In My Opinion

Make Mine ‘Full Fart Milk’

2025-01-01T13:30:00.000+13:00

My New Year’s Resolution is to commit to farmers and only use and drink full fart milk.

There are strong opinions around Cattle being ‘Environmental Destructors’.

Hmm. It’s certainly developing as a difficult, debated and disputed question.

So, let’s start with looking at the ‘size’ of the problem. It is argued that nature produces 97% of CO2 and mankind only 3%. Of course, that opens up another huge debate about global warming and what is causing it.

Fingers are being pointed at farming, particularly cattle farting, as a main culprit. And that is being vigorously disputed.

“Cows have a digestion system that emits methane. We need to change cows and work towards artificial meat,” says Bill Gates. He fails to point out that methane from cows breaks down into CO2 & water after 10 years. Grass absorbs the CO2 by photosynthesis & the cycle keeps repeating.

However, it seems that decisions have been made determining cattle are responsible and subsequently the development of an innovation - Tinkering with the inner workings of the dairy cow.

When added to Daisy’s daily diet, Bovaer is said to cut bovine gas emissions by up to 30% overall.

And of course, with these kinds of developments, the end users and public are the last to know, when the decision is announced and dumped on them. Just as the launch was celebrated as making a difference, “… the pesky public were not quite as ‘excited’…indeed some were reaching for the pitchforks. They started poking around the Bovaer small print and had spotted ingredients like silicon dioxide, propylene glycol and a compound called 3-nitrooxypropanol (known as 3-NOP) which US and Japanese authorities have linked to reduce male fertility.” (Robert Hardman/Daily Mail/7 December 2024)

In the UK there are concerns that with the use of Bovaer which is ‘thought’ to prevent climate change, there is a risk not just for animals but potentially for people too. For example, the label states ‘may damage male fertility & reproductive organs.’ And Farmers are recommended to wear protective equipment when feeding Bovaer to cows because it is very toxic to inhale.

The re-engineering of the ‘cow’ has sparked a new eco war. There's even more Bovaer air in the food chain than anyone realised, and it has sparked an epic battle among shoppers and farmers in the UK and closer to home in Australia. Some Farmers have announced they would not be consuming anything from an animal fed on Bovaer.

Arla Foods Group is a Danish-Swedish multi-national cooperative, the 5^th biggest dairy company in the world and one of the first to produce milk from Bovaer treated dairy cattle.

Following massive boycott of Arla over its trial of Bovaer’s methane-reducing additive, the UK government has stepped in, committing to mandate the additive for all cows in England by 2030.

To make matters worse, it has emerged that there is more of the ‘stuff’ in the food chain! Producers & retailers are being ‘blacklisted’ and accusations of scaremongering, misinformation and conspiracy theories are rampant.

It’s got to the point where they are giving away Bovaer products for FREE in supermarkets & people are still not taking them!

The idea that we can stop bad weather by drugging cows with BOVAER to reduce their farts is generating lots a scepticism to say the least.

Dr Jennine Morgan, a retired GP says, “It is clear to me that treating cows with a chemical to remove 23% of the 0.38% of total methane produced in UK is a complete nonsense & will likely harm the cow’s microbiome & possibly our own.”

@farmingUK had a positive piece on Bovaer as a chemical used to reduce methane emissions in cows. Dr. Jennine Morgan replied, “The chemical was found in 4/5 samples of milk tested. It was also found in liver, adrenals, muscle & brain. Ovary size was reduced. Rats treated with it failed to get pregnant. Do you deny it says this in the study documents? Moreover, what effects does it have on soils, small mammals, insects, birds, worms etc? Where are the studies? What effect does it have on the microbiome of cows?” Farming UK deleted their post.

Meanwhile it is becoming a political issue in Australia with Craig Kelly (an Australian conservative politician) recently stating that , “If I’m successful winning the Libertarian Party’s nomination for the Senate, and I’m elected – I will do everything in my power as a Senator to ensure that Bovaer is never mandated directly or indirectly – and that any beef or diary sources from animals drugged with Bovaer must be labelled.”

Since then, A2 Milk Australia have confirmed they don’t use Bovaer in the feed of the cows that produce their milk.

Cattle do not release more methane than grasses would without them, they do speed up the process of the cycle, but they are also essential for the continued survival of the cycle.

By grazing most of the plant leaves and moving on to new pastures, ruminants revitalize grasslands. Without grazing, the land dies.

In a recent piece in NZ Farmer, Paige Wills, a sheep and deer farmer, raised the contradiction in the approach of Silver Fern Farms (SFF). “On the one hand, they tout New Zealand’s clean, green farming image…On the other hand, they seem intent on pushing us toward unproven biotech solutions to satisfy corporate buyers…The two approaches are fundamentally incompatible.”

Paige notes that at a SFF roadshow the disconnect was exampled with SFF announcing Tesco”s 39% emissions reductions as their aspiration. She asks, “Why not tell the world that, per kilogram of meat or litre of milk, New Zealand farmers are unmatched in efficiency and sustainability?...Instead they are steering us toward biotech tools…unnatural, costly products that disrupt an animals natural process.” (https://www.ruralnewsgroup.co.nz/rural-news/rural-opinion/back-farmers-not-big-corporates)

Although methane is produced by cows, bacteria breakdown the methane into carbon dioxide and water after about 10 to 12 years. That means that there is never a cumulative load of new methane in the atmosphere.

Where might all this end up?

Well, the UK recently completed a trial of a carbon credit system that sets a daily allowance for each person—in effect, a limit on your ability to purchase food, clothing, goods, and travel as you have always done. The limit has been set at 20kg of carbon emissions per day, with food restricted to 2600g.

For example, a packet of cheese at 1100g would be almost half your daily carbon allowance!

Now, put that in the context of the Government’s rushed Gene Technology Bill deregulating biotechnology. The bill does away with the labelling of gene altered foods, hands decisions to a government appointed regulator, ignores the precautionary principle which maintains products need to be proved safe before release, removes any liability for mistakes, exposes our farming sector to corporate control by patent holders, and ignores the risks to our economy.

Watch the Video “The Gene Technology Bill-What Kiwis Need To Know” on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5b2skQADT4

And the vile comments flow

2023-01-19T19:15:00.003+13:00

Our Prime Minister, during some of the most tortuous years experienced in my life, has announced her resignation.

And the tap spewing bitter vitriol is opening up.

Let’s be clear from the start, I am not committed to ANY political party, nor do I wear a political ideological straight jacket.

What a coincidence that on Tuesday [17/01/2023], Ron Trotter had entitled his Blog ‘ Is the Prime Minister “Evil”?’

He was questioning the state of NZ politics where our Prime Minister was being branded “evil”. He noted that “...Transforming Jacinda Ardern into a hateful caricature… signals that political discussion has steered away from the predictably ideological towards the dangerously metaphysical…”.

As Ron notes, the fact remains the “country is economically, socially & culturally outperforming a great many of the wealthy nations against which we like to compare ourselves.” His Blog is worth a read...

http://bowalleyroad.blogspot.com/2023/01/is-prime-minister-evil.html

As far as I am concerned, the vitriolic personalised slagging says more about those making the comments, rather than it does about Jacinda Ardern as PM.

[Illustration is from Ron Trotter's Blog]

Politics should be directed... 'to the well-being of the people.'

2022-11-30T18:41:00.004+13:00

Groucho Marx is attributed as saying, “Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.”

I believe our current model of democracy is a croc, and for that reason I am not looking forward to the next election in New Zealand.

Apparently just 45.7% of the world’s population are considered to live in a democracy of some sort. Just 6.4% of the world’s population is considered to live in full democracies.

The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks countries in a Democracy Index. Each country is given a score out of 10 in four categories: electoral process and pluralism, functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties.

In 2021, New Zealand’s score was unchanged from the 2020 index, we ranked the world’s second most democratic country, after Norway.

I continue to question the operational effectiveness of our Democracy which operates as an Opposition Parliamentary System. My focus is not about Political parties per sae, rather the system in which they operate. Does it truly serve democracy and the overall wellbeing of the Country? Or is it more of a sporting match where teams vigorously compete against each other in the hope to be the ‘winner’? And what is the role and responsibility we, the voters, have to ensure democracy operates well?

Let’s review the three models of political opposition:-

Classical Opposition - To oppose anything and everything.

Opposition in Principle - Bent not only on wrenching power from the government of today, but on ending once and for all the system on which that government rests.

Cartel Arrangements - The third is a counter-concept to the other two. It relates to government under various forms of cartel arrangements among political organisations operating within the framework of parliamentary institutions.

In the nonsensical game of Opposition Politics, scoring political points seem more important than the issue. In 2019 Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Centre for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, noted, “The lessons of the world happiness report over the years is that … honesty in government are crucial for well-being…Politics should be directed as the great sages long ago insisted: to the well-being of the people…”.

It is interesting to note that there is plenty of research on what parliamentary opposition is, but very little on its effectiveness.

Reflect on your living memory of government, are the behaviours we have regularly seen (remember I am talking about the process of government, not parties), the hall marks of an ‘effective opposition’?

I argue that historically, the consistent practice of political opposition has been a combination of both Classical Opposition and Opposition in Principle. Very rarely during my active interest in voting, if at all, have we experienced the third model, that of cartel arrangements i.e., the various parties working together in the best interests of the Country, rather than point scoring against each other.

Certainly, there have been isolated examples of that happening, but it is not the common approach by any stretch of the imagination.

Successive governments have developed the habit of responding to symptoms, not identifying the root cause of problems – and of course, we the voters, have conditioned them to think and behave that way. “Populism trumps data”. (Max Rushbrooke Dominion Post Opinion 22/10/22) Most of the systemic issues we have are unlikely to produce measurable outcomes within one 3 year term anyway.

When will we stop reacting to symptoms and start dealing with the root causes?

The importance of open, considered debate and discussion on any topic cannot be underestimated. It helps us learn and understand. Putting forward ideas & even provocative thoughts takes courage & care. Receiving other & opposite opinions takes patience & understanding. Doing all of that well creates a continuous, exciting & exhilarating learning environment. It is okay for rational disagreement, and regardless of how confronting, dignity illustrates the better person.

In August 2022, Thomas Costello & Shauna Bowes wrote in PSYCHE, “Political views are, fundamentally, opinions… It is now apparent that reasonable, intellectually charitable discussions between progressives and conservatives are quite scarce…leaving little room for compromise or legislative success…ideological extremism is associated with low cognitive flexibility…we do warn against people who are sure that theirs is the only solution to societal problems…absolute certainty is something to avoid.”

Another hallmark of democracy is participation, and voting is an act of participation.

Many observers lament the decline in voter turnout and view this trend as detrimental to the democratic process. The fact remains, those of us with the privilege (some may say ‘right’) of being able to vote should be exercising that privilege. Not only that, but we should also be actively questioning and challenging candidates.

Are we going to allow the selfish game of egocentric and vain political point scoring to continue?

It is a simple behavioural logic (conditioning) – say nothing and the current behaviour will continue. In short, we can’t point the finger at politicians and aspiring candidates – they just deliver what they think we expect of them.

Leadership isn’t about doing what’s popular, it is about doing what’s right.

There is a basic logic that democracy will benefit when more citizens participate. The Intelligence Unit of the Economist magazine measures the quality of governance (EUI Index). Nations with overall higher political participation also have better performing government.

The truth is that most of us make shallow voting decisions focused on the here and now, ‘what’s in it for me?’ Are you more likely to support candidates who are prepared to take the long view or those that just hand out goodies for you in the here and now?

And that is it in a nutshell really. It doesn’t matter which party is in Government, they must maintain voter popularity rather than do what is right to stay in power. If it shouldn’t be that way, then we the voters, will have to change our behaviour.

Use of the word Health an ‘inverted euphemism’.

2022-10-26T10:51:00.005+13:00

Localised District Health Boards have been dumped and a centralised bureaucracy established.

[*1]

DHBs were set up to be responsible for the integration of all health services in a particular area officially known as “resident populations”. They were responsible to monitor the health status of that population.

Recently, suddenly, and with little discussion, a new Centralised bureaucracy was announced. Apparently, this was necessary because a patient in one geographic area receives state funding for a particular drug or treatment while a patient with similar clinical needs in another area does not. The Government, not the DHBs control the funding.

The question, “Restructuring yet again is the solution to what problem?” springs to mind.

Some answers include ‘The problem is the cost. Healthcare has become commoditized, politicised’ ‘We have a healthcare system that is only one big Accident & Emergency centre.’ ‘DHBs are stubborn, and always too slow.’

Even if those are correct diagnoses, is restructuring the answer? Remember health care is delivered by people. In an effective organisation the people are clear on what they are supposed to do and enabled to be able to do that.

The key word of diagnosis (in my opinion) is ‘politicised’. Restructuring is often synonymous with Politics.

During my service in the Public Health system, I experienced four restructures plus the one that created the opportunity for me to be employed.

The process of restructuring faces many challenges leading to most organisations failing to successfully implement it, usually because it is imposed from the top down with little or no real engagement of the people who do the actual work. The great Peter Drucker is credited with saying “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”. In other words, no matter how big or clever the plans, unless the team is onboard, you ain’t going nowhere.

In the words of someone whose opinion I respect, "...perhaps because we are so good at organizing, we tend as a nation to meet any new situation by reorganizing; and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralization."

Bad policy is more harmful than flesh eating bugs.

By sheer coincidence I came across a book ‘Curious kiwi words’ by Max Cryer (2002). I looked up ‘Health’ and here is what he said:

“Although the word health normally indicates that a body is functioning well, in New Zealand it’s often used to mean sickness. In spite of their titles, the Ministry of Health, health insurance, health professionals, health clinics and health legislation are entirely concerned with problems related to illness. Television and radio have health reporters who report on various matters to do with ill health…

The word health is probably an optimistic gesture towards what people want it to be (i.e. healthy) but the fact remains, that during their working day, health professionals only ever meet people who are ill.

For a while there was a moderate attempt to substitute the word wellness as a sort of middle ground, but the word never took off.”

Max referenced a social commentator, Richard Wolfe, who called the word ‘Health’ an “inverted euphemism’.

[*1] The Dominion Post / 28 October 2022 / Murdoch Cartoon / page 13

Guns and Gangs - Politics or Solutions?

2022-08-13T10:28:00.005+12:00

How many times in the past have National promised to sort the gangs?

“Apparently an opinion survey by Ipsos showed that the public now views National as the party most capable of managing the crime/law issue.”

Bryce Edwards – Political Roundup 15/07/2022

Let’s not forget The National Party has spent more time in Government than any other party since they were formed in 1936 through an amalgamation of the Reform and Liberal parties, which had previously been in government until a major loss to Labour hence the decision to unite. In 2020 National had held office for 47 years longer than any other party.

For most of the 20th century, National was more often in government than out of it.

In July 2010, in an address to the National Party Conference, John Key said he was, “…proud to be leading a government that is making New Zealand a better place.” Later in the speech he said, “We’ve declared war on P and we’re cracking (presumably no pun intended) down on the gangs that sell it.”

This was illustrated in a great cartoon ‘Gangs’. “*#@* ferocious pussy cats eh bro?” There is a gang member and his dog peering over a huge fence, topped with barbed wire, with the word ‘Gangs’ painted on it, and comment sarcastically on three cats on the footpath who represent ‘Councils’, ‘National’ and ‘Labour’ which purr, meow and hiss gently. There is a newspaper on the footpath with the headline ‘We’d crack down on gangs- Key’.

https://digitalnz.org/records/23219318/gangs-ferocious-pussy-cats-eh-bro-12-may-2008

Nor should we forget National Leader Simon Bridges in late November 2019, declaring that under his prime ministership his government would disrupt and harass gangs every single day he was in the job! Hmm, how did that go?

Interesting fact: Rob Muldoon liked drinking with the gang members and was a patron of Black Power. At his funeral in 1992, Black Power performed a haka in Sir Robert’s honour!

So, the current Police Minister, Chris Hipkins tells us the government wants to “…hit gangs where it hurts.” He does go on to say that they need to engage young people with something useful to do to keep them out of trouble. Ya thunk!? Of course, just recently National’s Leader Chris Luxon has announced they would introduce a jobs coaching scheme and that it should be run by Iwi. Good grief, is sense starting to prevail? Do you think he and Hipkins might get together, share their thinking, and create a jointly supported plan? Or will they use the topic for political fisticuffs?

You may think that I am a Labour supporter having a go at National. Not the case.

My comments simply illustrate that governments overtime have always been making promises when the Gangs profile became politically uncomfortable, that are clearly superficial political survival answers, focused on symptoms but not causes.

Ironically, the most intelligent and ‘cause’ focused comment has come from Denis O’Reilly of Black Power. He argued that gangs are symptoms of much deeper problems, many of which stem from our history as a country and that they arise from colonialism, neoliberalism, and socioeconomic inequality.

And that is not the first time he has commented, endeavouring to bring sense and perspective to the ‘issue’ of gangs. In 2017 he talked about ‘gangs being convenient whipping boys’ in an interview with Dale Husband. In that piece Denis notes that back in 1984, “Phil Goff called me into his office and said: We’re not going to be funding bad New Zealanders into work when good New Zealanders aren’t in work.”

https://e-tangata.co.nz/korero/denis-oreilly-the-gangs-have-been-convenient-whipping-boys/

Dale notes, “Social scientists can look back at that time and see that, when the work schemes stopped, the prison population began climbing. And that’s what we still live with today. When all the work schemes were pulled away, the boys became criminalised a fair bit and we are still cursed by that now.”

I suggest we stop playing politics, repeating the continuous political failures, and start the simple process of root cause analysis to deal with the problem, and not the politically convenient symptoms.

It is okay for rational disagreement, and regardless of how confronting, dignity, not their politics, illustrates the better person, .

Rainbow flag not flown for gay pride week at Pukekohe High School.

2022-07-09T19:16:00.001+12:00

I was sad to read ‘Queer students flag school’s pride’ (p4 / Franklin County News / June 23, 2022), explaining that the rainbow flag was not flown for gay pride week at Pukekohe High School because it was “unnecessarily inflammatory”.

It instantly transported me back to the early days of our Gay Rights campaign when the gay community decided it was no longer going to put up with having to hide in the closet and pretend to be something else. Back in the 60s people were being arrested for being gay. People were being discriminated against in some awful ways for being gay or homosexual.

My involvement in the late 70’s and into the 80’s was as the Secretary of the National Gay Rights Coalition, when the campaign for homosexual law reform began in earnest after the failure of MP Venn Young’s second attempt to legalise Homosexuality. ‘Salient’, the Victoria University Students Association Newspaper noted, “…the NGRC has established itself as a weighty, authoritative, and credible voice in speaking on behalf of gay right, in detecting discrimination and in protesting false stereotyping… The formation of the NGRC injected a new spirit of confidence into the gay rights movement, as a result of which has grown and diversified.”

We were there to fight and fight publicly. To stand proud and equal. Gay Pride week developed for that very purpose.

I recall teams throughout the country hoisting Pink Triangle flags on public flag poles, and later I remember our friend Fran Wilde introducing her Bill for our equality, and the campaign of public meetings against that Bill by the Salvation Army which we would protest outside or storm the meetings.

During 1985 were the marches supported with a lot of people who were not gay. When we marched in Wellington, people were coming out of the pubs and shouting abuse, throwing tomatoes and eggs and stuff like that. But there was such huge positive energy from the people marching, that they just kept marching.

We fought hard and for a long time. And to read that the rainbow flag was not flown for gay pride week at Pukekohe High School because it was “unnecessarily inflammatory” was a shock, propelling ourselves back to the 60’s where gays were criminals and hid in their closets!

Popularist Pandering or Constructive Government

2022-03-21T22:35:00.004+13:00

Well, well, well! Why on earth are we surprised?

[Source: Roy Morgan New Zealand Single Source. January 2020 – February 2022}

In order to become and remain the Government in New Zealand, a political party must be popular. The decisions they make, regardless of whether they are technically right or not, determine their popularity.

I had suggested in my last BLOG, ‘Appalling Behaviour in the Playground or Just Oppositional Politics?’, the COVID Pandemic provided an opportunity for a more collaborative and productive approach, e.g., a Pandemic Governance Committee comprising representatives of all parties in Parliament, which could have worked as a forum contributing, debating, critiquing, identifying the most appropriate path forward and hopefully reaching a consensus. (https://ingeoffsopinion.blogspot.com – 31/12/21)

What has transpired is of course well documented in the print and social media which might be summarised as:

1. We accept the Government’s attempts to save us from the pandemic – until we have decided we have had enough of being told what to do.

2. The most significant opposition party which had been busy eating its leaders suddenly becomes more popular - because the Government isn’t anymore.

3. We get bored with people we saw as heroes - then we pillory them.

4. The Government is criticised from all quarters – loses popularity.

Not surprisingly, the Government got the message about their significant drop in popularity through the polls. They react to the concerns and make rapid decisions to try and ease the stress on the People.

That is momentarily lauded then…. “In the last few days the Labour Government has come in for criticism for its panicked pandering to opinion polls… This was in response to pressure from opponents and the public … and following a poll showing Labour behind National.” (Bryce Edwards; Political Roundup)

The Government’s actions were labelled “cowardly...cynical and reactionary” by Jack Tame (TVNZ/Newstalk ZB) who also noted, “Once again, Jacinda Ardern's Government has shown it's more interested in doing what is popular than what is right.” The website Interest.co.nz asked economists for their view on the reforms – “political, reactionary, poorly targeted, short-termist and interventionist,” summarises their responses.

Appalling Behaviour in the Playground or Just Oppositional Politics?

2021-12-31T21:52:00.002+13:00

It came as a great surprise to me to learn that The Parliamentary Oath does not require parliamentarians to work together in the best interests of NZ!

A democracy without opposition is dangerous for the society as a whole and a lot of importance has been given to the political opposition in order to make a government accountable. An effective opposition performs a restraining role, whilst simultaneously posing a constant challenge by promising a practical alternative. For that purpose, we use what is known as the Westminster Model as our model of Parliamentary Government, which has evolved since the 1600’s.

There are three models of political opposition which haven’t changed when the model was questioned way back in 1957. First is the “classical opposition”, to oppose anything and everything. Second is what might be “opposition of principle”, bent not only on wrenching power from the government of today, but on ending once and for all the system on which that government rests. The third is a counter-concept to the other two. It relates to government under various forms of cartel arrangements among political organizations operating within the framework of parliamentary institutions.

There is plenty of research on what parliamentary opposition is, but very little on its effectiveness.

I liked this summary of Westminster politics – Picture a line-up of politicians. All have their arms outstretched pointing to the person on their left. They are all playing a blame game, accusing their opponents of responsibility for some event, statement, or incident. With politics, often another term for opportunism, it is often a question of how quickly to jump into a situation or ‘breaking news’ that can be reframed to their advantage.

Are the behaviours we regularly see, and more so in the recent challenging times, the hall marks of an ‘effective opposition’?

It is impossible to run an organisation without there being mistakes. The only way to learn to do the real thing is to do the real thing. And every system breaks down and even the best trained people make mistakes at times. You can chase down those who make mistakes and humiliate them, creating a climate of fear. Or you can talk about the mistakes openly so people and the system can learn. In an organisation, that is an illustration of a positive & productive culture.

How come that doesn’t apply to parliament and the running of NZ Inc?

The Parliamentary Oath is a statement of Allegiance to the Queen, heirs & successors, to be loyal to NZ, obey the law, respect democratic values & freedoms of the people. It came as a great surprise to me to learn that The Oath does not require parliamentarians to work together in the best interests of NZ!

We live in a world shaped by hundreds of years of collective, structural harms (e.g. the legacies of colonisation, heteropatriarchy) that shape the culture we live in. That means these patterns have shaped us too. Conflict unveils systemic traumas and the ways oppressive systems and violent people have used power against us over time and generations.

One of the strident messages I have learned throughout our current pandemic crisis is how counterproductive our parliamentary oppositional model is and how willingly and quickly MPs will resort to blame, personal invective, and ‘playing the person not the ball’.

So, if that behaviour is not acceptable in the workplace, or on the sports field, or at school or in the playground, how come its ok in Parliament?

The function of the opposition is not to rule. Instead, the opposition may have other functions, including:

• To offer political alternatives…

• To offer alternatives to the decisions proposed by the government…

The extent to which the opposition in a given parliamentary system is allowed to actually fulfil these functions can be seen as the sign of the level of democratic maturity.

An opposition party may be less likely to support government policy if it is large enough to achieve a position of power itself by replacing the incumbent government after the next elections. Larger parties might not show higher levels of support for government policies and actions because their credibility as an electoral alternative would suffer from being overly supportive of the very government they seek to replace.

In a review of the House of Commons (UK) it was found that Party loyalties greatly inhibited public criticisms and undermined evidence based reasoning about policies. Legacy procedural practices, plus MPs traditionalist attachment to inefficient and ineffective ways of working limited the legislature’s role.

Is government vs opposition, where the opposition vote against the government irrespective of the proposal that is made, the best model for democratic representation?

This practice is reinforced ensuring cohesion within party lines rather than necessarily the best interest of NZ Inc through the practice of ‘whipping’. Members do not get to vote ‘sincerely’.

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a crisis situation that requires extensive government action whereas the role of parliamentary parties is less clear. Government – Opposition relations during a crisis can range from consensus seeking too strictly adversarial. Analysis of a number of parliaments showed that opposition parties expressed sentiment in parliamentary debates on COVID-19 started out relatively positive towards governments actions and policies but increasingly became more negative, particularly when the crisis broadened from a public health situation to a social and economic crisis - traditionally more politicised issues.

The crisis is no longer new. Some of the issues around handling of the pandemic now seem to speak more to longstanding ideological differences.

So, to summarise the characteristics of New Zealand’s oppositional model (Westminster):

a) Our parliamentarians are not required to work together in the best interests of NZ.

b) Although we are a world leader in democracy, our parliamentary opposition exists primarily for the sake of opposition only.

c) Members do not get to vote sincerely (apart from a rare ‘conscience’ vote) but are ‘whipped’ to vote with the Party.

d) Party loyalties greatly inhibit public criticisms and undermine evidence based reasoning about policies.

e) They are all playing a blame game.

f) If the opposition party is large enough to achieve a position of power itself, they are bent on wrenching power from the government of today.

g) We are democratically immature.

Relationship researcher John Gottman identified four ways of managing conflict that weaken trust relationships. Many facilitators have identified these habits are toxic for trust in groups:

• Personal criticism (blame; attacking the other person’s character or personality; bullying)

• Defensiveness (deflection; self-protection; justification)

• Contempt (demeaning; mocking; disrespect & hostility; undermining; belittling)

• Stonewalling (withdrawal & cutting off communication; silent treatment; avoidance)

Let’s now take a step into the workplace, starting with some wise words from Charles Darwin, “In the long history of humankind (and animal kind too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed.”

The overall character of a business is described as the Workplace Culture. Ideally, businesses want to create a culture that is viewed as positive. Positive = Productive. A company would accomplish this by focusing on innovation, flexibility, and empowerment for example. On the flip side, a company’s culture will be seen as negative when it is hierarchical, bureaucratic, or power driven. If there isn’t a positive feedback culture, people become fearful of making mistakes, and consequentially of making decisions, they won’t try new things. They will come to fear the job.

Positive cultures are characterised by positive leaders, leading the way by example.

Nothing is more important than building teams of creative thinkers and problem solvers stimulated to venturesome and inventive thinking. Innovation is the catalyst to problem solving and business growth. It means being open to new ideas, technology, and unexplored opportunities; a commitment to adapt; welcoming diverse thought.

Collaborative problem solving requires team members to maintain communication to help each other know who knows what, as well as help each other interpret elements of the problem and which expertise should be applied. They will critique possible solutions to identify the most appropriate path forward.

The opposite of a positive work environment is described as a toxic or negative culture, working in which is far from a pleasant experience. Those who bet on having a cut-throat, high-pressure, take-no-prisoners culture will find that not only is that harmful to ‘productivity’ but also workplace wellbeing is seriously affected. Such environments are often characterised by bullying.

Bullying is when someone uses their power to control or ‘hurt’ someone else by teasing or making fun, spreading rumours, posting mean messages online in social media or texts, name calling. It also includes gloating about winning and making others feel bad about losing. It is bullying when it’s meant to hurt. It is no secret that the Parliament working environment is no happy place.

Ironically, a government department set up to help businesses has an excellent summary of advice on shaping a good work culture on its website, which seemingly does not apply to Parliament. [https://www.business.govt.nz/business-performance/management-and-leadership/shaping-your-work-culture/]

I have assumed the business of all Parliamentarians is to ensure the wellbeing of the people and improving the business results of NZ Inc. Is their commitment to good governance and the wellbeing of the population they represent, or is it to a political dogma and party?

The key behaviour characteristics necessary to work together to achieve the best outcomes for all NZers include:

• Positive feedback and recognition for accomplishments

• Lead by example

• Recognise and appreciate great work

• Continuous learning culture

• Fairness, tolerance, and respect for the individual

• Encouraging experimentation and risk taking

• Ability to recognize and negotiate social dynamics

• Understand the impact of words and behaviours

When people blindly align themselves to one party and their leader, they tend to overlook the negative effects of their decisions. They don a ‘political colour’ shirt which acts as a straitjacket for both their actions and thinking as they exhibit:

• Unconscious & conscious bias

• Lack of Social Intelligence

• In groups and Out groups

• Power dynamics

• Workplace incivility

True leaders unite people. They do not divide them.

They do not find faults. But they do find remedies.

They do not sow hate. But they do cultivate positive organisation and life cultures.

Sadly, our narrow interpretation of the oppositional model of Westminster politics works actively against this wisdom. If all ideas are worth considering in the construction of a universal plan, then all political energy would have been positively focused for our overall wellbeing, not the setting for political point scoring at the expense of our wellbeing.

The COVID Pandemic provided an opportunity for a more collaborative and productive approach. For example and at the risk of oversimplifying, A Pandemic Governance Committee could have been set up, comprising representatives of all parties in Parliament. That could have worked as a forum contributing, debating, critiquing, identifying the most appropriate path forward and hopefully reaching a consensus.

Yes, the Government would ultimately have to decide. They would provide the citizens with an overview of all of the contributions, a decision, and outlining what had not been included and why.

Yes, other parties would publicly offer comment, especially if something they thought important had been omitted. They would NOT make a personal attack in any way but offer reasoned commentary on what they feel the impact may be. If it turns out they were right, then that would be publicly acknowledged, and their opinions considered more thoughtfully in the future. And voters might consider that come the next election.

I think this is where you say, “And pigs will fly!”

#politicalopposition #nzparliamentarysystem #blindpolitics #ingeoffsopinion

References:

The Waning of Opposition in Parliamentary Regimes” by Otto Kirchheimer, 1957

Opposition in a Small Westminster Parliament: The case of Tasmania / Australasian Parliamentary Review, by Richard Herr, Autumn 2007.

The Role of Opposition in a Democracy: A Bibliometric Analysis’, Shrivastava & Dwivedi, 2021

Opposition in times of crisis: COVID-19 in parliamentary debates” by Louwerse et al, pub 3 March 2021

The futility of Politics as a blame game. Opinion, Aljazeera, Danny Schechter, Sept. 2012.

How effective are the Common’s two committee systems at scrutinising government policy making? 2018 Audit of UK Democracy. P. Dunleavy

Eight ways to build collaborative teams, HBR, Gratton & Erickson, November 2007.

Delta - Too Close For Comfort

2021-12-06T03:59:00.005+13:00

This last week, Covid Delta got too close for comfort.
On Sunday I attended the zoom memorial service for Rex Warwood, a character and news reporter for many years in Franklin. Covid 19 cast its line, caught Rex, and rather than ‘tag and release’ took his life.

Up until that point, COVID certainly was a concern for me, I had not come in direct contact with the dangerous consequences. During the first lockdown of 2020 I worked through at the Foodbank and certainly understood the impact of people losing their jobs. Sometimes there were near 200 people lined up around the foodbank waiting for food when we arrived at work. Thanks to my employer I was already double vaccinated before Delta took hold this year. In fact, I had ‘retired’ the month before we locked down again, so I was confined to home.

That in itself was not so bad – there was plenty to do on our farm.

People and behaviour fascinate me and as I came across the various memes, posters, messages, and the like, I decided on a project. Through Facebook, I began collecting what I thought would form something of a pictorial historical record of thoughts during the Delta lockdown. Each day I would post a number of these. I never expressed any thoughts, judgement or commentary choosing to remain apolitical.

As you will know, a decidedly different feeling began to emerge. During the first lockdown last year the sense of the team of 5 million, working together to eliminate Covid, was very real. However, it did not take long into the second lockdown for a whole different ‘edge’ began to emerge.

And as my project got underway, my connection with Rex was re-united as he took an active interest in what I was doing. Apart from comments about posts he and I exchanged emails and messages with it becoming clear he had some pretty strong views, not unusual for ‘Punchy’ as he was nicknamed.

However, there are some people where the relationship takes precedence over opinion, and that was the case here as my respect for Rex and his past work meant that we could agree to disagree, and maybe engage in some debate, especially about the ‘conspiracy’. Sadly, Rex was an anti-vaxer. Regardless we had agreed we would catch up in person when restrictions eased up and share more of our respective life experience.

It had crossed my mind that I had not heard anything from him for a week or so. I sent him a message and received no response. And just as I was wondering if he was ok, I received the news that he had contracted COVID, been persuaded to go to hospital, where shortly after he died. May God rest his soul and comfort his family.

Evidence is a word that has been bandied around a lot during this Lockdown. It has become a word that has evoked a great deal of anger, counter argument, fiery opinion, denial and generated some downright nasty interaction. Prior to Rex’s death I could have been accused of adopting something of an academic / impersonal attitude toward Covid and a ahakoa he aha (whatever) view of Lockdown.

Not anymore! It has come far too close for my comfort! It is personal now! I have all the evidence I need.

You can read more about Rex on page 4 of the Franklin County News, December 2, 2021 - https://www.neighbourly.co.nz/e-edition/franklin-county-news/44520

An Interview With COVID

2021-11-26T21:39:00.001+13:00

December 15th is the day Aucklanders achieve freedom from COVID Lockdown, so they can travel and ‘reconnect with the rest of New Zealand in time for Christmas and summer’.

They will have to be fully vaccinated or have a negative test within 72 hours of departure. Not only that, but others can also travel into Auckland. There will be no ‘hard’ borders with Police checking people in or out. Police will have operational discretion on the enforcement of these rules, undertaking random spot checks, just as they do with drink driving.

I had a zoom chat with some COVID Delta representatives suggesting their days may be numbered. That was greeted with some raucous guffaws! They reminded me that that they are the latest of 8 revised versions and further, even with the hard borders they had been successfully establishing themselves in communities previously untouched.

They reminded me that from February 2020 we have had near 11,000 confirmed cases and now there were over 5,000 current cases in NZ, with near 70% of those being caught from someone locally.

They said, “Mate, since the beginning of November we have steadily increased our hit rate daily from at least 100 to achieving over 200 a day and that, Mate, is with your controlled borders!”

They seemed keen to remind me that they had also been busy producing Cuzzy Bros. “You heard about Delta Plus, Lambda variant or Mu variant? Of course, you should have heard about B.1.1.529 by now. We call him Nu for short.” Umm, good point.

They went on further to draw an analogy with bowling. “It’s like we have been playing in a single lane bowling alley. From 15th December it will be like moving into a new 20 lane bowling alley. Imagine what we can do in there!” I had to wait until they recovered from their shrieking with delight.

I showed him a picture illustrating the various pandemics over time and their associated death rate.

“Looking at this" I said, "you haven’t had a very successful hit rate compared to past pandemics. Why don’t you just pack up and call it quits?” His tone changed and became deeper and more earnest (but at least that question took the growing smile off his face), “We had a good start except here in NZ then you guys got a bit cocky and dropped your guard, and bang! We were in. Yep, we have had a slow start. But as you can see, we have been adapting and practicing and the numbers of infections are starting to pick up. We have been blessed by people wanting to lay off their personal responsibility by blaming your PM.”

"But” I asked, “people will be double vaccinated at best or have tested negative, doesn’t that worry you at all?”

This prompted a scornful response.

“Mate, have you not been paying attention. They don’t worry us. Even with your hard border there were people who couldn’t give a stuff and one way, or another got out and Wahoo, we were right there alongside.”

I reminded them there was a big vaccination campaign. That didn’t seem to faze them either.

“You do know that vaccines are not exactly concrete full bodied condoms don’t yah?” They reminded me they had a great team of anti–vaxers. “There are even some doctors on that team which is good for us, and you have one of your top representatives of God thumbing his nose at your authorities."

"He’s more than just a Bishop in our eyes.”

Then they got all caring maybe patronising, “Look Mate, we know you are all vaccinated and that shit, but the more your leaders try and protect everybody with rules and stuff, the more people are going to get antsy about being ‘controlled’ and just say Fxxx You.”

At that point the conversation got interrupted by a loud smashing sound and someone shouting ‘STEEEERIKE!’ accompanied by lots of shouting and clapping. Mr. Covid said, “That was a good strike for today. Gotta go. We have set some new targets so got get more strikes. Cheers Mate.”

The NZ Chief Covid was having a press conference later in the day, so I tuned in and took a snapshot of the consistent key message.

Road Deaths & Our Reaction to COVID

2021-10-27T12:13:00.002+13:00

We do not expect people to behave randomly but to behave in certain ways in particular situations. Each situation entails its own particular set of expectations about the “proper” way to behave.

Society has rules, protocols, norms to provide order and predictability. Members of the society change such rules according to the need of the time and situation. Also, behavioural norms evolve through the actions of people and institutions.

Sometimes that is reinforced by regulation.

For example, during the Blitz in WWII there was a concern Britain would suffer night air bombing attacks which would cause large numbers of casualties and massive destruction. In order to make it difficult for bombers to identify areas of population at night, blackout regulations were introduced. Try as I might, I could not find any record of objection and or social commentary about rights being restricted.

Consider Naturalism, where believers find clothes restricting, hot and uncomfortable. They just don’t like having clothes on. In itself not a big issue, however their interest is restricted to home and clubs. Even there they have rules. For example, an apron is necessary when cooking a BBQ and safety gear was needed when trimming trees around the club. They are also sensible not to over-expose themselves to the sun. However, if they turned up naked at the Supermarket to do their shopping, they would probably be arrested for indecent exposure. Try as I might, I could not find any record of objection and or social commentary about their rights being restricted.

Road traffic speeds is a current ‘hot’ topic and a possible indication of where we are going to go with COVID. Despite a range of limits applied across our road system, the old default of 50km/h in urban areas and 100km/h on the open road is pretty much ingrained in many of our minds. Through a combination of education and policing, the NZ road toll has exhibited a downward trend since the late 80s through to 2010, attributed to factors such as

• Reduction in drink driving

• Improvements in vehicle safety

• More wearing seatbelts

• Hazard mitigation on roads

• Reduction in speed limits

Regardless, in the last decade, each year, between 253 – 373 people were killed and 11,219 – 14,031 people injured. In 2017 the social cost of road deaths and injuries was more than $4.8b. Social cost is a figure that looks at how a serious crash impacts the driver and their family. It includes loss of life or reduction in the quality of life and the loss of ability to work or be employed. Medical & legal costs, and damage to vehicles is also factored in. Add in non-injury crashes, and the social cost rises to $5.6b. This doesn’t include emergency medical treatment funded through ACC, but when factored in brings the total cost to more than $6b.

In December 2019 the Government released the ‘Road to Zero’ traffic Strategy which adopts the vision of a New Zealand where no-one is killed or seriously injured in road crashes. And that is creating some push back as people object to the attempts to slow us down, save lives and reduce chances of injury (not to mention reducing the whole cost).

I couldn’t help but see a parallel in the reactions to the Zero Deaths on the Road strategy of saving lives and cost, reducing injury risk, and the reaction to the plans to try and eliminate COVID or at least reduce the risk of infection, death and cost.

People are demanding their ‘freedom’ from COVID restrictions, campaigning that the PM must go, claiming the experts are conspiring, defying travel restrictions, and making a conscious decision to transport the virus to others.

We have been defying restrictions on our driving speeds, (paying $272million between March 2019 & March 2020 for 2.9 million traffic offences), and making a conscious decision to put our own, let alone others, lives at risk.

Standby for the predicted explosion of COVID and learn to be very, very careful who you trust to be in contact with.

You also might find the following an interesting read on informal rule of law.

https://theconversation.com/covid-19-response-shows-how-an-informal-rule-of-law-plays-a-supporting-role-in-society-144387

Going Grid Free

2021-09-16T21:28:00.005+12:00

Back at the beginning of September I posted on the Grid Free NZ Facebook page that in a couple of years time we would be looking to sell our existing home and build rural with the aim of being Grid Free.

I asked for the collected experience of the group to draft up a list of 'Key learnings' from their collected practice wisdom. I was looking for the most important ideas / learning / information that would spring to mind immediately, they would pass onto someone starting out. I said I would collate all that into one document and post it so everyone could share.

There were quite a bit of interest in the post with almost 200 interactions and 102 comments. People often endorsing some advice, others acknowledging they too found it helpful. In fact, as I reviewed the comments there was quite a lot of good sense which could be deployed in conventional environments.

We have already been thinking about the way we currently live. We supply water to 6 other properties of which 3 have 2 residences and another has 3.

Our water bore is dropping as is the groundwater in the district. I have suggested to the neighbours they begin thinking seriously harvesting water and think about how they use it. We have been conserving water by putting a bucket in the shower and them using that water to flush the toilet. We do our dishes by hand in a bowl and then use the water to water pot plants etc.

The two pieces of advice which I rated highly were the suggestions that, 'Move onto the property and live in a mobile home for all four seasons before deciding what goes where', and, 'Start a book of what you like and don’t in off grid living. The more you know the better able you are to filter all advice'. I have ordered 'Off the Grid-Houses for Escape' by Dominic Bradbury.

Here is the list of Off The Grid advice organised roughly under some headings: Power / Lighting / Insurance / Cooking / Water Heating. I hope you find it useful. I have kept it as a word doc which I open up when I am looking at GridFree NZ advice and continue to add to it.

My thanks to all those who freely and quickly gave advice.

Power

1. Get a pro to design & install a system

2. Learn to be frugal with power

3. Use low energy requirement appliances

4. Buy a generator √√

5. Don’t rely on one supply of power generation

6. Buy a property which allows you to have a windmill, waterwheel & solar panels putting power into a central battery bank sited to minimise loss through lines

7. Better off on grid if using fossil powered generator

8. Batteries do not like getting low

9. Don’t let batteries go below 40%

10. Spare solar panel in case of damage

11. Go 24v even better 48v

12. Buy quality solar panels with proven less degradation

13. Work out system size based on full use but no power to batteries – how many days 3 -5

14. 2.5 times as much power as needed

15. Get a windmill

16. Invest in good maintenance free batteries – 48 volt lead carbon

17. Two sources of power solar/generator

18. Make sure enough batteries

Lighting

19. Individually switched LED lights

Insurance

20. Send all documentation to your insurance company

Cooking

21. Use gas

22. Wood burner you can cook on/in that has a wetback √√

Water Heating

23. Use gas √

24. Two gas bottles

25. Wetback

26. Heat pump hot water cylinder (go outside use 1/3rd power

27. Solar hot water setup with tank & tubes on roof like suntrap solar units – don’t need circulation pump

28. 48v Victron Easy Solar system with Lithium batteries & tier 1 solar panels

Heating & Air con

29. Store firewood at backdoor

30. V2H model EV (cooling system) then doubles as main house battery

Advice

31. Talk to others √√

32. Look at others in your area

33. Downsize appliances

34. Move onto the property and live in a mobile home for all four seasons before deciding what goes where

35. Keep it simple

36. Start a book of what you like and don’t in off grid living. The more you know the better able you are to filter all advice

37. "Off the Grid-Houses for Escape" by Dominic Bradbury

38. Planning will take longer and cost more than you expect

Land

39. Do due diligence to ensure you are able to meet Council regulation

40. Consider location re climate (increase storms/floods in south & west, drought in north & east

41. Have good land

42. Investigate the climate in all four seasons considering how far you want to go with off the grid and what resources are available in that area

43. Cost of putting in driveway

44. Budget for fencing and planting trees (protected from stock)

Water

45. Water most important

46. 2x water 25,000ltr tanks 1 for fire √

47. Water pump

48. Buy land that has water

49. Huge tanks off every roof

50. Unfiltered for stock, cleaning, gardens

51. If possible two supplies of water bore/rain

52. Buy property with Hill so you can pump water up every week or 2 & have gravity fed water (less use of pump) √

53. Dedicated water source and a specialist fire hose outlet. Check guidelines from authority

House & Buildings

54. Position for best use of sun & for solar panels

55. Roof catchment to fill tanks

56. Build sheds in eyesight of home & away from front gate (deter thieves)

57. Plan to build the things you need first

58. Build house perfect roof pitch (30o) for solar

59. Access

60. Build to get maximum use of sun and shade, remembering the sun is lower in the winter so an overhang the right size will provide shade in the summer but allow sun in under during winter

61. Covered outdoor area for washing to hang when wet and for entertaining when not.

62. Shipping containers as water tanks, septic tanks, secure storage sheds

Life habits

63. Get used to doing things whilst the sun shines

64. John Seymour's books

65. Consider what you can live without and what you really can’t live without to give you a starting point to calculate power needs

66. Start living low energy life now

67. Buy meter to determine what power each device uses

68. Log all power use to calculate fuel needs

Toilet

69. Buy basic composting toilet system – ensure it has a separator for solids and liquids.

70. Don’t buy an over-engineered expensive toilet

71. Large concrete septic tank gravity fed from house with auto siphon system when chamber full of fluid. Low maintenance and cost.

Garden

72. Get a hot house for veges

73. Mulch, mulch, mulch

#LiveGridfree #EcoLiving

Eulogy for Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith - August 2018

2021-08-13T17:57:00.001+12:00

On Saturday 13th August 2018 we attended the funeral for Kevin Cholmondeley who passed on 11th August. Here is the Eulogy I delivered.

Ladies and gentlemen, many of you in the room will have known Kevin longer than I and will certainly be more aware of all of his characteristics, attributes, and foibles.

So, I thought I would take this opportunity to bring you up to date with the events of the week in Heaven and particularly regarding Kevin’s arrival.

On Monday, the evening edition of the Pearly Gates News reported that there had been disruption at the entrance gates to Heaven and later in the arrivals Onboarding Hall. St Peter, General Manager of Arrivals, said in a statement, “We have never quite experienced such disruption at the Pearly Gates entrance to Heaven before.”

The source of the disruption was a gentleman new arrival by the name of Mr. Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith.

“Apparently,” said St Peter, “he felt that our processing did not seem to be consistent across the various check-in booths and had gathered some of the staff in a meeting which slowed processing. St Peter continued, “When I arrived to investigate, all booths were closed, and Mr Cholmondeley-Smith was running a workshop with the staff, and they were reviewing our procedures. It seems he had also arranged for those waiting to be served with tea and biscuits.”

St Peter went on to advise that his assistant, the Angel of the first heaven who rules over Monday, Dabriel, negotiated with Mr. Cholmondeley-Smith to get staff back to work. They had to work an additional 2 hours to clear the back log.

On Monday night, Cloud 9, a Channel of Heavenly TV, reported that a meeting had been arranged between St Peter and Mr. Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith.

They also interviewed Kevin who said, “I am disappointed the Managing Director, God, will not be at the meeting, but at least we are making a start on creating a better arrival experience for new entrants to Heaven.”

The next day, Tuesday, the Heavenly Radio Chat Show, Hymns, had Kevin as a guest.

The presenter was the late Paul Holmes from Radio NZ. This is the programme where selected new arrivals are hosted for a chat. Apparently Kevin hadn’t been scheduled until next week but spoke directly with Paul and got himself on.

They had been chatting and talked a bit about the events of Monday when Paul asked how Kevin was finding the accommodation. In response Kevin launched into detailed commentary about how they were laid out and that he didn’t like the tenement like rows. He felt there should be more like smaller village settings. Kevin said this would help build identifiable communities where people could more easily relate to each other and build relationships.

It seems he touched a raw nerve with the listening community because the switch board lit up and additional call takers had to be rushed in to handle the increasing number of callers. With a bit of an uprising occurring the Director of Heavenly Operations the Arc Angel Gabriel arrived and shut the Radio chat show down.

The so called chat station was suddenly a soothing calming music station.

Now the Arc Angel Gabriel is not one to be messed with. He was reported on the midday news that he had delegated the Angel Ansiel, better known as ‘The Constrainer’, “to have a chat with this new arrival”. One or two others in the past had experienced an Angel Ansiel chat and ended up somewhere completely different, where there was no need whatsoever for central heating.

That night on the Cloud 9 TV news the Arch Angel Gabriel was facing some tough questions – clearly, he was annoyed at being put on the spot, but did concede that “Whilst the new arrival Mr. Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith was somewhat confronting, he had made some good points that they had agreed to consider.” In the meantime, he said, he would be setting up a residents panel which Mr. Cholmondeley-Smith would be chairing and would report directly to him.

Kevin was interviewed and said, “I am disappointed I have not been able to meet with the Managing Director God, but at least we are making a start on creating a forum for residents to have a voice in the planning of future accommodation.”

The next morning the first item of news on both radio and TV was the imperious Director of Heavenly of Operations the Arc Angel Gabriel. He announced on behalf of the Managing Director, God, that there would be a new approach to community engagement and planning.

On Wednesday there was a bit of a kerfuffle early afternoon. Apparently Kevin’s intake was scheduled for their orientation tour.

This is normally an uncomplicated and structured event – pretty mechanical really.

Kevin was picked up and shortly after they set off, the bus stopped, and the Driver stomped off. Apparently, Kevin had demanded that they go see the horses and ponies before anything else. Normally they didn’t do that until week two sometimes week three if they have been busy.

Kevin began flagging down passers-by until he found a bus driver who would take over & drive the bus to the horse & pony section.

There were quite few other people there, some of whom Kevin recognised. Of those, some were pleased to see him and some clearly were not. One loudmouth busy body who was bossing everyone around saw Kevin and shouted at him, “And you can piss off.”

A disturbance subsequently ensued which necessitated the angel security officer on duty to Taser some people. He assumed Kevin was in charge today and sort direction from him on who needed to be tasered.

The breadth of Kevin’s smile nearly cracked his face!

Because Tasers had been deployed the Angel Rogziel, the Angel of Punishment (whose name means ‘The Wrath of God’) had to be called. He was introduced to Kevin and kept muttering, bloody horse people, I rather be in Hell.

That evening on the Heavenly TV Cloud 9 News, it was announced by Hayyel, Angel of Animals, that the new arrival Mr. Cholmondeley-Smith had been appointed as the equestrian section manager. Apparently, a number of people applied for passes for the express train straight to Hell.

Now Cloud 9 TV News and the Pearly Gates Times had assigned reporters to follow Kevin. The Cloud 9 report secretly filmed the Pearly Gates reporter saying to Kevin, “We haven’t had this much fun in centuries!”

The full transcript of that conversation will be in the Heavenly Herald on Sunday, tomorrow.

Thursday passed relatively quietly with Kevin reacquainting himself with many passed friends and contacts and especially some special horses and ponies. Later in the afternoon the Cloud 9 News Director contacted Kevin complaining there was no exciting news.

Later that afternoon, Kevin invited himself to afternoon tea with Morael - Angel of Awe who rules the months of August-September. Kevin said later, “I met with the Angel of Awe so we could get to know each other better and to run through my plans for the next couple of months.”

On Friday morning all Radio and TV channels carried the newsflash that a reliable source had leaked that the Heavenly Managing Director, God had called the Arc Angel Gabriel and demanded, “Who in the name of white doves is this Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith?”

Kevin continued to express disappointment that he had not yet been invited to meet with the Heavenly Managing Director, God.

Just to be clear, new arrivals normally met with the Heavenly Managing Director, God, at a garden party at the end of the month.

Although not yet public, we understand that throughout Friday and probably to-day as I speak, Kevin is calling on various members of the Heavenly Equestrian community to set up a Judging Panel, develop a common set of showing rules, consider the possibility of establishing a breeding programme and to organise affiliation with the Royal A & P Society of New Zealand.

Well ladies and gentle, I figure you have a pretty good idea how this is going to play out. So in conclusion, let me just say a prayer. When I finish and say Amen you are welcome to shout out Amen in response.

Dear God, Heavenly Managing Director, please accept our appointment of Kevin Cholmondeley-Smith as our Ambassador of Equestrian to your deity.

He has served a long and comprehensive apprenticeship, Lord, and comes with many references and considerable international experience. We appreciate that he at times may appear difficult to work with, wishing to follow his own course.

But Lord, as Ralph Waldo Emmerson said, “Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”

Kevin knows that success is not measured by what he accomplished, but by the opposition he has encountered. He has demonstrated courage, maintaining the struggle, often against the odds, not running away, but remaining at his post.

Let Kevin take care of your equestrian herd.

He has discovered that the horse is life itself, a metaphor Lord, but also an example of life’s mystery and unpredictability, of life’s generosity and beauty, a worthy object of repeated and ever changing contemplation.

Lord, bear in mind the words of two wise men of our world. Mr. Bruce Orr, a Past President of the RAS. He said of Kevin, “The movement owes him a huge debt of thanks for lifetime of involvement, passion and commitment. All of us who were fortunate enough to have enjoyed his companionship & wise counsel are very much the poorer with his passing. “

We ask humbly that you appreciate him.

An international Equestrian expert Mr. Wayne Hipsley in America said, “I can only wonder how many people realize how many equestrian lives he touched through his activities. He had a purpose and a passion for equestrian sports and we must consider ourselves lucky to have called him a friend.”

Lord hear our words.

Kevin comes to you well recommended – care for him, love him, and bear with him.

We ask also that you bless John, Kevin’s family and the close friends who have travelled this journey with him to his departure.

Amen.

The Franklin Aging Expo and its importance in helping overcome the worst enemy of older people.

2021-07-11T20:08:00.001+12:00

The Franklin Positive Aging Expo is getting set to run again in Pukekohe, the initiative of a small charitable group, the Franklin Integration Project Group.

On the 1st October, and after a break of two years, this significant event, the biggest of its kind in New Zealand, is set to retake its claim as one of the unique Franklin features. In the past, over 100 groups were exhibiting with advice help and information available across many topics of relevance and importance to older people and their families. This includes advice on residential care options and alternatives, resources and equipment for everyday living with a range of impairments or disabilities, suitable recreational activities, information on volunteering, support to and for carers, and even professionals providing health screening and advice on healthy lifestyles.

Activities such as line dancing and Tai Chi, exercise to help keep you healthy and happy are showcased along with a range of hobbies, crafts, sports, and social activities to keep the mind and body active.

And its all free with complimentary refreshments throughout the day.

It is no coincidence that the event is being held on the first day of October. On December 14th 1990, the United Nations General Assembly voted to establish October 1^st as the International Day of Older Persons. The day aims to raise awareness of the impacts of an aging population and the need to ensure people can grow old with dignity and to raise the consciousness about points which are affecting the aged.

Aging can be very frustrating, especially when you can’t do something you have enjoyed any more due to the process and difficulties of aging. In communities all around the world, people are living and thriving into their golden years. In places where longevity reigns, locals tend to eat balanced diets, are involved in daily low impact activities, focus on family and spirituality and carve out plenty of time to enjoy the simple things in life, and believe it or not there are two other prevalent ingredients, wine and sunny weather!

Using findings such as the World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report and the Blue Zones Project, countries where people have the highest life expectancy have been identified and in most of those destinations there are high concentrations of centenarians.

One of those is the the Caribbean Island of Barbados. Bhajans who reach 100 years of age are honoured with portraits printed on postage stamps. In Barbados, people spend their days with purpose by putting faith and family first. According to the Blue Zones Project, knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to 7 years of extra life expectancy.

In the Netherlands, one of the oldest people in the world died at age 115. She and others in the country have thrived thanks to a national focus on supporting healthy aging. Austrian citizens enjoy long life spans because the socioeconomics of the country positively affects the populations access to reliable healthcare and nutritious foods. Austrian culture focuses on healthy work-life balance, with a more laid back approach to working hours and a priority on spending leisure time outdoors.

In Jersey there may be mystic explanations for the longevity of people. Locals think that their ancestors were fairies. There is also a custom of building a stone seat on the exteriors of their homes so witches can rest and won’t cast evil spells on their households. The good news for me is, I am already officially a ‘fairie’ and there is plenty of seating outside on the veranda.

Spell or no spell, the message is clear about what contributes to reaching a grand old age, nutritious foods, purpose, family, exercise, community support, healthy work-life balance, a glass of wine and perhaps having a fairie in the family history! What then is the worst enemy of older people?

It is loneliness!

Among the many health concerns that can befall seniors, loneliness is one of the most common and least discussed. Research shows that chronic loneliness can have a significant impact on your overall health, including brain health. Some studies even suggest that there may be a link between loneliness and an increased risk of dementia and Alzheimer's.

Age Concern reports that about half of older New Zealanders experience some level of loneliness, and 8-9% feel severely lonely all or most of the time, and 44% moderately lonely. This is important because having inadequate social relationships has shown to be as bad as smoking.

While loneliness can be incredibly detrimental to health, it can also be successfully alleviated through a number of activities and treatments. For many seniors, the increased presence of people is all that is needed to alleviate loneliness.

This can be achieved a number of ways, including scheduling regular outings, visits with friends and family, attending senior activities in the community, volunteering. Exercise is another excellent activity both for health and greater wellbeing.

The Franklin Positive Aging Expo is an excellent resource not just for older people but also their families and others who have older friends.

It would be great to see our community support the Expo, and also if there is someone you know who is older and on their own, offer to bring them along. And if you are much younger, bring Mum or Dad, or Nana or Grandad, or just to get ideas for yourself to help plan for your later life.

This oldie looks forward to seeing you there.

https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=10164336343975652

#agedloneliness #agingexpo #retirement #loneliness

What’s with these personality quizzes/tests?

2021-06-07T09:23:00.001+12:00

I admit it. Yes I am guilty. I can't believe that I did it, but I did!

Periodically on the face book there is a post from someone who has done one of those personality quizzes which litter the internet. Go on, admit it you know the ones, Which Disney Princess are you? Which 'Friends' character are you? Which sandwich? Which character from 'The Godfather', 'Harry Potter', or Sesame Street'. There are all manner of sites reaping attention and revenue from users taking quizzes to discover who they really are.

In my working life personality tests like Myers-Briggs, to name but one, were part of the process of determining which candidate was most suitable to fill a job vacancy. Is there any relationship, and are any of them anything but entertainment?

One day in a weak moment, and prompted by a post, I decided to find out whether or not I was lazy or a workaholic. Apparently I am a hard worker and don't have a hidden agenda. Another (yes I succumbed to the temptation...) was to 'reveal what my anger means' - "Never mistake his silence for weakness for he is both holy water and hell fire." Crikey. I found that out by identifying some words from among a jumble of letters. Go figure huh.

Why are we obsessed with these personality tests?

According to science there might actually be a reason for this obsession. We need answers to know if we are in the logical stratosphere of "normal" . We know that we are complicated, and we do not fit a single mold, so we take personality tests because it breaks down our personality into smaller pieces to help create a bigger picture of ourselves.

Life is about relating to other people, and we use our understanding of our personalities and the personalities of others to do that. Fitting people into compartments allows us to better understand the way the world around us works. Apparently taking a quiz can be a shortcut to finding out who you are and what you like.

Personality tests give people labels, "I am a [fill in the blank]" which are often taken at face value. Whilst interesting and maybe entertaining, most of these types based tests are unscientific and do not validly or reliably measure 'personality'. We like personality tests because we hope that they will reveal previously unknown information about ourselves.

The bad news is that is unlikely to happen. Despite the fact that the results can seem stereotypical or over-simplified, we still find odd comfort through them. But for most people its all really in good fun. Perhaps the truth lies with our friends and family, and you might be better off asking your best friend than taking a pop quiz.

Regardless, I so want to be Yoda. All I have to do now is find a personality quiz that will confirm my aspiration. I think this is where you go, "Get real buddy", "Oh really", "Dream on", or just fall off the chair laughing...

#whichcharacter #whoami #personalitytests

Loving Work - NOT!

2021-05-01T21:28:00.024+12:00

According to Sigmund Freud, "Love and work are the cornerstones of humanness".

But it seems work is becoming well developed as a place where workers do not want to be and the cause seems to be a reversal to pre-Industrial Revolution, Theory X, Authoritarian management style. And worse still, I learn my beloved Human Resource function is complicit!

Despite the overwhelming evidence supporting the value of creating an environment at work which causes people to want to be at work and to give of their best, there is a strong sense of general dissatisfaction with ‘work’ which shocked me.

It seems the number of disengaged or downright unhappy employees is staggering. A Gallop poll has revealed that out of the world’s one billion fulltime workers, only 15% of the people are engaged at work, meaning an astounding 85% of people are unhappy in their jobs.

Scholars suggest that to live a life with meaning, people must fulfil three preconditions. First, they must have a purpose which gives them a sense of direction and which helps the world make sense to them. Second, they must feel they are part of something larger than themselves. Third, they must maintain connections with other people. knowing your sense of purpose is worth up to 7 years of extra life expectancy.

Given on average, we spend about 1/3^rd of our lives at work, around 90,000 of our waking hours in a lifetime, work exerts a significant influence on ‘meaning’ in our lives and therefore our life expectancy.

The focus on workplace culture is relatively new with the Industrial Revolution as the turning point in the history of management. Companies grew far larger than ever before. Massive corporations with hundreds maybe thousands of employees sprouted up in this era. And different concepts of management developed.

Frederick Taylor’s ‘Principles of Scientific Management’ was one of the earliest proponents of management theory, arguing that managers and employees must work together. This was heresy for the Owner / Boss classes because until then most companies operated like dictatorships. They issued orders and expected employees to get on with the work.

About that time, Henri Foyal published ‘Administration Industrielle et Generale’, focusing on the administrative side of management, arguing managers were not interacting well with their employees and all employees should only have one manager.

Max Weber built on Taylor’s theory and whilst he argued similar principles, he also argued that the rise of technology could lead to a toxic workplace culture and too much change could affect morale.

These early concepts of management held that money was the main influencer of employee performance. However, a five year study by George Mayo focused on workplace conditions and how they affected productivity, brought new thinking.

His work, described as “The Hawthorne Effect”, found that relationships work as the key motivator for employees, and when working as part of a team, people became more productive. In short, job satisfaction increased through employee participation in decisions rather than through short-term incentives. Mayo’s work laid the foundations for the focus on teamwork that today’s management theories have. His work was the first to prove that the right people in the right teams leads to higher productivity.

Ludwig von Bertalanffy noted from a biologist’s perspective, an organisation is made up of various parts (departments) and of course people. All of the parts and people need to work together for both a successful business result and a good working environment. Ludwig also noted that personal issues outside of work can also affect an employee’s motivation levels.

Another significant contributor to our knowledge was Douglas McGregor who, in 1960 built on the teamwork related ideas from the Hawthorne Studies which he published in ‘The Human Side of Enterprise’. He presents two types of management, Theory X and Theory Y.

Theory X is easiest described as Authoritarianism, with managers taking a negative view of their employees and expecting to control everything believing that employees wouldn’t work unless they are pushed and or dragged

On the other side of that coin is Theory Y, a more positive approach to managing people – a belief that teamwork, professional development of and responsibility for employees, leads to a more positive and productive work environment, and overall workplace culture. Along with McGregor, there is no shortage of research and opinion that Theory Y is the better choice.

When I arrived in management, Peter Drucker was the management guru, being one of the first to portray management as a distinct function. He was a prolific author, with 33 books to his credit. It was in one of those, ‘The Concept of the Corporation’ he argued demotivation was rife, and initiative reduced to the minutiae of checks, rules, and controls. Bureaucracy slowed down decision making, created adversarial labour relations and did nothing for ‘creating the self-governing plant community’ – the phrase Drucker used for an empowered workforce. His thinking and wisdom form the basis of our modern view of effective management.

The expression Human Resource Management had been around for a while however, it
began to gain wider recognition at the beginning of the 1980s in the USA and late 1980s and early 1990s in the UK, which is when I became involved. Whilst the term Human Resource Management as we know it is attributed to Peter Drucker, Dave Ulrich has been referred to as the ‘Father of modern HR”.

It is about that time we began talking about ‘culture’ in business. The workplace culture is the environment created for employees. It is the mix of the organisation’s leadership, values, traditions, beliefs, interactions, behaviours, and attitudes that contribute to the emotional and relational environment of a workplace.

It is what makes a business unique, and the upside of a great culture is that it attracts talent, drives management, impacts happiness and satisfaction, and affects performance. It is the personality of the business. A good work culture is one which encourages employees to behave like a family and watch each other’s back.

Of course, a key influencer in creating a culture, good or bad, is the boss who has a huge impact on how employees feel. A telling brain-imaging study (*2) found that when employees recalled a boss that had been unkind or un-empathetic, they showed increased activation in the areas of the brain associated with avoidance and negative emotion while the opposite was true when they recalled an empathetic boss.

A recent example of current thinking is from Hamel & Zanini’s ‘Humanocracy’ (*1)

“…organization infantilizes employees, enforces dull conformity, and discourages entrepreneurship, it wedges people into narrow roles, stymies personal growth and treats human beings as mere resources.”

Sadly, what I am hearing from diverse examples of ‘work’ is Un-kind, Theory X, Authoritarian management... and worse, that Human Resource staff, the ones whose job it was to facilitate the positive cultures, are becoming the most hated department in an organisation. WHAT! I was an HR pioneer, one of the first in the country, and I loved working with some amazing leaders who embodied all of that positive thinking about work in everything they said and did. I find myself stumbling to try and understand what the hell is going on at work these days.

Line managers have the final responsibility for a achieving the organisation’s goals. They also have the authority to direct the work of their teams. HR managers are staff experts, assisting line managers in areas like recruiting, training, compensating, and creating a positive working environment / culture. But be clear, the business line manager is there because they know the business. However, it seems HR has usurped line management and are dictating what will and will not happen. Line managers are becoming babysitters.

Why is that? There was a time when HR worked with and for the employees, but their role seems to be shifting to that of protecting the company from the employee, not to help the employee. As such HR is seen as the enemy, like the spouse’s lawyer in a bitter divorce settlement. They are generally too involved with policy and creating more roadblocks instead of removing them; are too focused on ‘administrivia’ instead of focusing on important things like culture, and the all-important trust.

HR people, who should be the Ministers of Culture in their organisations, are often seen as culture killers instead. In a TimesJobs Study they note, “…Most HR functions are still structured for an industrial economy rather than a people economy…HR leaders need to make concerted efforts to improve their employee engagements, HRM practices, policies, and procedures…” (*3)

In The Arts Mechanical, ‘The HR Secret Police’, J.C. Carlton writes, “The problem is that HR is bureaucratic by nature. … any bureaucracy will work for its own purposes rather than those of the organisation that the bureaucracy is supposed to be supporting.”

Ironically, an unemployed job seeker might say “If I had a job, I wouldn’t complain! I’d be grateful just to have a pay cheque.” The reason many people hang on to their unhappy job, is simply to just pay the bills. And hating their job becomes ‘normal’. They see jobs as modern-day slavery. It seems many employees worldwide wake up every day and rather than looking forward to a day of work, they drag themselves to the workplace, looking forward to ‘hump’ day and counting days to the weekend.

(*1) Humanocracy – Creating Organizations As Amazing As The People Inside Them. Gary Hamel & Michele Zanini. Harvard Business Review Press. 2020

(*2) Examination of the neutral substrates activated in memories of experiences with resonant and dissonant leaders. Richard E. Boyatzis in The Leadership Quarterly – Volume 23 Issue 2 April 2012 pages 259-272

(*3) Nilanjan Roy, Head of Strategy, Times Business Solutions

#loveworknot #goodleaders #hrgonebad #empoweredworkforce #ingeoffsopinion

Fired Up for a Book Burning

2021-03-21T10:48:00.005+13:00

Books may well become artifacts talked about in hushed tones in select company. Damn it, I am buying more books.

I was lucky because my mother taught us to read before we got to school.

Sometimes it was a struggle because, as I learned some 20 years later, I had a mild form of dyslexia but that didn’t stop me.

I could learn at my own pace; I could delve as deep as I wanted into a topic. And reading could be very calming.

I remember an instance in my first year of teaching, Standard Two in those days, 8 year olds.

Something had happened in the lunch break. One of the children in my class had been the target of some bullying and was quite upset, as was the class. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. The class certainly was not settled so organised learning was out of the question.

So, we all gathered on the floor in front of the class, and I began reading ‘The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe’, the first of the Tales of Narnia. The child snuggled up and the rest crowded in. There was hush and suddenly nearly half an hour had passed and there was a whole different feeling amongst the crew.

I suggested we should stop. There was resistance. We read some more. Then I had to make a deal. Every Friday, no matter what, after lunch we would all gather on the floor and all chill as I read more from ‘The Tales’.

The crew went back to work and I sat quietly with the now calmer child who was in a much better frame of mind to talk and got the story. Armed with the facts I went off to the Headmaster and he dealt with the offenders and talked with their parents.

Recently there has been this bizarre movement starting to build, to sanitise the past by expunging children’s books from our current reading list. In the States, even The Little House on the Prairie is apparently too controversial for their libraries and the Association of Library Service to Children has publicly removed the name of the author, Laura Ingalls Wilder, from an Award for Children’s Literature.

The first book in the series was released in 1932, and originally based on the Ingall’s family story.

Like it or not, that was America in the 30’s and whilst the stories developed more as historical fiction, they still provided a picture of life during those times. There might be things about those times we now don’t like. But like it or not, that is the way it was and attempts to sanitise history like this simply make it harder for people to learn and understand how things were and why they are different now.

If anyone dares to interfere with the continued existence of my heroes, Aslan (Narnia) and Yoda (Jedi Knight), a whole different side of my character will be revealed.

Perhaps we have forgotten too easily and quickly that on May 10th, 1933, students burned upwards of 25,000 volumes of “un-German” books in the Square at the state Opera, Berlin, a sign of warning of an era of uncompromising censorship and cultural control. In many other university towns, nationalist students marched to torch lit parades against the “un-German” spirit. The book burnings took place in 34 German towns and cities.

In the aftermath of the book burnings, the Nazi regime raided bookstores, libraries, and publishers warehouses to confiscate materials it deemed dangerous or “un-German”. The burnings provoked international criticism – it was seen as a barbaric act that was out of keeping with a modern, civilised society.

Heinrich Heine, one of Germany’s greatest poets, who was of Jewish origin wrote at the time, “When they burn books, they will also ultimately burn people.”

The book burnings still stand as a powerful symbol of intolerance.

Through time, burning books has been carried out, usually in a public context, representing an element of censorship. In some cases, the destroyed works are irreplaceable, and their burning constitutes a severe loss to cultural heritage. Some of the earliest on record include during China’s Quin Dynasty (213-210 BCE). When the burning is widespread and systematic, destruction of books and media can become a significant component of cultural genocide.

I was starting to give my small library away as we begin the decluttering process to sell up the farm. Given some of the recent events of book discrediting (Little House on the Prairie; Dr Suess; Enid Blyton for example) I have changed my mind – Technology aside, books may well become artifacts talked about in hushed tones in select company. Damn it, I am buying more books.

There is something assuring about holding a book and yes you can find out a lot on the interwebby these days, but siting on the veranda in peace and relative quiet, reading, nodding off as you relax, or grabbing a piece of paper to jot down some important insight – well a chunk of technology just doesn’t do it for me, especially when you read predictions like this from Harari's Homo Deus.

"Devices such as Amazon's Kindle are able to collect data on their users while they are reading. Your Kindle can, for example, monitor which parts of the book you read quickly, and which slowly; on which page you took a break, and on which sentence you abandoned the book...If Kindle is upgraded with face recognition and biometric sensors, it will know how each sentence you read influenced your heart rate and blood pressure...Soon books will read you while you are reading them." (p 400-401)

Oops, there I go digressing - back to kids books. There has been some interesting commentary, on my face book page there is a post of a British TV Newsman losing it and talking volubly about the Laura Ingalls Wilder case. At heart I can understand the frustration. One comment on my page noted “…that the issues he raises cannot be simply blamed on the PC Brigade narrative but are quite complex issues.” And without doubt that is true.

But how do we know about the issues if the figurative book burning continues?

In conclusion, I have a warning for Winnie the Pooh. You all know that old question, "Does a Bear Shit in the Woods?" Well I am surprised that the Brigade hasn't got stuck into Pooh Bear for running around without pants - stand by!

#gotohellSnowflakes #bookburning #burnhistory #geoffsopinion

HOMO SAPIENS AUTOMATED

2021-03-06T19:18:00.004+13:00

“We are about to face a flood of extremely useful devices, tools and structures that make no allowance for the free will of individual humans. Will democracy, the free market and human rights survive this flood?” (p395)

Homo Duess: A Brief History of Tomorrow is written by Yuval Noah Harari, a professor of History at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Homo (man or human) Duess (God) describes mankind’s current abilities and achievements and attempts to paint an image of the future. Easily and quickly said but once I opened the book and began reading, I found myself having to pay careful attention, often re-reading sections and finding my own thinking frighteningly challenged.

Oh well, I started reading for that purpose and was happy to take my Nephew’s recommendation and order the book.

Thank goodness for lockdown giving me plenty of time to read sections of the near 500 pages in chunks of time then get up and go to work, painting, fencing, anything to physically occupy me whilst I mentally digested what I had just read.

When Harari retraced steps of history, it was very enlightening. Albeit I had studied history at college, I had not gotten anywhere near to appreciating the intricacies of events studied – all I was doing was finding the acceptable right answers to pass exams not examining for insight and understanding.

What a gift, here is someone who has looked back over 70,000 years or so of human history looking for trends to extrapolate the future. The thought that the advances in science and technology will erode humanism, in particular humans turning to technology to upgrade themselves through genetic, bionic, and AI engineering, were things we fantasized about in TV programmes – remember the ‘Six Million Dollar Man’?

I am having difficulty getting to grips with the thought we are nothing but data processing machines – algorithms. As shocked as we might be, the thought is not new. As I explored the concepts, I found out that a chappie, well a philosopher called Thomas Hobbes, writing in 1651 called it an automaton, or what we would call a robot. According to Harari, we are just the start of this process of data-driven transformation, and there is little we can do to stop it.

“What will happen to the job market once artificial intelligence outperforms humans in most cognitive tasks? What will be the political impact of massive new classes of economically useless people? What will happen to relationships, families and pension funds when nanotechnology and regenerative medicine turn eighty into the new fifty? What will happen to the human society when biotechnology enables us to have designer babies, and to open unprecedented gaps between rich and poor?” (p314).

“History is often shaped by small groups of forward looking innovators rather than by backward looking masses.” (p315)

“In the early twenty-first century the train of progress is again pulling out of the station – and this will probably be the last train ever to leave the station called Homo Sapiens. Those who miss the train will never get a second chance.” (p310)

Whilst corporations and governments will continue to pay homage to our individuality and unique needs, but in order to service them, they will need to, “… break us up into biochemical subsystems”, monitored by powerful algorithms.

Are you scared yet?

Who is this guy? And who listens to him anyway? Harari, works at the home he shares with Itzik Yahav, his husband in Tel Aviv. President Barack Obama is a fan, he visits Mark Zuckerberg and in 2018 he was offered the main stage of the Economic World Forum, in a slot between Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron.

Harari has a mission statement pinned to a bulletin board in his Tel Aviv office and it begins, “Keep your eyes on the ball. Focus on the main global problems facing humanity.” It also says, “Learn to distinguish reality from illusion”, and “Care about suffering”.

In 2019, appearing on stage with Israel’s President at an ‘Influencers’ Summit in Tel Aviv, Harari said, “Think about a situation where somebody in Beijing or San Francisco knows what every citizen in Israel is doing at every moment…from the age of zero…Those who will control the world in the 21^st Century are those who will control data.”

Suddenly my brain has searched and recalled the clatter of the dangers of 5G!

There was just too much to absorb, contemplate, and understand in one read. I think this is one of those books which will be read again and again.

#HarariHomosDues

#homosapiens automated

#Humanistalgorithms

#GeoffsOpinion

#obsoletehumans

The Crooked Tower of Debt

2019-08-22T16:47:00.003+12:00

I am no economist nor financier. I am aware of the perils of the economy, having brought my first house in the 80’s, paying 22% interest on the mortgage. I had some savings which I had daringly invested in a very buoyant share market. Then came Black Monday, October 19^th 1987. In the USA it was the biggest one day fall in the history of the stock exchange and the financial world collapsed.

In New Zealand, we had been swept up in the delirium of the free market, and the following day, October 20^th, we woke up to learn that much of the newly created wealth of the 1980's was an illusion. I had lost all of my savings.

That event was starting to become a memory when blow me down, Monday September 15^th, 2008 the bankers Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, and insurance companies and banks began falling like flies. Governments quite literally began printing money to prop them up.

In 2013 the stock market finally recovered. In the first six months it gained more points than any year on record.

In order to try and keep some insight into what the economy is doing, I subscribe to several newsletters. You can imagine my concern when, recently reading statements like, "This just in: The crooked tower of debt is growing taller and leaning further over.” “...the economy gets more and more out of kilter…more and more dependent on inflation… And the feds need to tell bigger and bigger whoppers to keep it from collapsing.” Says one commentator, “It will be like watching to see how many beer cans a drunk can stack before they all fall down.”

Unsettling questions are being raised in these briefings and updates. Questions like, Is there an economic storm brewing? Are we about to feel the full force of another global recession?

Ahead of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis, the financial sector in the US was rife with greedy, grubby hands finding inventive ways to make a buck off customers. Hmm, does it remind you of what recently happened in Australia? An investigation uncovered that most major banks had been doing some pretty dodgy things…and many of these banks have satellites or subsidiaries in New Zealand.

ABC Australia reported ‘The commission heard evidence of appalling behaviour, including that banks were charging the dead and institutions were badgering disabled people to buy worthless products.’

One news service, Money Morning, notes concern about debt: government, corporate and household. “The world is now full of debtors…up to their eyeballs in easy money”, they say, “By up to their eyeballs, I mean global debt currently sits at over three times the entire globe’s GDP.”

Bank of New Zealand Senior Economist Craig Ebert notes we are looking at a slowing economy, which might struggle. According to BusinessNZ's executive director for manufacturing, Catherine Beard, the drop in manufacturing activity to its lowest point in over six years is obviously a concern.

84% of first-home buyers in Auckland now suffer below-average incomes after housing costs as do 52% of renters. Auckland holds the most job opportunities. New Zealand has low real wages, and they don’t seem to be getting much better. Why? Mass immigration has contributed to GDP growth — but not so much to GDP. In other words, more people, more cars, more demand — but more competition for jobs, pressure on wages, and in real terms, little growth.

I have to stop, I'm scaring myself. I wonder if my KiwiSaver will be okay in the bank that fought for more than three years to keep its role in New Zealand's biggest Ponzi scheme quiet, and stop a regulator telling out of pocket investors the details?

#globaldebt #economicstorm

Westminster model of democracy outdated

2019-07-06T08:39:00.001+12:00

These days there seems broad agreement that democracy is a system of governance where power and civic responsibility are, ideally, exercised directly by all citizens.

Unfortunately the practice is different. The people typically exercise their power through elected representatives who belong to parties and are either in Government or Opposition.

Before I go any further let me make it clear I do not belong to any political party, and nor am I exercising any judgement on various political party policies. My comment is simply raising the question of whether the current model of government is an effective use of the array of people who put themselves forward in the best interests of NZ Inc.

The majority of members of parliament are backbenchers who are not in cabinet or state ministers and are, for all intents and purposes rubber stamps, who must obey their parliamentary whips (appropriate choice of word) and leaders with respect of how they vote. That means, if an MP has a personal view on a matter they must subsume that and ‘follow the leader’. To do otherwise is to commit political suicide.

Franklin experienced that first hand in the past over the issue of our community being chopped up into bits and farmed out to other local bodies. The community had made it clear how they felt but the MP was required to vote with the party against community wishes.

In essence, the system also marginalises constituents whose MPs are in the ruling part(ies), Government MPs do not get enough opportunity to stand up and truly represent the interests of their respective constituencies. Ironically, their opposition counterparts get far more leeway.

Workplace culture is a powerful force that will see the business strategic plan either succeed or fail, no matter how good the strategy is. Culture is the high velocity oil that helps the finely tuned engine achieve peak performance.

When the report of the Parliamentary inquiry into bullying (Parliamentary Culture) was released, the Speaker said “The stressful, 24/7 nature of parliamentary work that was typically marked by power imbalances and immense loyalty made it open to bullying and harassment behaviour”.

Commentary after the release of the report referred to politics being ‘robust’ hence the bullying culture. I understand the word ‘Robust’ to mean, strong and healthy, vigorous. The report described anything but healthy, with a quote from an interview noted in the report of inquiry summing up the true meaning pretty well, “Just because it’s politics and people are passionate doesn’t mean any of us can behave like arseholes....”

We have 120 MPs who are, ostensibly, elected by us (directly or through party votes) to represent us in the best interests of NZ Inc. However, once they reach parliament they are obligated to follow party political dogma and if they contemplate any dissention they are ‘whipped’ into line. And the whole culture of the environment in which they work is toxic.

Such a culture and practice would not be tolerated in corporate environments which pride themselves as Great Places to Work.

First published in the Franklin County News Thursday 4th July 2019

Local Opinions Matter

2019-05-09T17:20:00.006+12:00

There has been quite a lot going on one way and another, but I will focus on community engagement through consultation, the type we have been invited to participate in over the last few months, and speed.

Our opinions on a variety of plans and topics have been invited including cats, dogs, water, trade waste, sports investment plan, annual budget, stopping marine pests, how much capital banks should have, the right to end your life with dignity, fireworks, speed limits, the next big dormitory suburb in our community, and use of rural land, to name a few that I have noticed.

Often there is outrage from campaigners and lobby groups that they feel they are not being listened too, their views were not taken into account during the decision making process and that consultation does not work.

The opportunities we get are mostly to provide feedback on proposals and looking to understand our concerns and the aspirations for our community. Furthermore there is an expectation that there is an obligation on us as citizens not to take democracy for granted and to engage in matters which will affect us.

However I do worry that rural, less populated communities have their voice overwhelmed by the urban dwellers. This was illustrated in the results of the Fire Works Ban consultation. The Council published a detailed analysis of the near eight thousand responses. As I recall round 73% of the responses were from urban dwellers. How do we get our rural voice heard in any significant volume amidst what we already know to be a very ill-informed urban view of agriculture and what that community does do?

And there is yet another issue which has been illustrated by the speed sign consultation. Apparently 90% of the roads in the proposal to reduce speed limits are in rural areas to counter the number of deaths and injuries on Auckland’s roads. Speed is attributed as a major factor, and the topic of speed limits is an emotive and polarising issue. Changes need to make sense to people and be backed up by evidence.

The number of fines handed out as a result of being caught speeding last year was more than three times higher than in 2017 and 20 times more than it was in 2013. The numbers are mind boggling. In 2018 there were 1,191,484 speeding infringement notices issued. That means on over a million separate occasions, drivers simply ignored the safe speed road signs. And why?

Research in NZ has shown that drivers in general, and novice drivers in particular overestimate their driving skills. As one researcher noted, drivers, “... have poor insight; they overestimate their skills and underestimate the difficulty of driving.”

Other research showed that drivers tended to overestimate the time savings at high speeds and underestimate the time savings at lower speeds. However most drivers were aware that increasing speed above 100km/hr would use more fuel.

So in short, drivers generally don’t give a damn about road speed safety signs; believe they are much better drivers than they really are; overestimate the travel time saved through speeding; and although they know speed will cost them more petrol, they do it anyway.

So we think reducing the road safety speed limits will make a difference how?

First published in the Franklin County News p14 May 9th 2019

Is there enough land to feed us?

2019-03-14T22:36:00.003+13:00

Think about how much food you eat each day. Now think about how big the human population is and how much food is needed to feed all of those people.

One thing is universal and that is our need to eat to sustain our lives. Without food we can no longer exist. We fail to realise that by allowing our cities to grow without interruption, we are literally and rapidly starving ourselves. Urbanisation is threatening food supplies all across the planet.

The rapid loss of agricultural land is prevalent throughout the world, and clearly shows that crops cannot compete with the sprawl characteristics of cities. Urban centres have forgotten that their existence is totally dependent upon the rural areas surrounding them. The continued rise in population rates is so adversely affecting the carrying capacity of the planet, making aspects of food production much more worrisome and problematic.
With almost half of New Zealand’s land area committed to pasture and crops we could assume there is still plenty of land to spare.

Economist Shamubeel Eaqub raises serious concerns whether New Zealanders have been lulled into a sense there is plenty of land to go around in our supposedly lightly populated country.

Many of our urban communities grew up as support centres for the agricultural community around them. Pukekohe would be an example. But is it the best use of land? What happens to our ability to produce food when that high quality land is taken out of production? Once it has gone into houses, you don’t get it back.

According to Landcare research only 5% of our land is fertile and versatile enough to produce food without the need for ‘significant manipulation’. Examples of ‘Manipulation’ include fertiliser and irrigation. So would the population be prepared to let farmers use more fertiliser and develop more irrigation to produce the food lost as a result of urban sprawl? Given their view of agriculture has been negatively well conditioned by shrieking lobby groups supported by mainstream media, I’m confidently predicting the answer is ‘No’.

Without doubt, good quality food is a necessity.

Horticulture NZ tells us that productive land to the south of Auckland is a mere 4,300 hectares. Taking the land out of production over the years could cost up to 4,500 fulltime jobs and mean fruit and vegetable prices in Auckland would go up 58%.

From 2002 to 2016, NZ’s vegetable growing area declined by 30%. The area of land devoted to agricultural fell by almost a million hectares in the decade to 2012. For the growth of 100,000 extra people, about 2,100 hectares of residential area is required.

New Zealand has limited national information on how quickly our versatile land is shifting to urban use. Auckland will gain another 26,000 people a year between now and 2050. Not only is the soil lost, but the population that needs feeding from the remaining land will have grown by a third. And with a city bursting with people there is the associated demands for more roads, motorways and upgraded sewers and storm water systems.

The research agency Motu recommends shifting from meat and milk production to horticulture, requiring at least 100,000 hectares more horticultural land and possibly up to 250,000 hectares.

Estimates suggest that by 2050 food production will need to have increased by 60% on 2005 levels to feed a growing global population.

In the last past 40 years, earth has lost one third of its arable land. Research has calculated that nearly 33% of the world’s adequate or high quality food producing land has been lost.

Published in the Franklin County News, Thursday 14 March 2019, page 6, Conversations, "Is there enough food to eat."

Pukekohe Project Plans Hard to Find

2019-02-07T17:53:00.000+13:00

I read late last year about a regeneration programme for Pukekohe. The information did not give me the ingredients necessary to get excited about our future, well Pukekohe’s anyway.

Apparently great development is going to be ‘Unlocked’ (with a capital ‘U’).

The information certainly confirmed much of what we already know, special housing developments, rapidly increasing population, the need for better transport connections, attracting more investment.

Yes we know a strong local economy is vital, and the cornerstone to much needed employment, but what is the answer to the “So what” question?

The Maori word ‘Panuku’ in English is a verb meaning “to move, move on”. To move on is an encouraging but rather vague indication of, what exactly?

I searched the Auckland Council website and found the Panuku Development Auckland page which told me it was about shaping spaces for Aucklanders to love. Great news I was on the track. There was a Project Map tab so I naturally clicked to see where we featured. Well the news is, we don’t. Franklin isn’t on the map.

But I was not giving up. I clicked on the Projects tab and scrolled down the list of great photographs with location labels but there was nothing with Franklin, or Pukekohe, or Waiuku on it.

Then I clicked on the ‘Latest News’ tab and up came an aerial photo of Pukekohe with a label, ‘Panuku to help shape Pukekohe’s future – a new future is being envisaged for Pukekohe’. I clicked on that, excited that I was getting closer to something actually informative about our future, but no it was, disappointingly, word for word the PR statement.

But wait, I spotted some small print right down the bottom of the webpage, ‘Board Reports’ so clicked on it and up popped a heading for future meeting dates (there were none) then a list of previous meeting dates, back a couple of years (well that is as far as I could be bothered looking on a quick scan).

At the time of looking, the last meeting of the Board of Directors was on the 28^th November 2018. The notice advised, ‘The general nature of business will be to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations....’ I thought I would have a look at what transpired at the previous meeting held on 24^th October. Apparently the general nature of business was to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations.

I thought I might go have a look at what was under the date for other meetings before that and found that, yep you guessed it, the general nature of business was to consider the Chief Executive’s Report on the company’s operations.

Having clicked through a bunch of those I got bored and my partner yelled, “Are you ready for some dinner?” and I said “Yes thank you.” Then left the computer with my anticipatory excitement deflated.

I really was interested in finding out, beyond the PR announcement, where we were moving on to.

First published in the Franklin County News, page 4, Conversations, “Pukekohe Project Plans Hard to Find”, Tuesday 5^th February 2019.

What comes first - People or Infrastructure?

2018-12-03T22:48:00.001+13:00

The concept of the development of Paerata began before Franklin became part of Auckland when the then Auckland Regional Council were looking for areas to build more houses. One of the other areas they were considering was the Pukekohe A&P Showgrounds, and that subsequently took some 5 years to fight off.

I was Chairman of the Franklin Economic Development Agency at the time, bringing together the economic, business and tourism groups to look at ways to develop opportunities for Franklin.

There are many who believe that the sole reason for annexing Franklin into Auckland City was purely and simply a land grab to enable them to build the huge number of houses they anticipated would be needed for the burgeoning Auckland population - and they had pretty much run out of land in the city.

One of the issues raised then and still relevant, is the use of elite soils on which to build houses. Now we are flat out building dormitory suburbs in Franklin in elite soils.. And the fact is that Franklin will go from being one of the least populated of the 21 Wards of Auckland, to the most populated in a relatively short period of time.

The owners of the land were looking at how to develop that and originally were looking at a concept of Live, Work, Play. This would be a mix of businesses and homes so people could either bicycle or walk to work and hence develop a true sense of community where people got to spend more time with their families and be involved in their community. A lovely ideal.

Regardless of the model, for me there are a couple of issues with any housing development. The first is using elite soils to build on. The second is our approach of people first, then infrastructure.

In 1950 the average farm fed 27 people, by 1917 the number had risen to 150 people fed per farm. The experts predict that by 2050 the world population will reach 9.6 billion. That is a lot of mouth's to feed. To meet that future demand, the United Nations Food & Agriculture Organisation estimates that agricultural production will need to increase by 60%.

More homes are needed to house that population. Its a world wide issue. However the world's farmland is decreasing. Every two years an area roughly the size of Britain is lost to agriculture. as houses are built on prime agricultural elite soils. So what is Auckland's food security policy? Or will we just increase our food imports from unregulated providers elsewhere in the world.

One of New Zealand's most popular and colourful local politicians, Dove-Meyer Robinson was the longest serving mayor of Auckland city, holding office for 18 years between 1959 and 1980. He had a vision of the future and the development north of the city. And he wanted to build a bridge that would see the road, rail, pedestrian, cycling needs of a growing city way into the future. The Government of the day said he didn't need that and offered him one third of the cost. Of course we all know more capacity for road traffic was needed pretty soon after and more recently we have been regretting the lack of that rail link.

That minimalist approach to infrastructure has continued, hence we are always playing catch-up.

Currently I drive 48 kilometres to work. If I were to take public transport, it could be three train rides and at least one bus. It takes around an hour and a half by car, sometimes two, and God willing there are no accidents which stem the flow completely.

That is at least 3 hours per day, 15 hours per week, 750 hours a year I do not get to spend with family, community or other interests such as, sport and church. As thousands more houses come on line, that commute is going to increase substantially and in a very short space of time. As new house come on line and are occupied, there will be more and more commuter traffic. The wasted time will dramatically increase and the social cost to families and communities will be immense.

The only major infrastructure project to deal with or more likely mitigate somewhat is the short stretch of motorway widening between Karaka and Takanini.

I had the good fortune to see a development in China. I saw houses, highways, rail, town centre, schools and services - everything you would need to support a large population but not a single person in sight except construction workers. When everything was finished then the people came to take up residence.

How sensible is that?

Extracts from this BLOG were first published by Stuff.co.nz on Monday 3rd December 2018.

https://www.stuff.co.nz/auckland/109019658/new-4500home-subdivision-in-paerata-will-only-add-to-traffic-woes-residents-say

Welcome to The Royal A&P Show 2018

2018-10-17T22:50:00.002+13:00

Good evening Mr President, I would also like to introduce members of the RAS Executive here this evening, Vice President, Brent Snellex from Rangiora, Kelly Allison from the deep south and Cara O'Connor who has been equestrian judging all day and unable to be with us this evening.The RAS CEO, Debbie Cameron is also attending the show.

The Royal Agricultural Society of New Zealand is the umbrella group for the 97 A&P Shows and 65 Breed & Kindred Societies in New Zealand. It is also one of the oldest organisations in NZ, with its own Act of Parliament and Royal Charter.

Yoda, the Star Wars Jedi Master so prophetical said, “Difficult to see. Always in motion is the future.”

That is certainly the case with the Agricultural economy.

Gene editing technology has highlighted some benefits it could bring to agriculture, such as removing allergy causing compounds in cow’s milk; disease proofing Manuka honey; speeding up apple variety selection; significantly reducing pest levels and shortening the time to market for developing new crops.

The Agri-Science community is, without doubt, an exciting place to be.

It is also great to see the launch by the Red Meat Profit Partnership, of the Key Performance Indicators booklet with 16 core KPIs to help farmers measure their business performance.

And on a more basic note, experience based observations such as that revealed by Steve Wynn-Harris in a recent Farmers Weekly. He disclosed that at 60 he isn’t fast enough to catch stud lambs to tag.

He has taken to using a fishing net to catch them. The net, apparently, is also handy for popping over one of the triplet lambs and standing on the handle while he deals with the siblings.

Innovation drives growth and unearths opportunities. From this gamut of innovation, development and practical experience we must remember the community in which we live and to whom we sell.

We must be aware of the issues of environment; animal well-being; nutrition; ethical and sustainable production; how red meat is being produced; and evolving consumer expectations and concerns.

We should not be allowing the Vegan Lobby under the guise of animal welfare to dictate the negative and biased establishment media agenda.

We have not been doing a good job of anticipating or responding to those issues. Therefore many people are misinformed about farming. Young people, the next generation of consumers, have their own expectations. Many urban kids have no idea there is a whole other world outside their suburb. It is easier for them, and their parents, to absorb click bait headlines adorned with emotion than it is to read in-depth articles that pursue the evidence.

We need to take everyone with us & leave no-one behind!

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why we need A&P Shows.

Over the 26 week season there will be 97 of them quite literally from one end of the country to the other.

These Shows are a unique, marketing, educative, relationship building machine that no one business could ever dream of recreating to promote their interest. The A&P platform provides fun; opportunities for hands on; asking questions without feeling intimidated and to get a positive and good understanding of our industry.

Shows are important to illustrate reality at a glance.

And what is more, this promotional machine comes with a huge voluntary and sponsor support network.

Mr President, thanks to you and your great Hawkes Bay A&P team here at the Showgrounds Hawkes Bay Tomoana, your generous sponsors and volunteers, for getting together to create something special, The New Zealand Royal A&P Show 2018, the flagship event of the 97 Show network.

Hopefully many agriculturally vested interest groups recognise this amazing opportunity to showcase; to tell the story; to create the news; and to engage with the wider and influential urbanised community.

Finally, Mr President, I am pleased to advise you that the Executive of the Royal Agricultural Society have awarded the Hawkes Bay A&P the right to host a Royal A&P Show for the next three years. We are most grateful for the work you have done for the brand and we wish you all the best for the future.