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His master's voice | Dec 08, 2005 16:17
Sandy, when you've tidied this up, send it over to Licke, Spitte, Polish and Spin to give it the usual gussying up, then send it to the Minister, but for God's sake don't let them change it too much. We want these buggers to sit up and pay attention.
……..
Dear Pussy
Do you want to know how far Telecom's share price will fall if you go ahead with unbundling?
Want a guess? Well do you, Pussy?
I'll tell you.
It'll drop 30 cents.
And what's at stake if it drops 30 cents?
The stock market, Henry. That's right. If we go down, you turkeys are coming down with us. Think it can't happen? Our shares make up more than 20 per cent of the market. It'll drop like a stone.
And why does this matter to you? Well let's start with the Government superannuation fund.
What have you got that invested in?
That's right, Einstein: Telecom.
How are you going to like it when the market plunges? What are you going to do when the headlines say worst day since 1987.
Yeah, yeah, big-arse companies can lose a fortune without hurting the rest of the economy. You think we were all asleep when Fletcher Challenge got carved up? Heard it all before, been to the boring business school classes, got the diploma.
But wise up Chester, we're the big gorilla in the pen. You know and I know that it would realistically mean buggerall to the economy in the long run if we went down. In fact it would probably be quite positive for everyone who isn't us. There'd still be a telecoms market and the rest of the economy would probably get a bit of a lift from having our chokehold taken off it.
But do you trust the voters to look that far ahead? Do you, bollocks. They'd just be all: oh no, oh no, the sky is falling, look at poor Telecom, look at the poor sharemarket, what will we do now?
You think they wouldn't? Want to put a lazy 100 large on it? I've got it right now in my wallet, mate.
And if that hasn't got your sphincter nice and tight, try this on for size: The Aussies. You dump on us and you know who gets to pick up the bone? The bloody Aussies! Telstra Bloody Clear, the mongrels. Look, they won't do even a half-way decent job of running telecoms in New Zealand. Telcos never do any good in a foreign country. Look what a dog's breakfast my company made of AAPT in Australia.
And another thing.
You know those flash 3G phones we sent you saps? Well you can whistle for getting any mp3s or home movies on those suckers if we don't get what we want.
Why should we put any of our profits back into the market if un-freaking-bundling is all the thanks we get?
Stuff the upgrades, stuff the flash high speed service to every door in the country that we've been banging on about. You'll get none of it.
Now be a good boy and vote like you're told.
A one night stand with Ronald | Dec 07, 2005 07:20
The universities, institutions of higher learning and of course, wananga, are a little quieter this month, so let us now all spare a moment's thought for the army of young New Zealanders who are presently using their available holiday hours to wash our dishes, pour our wines, flip our burgers and do the bidding of obnoxious property developers and tax lawyers all over the Viaduct Basin. Been there, done that, got the lifelong aversion to wankers.
Let us also spare a moment to compare the size of the pay packet I took home for more or less the same work - making due historical allowance for the muscle of your friendly trade union - two decades ago.
I had an entertaining conversation with Matt McCarten the other day about his supersize my pay campaign, and his unionist-versus-boss debate on Nine to Noon with Vicki Salmon about the world's first Starbucks strike. I told him I'd all but picked up the radio and given it a shake to see if the speaker wasn't distorting, because I could swear I'd heard her described their nine dollar an hour employees as "partners".
That's a good one, I said. You heard right, he said. In fact, he said, he'd become so accustomed to hearing that kind of management gilding of the lily, that he really doesn't notice it any more.
Our partners! I've led a life a little too ordinary to comprehend all the permutations of the typical SM predilection, but I'm willing to bet that even your most elaborately nipple-clamped, cuffed and blindfolded love slave is unlikely to characterise a nine dollar an hour relationship with an international conglomerate as a "partnership".
This was more or less verified in the next sentence or two, when Linda Clark pressed Salmon on their level of staff turnover. Why, they had the best in the industry, she declared. The average was something like 135% per year, while Starbucks boasted a mere 75% or so. Again, I may be a relatively white bread sort of guy, but in my assessment, if 75% of them are moving on within a year, honey, you're not conducting relationships with "partners"; you're having a succession of one night stands.
Matt knows the numbers, and he can no doubt demonstrate to you how much better-paid, relatively speaking, I would have been when I had my turn as a "partner" in the fast food business. I can't recall for sure, but I think in 1978 I was getting $2.40 an hour.
Come with me now as I relive that wonderful first year in Wellington before I got my big break and a decent job in a pub. Once that happened, I was truly as happy as a pig in the squelching stuff, I have to say. It was still worth about 2.40 an hour, but it translated into colossally better pay thanks to the longer hours, overtime rates, and weekend penal rates. But first you have to pay your dues, and mine began at the Courtenay Place McDonalds in the winter of 1978.
What an exciting place this brand new McDonalds was to visit on a Sunday afternoon. We'd fill our trays with Big Macs, Quarter Pounders with Cheese, Hot Apple Pies and coffees and fall upon our feasts. We were way-impressed, and - it probably goes without saying - easily. I asked for a job.
Step behind the curtain; the magic evaporates. The onion comes in bags as big as your torso: desiccated little pellets that reconstitute in water. You heave the fries and the apple pies out of bathtubs of oil, and into their attractive packaging. It's a very clean kitchen with thorough procedures for keeping it spotless, but as the shift wears on, you get filmed in oil.
You also get to wear a paper cap that does nothing to imbue you with any babe magnetism, and when that gorgeous woman from your English 101 tutorial presents herself at the counter, you hope she's looking past the smock and cap and into your soul which, even as you stand there shaking fries into paper bags, suggests a certain Parisian world-weariness and great wisdom, informed by deep questions of existentialism and the theatre of the absurd.
She may have seen all this, and more besides, but it's hard to tell as she turns on her heel, makes for the door with her cheeseburger, fries and coke, and in another moment is through the doors and gone from your life for another day.
Approximately 45,000 other young people work in this store, but at closing time, just two of you are rostered on to hose down all the grease-lined trays and extractor hoods, and a vast array of small implements of preparation. An hour or two before day-break, it feels, you stow away the last of them and trudge back up Manners Street and Boulcott Street to your flat.
After a month or so of this you think: I wonder if they have any jobs at Homestead Chicken. By the next weekend, you are dumping chicken pieces in bathtubs of oil in a busy outlet on Adelaide Road.
Here, you discover that the small local chain is a bit more rough and ready than your big American one. Procedures are a little more ad hoc. The floor begins the day spotlessly clean, but within an hour you're skating across a deep film of chicken grease, which rises with every passing hour. A combination of oil and water completely soaks your socks and sneakers and begins its way up your trousers, reaching your knees by the end of your shift.
None of this is taxing work compared to three good hours on the farm, but it's pretty dreary, and you don't feel especially pleased for the customers when you see trays of cooked chicken falling to the floor, being scooped swiftly back onto the serving tray and slotted into the warming cabinet.
You may have to work a bit harder now to believe me when I tell you that this was far and away a superior-tasting chicken to the one on offer at Kentucky Fried. The shop was also quite generous at giving you plenty to take home; the flatmates loved it. I didn't trouble them with the hygiene details.
And then the summer holidays arrived. Homestead could give me a couple more shifts, but not a full time job. So I rang Kentucky Fried in Johnsonville. I had experience. At Homestead chicken. Excellent, they said, I could start on Monday. But I couldn't work for Homestead as well.
Excuse me?
They're the opposition. You'll have to choose.
This is ridiculous, I said to myself. What am I going to do? Steal the colonel's secret recipe? I decided to do both jobs and say nothing.
Johnsonville has never struck me as a very dynamic or interesting place. There was nothing about its Kentucky Fried store that offered anything to change my point of view. Business in the daytime was slow. You took your pieces of chicken, you coated them in flour, you got your great big barrel of the colonel's secret recipe of herbs and spices (which looks like gunpowder - a sort of metallic grey, with a strong smell of pepper), you shook that all over the chicken and then you loaded it all into the fridge and waited for lunchtime when you cooked a few desultory trays' worth, and watched the clock tick slowly by.
I like Bob Marley, I really do; but the summer of 1978, Is This Love was playing every seven minutes all day long on Radio Windy and it became the soundtrack of my long dull days in Johnsonville. If I ever hear the tune again it will be too soon. That and Hot Child In The City, which had the further handicap of being a piece of complete shit to begin with.
This might have all rolled along uneventfully had I not been reading a chart of sales figures on the notice board one morning as I enjoyed a cup of coffee and a smoke.
I spend every spare moment reading. I will read a muesli packet if that's the only thing on the table at breakfast. So that morning, I read the sales chart as I enjoyed my coffee and my Rothmans.
The manager was deeply suspicious. Why could I possibly be interested in this information?
Why was I reading it?
More significantly: had I really quit my job at Homestead?
I'm a keen reader; I also prefer not to lie very much. As a matter of fact, I said, I was still working at the other one. Well, mate, he said, you have to choose right now: them or us.
Too easy. The chicken tasted better at Homestead and they didn't play Radio Windy. I bailed, and got myself a second job washing dishes at The Coachman. Staff ate well at Des Britten's restaurant, and he never once asked if I was washing dishes for any other leading Wellington chef.
The next installment in this story, if you want to keep following it, appeared here last year but it doesn't exactly address the Starbucks strike issue, which you'll recall was where we began.
David Young wrote an interesting piece about the minimum wage in the Listener this week that suggested that although it may not be a job killer, it may nevertheless push the whole wage scale up. That's worth bearing in mind, but I have to say I'm behind Matt McCarten's campaign nevertheless. How far would you say 9 dollars an hour would take you?
There's an argument that low pay rates motivate people to move on up and out of these jobs and keep the skill level rising. We appreciated the opportunity, and we were willing to do a decent day's work, but I don't recall meeting anyone at McDonalds or Kentucky Fried or Homestead Chicken or the Coachman who had any plans to spend the next twenty years hosing down greasy kitchen equipment.
And we sure as hell didn't see ourselves as "partners".
Outside, It's Auckland | Dec 05, 2005 16:47
If you were one of the few hundred people who queued up outside Real Groovy overnight for U2 tickets, I have good news. In fact even better news than the astonishing revelation that within minutes of selling out the first show, the promoters had managed to arrange a second one. The wonderful news is that U2 is not, in fact, the only band in the world. And as if that revelation isn't exciting enough, some of them will be coming to New Zealand! This summer!
Exciting details here, here, here and here
No sneer intended in any of this, really. They're a fine band, and a line like Outside it's America still does it for me. It's just that I got a little closer to the frenzy this morning than I might otherwise have expected, and I was shocked-I-tell-you-shocked. Our neighbour asked if she could come over and use the broadband connection to improve her chances of logging on to Ticketmaster to buy a couple of tickets.
By all means, I said. She and her partner were last over here to enjoy our broadband a couple of weeks ago on the occasion of his brother's online wedding in Las Vegas, and let me tell, you that truly was fun. They brought over some bubbly and we raised our glasses to the happy gathering in the Little Chapel, Las Vegas, Nevada, as they raised theirs to everyone back in New Zelland.
This morning, I watched in less then total surprise as the Ticketmaster website groaned under the strain and failed to let Vicky log on. Continuing the sneering, I notice they use an ASP platform to run their web site. Did the ASP.Net revolution pass you by guys, or has someone taken your server hostage? Perhaps the commission on the U2 tickets might be enough to fund an overhaul.
I doubt we'll be hearing any expression of remorse from anyone about this. They'll be too busy getting the punters to jump in grateful appreciation at the second offering next Monday.
In any case, expressions of contrition really are becoming a devalued currency.
David Benson-Pope doesn't appear to feel inclined to offer anything of the sort, nor even anything more gracious than the word "bozo" to characterise the conclusions of the police who chose not to send him to the principal's office.
And Allan Peachey has cribbed from page one of the PR practitioners' manual and turned in a performance that wouldn't get you an 'Achieved" on NCEA standards.
"I made a mistake and I've said I'm sorry" is thin enough, but delivered with the bad grace that this one was, it becomes risible.
I'm just trying to think of the various things I did at school that got me into trouble and how well that strategy would have served me.
"Well yes sir, I was smoking under the bridge and it was a mistake but I said I'm sorry, now put that cane down and let's move on."
"Well yes sir, we snuck into town and had lunch at the Empire Tavern and it was a mistake, but I said I'm sorry, now let's move on."
"Well yes sir, we carved up the playing fields with a "borrowed car" and it was a mistake, but for heaven's sake I said I'm sorry, now let's move on."
There used to be a cartoon on the noticeboard of the law library when I was a student. It had the picture of an exasperated lawyer sitting across the desk from his client saying, "For pity's sake man, you need to understand: you can't shoot 37 people and expect to settle out of court."
Allan has made an interesting start and shows promise, but he must try harder.
Another Hanging | Dec 02, 2005 15:37
I don't know if Damian wants us to set up a bit of a Crossfire effort here, but I'll take the bait. What's up with the deification of Van Nguyen he asks.
I'd say: identification.
I don't identify with trying to sneak 400 grams worth of death sentence through Singapore, but I look at the picture of a young guy and I remember being that young. I don't identify with risking your life to help out your brother with his gambling debts, but I hear the story and I think of all the ways my brother was willing to bail me out of a jam when I was young and stupid.
Once you've identified with the subject of the story, you take more interest. It's not necessarily logical or rational, but it's how we tend to deal with the world and its news.
That's how we deal with the notion that several thousand children will die of starvation on any given day, while we go about our comfortable lives.
That's how we deal with the apparent illogicality of extensive coverage of an earthquake that kills perhaps ten people in the USA in comparison to the attention given to a flood or earthquake that kills several thousand in some more remote third world country.
If it becomes part of our immediate mental neighborhood, we pay more attention. Like politics - as Tip O'Neill is endlessly quoted - all news is local.
So we noticed what was happening to Van Nguyen, and we were drawn into the story.
Even in my natural state of incurable optimism I could see no good outcome for him, and that only amplified the sense of identification, imagining the hopeless, pitiful experience.
I remember when the same thing happened to Barlow and Chambers almost twenty years ago. That got, in my recollection, somewhat more ambivalent coverage here, and I think that was in part because that sense of identification played out a little differently. These were a couple of guys whose photos suggested something more akin to the various characters whose pictures had been splashed across our screens as the Mr Asia story had its pages turned.
Less photogenic, in other words, and should that make a difference? No, and yet it does - the identification is diminished because their image doesn't suggest the innocence that the picture of Van Nguyen does.
Yes, that's really no good basis for a distinction, but I believe we make it anyway. We identify a little more because we see in that young face, whether it's a trick of the eye or not, a less culpable character, and we therefore see him as less different to us than your sterotypical drug runner.
The whole narrative seemed all the more grim to me because I'd watched it unfold with Barlow and Chambers in KL - two guys then about the same age as me - and I'd thought: They'll cave at the last minute. They won't want to cause some international standoff.
But they didn't. I remember going out to the car to listen to the radio at the appointed hour and sure enough, they did it.
Ten or so years later, when I was making a regular trip to KL to run workshops, I went on a tour of the old city jail. I don't like to think that there was any kind of prurient curiosity to it, but perhaps I'm unreasonably ennobling my motivations. In any event, I found to my grim astonishment that the star turn of the exhibit was a presentation that takes you to the small, barren cells where the two men spent their last days, and which walks you along the corridor to the gallows where the Malaysian government made good on its conviction.
In those dismal surroundings, silence might be sufficient, you might think, but in fact there is a soundtrack playing endlessly on a less than five minute loop which builds with the sound of an accelerating heart beat and then the crash of the trapdoor.
So, again: drawn into the story.
I couldn't see a way out for Van Nguyen, and sure enough, there wasn't. It's entirely correct to argue that he is only one of many who have gone this way, and it is equally correct to argue that drugs potentially waste other lives. But taking a life in this way diminishes us, and even if we don't make the same protest in every instance, and even if we have been deluded into seeing Van Nguyen as a less culpable and more moral man than he in fact was, it does nothing to diminish the potency of the two best arguments I turn to any time this subject comes up.
One I appropriated for a black parody the other day - A Hanging by George Orwell. The other is that great old song by Steve Earle, Billy Austin, which runs like this:
My name is Billy Austin
I'm Twenty-Nine years old
I was born in Oklahoma
Quarter Cherokee I'm told
Don't remember Oklahoma
Been so long since I left home
Seems like I've always been in prison
Like I've always been alone
Didn't mean to hurt nobody
Never thought I'd cross that line
I held up a filling station
Like I'd done a hundred times
The kid done like I told him
He lay face down on the floor
guess I'll never know what made me
Turn and walk back through that door
The shot rang out like thunder
My ears rang like a bell
No one came runnin'
So I called the cops myself
Took their time to get there
And I guess I could'a run
I knew I should be feeling something
But I never shed tear one
I didn't even make the papers
'Cause I only killed one man
but my trial was over quickly
And then the long hard wait began
Court appointed lawyer
Couldn't look me in the eye
He just stood up and closed his briefcase
When they sentenced me to die
Now my waitin's over
As the final hour drags by
I ain't about to tell you
That I don't deserve to die
But there's twenty-seven men here
Mostly black, brown and poor
Most of em are guilty
Who are you to say for sure?
So when the preacher comes to get me
And they shave off all my hair
Could you take that long walk with me
Knowing hell is waitin' there
Could you pull that switch yourself sir
With a sure and steady hand
Could you still tell yourself sir
That you're better than I am
My name is Billy Austin
I'm twenty-nine years old
I was born in Oklahoma
Quarter Cherokee I'm told
For what it's worth, the song ends with almost the same sound effect as the jail tour in KL.
The Call of the Wild | Nov 28, 2005 17:46
Within a couple of years of graduating, I was already done with my first career choice.
Advertising: what was I thinking? This, in case you haven't read it.
By the winter of 1983, we had a bad economy, a bad Prime Minister, and I had no special interest in hanging around.
My friend Richard was done with being a junior lawyer, and he had the perfect suggestion. We would go to Canada: Whistler, Banff, or some other fine ski resort. Somewhere with fresh powder every morning and fresh dishes for kitchen hands every evening. We wouldn't mind the work at all. Ski all day, hone our skills and then on to Europe where we would become ski instructors at a Swiss finishing school and in due course marry into some small European principality or other. Couldn't be better.
If I hadn't been offered a job with Dominion Breweries: car, expense account, upward management mobility in a Brierley company, I would absolutely not have had my head turned, and I would not have had to tell Richard with about four weeks to go that he'd be making the trip on his own.
If I had been a better kind of mate, I would have gone to Canada, and if I had gone to Canada, it would have all worked out precisely as we predicted. But I didn't go. Richard broke his leg within a couple of weeks, hobbled off the mountain and flew on to an office job in London. At that point, he possibly regretted having staged a ritual burning of his work suit just before he left New Zealand.
For much of my ensuing adult life I have been atoning for this appalling lapse in mateship with the occasional small gesture, and the following would be one of them.
I recommend you take yourself off to a Tisdalls store just as soon as you can, because if you read just one catalogue this year, you should read the one Richard has produced this year for the family business.
Yes, really. A store catalogue. Beautifully designed, with some lovely writing. Their intention is to produce something that isn't laden with the usual commercial flannel. To this end, they've asked award-winning New Zealand novelists and poets to produce the little vignettes that appear throughout.
"IT WAS AN ISOLATED HUT AND HE WASN'T SUPRISED TO FIND IT EMPTY. As he was about to light the fire he heard laughter rise above the wind and rain outside. The laughter dropped away when the door swung open..."
This would be the third or fourth year they've done this, and this one is an especially nice job. Go and pick up a copy of Ever After and tell me you don't feel a little tempted to get out amongst the great New Zealand bush this summer. If you really don't feel the call of the wild, at least check out some of the survival gear. It could come in quite handy if we get bird flu this Christmas.
Reading Between The Lines | Nov 23, 2005 09:08
How devout a Muslim is Michelle Leslie?
How much distortion do you have to apply to a story to come up with a headline that that declares: Ministers First in Queue for Flu Pills?
How stupid would you feel to discover to your great surprise that the other half of the building you tenanted was full of hydroponic equipment and leaf after leaf of fine NZ green?
All valid questions, but not the one that I feel most impelled to answer this morning. The question I left hanging on Friday was: Who is Accident? What kind of man or woman is the person who penned this signature?
Thank you one and all for your answers to that question.
Jessica Reid thinks Accident is "definitely male".
He's professional, smart and in his early to mid twenties. He lives off KFC and Pepsi. He works in IT. He has two good friends who he keeps in regular contact with (they went to school together in Palmy). He owns the Lord of the rings DVD box set and watches it incessantly. He doesn't know many females. He lives in a student flat although with his salary he doesn't need to. At school he was good at Maths and geography.
Laura Roylance also thinks he's male: "men tend to have messier handwriting".
He is relatively literate because there are no spelling mistakes. (The "e" in "Compensation" is not really there but it's eluded to, so it's not a spelling mistake.) And let's face it, NZ is hardly a nation of people who are great at grammar and spelling, so he is of above average intelligence.
He is probably well educated - an Arts grad most likely, because a lot of us end up working for the big G and its departments. Accident is certainly not a Med School grad, because although his writing is messy, it is not messy enough for a medical professional (perhaps this is why he chose an Arts degree?).
He's probably left-handed, judging from the left lean to the writing.
The "e" in "Accident" looks like one of those backwards-3-style Es that were popular in high schools in the 1980s and early 90s, so he's probably in his early to mid 30s.
Accident must be around that age anyway, because he also has a healthy disregard for authority, and sufficient experience to know that he should follow through. Oh, and he also knows that it's not likely anyone will notice or care, so repercussions will be minimal.
Good sense of humour, too.
Daniel Nicholls says my guess is far too romantic.
That is most definitely a man's signature. Scruffy, un-ironed white shirt, loosely tucked in, who has worn the same tie his mum bought him last xmas.
He was having a joke with his mates about signing ACC…and wrote the letter and signed it. After his mates left he meant to redo it probably, but it slipped his mind and he Accidentally sent it….
Span(ner in the works) would like to add into the mix that Accident appears to have studied physics at some point in the past, possibly at school.
I say this because in my experience the practice of physics study does horrible things to anyone's handwriting and I detect a certain attempt to control what would otherwise be quite a ratty signature.
No offence to Mr/Ms Accident intended of course, I suffer from the same affliction.
Going by his first name, writes Duncan,
Accident was not a planned child, with something of a chip on the shoulder through constant reminder of the fact (especially when signing all those letters). The second name suggests that the child had some redeeming features - possibly accounting for his or her generous nature.
Robyn Gallagher casts her keen graphologist's eye over the signature and concludes:
I agree with your impression that the ACC signer is a woman in her early 30s, though she could be a bit younger.
When she went to school, she learned printing, not cursive writing, and as a result, her attempt to join together letters to make a proper, grown-up signature is rather clumsy - look at the join of the 'e' and 'n' in both 'Accident' and 'compensation'. Now, I went to two primary schools - one taught printing, the other cursive writing, so I assume that cursive writing was phased out in the '80s, which probably makes her around my age or younger.
The writer is right-handed, which is apparent from the way the 'o's have been written in a clockwise fashion.
My initial reaction was that it was written by a man due to its messiness (in my experience, men tend to have messier handwriting than women, but not always), but I looked closer and I actually think it's a woman.
It's the 'd' and 'e' in 'Accident' that remind me of the way that the cool girls at my school started writing in the third form. The 'd' has no downstroke and the 'e' is a cross between a capital E and a sigma.
I like to imagine that she was picked to be the signer after several attempts by the marketing department proved to be less than satisfactory (Fiona's signature was too girlie, Brian's was totally illegible, and the handwriting font, well, it looked like a font), so finally Mel, a PA, was asked to write "Accident Compensation Corporation" and it looked warm, friendly and ordinary enough to pass the test, so it was the chosen one.
Llew of Sunnyo manages to find allusionary room in the cast not only for the blogosphere's most controversial provincial redneck but also its least likeable woman.
A signature like that must be reassuring, it implies you have the support of an entire corporation, not just some nobody claims clerk.
I'm guessing that Accident Compensation Corporation has to be a woman. A man, even a callow youth, would sign his own name to wring a little power & respect out of the situation [viz:]
AJ Cheesewax,
Claims ClerkEven some women:
Cath Yodgers
GM, Claims DivisionWhereas my primary take on her is that she's young, somewhere in her very early twenties, shy, unassuming, a follower rather than a leader during work hours, but as in all these situations I'd like to think that she's pretty hot in a coy Jennifer Aniston kind of way, parties hard, but discreetly in the weekends & possibly routinely goes without underwear.
I think this view is evidenced by the jaunty little dotted "i"s, the devil may care "n"s and the slightly mischievous slope of the signature.
The other possibility... is that it is the night shift computer operator, who doesn't have the authority to sign letters, a 300lb bearded & bespectacled geek, probably an immigrant from Canada, who spends his evenings performing system backups & printing out & signing form letters, and his days watching Cartoon Network, smoking dope & surfing the net for pornography. The signature looks like that because at that time of night, he has the shakes.
BTW - Vote for SunnyO.blogspot.com & the Wellingtonista.blogspot.com (best lifestyle site) here:
This tour de force would have won him a book if he hadn't worked in that shameless self-promotion. I leave it to you to decide how to act, noting only that it is becoming increasingly apparent that he has invested significant personal stock in a successful outcome at the Netguide Awards, and a vote might bring him much more joy than some book about local politics. (As an aside, I can't speak for the others but I suspect that the official PA line is that although we have a two year old trophy on the mantelpiece, another one would be nice, so if you want to keep the sparkling prose coming, you know what to do.)
Because Llew has disqualified himself, I therefore duly declare the winner of Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions (Slack, Penguin, favourably-reviewed with a couple of priggish exceptions) to be Ed Haszard Morris for this equally entertaining contribution. I generously forsake any copyright interest in the contribution and leave it to him to clean up with the movie rights.
Accident is a person of indeterminate gender in their mid-50s.
During their upbringing in a small King Country town, Accident was subjected to more than the fair share of normal childhood taunts. This may be attributed to their indeterminate gender, or more likely, to their debilitating bad haircut.
Accident managed to overcome the difficulties of childhood in a small town, and grew into a lithe and intelligent young adult. Enrolling at the equally young Waikato University for a B.Soc.Sci. in Human Geography was the logical next step after U.E.
Like many students in the late 60s and early 70s, Accident fell in with the hippie crowd, and consequently fell out of love with higher learning. A succession of manual labouring jobs eventually led to the ownership of a small second-hand bookshop in 1980s Auckland.
This naturally crashed along with the sharemarket, and Accident returned to the family farm a broken person.
Several years and many job applications later, salvation came in the form of a case-worker's job with the ACC. This appealed not only to the pinko socialist tendencies learned in Accident's hippie days, but also to some of the more base traits instilled by Accident's farm upbringing.
With this combination of caring, sharing, and putting the lame out of their misery, Accident soon rose through the ranks to the current position at the head of the little-known Anthropomorphisation section. This business unit is charged with the unenviable task of giving the corporation a more human image, even going so far as to create a signature.
Accident had a wonderful Labour weekend trapping possums, thank you for asking.
Any resemblance to any person living, dead, or employed by the Accident Compensation Corporation is of course purely coincidental etc, and we trust you had a nice weekend with the possums.
Orwell That Ends Well | Nov 21, 2005 16:47
It was in Auckland, a sodden morning of the rains. A sickly light, like yellow tinfoil, was slanting over the high walls into the jail yard. We were waiting outside the condemned cells, a row of sheds fronted with double bars, like small animal cages. Each cell measured about ten feet by ten and was quite bare within except for a plank bed and a pot of drinking water. In some of them assorted men and women were squatting at the inner bars, with their blankets draped round them. These were the condemned Herald writers, due to be hanged for treason within the next week or two.
One prisoner had been brought out of his cell. He was a puny wisp of a man, with a shaven head and vague liquid eyes. He had a small goatee and moustache, somewhat in the style of a diminished Russell Brown. Six tall warders were guarding him and getting him ready for the gallows. Two of them stood by with rifles and fixed bayonets, while the others handcuffed him, passed a chain through his handcuffs and fixed it to their belts, and lashed his arms tight to his sides. They crowded very close about him, with their hands always on him in a careful, caressing grip, as though all the while feeling him to make sure he was there. It was like men handling a fish which is still alive and may jump back into the water. But he stood quite unresisting, yielding his arms limply to the ropes, as though he hardly noticed what was happening.
Seven o'clock struck and the sound of a birdcall from a transistor radio, desolately thin in the wet air, floated from a nearby Mount Eden home. The superintendent of the jail, who was standing apart from the rest of us, moodily prodding the gravel with his stick, raised his head at the sound. He was a retired NZRFU official with graying temples, heavy jowls and a gruff voice. 'Christ, what's the hold up, Farrar,' he said irritably. 'The man ought to have been dead by this time. Aren't you ready yet?'
Farrar, the head jailer, a stout man in his late thirties, shining pate and gimlet-eyed, waved his hand. 'Sorry, about that sir, sorry,' he bubbled. 'Just had a slight hitch hooking up the feed for my live blog. The hangman is waiting. We can begin any time you like.'
'Well, quick march, then. The prisoners can't get their breakfast till this job's over.'
We set out for the gallows. Two warders marched on either side of the prisoner, with their rifles at the slope; two others marched close against him, gripping him by arm and shoulder, as though at once pushing and supporting him. The rest of us, New Zealand Party observers and the like, followed behind. Suddenly, when we had gone three metres, the procession stopped short without any order or warning. A dreadful thing had happened – John Campbell, come goodness knows whence, had appeared in the yard. He came bounding among us with a loud volley of questions, and leapt round us wagging his finger, and raging at the insanity of putting reporters to death for criticising their country's foreign minister. It was a wide sweeping monologue, half diatribe, half prayer. For a moment he darted about us prodding with accusations: "you can't do this!"; "It's not treason, it's sedition"; "Don't you know they abolished hanging for treason in 1989?" - and then, before anyone could stop him, he had made a dash for the prisoner, and jumping up tried to pull him free from the guards. Everyone stood aghast, too taken aback even to grab at the current affairs host.
'Who let that little creep in here?' said the superintendent angrily. 'Catch him, someone!'
A warder, detached from the escort, charged clumsily after Campbell, but he bobbed, weaved and declaimed just out of his reach, taking everything as part of the game. A young Investigate magazine reporter picked up a handful of gravel and tried to stone him away, but he dodged the stones and came after us again. His indignant outbursts echoed from the jail walls. The prisoner, in the grasp of the two warders, looked on incuriously, as though this was another formality of the hanging. It was several minutes before someone managed to catch Campbell. Then we put my handkerchief through his suit belt and moved off once more, with the Campbell Live host still objecting noisily.
It was about ten metres to the gallows. I watched the bare pale white back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the journalist who never loses the capacity to reach the bar for another. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock of hair on his scalp danced up and down, his feet printed themselves on the wet gravel. And once, in spite of the men who gripped him by each shoulder, he stepped slightly aside to avoid a puddle on the path.
It is curious, but till that moment I had never realized what it means to destroy a healthy, conscious journalist. When I saw him step aside to avoid the puddle, I saw the mystery, the unspeakable wrongness, of cutting a life short, even that of a reporter, when it is in full tide. This man was not dying, he was alive just as we were alive. All the organs of his body were working – head throbbing from symptoms of coffee withdrawal, stomach crying out for a Big Mac, lungs tickling from the residual effects of a two-pack-a day habit, - all toiling away in solemn foolery. His nicotine-stained nails would still be growing when he stood on the drop, when he was falling through the air with a tenth of a second to live. His eyes saw the yellow gravel and the grey walls, and his brain still remembered, foresaw, reasoned - reasoned even about puddles. He and we were a party of men walking together, seeing, hearing, feeling, understanding the same world; and in two minutes, with a sudden snap, one of us – Frank O'Sullivan - would be gone - one mind less, one world less.
The gallows stood in a small yard, separate from the main grounds of the prison, and overgrown with tall prickly weeds. It was a brick erection like three sides of a shed, with planking on top, and above that two beams and a crossbar with the rope dangling. The hangman, a grey-haired convict in the denim uniform of the prison, was waiting beside his machine. He greeted us with a servile crouch as we entered. At a word from Colin, the two warders, gripping the prisoner more closely than ever, half led, half pushed him to the gallows and helped him clumsily up the ladder. Then the hangman climbed up and fixed the rope round the prisoner's neck.
We stood waiting, five yards away. The warders had formed in a rough circle round the gallows. And then, when the noose was fixed, the prisoner began crying out on his god. It was a high, reiterated cry of 'Winston! Winston! Winston! Winston!', not urgent and fearful like a prayer or a cry for help, but steady, rhythmical, almost like the tolling of a bell. Campbell answered the sound with a groan. The hangman, still standing on the gallows, produced a small cotton bag like a flour bag and drew it down over the prisoner's face. But the sound, muffled by the cloth, still persisted, over and over again: 'Winston! Winston! Winston! Winston! Winston!'
The hangman climbed down and stood ready, holding the lever. Minutes seemed to pass. The steady, muffled crying from the prisoner went on and on, 'Winston! Winston! Winston!' never faltering for an instant. The superintendent, his head on his chest, was slowly poking the ground with his stick; perhaps he was counting the cries, allowing the prisoner a fixed number - fifty, perhaps, or a hundred. Everyone had changed colour. The New Zealand Party officials had gone grey like bad coffee, and one or two of the bayonets were wavering. We looked at the lashed, hooded man on the drop, and listened to his cries - each cry another second of life; the same thought was in all our minds: oh, kill him quickly, get it over, stop that abominable noise!
Suddenly the superintendent made up his mind. Throwing up his head he made a swift motion with his stick. 'Fuck this for a joke!' he shouted almost fiercely, "Let him down!"
There was a clanking noise, and then dead silence. The prisoner had fainted, and the rope was twisting on itself. I let go of Campbell, and he galloped immediately to the back of the gallows; but when he got there he stopped short, barked a command to his cameraman and then retreated into a corner of the yard, where he stood among the weeds, looking pensively out at us. We went round the gallows to inspect the prisoner. He was unconscious, but the slightest smirk of triumph lay across his face.
The superintendent reached out with his stick and poked the limp reporter. 'He's all right,' said the superintendent. He backed out from under the gallows, and blew out a deep breath. The moody look had gone out of his face quite suddenly. He glanced at his wrist-watch. 'Eight minutes past seven. Well, I tell you what, they can get some other stupid bastard to do this, I'm not up to it.'
The warders unfixed bayonets and marched away. Campbell, sobered and yet conscious of having contributed to the aversion of a tragedy, slipped after them, commenting quietly in a reflective Piece To Camera. We walked out of the gallows yard, past the condemned cells with their waiting prisoners, into the big central yard of the prison. The convicts, under the command of warders armed with batons, were already receiving their breakfast. They squatted in long rows, each one holding a small bowl, while two warders with buckets marched round ladling out sodden Weetbix; it seemed quite a homely, jolly scene, after the attempt at a hanging. An enormous relief had come upon us now that the job was abandoned. One felt an impulse to sing, to break into a run, to snigger. All at once everyone began chattering gaily.
The Investigate magazine reporter walking beside me nodded towards the way we had come, with a knowing smile: 'Do you know, that reporter guy, when he heard his appeal had been dismissed, he pissed on the floor of his cell. From fright. Like an M and M? From The Warehouse, two dollars a box. The brown ones are real nice.'
Several people laughed - at what, nobody seemed certain.
Farrar was walking by the superintendent, talking garrulously. 'Well, sir, this was an excellent performance. I got the whole thing streaming on the webcast - flick! like that. It doesn't always work so well. I've had cases where the bandwidth has dried up and I've had to slip in a few jpegs of my Ralph magazine scans, just to keep fresh images coming!'
'Ralph scans, eh? That's bad,' said the superintendent.
I found that I was laughing quite loudly. Everyone was laughing. Even the superintendent grinned in a tolerant way. 'You'd better all come out and have a drink,' he said quite genially. 'I've got a few dozen cans of Tui in the car. We could do with it.'
We went through the big double gates of the prison, into the road. 'Ralph magazines!' exclaimed Bridget Saunders suddenly, and burst into a loud chuckling. We all began laughing again. At that moment Farrar's anecdote seemed extraordinarily funny. We all had a drink together, reporter and New Zealander alike, quite amicably. O'Sullivan was still unconscious a hundred yards away.
And sealed with a kiss | Nov 18, 2005 10:22
I am accident-prone. Even as I write, I carry the scars of my most recent moments of clumsiness: scratched lower legs which I acquired during a morning of chainsawing; a toenail that's deep blue from the trauma of being torn from its pad; and a thigh that bears a wide and, frankly, impressive bruise that I acquired by running with a damaged hamstring.
No surprise, then, that I have a steadily accumulating collection of letters from the Accident Compensation Corporation. I used to be noble and principled and wave away the forms when they pulled them out at the doctor's surgery. No, I really didn't want to make a claim - no, it seemed too trifling a matter, no, I was quite happy to pay the bill myself. But these days it takes more time to dissuade them than it does to answer a couple of questions and let them punch, process and despatch the claim online.
So the other day I got another nice letter from the ACC, and here it is. It's nicely written: helpful, clear, succinct, with just the right tone of approachability and goodwill. But for one small quirk, I can't fault it.
The quirk is this: they conclude with the "signature" of the Accident Compensation Corporation.
I daresay that, legally speaking, this is the correct procedure. If the lecturer covered this in Company Law, I was quite possibly asleep. It's not the legal dimension that interests, me, though, but rather the sense conveyed of a living, breathing, letter-signing entity named Accident Compensation Corporation.
Every signature tells a story, and this one suggests to me a smart, efficient woman in her early thirties. Perhaps a little brisk, certainly very organised and methodical. She works hard all week, and gets everything done before the office drinks on Friday afternoon, but on the weekend, she's more light hearted, and perhaps somewhere within the range prescribed by Patty Loveless:
I ain't the woman in red, I ain't the girl next door
But if somewhere in the middle's what you're lookin' for
I'm that kind of girl
But perhaps I'm reading too much into it.
There's just something so jaunty about the signature, though, that you feel almost compelled to send a nice thank-you note.
Dear Accident, you might write, thanks very much for taking care of that. The leg is already much better thank you, and I expect to be walking again in a few weeks. Hope you had a nice a Labour Weekend. Did you manage to get away up North? We spent a couple of days at Waipu Cove in a house just by the beach. Etc.
That's just my impression, though. I could be miles off. And that's where we get to the audience participation bit. What do you make of the signature? What kind of man, woman or beast is Accident? Best description wins a copy of Civil War and Other Optimistic Predictions. Signed.
Three Score and Ten | Nov 11, 2005 09:33
Poor old beleaguered McDonalds. You do your best each morning as you empty your hash browns into the deep fryers and melt the cheese over people's breakfast sandwiches, but what thanks do you get? A generation ago, you called yourself a family restaurant and everyone agreed with you. Today, thanks to obsessive health Nazis like Morgan Spurlock, you're just another evil corporate monster and an enemy of the people.
Where did it all go wrong? I asked myself last night as I finally got around to watching Supersize Me on the lately-equally-maligned-TV One. There was no arguing with the data as Morgan ploughed his way through 30 days of Big Macs, fries and buckets of Coke.
His liver is melting! We've never seen anything like it! declared his doctors.
His tongue was in his cheek! declared McDonalds in a commercial made specially for the occasion.
You guys will have to peddle faster than that I declared, as the commercial scrolled through the company's diverse rebuttals.
He ate too much! they said. We have salads now, and our beef is 100% pure! We sponsor kids' sport! Please don't keep watching this! What's on Prime? Hey, is that someone at your front door?
You can declare that your heart is in the right place, and you can get the estimable Sarah Ulmer to make all the arguments you like in favour of your salads, but dude, come on. You give kids free toys to make them eat your food. A bucketful of Coke has more spoonfuls of sugar in it than even Mary Poppins would think was good for you. Your food is crap in a pretty wrapper and you know it.
* * * *
I have been a poor correspondent lately, so let's catch up on responses to various recent posts. First: that list of Christmas presents at Hammacher Schlemmer.
Kathinka writes that my mention of that venerable retailer reminded her of "long ago, cold war, nuclear shelters.... and a poem written by E.Y. "Yip" Harburg"
Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
worthy of Kubla Kahn's Xanadu dome,
Plushy and swanky with posh hanky-panky
that affluent yankees can really call home.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
a push-button palace, florescent repose,
electric devices for facing a crisis,
with frozen fruit ices and cinema shows.Hammacher Schlemmer is selling a shelter,
of chromium kitchens and rubber tile dorms
with waterproof portals to echo the chortles
of weatherproof mortals in hydrogen storms.What a great come-to-glory emporium
to enjoy a deluxe moratorium
where nuclear heat can beguile the elite
in a creme-de-la-creme crematorium
Robert Southon, on the other hand, said bugger the Christmas presents, how was the half marathon?
Thanks for asking Robert. Getting closer to 1 hour 30 all the time, thanks. According to this, I did 1.34.11 but as well as starting the race about six minute early, the buggers also stuffed up the capture of the net time of many runners, myself included, so I WILL have my 14 seconds thank you and I WILL declare myself to have done it in 1.33. Not that you get precious about this or anything.
The Harbour Bridge course is a great run, and I came in two minutes faster than last year, feeling much more comfortable with it. Robert writes that he's running a half in Barcelona on the 27th aiming for 1.28, which gets you automatically into the New York marathon in the men's 40-50 age group. Now that's a target I could really get excited about next year.
People were asking me at the start of this week: as someone who exercises regularly and who has a heart attack in his imperfect medical history, how was I feeling? Meaning, I guess: if that can happened to Rod Donald, how much comfort can you take from pursuing good health?
How I was feeling was: this is awful for his friends and family, and it seems wrong to be dwelling on my own fortunes. And yet, it's a fair question. As we now know, it wasn't a heart attack, but it's nevertheless true that sometimes fit healthy people can die of one. Still, the more you do to protect yourself, the more you diminish your vulnerability. It doesn't give you an absolute guarantee, but it improves your prospects, and that's reason enough for me.
Beyond that, you just have to reconcile yourself to the fragility of human life. By far the greater number of us will live to 70 and beyond, but the sobering reality is that terminal illness, accident, and sheer rotten luck will take friends, family and maybe our own life sooner.
A couple of months after the heart attack, I met one of the nurses from coronary care at the swimming pool. We sat at the end of a lane, chatting. She told me: "perhaps you should prepare yourself for dying soon." I've been swimming, running and living my life with the determination to prove her wrong for the last 17 years. I might, and I might not, but it won't be for want of trying.
On a less perturbing subject, the list of Pania suspects motivated Mark Payne to write from Denmark with news that proved just how damn hard it is do something that hasn't been done somewhere else.
It must be the State of Denmark who did it, he said; they need a replacement for their own. Details here and here.
No doubt about the motive, then. As for the means, he posits that it would have been something involving an expensive chair, a blonde porn star, and a pastry. Sure, they've arrested someone else now, but how do we know they're not just leaning on this suspect just as they apparently did on the first two, to get to the big fish?
From a civil liberties point of view, you'd have to say there's something a bit perturbing about chucking the first two in the cells for the weekend, but then on the other hand, it was just one weekend. In Britain, you could be in there for thirty days.
Going yet further back in neglected correspondence - and I really promise not to get this far behind again - some interesting responses to the question of risk assessment.
I'm becoming an ever-greater disappointment to Phil Sage, I can tell, who writes: "yeah it is a real shame those church designers 500 years ago did not think about the impact of electrical lighting & EU safety directives." Look ahead, Phil, look ahead! Like Andrew, for instance, who writes:
Lighting that can enhance a room is so available, long life, low voltage high wattage bulbs, energy efficient placed around the walls using stands, lighting paintings, wall hangings, just feature lighting or hung low over work stations so cool.
As for churches, he says, they should "just go back to using candles as befits their bronze age gods and philosophies."
With such illumination, when people walk into these places they will realize they are stepping back in time…hey presto, no ladders needed for bulb changing, legislation rendered obsolete.
My principal interest, though, was the question of risk assessment and how onerous or otherwise it might be.
Adam Hunt grew up just over the border from Norfolk and is fluent in "Naaarfark" so he offered a phonetically correct risk assessment for the church in question
"Oi Jarge [george], eve yew gart toime tew change a bulb in the Chaaarch?"
"Oi dewnt new, have yew gart a loight boh"
"Its a bit hoigh boh"
"Bargered if'd oid gew up thoyar, ars abewt 50 foot boh"
"Tell yew warrrt, thaart silly owld baarrstard at the church is tew toight tew boy wun oh them long loif bulbs, sew eee makes me gew up thoyer evry yee-ar.
Woi dewnt the old twat put one o them thar lew energy lamps in, then we'd ewnly aff t gew up evry 5 yoir?"
"oh arr, but then them tory twats wouldn't have nuthin to woin abewt would they - after all, Crutch of Ungland is a bot ard up int it?"
"ohh arrr".
Sally helpfully wrote that we have much the same experience here in New Zealand.
I work for Universal Homes, and there are many firms in the construction industry that now adopt the policy that anyone [who is going to go on or work at] a building site needs to have a "Site Safety Certificate" ie they've attended a course which outlines the same sort of 'risk assessment' you mentioned. (Apparently the big companies get a discount on their ACC premiums if everyone does it)
The basis is summarised as (from memory) 5x5 - Take five minutes at the start of the job to stand back 5 steps and look for any areas of risk, and how these can be 'minimalised' (note this is not 'eliminated'). Falling is still the highest death and injury cause in the building industry.
The other main thrust of the seminar is to have a safety register- where any issue is written down, so data can be accumulated over time to determine if the problem is ongoing and can be minimalised.
For more info, she says try www.sitesafe.org.nz
Fair enough. We'd all like to live to 70 and beyond, after all.
POSTSCRIPT
One more random reflection on life, courtesy of the ever-entertaining Llew at Sunnyo who's not quite sure of its provenance.
Women are like apples on trees. The best ones are at the top of the tree. Most men don't want to reach for the good ones because they are afraid of falling and getting hurt. Instead, they just take the rotten apples from the ground that aren't as good, but easy to pick up...The apples at the top think something is wrong with them, when in reality, they're amazing. They just have to wait for the right man to come along - the one who's brave enough to climb all the way to the top of the tree.
Share this with other women who are good apples, even those who have already been picked.
Now Men...
Men are like a fine wine. They begin as grapes, and it's up to women to stomp the shit out of them until they turn into something acceptable to have dinner with.
Have a nice weekend.
Only while stocks last | Nov 02, 2005 15:59
In seven short weeks, we will all be waking to another Christmas morning. The frenzy and stress of the preceding weeks (which began to build on the day you read in a blog that Christmas was only seven weeks away) will be steadily ebbing, unless of course you're expecting to spend the day in the company of people you don't particularly care for.
Let's assume you'll be seeing only people you like. The day will dawn quietly. You will open the front door and listen. You will hear neither bus nor truck nor courier van.
Inside the house, the air will be fragrant with pine needles, or perhaps Christmas lilies, unless of course it's swamped by the residual odour of sundry illegal substances that made last night's party such a terrific Xmas bash. In which case, you will be looking forward to the fragrance of lilies and pine needles when you get to your Mum's later this morning.
Jesus X ! you will think to yourself, I forgot to get her a present. I wonder what I can get at the BP station?
I am an unimaginative gift shopper. The best I ever manage is nice jewellery for Karren. Apart from that, it's pretty much books and CDs, CDs and books. Books are our friends, and in my view, you can't buy too many of them.
This approach to shopping also suits that aspect of my personality that finds few shops very exciting if their name does not have "Book" in it somewhere. If you can order it on the net, rather than have to drive somewhere and get it, that has its appeal also. It's not that I don't like the thought of giving imaginative Christmas gifts. It's just that it inevitably calls for more work than I am willing to undertake.
From a safety and convenience point of view, this is possibly not a bad thing. Many years ago I gave my brother a pair of boots with springs on them that purportedly functioned in a pogo fashion. I was taking the piss, and he understood that, but a few days later he was several drinks into the night when he remembered the boots, went and fetched them from the car boot, strapped them on and began moon-jumping around the campsite. The plaster came off in about mid March.
From then on, it was books and CDs, CDs and books.
However this year, things may be different, for I am very much inclined to buy a novelty item or two from the reputable trading house of Hammacher Schlemmer.
This is absolutely my kind of store. It's online, it ships worldwide and it's just loaded with ingenious stuff.
Some people look at a TV remote with a bottle opener on the end and say: tacky.
I say: how convenient.
Here's the item I most want to buy, and a small part of me wants to believe Karren would like to open it on Christmas morning.
What's not to admire about a toaster that is also a radio?
Look at the chrome! Admire the timeless design lines! See how you can be stuffing in two slices and adjusting the volume on Sean Plunket at the some time!
But perhaps you might be more interested in the Wall-Mounted Fold-Out Basketball Game.
Or perhaps the wristwatch television?
Maybe a Cell Phone-Charging Hand-Crank Radio might be a good gift for the outdoor type in your family.
I can think of at least one member of the Public Address family who would appreciate this gift on Christmas morning.
And who hasn't wondered at some time or other whether it might not be possible to make a contraption that could produce a gentle whooshing noise that would help block out intermittent or continuous annoying sounds such as traffic and ticking clocks, the better for you to relax and fall asleep easily? Wonder no more, the Sleep Sound Generator is yours for just 49.95.
My only cause for hesitation in recommending these fine products is that the last thing this Plasma-TV-buying nation should be doing is spending more money on consumer fripperies from other countries and putting yet more of a burden on the current account.
Well, too late for this Christmas, but maybe what we need is our very own Hammacher Schlemmer selling the clever creations of all our redoubtable Bruce Simpson types hunkered down in their sheds across the nation. If we have the people here with the smarts to make a cruise missile for less than the cost of a Big-Screen TV, then surely to X we have the talent here to design something as simple as a toaster radio.
Nagged To Death | Nov 01, 2005 08:34
So. Farewell
Then
Ian Fraser
"Sold to the man talking to himself."
That was your catchphrase
In a TV commercial for
The BNZ.
You stood in an auction ring
As you spoke to us
With your back
To the auctioneer.
How we all laughed
When you put your
Hand up
To make a point
About sensible
Investments
And ended up buying
A horse.
Once again,
You probably wish
You hadn't put your
Hand up.
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