Health?

 First published in Column 8 on the 7^th October, 1992

It had to come some time. And I know I’ll be shot down for daring to talk about a matter that supposedly men should keep their ethical views out of. Here goes – in for a penny, in for a pound.

Last Thursday I got hot under the collar seeing blarney passed off as argument, typical pro-abortion propaganda that’s churned out every time there is any mention of abortion. More particularly, it’s churned out any time there is likely to be a hint of pro-abortionists losing ground.

Let’s have a quick look at some of the ‘arguments.’

1.      Women shouldn’t have to pay the full cost of abortions. Why not? If they don’t, who will?

There’s one easy answer. You and I, whether we like it or not. At present the cost of killing 10,000 children a year, at the sum of $450 a child, comes to $4,500,000. That’s over $4 million being wrenched out of our health taxes, and those who aren’t in favour have absolutely no choice.

2.      A doctor fears that a lack of abortion services would lead to an increase in back-street abortions.

Now hang on a minute. Back-street abortions won’t be done for free. In fact, I’d say they’d be done for a darn sight more than public hospital ones. So you’re telling me that women wanting to get an abortion will go off and pay more, for something that at $450 will still cost them less in hospital?

And anyway, were 10,000 babies a year aborted in back-street abortions in the past? I doubt it. Abortion has become an industry in a way it never was in the past.

3.      Studies have shown that children born to mothers who were refused abortions cost health services more because of subsequent psycho-social family problems. (How there can be any women who have been refused abortions in these open slather days is anybody’s guess.)

Every child born brings about changes to the situation of the family (or lack of one) into which it is born. No baby comes complete with all expenses paid for the next twenty years. No baby comes with a guarantee that there’ll never be any trauma as a result of the birth. There will always be times when parents say, I wish I’d never had this child – and mean it. And with today’s economics, an extra child can be a difficult proposition.

None of these are reasonable excuses for slaying a child.

But there’s another option for the ‘unwanted’ child. Until adoption was made a dirty word, and selfishness a ‘decent’ one, there were homes aplenty for ‘unwanted’ children. There still are. Yes, I know there were some disasters in the adoption field – there will always be disasters where human activity is concerned – but there were also plenty of healthy adopted children brought up over the years.

Besides, there are other studies showing that mothers who do have abortions more often than not suffer greatly in the ensuing years from having killed their child. (And that’s from the horse’s mouth, as it were – women who have abortions have stated this repeatedly.) This is where the real mental health problems arise.

The guilt doesn’t just stem from religious feelings: it happens to women from all manner of philosophies.

4.      Anti-abortion groups are vocal in their opposition while people in support of abortions are often unlikely to speak out. Recent history shows the opposite to be true. The most vocal group in the abortion issue has always been the pro-abortionists. More often than not they also get all the publicity.

But how many of them have wound up in prison as a result of their pro-abortion protests?

Quite honestly, I don’t know what all the fuss was about. The Chairwoman of the National Advisory Committee on Core Health Services said their first report doesn’t advise major change, i.e. the core will start with the present services, which include abortion.

Besides, after nearly two decades of legal abortion it has become ingrained into our national psyche. Nothing short of a radical rethink will now change it.

 

Several letters were written to the Editor as a result of this column.

14^th Oct, 1992

Mike Crowl’s Column Eight, Midweek 7.10.92, is, to me, a crass exercise in boorish petty-mindedness. Mr Crowl has the right to express an honest opinion about any subject that interests him. However, I do not believe he has the right to pontificate on an issue of which he has no experience. There are not many things in nature of which man (with a small ‘m’) has no experience at all, but pregnancy is definitely one of them. Mr Crowl worries about his tax dollar being spent in areas which he regards as inappropriate. That is part of the price of democracy. I know a pacifist who does not like her tax dollars being spent on the armed services. For myself, I object to my tax dollars being used to jet our ministers around the world to meaningless conferences and similar ego trips for our politicians. I know we can all of us lack charity but is Mr Crowl so free from sin that he cast so many stones?

P Cottman

Fifteen years have gone by since the passing of the Contraception, Sterilisation and Abortion Act. It is clear from the debate which took place in the House at the time that it was the intention of the majority of members of Parliament to enact a law which would give great protection to unborn children. It is equally clear that the law is currently not being applied as it was intended. New Zealand now faces the same situation it faced before 1977 – a small minority of doctors being allowed to get away with an overly liberal interpretation of the law. The result is the killing of over 11,000 unborn children annually. The Royal Commission in 1975 considered that a figure of 4500 deaths amounted to virtual abortion on demand. What would they say about 11,000. The life chain scheduled for Sunday, October 18, is an opportunity for ordinary New Zealanders to come out and say that this killing has got to stop. The children deserve the same protection as the rest of us. Mike Crowl considers that the abortion mentality is now so ingrained that it would take a miracle to turn things around. Maybe he is right. But maybe a miracle is what is going to happen next Sunday.

Brian Kenny

 

In reply to Mike Crowl (Dunedin Star 7.10.92), who talks of killing children and blames women in gender terms, let us examine the record of men in the Killing Fields. From the year dot, men have been murdering other men as well as billions of helpless, innocent women and children including billions of foetuses – those of pregnant women slain by men. If the earth were to suddenly vomit up the corpses of these victims of male homicide, there would be mountains piled upon mountains, higher than Everest, as witness that when it comes to killing, men are experts. In fact, it could be said that women bear children so men can kill them. At this very moment, men are happily engaged in slaughter – turn on the telly and see mass extermination in Bosnia or listen to the latest crime statistics on the radio. It is known the majority of anti-abortionists support war while making pious claims about saving unborn babies. Please note these are white-skinned foetuses only. None of these zealots seems interested in the foetuses of African, Asian or indeed, Maori women. I wonder why? I presume it is because only the sperm of European males who still arrogantly claim they are the ‘master race’ is sacred.
Morgane Saille

 18^th Oct, 1992

I have never had an abortion. My first pregnancy was ‘shall I – shan’t I’ – I didn’t. I’ve now got four babies. But if this society wants women to stop having abortions perhaps more support for the single parent should come first. Having to answer humiliating questions to the DSW [Department of Social Welfare] about when, where, why, will you see this man again, and having to ask for food from them from time to time because ends don’t meet, isn’t exactly fun. These people who are anti-abortion aren’t going to be there if the woman doesn’t cope! Mistakes happen. Babies are born. Sterilisation is a major issue. It takes a few years to think about. Free child care would surely help us. Every parent needs a break. I love my children and don’t regret any of it – but I chose to be a mum, it wasn’t forced on me. Adoption isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. The grief on the parent, the shock to the child. women are freer these days to express their feelings. Talk to the baby – tell it why it can’t stay. Love it but have to let it go? For whatever reason, they grieve deeply – but can get through it – as the death of any child. To be forced to have a baby must have been terrible in the ‘old days.’ Or did this really happen? Back-street abortion is a horrifying thing. Keep it legal. Hopefully for the right reasons.
Each To His Own.

You’re quite right about one thing, Mike Crowl, and that is you shouldn’t have got yourself involved in the ongoing abortion debate. It is a woman’s issue and a woman’s choice as well, and until men become pregnant it should stay that way.
Sorrel Bovett

I want you to know I entirely agree with Mike Crowl in his Column 8 (Midweek 7.10.92) and this irresponsible attitude of today. I believe that sexual relations should only happen between two partners who have decide to live together on a permanent basis. Sex is too intimate to be demeaned by casual relationships. Still if they cannot control themselves surely there are condoms and other means to prevent pregnancy. While there are rare exceptions to consider, abortion is killing.
J C M Van Alphen

Mike Crowl makes some engaging points, quite right of course, backed up by thought-provoking ingredients and rational deductions, for such is the science of discussion. Now, I’ll back and watch the opposing ‘views.’ Will they expand and enlarge on te topic? They haven’t yet. No, we’re now going to get the cry of ‘rights,’ and Mike Crowl personally attacked. Predictable and repetitive, free speech, and courage are dirty words in today’s furtive and covert society.
Gordon Weare

The predictable responses from the abortionist camp present the same tired ‘arguments’ – arguments that never address the issues and which mostly insult the intelligence of pro-life people. These arguments continue to be trotted out more than thirty years later.

I wrote a blog post on the topic in 2013.

Genius

First published in Column 8 on the 23^rd Sept, 1992

While it’s good to read that Bobby Fischer, the all-time marvel of world chess champions, is back playing top class games, it’s sad to see his eccentricities are still in full bloom.

I guess that’s only to be expected. Unfortunately the peculiarities of geniuses (such as Fischer) are accentuated by being publicised. Oddities that might be dismissed in people of un-renown (in which category most of us fit), become highly visible in people whose gifting makes them stand out from the crowd.

Fischer is reported to fuss about the height of the toilet seat. While I would agree that most toilet seats are a shade too high, who would listen to me, or more to the point, do anything about it! (I can’t even get people to replace a toilet roll in the holder, so what chance have I of a lowered seat?)

Fischer fussed about the chess board, which had to be lowered three millimetres. Height is important – for geniuses. Glenn Gould used to insist of having his piano stool set so low he seemed to play from under the keyboard.

I’m plainly not in the genius class. While accompanying singers in the competitions, I found it too embarrassing to sit there adjusting the swivel on the piano stool – quite apart from the the fact that I can never remember, when I actually get to sit on it, whether I have to turn the thing to the left or right.

Fischer has conspiracy theories about Judaism. He claims Judaism hides under the mask of Bolshevism, which is in turn hidden by Communism. And Communists are cheats, he says, and that’s why his opponent Kasparov beat Karpov in 1985. The logic is apparent only to a man of genius.

I’ve heard plenty of non-geniuses burble on in such a way; fortunately no one pays them much heed. In fact I’ve been through a few conspiracy theories of my own. Since my world audience is smaller than Fischer’s no one pays my theories much heed either. When conspiracy theories are ignored, one eventually matures and grows beyond them – hopefully.

Samuel Rogers relates that ‘one forenoon’ he and fellow poet, Wordsworth, called on Samuel Taylor Coleridge (now mostly remembered for the Rime of the Ancient Mariner). Coleridge, who could expound poetry excellently, on this occasion talked uninterruptedly for two hours. Wordsworth listened with profound attention, nodding his head in assent. As they left the house, Rogers asked Wordsworth if he could make head or tail of Coleridge’s ramblings. ‘Not one word of it,’ said Wordsworth.

The worst thing about being a genius is that someone always wants to dramatise your life. Bad enough if you’re still alive, worse if your dead and can’t sue.

Mozart would be appalled at the treatment he received in Amadeus, for instance. This film (based on a play) gave many moviegoers a distorted picture of the Mozart-Salieri dispute, and will have convinced said moviegoers that Mozart was a redneck idiot who couldn’t get two seconds of his life together. How he was supposed to have simultaneously composed some of the most sublime music of all time is a question not to be asked.

It's kind of a relief not to be a genius. Conspiracy theories are one thing, but who’d want it known that you sucked peppermints in excess and enjoyed wearing a twenty-year-old overcoat?

A photograph of Samuel Rogers in his old age -
he lived to be 92. 

The other problem with piano stools is that it takes some time to figure out whether you’ve actually lowered or raised the thing, so subtle is the degree of movement down or up. Usually you wind up having lowered it when you wanted it made higher, or vice versa, and then you have to sit there playing knowing that you’ve made it worse than it was.

It took me some years to catch up on Amadeus again, by which time I’d learned more about Mozart and knew that a good deal of the drama was based on stories rather than truth. Mozart’s character was also made to be of such silliness it was embarrassing to watch. And in the director’s cut version that I saw there were several scenes that certainly deserved to be left out, but no longer were.  

The number 7

 Some time ago my son alerted me to an oddity:

I grew up in a house numbered 7.

At one time my grandparents and their seven children lived here. 

In London my wife and I, newly-married, lived in a house with the number 17.

When I was newly-married, the house (in a different street, of course) was 27.

And then we moved to a different house in a different street: 127. And lived there for more than forty years.

The house where our family grew up - when the additional floor was being added. 

And now, since late 2020, we've lived in a house with the number 7 - again - though it's a different house in a different town to the one I grew up in.

The most recent house, in Spring 2020, not long before we moved in.

Odds and ends about The Dog (now departed this world)

This one came from 2021 and first appeared on Facebook:

This is a bit late, since Marley's birthday was back in late May, but at his request I'm posting this photo of him in his fancy winter birthday coat. He'd had to have his normal haircut just before his birthday, and then claimed that in spite of being a tough male dog, 'Now was the winter of his discontent.' (He was quoting some ancient writer, apparently.)

He's taken to sitting on one of the kitchen chairs while we eat our meals, and his mother couldn't stand him shivering in front of us any longer. It's bad enough that he sits and stares at us while we're eating - this is aimed at getting some additional tidbit. (It doesn't work. Usually.)

All for one

First published in Column 8 on the 16^th Sept 1992

Struggling my way late on Sunday afternoon towards the deadline of writing a column on Monday morning, I was considering discussing deadlines, when a reader kindly informed me of the absurd presentation conjunction on all three television channels.

I promise this is the last time for a while (a fortnight at least) that I mention the word television in this column. Otherwise my columnistic colleague, Miles Synge, will wonder if I’m stealing his thunder.  

Anyone who wanted to watch something apart from rubgy on television between the hours of five and six on Sunday evening must have wondered if they were expected to put on a videotape. That’s right, Stanton, all three channels screened rubgy, or one of its variants.

And, believe it or not, those able to get Sky would have seen archive film on…rubgy. Good grief.

(For those who wonder why this strange word ‘rubgy’ occurs in this column, you’ll have to consult my computer; I think it’s incapable of writing the word correctly.)

And it wasn’t only this hour that was overloaded with uniform entertainment: Television One had shown sport since 2.00 – (four hours in all); Channel 2’s sport went for two hours; and TV3’s for three (appropriate, I guess).

Don’t television presenters talk to each other anymore? Don’t they check out what’s been shown on each other’s channel? As my reader said, here was a prime opportunity for at least one of the channels to show something different. (Even that gentlemanly sport, soccer, perhaps.)

Does this tripling-up happen because rubgy is cheap to produce on television? (More economical obviously than importing quality programmes from overseas.) Or is it true that television companies get paid large sums of money to show certain sports? Even that might be acceptable, up to a point, if there was variety. But we don’t see other sports anywhere near as much as rugby, mainly because those sports can’t afford the cost of being shown. Talk about cheapskate television!

I can see the television channels turning their viewers right off (which I suppose would be a change), and the video shops being saturated with customers. Either that, or else viewers will do what friends of mine mostly do: they record the quality programmes – which almost invariably are shown around midnight – and watch them the next evening, during the junk food television.

In the future television producers may find it easier to sell their material direct to the video outlets, where customers can really have a choice about what they want to watch.

Then with fewer viewers watching the prime time pap, the advertisers may have to rethink their priorities. Watching television may become a very non-U thing to do. In fact I wonder if that isn’t already happening. Television may join the cinema in becoming old hat.

And talking of old hat cinema, I see the Octagon movie theatre, where the stalls swept upwards towards the screen, has finally closed.

No wonder there are so many back problems amongst now middle-aged former film-goers. I’m sure I’m not the only one to have suffered a crick in the neck or an ache in the back from having to sit with my head at an acute angle for anything up to three hours – as occurred after arriving late at The Sound of Music, and finding that the only seats left were a bare few yards from the screen.

Let’s hope the new cinema complex will be built with the customers in mind; which is more than we seem to be able to hope for from the television moguls.  

 

 I used to visit an elderly neighbour until he died a couple of years ago: his television was apparently incapable of playing anything but rugby, I thought, until I visited him in a rest home and found that there the television was incapable of playing anything but horseracing.

It’s also interesting that my comment about television producers selling to video outlets (when they still existed) came true, to a degree, and now, of course, many minor films only ever appear on streaming channels, and thousands of hours of television shows of all sorts are available there too. We’ve gone from no choice to total choice.

Odorous

First published in Column 8 on the 9^th September, 1992

Most people will have seen those unbelievable television ads in which a man lifts his head, sniffs the air (like some hunting dog on the scent of prey) and moments later is chasing after a woman to offer her flowers – all because of the perfume she’s wearing.

Or equally absurd, the ad in which some fellow races round darkened streets in the rain – even over the roofs of cars – shouting, ‘Why Me?’ because dozens of screaming women with nary an umbrella or raincoat between them are hysterically chasing him. All because of his body perfume.

The social consequences of being accosted by a total stranger – or in the case of us men, by innumerable total strangers – merely because we’re wearing a perfume, need some thought and consideration. Do we really want to start a relationship with someone of the opposite [word I can’t mention] because their smell is irresistible?

And on what basis would such a relationship continue? Once the effects of the smell/scent/perfume had worn off, would we be tossed in the trash heap like an empty bottle?

All this by way of introduction to a rather odd item of ‘news’ reported from Chicago this week. Supposedly the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation has discovered an odorant (I guess I always knew there was an opposite to deodorant) that will encourage gamblers in Las Vegas to waste even more of their millions while trying to win a few extra bucks.

(By the way, doesn’t that word ‘treatment’ in the title of this Foundation rather put you off – it reminds me of a certain public utility dealing with effluent. And equally by the way, I see that effluent discharged from Mosgiel into the Taieri River is now of a better quality. Ain’t life grand?)

While the gamblers were striving to force the one-armed bandits to give them a payout, the machines emitted a secret weapon. The unfortunate gamblers’ ‘normal’ addiction was no longer considered sufficient to keep them at the machines. Now they had little choice – the monsters enticed them, not to give flowers, but more of the gamblers’ hard-earned cash.

The neurologist who conducted the experiment claimed it could soon be common for odorants to play a part in Las Vegas life. Contending against that kind of unfair weaponry would make me even less likely to visit the gambling mecca. Either that or I’d be taking along something that put the slot machines and their owners in their place. One of those dog repellents might do, or the stuff that’s used to kill flies.

Worse still, this idea of aroma-ising people to spend money will have an appeal beyond the gambling trade. After all, some retailers don’t have the fragrance of a fish shop or florist to draw their customers in the door.

Think of bookshops for instance. Bookaholics already have enough problem resisting the temptation of the newly-printed page. (Though when I picked up a copy of Barbara Thiering’s new book the other day, I was repelled by the smell of the ink. How curious – maybe it’s intended to repulse unsympathetic readers.)

Imagine if a bookaholic went into a bookshop and found him or herself being driven to buy all manner of books because of some irresistible scent. The penurious state of bookaholics in this country would be worse than ever. There would be thefts of booksellers’ tokens on a grand scale.

I suggest we consider banning the use of scents in any shape or form if they’ve going to be used in such an underhand (or underarmed) way. Let’s go natural and join BIMBO! (Bring In More Body Odours.)

Alan R Hirsch was the Neurological Director of the Smell and Taste Treatment and Research Foundation.  He’s the author of a large number of apparently successful books, not all of which have received favourable reviews.  

Moratorium

First published in Column 8 on the 2^nd Sept, 1992

My dictionary defines moratorium as an agreed suspension of activity, and if ever we needed one on a particular subject, the time must be ripe.

I’d like to see a moratorium for at least a year (if not until the end of the century) in all areas of the media, on the subject of sex, and how much we really need to know about it.

One present theory would have it that the increase of sexual violence in New Zealand is a reaction to the women’s movement – men getting their own back on women for daring to speak up.

While that theory might have its points, and nicely puts the blame first on women for arousing men’s ire, and second on men for being beasts anyway, I don’t think it carries enough weight.

I’m more inclined to think that many of our sexual problems and general promiscuity arise not, as some would have it, from too little information, but from too much – sexual overkill, in fact (future historians may wonder if we thought about anything else.)

I know I’ve written on sex once or twice before, and perhaps you’ll be thinking if this chap wants a bloomin’ moratorium on sex, why doesn’t he start with himself? Fair enough, but before the hatches are battened down, let me have one or two last words.

Even the most sober journalists discuss sex sometimes. The least sober discuss it all the time. Without wishing to pick on any magazine in particular, I note in my local shop that one recent issue of a women’s mag had a sealed section on puberty. They claimed it was to protect other members of the family from the explicit drawings; those blind, deaf and dumb ones, that is, and those who find sealed pages finger-proof. Am I overly suspicious in thinking it’s just another gimmick for promoting their particular mag? Since then another mag has tried the same approach.

I know I’ll be shot down in flames for saying all this. The current theory is that if you tell the children everything, emphasising the biological facts, they’ll be so sure of themselves that no harm will come to them when they indulge in what is (so the pundits say) a harmless pastime.

Seems to me that telling the children everything at school, then hammering home the more salacious details in every other sphere of the media, has hardly had the responsible effect it ought.

If it’s such a good idea, why do we have the highest rate of teenage pregnancies outside the US and Canada? Why has abortion become culturally acceptable? (Morally is another story.) If the schools are doing such a marvellous job, why do magazines need to spread the sex lives of all and sundry out in full frontal detail, and then give the latest in ‘helps’ at least once a month?

A return to the so-called enlightened ages, when the facts of life were kept rather more modestly, might return the sense of mystery to one of the holiest of human activities. Barraging our kids – and not just our kids – with something as arousing as sex seems an inside-out approach.

I’d be interested to see the effect a reasonable silence on the subject would have; our minds and imaginations might get five minutes to clear in order to think of something else.

Who knows, we might open a magazine in which the sealed section was on a really interesting subject – the Meaning of Life, perhaps.

Blank Photo courtesy of H.F.J.M. Crebolder 

Refs rule, okay?

First published in Column 8 on the 18^th August, 1993

Whenever I watch a game of rugby – you’ll note that I’ve finally learnt how to spell the word – my heart goes out to one particular person on the field.

In my rugby days it used to be the hooker – me – sandwiched between two great hulking props, my ears mangled, my shoulders wrenched and my head forced – Crrrunch! – up against an opposing wall of bull terriers. However, after I retired (round the age of 10) my sympathies diverted to a person who acts in a sense always as the bridesmaid, never the bride – if I can use such an expression in this context.

That person is the referee. He’s never the star – he’s only noticed when he does something wrong. He has to be in the action at all points, yet he can’t be part of the action.

He’s like a child in a field of raging bulls, and woe betide if he’s careless enough to get in the way of a footballer making his way like a diesel engine (converted to lpg) towards touchdown. Not only would the ref’s name be mud, he might be buried face down in it.

On my walk to work I often come across a huge mastiff looking over a fence – a tall fence, thank goodness. His eyes are red and the expression on his black face is ambiguous enough for me to think twice about going close to him.

A ref often finds himself in a similar situation: he’s supposed to stand up to the equivalent of several mastiffs and state his case for claiming they’re in the wrong. If necessary he has to send one of them, like a schoolboy caught making stinkbombs behind the loos, off the field.

Refs have to have the stamina to keep up with a ball kicked from one 22m line to the other, and still somehow be in the right place at the right time – always. I don’t know how they do it.

The reason I mention rugby is that during the last week I was in a somewhat similar position to that occupied by your average ref. (Note, I said somewhat similar.) I was one of several stamina-requiring bodies who acted as accompanist to singers in a musical mini-version of the BleedUsSlow Cup: The Dunedin Performing Art Competitions.

(Singers, by the way, are not equatable with mastiffs. Singers come in all sizes: Chihuahuas, St Bernards, Pomeranians.)

Accompanists have to  have many of the qualities of the average ref. They must somehow be at all times invisible and subtle; in control but not pushing; as musical as the singer, but patently not more so.

They should never be seen to be nervous, lest they put the singer off; and they should make no mistakes…lest they put the singer off (in other words, when the singer misses a page out, so does the accompanist).

Accompanists must ignore trickling itches in inaccessible spots, as well as the ones they could reach but can’t afford to because they’re just about to turn a page over. (As refs must get on and blow the whistle when they’d prefer to blow their nose.)

They must at all times act as though they hadn’t a care in the world, and that performing in front of a crowd is an everyday occurrence to be taken in their stride. Just like refs.

Football and musical crowds are both very discerning. The ears of the latter are more acute, but the former know all the rules – better than the ref.

Accompanist can pour out their emotions through their fingernails. But what does a ref do when he’s feeling all churned up? At the end of the game, no one ever swaps his shirt with the ref.

Because my week was musical, I’ve had an idea. Next Saturday, let’s all give the ref a treat, and nominate him for Most Valuable Player.

2024 Six Nations Championship, ITALY vs ENGLAND,
3 February 2024, Stadio Olimpico, Rome
photo courtesy Stefano Delfrate

Porridge, possums, politicians and solo parenting

 First published in Column 8 on the 11^th August, 1993

 Having negotiated the twisting sands of a local newspaper last week, I decided to go on to the big time – a metropolitan daily from the CER. This distraction was necessary as my wife has gone to England for five weeks, leaving me a solo parent.

I discovered there’s a square in Sydney lumbered with a motormouth cognomen. (‘Where do you live?’ ‘Sesquicentenary Square.’) I discovered that if everybody in Australia obeyed the law, the treasury coffers would be depleted. Let’s not tell Ruth. With our parlous state of economy she’ll make it compulsory to be obedient.

Someone in Britain is encouraging us to be green even after we’re dead. The trees will grow better if we’re buried beside them and cleanly turn ourselves into mulch.

On this basis, trees in the year 2126 will do very well. In 2126  (when I’ll be shifting into my 80s) a comet named Swift-Tuttle will loosen a barrage of space debris and drop it on the Earth. The meteors will be the size of city blocks and will wipe out entire countries – if they don’t fall in the ocean.

To give us a foretaste, Swift-Tuttle will be doing a mini-version of its trip next Saturday, the 14^th. Meteorites on that day will only be the size of peas and grapefruit. (Meteors always seem to come in city block, pea and grapefruit sizes; you never hear of banana, kiwifruit or paddock.)

I know last week I said No Politicians, but since this one’s Australian we can make an exception. The Victorian Premier, who is apparently very popular, appears on the front of a magazine (without his permission) apparently very naked.

His head was in the picture all right, but the body belonged to an unidentified person. The magazine’s intention was to prove that the eye can be deceived. The Premier’s eye was not deceived, and he threatened to sue.

The editor, with dubious logic, said he had no case. The Premier, she said, wasn’t held up to ridicule (!), wasn’t defamed (!), and nothing had been done to detract from his reputation (!!!). Her eye wasn’t deceived, just her brain.

As if to keep up with us, the Australians have gone in for some cultural sensitivity. Only this time it may upset the sensitivity of 51% of the population.

In an Aboriginal art exhibition, one room has been genderly segregated: they call it the men’s room. In this area, culturally sensitive paintings are on display. I understand their point, but could male pakeha painters get away with it?

Here’s an item of interest. Up until the last century the Welsh donned clean white stockings and went up to a warm dry room (usually the bedroom above the kitchen) where they trampled and stomped upon porridge oats laid in an oak chest, aiming to compress them. (The oats, not the stockings.)

No peculiar custom here: merely an attempt to keep the mites out. Try this at home if you’re heavily into porridge.

And talking of keeping things out, I finally found out how, if I was an Aussie, I could keep the possums out of the roof – and from the eating the roses. Unfortunately the rose-protecting method seems likely to keep humans away from the roses as well.

Take a number of woollen dags, the scungy bits that don’t make good knitting, and hang them on the rose bushes. Possums object to having one of their favourite foods so spiced, and keep away.

And how do you keep possums out of the roof? You set up a light in the attic, and leave it on for two or three nights. The poor possums soon suffer from insomnia, and go away in a dozy huff. At that point you nail up the gaps.

Not forgetting to turn the light off first.

And talking about turning off the lights, you will suffer from poor sleep hygiene (disturbed nights) if you go to bed at erratic times, drink coffee beforehand, read, or watch television in bed.

Or allow your wife to go gallivanting.

 

 

[Have you heard about my fourth children's fantasy, The Counterfeit Queen? Suitable for pre-teens and upwards (three adults have told me they're reading it at present...)

CER: I think by this I meant: The Australia–New Zealand Closer Economic Relations Trade Agreement, commonly known as Closer Economic Relations (CER).

I was plainly confused when I wrote that I was only going to be in my 80s in 2126 – I should have said I’d be in my 180s (!) Furthermore, telling people the oddly named Swift-Tuttle was coming a week later, in 1992, seems to contradict Wikipedia’s hindsight version of the facts.

The photo of Jeff Kennett appeared just three years after Photoshop came on the market. The magazinewas the Good Weekend Magazine, July 31, 1993.

Incidentally my wife, thirty years or more since this was written, still goes to bed at erratic (usually late) hours, drinks coffee in the evenings, watches television late at night (but not in bed). Her sleep hygiene isn’t much impaired by any of this…

Troubles with roubles

First published in Column 8, on the 4^th August, 1993

Newspapers are a great source of education. I had time to read a newspaper more thoroughly last week and discovered informative facts, and fictions, on nearly every page.

That day, the Russians had troubles with roubles. The Central Russian Bank decided to dabble with the money bubble and gobble up pre-1993 roubles. This nobbled people’s savings, causing a scrabble for new money. The banks quibblingly closed for ‘technical reasons.’

Many elderly wound up with barely a nibble; they hobbled to the banks to exchange their old roubles – paid out the previous week in their pensions – for a maximum sum amounting to the equivalent of NZ$64. This reduced them to quivering blobbles.

Why the rabble didn’t reduce the banks – or better still, the government – to rubble, I don’t know.

This time the West didn’t get the blame. A couple of years ago, when a similar thing happened, the cause was a ‘Western financial plot.’ (I thought, at first, that was the part of a cemetery where you bury a paid-up corpse.)

Plainly the Russian government still has a blind spot when it comes to the people – a bit like one or two of our own parliamentarians – but I’ve vowed not to give parliamentarians any more free publicity this month.

Talking of blind spots, I discovered that a blind electric ray can give you a nasty shock if you meet each other in the sea.

I quote: ‘The ray’s ‘electric organs are composed of specialised cells called electrocytes.’ (Not electrolytes – those hang from the ceiling.) ‘These are wafer thin, hexagonal and arranged in stacks of 450 plates.’ (These fish would make good waiters.) ‘There can be several thousand of these columns, each composed of 450 electrocytes.’(Reminds me of Steve Parr’s dishwashing ad.)

In spite of its blindness the ray electro-sights its prey with ease. What I want to know is why when the ray lights up in water it doesn’t electrocute itself.

Talking of blind spots, I noted the continuing saga of the Christchurch Polytechnic nursing course, and its cultural problems. I like what one local nurse said, ‘We’ve bred a bit of a monster. It’s cultural fascism creeping in where you can’t afford to have different views. It’s almost like because of the wrong in the past we have to try and make up for it. Where has our freedom of speech gone?’

Where indeed?

The answer to her last question is that free speech has drowned in the sea of political correctness. Yes, we Caucasians have done a lot wrong, and yes, we have a lot of ground to make up. But the cultural content of this nursing course has the bad breath of indoctrination in its mouth.

Perhaps we need to park the Treaty of Waitangi back in the history books where it belongs. Then, in accordance with our current marketplace-type thinking, we could negotiate a new, contemporary contract.

A contract that doesn’t squabble over different interpretations, and one which, in raising the status of the minority, doesn’t have to put down the majority. Or cause them to doublespeak.

My son has been investigating cultures for school. We have icecream tubs perched around the house containing moulding of bread. Seeing the process of culture at home I hope, if I’m in hospital, that the nurse will treat me as a human being first, and a culture second.

Finally, I learned a new word from my newspaper reading: vexillologist (requires careful spelling – and pronouncing!). A vexillologist is a flag fan.

I’ve been indulging in some vexillology – flag waving – in the above paragraphs.

I guess you shouldn’t get vexed when vexillating.

 

Electric ray Narke capensis

Photo courtesy of Peter Southwood

 

See more about Steve Parr here. Unfortunately I can’t find the particular ad I mentioned.

For ‘political correctness’ read ‘woke,’ a word easier to remember than a phrase, and with so little real meaning that it can take hold of anything and make a problem out of.

Outrage

First published in Column 8 on the 19^th August, 1992

During the Vietnam War the public expressed outrage when a piece of newsfilm seen on television showed a member of one side of the warring factors being shot in the head, and killed.

The outrage was because the end of a human life was treated as mere newsfodder. His personhood didn’t matter – he was being used as an example of the horrors of war.

No one denies those horrors. The horrors of modern life are multitudinous. What concerns me is that these horrors are more and more being used by the media in a way that turns us all into spectators at a gladiatorial bloodbath.

I have come across two examples recently, neither of which I sought out, and both of which linger on malevolently in the recesses of my mind. And if these two came to my attention so easily, how many more have there been that have not crossed my path?

I wrote a few weeks ago about the media and the royal couple, and the way in which the lives of these two were being abused. The lack of moral concern in some parts of the media is an abuse as sickening as sexual abuse of children.

You can say that by writing about them I’m extending the abuse still further. But unless someone writes, how do we combat the immoral flow?

The first instance occurred on television in one of those news compilation programmes, and discussed the murder of a teenage girl by her father.

This Middle Eastern family had emigrated to the States. The father lived by the old rules; the 15-year-old daughter wanted to live by the new. By his culture’s standards, the father considered her rebellious, especially when she went out and got an after-school job. The father forbade such behaviour. When the daughter continued to work, the father one night took a kitchen knife and stabbed her to death. In his culture that was ‘acceptable’ punishment for her behaviour.

Of course it wasn’t acceptable in the culture of the USA, and he was imprisoned. Nothing very startling about all that, you say. Nothing, except that somehow the US authorities had suspected foul play might occur, and had bugged the house. Unfortunately for the girl, no one was listening the night she died. Only a tape-recorder picked up the terrified screams as the child was repeatedly stabbed.

And those screams were played over and over on television. Not some actress simulating horror, but a child’s dying agonies as her own father killed her. Was the broadcast necessary?

The other situation is worse, and also involved young people: the murderer was around seventeen, the victim maybe a couple of years younger. These two boys were part of an ongoing Asian war. But the news magazine article in which they became known to the world was on revenge.

Somehow a photographer was there at the moment when the murderer, in revenge, used a heavy knife to stab his victim in the chest.

And now comes the part that sickens. That observer photographed the murder. He took more photos of the murderer now satisfied at having achieved revenge. Some editor paid that photographer for those photos, and a writer for writing about them. Some publisher published them. The victim’s personhood became nothing. His death was mere newsfodder.

In the 17^th century John Donne said, ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind.’

Isn’t there a point where the objectivity of the media goes beyond the reporting, and reporters discern that they are involved in Mankind? Isn’t there a point where getting the news becomes much less important than the life of those involved? Is there any sense of moral outrage left?

()()()()()()()()()()() 

Since I wrote this article over thirty years ago people have become numb to such violence being shown on screen or on the Internet: either it’s reality, and real people die in front of our eyes, or it appears in movies and television with the kind of grisly detail that once would have been unacceptable in so-called entertainment. Such scenes are commonplace, and the media thrives on them.

Sadly, even the best of us are becoming immune to these scenes because they are innumerable.

It’s interesting that journalists who watched the hour long compilation of video shot by people who were attacked and killed in the invasion of Israel by Hamas on the 7^th of October, 2023, has proved that even the media is not entirely immune to the human suffering that was shown. Many of those audiences found themselves still able to be shocked.