Allegiance

 First published in Column 8 on the 1^st April, 1992

 When you see those crowded terraces of monitors behind the newsreaders on television, you realise there’s no way all the news that’s available can actually get on screen.

The same thing happens with the newspaper services. Each day dozens of items fail to find their way onto the printed page because of lack of space.

I am reasonably informed that the following are some of the items that didn’t make it last week. I don’t claim to have verified their accuracy, so you’ll note that I often use the word ‘allegedly.’ I’ve been fascinated with the word ever since I read that a woman allegedly bit off her husband’s nose.

One report told us the real reason why banks have to collect tax on your interest. Rather than going to pay off our national debt, it is (allegedly) paying off the huge sum of money the BNZ (Bank of New Zealand) was found to be short when the present Government came to power.

The second item of interest is a little more trivial. We now discover that all the televisions manufactured since 1990 have a two-way transmitting ability. This means that if ‘they’ want to watch you watching them, they can.

Seeing you supping your savouries in front of the telly isn’t very exciting, so the makers of that Candid Camera-type programme (allegedly) came up with a profitable use of the system.

Watch out as you doze in front of Holmes: a maniac actor my break into your living room and shout ‘Boo!,’ upsetting your lukewarm cuppa into your lap, causing the cat to tear its way up the curtains, and your wife/husband/spouse/partner to crash the new crystal bowl into a pot-filled sink. The ensuing chaos is intended to provide El Cheapo television.

On another front, in an attempt to give new meaning the concept of job sharing, Fran Wilde, member of Parliament, has allegedly claimed that when – not if – she also becomes Mayor of Wellington, she will insist on wearing her mayoral chains in the House. Her aim is to clank them like the ghost of Jacob Marley at any debate with which she does not agree. There could be a lot of noise.

(I’ve always been impressed by another of Fran’s unreported remarks: Democracy is a matter in which government decides what is best for the people, however much petitioning the people may do.)

Transcendental Meditation devotees didn’t make the news this week, although allegedly they should have. While practicing their ‘flying’ exercises, a group of meditatees at the TM headquarters suddenly bounced up and struck their heads on the ceiling. All were treated for concussion.

However, one meditatee said, ‘I think the concussion gave me much inner peace.’

And talking of words like meditation, when the Association of Presbyterian Women’s conference was held in Dunedin last weekend, a break-away group allegedly questioned why it’s good enough for the Anglicans to have a female bishop, when they haven’t got a female moderator. To show superiority over the incumbent patriarchal model, they suggested the one elected should be called a Moderation.

And one more item from Dunedin. The new tiles in the Civic Centre are due to become a source of much controversy amongst the councillors. Subject to intense scrutiny from irritable ratepayers, who felt there was nothing wrong with the old set, they (the tiles, that is), have begun a melt-down process. Consequently, they may well have to be replaced with the lino taken out of the old mayoral loo.

(Allegedly this is the first of April.)

Fran Wilde

‘All the news that’s available’ was the catchphrase on one TV station for a period of time.

As of this date (30.1.26) the Presbyterian Moderator for the past year has been the Rev Rose Luxford. In fact, the first female Moderator, Mrs Joan Anderson, had appeared back in 1979, and she was an elder, but not a minister though female ministers had first arrived in 1964. Rev Luxford was the fifth female Moderator.