Speechmaking

First published in Column Eight on the 9^th June, 1993.

Two rumours are doing the rounds. One has it that a computer programmer, hoping to promote his software, recently sent a programme entitled, ‘Make Your Own Speeches,’ to the Beehive. One of the queen bees, Jenny, desperate for help with her speech-making, threw it in her compatible and got a real buzz out of it.

The other rumour has Mike Moore secretly faxing his speeches out to all the other offices in the Beehive in the hope that someone, somewhere, will listen to him. Queen Jenny, being ultra-busy, grabs one of these and makes it the basis for her National Party conference speech.

I suspect that latter rumour has Moore basis in reality, since a typical piece of Moore impromptu was: ‘I don’t make promises, and those I make, I keep.’ (Huh?)

Jenny’s conference speech went much further into cloud cuckoo land: ‘We should not flinch from breaking the surcharge promise…to take the tough decisions to allow New Zealand to make more money, pay more tax and provide a better welfare society. Some people want social justice to come from socialism. I want it to come from opportunity.’

Lots of rhetoric and not much reality.

Maybe this is foot-in-the-mouth month. An Australian linguist recently claimed the New Zealand accent was rapidly changing. Why? Because, when we New Zealanders saw Britain joining the Common Market, we lost confidence in our Britishicity. Collectively we’ve instinctively felt that we’d better start sound like New Zealanders. Huh?

According to this linguist, if you’d asked an Aussie twenty years ago what a New Zealander sounded like he would probably have said ‘no different.’ This linguist is obviously a baby boomer. One Kiwi member of my family clearly remembers Australians laughing at her Kiwi accent as long ago as the 1940s.

The spoutings of the Experts (the Spurts?) is a plague upon all our houses. Not only do we have our own New Zealand variety – parliamentarians – but an endless stream of overseas Spurts who manage to make New Zealand a target for their roustabout sayings.

Fr Robert Sirico (yes, I asked who?, too), came here on a whistle-stop tour (or a mission from Michigan), to tell New Zealanders what to do about their economic situation, and to discredit clergy criticism of the Government. Maybe he’d also received one of Mike Moore’s speeches.

Fr Sirico, from Michigan, tells us that our domestic purposes benefit subsidies divorce. To take the financial considerations out of divorce we should scrap the benefit. A ‘free market free of government intervention’ wouldn’t pick up the pieces, says Fr Sirico. ‘The church must assume the role of the state in providing support for the needy.’

I thought the church was already having to do this – and barely keeping up with the overflow.

There are days when I think it’s the way I read the papers: do these aforementioned people only appear not to be making any sense? Are their words misrepresented, or placed out of context?

Sometimes when reading the news I feel like citoyen of Nancy who has been caught failing to wear his seatbelt while driving. He has a choice of punishments – a 150 franc fine (c’est irritable!), or a carnival-like trip in a car that rolls over and over (c’est magnifique!)

Trying to grasp some of the statements by those personages listed above leaves my head in the same state as the rolled-over Frenchman: Dizzy a la Gillespie.

Or alternatively, reading the news is sometimes like trying to read in the bus on winter nights. Citibus now appears to be saving power: the internal lights are so dim you can hardly see the bell-pull.

Or worse, it’s like trying to figure out whether the graffiti on a billboard in Cumberland St is the beginning of a theological statement, or the end of a philosophical one.

With the enigmatic simplicity of a speech-writing computer program, the writer has writ: ‘I AM.’

 

From the French road safety campaign recommending
that men should drive like women....

 The version of this column that appeared in the newspaper had two proofreading errors in the first paragraph alone. Probably the worst place to have errors; the current edition of one of my books has a similar problem: a spelling mistake in the first sentence!

 AI provides us with more information about the speech-writing program (which I seem to have inaccurately named):

This historic moment took place in 1993 when New Zealand computer programmer and satirist Simon Kember created a software program called ‘The Politician’ (sometimes referred to as the Automatic Speech Writer) and distributed it to members of the New Zealand Parliament.

The 1993 Speech-Writing Software

Long before the advent of modern generative AI like ChatGPT, Kember coded a text-generation algorithm using a specialized vocabulary. By selecting certain parameters, the software would automatically string together political buzzwords, policy platitudes, and rhetorical filler to generate complete, grammatically correct—yet entirely hollow—parliamentary speeches.

Public Reception and Parliament's Reaction

Kember designed the program as a satirical critique of the repetitive, focus-grouped, and formulaic language used by contemporary politicians.

• The Distribution: Kember sent floppy disks containing the program directly to various MPs across the political spectrum.
• The Irony: While intended as pure mockery, several parliamentarians and their staffers reportedly admitted that the program was surprisingly accurate and hilariously indistinguishable from real political rhetoric.

This 1993 stunt remains a legendary piece of early New Zealand computing history, demonstrating that the anxiety—and humor—surrounding automated political speechwriting began decades before the modern AI boom.

I’m not sure why I thought Jenny Shipley’s quoted speech was particularly unsound: compared to those we hear from the minor parties these days (the Greens at the moment are suggesting nationalising all supermarkets) it makes enough sense to sound feasible.

 As for Australians laughing at Kiwis accents, I can remember in the 1960s when members of a Sydney orchestra came over to play for a nationwide tour of the NZ Opera Company’s production of Die Fledermaus. The leader of the orchestra had an accent so strong that I initially thought he was a foreigner. I haven’t been able to discover who the Australian linguist was, sadly.

 AI also gives us more detail about the Nancy road safety campaign:

‘This scenario was a highly effective road safety campaign rather than a literal ‘pay or go to jail’ criminal punishment.

In Nancy, France, local police and road safety authorities utilized a rollover simulator (known in France as a voiture tonneau). Drivers caught without a seatbelt were given a creative ultimatum: they could either pay the standard 150-franc fine or agree to experience the rollover simulator to understand why the law existed.

• The Ultimatum: Instead of simply writing a ticket, officers gave unbelted drivers a choice. If they chose the simulator, they would get inside a modified, secured car cabin that safely but aggressively rotated 360 degrees on an axis.
• The Goal: The exercise was designed to vividly demonstrate the violent forces of a crash. Experiencing how difficult it was to stay positioned—even at a slow, controlled rotation—convinced many drivers that they would be severely injured or thrown from the vehicle in a real accident.
• The Outcome: Most drivers chose the simulator over paying the fine, and the shocking physical experience proved far more memorable and educational than a standard traffic ticket.’

 

 

Sounds

First published in Column 8 on the 2^nd of June, 1993

Recently, a blind youth visited my shop with his father. During the few minutes in which we shared company I was suddenly made aware again how little I listen to what’s going on around me. The youth didn’t himself say anything about listening, but it struck me as we talked that noises irrelevant to me might well have more meaning to him.

So we non-physically challenged people often think. We can hold this myth that someone who’s cut off in one sense automatically makes up for it in another. If we took the time to check it out we might find the truth was different.

Lisa Bendall, in the Canadian abilities magazine, soundly berates the film, Scent of a Woman,  for promoting the myth, in what seems to her to be an absurd fashion.

She says: ‘The average viewer now believes that a man who is totally blind can drive a car at over 100m/h without veering off the street; can interpret a woman’s appearance (right down to the colour of her eyes) by the sound of her voice; and can detect, with complete accuracy, the facial and hand gestures made by other people.

‘The same blind superman, however (who incidentally never blinks), was shown in other scenes groping, staggering and otherwise stumbling around his environment. He rarely uses his white cane and his sighted guide tends to walk pointlessly behind him.’

Okay, so Hollywood failed to take into account the way a real blind person behaves. For them only what’s convenient for the drama, whether realistic or not, is important. Thus they promote the myth.

My blind friend may in fact be just as oblivious to everyday sounds as I am most of the time. Nevertheless our meeting did make me think about listening again.

As I moved round the shop on that day I suddenly heard afresh the stapler being hammered into the paper, the crash of the till drawer opening, the clunk of a book knocked off the shelf, the clonk of a file being put back into place, my own footsteps stumping across the carpeted wood, the individual swish of the door the back room, and a hundred other sounds peculiar to my environment.

Lying in bed this week with a cold brought it home to me even more: a blackbird outside going crazy with his singing; another bird merely chip-chip-chipping away. The irritated squeak accompanying the undoing of the front door latch. The clatter as one of our furry inmates burst through the cat door, jerked the curtain hooks as it shoved the material aside, and then thudded on its four paws – all in perfect and unconsidered synchronisation – up the stairs.

Lying in bed listening to the radio is a reminder that most of us, privileged as we are now to have musicians on tap, don’t actually listen to them most of the time. But we expect them to accompany us wherever we go (like the bells on a certain lady’s toes) – in the car, the bath, the loo, the bedroom, outside in the garden and even at work, a place where listening to music is about the last thing we actually do.

Peter Kreeft writes that ‘God invented the senses to reveal the unique and irreplaceable tang of the Particular to (our) consciousness – the thisness as Duns Scotus calls it, of each thing in the universe.’

We take hearing – indeed, all our senses – for granted. To hear the world afresh, we have to make the effort to become like little children again. Unless we do, we’ll miss the minor wonders of this life – and may miss the entrance to the kingdom of Heaven itself.

Blind person listening

Column Eight and letters

A bunch of letters I received over the years regarding Column Eight. Some of these came through the post, as things did in those days, though my address was never advertised anywhere, and some were sent to the Midweek/Weekender office.

25^th May, 1992

Dear Mike,

We read with interest your Column while in Dunedin once again last week. We wish to say that we appreciated your tactful comments regarding the Dalai Lama’s Public Meeting in the Town Hall.

Thank you for exalting Jesus Christ as the complete answer for this World and its People today. We do wish many ministers would speak out from their Pulpits with this same courage as you have shown.

We have written a letter to the Bishop of Dunedin stating our disapproval of the fact that St Paul’s Cathedral was used for the purpose of a Public Meeting addressed by the Dalia Lama who represents the pagan god, ‘Buddha.’

It’s no small wonder that many people today are confused in trying to find the truth.

Your cousin Denise (nee Hannagan) has recently told us who you are. We are her Mother and Father-in-law.

Keep speaking out as you feel you have to.

God bless you for doing so

Eleanor & Bruce Teasdale, Arrowtown.

 

16^th August, 1992
Dear Mr Crowl,

Thank you from all of us for your very kind tribute to Dad in the Midweeker. Many people phoned to make sure we saw it.
We have copied it several times now to send the news of Dad’s death to his good friends overseas – in Canada, USA, Japan etc.
Yours sincerely, Mary O’Neill, Dunedin

 

Dec 16, 92.

Dear ‘Mike’

You and your column are really doing something for Dunedin, & Otago generally. You say such wise words, inspiring faith, hope and love, & all the godly gifts of mercy & justice & tolerance & truth. I look forward to your column more than anything & I hope it will be instrumental in bringing many souls to Christ (as He has been to me).

I hope your ‘virus’ & other painful experiences are of the past now. You have had a bad time! And you expressed it very well, I could feel it in my own bones.

This is written in an awful hurry. Some day we may meet, who knows.

Meanwhile God bless you & guide you all your days.

In sincerity, Effie Todd (81 yr old widow – but rich in Him).

Brockville, Dunedin.

 

29.5.93

By all means keep the copies of letters I sent.

You have some sort of influence & can spread it around – every little helps.

I also sent copies to ‘Women Against Porn’ & SPCS (I don’t know what they really do).

Rita Denham, South Dunedin

 

18.3.94

Dear Mr Crowl,

Your article continues to be excellent.

It seems a pity that the Midweek/Weekender has started up an ‘Adults’ Entertainment’ column, hopefully it won’t gather momentum until it reaches the mammoth proportions of the sleazy ads in the ODT, which are now akin to a walk around a red light district.

Ironic that close to the ODT columns is a paragraph stating that all ads must be in good taste. There is really no such thing these days, but I wonder exactly what criterion the ODT goes by.

The media re much to blame for the increase in pornography, sexual crimes, etc, in the way they continually dwell on it & dig out every little detail. Grist to the mill for potential perverts.

Yours sincerely, Mrs R Denham, South Dunedin.

 

July 28/93

Well done, Mike! I really enjoyed Column Eight: Fisherwomen. Not only was it great to read about women’s achievements but it was especially gratifying to see a journalist refusing to condone the use of ‘girls’ to describe adult women.

Thank you,
Yours sincerely

Shona Thompson, Dunedin.  

 

August 23^rd, 1994

Dear Mike Crowl

I meant to write to you immediately and congratulate you for your bravery in writing the Monarchy letter in Column Eight for Midweek of 10^th Aug 94.

Your opinion as portrayed would be one that is held by many silent Australian and New Zealand citizens.

While your Monarchy letter has appeared in Dunedin Star Midweek, it should qualify for publication in all New Zealand daily newspapers and that is what you may find difficult to achieve.

D J Ralston, Mosgiel.  

As of the 4^th of September, 2026 I’ve yet to discover which column this relates to.

 

17 May 1995

Dear Mr Crowl

I feel I must write in sincere appreciation of your timely column (‘Profane but PC’) in today’s Midweek.

Thank you for so aptly stating in a public forum what so many Christians strongly feel, yet cannot express due to lack of ability or opportunity.

With this article, you have pushed home a vital point: ‘How curious that political correctness protects all manner of groups but one.’ How curious, indeed.

May God bless you.

Yours sincerely,

Mary L Falconer, Mosgiel.

(I do not expect any response to this letter).

 

 

 

This came on a small card with no date:

Dear Mike,

I always read your column with interest.

Enclosed find a way of using all those unused envelopes.

M H Graham.

As of the 4^th of September, 2026 I’ve yet to discover which column this relates to.

 

Hello Mike,

I read with interest your article ‘A Sade State of Affairs.’ It so happens I lent someone a book once of Marquis de Sade but it was never returned to me. It annoys me that I am unable to remember the title and I simply wondered if you could inform me how many books there were and what their titles were.

Keep up the good work. You’re a great writer and I always read your articles with immense interest.

Have a great day and never mind if you cannot help me, it’s not too important.

With kind regards, Joss Detollanaere, Waitati

Sadly, this being before the days of Google, I was unable to help.

 

 

No date:

Dear Mike,

I like this column very much; would you sign it & send it back?

Jocelyn Jaquiery (same name, but not Stephen Jacquiery’s wife)

Stephen Jacquiery has been one of the ODT’s longstanding photographers. 

The end of Column Eight

The end of Column Eight. 

On the 20^th April 1996 I received a letter (by post, of course) from the acting managing editor of the Midweeker:

Dear Mike, we have recently been reassessing the content and layout of the Dunedin Star Communities. With this in mind it has been decided that we will no longer be requiring your column for publication. Your contribution and support has [sic] been appreciated and while this is an end to your column we do not discount the possibility of working with you again. Yours sincerely, Jeff Whyte, Acting Managing Editor.

I went into shock, since there’d been no warning of this on the horizon, though the ‘Acting Managing Editor’ had recently taken over from the Editor I’d worked with since I’d started the columns - a very supportive editor - and he was plainly under orders to cut back on costs. From memory, I don’t think mine was the only weekly column to disappear.

Here are three of the letters that appeared at the time. 

 Weekender, 5^th May, 1996

I wish to voice my dismay that presumably you have decided to do away with Mike Crowl’s weekly column in your paper. I, along with many of my acquaintances have enjoyed reading his comments on life, and his sense of humour about everyday things. His column was always the first and sometimes the only thing I read in each issue, and I feel that your paper will lose much of its appeal for many of your readers.

R. G. Hendry.

 I just want to add my voice to the many more who must feel as I do, so disappointed that ‘Column Eight’ has come to an end. It was for me one of the main reasons I looked forward to the Midweek. It was the first article I would read. May I take this opportunity to say thank you to Mike Crowl for the many humorous, thought-provoking and often inspiring articles he has produced. Hope springs eternal, maybe you’ll be back! You will be missed.

S. N. D.

 I am sorry that you have discontinued Mike Crowl’s column in the Midweek paper. I looked forward to reading his pithy and cryptic comments on such a wide variety of subjects. Your paper, I am sure, will be the poorer for this omission. Much which comes under the term ‘restructuring’ these days is merely an excuse to lower standards.

A.H. Richardson

 

These generous letters weren’t the result of an organised attempt to reinstate the column, as far as I know. 

A (very) loose Spanish story

Photo courtesy of the New York Times

In my last post on learning Spanish, I spoke about increasing fluency by memorising random sentences. This process got interrupted by the fact that I was also learning Psalm 139 at the same time, and I wanted to finish memorising it. Which I did.

Then I came back to the random sentences - as well as going on to start learning Psalm 1, another one I’ve known in English for a long time. In fact, I taught it to my kids as a song that I made up when they were all still relatively young – my wife learned it at the same time. And interestingly enough, everyone of them remembers it to some degree at least, once we remind them of the tune.

Anyway, back to the random sentences. Here they are, just for your information.

En una época de engaño universal decir la verdad es un acto revolucionario.

El fuerte olor a pintura me mareaba, así que salí a tomar aire. 

Estoy de acuerdo: será mejor vender la casa. 

No recuerdo en este momento, pero sé que anoche pasó algo grave.

Tenemos que conducir a la izquierda de la linea blanca. 

Cualquiera puede venir a la fiesta.

Judas Iscariote entregó a Jesús por treinta monedas de plata.

Lleva un carrito para poner la compra.

Estacio el coche en un estacionamiento y salió de él.

Mañana ayunaré porque tengo que ir a hacerme unos análisis.

Here are the rough translations, so that you have some idea what they’re all about.

In an age of universal deceit to tell the truth is a revolutionary act. (It’s a quote from George Orwell, apparently.)

The strong paint smell made me sick, so I went outside to get some air.

I agree: it will be best to sell the house.

I don’t remember at this moment, but something serious happened last night.

We have to drive on the left side of the white line!

Anyone can come to the party.

Judas Iscariot betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Get a trolley to put the shopping in.

I park the car in a car park and leave it.

Tomorrow morning I have to fast because I’m having some tests.

You can see there’s nothing connected amongst them. Nor did I choose them for particular words or grammar.

I spoke about using strong images in the last post to in order both to remember them and their order. At that time I was thinking of calling these to mind in a way that didn’t necessarily connect to the sentences as a whole.

But when I learned the first lot of sentences I found I would forget one or two and didn’t always get them in the same order. Not that the order mattered particularly, but it does help to remember them. Eventually I strung them onto a kind of ‘story’ and that helped enormously to remember them and their order.

I should have worked on that basis with the third lot as well, instead of trying give each of them ‘calling cards.’ So I took the idea of strong images and using those stitched the sentences together in a very loose story.

I’d had the ideas of explosions and battles and so on – I mentioned this in the last post. I noticed that the first sentence talks about revolution, and so suddenly a group of revolutionaries were taking over the town, shooting up things and setting fire to houses.

The burning houses linked to the strong smell of paint – I had in mind that in a hot climate (these were South American revolutionaries, it appeared) the paint on houses might burn fiercely, and with a strong smell. So sentence two sorted.

Next I imagined a husband and wife, caught up in the revolution, and, with the houses around them being set on fire, deciding rather ironically that it was time to sell their house. An unlikely possibility in the real world, but this is a story.

And then the wife opens the back door to find someone lying there who isn’t fighting with the revolutionaries. He’s bleeding badly all over the porch and the lintel. He explains that he doesn’t remember at the moment how this came about but obviously it was a serious matter.

The couple decide they have to take the risk of getting the man to the hospital, which accounts for the wife yelling at the husband that he’s driving on the wrong side of the road. Caused probably by other people trying to leave town as well.

Of course they come to a road block - set up by the revolutionaries. The man in charge finds the wounded man in the back of the car. He’s possibly the one responsible for shooting him, coincidentally. He’s a sarcastic bloke, as his words about ‘Anyone can come to the party’ indicate. We know that the ‘party’ is likely to end in the death of the wounded man.

The wife knows something about this revolutionary, and that he is a betrayer. Her comment about Judas and Jesus arises from this.

The road block is outside a supermarket. The revolutionary thinks it’s a joke to say the husband should get a trolley to put the ‘shopping’ (the wounded man) in. But the couple are hesitant: what will become of him?

Nevertheless the husband goes off, in his car, to park it in the supermarket parking area, and bring back a trolley. His words about this have a hint that he’s done something more than just leave the car. (Yes, I know I’m stretching things a bit here!)

The final sentence has the wounded man saying the words about ‘tomorrow morning’ and ‘tests’ – a grim joke perhaps indicating that he’ll be tortured in the morning.

Of course this ‘story’ is full of plotholes, and only partially goes anywhere. Or perhaps it leaves us up in the air and gives us a desire to know what happens next (!)

Once these stories are well and truly memorised I’ll move on, and we’ll see what happens next. Maybe.

 

Demeaning

First published in Column Eight on the 19^th May, 1993

Demeaning is the new in-word. Warren Cooper tossed it around like a hollow caber a few weeks ago when he claimed that the media is demeaning the Government. With all due respect it isn’t hard to do this, particularly when one minister (who shall be nameless) on the radio modestly declared he was ‘sincere and hardworking.’

However, demeaning the Government is child’s play compared with some of the more heavy duty demeaning that’s presently going on.

The Demeaning (formerly the Indecent) Publications Tribunal ruled recently that in pornography men are harder to demean than women. This rather curious ruling compares the treatment of men in a series of homosexual magazines with that of women in ‘heterosexual’ pornography mags.

Thus while women are ‘always’ treated as objects in heterosexual mags, the men in the homosexual ones were treated as both objects and subjects. So that’s okay. Follow? I must admit it took me several careful readings of the news report to understand what was being said.

Why do I have this niggling feeling that there’s something awry in all this wordplay?

I agree that an all-male porno mag doesn’t reinforce negative male attitudes to women, or reinforce gender-based inequalities. Of course it won’t. But surely that isn’t what the Indecent Publications Tribunal was set up to judge!

The IPT was set up to rule on indecency, not on inequality between the sexes, and I think it’s failed to do this. I also think it no longer understands the meaning of the word demeaning.

Demeaning has the sense of debasing. These days we usually understand it as an action on the part of one person or group which demeans another human being or group.

Surely, therefore, indecency itself is demeaning, quite apart from whether it debases women or men. And magazines are pornographic when they display human genitalia in such a way as to treat them merely as objects with no sacred worth, showing human bodies impersonally and without regard for their dignity.

The borderlines are being stretched constantly, of course, even in magazines that in no way would call themselves pornographic. But I think the average person has a fairly good idea, with or without the help of ITP, of what constitutes pornography.

In Melbourne the same curious double-standard as that used by the IPT recently appeared. A billboard of a naked 17-year-old youth with smutty words across his private parts was considered by women to be okay. However, it would have showed a ‘dominant and repressive’ social attitude if the person had been a young girl.

In New Zealand we have a naked man walking down the street on a television ad: in fact men dropping their pants on TV has become almost commonplace. Those who complain are told it’s only humorous.

Female strip shows are called degrading, yet women now attend male strip show in droves. How can it be demeaning for one half of the human race and not for the other?

The over-emphasis on exposing the human body in our society is excused on the basis that we’ve somehow matured from attitudes of the past. In fact it’s typical symptom of a society rapidly heading toward un-civilisation, and towards the decay, erosion and ultimate overthrow that normally follows such behaviour.

The Demeaning Publications Tribunal, meanwhile, contributes to our downfall, by allowing indecent publications to be sold. And the pornographic merchants of the world sit back and laugh, and rake in the dough.

 

The IPD was dissolved a few months after this column was written, and replaced by the Office of Film and Literature Classification – now called the Classification Office. It covers a wide range of areas, in part as a result of the huge changes that have come about due to digital information.  

Trade unions

First published in Column Eight on the 26^th May, 1993

An election year promise: New Zealand will become a nation of brown and white Asians.

Brendon Burns in The Press quotes words spoken by one Rev G H McNeur in 1926. ‘The average New Zealander has not begun to realise that the future of his country is in any serious way bound up with the happenings in China. China is awake. Is New Zealand asleep?’

Burns claims McNeur wondered why we hadn’t understood that our future is inextricably tied to China. Was that what McNeur had in mind? Perhaps, in those days, he was rather more concerned with China as a threat.

In the 1920s many New Zealanders barely knew that nations like China and Japan existed. And during the war one of these people became hated foreigners – for some Kiwis that still are. Perhaps we were wise to wait.

Mr Bolger, in his recent junket round three of the Big Asian nations, at least avoided the appalling arrogance attributed to Sir Keith Holyoake in his Asian dealings. Austin Mitchell wrote: ‘Sir Keith admonished the Japanese to drink more milk and eat more meat, to grow up big and strong and presumably slow their economic growth rate down to New Zealand’s.’

As a thumb-sucking self-secure little nation for so long, tied to Mother Empire’s apron strings, some of us are baulking at all the new trading partners we’re acquiring. We have some mind-resetting to do, especially in terms of viewing Korea, China and Japan as part of our neighbourhood.

Exporters, however, see dollar signs clinking above the heads of the 1.2 billion Chinese. But they look further than that: to other Asian countries – and the Pacific. There’s Papua New Guinea, and of course, the great Pacific nation, Australia.

Trade is all very well, but it isn’t all one way. You can’t just empty your containers on foreign shores while your overseas bank account fills up with dollars. Our trading partners will want to send us something in return.

Australia promotes Neighbours-liness in one of its soaps, but in real life, Crass Economic Return lies across the Strait.

What do we get for our export of expatriates, for example. A million dollar bill for feeding them! do they appreciate us sending them our finest rugby players? No – they stomp their springs all over the face of our national sport by cluttering up our TV screens with something called State of Origin. (Very puzzling – I thought I knew the names of all Australia’s states. Or is this some obscure reference to the confusions of an early church father?)

The more trading we do the more like our trading partners we may being to look. (And possibly like us, although with 1.2 billion Chinese it seems unlikely.)

Will all our New Zealand-made stuff have to go overseas, just to keep up with the rush we’re told is coming? Will we in return begin to wear garments made in places as diverse as Port Moresby, Osaka and Beijing (or even Melbourne!)?

No doubt this trading will eventually reduce our overseas debts. We can begin putting some money back into our own people again, in the form of classes in Japanese, Chinese, Pidgin and Ocker. That may prove more long-sighted than sending people off to Burnham/Waiouru for six weeks.

I would like to contribute this suggestion to international trade in celebration of my new-found Asiasticity. On a recent trip to China, a friend of mine found it necessary to carry toilet paper – at all times. Obviously this produce is in short supply.

Right here in Dunedin we have a company producing the stuff, almost on the wharf. How easy it will be to run the fork-lift across the road from factory to ship.

With all this new trade-unioning, I have another hope. That soon we’ll be able to call our national fruit by its rightful name again: the Chinese gooseberry.

Rev McNeur. Photo courtesy of 
The Presbyterian Research Centre, Dunedin

 think this is a good example of how not to write a weekly column. The title is a pun that doesn't get referenced again the text. The focus starts in one place and shifts halfway through to another. It begins in a fairly serious fashion and ends with mostly oddball humour. It doesn’t sound to me as though I actually had much idea what I was talking about when I wrote it, so it probably can be classed, at best, as a filler.

However, it has a certain historic value: trade is still a big issue, and there are now far more Asian people living in New Zealand than would have been contemplated in 1993, many from India, which doesn’t get a mention in this article.

 

The eyes’ habit

First published in Column Eight on the 5^th May, 1993

I started to write this week about the 5,000 school pupil suspensions/expulsions, and the statement that half that number were Maori or Pacific Islanders.*

Though my wife says it’s unlikely, I was going to be objective and fair. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised what a difficulty I have (along with many other New Zealanders), in being objective and fair about anything to do with race.

Concerning objectivity, American journalist, Walter Lippman, said, ‘The facts we see depend on where we are placed and the habits of our eyes.’ I’ve been placed in a mostly pakeha lifestyle all my days, but I’m realising a need to change my eyes’ habits.

Over the last twenty years I have, along with many other Europeans in this country, become alienated towards non-European New Zealanders. Why? Because we’ve believed much of what we’ve read and heard in the media: mostly bad news about the people we share these islands with.

To describe a man in the news as Maori no longer defines him in the way the bland and rather meaningless word ‘Caucasian’ does. We read more into ‘Maori.’ We know Caucasians commit crimes, but we ‘know’ that Maori commit more of them.

I confess I usually react to news about Maori, and Pacific Islanders, in a fairly negative light. But while their worst citizens are just as evil as the worst pakeha, the majority of them are reasonable, good-natured, decent human beings trying to deal with a time that’s become morally, socially and economically chaotic.

We don’t hear much about the ordinary non-crime committing ones; they don’t make eye-grasping headlines, or shock-horror television clips. And until we begin to hear about them, our perception is going to be slow to change.

In my childhood, and further back, Maori people were almost invisible, especially for us South Islanders.

Perhaps after the Maori Wars we thought of their wild warriors as ‘tamed’ – and didn’t think much beyond that. With good reasons: they hardly appeared in our history lessons, nor much in our newspapers. If we thought about them at all, we considered they lived in harmony with us. They’d conducted their skirmishes in the 19^th century, and got war out of their system.

Since the seventies, however, we could easily believe that the once-peaceful Maori were conducting some sort of guerilla warfare – or peace-fare; it consisted of attempting once more to raise their mana in the land they share with their fellow human beings.

These days there’s a smattering of the Maori language taught in most schools and kindergartens. But the emphasis seems to be on songs that remain obscure to the kids, and on legends that don’t relate to daily life.

Understanding the Maori in his daily life is difficult for many of us. The best overview I’ve come across was in a novel, Witi Ihimaera’s The Matriarch. The author took us back into the Maori Wars, showing what a vicious and grim period it was, with much suffering on both sides. He also showed us what life was like in that ‘invisible’ time. But best of all, he present a picture of contemporary Maori life, the straddling between the community and the city, the being at home in both worlds, yet not quite at home anywhere.

We need to read Maori writers to appreciate Maori people. We need to see Maori artists at work in films and on television. Compare the ‘Caucasian’ film Utu and the Maori film Ngati; it’s an interesting exercise in viewpoint. Utu is vicious, violent and tasteless (a copycat Rambo); Ngati is dramatic, humorous and celebratory, sometimes self-mocking, and essentially gentle.

And we need to have journalism about, and by, Maori and Pacific Islanders. Journalism that accentuates the positive.

*In 1993, school suspensions in New Zealand reached an estimated 5,000 cases, sparking significant national concern and leading to legislative reform. This milestone occurred directly after New Zealand raised the compulsory school age to 16 on January 1, 1993. The surge in cases prompted an inquiry by the Education and Science Select Committee, ultimately reshaping how schools handle student exclusions.

 The Maori Wars are now mostly known as the New Zealand Wars.

Since I wrote this, the racial landscape in NZ has changed considerably. There are more Maori – or people of Maori descent – working as politicians in Parliament. In fact two of the three leaders of the current ‘Coalition’ are of Maori descent. There is also a Maori party, though its members have done themselves more harm than good during their time in this Parliamentary term.

The use of Maori language has increased greatly, and there are immersion schools where only Maori is spoken from a young age. More people of Maori descent are attending University.

Sadly, the crime reports in the newspapers continue to feature men (mostly) of Maori descent, and murder and violence is well and truly on the rise.

On the other hand, three of my grandchildren are part-Maori…

Denial

First published in Column Eight on the 28^th April, 1993

I walk into the kitchen. Grated cheese is spread from one end of the bench to the other; milk sits in several pale puddles; the charcoal from a burnt slice of toast is piled up in a little mountain; unidentifiable liquids drip intermittently from the cake-beater, the milkshake-maker and the hair drier. I nearly break my back ice-skating across a margarine blob on the floor.

Easily roused, I give that fingernail-on-the-blackboard parental cry: ‘Who did this?’ Every child in the house answers, ‘I dunno. It wasn’t me.’

I conclude that a neighbour’s child stole into the house, opened the fridge and larder for a day of devastation. This was an attempt to fool his parents into thinking he always keeps his own kitchen clean.

Not so. Someone in our house did it, but everyone denies it.

Denial. It’s a common complaint in our world, and not only when it comes to covering up our own misdemeanours.

Some curious people even go so far as to cover up the misdemeanours of others, claiming that actual factual events never took place.

We have at present one gent being refused access to several countries because he insists on denying the reality of the Jewish Holocaust.

And he’s not even alone. M Hirsch Goldberg (in The Book of Lies) says Paul Rassinier, a French author, Arthur Butz, a Northwestern University professor, and Robert Fausisson, a Sorbonne professor, all equally claim that the Holocaust is a hoax.

How curious. The Holocaust has been called ‘the most documented of all crimes.’ So how can people deny it? (I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at denial – we still share this ball-shaped planet with convinced flat-earthers.)

In our own nation we have Maori tribes stating that large chunks of land should be returned to them because they were ‘stolen’ by early visitors to the land. Yet history books tell how some of these ‘stolen’ lands were sold several times over by our present Maoris’ ancestors. Some South Island Maori even travelled to Sydney to clinch the deal.

More usually, denial wants to cover up its own ugly truths.

Last week Waco’s David Koresh appeared on television in an Aussie interview laughing off claims that he’d abused children and women, physically and sexually. Yet the voices of his victims said otherwise. I suppose if you think you’re a Messiah you can do, and deny, anything. (Bert Potter has the same problem.)

Denial is a form of lying. A far-more widely acknowledged Messiah, Jesus, once said to the hypocrites of His day, ‘The devil is your father, because he’s the father of all liars.’

But you don’t have to be the devil to be denied. The widely-acknowledged Messiah has also come in for His share of denial. Last year Barbara Thiering had a go at Him, using some newly invented cryptology to argue away everything He was supposed to have said and done.

How much increase in cash she may have made from her form of denial is anyone’s guess, but she can’t have done much to increase her reputation as a scholar.

And more recently, one Professor Thompson has concluded that various chief figures never existed, because he couldn’t find any archaeological evidence for them.

When we went to Cannibal Bay in the Catlins at New Year we looked in vain for signs of the guidebook’s ‘remains of a forest buried by blown sand and evidence of moa-hunter living areas.’ Our first reaction was to deny the truth of the guide book.

However, does it mean that more knowledgeable people were necessarily wrong, or that contemporary records were mistaken, just because we didn’t find any evidence?

These scholars and messiahs mentioned above have come a long way from leaving a mess in the kitchen and the childhood saying, ‘It wasn’t me.’

Denial on their scale becomes a refusal to face the facts, or believe the truth.

 

David Koresh was already dead, on the 19^th April, 1993, by the time this column was published, so I presume the television interview had been filmed some time before. The horrendous end to the Waco siege was as shocking as the Jim Jones murder-suicide in Guyana.

Doublespeak

First published in Column Eight on the 21^st April, 1993

Every employer must at some time have sat down to face that most delicate and awe-inspiring of tasks: the writing of a testimonial for a departing employee whose stay has not endeared them to you.

A type-rope tread is required. How to be fair without destroying the person’s working future? On the other hand you need to warn prospective employers of whom they may be employing.

A code is needed. Here are a few examples of its use.

I recommend him heartily to any other employer: I’m happy as long as he’s not working for us.

A sparkling, witty, vivacious and outgoing person who communicates easily with both customers and staff: Never stops talking long enough to do any work.

This person will revolutionize your office procedures: Once he gets hold of your files you’ll never find anything again.

Efficiency is her other name: She not only corrects all your spelling mistakes – she re-writes your letters.

Picks up new tasks so quickly, you’ll wonder why you need to train her: She can’t be told anything because she already knows it all.

Exceptional at handling the firm’s finances: Must have been putting his hand in the till, but we couldn’t catch him doing it.

Self-confident, innovative, full of new ideas, progressive and dynamic: He knew more than the boss.

This person has become skilled in all our operations and knowledgeable about all our tasks. He has never missed a day’s work, and has put in extra time without remuneration (frequently missing lunch breaks to get jobs finished). He has taken work home, and even called up during his holidays to see how things are going: He used to be the manager.

Of course, that’s the employers’ viewpoint. Supposing employees had to write testimonials for their bosses – what sort of doublespeak would be needed then? Some examples…

An excellent supervisor: It’s a relief when he stops looking over your shoulder to see if you’re doing the job properly.

Often calls you into his office to discuss working problems: Is always demanding you go upstairs so he can threaten to sack you.

Very good at give and take: Gives abuse then takes a bit off your wages.

Makes sure everything in the office is well-oiled: He’s a greaseball.

Keeps staffs’ personal problems confidential: Keeps details in a file which may be brought out and used in evidence against you.

Likes to make sure everything is running smoothly at all times: A one-man band with no idea how to delegate.

Allows staff to work at their own pace: Spends the whole day in his office ringing up the TAB, or working out how much he can deduct for expenses, or programming his computer to give him the next six figures in the Lotto.

Sensitive and concerned about staff needs: Will only bawl you out in front of everyone when you’ve made the mistake of the century; or when your wife has left you and the kids and somehow managed to sign your house over to your mother-in-law; or when the big chief from head office is down on a PR trip with reps from the Japanese sister company.

Usually even-tempered, and manages to keep her cool even under the most stressful circumstances: As long as the stressful circumstances are yours she’ll be okay; but when she’s having morning sickness, or finds that her husband forgot to put pickle in her ham sandwiches, or when instead of sending out the top copy the typist has fast-posted the carbon she’d scribbled rude remarks on – then, and only then does she exhibit a little distemper.

 

courtesy: https://www.amtec.us.com

 

The TAB is the agency that controlled betting on racehorses at this time; now it also covers betting on a wide range of sports with human participants. It’s been running for some seventy years.

Indecision

First published in Column Eight on the 31^st March 1993

Otago: wild coasts, arid inlands, lush pasturelands. A province of marvellous contradictions. That last word sums up not only the piece of Earth we inhabit but also this province’s prevailing attitude to its Anniversary Day.

Do other provinces take such an ad hoc approach to their holiday? Would we so arbitrarily toss around Labour Weekend, Good Friday or Boxing Day? (We have better reason to do so with Queen’s Birthday, since the Queen celebrates it twice each year.)

This year confusion was added to confusion as banks and offices took one stance, retailers another, and some schools a third, in order to fit in with a much more important event – the cricket.

With some shops believing that they have to trade every day, or die, shoppers had no idea what would be open in town.

What are we celebrating? Not much it seems. The newspaper presented some historical articles on the earliest settlers, and reported on the high school’s Anniversary Day speech. I didn’t see anything else.

Quite honestly, while we fluff around year after year, the whole point of the holiday ceases to be. What will take to make us unite? An Act of Parliament?

Indecision continues in another area: the Andy Bay roundabout. I had high hopes for improvement when I saw Citiworks back there digging and delving. Yes, the plot in the middle is bigger, with a nice kerb for cars to ride up on to. It still, however, looks like a base for some civic dignitary’s bronze statute which hasn’t arrived from the foundry.

Let’s face it, a roundabout doesn’t work in this location. Abandon it and put in some plain old-fashioned traffic lights before an enormous semi-trailer demolishes a Mini trying simultaneously to negotiate that pitiful zig-zag of a double lane.

Yet more indecision: the buses. The free day must have shown that Dunedinites don’t have any inherent problem about riding on buses. (Although I have some inherent problems about that seamy ‘You can do it on a bus’ piece of advertising. It’s about as clever as most toilet graffiti. 

Where Dunedinites do have problems is the basic fact that it costs more to travel daily on a bus than to take the car – in terms of petrol, at least. If every member of our family used a bus instead of being taxied everywhere (that’s assuming with the present timetable they could find a bus), our budget would skyrocket. Either that, or we’d just stop going lots of places.

The chicken or the egg. As long as prices stay up, and as long as there are no buses when they’re needed, who’s going to bother going on them?

More indecision: parking meters back in the main shopping area. Just when we’d got the city beginning to look halfway decent, someone want to clutter it up again. (Why not bring back overhead electricity wiring as well?)

The problem isn’t the fact of parking in the main street, it’s the fact of cars in the main street. Rather than plant rows of meters again, let’s think about making the Octagon through to Frederick St a pedestrian-only zone. The idea’s been around for years – let’s move with the times and get on with it.

And finally, a possible decision – 16-year-olds in night clubs.

I’d like to be optimistic about human nature, so I’ll try. Of course they won’t drink, of course no one will  buy drinks for them, of course the bar staff will have time to supervise, of course there won’t be trouble, of course the drinking problem in New Zealand won’t be encouraged.

Of course, pigs will become a problem to air traffic controllers.

 

Trooping the Colour 

The Queen herself didn’t actually celebrate her birthday twice a year; but we in New Zealand celebrated it on a day different to the actual day she was born. Apparently the first Monday in June is the day – in England – when the Trooping the Colour takes place. In England, of course, it’s also the start of Summer, and the ‘official’ birthday of whichever monarch is in power. New Zealand, without consideration, celebrates it at the beginning of winter, which makes no sense at all.

Otago Anniversary Day is supposed to be observed on the closest Monday to the 23^rd of March. However, most schools celebrate it on Easter Tuesday, even when the school holidays occur at the same time. Offices tend to close on the official day, but shops often stay open and also tack it onto Easter. Even though many of them now stay open as well!

I don’t know which Andersons (Andy) Bay roundabout I’m talking about here. Partly this is my ongoing dislike of roundabouts that aren’t really big enough, or are too big – or like the newest one in Oamaru, where I now live, are so big that they barely fit the intersection, and cars struggle to rotate around them. Ambulances and fire engines avoid it completely.images 

I’m intrigued that way back in 1993 I was advocating for a pedestrian only main street. I've long since changed my mind about this. In the last couple of years, part of George St (the main street), was turned into a semi-pedestrian street. Except that cars can drive along it single file, and in one direction, as well. It has not exactly proved popular, and worse, it’s removed even more parking spaces from the central city, something that a peculiarly ideological City Council (the one before the current one) decided was a good idea. Now traffic flow in the city is worse than it was, and finding a park is more of a nightmare than ever. Pro-bikies, who have gained sections of the roads where car used to park and where bikies seldom appear, say this is a great thing, carefully forgetting that the elderly don’t tend to ride bikes, that it’s very difficult to take home your weekly grocery shopping on a bike, that getting children to school is impossible on one bike and so on. And that Dunedin has many hills…

Glorious?

First published in Column Eight on the 7^th April, 1993

I see some protester has scrawled obscenities on the Cenotaph. Downwards at an angle above the inscription, The Glorious Dead, is a word both objectionable and objecting.

I may be wrong in thinking that the protester disagrees with the message engraved on this monument. Maybe he or she had nothing else to do. The obvious intent, however, was to cry out that the implications of the phrase, The Glorious Dead, are hard to justify. Our view of war, in general, has changed since the days when monuments were raised in memory of soldiers slain in battle.

While some of those who gave their lives for their countries may live on in glory, their deaths were anything but glorious.

Death on the battlefield is a horrifying alternative: a long slow lingering torture or a sudden extinguishing of the light. There isn’t much in between. Although the death arises in an attempt to halt the onslaught of the enemy, at the moment of truth, those slaughtered must find their self-sacrificing motives mixed with, or even overwhelmed by, the desire for life.

Yes, I know giving one’s life for one’s country is a noble thing. so we used to think; it’s an extension of the noble philosophy of giving one’s life for a friend. But what battle was ever noble? Most are outlandish horror.

An article in the news this week detailed the after-battle life of a Vietnam veteran, from Palmerston North. This man has been so affected he can no longer stand the stress of living amongst other people. A television documentary some months back showed US veterans living out their lives in isolation, far away from families and friends.

I’ve been considering this whole matter of glory in war, or the lack of it – and its morality – after reading the draft of a book on pacifism by a near-neighbour of mine, Walter Lawry.

In the days of World War II, patriotism was at one of its  heights, and the majority thought war had to be fought, come what may.

The pacificist minority were viewed as traitors, wimps, and cowards, people who  had no consideration even for the safety of their own wives and families.

Their heroism was viewed very bleakly by almost all who had dealings with them. Yet it takes as much courage to stand up to the majority who believe they are right, as it does to stand up to an enemy who threatens to overwhelm you, and take your life.

Ironically, it seems easier to die for your country than to live on in the ignominy of going against the common grain.

The story outlined in this book is the sort that blows away all the dusty geniality of our history, as we thought we knew it. It exposes the antagonism shown to the conscientious objectors, an antagonism equal in ferocity to that shown to the enemy.

As Lawry says, New Zealand had to prove itself more loyal to the Empire than the very country that made the Empire. In Britain, some ‘conchies’ were given a short prison sentence – perhaps a month. Generally they were put to useful work.

In NZ, they were separated from their wives and families, imprisoned for the duration of the war – up to five years – and wasted in terms of productivity.

More than forty years down the track we’re finally beginning to appreciate the price men paid for refusing to go off and kill.

Standing up to the current world view will always get you knocked down. And as Easter approaches, I’m reminded of that all-time great conscientious objector, Jesus of Nazareth. He had the same problem when He stood up for the truth. His enemies buried Him and tried to put Him out of sight.

When it comes to truth, things haven’t changed a lot. The only difference now is that the majority bury Easter, and Jesus, and the glorious truth He spoke about, either under an avalanche of pop-eyed bunnies and chocolate eggs, or indifference.

Walter Lawry lived a couple of blocks away from me, and I was given the privilege of reading his book, We Said No To War, before it was published, in 1994. I think I did a bit of proofreading on it.