Ruck 'em!

I can't help but think there is huge missed opportunity in the debate surrounding the way Paula Bennett is bullying two women who have gone public with their criticisms of the government’s cuts to the Training Incentive Allowance.

If you're out of NZ or under a rock - our Minister of Social Development released details of the two women's benefit incomes (although it seems she got the numbers wrong) in response to their criticism. She is now unrepentant and her PM is backing her.

There's an issue around the appropriateness of a Minister of the Crown releasing personal details relating to the benefits paid to clients of her department without first seeking their permission or informing them of her intention. There's also a question about whether her actions amounted to a breach of the Privacy Act. She may also have misled Parliament (or the public) with her explanantions about whether or not she got advice before acting.

Predictably the blogs and news reports have veered from "she's a bully" to "bloody beneficiaries". I will be very interested to see if Labour's complaint to the Privacy Commissioner bears any fruit. I find the beneficiary bashing side of it all so reminiscent of a by gone era (Muldoonism, anyone?) but I am much more interested in the continued lack of informed debate.

I say lack of informed debate because not one media type has made an effort find out and explain exactly how our benefit system works or to find out how successful such support of education and training for beneficiaries can be.

I posted Elsewoman's comments about the DPB earlier. Such information would really help people understand that there simplyaren't the imagined hoards of solo mums out there trying to rip off hard working tax payers.

I'd also like to see some discussion of studies from Europe and Scandinavia that indicate the more support we provide to recipients of a range of benefits the less time they continue to draw that benefit.

But none of this will see the light of day in the New Zealand media. I don't know why. I suspect it's because the system is now simply not up to the research and investigation required to write such an article. News rooms are getting smaller and younger. There's neither the resources nor the expertise. Nor, I uspect, is there a will. Most journalists are just as prejudiced and uninformed as the rest of us and to begin the process of writing such an article one would need an open and enquiring mind and some knowlege of the issue to start with.

That's a shame. The vitriol about beneficiaries in comments to news stories and blogs is so 1970's. With a bit of help from media outlets we could at least progress the discussion.

I don't think Bennett intended to progress anything. She's now feigning horror at the level of abuse these two women have received but she'd have to be a moron not to have foreseen it. No, it was just old fashioned bullying from her. She didn't like being put on the spot and being accused of pulling up the ladder (she sold herself as a success story solo Mum in the election) and she went ad hominem on their arses. As she said on the telly - it was “a bit of a lesson for what happens if you go out there and put your story”.

And since no one in the news industry is interested in getting their eye back on the ball, the only option we're left with is to watch the other team play the woman. I have to admit I'm kinda enjoying watching a Tory sweat at the bottom of the ruck but I would really have been interested in seeing more of the broader game plan.

Teen Pregnancy. Elsewoman says it all.

Elsewoman is a great blog from one of those people who actually know stuff. Unlike, it seems, Lindsay Mitchell.

Take me to the Moon

I've really enjoyed all the coverage of the anniversary of the Moon Landings.

I know that the kazillions they spend on space travel could be used to solve world hunger. I know that it's a huge industrial/military/government complex of a conspiracy to keep American millionaires.......millionaires. I know that scientists could be using their extraordinary minds to solve the Earth's problems. But I think flying to the moon is cool and I love the idea that humans are going to go further.

And I want to know what's out there just as much as I want to know what's under our oceans or what creatures and plants once inhabited our planet or what happens when two sub-atomic particles collide or how my body knows the difference between pineapple juice and petrol.

I'm not religious. I do not believe in a god or gods. I do, however, share something in my response to the universe with those of a religious persuasion. I think it's awe. I am in awe of how this whole thing works. This seems to manifest itself in me as a sort of geeky interest in things scientific.

I honestly look up at the the Milky Way and - like a kid - try to imagine what it must be like to be closer to one of those stars than to our Sun. I read all the articles about the Large Hadron Collider. I'll buy any magazine which advertises itself with pictures of dinosaurs or planets. I search shuttle launch on Youtube every time there is one. I am endlessly fascinated by the human body - from gross muscle movements to biochemical processes.

I want to know more about how it all works. I think we should all be fascinated by how it all works. I think every teacher and parent should instill in every kid a wonder and thirst for knowledge about this extraordinary thing - our ability to know and want to know the world around us. I believe that if this sort of excitement about how interesting it all is was instilled in people then people would do less bad stuff. Kids with a fascination and wonder about life would be less inclined to damage it or themselves. People whose minds are opened to the marvel of it all are more inclined to want to listen to others in order to learn more.

That's why I want someone to go out, take a look and report back on what they find. I want to say - I want to hear others say - with wonder in our voices - "Wow, that's cool".

Throw away the Key

I was fascinated by how defensive Simon Power appeared when responding Dame Sian Elias' comments on our prison system yesterday. Garth McVicar's comments were predictable but I thought John Key's McVicar-like "we are not going to just open the gates and let them walk out" comment was very telling. Today it was "three strikes" ACT MP David Garrett being very aggressive in his attempts to shut her down.

What interests me is the defensiveness of their responses. Neither of the Nats outlined the government's approach nor did they try to justify policy. Power just tried to bully Elias into shutting-up and Key trivialised the discussion with a ridiculous dog whistle to McVicar's cronies. Both demonstrated a fair amount of insecurity about their position.

I think this insecurity about their position stems from the fact that their position is so insecure. In other words there actually isn't any analytical, reasoned approach to their policies.

What we have seen from many of the new Government ministers have been policy announcements based on nothing more than the minister's opinion. An opinion which might go down well over G&T's with their mates but simply doesn't hold up to any sort of analysis or scrutiny.

Their current justice and prisons policy is a classic. There is ample evidence from all around the world that no matter how harsh or punitive we make prisons they simply don't actually work. Greg Newbold points out in his "The Problem of Prisons" that it makes no difference whether our system is harsh or liberal (and NZ has had a range of responses. We currently have - historically - very long sentences) there is always pretty much a 50% recidivism rate. Half the people who go to prison will re-offend no matter what you do to them while they're in there. As an aside, he points out that almost every prisoner gets out of prison eventually and he'd rather live next to someone who was treated moderately humanely than an ex-prisoner who was brutalised while inside. He also refers to his own history as an example of what happens for at least some prisoners if they are offered a chance at redemption.

Dame Sian Elias knows all this. She knows the research from around the world and the models of justice that do- in some countries - seem to work better than just building more and more prisons. Simon Power, David Garrett and John Key of course don't care for this research and knowledge because it conflicts with their populist stance - the public want 'em locked up so we'll just lock 'em up. Neither of them have a reasoned leg to stand on so they don't bother with reasoned discussion about the issue.

Watch them - they will repeat their "not opening the gates" and "Government makes the policy, judges action it" lines over and over. They won't try to address the real issues or listen to the arguments. Neither, of course, will the telly interviewers or the talk-back hosts.

And as long as we have these guys in power that will be the intellectual level at which these debates take place.

Hazardous

It started years ago in Wellington. Which is sort of significant in the light of the current scene. In the early eighties, in what is now the home of the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra, I picked up a uke. We had a theatre group called "Bricks". Bricks mostly performed kids' theatre in schools and summer festivals but we also developed a couple of adult shows. We called it "cabaret - with a "k"" and one of the shows featured (as well as a short play by The Spines', Jon McCleary) two songs by "The Lunchtime Intellectuals". One of the LT's two songs was Shirley Bassey's "I who have Nothing". For the life of me I can not recall the other song and after a recent drunken, nostalgic night with Jon I am none the wiser. Anyway, I played uke. I never played much again and the instrument I had disappeared in one of my moves.

Fast forward to Christchurch a couple of years ago. Uke fever had hit and all the cool parties had a resident uke player. My flatmate, Dan Randow, was just starting to get a few songs down. I picked up his ukulele and I was hooked again.

You could be forgiven for being a bit cynical if you google ukes and read the endless blogs and comments about how much fun it is to be in a ukulele group. There's this daft, childlike enthusiasm that people have about this funny little, four stringed instrument. But the ukulele really is like that. I guess you have to have the gene but pick it up, strum a couple of chords, listen to someone who can actually play and the ukulele really does get under your skin. It's an instrument that makes you smile. It seems to generate big groups of amateurs who play for fun. It's a little bit ridiculous, a bit comical. Like any instrument in the hands of a great player the uke can be magical but it's also relatively easy to master enough chords to have some fun and satisfaction.

Back in Nelson - the uke bug embedded in my epidermis - I got a cash bonus one day in my sales job, walked into a shop and spent $90.00 on my very own Makala pineapple ukulele. I brought it home and asked Spike what song she wanted to hear. My Girl was her choice so that was the first song I learned.

I've never been too shy about singing so my challenge is to try and make the instrument sound good enough to match a reasonable voice. And a challenge it is. I've got a three chord grasp of the guitar but the trick with all the strummed instruments is in the right hand. Mastering the chords on the four stringed uke isn't that hard but so much of what we hear when we listen to guitar and ukulele is in the rhythm - and that's the other hand. I spend way too much time practicing and I'm sure I drive Spike crazy but I want to do more that chinkachink on every song. But then again, on the uke, chinkachink still makes you smile.

Recently I inveigled my friend Terry to try the uke. Terry and I have known each other for a few years. Most of our relationship has been watching rugby at our local and talking rubbish about music and politics. So, I already knew we had a similar taste in music and I liked spending time with him so I invited him around, handed him a uke and suggested we knock out a couple of songs.

Terry is a very good guitar player. No, I mean very good. He can sit down with almost any stringed instrument and just wow you. I've watched a pub full of drunken orchard workers stand transfixed as Terry essentially mucked around in the corner on the pub guitar. I was a bit nervous about inviting him out to play but of course like most musicians, he's incredibly generous and just enjoys making music. We shared songs, he showed me the ropes and we started to enjoy playing together.

Occasional sessions turned into regular sessions which turned into rehearsals which moved on to the endless activity of all groups of musicians - finding a name. Terry is a funny guy who likes puns and that's a good thing for ukulele players because there are three types of ukulele band names: ironic formal names such as The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain and the Wellington International Ukulele Orchestra; "club names" (the Durham Ukulele Group, the Brisbane Ukulele Musicians Society, The Adelaide Ukulele Appreciation Society) and puns. My sister's band is the Ukunesians. I've come across : The dUKES, Uke 'til you Puke, The Plinkers, The Uke Lamers, Sonic Uke. We started as The Ukrainians. Now we're The Ukes of Hazard.

I think the Ukes of Hazard are a country swing group. We both have a love of country so we tend to choose country songs. We also tend to countrify anything we play. So I think we're country. Which makes us a bit different. A lot of uke groups seem to be cover bands like us but go for ironic covers of pop music. I guess we've got a niche although it's hard to say because with the current craze there are thousands of uke groups out there.

Terry and I have no intention of trying to do more than enjoy ourselves so aren't looking for gigs. We haven't played publicly. But our first gig has come to us. Spike's birthday. At our local. I've been a performer for 30 years but it has been a long time since I've been this nervous about gig. Partly that's because I'm playing music instead of acting, partly it's because I'm trying to keep up with a genius musician and partly because a lot of the audience will be friends and I'll see them the next day. But we've said "yes" so we got on with organising a set list. A set list I might add, that will contain every song I know on the ukulele.
Sloop John B - because we both like it's old fashioned rollicking folky nature and it's something familiar for the audience to latch on to as they confront two middle aged blokes with funny little instruments. I think the Weavers did it before the Beach Boys popped it up but it's actually an old West Indies working song.
Bring it on Home. I first heard Sam Cook's classic on John Lennon's Rock and Roll album. I've always liked that Motown sound but never really been a fan. Terry suggested this, though, and he's right. Bring it on Home to Me is made for the Maori strum and a sing along.
Slipping Away. I heard an old muso say once that playing music is a just a job but a hit song - now that is a career. Slipping Away was Max Merritt's career. The Christchurch musician had a great job interpreting R&B down under but there won't be a New Zealander or Australian of a certain age who doesn't know this simple song. It's basically two verses and a bridge. You sing it twice through in one key and then again one note higher. Simple magic.
Mercury Blues. Lot's of people have covered it but David Lyndley made it his own. Crazy as a loon and a genius. If you haven't heard of him you've heard him - Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, James Taylor. Dave's the guy playing whatever stringed instrument they need - often a lap steel. MB is an ode to cars. Very American.
Don't Think Twice. Terry and I are both Bob Dylan fans. Terry does a great BD impression. I think we could be a Dylan tribute band if we let it happen but we've got more sense. We have a couple down, though, and I love the dark humour in this song of a fella saying goodbye to a gal who has pissed him off.
Evangeline. I am fast coming to the conclusion that The Band were the ultimate purveyors of Americana. Robbie Robertson wrote it, the gorgeous Emmylou Harris sang the quintessential version and it's fun to play. I also get to try the high notes.
Bar Room Girls. I love Emmylou Harris and Emmylou loves Gillian Welch so I love Gillian Welch. There's a sort of movement of young musos writing and playing old-style country and Gillian has it down. This is a beautiful waltz that's gorgeous to sing and let's face it - we all love the barroom girls.
I'm on Fire. The closest we come to the ironic pop thing. It sounds really good on ukes.
Long Gone Lonesome Blues. Hank Williams. If you're a country fan I need to say no more. If you're not - listen to Hank. As you listen remember that for every overindulged, rebellious, system fighting, artistically tortured, depressed, lovelorn, drug addicted stereotypical rock or pop star, Hank did it first. With one guitar, talent and a great voice.
Everybody's Talking. A lovely song that Terry suggested. I put Harry Nilsen in a category with Warren Zevon and Randy Newman. Proper American poet/song writers capturing imges of their place reflected in rain soaked streets, dirty windows and gas station bathroom mirrors. Think Ratso and Joe Buck.
I hope I don't fall in Love. I wish I could do Tom Waits' dirty, sodden, smoke stained, piss taking voice. I can't so we soften this a bit. I sing it low so the bottom C at the end of each verse is a challenge. Funny, self effacing, modern poetry.
I'm so Lonesome I could Cry. Did I say I like Hank Williams? I like Hank Williams. There's a great clip of Bob Dylan and and Johnny Cash singing this classic informally around a piano. They linger over every note, savouring the beauty of a simple, simple song so well written.
Red Clay Halo. More Gillian Welch. An Okie song in which the singer bemoans a tough life but uses the metaphor of an after-life to remind him/herself that they wouldn't have it any other way. Or maybe it's just a great country dance song.
Ophelia. The Band again. Impenetrable lyrics. Ophelia has left and no one knows why. God, it's fun to play, though, and has the best ever chord progression. My sis (who knows her stuff) reckons sevenths chords sound great on a uke and she's right. This one is full of them. The verse goes C E7 A7 D7 F G7 C then bowls through a lovely A7, D7, G7 C trill at end of each verse. If that all sounds like muso-wank just get a copy of Northern Lights-Southern Cross and have a listen. See if you can stop yourself singing along as though you're in front of the crowd at The Last Waltz.
Serve Somebody. I'm not a big enough Bob Dylan geek to know if he really did have a Christian phase but this is certainly a gospel song. It's a cracker too. Bob has written lots of songs with lists and this one lists all the things you can be in the world while you're trying to ignore the big question. Even though I don't subscribe to any religious doctrine I like to think of it as a metaphor. What ever it is that we're doing has an impact on our world and we have to decide which side we're on. Fence sitting isn't actually an option.
Wagon Wheel. More nouveau trad. country this time from Old Crow Medicine Show. I really like these kids and this song is a cracker. They've presumptiously taken an unfinished bootleg Bob Dylan chorus and written verses for it. It's a clever song because the tune for each verse and the chorus is exactly the same but it feels like it changes and develops through the song. This is partly because of the the slightly odd scanning of the lyrics in the verses which were hard to nail when we first started playing it. We kept going back to the CD and listening intently to work out where the stress was on each word so we could fit them all in to each line. But the chorus is a real sing along number and enormous fun to play.
My Girl. Well we gotta. It's Spike's birthday after all. A chance to be a bit silly doing the bomm bom bompbompbomp bits vocally.

Now I'm Depressed

So the top entrepeneurial minds of New Zealand got together yesterday to generate 5 ideas to get our economy pumping. Bright minds, thinking outside the box get together at a summit to tell poor old, dumb, lazy New Zealanders how to make a buck.
They came up with this:
-Kiwicard Travel: Tourists buy a $10,000 special debit card which can be spent only on goods and services in New Zealand. Their airfare is paid by the Government and included with the card.
Not bad. New Zealand's tourist industry is a big part of our economy. $10,000 would contribute. 20 nights in some pretty good hotels or 50 pretty good meals or 10-15 of the more expensive touristy activities. And that's not the cost of a top end holiday in which tourists pay thousands of dollars to stay in our luxury lodges. In other words $10,000 is a bit less than the expenditure of a holiday in New Zealand by someone who can easily afford the fare anyway.

-Flying Kiwi Fund: A capital fund to attract investors to help fund the growth phase of small to medium-sized businesses.
Good idea. I think we call that sort of fund a "bank".

-Possum Economics: Transfer the funds being used to poison the country's 70 million possums (about $200 million a year) into trapping possums for economic benefit.
Various New Zealanders have been trying to get a decent possum industry off the ground for years. This ain't a new idea. There are certainly a few arguments from coservationists as to why it can't work to control possums. If the government listened to that one I'd understand if the hard working people in the possum industry felt a little miffed that they'd been struggling all these years and it took a bunch of yuppies to get official recognition.

-Research and Development: Reform and collation of intellectual property rights to help bring them more quickly to the market, where they can generate revenue.
Again a good idea. But hardly original.

-Attitude Campaign: Dubbed "Give it a go, bro!", this idea is about encouraging a national positive attitude. It includes a advertising campaign and youth education.
That's it? That's all you've got? These people need to get out more. I think they think that anyone earning less than $100,000 p.a. is sitting around in public bars bitching. That's not the kiwi way, actually. Pop into my local and you'll find the atmosphere lively, jovial and poistive. Most of the people in the Trav on a Friday night have spent the week - and intend to spend the weekend giving it a go. Bro'.

A full day with 100 of our top enterpeneurial minds and that's what they come up with.
We're screwed. Oh - sorry. Give it a go, Bro!

Meeting of the Waters

When I was a kid we had two playgrounds. The river and the hill. More of the hill later. The river was mostly the Waipa which wended it's very circuitous route through peaty, muddy landscapes from the the rangitoto Range and Waipa Valley to meet the Waikato at The Point. The Waikato, of course is the river everybody knows at Ngaruawahia because it's the one you cross on the way to Auckland. It's the one in all the old photos of the Ngaruawahia Regatta. The one in the background of the competitions at Turangawaewae Marae when the waka majestically appear around the bend and your heart stirs in the same way it does when your team performs the haka or you hear the bagpipes.

It's also big. More dangerous. We were raised on stories of kids who'd strayed too far out when swimming at The Point or jumping from the railway bridge. They'd have tried to swim to shore but the sheer power, the deceptive lugubriousness and the sheer weight of current and water would take them too far, too fast. They'd be found (in various states of decomposition depending on the teller of the tale) tangled in branches of fallen riverside willows or even on the bar at Port Waikato - a hundred and fifty miles to the north. I'd never known one of these poor kids, never noticed any of my gang missing. But we knew it had happened. Everybody said so.

The Waipa didn't have this reputation. Near our place on Waipa Ave it was narrow enough to swim across and not so swift that you'd be taken too far. It was wide enough to be a challenge, though and as we kicked and pounded the water and looked into the tannin green, part of the excitement was the thought of not making it, not touching the tangled mat of roots on the other side and being swept down to the junction, past the Point and swallowed by our river's bigger, meaner sister.

So our playground was the bank of the Waipa with its swimming hole and giant willow branches. We built huts, dug tunnels in the muddy dirt, tortured the eels and the occasional unfortunate frog. Gangs of us spent entire summers muddy and wet and happy in the water just a hundred metres from our home.

I remember the water being brown but not muddy. After all it passed through flat, peaty dairy country on its way to us but it wasn't an unpleasant colour. I'd even call it fresh. Although visibility was poor the water was in fact clear for a few feet until the tannin lowered the curtain shielding eels, floating bodies and Marie Thompson's tanned, bikini clad body from view. Clean dirt my mother would have called it. We didn't mind swallowing a mouthful as we fought in the shallows and never felt dirty even when we were covered in the mud that started to surround the swimming hole as the summer progressed and a thousand bare foot steps had broken down the soil of the bank.

We even had a boat a couple of years. Dad's twelve foot tinny. He used it during his brief career as an eel fisherman and we were sometimes allowed to fire up the ancient Seagull motor, take a bunch of inflated inner tubes and pootle up and down by the swimming hole. Well, that was the agreement we had with Mum. In fact we'd head miles up river until home and safety and rules were out of sight. Then we'd shut off the motor , chuck the tubes into the water and float back, yelling insults to each other, telling our latest filthy jokes, slipping in and out of the water and basking on the hot, black tubes like so many hairless, raucous otters. Within sight of home we'd fire up the motor, head upstream and repeat. Grouse fun.

I've been back to that hole many times. It's just down the road from where my mother now lives overlooking The Point. It's not the same, of course. The bank is overgrown, the hole silted up and the water looks dirty. Actually dirty - although I notice people still swim down at The Point. I guess industrial dairy farming and an increased population have degraded the water quality somewhat. But there doesn't seem to be as many kids around either. The grassed area down there and the river bank used to swarm with them. Me and my mates. We would have cleared away the undergrowth, dug some steps down to the water, nailed some bits of wood to the willow - a ladder for the climb to the jumping branch. We would have reattached the old rope swing. Maybe it's just older people living around there now. Maybe these days kids aren't allowed to disappear all day and risk their lives in the river. Maybe the giant eels got them. Maybe my memory of sun soaked, endless, carefree summers is actually a fantasy. I hope not. I hope not because it's part of what makes me a New Zealander - that opportunity to hoon about, safely(?) in the semi wild. That openness and freedom and connection to place. It's part of what makes me Pakeha - having the opportunity to call that paradise my stamping ground, my turangawaewae. I'd hate to think I made it up.