how Trump cheats at golf is a big book
In Trump’s perverse world he would probably want to capitalise on that, trumpeting:
“I am the world’s greatest ever golf cheat. The best ever. It’s true. Yes, it is.”