Candles in the wind for Michael Jackson. Picture from Dreamstime.com

That Jackson was, for a while, a genius is beyond doubt. However, like all such unusual people, there were more than a few loose screws rattling about in that peculiar head. He had been reduced to just another fragile butterfly, broken on a wheel. Now that Granny has custody of his strangely produced offspring, can we expect a new Jackson Three – and a smaller scale version of the previous awful mess? Let us hope not. Those kids need to be kept well away from Grandfather Joe, architect of the original disaster, and a person you might like to think carefully about before offering a beer.

How embarrassing that New Zealand’s media devoted so much airtime and newsprint to Jackson’s demise, seeking “local angles” in a pathetic attempt to get in on the final act. The DominionPost, for example, featured two Kiwis who had actually been on stage with the King of Pop for a few seconds, years and years ago – as if that had any relevance to anything. Radio New Zealand National also featured somebody who had been in the audience at a Jackson concert in Paris, Heaven knows when. Her description of the event was touching, but she sounded ever-so-slightly touched as well.

Let’s face it, like some other charismatic figures some of us can recall, Michael Jackson was a talented crackpot suffering from arrested development, whose PR and media circus wielded far too much influence in the world for a little bit too long. He does not appear to have made the slightest difference to the state of mankind, instead wasting his time and his vast earnings on toys, playgrounds and frippery, and producing no music of any note for well over a decade. He may have left us at just about the right time.


Oh, such is our unhealthy fascination with freaks. It also extends to a malign envy of almost anyone who is successful. We raise them up, but we can hardly wait for their downfall. We eagerly anticipate the suicide of a Lotto winner who couldn’t handle it, or the ruination of a thick-headed Rugby star who’s up to no good in a hotel most weekends. Once the hypocritical breast-beating and fake praise for Jackson is over, the media vultures will be picking over the bones of his tortured life, and we will take prurient delight at his exposed remains.


It’s Bad.

Unless you’re one of the nitwits who’ve applied for a free ticket to Jacko’s memorial in Los Angeles, the best advice is probably to get over your terrible loss as soon as pos.

Remember: Like the surviving rock stars and all the others who died far too young, Michael Jackson was nothing more than a travelling minstrel.

What tosh. Blaming the driveway, rather than the driver, is another shameful and pathetic attempt to deflect the blame away from human error or downright carelessness. Blaming an inanimate object, system, design or something else – and then fencing it off – might make us feel good but it is just another way of ignoring the real problem and hoping it will go away.

In the hope that we can combat the evil designs of your driveway to kill and maim your children, however, GoG has a few simple – and doubtless obvious – pointers that may help to reduce the driveway toll:

The fact that children are being killed in driveways is simply another illustration of the deplorable standard of driving in this country.

Tariana Turia... on the make again

The very idea is absurd. Apparently, Maori believe that they have a claim on parts of Hawke’s Bay airport, despite the fact that the entire area was under the sea before 1931. What happens if our territorial waters are extended? Would Maori therefore own all that, too? You can see where Turia is coming from. She doesn’t simply have her eye on the kai. There could be some oil out there, too, from which Maori might derive fortunes without lifting a finger…

There is a stench of separatism around people such as Tariana Turia that doesn’t settle easily on the rest of our otherwise refreshingly egalitarian society. The only way to resolve this issue – after that day in court – will be to declare all our coastline and seabed as public property, to be shared equally among all the occupants of this country and to be personally owned by none of them.

Peter Dunne... How he spends your money is his business

This year, MPs will spend around $16 million of our money purely on air travel. They have, in the meantime, slashed the budget for adult education from $16 million to a worthless $3 million. Labour spent quite a chunk just on airfreighting its heavy hitters into the Mt Albert election campaign. Now it emerges that there are no firm rules governing how MPs spend the air points earned with all this flitting about. While this is by no means as serious as the scandal of British MPs and their expenses claims, it is nevertheless another illustration of the cavalier attitude our local representatives adopt to their constituents and to the public money for which they are responsible.

National’s Chris Tremain is only into his early weeks as Whip, but his relaxed attitude to what is clearly a gaping loophole, wide open to abuse, is not good enough. This is a trough that should be closed off to greedy snouts without further delay, and the matter should be referred to the IRD because the air points collectors are clearly enjoying an untaxed benefit in kind.

And what does the arch opportunist Peter Dunne, Revenue Minister and self-publicised guardian of the public purse, have to say about his own air points?

He arrogantly retorts that how he spends them is his business.

He’s wrong.

It’s ours.

The Awareness Event: a longed-for meeting of minds, usually dreamed up by a committee of do-gooders, that invariably leaves us all none the wiser. Picture by Dreamstime.com

However, a word of caution. Too much concentrated awareness on these (hopefully) frantic weeks, and a reckless oversight of Contraceptive Awareness Week last February, could result in you becoming all-too-aware of Parental Alienation Awareness Day, next April. And that could result in your awareness of Self-Injury Day (every March 1) .

Those who lack an interest in sex and prefer TV or over-eating will, on the other hand, enjoy Potato Day in January, and if you’ve really lost your sense of direction, don’t forget Celebrate Your Name Week in March. Otherwise, it’s Missing Persons’ Month for you, in May.

One of the least popular events in the awareness calendar has to be Work Your Proper Hours Day in February, mostly because a large number of people either cannot or will not observe it, or may be unaware of it. Many prefer Sleep-in Day, in October. If working takes your mind off being aware and the dole queue looms, there’s always Panic Day in June.

In New Zealand, every year, there’s a Schizophrenia Awareness Week and a Schizophrenia Fellowship week – but perhaps they should each last two weeks, for all those other people (and we are not one or either of them). In the same month, there is a Victims Awareness Week, which seems to have made no impression at all on perpetrators, as did the failed World Day of Justice back in February. In March, it’s Walk to Work Day, which is not such good timing because it coincides with Brain Awareness Week. This is the optimum time for a Drive to Work Awareness Week because, for the other 51 weeks, many Kiwi motorists seem to be completely unaware of their brains.

Rather than worry about Coeliac Awareness Week, you’d be better off Googling right this minute, because you might already have caught it and the next awareness day for it doesn’t happen until next May, by which time you could be coeliac, colonic, comatose – or fully aware of the after-life.

For most of us, last May 31 would have been the ideal day to get some fresh air, because it was World No-Tobacco Day, and every smoker on Earth stopped for 24 hours, didn’t they? That would have given us time to clear our heads and think about Infant Gastric Awareness Week (May 31 to June 6).

Worried? You should be, because it gets worse: from June 1 to 9, we’re expected to think hard about Rape Awareness Week, followed by days and weeks devoted to making us aware of brain injury, autism, men’s health and refugees and countless other issues of which we are unaware, or wary.

Already uptight, or still feeling upright? Drink gallons of milk because, come September, there is World Osteoporosis Day when you might contemplate a short future as a toothless and boneless lump of jelly. This awareness month also features Continence Awareness Week, which ought to be renamed but will not concern those who foolishly ignored Osteoporosis Awareness Week during their formative years. Plus, there will be Gamble Free Day: either this means nobody should buy a Lotto ticket, or the organisers will give them away.

There are also loads of oxymoronically termed awareness days, including the Alzheimers Forget Me Not Week and the International Day of Families – as if families could ever be international…

Despite the overcrowded year of awareness events, there are always more causes crying out to claim a claw in your consciousness, and we have some ideas, too. How about Substance Abuse Unawareness Day, or Migrant Overstayers Awareness Day, or – for depressed movie buffs who can’t spare a whole 24 hours – Dog Day Awareness Afternoon?

Do please send us your suggestions for new awareness days. The best one so far is the Awareness Awareness Day – just so we don’t forget to be aware of the rest.

What price a degree? Pretty soon, they'll print them on toilet rolls. Picture by Dreamstime.com

Maori Party co-leader and Minister of Maori Affairs Dr Pita Sharples says that, in view of the dreadful educational record of young Maori, they should be allowed into university without any formal qualifications. Given that 37 percent of Maori boys leave school with not even a level-one NCEA result, they’re obviously at a major disadvantage. But that doesn’t mean they’ve been unfairly treated. At a stretch, it might just indicate that they are either terminally lazy or the schools system, “enhanced” and “immersed” for Maori at such vast cost, simply does not suit them.

The bold new Pita Principle seems to be based on the Wananga, a concept rejected by Labour, introduced by National, and then embraced by Labour, whose leaders threw money at it and then virtually ignored it until serious sleaze arose. It’s the tertiary education system for secondary school leavers who’ve failed. Apart from the occasional embarrassment involving nepotism and dodgy finances, the Wananga has probably made some difference to young Maori’s prospects, although the jury’s still out on that one.

But letting semi-literate and half-numerate kids into mainstream university purely on the basis of ethnicity is not only ludicrous. It’s downright racist.

Pita Sharples... the champion of late developers and hopeless cases

And what would be the damage to the credibility of our degrees? From an international perspective, it would probably be quite serious.

Opening up universities to people who have already failed after more than a decade of primary and secondary education also opens up a whole new can of worms.

Know nothing about biology? Can’t read or write? No worries! You can play doctors and nurses, and learn on the job – or make it up as you go along. Of course, with all those human guinea pigs, you’ll need to take just a teensy little bit of care with that scalpel and make sure you don’t get caught in a random drugs test.

Know nothing about physics, or adding up? It’s a breeze because, under the Pita Principle, absolutely anyone can be an electrician. Do bear in mind, though, the risks of house fires and self-electrocution.

Colour-blind or grossly obese? Why not become an airline pilot and see the world? With a brain by-pass, you can avoid the medical exam. We all know that the only qualification needed under the Pita Principle is to have the same number of take-offs as landings in your log-book. If in doubt, ask the auto-pilot.

Always remember that money isn’t everything. Wag off school – after all, you’re only young once, so now is the time to waste it. And don’t worry about a roof over your head, if your skin is brown. If the Pita Principle of Something for Nothing gains traction, you’ll be able to walk on to somebody’s freehold property, claim it as your ancestral heritage and live happily ever after, mortgage-free.

Is Pita Sharples seriously proposing a world where ignorance is bliss, unreadable paperwork is banished and it’s foolish to be wise? Perhaps everyone should have free entry, regardless of race. We could have a new “virtual” degree, the BA (Bachelor for Attending). I spy a profitable growth market in lobotomies.

Or you could just pretend to be a thick Irish Maori, and change your name to Sean O’Brains.

Our world... where the eco-frighteners are back, with their heads still in the clouds

No doubt the dire warnings will shortly arrive in New Zealand, edited and amended to strike terror in the hearts of the local populace. But before we consider replacing sheep and cows with camels, or growing dates instead of grapes, it might be helpful to look at some of the forecasts made when primitive environmentalists first emerged, to announce their first Earth Day. It happened way back in 1970, and we’re grateful to the UK’s Grumpy Old Sod for collecting these now hilarious predictions.

And they didn’t stop in 1970. Finding that newspapers were suddenly taking notice and their own kudos was increasing, pundits carried on making up rubbish and various silly scribes got in on the act…

1971: The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WW2 is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialisation, mechanisation, urbanisation and exploding population – Reid Bryson

1975: There are ominous signs that the Earth’s weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production – with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it – Newsweek

1976: This (cooling) trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century – Peter Gwynne

1976: This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000 – Lowell Ponte

Will we never learn? Why, nearly 40 years later, are we still listening to these people, who have blown hot and cold for so long?

Paul Ehrlich: Proof that to err is human

The vast majority of intelligent people value their world, enjoy their life in the most ethical way they can, and want to leave the planet in good shape for their descendants. To all the gloomy doom-sayers, they have a simple message:

Get a life, and kindly get out of ours.

Family Planning's Sexuality Road is leading us up the garden path. Picture by Vilisow at Dreamstime. com

So rather than crash courses in sex at school for infants, parents would probably be better off putting their children on crash diets. The later puberty occurs, the better the outlook for long-term good health. Our misguided, Messianic sex educators, on the other hand, appear to know nothing about this hidden threat, and carry on up The Sexuality Road regardless.

They won’t stop at nine-year-olds either, if UK experience is any guide. In Britain, the crazy Labour Government is introducing sex education for five-year-olds! This horrifying prospect is causing huge headaches for parents alarmed at the total loss of innocence. At that tender age, you cannot call a spade a spade. There is a discussion about what to call the naughty bits when you’re talking to a tiny tot, so as to avoid what one expert has described as “psychic genital mutilation”.

Here are some of the suggestions for female genitalia: Front bottom, Winkie, Minney, Sparkly bits, Flossie, Doris and Fine China (a charming term first used in this context in 1675). One poor little soul, barely out of nappies, came up with a new one. When asked by Mum if she’d washed her armpits, the child replied: “Yes, and I’ve washed my legpits, too”.

The outrage is not confined to adults, either. This is what one youngster had to say, on The Guardian’s website:

“First of all, I’m barely a teenager – I’m currently in Year 9. I received sex education of sorts in Year 6 (I was 10). ‘Of sorts’ meaning we just learned about puberty, with boys and girls in separate classes, girls with a female teacher and boys with a male teacher. I was fine with it – my mother had already told me about puberty etc. The only thing that bothers me now is that no permission slips were sent out.

In Year 8 (I was 12), we got real sex ed. lessons – in a mixed class of boys and girls with two male teachers and again, no permission slips. It was compulsory. I was so horrified and disgusted that I ended up walking out of the class and almost throwing up in the bathroom. I can’t believe anyone would teach things like that in such an environment – I wasn’t ready and I’d have much preferred to talk with my mother about it before the school intervened. I will never take sex ed. again because I can’t handle it.

Now, if my little sister or brother told me they’d been taught about such things at school, I’d march up to the school and knock the teachers for six myself. I won’t stand for it. The government should have just let the vast majority of Britain believe they were a bunch of useless dimwits rather than put forward this ridiculous proposal, and prove it.

I’ll be leaving this country as soon as I turn eighteen and I won’t be coming back.”

And at the other end of the spectrum, this comment:

“My father told me about this stuff when I was six. I didn’t understand it. Now I’m 60 and I still don’t understand it.”

Being told how to behave at home by Sue Bradford and her fellow travellers was what truly got up their noses and compelled them to sign the petition.

Faced with this shock reaction to a loony law, Bradford and her supporters now loudly complain about the cost of a referendum, instead of honestly debating their pet question, because they know that a well-deserved thrashing from the electorate is virtually guaranteed. She already knows about disapproval, having failed to gain the co-leadership of a party that had the sense to realise she would be the Kiss of Death at the ballot box.

They spuriously issue red herrings and calculate how many ambulances or schoolbooks could be bought with the money. They raise Obfuspeak as a reason for calling it off (even though that is impossible), saying the question is badly worded. But they were not around to protest about Labour’s badly-worded Electoral Finance Act, or the other flawed legislation to which the rest of us have fallen victim…

Bradford: Surprisingly aggressive for someone who opposes violence

The last thing we need is a generation of little living dolls and pre-teen Lotharios. Picture by Grosch at Dreamstime.com

The Sexuality Road is aimed at younger children because “research shows that they are entering puberty earlier”.

Family Planning Director of Health Promotion Frances Bird says: “Young people have a right to understand what is happening to their bodies and their emotions.” Curiously, at the programme launch, there was nary a word about the rights of parents, or whether they had been consulted in any way beforehand.

Year 5 and 6 (nine and 10-year-old) pupils will look at pubertal change, friendships, gender, families, menstruation, fertility, conception and personal support. Year 7 and 8 pupils focus more on changing feelings and emotions and their effects on relationships, sexual attraction, decision-making around sexual attraction, conception and birth, contraception and support agencies. No doubt all this will take the grandson’s mind off skateboarding…

Bird says international evidence shows children are entering puberty earlier than has been seen in decades. The average age of puberty for girls in New Zealand is allegedly down to between nine and 14 and for boys, between 11 and 16.

“Some people are concerned that providing information about sex and sexuality arouses curiosity and can lead to sexual experimentation. There is no evidence that this happens,” she said.

Why then, despite years and years of sex education, do New Zealand teenagers rate second-highest in the developed world for teen pregnancies? The existing programme’s clearly been a big success in one sense – kids know all about the mechanics, but apparently much less about safely operating the equipment.

And surely, if providing information in schools about, for example, reading and writing also doesn’t arouse curiosity and lead to experimentation, educators would count that as a failure?

It seems a particularly inappropriate time to start lecturing nine-year-olds about their bodies and “support agencies”. An Education Review Office report, commissioned by the ministries of Women’s Affairs, Health and Education, reveals that at least half of all sex education in schools is presented by teachers with no qualifications in the subject. If half the existing sex-educators are unqualified, what’s to be gained by increasing a workload that they are said to be incapable of dealing with?

Family First National Director Bob McCoskrie says children should be taught sex education by their parents when they are ready. “The simple message to Family Planning is ‘butt out and leave it to parents’. Parents know their kids the best. They know their emotional and moral development best and have their own values. Family Planning should not be interacting with kids of that age.”

When Helen Clark and her Food Police were running amok, the newsletter of a local primary school chided parents for sending their children to school with inappropriate lunches. Now, however, the tuck shop is selling “ethical” meat pies, no doubt as a result of a changed political climate and pressure from sensible parents who objected to the nonsense.

Parents have the right to reject irrelevant homework, and they also have the right to refuse exposure of their children to this latest example of State meddling in their private affairs. Let’s hope enough of them rise up, pour derision on Nanny, and put a stop to this before some serious damage is done.

The best people to teach kids about sex are the people who created them, and they’re the ones who should be educated better – along with those inadequate teachers. Chastity begins at home.