A man on an Air New Zealand flight turns to his partner and says, ‘I wish those children would shut up’. His remark that night features on both major TV networks’ national news bulletins, both ‘current affairs’ programmes and prominently the next day in every metropolitan newspaper in the country. The Timaru Herald even devotes its leader to the story.

Since people on planes regularly express the wish that noisy or badly behaved children would ’shut up’ - often in much stronger terms than that - and since those episodes attract no attention whatsoever in the media, we have to assume that there was something else to justify such extensive coverage. There was. The complainant was a Member of Parliament and he was gay. (I’ll come to the ‘gay’ bit in a moment.) 

Several stories noted that the MP was travelling at the taxpayer’s expense. I take this to mean that Members of Parliament forfeit their right to reasonable peace and quiet while flying or travelling on trains, buses, ships or ferries. It is all right to annoy them.

The complainant in the case, the children’s father, did not appear in any of the television coverage. This seems strange since his wife, who did all the talking, says she did not actually hear the MP say, ‘I wish those children would shut up’. Her entire evidence on that point was therefore based on hearsay. Or perhaps ‘not-hear-say’. This seemingly relevant fact seemed to escape the attention of the ‘journalists’ covering the story.

The children’s mother did say that use of the term ’shut up’ was inappropriate and that she would never use it to her children. Poor delicate-eared little darlings. They will no doubt need counselling. As for me, I should be all over the news media. I cannot count the number of times I have told my children to shut up.

While admitting that her children had been responsible for ‘a little bit of ordinary noise’, the mother noted that the MP ‘would have no concept of how young families are and how they live’. Now why would that be? Wasn’t the MP once a member of a young family himself? Well, the only thing I can think of is that this particular MP is gay.  I take this to mean that being gay disentitles you from complaining about the bad behaviour of other people’s children.  

And, by the way,  what exactly is ‘ordinary noise’?  

Now the difficulty with this story for most of us is that we weren’t there and the prosecution and defence versions of what happened are diametrically opposed. Mum’s  evidence on what was said cannot be admitted, since it’s hearsay. And Dad hasn’t appeared in (TV) court at all. His evidence has merely been reported in print and is uncorroborated.  So it’s difficult to judge his credibility. The MP, on the other hand, did appear in court and his evidence is corroborated. He has a witness. The New Zealand Herald reports:

‘A person on the same flight said yesterday: “I was sitting in the aisle across from Charles and I actually said to my husband that I wished the parents would tell their children to ’shut up’. They were pretty loud.”‘

Thank heavens the witness was married and to a person of the opposite sex.

But  before reaching a verdict we really ought to consider the question of possible motive for the charge being laid at all. Why would the father have gone to such extreme lengths to publicly attack the MP merely for having said to the person next to him, ‘I wish those children would shut up.?’

It’s a tricky one, isn’t it? But let’s throw caution to the winds and speculate widely: The MP is a member of the Labour Party. The father is a former member of ACT and a virulent right-wing blogger.  Hmmmm.

Unfair? Fanciful? Drawing too long a bow?

Well,  here’s what I think. I think this rather unpleasant fellow - read his blogs - saw a wonderful opportunity to damage a Labour MP by inflating an inconsequential and probably justified remark made about his children.

And I think the coverage given to this matter by the New Zealand media speaks volumes about the quality of journalism in this country. It is a disgrace.

I’m a Labour supporter myself of course, so you’re entitled to take that into consideration. But I’m also a father of five children, a grandfather of ten and a frequent flyer. I know about how young families are and how they live. And I’m all too familiar with small children’s behaviour on planes. I have endured  their shouting and screeching; I have suffered being kicked in the back for an entire flight by their restless little feet; and I have cursed their inconsiderate and useless  bloody parents.

I have enormous sympathy for the parents of a screaming baby on a plane. But there my sympathy stops.

As for the MP, he doesn’t come out of this lily white either. Instead of dealing with the problem in an assertive manner, by quietly asking the parents if they would mind asking their children not to make so much noise, he went down the non-assertive route of speaking loud enough for them to overhear his complaint. Not very courageous and more likely to receive a negative response and, as it turns out, widespread coverage from our now almost exclusively tabloid media.

But at least he’s stuck to his guns and not apologised. No apology is required.

 I was moved to write this post by two things: an article in The Times, reproduced in last week’s Sunday Star Times and headed ‘Satan to blame for church’s sex woes’, and a video clip, sent to me by my friend Ivan Strahan, of Stephen Fry taking part in a 2009 debate in the Methodist Central Hall in Westminster, London.

The motion was that, ‘The Catholic Church is a force for good in the world.’ Fry and Christopher Hitchens spoke against the motion. Conservative  MP Ann Widdecombe and a Nigerian archbishop spoke in favour. The debate was originally broadcast on BBC4 and you can see the whole thing at http://www.intelligencesquared.com/iq2-video/2009/catholic-church.

The vote at the end of the debate was 268 for and  1876 against.

Fry’s contribution is one of the most passionate and brilliant addresses I have ever seen. Regardless of your views of the Catholic Church, it is simply a delight to watch.  This post begins now. 

Why have thousands of Catholic priests taken to abusing young boys in their charge? According to Father Gabriele Amorth, the Vatican’s chief exorcist, as reported in The Times, Satan is to blame: ‘All evil is due to the intervention of the Devil, including paedophilia.’

It must be nice to have such a simple answer to such a difficult question. And comforting to at last know the identity of the real villain in the piece - not the men who raped the bodies and minds of those children, not the bishops and cardinals and popes who sheltered and protected them, but the Devil who placed such irresistible temptation in their path. Good men at heart, tested beyond endurance. One could almost feel for them.

I have a more complex answer.  It is that the sexual dysfunction of the paedophile, often a result of early abuse in his own life, may make the Catholic priesthood an attractive career choice. Not because it is a job which offers opportunity for contact with and power over children - though that is also a reality - but for the very opposite reason, that the Church’s requirement to live a life of celibacy may seem to offer a degree of enforced protection against the powerful sexual impulses which drive such men. Lust and guilt cohabit in the mind of the paedophile; a celibate life, spent in the service of God, may seem to offer relief from both.  

But the reality is that, for any normal man, celibacy is itself a dysfunctional state. Freudian psychology tells us that the suppression of our instincts and desires almost never succeeds. On the contrary, suppression merely makes things worse, as those suppressed instincts and desires fester within us, often later reappearing in more distorted and unwelcome form. Misguided attempts to change the sexual orientation of gay men provide an excellent example of the total failure of such ‘re-educative’ programmes. The vast majority of these men return to their former practices; many are left depressed and suicidal.

However good his intentions, the imposed self-denial of a celibate life within the church therefore offers the paedophile not redemption but opportunity. The evidence of that is now all around us.

Worse than the paedophile priests are those who, to avoid damage to the Church, protected them from exposure and, in so doing, exposed more and more children to risk. Satan again? Well, if we simply want to use ‘Satan’ as a convenient synonym for evil, Satan it can be, for this is certainly a great evil that stains the reputations of the highest officers of the Catholic Church. Indeed, it seems to me more unforgivable than the abuse itself, since it is not the product of compulsion, but the coldly calculated perversion of justice and the truth.

In his contribution to the debate, Stephen Fry notes that in 2003 the current Pope, Joseph Ratzinger, in his role as Prefect of the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith, was charged with looking into the burgeoning cases of child abuse among priests. His first act was to write a letter to the bishops ordering them ‘on pain of excommunication’ not to talk to the police or anyone else. Investigations into cases of abuse ’should be handled in the most secretive way, restricted by perpetual silence’.  Ratzinger’s solution to the problem, according to Fry, himself a gay man, was to stop homosexuals being allowed into the Church, a futile gesture since homosexuality and paedophilia are entirely different and unrelated phenomena.

A partial, but much better solution, it seems to me, would be to allow priests to marry.

As for Satan, I’m inclined to adopt my wife’s position on crime, that being tempted by the Devil may be a reason for doing bad things, but it isn’t an excuse. And I’m almost tempted to agree with Nigel Latta that when it comes to the crunch, each of us has a choice between good and evil. Almost.

Photo: kiwiblog.co.nz

Photo: NZ Herald/Richard Robinson

 I see that John Banks has taken his media trainers’ advice and begun to appear wearing an open necked shirt. According to a recent story in the Sunday Star Times, the candidate for the ‘Super Mayoralty’ was also counselled to be ‘more chatty’ when he talks and to ’speak up’ about  his difficult childhood.

Political makeovers are tricky at the best of times. To be effective they need to be both gradual and subtle, their effect on the electorate’s consciousness almost subliminal. Obvious makeovers  make the public suspicious and resentful. They suspect that someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes and are offended by the idea that they can be swayed by mere cosmetic change. 

When David Lange had his stomach stapled, there was adverse comment that this was part of a makeover which also included changing his glasses. The reality was that the stomach stapling was essential to his continued health and that he had accidentally stood on his old glasses and broken them.

From the time she became Leader of the Opposition, Helen Clark was constantly being told to do something about her hair, her voice and her teeth, but wisely resisted the advice. Her first words to Judy and me when we met in 1996 were, ‘I do not intend to be deconstructed.’ Her hair, voice and teeth subsequently proved no impediment to political success. Voters saw past these superficial matters to the leadership qualities within.

It was in any event too late. The time to change your image is before you have mounted the national stage and become familiar to the public, not after. A gradual and subtle makeover is virtually impossible when you are already well known.

Helen Clark was to experience this herself when Monty Adams’ flattering portrait of the PM was used in the 2005 election campaign and attracted widespread derision. People were happy with the way she looked before and saw the photograph as an attempt at deception. ‘Helen doesn’t look like that.’

John Banks’ problem now is that if he stops wearing a tie, starts being more chatty and begins introducing the topic of his difficult childhood into speeches and interviews, these departures from  his previous appearance and demeanour, far from being gradual, subtle or subliminal, will stand out like a sore thumb. He will be seen as trying to sell the Auckland voters a bill of goods.

This is not to say that the advice he was given was necessarily bad advice; nor is he to blame for the fact that that advice was all over a Sunday newspaper days after it had been given. But someone with Banks’ political experience really ought to have known that absolute discretion is the sine qua non of public relations and sought assurance that everyone involved in the training session, from trainer to tea lady, had signed a watertight confidentiality agreement.

Still, it will be fun  to speculate on which occasions John will decide to wear or not wear a tie, to score each of his public appearances for their ‘chattiness’ quotient and to keep count of the number of times he manages to work his difficult childhood into the Super City debate.  Local body politics have never been so interesting.

I assume Phil Goff would like to be Prime Minister of New Zealand. He has every reason to think he deserves the job. He’s served a lengthy apprenticeship, having come into Parliament in 1981, the same year as Helen Clark. And he’s had a distinguished career as an MP and Cabinet Minister. He’s highly intelligent and well-informed on a whole range of portfolios from Justice to Foreign Affairs. And he comes from good Labour stock.

Goff and his party are languishing in the polls at the moment, but their figures are actually better than Helen Clark’s and Labour’s were in early-mid 1996. Both the party and its leader then looked like dog-tucker. In my book, Helen, Portrait of a Prime Minister, she takes up the story: 

‘Then, in May 1996, just before caucus, I get this delegation telling me to stand down. From memory there was Michael Cullen, Phil Goff, Annette King, Koro Wetere, Jim Sutton. I had heard that they were intending to come, so I’d mobilised my Deputy, David Caygill, Steve Maharey, Trevor Mallard and Jonathan Hunt. I can’t remember if anyone else was there.

‘Anyway, these people had rushed around the caucus counting numbers and then decided they’d come and confront me and ask me to stand down, and say there was a majority who wanted that to happen. And the line was, you’re a nice person, blah, blah, blah, but you can’t win the election and we don’t want to have to challenge you directly at the caucus, so it would just be better if you resigned.  And I said to them, “Well, if you want  a change of leader, you’re going to have to go into caucus and move a motion.”‘

Which was another way of saying, ‘OK, if you think you’ve got the numbers, do your worst, I’m not budging’. The matter was not put to caucus and Helen went on to become New Zealand’s first elected woman Prime Minister and one of the country’s longest serving.  

That’s the history. But it’s interesting to speculate what might have happened if Clark had not  called the coup leaders’ bluff and stood down. In every conversation I’ve had with Michael Cullen, he’s claimed to have had no interest in leading the Labour Party or being Prime Minister. So Labour’s new leader might well have been Phil Goff: 43, talented, hungry, going places.

Could Goff have won against Bolger in 1996? Quite possibly. A factor in Winston Peter’s decision to go with National in the country’s first MMP election may well have been his reluctance to serve under a woman Prime Minister. So he might just have gone with Labour, and Phil Goff would have achieved his ambition to lead the country.

Whether or not he would have lasted three terms is impossible to say. But Peters has proved an uncomfortable bedfellow for more than one New Zealand Prime Minister  and there is no reason to believe things would have been very different under Goff.

So the question arises: did Phil Goff miss his one and only opportunity in May 1996?

Popular political wisdom at the moment has it that Labour will not win the next election. If that is right and if Goff’s personal rating as preferred Prime Minister has not significantly improved by then, he’s unlikely to survive long as Opposition leader after the election. In similar circumstances, Clark had 6 months to improve her poll ratings and did so spectacularly. Goff has at least 18 months and National’s social and economic policies will inevitably begin to erode the party’s huge lead in the polls well before then. So Goff is in with a chance, albeit a slender one.

Against him is a less easy, less engaging image than Key’s and a phenomenon which I like to call The Prince Charles Syndrome. Charles, the man who would be king, has simply been around too long. Kept waiting by a mother in excellent health and showing no inclination to abdicate, the once young and attractive prince has lost his appeal to his handsome and exciting son, Prince William.  Kept waiting by the hugely charismatic, if morally flawed Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, the dour Scottish son of a Presbyterian minister, may have suffered the same fate - around too long. And the same may be true of Phil Goff.

At the heart of National’s 2008 election win was the simplistic but potent belief that it was ‘time for a change’. John Key had been in Parliament only 6 years when he became Prime Minister. He was fresh and new and the electorate is giving him a lot of slack. We are still getting to know him.

When the 2011 election rolls around, Phil Goff will have been in Parliament for 30 years, kept waiting for twelve of those years by a woman who in 1996 also refused to abdicate.

So does Phil Goff deserve to be Prime Minister of New Zealand? I believe that he does.

And has he been around too long? Possibly.

From the story we learned that ‘a desperate young mother frantically tried to revive her baby daughter after finding the infant floating face down in the bath next to her twin sister.’

But the mother’s efforts were unsuccessful and the baby later died in Starship Hospital. The story continued:

‘Police are investigating the death but say it’s too early to know if charges will be laid…. It is understood the mother briefly left her daughters in the bath while she went to get something ready for them.

‘”It was just a matter of minutes,” Detective Michelle Shepherd, of the Waitakere child abuse team, said. “She immediately scooped her out of the bath. She phoned the ambulance who talked her through doing CPR.”‘

The remainder of the story highlighted the dangers of leaving small children unattended in the bath.

The story was back on the front page again this morning:

Mother of bath tragedy child on CYF list

In this story we learn that the baby’s 21-year-old mother,  whom the Herald names,  ’was regularly visited by Child Youth and Family which gave her advice on how to provide a “safe and loving home” for her twin daughters.

‘While police continue to investigate the case [her twin sister] has been placed in another home. Police say it may be some time before a decision is made on whether any charges will be laid.

‘CYF general manager operations John Henderson last night described [the baby's] death as a tragedy.’

Herald reporter, Elizabeth Binning, was meanwhile doing what reporters do - looking for  background and colour. She quoted from the family’s death notice in the paper,  got another quote from the little girl’s grandmother, who said the death was ‘just terrible’. And then this:

‘The Herald has been unable to contact [the girl's mother], but a picture on her page on the social networking site Bebo shows two baby girls, wrapped in blankets, lying on a couch side by side.’

Let’s all rush to our computers!

I wondered what the justification for these two front page stories was. The Herald would no doubt argue that they provided a salutary warning against leaving small children unattended in the bath. No doubt they do.

But the stories went beyond that, in my submission,  to exploit this mother’s and this family’s personal tragedy for no better reason than to sell newspapers. In so doing, it behaved no differently from any other newspaper in the country or, for that matter, any other media outlet.

When we read this stuff, we become little different from rubberneckers at a fatal accident, ghouls getting our jollies from the personal tragedies of our fellow man and woman, then taking the moral high ground of blame.

Twin dies after being left for ‘just minutes’. Do those quotation marks perhaps invite us to wonder whether it was really ‘just minutes’? And since police are quoted in both stories as saying that no decision has been made to prosecute the mother, why mention that possibility at all? Because a bad mother makes much better copy than an inadequate mother, whose entire history testifies to her inability to cope.

It is hard to imagine the mental agony that the mother of this little girl must have suffered when she found her baby nearly drowned in the bath, when her attempts at CPR failed, when the ambulance paramedics could do little better, when the life support system at Starship Hospital was turned off. And within 48 hours of her daughter’s death her story is front page news in the country’s biggest metropolitan newspaper, and front page again 24 hours later. And, in the interests of news and under the guise of sympathy and public information, she is named and shamed. Is there no humanity in our newsrooms? Very little.

If you doubt it, consider the extraordinary fact that the Herald tried unsuccessfully to contact the mother, for no other purpose I can imagine, than to interview her or get a statement. This in the period between her baby’s  tragic death and a service this afternoon to ‘farewell’ the little girl. I find this unconscionable. What, in god’s name, do you ask a woman whose baby has drowned in the bath and who undoubtedly blames herself for the tragedy? ‘What happened?’ ‘What had you gone to get for the twins?’ ‘How did you feel when you saw your baby face down in the water?’ ‘Do you have a message for other parents?’

From time to time I find myself referred to as a ‘journalist’. On the whole I’m more comfortable with being called a ’spin doctor’.

Reuben Strahan - 18 hours old

 A few days ago I had  an email from my oldest friend, Ivan Strahan.  ’Oldest’ in both senses of the word - Ivan and I were at school and university together in Belfast. Now semi-retired, he lives in the lovely little seaside town of Donaghadee with his gorgeous wife Claire. You may have heard of Donaghadee,  perhaps as the chorus of The Old Orange Flute: ‘Toora loo, toora lay, Oh, it’s six miles from Bangor to Donaghadee.’ [I know, it doesn't rhyme!]

Ivan and I are in regular email correspondence. Regular from him at least; I’m a hopeless correspondent. But this email was special. It was to announce the arrival of Ivan and Claire’s first grandchild:

‘The new arrival made an appearance yesterday, 1st March.  A baby boy, 8lb. 5oz., fair hair, no complications, mother and baby exceptionally well. Attached photos taken at 18 hours old.’

The new baby’s name is Reuben, a name I happen to be particularly fond of since one of my own grandchildren, and my first male grandchild, is also called Reuben.

Ivan has been a little bit anxious about being a grandfather, so I sought to reassure him by sending him the script of ‘Second Chance Dad’, which I wrote for National Radio’s Top of the Morning programme in 1998. Curiously enough, it was broadcast on the occasion of my own grandson Reuben’s fourth birthday.

***

Grandchildren are special. Talk to any doting grandparent - and ‘doting’  grandparents are the sole variety - and they will inform you, with absolute assurance, that their grandchild is the most intelligent, the most beautiful, the most talented creature that ever breathed air. Where their children’s children are concerned, grandparents are devoid of modesty, without shame, incapable of rational assessment. The child may be the ugliest thing that nature spawned, it may have the manners of a tomcat, the intelligence of a flea, the personality of a rock, and all the charm of masticated chewing-gum, but to its grandparents it will remain the apotheosis of every human virtue, a thing of beauty, whose loveliness increases and is a joy for ever - to paraphrase Mr Keats.

And the feeling seems to be mutual. Guests on this programme speak of their parents with affection generally, with indifference sometimes, with dislike occasionally. They are, perhaps, most often ambivalent. That may be in the very nature of the parent-child relationship, where nurturing and loving go hand in hand with the discipline and behaviour-modification necessary to fit the child for existence as a social being. Life for the child is a combination of wishes granted and wishes denied, and it is small wonder that we often have mixed feelings about our parents.

But it is rare, on this programme at least, to hear anyone say anything bad about a grandparent. Grandparents, it seems, are universally ‘wonderful’.

The reasons are not too hard to find: grandparents grant more wishes than they deny; grandparents have time; grandparents listen; grandparents understand; grandparents know how to keep secrets; grandparents make wonderful allies; grandparents know what your parents were like as children; grandparents have stories to tell.

For all of these reasons, tensions can arise between parents and grandparents. Parents often see their authority undermined by grandparents who are inclined to allow… everything. The answer to the question, ‘Can I, granddad?’, ‘Will you, grandma?’ is almost invariably, ‘Yes’.

Accused of ’spoiling’, grandparents respond that ‘a little spoiling never hurt anyone’.

‘Then how come you never spoilt us?’

Good question. One of the answers is undoubtedly that it’s easier to spoil a child for whom you have no long-term responsibility, than one who lives with you permanently.  The more cynical or perhaps the more honest among the grandparent fraternity will concede that one of the joys of grandchildren is that they come to stay for short spells ‘and then they go away again.’ Parents have their children often for 20 years or more, and sometimes it seems that they will never ‘go away again’. Parents, generally speaking, have to take the good with the bad. Grandparents, generally speaking, get to take only the good.

But there is, I think, something more to it than that, something deeper. Grandchildren offer us a second chance at parenting, an opportunity to do things better.

I can recall lecturing my children for hours on things they did wrong; I have uncomfortable memories of making them sit at the table, sometimes for ages, till they finished eating something they loathed; I was never physically cruel, but my tongue could leave deep wounds; as a parent, I was ungenerous, intolerant, authoritarian; I have seen fear in my children’s eyes.

As a grandparent, I am a wonderful parent. In part, of course, I have grown older and wiser. I realise that yelling makes everyone unhappy and solves nothing; I know that a child will eat when it needs to eat; I do not see my relationship with my grandchildren as a battle of wills and, if it is, I don’t mind losing;  I am more generous, more understanding, more relaxed; I’m cool!

Of course, it’s easier to be cool when you know that in a few days ‘they’ll go away again’, easier when you don’t have to deal with long-term consequences, easier when saying ‘yes’ makes you so very, very popular.

So being a grandparent has offered me a second chance at being a parent, a chance to do better. And I have done better.

Grand-parenthood has thus been a cathartic experience, an expiation. I feel like a better person. I am a better person. And it’s such good fun!

So I think I’ll have lots more grandchildren - maybe 10 or 15 or 20 . And when I’m 80 I’ll sit in my rocking chair on the back veranda and tell stories about how I used to be a famous person and had my own programme on the radio, called Top of the Morning, and how I once said I was going to have ten or fifteen or twenty grandchildren.

I’m looking forward to it.

‘Tell us again what radio was, granddad!’

***

Mine: He just doesn’t get it.

The ever-brilliant Tapu Misa’s column in this morning’s Herald.

Pic: Glenn Jeffrey/NZ Herald

In October last year, I wrote a post about Brian Tamaki and the Destiny Church.  Over the last few days it has become apparent that sections of  of the church’s membership are waking up to the true character of their ‘Bishop’, his wife and his lieutenants. Among those lieutenants, Richard Lewis, who has appeared twice on Campbell Live, once to answer questions about the church  and, a couple of nights ago, to refuse to answer questions about the church,  presents a particularly daunting, almost menacing image. It is as hard to reconcile that image with the practice of what one might call ‘true Christianity’ as it is to reconcile the Tamakis’ lifestyle with the teachings of Christ. That disconnect, as former church member Matthew Coleman told John Campbell last night, is essentially what the disaffected members of the church’s Brisbane congregation are no longer able to accept.

It is possible that the rigorous discipline practised within Destiny Church has been instrumental in turning around the lives of men who might otherwise have ended up in the prison system, but no amount of good works can disguise the fact that it is Tamaki and his wife Hannah who have benefited most from the organisation which they founded.

Whether  the events in Brisbane mark the beginning of the end of Destiny Church remains to be seen. The history of cults suggests otherwise. Cults survive through mind-manipulation, bullying and fear. They are invariably easier to join than they are to leave. But the signs are at least encouraging that the members of Destiny Church are finally getting wise to the real ambition, the real motivation of their homophobic, misogynistic, deluded leader.

Read the original post.

Twice during the week I had occasion to grab a bite of lunch by myself in a local café. The proprietor of this establishment has had the good sense to furnish his patrons with a pile of magazines to read. Not the sort of stuff you find in doctors’ and dentists’ waiting rooms - tattered copies of the Woman’s Weekly and Readers Digest, dated July 1995, and back-copies to 1943 of the National Geographic with articles on the long-lost Fakawi tribe of the upper Amazon.

(I don’t wish to mock the National Geographic. It was the only magazine in which a frustrated Belfast adolescent could find pictures of half-naked women. Admittedly they were pigmy women, and some had plates in their lips, but Irish beggars can’t be choosers. As they said during the potato famine, ‘Be grateful for small Murphies.’)

No, these were top-class magazines obtained by the café from the shop across the road - GQ, Arena, Vanity Fair, that sort of thing.

Now the real reason why these magazines are there is not that the café’s patrons are bored out of their trees and desperate for something to read. The real reason why the magazines are there is to hide the embarrassment, to cover the shame of that most tragic and guilt-laden of creatures - the solitary diner. 

Eating, as Desmond Morris told us on the telly some years ago, is not merely a means of keeping the body alive, it is essentially a social activity, a group activity. One may eat alone in the privacy of one’s own home, but to eat alone in a public place, is to invite suspicion of personal failure at best and deviancy at worst.

The solitary diner is therefore painfully aware that the eyes of other people are upon him - people with friends, people with partners, people with children, people with business colleagues - people, in other words, who have about them the incontrovertible evidence not only of their social success but of their very normality.

The magazine or newspaper - newspapers are even better, since they provide total protection - the magazine of newspaper thus has two functions. It protects the solitary diner from the accusing gaze of the café’s other ‘normal’ diners; and it ensures that the solitary diner is not accidentally caught staring at someone else in the establishment, raising immediate suspicions of some unspeakable perversion.

Now if you think I’m wrong about this, take someone with you to a restaurant or café and check out the solitary diners. You will find that, without exception, they come into one of  four categories: head buried in menu or wine list; head buried in magazine or newspaper; head buried in work; head buried in food

Some other key indicators: The solitary diner has difficulty in attracting the attention of the waiter or waitress - he is low on the restaurant’s priorities; the solitary diner eats more quickly than other patrons - he is anxious to end his shame; the solitary diner is delighted when his cell-phone rings and conducts the conversation in an abnormally loud voice - he wants everyone to know that he does indeed have a friend, relative or colleague; the solitary diner has difficulty exiting the restaurant with dignity - his muscular co-ordination is affected by the knowledge that all eyes are upon him.

The characteristics of the solitary diner are personified in the tragi-comic figure of Mr Bean, trying to hide the steak tartare - which he has ordered not knowing what it is -  under the tablecloth and in the sugar bowl. But in the end, what is tragic and comic and strange about Mr Bean is that he is almost always alone. Behind the discomfort of the solitary diner may lie a wider and more deep-seated social prejudice, which the diner himself shares with those around him, against people who not merely dine alone, but are alone.

As for me, I am a shameless social voyeur. Dining alone gives me the opportunity to pursue my hobby of composing the imaginary life-stories and situations of my fellow diners, without being interrupted by the irritating tittle-tattle of a companion. That offensive old coot staring at you from the corner table is me.

So if you do spot me in a local hostelry with my head buried in a magazine, I want you to know that it is because I am genuinely interested in the contents of that magazine and not because I feel uncomfortable about eating alone. I do have a friend. Several friends in fact. It was just that none of them could come today. Honestly.

Waiter! Waiter, could I have… Waiter! Oh never mind.

NZ Bus has bowed to blackmail and changed its mind about allowing the slogan there’s probably no god - now stop worrying and enjoy your life to appear on the sides of its buses.

As a commercial operator, the company is entitled to make that decision. It no doubt reasoned that disgruntled theists would stop travelling on its buses and might well start a campaign to encourage others to do the same.

The god-botherers must believe that their creed is pretty weak if they see something as innocuous and understated as this particular slogan as representing a threat. Most atheists would say there is almost certainly no God, conceding only that it isn’t possible to prove the case one way or the other. The non-existence of God comes as near as possible to being a fact, since there is absolutely no empirical evidence to support a claim to the contrary. 

There probably isn’t an issue of free speech here either and for the same reason: that NZ Bus is a commercial operator and has an absolute discretion as to what advertising will or will not be carried on its buses. But the theists should at least realise that censorship of opposing ideas isn’t a good look for anyone who thinks they hold a strong and supportable position. It didn’t work for the Inquisition. And they had thumbscrews, the rack and the iron maiden.

There is, however, an issue of fairness here. As an atheist I find myself living in a society awash with religious propaganda. It would be virtually impossible to walk down any major road in New Zealand without encountering a billboard or sign advertising God or Jesus.

Religion and politics are supposed to be separate in this country, but our parliament is opened each sitting day with a prayer:

‘Almighty God, humbly acknowledging our need for Thy guidance in all things, and laying aside all private and personal interests, we beseech Thee to grant that we may conduct the affairs of this House and of our country to the glory of Thy holy name, the maintenance of true religion and justice, the honour of the Queen, and the public welfare, peace, and tranquility of New Zealand, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.’

Given the way our MPs ‘conduct the affairs of this House’, either God isn’t giving them enough guidance or they aren’t listening or there is no God. There may well be a constitutional argument for getting rid of the parliamentary prayer, but it is nowhere near as strong as the argument advanced by the total disregard shown by our politicians for  the conduct and values to which they nonetheless continue to say  ’Amen’.

Our national anthem makes further nonsense of the concept of New Zealand as a secular state.

God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific’s triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.

According to the most recent New Zealand Census  one in three New Zealanders have no religion and therefore cannot in conscience join in the singing of their  own national anthem.   And what person with an ounce of dignity or self respect would want to sing that obsequious dirge anyway?  Give me La Marseillaise any time.

Religious propaganda is everywhere.  Check out any news bulletin on almost any night of the week. When anything good happens, we’re thanking God; when anything bad happens we’re praying that it won’t happen again. I sometimes wonder why it does not occur to people that if God failed  to prevent the last thousand human tragedies and natural disasters, he is unlikely to turn up to prevent the two thousand and first. You’d do better to take your chances with Superman.

Whoever’s right or wrong - and if we’re right,  we atheists will never know it - the propaganda balance between believers and non-believers is somewhat unequal.  So it seemed rather mean-spirited, not to mention chicken-livered  of the God-botherers to use their ticket-buying power (or more likely their Supergold cards) to prevent  their fellow citizens being exposed to the anodyne little opinion that ‘there’s probably no god’.

I take heart from the sure and certain fact that nothing can draw more attention to a commercial than banning it.

And in the meantime, I assume that New Zealand Bus will not be displaying any signs that say ‘God is love’ or ‘Jesus saves’.