Feel Free to Talk Back

I am very happy to have people comment on these entries and you don't need to write an essay, happy to get "liked it" or "don't agree with this one" although if you hate it some hint as to why would be helpful.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Let them eat cake

This much repeated quote is attributed to Mary Antoinette and has passed into general language as a put down towards protesting mobs. Of course history shows that things didn’t work out very well for Mary ultimately losing her head to the French Revolution guillotine alongside her husband.

No expert in the area but my understanding is that the cause of the French Revolution was the widening gap between the rich and poor, with the breadless peasants vs the French Queen the ultimate example and hence the power of the supposed quote.

So as we know those that ignore history are destined to repeat it and while I think we are some distance away from the “peasants” taking over the streets they have made a start with the Occupy Wall Street protests which seem to have morphed into just Occupy.

We have our only local version here that are camping out in The Octagon, a central green space in the heart of the city and just outside the front door of the council offices. I was taken to task recently for referring to them as an “idiotic mob” with my critic pointing out that they were peaceful and well meaning with some valid points to make. So I would have to concede that what he said was true as far as it went but I still stand by my comment on the basis that these folk (the local version) are against a lot of stuff but “for” absolutely nothing (well for the environment, people first etc) but there is no how, what do they want to see done exactly? They have no answers to the problems they pose so they are just noise machines. I am against cancer but protesting on the streets won’t fix that either.

As to mob, well all of them as far as I can tell are living off “the state” or put another way the system they despise is allowing them the income to sit around protesting and because they don’t believe in central authority they are a group of individuals acting for the time being in concert, eg a mob, as opposed to a political party or movement.

But overlooking the short comings of the way they are going about it, there are certainly shades of the French Revolution in the current world wide unrest.

Locally there seems to be an increasing theme around the widening gap between rich and poor (so called as both terms are relative to the society within which you happen to be measuring) and there is no doubt that this is ultimately a bad thing for all. Problem is the solutions seem to be missing. On one side we have “trickle down” economics and on the other we have “wealth redistribution”, neither option really seems to deliver on its promise.

The other interesting plot line that is playing out is “do we care and should we care”. As I have mentioned before the idea that the poor should be anything but that is a reasonably recent idea and alongside that idea is “blame” for being poor. Once upon a time being poor was not your fault and you couldn’t change it. Both ideas are currently in question. Then we had the rise of social justice, “we should help people not be poor”, which is somewhat in conflict with the “they should help themselves” idea.

Once again the clash comes with a poorly defined statement of the problem, “no poor people” or “helping the disadvantaged” are very worthy ideas but what do they mean in practice. How do you define poor, a percentage of average income seems popular but obviously flawed. Helping often turns into dependency and is it even possible with 20 something percent youth unemployment at the moment, how exactly do you “help” these people into employment there are simply not the jobs... although perhaps the youth have the wrong skills... or too expensive to take on.... or not paid enough to attract them to work. Seems I don’t have the answers either so I am off to The Octagon with my tent.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

William Webb Ellis

So Mr Ellis lived from 1806-1872 and were it not for his “invention” of Rubgy was unlikely to have been one of history’s stars. The idea that he invented Rubgy by picking up the ball and running with it during a football match doesn’t seem very likely but none the less this myth is strong enough for the Rugby World Cup trophy to carry his name.


At the moment with NZ hosting this competition and the general religious zeal with which some Kiwis treat rugby it seems as if the future of the nation hangs on one last game in the finals when the All Blacks play France. The AB’s bogie team at world cups just to add some interest to the match.

This cultural phenomenon where the emotional wellbeing of the nation in some part hangs on the performance of roughly thirty men (the total squad size) playing a game of rugby is rather intriguing, for a start how did rugby come to have such a dominant position as the sport of choice of so many Kiwis.

In the majority of the world Rugby is an elite sport played most often at private schools as a sweeping generalisation only in NZ is it the game of the masses. Most other countries have soccer in that position and in the country of origin of so many Kiwis when it was first settled, England, this is certainly so.

So presumably I can deduce that NZ was settled by the upper classes who brought with them a love of Rugby and the poor working classes that followed went along with this and abandoned soccer when they saw what their betters had to offer in the new country......Hmmm doesn’t seem that likely and even less so when you sprinkle in some facts for example it was the working classes who settled the land and given that life was quite comfy in London for the rich I can’t see hordes of them volunteering to come out to a land “lacking in culture and refinement”.

So why is soccer not our dominant sport? Well it seems to be down to the efforts of one Charles Munro who learned the game while being educated in England, presumably in one of those private schools. Upon his return to Nelson he established a team at Nelson College, but who did they play is the key they played the Nelson Football club (i.e. the soccer boys) and this set a pattern that was to be repeated as the energetic Mr Munro established the game in Wellington and then organised tours of the country. Every where the team went it played the lads from the local soccer club as presumably they were the only easily contacted local sports teams who could organise 15 lads for a game. Clearly some of the clubs enjoyed their rugby outing and presumably switched codes, in fact quite a number must of because the game took off quite quickly and was a sporting force in the country within 10 years of Mr Munro’s return from England.

So well done Mr Munro for setting in place a cultural icon of NZ for at least the next 150 years (I think there are threats to rugby’s current status but only time will tell.) This idea that an individual who is not a recognised leader can influence the culture of a nation is intriguing but when you think about it a bit more this must always have been the case.

For example the Japanese interest in achieving perfection in what they are doing has always fascinated, I mean to become a sushi chef can involve up to 10 years training and the first three are cooking rice only. To western eyes taking 3 years to learn to boil rice seems a bit over the top but that is Japan for you. This is one example of their approach, so how did this get started? Well presumably it must have been one person and others must have said you know what Fujita is on to something there and followed.

The other question that arises is some cultures have traits that we don’t always admire, so how did that get going? Why would we copy a loud mouth to the extent that it became part of a national identity?

Back to the power of one, looks like a good example could still change the world or at least your part of it which might spread, just like Charles Munro and his love of rugby. So pick your desired cultural norm and practice what you preach you never know what might happen.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Pick Me..

It is election time here in three months and the billboards and campaigning have already started. I spotted a Labour Party billboard at the weekend which beside the shining face of the candidate had “Vote Labour” (naturally) “Minimum Wage $15” (For anyone who is interested this is an increase from $13) So I have rubbished the idea of a legislated minimum wage before and if this was the answer to a low wage economy why don’t they suggest $25 or $45 an hour? Any way the over arching thought I had was that this sort of blatant electioneering nonsense is what needs legislative change. Therefore here is my answer to a change of governance structure.


Firstly as a society we have limited difficulty coming up with collective desired outcomes or “policy” if you will where the debate starts is the best way about achieving the required outcome. The increase in the minimum wage is an example the policy requirement is a liveable wage for all employed persons. Just about everyone will agree that sounds ok (I am going to walk past the definitional issues for the moment) It is the how we get there where it all goes wrong. In this instance the best people to answer this question are probably economic researchers and potential social analysts. Not well meaning, slogan wielding, power hungry, ego driven, vested interest politicians. (some or all of the list normally applies to all of them)

So first it is clear that we need to arms of governance, we need the policy arm and the implementation arm. The Policy arm, let’s call that the Peoples Parliament (PP) would have the same elections, party politics etc that we know and love now but no power to pass any legislation, only the power to pass Policy in the form of Legislative Requirements. These Requirements would be passed to the Governing Parliament (GP) for implementation.

The GP would propose the method for enacting the Policy and design the legislation to give effect to the Policy, this would be referred back to the PP Passing into Law or Veto. If they Vetoed they could offer comment of course but there would be no requirement on the GP to do anything further. The PP would have no right to alter the legislation.

Contained within the GP would be the Prime Minister character and Ministers as we know them now and the various Department Heads would answer to this group.

So the obvious question how do you get into the GP? Answer the PM would be appointed by an Electoral College and they (the PM) in turn would appoint Ministers. The PP would have the power of Veto over any given Ministerial Appointment but not the PM.

Who is this mysterious Electoral College? These would be people elected by the citizens to appoint the PM and after they had completed this task they would go into recess only to reappear between elections if the PM needed removed for some reason (governed by a constitution). To be able to stand for the Electoral College you would have to have no political affiliations, have a suitable level of education and passed a simple test on the constitution. Anyone could stand for Electoral College if they qualified.

What’s the point? Well that way hopefully we get a legislative and implementation arm of government less effected by political influence (no one is totally unaffected but hopefully better than now). You get people in the GP who are suitably qualified for the roles they hold without having to pander to vested interest groups etc.

This is unashamedly designed to put a buffer between the masses and the leadership of the country, hopefully allowing a rational consideration of the facts to dictate government decisions in pursuit of an agreed vision provided by the people.

The opportunity for such a radical experiment seems remote but that’s my idea for what its worth.