Party Central: An artist's impression with added landscape gardening

Compromises usually reek of the lowest common denominator, and in a way it’s a shame that half of Auckland’s Queen’s Wart heritage is going. They and the nearby fuel farm represented a fine snapshot of the carbuncle-style architecture that has made Auckland world-famous as one of the most dysfunctional and dull-looking cities.

Compromises are also the usual consensus of a committee, always producing a camel instead of the intended horse. But in this case, it’s a tin turkey, thanks to – among others – Auckland Regional Council’s leader, the perfectly hindsighted Mike Lee, whose form includes a disastrous foray into circus soccer that cost ratepayers millions, and a strange inability to measure the required length of railway platforms before they are built.

A hastily erected marquee, plus the loosely nailed old wreck, will serve as a lesson to the IRB: There is a new definition of Third World country. Compare what pitiful New Zealand can offer with the basket-case we all thought was hopeless: South Africa and its amazing football World Cup triumph.

Full points to the Government for insisting that only the shed’s ground floor may be used for unrestrained carousing. Given recent experience, we can’t have rugby tourists falling to their deaths from parties held at great heights.

Forget the Eiffel Tower, Bath’s Royal Crescent, the Brandenburg Gate and the Taj Mahal. Our Great Shed stands as a monument to the pioneer spirit of fencing wire, corrugated iron and eternal kludging – in fact, all the things that have made this great nation look rather small and uncultured.

Pathetic native experts have judged the sheds to be of architectural and historical merit. Methinks they live on airfields.

Visitors, on the other hand, will most likely marvel at our banality and obvious lack of cash or imagination. They’ll probably say: Kiwis are world-champion boozers, but they couldn’t organise a piss-up in a potting shed.

Unless, of course, our guests venture beyond Auckland; in which case, they will discover a wonderful world of welcoming folk who cringe with embarrassment because of a pretentious, vulgar sub-city and a fumbling government that, together, couldn’t make a mall out of an unruly scrum.

The Soccer City Stadium... like a giant cooking pot

England has its Barmy Army. But what should we call our All White supporters, so dedicated to a lost but honourable cause? GoG’s suggestion, on an impromptu Afternoons with Jim Mora contest, was The White Noise. Which might have been appropriate had the World Cup not been staged in South Africa. The idea was quietly dropped in the face of a deafening Black Noise.

It comes from the massed band of the Vuvuzela Players, currently performing in a Johannesburg stadium hilariously described by a BBC commentator as looking “like a giant cooking pot capable of holding 96,000 people”. Somewhere in Hell, Idi Amin was having a chuckle.

Dredged up for the thicker-lipped attending the World Cup, the vuvuzela is a wretched metre-long cone of coloured plastic, producing 115 decibels of harsh monotonous buzzing. That is only slightly less noisy than one jumbo jet engine at maximum thrust. Aimed at the players, the combined effect of 80,000 being blown at once makes verbal communication and robust blaspheming on the field impossible even for the originators to hear.

The referee’s whistle is barely audible above the din and has to be amplified through the public address system. But I love the vuvuzela almost as much as I loathe watching grossly overpaid footpads lashing the ball around and falling over like blubbing diddums in the hope of getting some field advantage.

The vuvuzela, a deadly weapon

I can see the vuvuzela bringing a whole new era in sport support where audiences, galleries, the crowd in general can test a sportsman’s anger management strategies to the limit and perhaps beyond, for our viewing pleasure. McEnroe at his most explosive would be as nothing compared to an athlete reacting to the aural assault of massed vuvuzelas.

Imagine Tiger Woods about to make a critical putt to clinch some tournament when, as he lines up, the gallery draws in its collective breath in glorious anticipation, and he begins to move the putter head. Suddenly, 400 vuvuzelas ranged around him blast forth.

“Quiet please” called out at tennis tourneys, snooker events, in libraries, in opera houses, theatres, and in parliament would become a phrase blown from the language into oblivion by the mighty vuvuzela.

The recently rediscovered Vuvuzela and Child by Scarlatti (1660-1725)

The resulting entertainment value of watching raving, apoplectic sportsmen, actors or politicians (live and in colour) cannot be under-estimated in reawakening the fortunes of today’s ailing commercial broadcasters. A bit like jogging a man’s elbow when he’s holding a full pint, I commend the vuvuzela to the House!

Next year, when New Zealand hosts the Rugby World Cup, it will feature two dangerous imports: the Springboks, and the dreaded Vuvuzela Orchestra.

Postscript

Where will it end? Vuvuzela-powered motorcycle

Was it Martha and the Vuvuzelas? If it wasn’t, it should have been. I can only think of one other word in English that has two ”v’s” an “l”, a “u” and an “a” and I wonder whether this orifice was what the inventor had in mind, in a sick combination with either umbrella or Mandela. Thought originally to be a Zulu horn called a kudu, it was modified and modelled on an imboma, a holy horn devised by the Nazareth Baptist Church, which is now threatening to sue for royalties. Twas ever thus: God moves in wondrous ways. NZ actually won a point.

Britain's Daily Mail, 1999: Rumours of Golly's demise were greatly exaggerated. Today, he's enjoying a revival

It is perfectly possible to be a diplomat and still tell it like it really is. So-called Rugby Ambassador Andy Haden has apologised for using the word Darkie to describe Polynesian rugby players, who he says (much more importantly) are subject to a colour-based quota by Canterbury’s Crusaders. Apparently, even Polynesians who know about rugby have noted that statistics seem to support Haden, who sticks by his claim.

The alleged culprits have issued a somewhat limp-wristed denial, but that has been all but drowned out by the bizarre fury surrounding Haden’s “three darkies, no more” comment. Instead of fretting because (sensibly) no one has laid a complaint about this toss-away remark, Race Relations Commissioner Joris de Bres should have been onto the quota claim immediately. His inaction is in stark contrast to that lightning response when a bunch of teacher-inspired Otaki schoolchildren objected to Wanganui Mayor Michael Laws, and Debris printed certificates for them. http://www.gog.org.nz/2009/10/24/what-a-wharce-the-undignified-spectacle-of-an-inverted-racist/

The silence from his worthless organisation on Haden’s grave allegation has been deafening. If the Crusaders have a hidden agenda, that’s very serious and should be investigated.

Andy Haden is just the latest in a long line of politically incorrect prat-fallers, victims of a creepy campaign that began in the 1980s when British jam-maker Robertson’s was forced to stop giving away Golliwog badges. Those lovely, enamelled Golliwogs are now collectors’ items. Such misguided attention to the wrong target also claimed children’s author Enid Blyton, now widely banned in public libraries. Her Golliwog character was condemned for bullying Noddy in Toytown.

Look what PC did to Arnott's Golliwog bikkies...

The Haden case is entirely unlike Paul Holmes’ rant against former UN Secretary-General Coffee Annan, which amounted to a stupid piece of personal abuse. Any such comparisons that have been made in the media have not been properly thought through.

It’s likely that this PC lunacy will not end until Cadbury and Whittakers have been forced to drop the term Dark Chocolate.

Meanwhile, further north, the natives are restless. The Bay of Plenty’s Te Arawa Iwi has seriously annoyed 120 of its tenants – many of them Whities – by telling them to destroy their homes and vacate land leased from the tribe on an idyllic bit of coastline in Little Waihi. They are allegedly polluting the nearby estuary because their own landlords failed to provide a decent sewerage system (while carelessly permitting them, in some cases, to spend large amounts on their homes – ownership of which, under the lease, reverts to the iwi on vacation). Who pays the rates on this land? And what happened to the Western Bay of Plenty District Council’s $32 million 2006-2016 Waste Water Plan, which included Little Waihi?

Little Waihi - big stink

Some suspect that – rather than experiencing a sudden and novel epiphany about the environment – the tribe has realised that, if public money can be found for a decent sewerage system, Te Arawa will be sitting on a piece of coastal real estate worth millions. Perish the thought – and banish the nightmare of what such people could be capable of elsewhere, if they won control of an entire National Park or if 15,000 kilometres of foreshore and seabed were handed over to their tender care.

You’d have thought that Debris, who we all pay to be our Race Relations Ambassador, would have hot-footed up to Little Waihi to sort this out long before it festered into yet another nationwide, race-based controversy. Such a notion is clearly ludicrous, for it would involve repudiating the idea of two separate societies and concentrating instead on developing a united, harmonious community.

And that would put Joris de Bres out of a job.

http://www.tpk.govt.nz/en/region/te-arawa/

Rugby - The Profession is exposed as a load of overpaid bottom-feeders

There being little of significance to discuss, let us turn our attention to matters of no importance. For example, on Page 5’s “In Brief” column of The New Zealand Herald on Thursday or Friday (how time flies when you’re having fun doing something useful instead of reading newspapers), we learned of a minor power outage in Wellington. This caused premature darkness for an hour or two, marooned a few people in lifts, suspended two window cleaners on a high-rise building, and failed to deter parking wardens who continued to issue tickets in the gathering gloom that surrounded powerless trolley buses. It had no effect on the bums occupying the Seat of Government – and no taxpayers noticed. Nobody died.

So, not much to write home about – unless you foolishly bought The Dominion Post, expecting a good read. The DomPost devoted almost all its front page to this faux catastrophe – caused, as it turned out, by an idiot and a piece of broken wire that did no damage to the Dominion Post’s outlying readers. Of course it was a piece of wire, stupid. Everyone knows that Wellington depends on one piece of wire, one electricity sub-station and one railway station – which also regularly grinds to a halt, thanks to a similar lack of investment in infrastructure. That’s why Wellington is so laid back and slack. Or, some suggest, lags behind the times. Other New Zealanders pay dearly for Wellingtonians’ arrogant laziness and wonder about jumped-up elected people who believe a Wallywood sign is more important than dealing with unpleasant vagrants and various other litterati that Wellington freely displays to its visitors. Or installing 21st Century trains and a reliable electricity supply.

Not that The Herald has 20/20 news sense or good timing or unusual energy, either. While relegating the dreadful power outage to Page 5, its lead story was all about a Melbourne rugby league gang that had been over-paying players (and therefore winning all the games) by – wait for it – all of $1.1 million over five years. That’s an average of $220,000 a year. Split evenly across the squad, it hardly covers the burly boys’ expenses in beer and off-field hookers. Yet revelation of the rort caused total meltdown at the club – and a rare chance for the densoids on the media’s sports desks (these people are normally confined to the rear-end of the newsroom) to grab a piece of the front pages.

That $1.1 million hardly stacks up against the billions lost by New Zealanders whose money went into the accounts of finance company high-rollers. The activities of these birth canals over decades were never the subject of such courageous investigative journalism. Even today, our fearless journalists can’t quite bring themselves to reveal who is planning to steal your money.

And who gives a toss about professional sport? The hallowed NZ Rugby Union Corporation’s $15 million loss provides a valuable clue. Most people are sick and tired of rugby – and of the TV and newspaper hacks who take our so-called “obsession with sport” for granted. That’s why rugby is losing money and fans. There is far too much cricket and rugby – and for consumers, most professional sport has become as boring, expensive, corrupt and predictable as politics. By contrast, soccer in New Zealand seems relatively innocent, and we love underdogs and lost causes. Plus, there are much more exciting things to watch, such as Project Runway, America’s Next Top Model, the Living Channel’s Watching Paint Dry Without Feeling Inadequate and Relocation, Relocation Revisited and Grand Designs Revisited with a GPS, which is popular viewing in the waiting rooms of Britain’s divorce and bankruptcy courts.

Fewer than millions of Dunedin International Airport passengers had their flights disrupted by a small Icelandic volcano and an enormous fake bomb. What a disgrace. Somebody must be to blame. RNZ's top evening news presenter Mary Wilson must demand: Who did it, and who will pay?

Is there a flight from Dunedin to Los Angeles or London? If not, Dunedin International Airport is a misnomer. It’s also unqualified for the title, following a bomb hoax that gripped the entire nation, thanks to a gullible media and an incompetent bunch of crisis handlers who delayed a few hundred passengers and caused needless flight disruption by taking five hours to reveal that the bomb was probably just a bar of soap embedded with a couple of wires connected to a dead battery. Blues legend John Mayall (who lives in slightly livelier Los Angeles and has just completed a hugely successful tour of New Zealand) was coolly sanguine, hanging about the airport in 75-year-old shorts and sandals. He must have thought the rumour was true: New Zealand is a place where people wait in desperation for something to happen.

And it almost did, when several suspicious cola cans were found strapped to a Green Island road bridge the very next day. The “art student” responsible said ruefully: “I thought it was all a bit blown up.” The nodding dogs who man and woman our newsdesks reported the false alarm with the usual earnest urgency.

No sooner was this non-drama over than The New Zealand Herald exposed The Bloody Hamburger Scandal on Saturday’s front page, along with a small but gory picture. Dark-hued Timothy Hughley and wife Rachel are outraged that the burger they bought from an outlet in West Auckland came with an added ingredient: human blood from the chef, who cut his hand while wrapping up the burger. Spurning the offer of an apology and vouchers for more burgers, this leading unpaid-up member of Victimhood NZ says he may take legal advice.

For which, all taxpayers will no doubt swallow the costs.

“What would have happened if my wife had bitten it and got hepatitis or Aids?” Timothy bleats.

Well, she didn’t. So shut your greedy mouth, Timothy, find a better restaurant, and move on to a healthier diet.

As for the basket case that is New Zealand journalism: Get some ear protection, try to regain a sense of balance, and stop headlining trivia and time-wasters.

Donut Quote of the Week: After a raid that netted hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of stolen goods, Auckland’s Detective Inspector Greg Cramer said: “The huge variety of goods turned up is probably a clear indication that drug crime, burglary and dishonesty are linked.”

Rechnik - wrecked by Russia's nouveau rich

Unfortunately for the peasants, this land – once on the outskirts of the city – is now within commuting distance of central Moscow and worth hundreds of millions of dollars. The city authorities want it back for a “public park” (yeah, right) and they have begun to demolish the houses. The residents have a legal right to occupation, according to human rights lawyer Yevgeny Arkhipov. Here’s hoping Yevgeny wears a bullet-proof vest at all times.

Winging our way westward, we arrive at the inner London suburb of Hackney Wick. This is where, in 1924, philanthropic aristocrat Major Arthur Villiers led the Manor Gardens project to make allotments of land available “in perpetuity” (and the Major could afford good lawyers). On these plots, local slum-dwellers could grow fresh produce to supplement their poor diet.

The slums have gone, but the English people’s love of allotments endures. Allotments produced food that helped the Brits to win World War 2. Major Villiers’ project became a fertile haven where, in recent times, neighbours of various ethnicities have worked together, swapping gardening lore and recipes, and they no doubt helped to inspire the movie Grow Your Own.

Eternity, said Woody Allen, is an awfully long time – especially towards the end. But these days, perpetuity is somewhat shorter.

Manor Gardens, ruined by land-grabbers in the name of sport. Picture by diamondgeezer.blogspot.com

Manor Gardens allotments lay just inside the boundary of the site designated for the 2012 Olympics. The land was compulsorily acquired by the Labour Government’s London Development Authority (desperate to secure the Olympic Games and the next election, and blot out memories of the catastrophic £1 billion-plus Millennium Dome just across the river) although it will only be needed for a few weeks to provide pedestrian access.

Allotment holders came up with an imaginative yet practical alternative design that would have transformed their traditional arrangements (featuring rusty old baths and bits of third-hand corrugated iron). Spectators would have been treated to the unusual experience of strolling to the stadium through attractive, semi-rural surroundings in the heart of London.

Lord Seb Coe, in happier times

It sounded like a reasonable compromise, but sharp suits from the Olympic Delivery Authority – led by sports czar and grasping artificial aristocrat Lord Sebastian Coe – were hostile. In reality, the Olympics are Corporate America in Lycra. Official food and drink sales are strictly licensed by Coe and Co and apparently only supplied by Kraft-owned Cadbury, McDonalds and Coca Cola (for goodly fees). Perhaps the owners of the Olympics feared a nightmare scenario of ordinary walkers pausing on the way to buy a few freshly picked tomatoes, lettuce leaves and basil for their lunchtime salad.

The gardeners were fobbed off with a piece of inferior-quality land somewhat further away, in Marsh Lane – the ancient name may provide a clue as to its condition. This move has upset another community that has lost some of its precious open space, and long-suffering taxpayers have so far forked out well over £1 million for remedial drainage work.

Similar stories crop up with depressing frequency. From China to India, from Africa to the Americas, and all points in-between, small groups struggle to retain ways of life that have evolved to suit the places they inhabit and love – while governments and special interest groups, energised by big money and grandiose ideas, remain blind to the intrinsic value of what is already there. Major Villiers made his fortune at Barings Bank. That bank, established in 1762, was destroyed in 1995 by another opportunistic vandal, Nick Leeson.

Footnote: In 1649, a radical offshoot from Oliver Cromwell’s army declared England’s land to be a common treasury and began to plant fruit and vegetables on common land in south and central England. It was a response to a shortage of food and what the Diggers saw as the misuse of productive land by large landowners. On BBC Radio 4, Alice Roberts meets The New Diggers – groups and individuals across the UK who are determined to tackle the looming food crisis by making wasteland grow.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qbz09

The Olympian rape of East London is described in detail here:

http://www.metamute.org/en/The-Regeneration-Games

Other background information about how dodgy people steal honest people’s property is at:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8482837.stm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manor_Garden_Allotments

http://www.lifeisland.org

http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2007/apr/08/features.magazine37

Michael Meehan - Police say no one was to blame for his death

They don't interview your partner if you want a driving licence. Picture: Dreamstime.com

Brian Edwards: Poor shot and bad sport

To make things fairer, we need to equip ducks with small heat-seeking missiles, triggered by the sound of shotgun fire, and programmed to zero in on the occupants of maimai across the land. With any luck the project will be underway in time for next year’s ‘Bag a Duckshooter Season’.”

Having shot yourself in the foot, Dr Edwards, your only honourable option is to fire up the laptop and delete that facile, ungrammatical and inaccurate piece. However, the miserable, fun-hating Edwards will more likely overlook his cheap and insensitive shot and perhaps turn his rheumy eyes to angling. There, he will discover cruelty or unfair human advantage, or some crazy, class-war-related reason to outlaw the sport.

Let us thank heaven that the likes of Ms Bradford and Dr Edwards are nowadays recognised as dummies who are reduced to firing blanks. They’re out for a duck.

http://brianedwardsmedia.co.nz/2009/05/bag-a-duckshooter-today/

Beckham's simply magic, but Auckland Regional Council faces the rebound. Picture by Diadem Images at Dreamstime.com

Boy, did they miss the ball. In the event, only 16,600 turned up. The result was: Beckham – Even Richer: Auckland Regional Council – Seriously Minus Nil.

At the original asking price of around $140 a ticket (subsequently painfully discounted at well past the point of no returns) and a break-even sales volume of 20,000, that leaves ratepayers out of pocket to the tune of at least $500,000.

And it has raised a more serious inquest than the match result.

Why is the Auckland Regional Council running sporting fixtures and arenas? The last time we looked, regional councils had quite another job to do, including environmental issues such as looking after water quality, for example. According to the Environmental Defence Society, “there are currently 12 regional councils in New Zealand with boundaries broadly coinciding with water catchment areas. They are charged with the integrated management of the natural and physical resources of a region. There are five unitary authorities, which carry out the role both of regional council and territorial authority.”

No mention of football there…

On the same day that the council emerged looking gutted, a water quality report said that more than one third of New Zealand’s top 500 beaches are often unfit to dip your pinky in. Wasn’t that something tasked to regional councils? Apparently so. Aren’t they supposed to be looking after streams and rivers? Apparently so.

But apparently not, because anyone who cares to look closely can see the filth that continues to pour into our rivers from dairy farms, and into our seas from sewage outfalls. This country falsely promotes itself as clean and green; some of our beaches are no better to bathe in than they were more than 30 years ago.

The Auckland Regional Council feebly defended its failure on the night by saying that its loss from the beautiful game might be offset by future rock concerts at the stadium. Since when was a regional council tasked with staging concerts? And if ageing rockers fail to draw the compensatory crowds, who will pay for that?

The answer is, of course, the ratepayers of the Auckland region, many more of whom will no doubt be lining up for welfare benefits as meltdown really begins to hurt – totally unaware that councils (whose new agendas they did not vote for) have crept up to devour their shrinking wallets.

Whenever we vote in councillors, they dream up new missions that voters hadn’t imagined. Several Hawke’s Bay regional councillors recently enjoyed a trip to China, for reasons that still haven’t been completely understood, let alone believed. Wellington’s star-struck mayor is showing all the signs of morphing into a deluded rock star concert promoter, all on her own. Invercargill’s rictus-grinning leader fancies himself as the local sheriff.

Down in Dunedin, ratepayers are fighting plans for a “world-beating” sports stadium that will cost them mind-boggling millions. The people who run Dunedin need a good pair of spectacles, because their economy earns less than Cronulla, a suburb of Olympic-earning Sydney (whose economy is at least three times bigger than the whole of New Zealand’s). Hopefully, the recession will put paid to Dunedin’s potty pipedream.

Christchurch, a city that once hosted the Commonwealth Games, is run by a tragic mayor who cannot account for his murderous citizens, but is searching for a 21st Century Vision. His stultifying place is one of the world’s most dangerous areas to be in if you are a taxi driver, a prostitute, or merely an innocent party-goer walking home or a lost back-packer trying to escape its desolate airport.

Hastings Opera House... elsewhere, the council's off-key

Mr Yule – supported by millions of dollars from Helen Clark – rightly restored the city’s Opera House, but looks nonplussed whenever increasingly serious violence erupts in his income-gapped areas. His gilded Opera House stands resplendent, mostly doing nothing, while taggers roam at will.

What are district, regional and city councils there for? We reckon they should stand only for good old honest values such as: collect the rubbish, clean the streets, look after local roading and lighting, take care of sewage, protect the environment, and have a role in promoting basic community values and public facilities.

Pretentious local politicians bang on about promoting values that our rates cannot afford. Across the country, meaningless, aspirational and unsustainable gobbledegook is being spewed out by councillors who are not doing what they were originally voted in for.

No doubt the entire Auckland Regional Council made it to the after-match Beckham party, which apparently featured a female ARC bouncer at the door. But when Rodney Hide’s bean counters arrive, many councillors will not be able to bend it quite like Beckham.

Jesse Owens, 1936 Olympics champion. Black man beats a white supremacist system

That is what we should be looking at, if we can spare the time to notice the murderers who are busily at work, instead of clapping our canoeists. Thousands of people are being slaughtered while we misuse our televisions and get over-excited about unproductive athletes. We must be crazy.

Dream on, if you believe this nonsense

New Zealand is so besotted by sport that it appears to have sent almost every available journalist to Beijing. We did not see such interest or investment in foreign affairs when Zimbabwe descended into anarchy, or thousands perished in Darfur, or during any of the other disasters that have recently afflicted the world.

No. Everyone who’s anyone in the media (and many who aren’t) is in Beijing, watching, feasting, fattening and reporting on every facile detail of a foggy farce. South Ossetia and Georgia can go hang, when US television stations need to re-arrange the finals of certain Olympic sports events to maximise audiences, and nobody is allowed to mention the word Tibet.

Hundreds of people in Beijing were displaced so that their homes could be demolished and replaced by shopping malls for visitors to the Olympic Games. Millions of tonnes of polluting concrete have been poured into building China’s expression of vanity. In a couple of weeks, it will all be forgotten and Beijing will be once again obscured by a dense fog that was only reduced by a totalitarian ban on transport that made the place look temporarily survivable by the competitors and tourists.

Thanks to the numbingly uninteresting Olympic medal winner Sebastian (now Lord) Coe, inhabitants of the deprived areas of East London are seeing vast parts of their place transformed for the next big-business Olympic circus. It will not benefit them and they had no choice when Coe and Blair and the Company of Hangers-On descended upon them. No modern day Olympic Games have ever benefited the locals. The UK Games will, on the other hand, vastly enrich people like Sebastian Coe and Co.

Meanwhile, the Russians are playing a merry and murderous game with innocent people in a neighbouring upstart country. Perhaps our new generation of students will start a protest movement. They could march past the Russian Embassy, singing “Georgia on my mind.”

On the podium, Jesse Owens, surrounded by thousands of racists

The Games are a relic of our primitive past and they should be consigned to history. There are many more useful ways to burn lots of money.