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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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: Read the rest of this entry »
Bath tragedy: Mother’s fight to save baby This was the Herald’s front page headline yesterday. The subhead read: Twin dies after being left for ‘just minutes’.
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:
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.
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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. Read the rest of this entry »
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.
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. Read the rest of this entry »
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. Read the rest of this entry »
Because it is the only broadcast medium in the country that takes the time to examine issues of consequence to New Zealanders at length and in depth. It can do so because, and only because it is a non-commercial radio network. It is not beholden to advertisers, does not need to concern itself with ratings - though many of its programmes outrate its commercial competitors - and its programmes are not interrupted or abbreviated by the irritating presence of advertisements.
Radio New Zealand’s success in commanding a large and loyal audience with programmes such as Morning Report, Nine to Noon, Checkpoint, Afternoons, Kim Hill’s (and formerly my own) Saturday morning show, gives the lie to the proposition that the public are not interested in social and political debate or intelligent conversation. They are.
In contrast the free-to-air commercial television channels offer us quasi ‘current affairs’ programmes such as Close Up and Campbell Live whose function is less to inform than to entertain and whose mandate is to retain the ratings momentum generated by the channels’ preceding news, sport and weather packages.
The entertainment ethos that drives these programmes - and the channels’ network news bulletins as well - is that the viewer has a limited attention span, requires constant stimulation and novelty, and has little appetite for the serious examination of social and political issues. To be palatable, what information the programmes offer must be served up in tasty, bite-sized chunks. Nothing too long, nothing too tough, nothing requiring chewing. The viewer must be given no excuse to reach for the remote to change the channel. Read the rest of this entry »
Railing at the water cooler? In despair about the quality of our television news bulletins? Think you could do better with your monosyllabic nephew as camera operator and the pneumatic blonde from the dairy armed with a list of pre-prepared questions? You need Charlie Brooker’s How to Report the News. Enjoy!
Lunchtime today. I’ve made some lettuce and tomato sandwiches for Judy and me. (Mollenberg Swiss Bake sandwich bread, Heinz Seriously Good Mayonnaise, butter, salt, pepper.) Yummmmm! And two cups of Bell tea. (I don’t feel alive till I’ve had it.) I take the sandwiches out and put them on the table that sits on the deck that overlooks our lovely Herne Bay garden. It’s a beautifully still, balmy Auckland day. I call Judy and go back for the cups of tea. Just as I take my first step from the kitchen onto the deck, one of the neighbours at the back of our property starts up his petrol-driven hedge trimmer. We retreat indoors and close the doors and windows.
If I were paranoid, the timing would suggest that the neighbour had been waiting for us to sit down with our sandwiches and tea and had started up his petrol-driven hedge trimmer at this particular moment as part of a campaign to drive us from the district.
But I’m not paranoid. My neighbour is almost certainly at work and has no idea that Judy and I are about to sit down and enjoy a quiet lunch in our lovely garden. And it isn’t actually him wielding the petrol-driven hedge trimmer. One of an army of professional gardeners who make a more-than-decent living from servicing the properties in our street alone, is the source of the appalling racket. And our neighbour would have no reason at all to want to drive us from the district. We’re very quiet, responsible people. Read the rest of this entry »
I have been to several New Zealand prisons to meet or interview men convicted of murder or manslaughter, including Dean Wickliffe, who shot a Wellington jeweller during the course of a robbery and gained further notoriety by twice escaping from Paremoremo, John James Murphy, convicted of murdering a young woman on Papaparaumu Beach and burying her body in the sand, and Dr David Minnitt who shot his wife Leigh and was found guilty of manslaughter. I’ve also given talks to prison inmates and made television programmes about their life inside.
On every occasion when I have spent time in a New Zealand prison, even those most forward thinking in their approach to crime and punishment, it has taken me days and sometimes weeks to overcome the deep depression, the black despair which overtook me as I walked free through those gates and back into my normal life.
I have formed the view that no one is competent to express a view on New Zealand prison life until they have shared that experience.
When is a quote not a quote? When is a quote something you didn’t say or even think in the first place? When you agree with a proposition or statement put to you by a journalist, that’s when.
This happens more regularly than you might think. How? Let’s take a hypothetical case.
Your company, The Good Guys, is in the spotlight over a spat with one of your competitors. The media are gathering. As far as possible you stay away from them. You resolve to handle this crisis, in public at least, with calm, good humour and dignity.
You’ve managed to get through a print interview with considerable poise, and carefully steered away from invitations to criticise your competitors, The Super Guys.
The journalist is nothing if not sympathetic to your cause. You feel as though you’ve got a friend at court. When she says, “But their business practices are a bit dubious, aren’t they?” you can’t help but chuckle and you say that you don’t disagree with her. Read the rest of this entry »
“Key booted for Brooke by TVNZ” was a front page headline in this morning’s Herald. Shock! Horror!
The story began: “Television NZ bumped Prime Minister John Key from its prime-time current affairs show so it could feature former All Black Robin Brooke saying sorry for groping a teenage girl.” Read the rest of this entry »
Today’s Herald makes interesting reading for anyone who thinks that, despite his Wall Street millions, John Key’s state house background makes him more sympathetic to those on lower incomes. GST is to rise by up to 2.5%. Such an increase disproportionately penalises those at the bottom of the economic heap - lower income earners and beneficiaries - since a much greater proportion of their income is spent on essential items such as food, power and rent. They are to be compensated by an unspecified decrease in personal taxation and an unspecified increase in benefits and Working for Families.
On last night’s Campbell Live, the Prime Minister gave Campbell a guarantee that lower income earners or beneficiaries would be no worse off after the changes in the budget. ‘No worse off’, but not necessarily ‘any better off’. Middle and higher income earners, on the other hand, will of course be better off as a result of any decrease in income tax, since that is an economic truism. So, in a nutshell, the rich will get richer and the poor stay where they are, which in real terms means ‘go backwards’. Read the rest of this entry »
In an earlier incarnation, more than a quarter of a century ago, I was contracted by the State Services Commission to media train public servants. With my Fair Go colleague Judith Fyfe - she of the huge, eccentric specs - we put people from pretty well every government department through crash courses on handling the press, radio and television. We enjoyed these sessions and so, mostly, did the participants. But, after a time, we began to notice that the personalities, and even the wardrobes of our students, very much reflected the departments they came from.
So the Foreign Affairs people were witty, urbane and looked as though they’d just stepped out of a Moss Bros commercial.
The Social Welfare people were rather worthy, appeared not to have had time to brush their hair, and their wardrobe must have come from their local op shop. We concluded that this might be deliberately intended to help them fit in with their clients.
The Treasury people, who all had first class honours degrees from Oxbridge, were dressed like university dons and invariably began by making it absolutely clear that they had nothing to learn from anybody, least of all subhuman media whores like us. We enjoyed reducing them to gibbering wrecks during the interviews. Read the rest of this entry »
Mr Ngô writes letters. He writes letters in a small, neat hand on almost transparently thin paper. He writes letters for other people, people who can’t write letters for themselves.
Mr Ngô is the Last Public Letter Writer.
Mr Ngô is 80 years old. He is tiny, less than 150cm tall, with bright eyes, a ready smile and dignified, old-fashioned courtesy. He has been working at the Main Post Office in Saigon for 63 years. He retired officially many years ago, but he still comes to work every day. He still sits in the same place and people still queue up patiently for him to write letters in their native Vietnamese, or translate for them into English or French.
His short sight isn’t so good these days. He has to use a magnifying glass to make out words in his worn little dictionaries, soft and fattened with constant handling. Mr Ngô is very precise. The words must be correct. These are letters of importance, of special events, of births, deaths, marriages. You don’t go to a Public Letter Writer on a whim.
This special job is carried out in a special place. The Main Post Office in Saigon is worthy of any European capital. It was built in grandiose French style in the 19th Century and is one of the most imposing buildings in the city. The Town Hall, you think. Parliament Buildings. No, the post office. It’s a place you’d be proud to work, even for 63 years.
So if you ever go to the Main Post Office in Saigon, you should try to make the acquaintance of Mr Ngô. It is a privilege to meet the Last Public Letter Writer.
We used to have this weird habit of paying mega-bucks to travel business class, then skimping on our accommodation. It makes no sense. You spend hours in a plane, days in a hotel. We’ve come to realise that the quality of your hotel room dictates the overall pleasure of your trip. The best day is enhanced, the worst day is soothed by a spacious, pleasant room and charming staff. We don’t want spas, multiple flash restaurants, bars or enormous foyers - we just want a lovely room and somewhere to get breakfast, but hey, we’ll happily wander down the road to the nearest diner if the accommodation’s good enough.
We’ve talked about this trip to Vietnam for years. Other priorities, too much work, bird ‘flu etc have delayed it until now, so we decided to do this properly and in comfort. This is one of the trips where you save and splurge. We wanted comfort to cope with bouts of culture shock. Read the rest of this entry »
I really shouldn’t have brought my laptop to Vietnam. We intended to do the occasional blog on our travels and leave it at that. But the temptation to check out what was happening in Godzone - there’s not much in the Hoi An Times - was too hard to resist, so I took a peep this morning at the Kiwi Sunday rags. Had the government changed? Had Herne Bay been declared a disaster zone in our absence? Had Phil Goff rocketed in the polls? Had Bainimarama invited Helen Clark to act as mediator in the NZ-Fiji standoff? Had Lockwood Smith introduced smacking for naughty MPs? You know - the really big stuff.
No, nothing much had changed since we left two weeks ago. According to the Herald on Sunday, the really big news was that John Campbell might be sacked.
I like and admire John. He’s a talented broadcaster and a really nice person. That’s the problem really, I can’t be in the same room with John because I’m a diabetic. My sugar levels go off the scale. Read the rest of this entry »
Lunchtime today. I’ve made some lettuce and tomato sandwiches for Judy and me. (Mollenberg Swiss Bake sandwich bread, Heinz Seriously Good Mayonnaise, butter, salt, pepper.) Yummmmm! And two cups of Bell tea. (I don’t feel alive till I’ve had it.) I take the sandwiches out and put them on the table that sits on the deck that overlooks our lovely Herne Bay garden. It’s a beautifully still, balmy Auckland day. I call Judy and go back for the cups of tea. Just as I take my first step from the kitchen onto the deck, one of the neighbours at the back of our property starts up his petrol-driven hedge trimmer. We retreat indoors and close the doors and windows.
When is a quote not a quote? When is a quote something you didn’t say or even think in the first place? When you agree with a proposition or statement put to you by a journalist, that’s when.
