The Trav

I was at our local last night. The Travellers' Rest. The name sounds like one of those appalling, '70s, faux-Spanish jobs with a stuck-on brick facade and a "family restaurant". It's not, though. The Trav is the real deal. The building is at least 80 years old, wooden, two stories and was once actually a travellers' rest being positioned, as it is, in the middle of the Waimea Plains.
It would have been a stopping off point for coaches and carts headed for Mapua and Motueka from Richmond. The Waimea River mouth at Rabbit and Best Islands is not far away and Pearl Creek on the old Rabbit Island road was once the site of landings for boats moving between Nelson, the plains, Motueka and Golden Bay.

These days the Trav is a locals' pub. Farmers and farm workers gather there for an after-work confab of an afternoon and the local community tends to congregate on a Friday evening. Local news and gossip is shared, people catch up with neighbours and business is conducted over a beer and a basket of chips or a plate of nachos. Families and couples come in for a meal. There is always a traveller or three there - usually staying in the camping ground or the motel next door. It's a friendly, convivial scene with an interesting mix of people. The local market gardeners mix with young builders, the potter and the green stone carver. Farmers chat with accountants and the guy that owns the biggest local horticultural business talks nets with the fisherman in on his four week lay over. The same scene is replicated in pubs all over the country.

I really like the way the local community gets together at The Trav. There are locals, of course, who don't show up very often - some not at all. Some don't drink, some don't enjoy the friendship of the regulars, others are just in a different circle - but going to our local was the best thing we ever did on arriving in Appleby. We made friends there, got support for our business and found all the trades people we'd ever need (except a sparky. If you're an electrician and want to live the good life - the Trav needs a sparky). By visiting the local pub we became part of the local community with all of the emotional and practical support that entails.

The Trav(or the Office as many call it) is the focal point of a number of community activities including regular community pot-luck dinners, an all-ages, all comers cricket team, fundraisers for the local fire brigade and quiz night teams who head off to support various local kids raising money for sports trips and the like. Locals gather at The Trav dressed in their finery before heading to town for birthday and anniversary dinners and it's often the departure point for van loads and convoys heading into the city for concerts and other events. Just as many birthdays, anniversaries and wakes are held at the pub itself.

Last night was a regular Friday. We'd been around the corner celebrating the return to the district of a couple friends and then popped in on our way home. Kylie, one of the owners, was - as usual - beating the boys at pool. One of the locals was fretting because his fifteen year old daughter was off to town with her friends for a big event. He was being "supported" by a bevy of local women regaling him with stories of their antics when they were his daughter's age. A bloke who lives nearby was trying to interest tour groups to pop back to his place to try some lambs' tails he was roasting on an open fire. I engaged in a conversation about our local team, the Makos, and the injustice of their pending relegation while I kept half an eye on the Manwatu/Bay of Plenty game. We discussed the poor whitebait season, the prospects for the scallop season and the pros and cons of our district council amalgamating with the city. Parents put out the word - looking for summer jobs for their kids. We introduced ourselves and included in our conversations a couple who were looking after the business of local growers who are taking a well earned holiday. It was the chatter and stuff of local community and as I paused to take it in I felt optimistic.

There is huge diversity at my local. The Trav hosts people with a range of policical and religious beliefs. But there's a certain acceptance at The Trav that allows all sorts of difference while knitting together a community that can be and has been very cohesive when it needs to be. We manage to discuss politics and religion without anyone getting too wound up. We laugh at each others' foibles without anyone getting upset. Not all of us are close friends but we are all to some extent involved in each others' lives. New comers are welcomed and accepted because they too are now "locals". And if push comes to shove we can and do band together to support those in need. That need might be something as simple as building a deck or picking up some hay. It might be planning a wedding or dealing with a family crisis. Whatever the galvanising issue there is a willingness in the community to not only offer but also request help.

It seems to me that none of this is hard. We don't struggle in Appleby to be a cohesive community and if we find it this easy then I'm sure others do too. If the communities that seem to manage this cohesiveness can do it then so can the communities that currently don't and that makes me feel optimistic.

Fit? I don't fink so.

Since the new Tory government took power there has been a lot of talk about whether or not some of its Ministers are fit to do their job.

The likes of Kate Wilkinson, have clearly shown they're out of their depth.

Paula Bennett and Judith Collins have so far toed the party line and really only initiated the sort of populist agenda on which their party was elected - boot camps and container prisons. Neither has shown they have the vision needed to be truly effective ministers.

Bill English, while probably a very good Minister of Finance (depending on your economic views, of course), has exposed the self righteous, born-to-rule mentality that is the underbelly of modern Tory outfits.

There are several National ministers who are simply doing what all Tory Ministers will do and probably doing it competently (again depending on your political views) and there are those such as Phil Heatley and his Hoki quota - a stupid, ideologically driven move that reeks of the old boys' club and gins with the Talleys (Open Country, anyone?).

And then there is Anne Tolley. It seemed she'd been in the chair for seconds before she poured millions into private schools while gutting long standing and valuable community education courses nationwide. Now, we know that Tories hate any kind of adult, community or further education that isn't focused on producing factory fodder. Some of us are old enough to remember the attacks on the WEA. A conspiracy theorist might suggest that this attitude has to do with keeping the prols in their place but I couldn't possibly comment. I am, however, gobsmacked by Tolley's latest cock up. The link at the top of this post refers to Tolley backing out of plan to cut 770 teachers from our educational workforce. Many will view this as a good decision but let's look at the process. Tolley is quoted as saying she backed out of the plan at the last minute when she realised that it referred "actual" - well - people. I'm not sure what she thought cutting staff must have meant but you've got question her competency - and her motives.
She has clearly said that she has promised to carry through on a commitment to cut $50 million from the education budget. I'm not sure where she intends to make these savings but an amount like that has to affect staffing levels at some point. So we can start to come to some sort of conclusion about her fitness to do her job:

Either Anne Tolley is willing to gut education to reach her budgetary goal, in which case she’s leaving an appalling legacy behind her;

or she’s not competent enough to read the difference between actual cuts and cuts to recruitment.

I am sadly afraid it is probably the former but if not it has to be the latter.

Either way - like too many of her colleagues her fitness for office has to be questioned.