Random Play by Graham Reid

Government and Treasury officials were thrown into turmoil yesterday with the announcement by well-known freelance writer S.E. Wheeler that he intended to raise his prices by 6c a story for both feature articles and satirical columns.

The announcement came in the wake of petrol price hikes, a survey showing both business and consumer confidence at a record low, and bad weather sweeping the North Island.

A source within Treasury said that Wheeler’s announcement -- on the eve of the first Cabinet meeting of the year -- could not have come at a worse time.

“With company layoffs now numbering in their hundreds, Cabinet and the Reserve Bank are already scrambling to keep the economy level. Wheeler’s action is bound to have a knock-on effect.”

The Auckland-based writer -- best known for articles on issues as diverse as the dairy industry, retailing and the role of reggae music in P-related crime -- said yesterday he felt he had no choice but to raise his rates.

“It was a combination of factors,” he told a press conference at an inner city Auckland restaurant late yesterday afternoon.

“The high dollar was certainly a factor but not the only one. There is the uncertainty in Nigeria, the concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme and of course the news that Linda Clark would be leaving National Radio.

“All these factors to a greater or lesser extent have impacted on my income which has not been reflected in lowering of mortgage interest rates, stability in the consumer food price index, and the increasing cost of sherry as a result of a government initiative which has had a short term impact but looks like it will remain in place for the medium term.

“So in this overheated economic environment I had little choice but to raise my rates.”

Prime Minister Helen Clark said last night she was “comfortable” with the situation although privately it is believed she has expressed fears that many other freelance writers will follow suit.

Last night the governor of the Reserve Bank, Alan Bollard, said that the move by Wheeler was “unfortunate but not unexpected” and he doubted he would have to factor the move into his plans to adjust the dollar to make it more competitive for exporters.

“I’ll be monitoring the situation, of course, and I am hoping that I can meet with Mr Wheeler today for a private discussion. I don’t think there is any need for panic yet, but I can see how in the medium to long term there may be ramifications.

"Quite what they might be I cannot say, it is too early to tell. And when it comes to steering the economy it's all pretty hit and miss anyway, isn't it?

"But we will be keeping a close eye on the situation.”

Wheeler’s price hike -- which is expected to come into effect immediately -- drew widespread support from friends and colleagues yesterday.

Former All Black Tane Shelford said he had read Wheeler’s work -- “his review of The Power of One actually, it’s my favourtite book” -- and he offered his support.

“Yeah, no. SE’s done the hard yards and given 110 percent, and I know he’s been enjoying his writing this year. So yeah, no. He’s should just go for it and . . . Yeah.”

The sharp rise in Wheeler’s rates reignited debate within the media on what writers, autocue readers and one-trick ponies should be paid for their work, but editors at various magazines and newspapers refused to be drawn into the debate.

Dave Sorenson, senior editor at the Auckland Times who did not wish to be named said, “It’s all very well for Wheeler to make this move but at this time, when people are more concerned with putting food on the table and paying off credit cards damaged by Christmas spending, I don’t think he’ll be getting much support.

“Anyway let’s be honest. He’s just a scribbler at the end of the day and he’ll work for what we offer to pay him. It’s a free market out there -- and he’s free to fuck off as far as I’m concerned.”

Consumers already reeling from news that main cities in the country are unaffordable, and that the impending bird flu pandemic means the likelihood of no electricity and deceased family members being buried in back gardens are expected to be unaffected by Wheeler's price hike, the highest in living memory by a freelance writer.

Wheeler could not be reached for further comment at the time of this story going to press but his wife told AltNation that her husband was severely hung-over and could barely remember what he had said at the hastily called press conference yesterday.

“It came at the end of a long and stressful lunch with a Mr Ralston from a television programme who had called SE in to discuss the Simon and Wendy show, and to ascertain whether SE thought Wendy really was ‘hot‘. Or something like that.

“Now please go away. We’ve got enough trouble today with a tree down in the backyard and SE not in any condition to get out the chainsaw.

"I‘ll probably have to call the council.”

Well, thank God that’s over. All the awful music, the inane blather, the uninteresting guests, the sheer discomfort of the whole drawn out affair. Nope, not the Big Day Out which, if a little short on happy surprises, was it’s customary mix of the terrific (Magic Numbers), the hilarious (Iggy), and the indifferent (White Stripes).

No, what I am talking about is something called Matinee Idle which National Radio inflicted on us over the summer weeks.

Abandoning any notion of quality radio NatRad simply handed over the weekday afternoons to a couple of guys who seemed to bring with them every lousy part of commercial radio (jocks with “personalities”), guests who all seemed to be mates and pretty good blokes, and then filled the hours with inane and occasionally inaudible comments and opinions.

To be honest after a while I tuned in rarely because it was so bereft of intelligence, or anything remotely interesting by way of interviews and music. I have the car radio tuned to NatRad but quickly discovered Radio Live next down the dial by pushing the scan button.

Michael Laws’ talkback is so desperate to be provocative that is weirdly compelling, and the Willie Jackson/John Tamihere pairing is hilariously unvarnished radio.

But when I did trawl back to NatRad’s Matinee Idle it was more of the same.

Okay, I am going to make this next bit up, but believe me, this is the kind of thing you could have heard. I’m not going to name the two people involved. Naming and shaming can come if they are ever brought back.

Host #1: And it’s 2.10 here on Matinee Idle and that was the Eagles with Peaceful Easy Feeling. Great song, and a great band.

Host #2: (off mike) Bimmffle adhh ana dwaaahm hheme . Ha ha ha.

#1: You can’t say that on radio!

#2: Summfillma ahd nend hamma dloop. Ha ha ha.

#1: Ha ha ha. Yeah, right. But they were a great band.

#2: Yeah, I met one of them after a show in Sydney a few years ago. Nice guy actually.

#1: Which one was that?

#2: Glenn, Glenn Frey.

#1: Oh, Glenn Frey. Great singer.

#2: Yeah, and a great guy. He was in Miami Vice once.

#1: I know, I saw that. He wrote the song Smugglers Blues for that show I think. You don’t hear bands like the Eagles anymore.

#2: That’s true. Great songs.

#1: The Little River Band.

#2: What?

#1: The Little River Band, they sound a bit like the Eagles. All those great harmonies and good songs. The Aussie band the Little River Band. We should get one of those guys in as a guest, he’d be good.

#2: Oh, that’s who it was. The guy from the Little River Band, that’s who I met backstage in Sydney. Glenn someone I think, it wasn’t Glenn Frey from the Eagles. I’ve remembered now.

#1: Ha ha ha ha.

#2: Yeah, it was him. Ha ha ha.

#1: Let’s see if we can find some Little River Band to play later on. Right now it’s 2.15 on Matinee Idle and coming up another in our classic concert series, this time Van Morrison’s It’s Too Late to Stop Now.

#2: Van the Man.

#1: Van the Man for sure. Some say he’s a grumpy guy, others say he’s a genius. We’ll see later on this afternoon, that’ll be coming up after 3, and before then we’re going to be talking to Steve Wainwright.

#2: Oh, he’s a great guy.

#1: Yeah, Steve works in ad agency here in capital writing jingles but he’s also been writing his own songs and the other night I heard one of them and I thought it was just terrific. So we’ve got Steve coming in to talk about New Zealand music and song writing. But right now let’s play some more music.

#2: Yeah.

#1: Right, here’s some one we haven’t heard from in a while. Cat Stevens’ with Father and Son.
#2: Great song.

#1: Yeah and a great guy too. Went Muslim of course. Have you met him?

#2: Ha ha ha.

#1: Cat Stevens’ Father and Son here on Matinee Idle . . . .

Copies of this programme are available through Replay Radio. Normal transmission resumes shortly.

Controversy hit the small Northland town of Kakamoana this week after local residents learned their council had voted to replace traditional underground fire hydrants with the free-standing model as used in New York.

In a series of meeting late last year the council invited submissions on how to upgrade the town’s image. Among the submissions which won wide approval were those for removing graffiti, repainting the mural celebrating Anzac Biscuit Day on the side of the new Kiwi Bank, and replacing the native trees on Ocean Beach View Place with exotic cacti from Mexico.

However opponents to the hydrant replacement scheme believe that decision was hasty and the new-look yellow hydrants were out of keeping with the ambience of the town.

“These are the kinds of things I expect to see on NYPD Blue, but not in Kakamoana,” said motel owner and anti-hydrant campaigner Des Bevan yesterday.

“They will attract the unwelcome attention of dogs, and you can just bet that some local when he’s a few sheets to the wind coming home from the pub will run into one and severely injure himself.

"It‘s not bloody on and I‘ll do everything in my power to stop this happening, short of it costing me anything of course.”

Those supporting the scheme however have been equally vocal and see the hydrants as symbols of a new period in Kakamoana’s development and important in its bid for the 2008 Northland Shearing and Cake Bake-Off Competition.

“Kakamoana has long been seen as a slightly backward little town and this is just a small gesture towards big city sophistication,” said councillor Shirley Mahutu who initially voted for the plan, then changed her mind, then voted for it again.

“After the hydrants I’d like to think we would have a subway which could take tourists from the Placemakers on Kauri St direct to the wharf and the famous fish’n’chip shop there.”

Kakamoana mayor Dave Hunkin -- currently holidaying in Sydney -- acknowledged this week that the new hydrants were his idea which he brought to the council meeting last November.

Critics of the plan note that council by-laws expressly forbid small yellow objects being placed on main thoroughfares yet the council ignored objections on those grounds and employed a consultant who was charged with having the new hydrants in place by February 12.

That consultant, Doug Grew -- of Northland Hydrant Installation Co -- denied any conflict of interest on Monday then left town.

In a statement yesterday he said, “I was brought in to the consultancy process at the request of my brother-in-law Dave Hunkin and in good faith investigated the viability of the new type of hydrant.

“While I concede there is nothing actually wrong with the old hydrants, that was not what I was asked to comment on. I was asked if it were possible to replace them and I said it was. I then went ahead and bought 70 new hydrants.

“We will initially replace the five in the city and hold the others in storage as replacements.”

The cost of the 70 hydrants, believed to have been bought on E-bay from a Teamsters Union organiser in New York, is $157,000 which the council has already signed off from next year’s budget allocation.

Mayor Hunkin said yesterday that local iwi and the Kakamoana Businessmen’s Association -- of which he was chairman -- had applauded the scheme and the deal was effectively done. There could be no turning back because contracts had been signed.

But he added he was willing to listen to all sides of the argument now the issue had unfortunately become public.

“Initially we thought we could just get on and do this symbolically important job for people, but then some locals started asking questions. I was elected to lead and that is what I intend to do.

“But when I get back from holiday I am prepared to vacillate and be evasive, and probably even change my mind if that is necessary. I have done that before and am proud to say I will do it again.

“That is what being a visionary community leader is all about.”

Inevitably at this time you tend to get a bit reflective and look back at the year that has just gone. I started doing this recently and was surprised how much of 2005 I sort of missed.

It started back at last year’s tsunami. I was on holiday and didn’t know about it for a couple of days. This year I spent a lot of time travelling -- three weeks in the States, two months in Europe, and more recently 10 days bobbing around the Pacific -- and so missed great swags of News And Really Important Stuff.

We were in the restaurants and cafes of Paris, Berlin and so on while the New Zealand post-election farce was being played out and returned home to find Winston Peters was, laughably, our new Foreign Minister.

During that period we missed the second Bali bombing and the earthquakes in Pakistan, and didn’t hear of them until well after the events. Now we’ve come home to hear about race riots in Australia.

I have to be honest, I didn’t really miss -- in the sense of wish I knew more about -- the unravelling of TVNZ, the David Benson-Pope saga and other such headline grabbing events. (We’d previously missed Dover Samuels' piddling effort which was the first thing someone told me in the car home from the airport.)

But -- and this is an odd confession -- I also didn’t really miss all the Major Events either.

A few weeks ago we were in the small village of St Maximin in Provence. We were staying with my friend Amanda at her beautiful home and realised how much Serious News was passing us by. And we didn’t care.

Amanda said she rarely read a newspaper or followed all those world-shaping events which seem to preoccupy us on a daily basis. And I wondered if that, and not the cheap but palatable local wines, is why she is always so cheery.

An unrelenting diet of bad news tends to make people grumpy, cynical and/or depressed.

Sometimes when we’ve been away I’ve checked the Herald website and the main items often seem to be murders. Last weekend when we got home I pulled the paper out of the letterbox and was confronted with the news that Auckland was about to explode and that bird flu was on its way.

Those were the headlines anyway, I didn’t bother reading the (probably) alarmist articles which followed.

I suppose, being the news addict that I usually am, I will start reading the papers, watching tele-news and tuning in to Linda Clark again. But the extended holidays from world events -- and just meeting a few of the world’s citizens in our travels who seemed universally generous, kind, amusing and good natured -- was kind of salutary.

Despite the disasters, wars and the peevish behaviour of politicians, life just seems to go on for most people. Of course we didn’t travel through war zones or flood ravaged countries -- but we need to remind ourselves that those places, which while fairly commanding news attention, actually contain a tiny minority of the world‘s people.

This is not to say we should have happy-clappy news -- good news-only papers have been conspicuously short-lived -- but that every now and again we could remember that most people are more healthy, happier and live longer than their ancestors of just a century ago. In so many ways life is actually improving, despite what grumpy old buggers try to tell us.

Just a thought.

Oh, and many thanks to those dozens of people who have responded to these "random play" columns. The whole Alt,Nation series seems to have been widely enjoyed so I’m thinking that could a running gag next year -- and I expect we have now hammered the credit card so much that next year we‘ll be staying at home, under canvas as I mentioned previously.

I appreciate the condolences sent when I wrote recently about our leaky building.

As I write this there are two men with sledgehammers and crowbars beating the bejesus out of the wall and patio just beyond the window where I am sitting. Right about now I think I need another lazy cruise on the silent ocean.

And thank you also to those who have bought my book Postcards From Elsewhere and been kind enough to write. Glad you enjoyed it. It’s a modest affair but ideal for the beach, if I may put in a plug.

Finally though, the second best book I read this year was Generation Kill by Evan Wright.

Rolling Stone writer Wright joined a Marine Corp unit when the Americans marched to Baghdad in 2003 and turned in this eye-opening account of the craziness, heroism, ineptness and compelling personalities of the players in this small corner of that on-going war.

More than a battle diary it is, as the title suggests, a probing look at the generation of soldiers whose war training began with video games as teenagers. And it is an insight into an incompetent military machine and how the seeds of the current situation were unwittingly sown as the guys with guns crashed through small towns.

It is powerful stuff, and some incidents provided the raw material for the tele-series Over There which largely went unnoticed when it screened on Sky. It’s being repeated in February I believe and is certainly worth a look, especially the second episode when the troops are manning a road block and cars are coming at them. It loads in the moral questions, as does Generation Kill.

So that’s it from me, typically contradicting myself by enjoying a holiday from bad news and recommending a book which is a dark ride.

Better quit while I’m ahead.

Have a safe and enjoyable break if you are getting one. The builders tell me they are working through. The joke’s on me.

Merry Christmas, happy Hanukah, au revoir.

Because of my well-known antipathy to backpacker accommodation it will come as no surprise I don’t do camping either. The last time I slept under canvas was when I was at intermediate school.

Then rock’n’roll and pubic hair arrived, so I quit Scouts and have never once since thought fondly of sleeping in a tent, especially not when it is raining.

It’s raining today and I am preparing myself for a Christmas under canvas, and I’m not looking forward to it.

But the karmic wheel has turned and I am about to get a comeuppance.

But it’s not like I will be able to crawl out of the tent and be in the middle some nice piece of native bush or near a pristine beach.

I am going to be under canvas in my own home.

We have a leaky building -- and it’s Christo-time in Morningside. The back of our apartment block is about to be wrapped up for possibly four months, maybe even longer.

In a further irony, our lovely sunny apartment which faces north-west and catches the sun all day, shows no symptoms of being leaky, smelly, creepy or whatever else people have identified in leaky buildings.

But it probably is -- the builder says when they ripped the patios off the other nearby unit they were rotting away quietly -- so we are going to wrapped up, stripped down, rebuilt and reclad and then painted.

As someone who works from home I’m not looking forward to this one bit: it’s not just the fact that we will have scaffolding and canvas (more correctly “tarpaulin” I suppose) around one side of the house, or that we won’t be able to use the patio or modest back garden, or that there will be dust and noise from saws, hammers and classic hits radio that the builders favour.

It’s that I have had to move office. The room beneath the house -- beneath the offending patio actually -- has been my well used, well established and nicely appointed office for years. The books, documents, files, records, tapes and CDs weren’t catalogued but I knew where everything was.

Ironically again, I still do: they are either piled up in one corner in an impenetrable heap or are now in storage. I can’t access anything readily at all.

I have had to move to a small humid room at the top of the house, but even this window is going to be covered in tarps although this upper part of the façade isn’t going to be touched for months.

And once they have finished off this side they will move on to other units then back to do our kitchen side and the wall which is alongside the railway land.

I am guessing that in the next 18 months some part of our house won’t have light coming in. And windows we aren’t allowed to open, and a patio we can’t walk on.

This is all annoying but there are also more serious costs: some people in our block are finding it difficult to raise the extra money needed to pay in advance for these essential repairs. Our lawyer is after the develop[ers and so on but the case is unlikely to be settled until much later next year, possibly in 2007, and there is no guarantee we will get back in compensation all that we have had to raise.

And it’s a not inconsiderable sum: by the close of play it will be well in excess of $60,000 which people are having to add to their mortgages. Maybe we’ll get lucky and be paid back $45,000. Shit!

Our helpful bank (Westpac who have been extremely good through all this) has done us a deal, but in July we will have to find $60,000 (the short answer to your question is, we don’t know, and we can’t) but we also have no choice here.

This is our house, the only one we’ve got, and we have to sit all this out.

But it is worse for some who simply have mortgages so high already they can’t raise the additional funds.

I won’t tell you how that matter can be resolved, but let it be said I have no great love for being on a body corporate which has to -- and legally can -- force a mortgagee sale on one of my neighbours.

I mention all this because leaky buildings are getting a bit of press right now, what with the Court of Appeal judgement that struck out a $20 million claim by the 153 owners of apartments in the leaky Sacramento complex in Manukau City.

You needn’t be troubled by the ins and outs of this case, but the human cost of leaky buildings really hits you hard when you think about it: people worrying about raising massive amounts of money to pay for repairs on homes bought in good faith from developers who have done a runner; neighbours unwillingly being pitted against each other as a result; people having to live in building sites for months and months on end (cold in winter, airless and dark in summer); and elderly folk watching the home they bought with their life savings being pulled apart and them having to live with not only the discomfort but also the fear they might not be able to raise and repay a mortgage.

It’s a shitty situation all round and so yes, this is one of those times when I reluctantly have to mutter that great Kiwi catchphrase, “the government should do something”.

Successive governments haven’t of course, but this latest court ruling puts the heat on even more.

People in leaky homes deserve better.

Jeez, four decades after swearing off sleeping in a tent I’ve got to spend Christmas under canvas.