Fantastic?

This morning’s Business News on Breakfast reported significant falls in share market indices all over the world. Economic collapses in various European countries were noted as factors in the sudden lack of confidence.

The report went on to talk of falling prices for commodities and ended with the words “even New Zealand is coming under attack”.

Ever-smiling Petra immediately responded from the anchor armchair: “Fantastic!”

Yeah, well, we probably know what she meant - but we heard what she said...

Earthquake Tax?

Thank you, Brian Easton, for spelling out so clearly that the government intends that the cost of the Christchurch rebuild be carried more by the “poor, weak and vulnerable” than the more fortunate. (NZ LISTENER May 14 2011)

I’m no economist, but even I can understand that paying for the Christchurch rebuild out of a specially raised tax would come hardest upon those who pay most tax. And paying for it out of the consolidated fund while at the same time reducing “Working for Families, benefit entitlements, support for students and the Kiwisaver subsidy will eventually reduce the incomes” of the most vulnerable in our communities.

Brian Easton says: “I leave it to you to decide whether that is a good thing.”

Thanks, Brian; I have decided and I am not happy with the Government's decision.

Meet Brian Easton

What price our carbon footprint?

This week we have had four trees taken down. One was a wildling that had gone mad on our fragile terrace, one was encroaching on our driveway and the other two had got far too big for the places they’d been planted. Two absolutely dominated the street as you drove down towards our place.

I had it done with a heavy heart. I had supposed that they absorbed enough C02 to compensate for some part of our human lifestyle. But I went to the internet to check on the facts. One calculator suggests that our home creates about 25 tonnes of C02 a year and that would need 120 trees. Taking out four didn’t make our situation a whole lot better.

But down the bank we have got another few dozen which we regard with a new respect.

All soft and furry…

We’ve been enjoying watching some of our 1997 trip video while transferring it to DVD.

Yesterday we recalled captivating sequence of a squirrel building a stash of winter food in Canada. He was bounding backwards and forwards about eight metres from a small source of good stuff to a hole in the ground. He seemed to carry just one item at a time and carefully nibbled at each one to check it was OK. He then spread leaves over the cache and tamped them down. It was irresistible viewing for Kiwis who never see a squirrel at home, especially as the action was just outside Doug’s window.

The same day I opened our compost bin and right on top was another soft, furry creature about the same size but lacking the bold bushy tail. Bright eyes. Twitchy nose, I think, but I hardly noticed I slammed the lid down again so quickly.

I’ve heard squirrels described as vermin in their home countries but they seemed really cute to us. Perhaps someone can see beauty in the large swamp rat that has taken up residence in our compost bin. But we will set a trap…

Singing a new song? Oh, dear, no...

I’m taking a service tomorrow and we are going to read a hymn. The words are just right but the tune will be completely unknown and too difficult even for the music readers among us. The sense of the words will be lost in the struggle with the music.

It's a shame. Hymns are to be sung. Singing is one of the distinctive things about worship. If I made the decision to read this one tomorrow with a heavy heart, my frustration has been somewhat lifted by the memory of a service I attended in a sister church in Australia recently. There was not one thing I could sing in the entire 75 minutes. Everything was quite foreign to me.

I remember our Principal at Trinity College, in reflecting on the possibility that heaven and hell are what you make them yourself, once told us whimsically, “An angel would take something of heaven if she were sent to hell. And the worst reprobate would hate being transferred to heaven – he wouldn’t know the tunes!”

I think I can sympathise. I hope our worship tomorrow will match up some vigorous and tuneful singing with some thoughtful and inspiring words. We may not be quite good enough for heaven – or bad enough for hell, perhaps – but we will try to uplift each other in our singing.

Head and Hands in the LSM congregation

Recent tensions in our small parish have highlighted for me the issue of the relationship between the Parish Council and the Local Shared Ministry Team. I've always argued for separation. It has seemed to me that the Council (the head) discusses policy and makes a decision; the Team (the hands) take the lead in carrying it out. Of course, one or two team members might be on the Council but, generally, the roles of the two bodies are separate and distinct. It's a good distinction. Our own difficulties were made worse some time ago when one Team passed a "resolution" opposing a management decision that was being made. They were seen by some to be intruding on others’ business. However, when the parish membership is very small, it is simply not practicable to have two or three separate bodies making decisions around the same mission and ministry. Perhaps the very small congregation could have a Calling for a team which would also exercise the powers of the Council. I wonder if this has been tried and found effective anywhere else in the LSM setting?

Misdirected enthusiasm

In Orewa recently we saw at least a thousand godwits flying south along the beach, presumably to assemble at Miranda prior to their autumn migration to the northern hemisphere. I am always filled with wonder that they know how to do it.
In the Australian National Botanic Garden last week I encountered some other birds who knew what they had to do and were diligently doing it. There was a galah industriously hollowing out a nest site in a tree; a red-browed firetail finch carrying a feather as big as himself; and an immature male bower bird dancing among blue bottle tops and little bunches of twigs in the makings of a bower.
They were all quite magical encounters. All three birdswere doing what their instincts told them to do for courtship and mating, nesting and raising young. But they were all doing it at the wrong time. Somehow, their internal clocks told them that after long heavy rains, the bright sunshine must mean it was that time of the year when all thoughts turn to love. However, Spring is months away and there will be a hard Canberra winter to endure before it comes.
It’s just as well that the godwits have a more reliable sense of the day when they must head out on their long ocean migration. I suppose the lesson for me is that, for some things, there is a season that is right. It is important for me to be living in that moment and not in some other time, no matter how much I am enjoying what I’m doing.

RTDs

Three really enthusiastic people offered impressive testimony at the Select Committee Hearing on the Alcohol Reform Bill I attended recently. They spoke with passion about a high-morale new company they are responsible for. It employs 200 keen workers in South Auckland – may of them Maori or Pasifika – and is marketing a whole range of new products that are commending themselves in the market. It all sounded like great news.
But, ah! These people are turning out the new RTDs (Ready to Drink) products which are designed to make alcoholic products more palatable (“No, they don’t have more sugar than other drinks” – Yeah, right!) and sold in all kinds of brightly coloured packaging. From “alco-pops” such as Cola mixed with quite substantial amounts of alcohol to sophisticated ready-mixed cocktails, these drinks are designed to make alcohol more interesting, more varied and more “more”. Indeed, the cynical among their critics are convinced that these products are deliberately targeted at people too young to be permitted to purchase them.
The proud manufacturers noted that many critics felt that such drinks should be banned, or at least more clearly marked, or sold in less persuasive packaging, or more heavily taxed to raise funds for the damage they caused. But, “Don’t pick on our niche in the market,” they protested, “Apply the same limitations to all alcohol products.”
Well, I hope that the government does that much at least. And I’m sad that such a live-wire group of executives are finding new ways of promoting sales of what, if it were just invented, would be a Class B drug.

Time for Lunch in the Select Committee Hearing

Over recent years I have attended a number of local sessions of the Environment Court or the Liquor Licensing Authority. These events usually convened at about 10am and sometimes adjourned for a half hour tea break and later took lunch around the middle of the day, even if a late schedule meant that some of us had to wait around during the lunch hour which once or twice extended to more than two hours.
The Hearing on the Alcohol Reform Bill worked in a different style. It convened at 9am and worked through without a stop until well into the afternoon. Every fifteen minutes or so a different individual or group had the full attention of the five Members of Parliament.
Continuous tea and coffee were provided and people helped themselves. But the schedule ran over an hour late and after my contribution the lunch break was taken around 2pm. I wondered if they were finished for the day. It seemed late to be taking a major lunch break.
But lunch break it was, though not like anything I’d experienced before. “Can everyone be back here in fifteen minutes?” asked the Chair. Some opened packed lunches on the desks where they sat.
I have heard about our “hard-working” Members of Parliament. It was instructive to see the level of discipline which people from various parties put themselves under yesterday so that people like myself could have our say.
They may not accept my earnest suggestions but I am grateful that the “System” put in so much effort to listen.

The "Paihia Migration"

In the middle of our national tragedy, life goes on. For me, tomorrow, it’s a rushed trip to Auckland to speak to my submission on the government's proposed Alcohol Reform Bill. From memory I think I ended my lengthy document with the comment that what needed to be reformed was the Bill itself. I think it is woefully inadequate to meet its own declared objectives.

My spoken submission will be just about the Paihia Migration of four years ago. At one end of town we have over 1000 visitor beds in one block, 450 of them in just one short street of backpacker accommodation. In that street there are no less than six licensed drinking establishments, presumably targeting the backpacker community. Not a bad idea, you might think, to keep them all together in one place.

However, in the CBD, some 750 metres away was a large party bar in which over 200 were known to have crowded at once. It enjoyed extended hours to 3am. But the Kings Rd bars all had to close at 1am. So about 12.45am in the high season we might see as many as 350 people, straggling along the beachfront road to another two hours of licensed alcoholic enjoyment. And then after 3am most of them stumbled back again to their beds. More slowly. That’s what I dubbed the Paihia Migration.

The noise, the fights, the accidents, a death or two, the rubbish – including human wastes of three different kinds – eventually so sickened the locals that 55 of them turned up unexpectedly at the Hearing to renew the 3am extension for the party bar. They didn’t say a thing; they just sat and watched – after the Hearing was shifted to another venue to make room for the extended public gallery. Months later, the extension was withdrawn.

The point of my submission tomorrow is that local neighbourhoods should have more say in the numbers and kinds of licences that are issued for their communities. No two communities are exactly alike and some have very special, almost unique, circumstances which require special provisions. Also, thought it may surprise some of the lawmakers, quite a few local people have some ideas about how to manage their local situations. Let’s give them more room to contribute.