Lefter

Picture this: a woman who has been a voluntary goodwill ambassador Bluecoat at Auckland Airport for ten years, a volunteer English instructor to new immigrants at a local church, a volunteer at the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau, a volunteer at Vincent De Pauls, a donor to hospice and the nearest old people’s home, dies holding the  hand of her son, a long-service firefighter.

Why?

Cancer. Lung, breast, brain, gut, adrenal glands … The woman was a sprightly 73-year old who had only retired at 72. She was diagnosed in May 2010 and died a week before the 45th anniversary of arriving in New Zealand as an eager immigrant. This was in late July of 2010, just over two months later.

She died in a hospice, which is supported by voluntary donations alone.

She had worked full-time and paid NZ taxes for at least 42 of the years she lived here as a proud NZ citizen.

Did she know smoking could cause cancer? Of course she did.

She was an addict.

Her addiction was profound. She had smoked since she was 14. You may say she could have suffered directly from smoking a long time before she was 73, and that’s certainly possible.

Her mother, a non-smoker, lived to a week short of her 99th birthday. (Her father died in the London blitz.)

She died incontinent, unable to lift her hand to her mouth. She was hallucinating and delusional for some of the time in the last two weeks of her life with, thankfully for the family, moments of lucidity. Except in those she was also all too aware of what was happening to her.

The week before, her addiction was so strong, she was wheeled outside. A cigarette was lit for her. but she didn’t even have the strength to lift it to her mouth.

This was despite nicotine patches. Thankfully this phase passed as she sank into torpor.

But this is hardly an original story.

It’s all too common. Thousands of people die of smoking-related cancer every year in New Zealand.

Our government actively supports tobacco smoking. It receives huge taxes from actively participating in killing and maiming its own citizens. You can buy cigarettes freely on the open market – in supermarkets, dairies and other New Zealand shops the length and breadth of the country.

You may be thinking I am about to advocate banning smoking outright.

That’s damn right. Cigarettes should not be for sale.

Not a single soul who isn’t already a smoker should be able to take it up.

Confirmed addicts should be on prescription cigarettes and managed withdrawal, supervised by the medical system and their personal physicians.

For the good of the country and the people.

Since the government is not doing this, for God only knows what reason, I therefore charge it with a crime against humanity.

In New Zealand, 4300 to 4600 deaths per year have directly been attributed to smoking. An estimated 350 of are from secondary tobacco smoke inhalation – the rest are directly attributable to personal smoking.

Smoking causes one in four of all cancer deaths in New Zealand.

A solution of one quarter of cancer-related deaths would be hailed as a fundamental medical marvel – yet it’s staring us in the face.

Each year tobacco causes five million premature deaths out there in the world. This is one in ten of all adult deaths worldwide.

Half of the people who smoke today and continue smoking will be killed by it.

Half of those will die in middle age, long before their tax earning potential ceases.

A crime against humanity, as defined by the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court Explanatory Memorandum, “constitutes a serious attack on human dignity or grave humiliation or a degradation of one or more human beings.

“They are not isolated or sporadic events, but are part either of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government or a de facto authority. Murder; extermination; torture; rape, political, racial, or religious persecution and other inhumane acts reach the threshold of crimes against humanity only if they are part of a widespread or systematic practice. Isolated inhumane acts of this nature may constitute grave infringements of human rights, or depending on the circumstances, war crimes, but may fall short of falling into the category of crimes under discussion.”

This government’s support of tobacco smoking fits the description, particularly in that the tobacco industry is a widespread and systematic practice which adds up to an attack on human dignity; grave humiliation; degradation; and murder (nearly 5000 clearly preventable deaths a year).

New Zealand tobacco availability is “part of a government policy (although the perpetrators need not identify themselves with this policy) or of a wide practice of atrocities tolerated or condoned by a government”.

For this government, along with those preceding since the 1950s, has actively been supporting this systematic and sustained attack on human dignity; grave humiliation of its citizens; degradation; and murder.

It’s clearly a crime against humanity.

And it profoundly disgusts me.

As it should you.

I have heard a lot about tax and the economy in the last few months – I guess we all have.

I don’t mind paying tax – in fact, I relish it.

I once worked with a guy who was on a really good wage, but he always insisted on working on an invoice basis rather than going on the payroll. One day, he explained why: every year his accountant bought a failed company. All the invoices were run through this company, and no tax was paid because the company had debts.

This guy effectively got paid exactly what he billed for, despite having a large property and a second property and several cars. He paid not a cent of income tax.

Just to further disgust me, this guy wrote about cars and constantly complained, in print, that NZ’s roads were appalling.

National’s platform is on decreasing tax to ‘empower’ spending. This empowers, in turn, some people to smoke, get drunk, take drugs and gamble. Which in turn infers that some NZ people are stupid, uncontrollable, susceptible to the basest of urges and happy to throw away their money to no good end.

Frankly, and unfortunately, this is true – as it is of every other population.

It’s just as true that the class of Khandallah Remuerarites will happily take any tax ‘incentives’ the National government hands out to have more holidays in a fascist state like Fiji rather than make things better for the workers who keep them propped up. Once again, this class exists all over the world.

There is a very good case that income removed from the general population, and then spent on the welfare of that general population (roads, schools and hospitals spring to mind) is better for that population. New Zealand pioneered this welfare state.

A caring state engenders patriotism, enthusiasm and equality.

The case is obvious, tried, proven and clear.

National’s tax policy would be fair to New Zealanders, said John Key.

Fair?

That means “in accordance with the rules or standards; legitimate: the group has achieved fair and equal representation for all its members.”

Also “just or appropriate in the circumstances”.

As an adverb, it’s defined as “without cheating or trying to achieve unjust advantage.”

Fair?

I know John Key is not the most literate man in New Zealand. In fact, sometimes he can barely talk. Perversely, this seems to have made him more popular with average New Zealanders. God help us.

But surely he knows what ‘fair’ means?

But ‘fair’ is subjective, isn’t it? John Key is being fair to his class, which includes people like Mark Hotchin of Hanover Finance. This is the guy who ran Hanover until it fell over, leaving lots of investors bereft of their savings.

Hotchin, who in my opinion is an arsehole – sorry, that’s really not fair: ‘prize arsehole’ – is currently living in abject luxury in Hawaii. (John Key has a luxurious house in Hawaii.)

Hotchin’s multi-million dollar Auckland mansion is almost finished, and now on the market because he’s worried about coming back here. As he bloody well should be. And he has a pad in Sydney. Plainly he’s hurting. He thinks New Zealanders dislike him … and he is most likely filled with a deep remorse about the suffering he’s caused.

Like hell. He couldn’t care less.

For me, paying tax is a moral issue. I choose to live in New Zealand. It supports me. I support it with my volunteer efforts and my taxes.

Of course, I want a government to spend the tax take wisely on our behalf – something the National government has never excelled at.

Pay your tax and demand accountability from the government.

Post colonial, or colonial post?

Atutaki is a picture-perfect, beautiful atoll not far from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands. It’s part of the Cook Islands Group. The Cook Islands became a British ‘protectorate’ in 1888, at chiefly request out of fear of an armed French takeover (which had happened already to Tahiti) and this was accepted, but in 1900, Britain transferred administrative control to New Zealand.

In 1965, Cooks Islands’ residents chose self-government ‘in free association with New Zealand’.

But what does this mean?

The Cook Islands’ comprises fifteen islands spread over a considerable area of the South Pacific ocean. Somewhat oddly, since it’s not the closest of South Pacific islands to New Zealand, most Cook Islanders speak ‘Cook Islands’ Maori’, a language that sounds a lot like Maori, and in fact the two languages are mutually intelligible. They also speak excellent English.

Most of the Cook Islands are low coral atolls – a couple are either very sparsely inhabited or not inhabited at all – but Rarotonga in the Southern Group is a large, volcanic island and it’s the main administrative centre. It also has by far the largest amount of Cook Islands-based Cook Islanders on it: about 14-15,000.

About 75,000 Cook Islanders live elsewhere, most of them here – Cook Islanders have NZ passports. So apart from plundering their able workforce, New Zealand’s primary responsibility to the Cooks seems to be as a tourist destination and aid recipient.

And we’re supposed to defend the Cook Islands on request.

Rarotonga is bizarre in that it’s a big, hot, tropical, exotic-looking, island populated by people speaking great English. NZ institutions like banks work, and look, just as they do here. Indeed the currency is NZ with some additional, and distinctive, denominations and coins.

There are two public buses on Rarotonga and they just circle the island in different directions. I kid you not, they are actually signed ‘Clockwise’ and ‘Anticlockwise’ just in case you get confused.

It’s also weird in that there are abandoned and semi-collapsed buildings all over the place. Some tumble-down houses are actually still occupied by people who appear to be living in abject poverty (accept that delicious food grows pretty much unbidden, and all over the place). But you also see gracious and even grandiose homes that somehow look, somewhat unfortunately, like plantation owners’ homes – although I have no idea of their actual provenance.

There are other jarring sights – the massive Ministry of Justice, recently completed, is a lavish building that looks entirely out of place in the little (and main) town of Avarua on Rarotonga. It looks even more ridiculous when you find the prison – its fenced with four strands of barbed wire a nine-year-old could get through and indeed, someone told me the prisoners go home on weekends anyway, as the guards like to have the weekends off! (I don’t know if this is true.)

So why the massive, lavish new Ministry of Justice, exactly?

Take a short flight to Aitutaki (population about 2000) and you realise that the paradise that is Rarotonga was just an introduction, although Aututaki is very touristy and resorty. But Aututaki got hit badly by a powerful cyclone earlier in 2010, with gusts of up to 100 knots flattening buildings and trees.

In April, National MP Murray McCully flew to the Cooks ostensibly to inspect Aitutaki. New Zealand had pledged $5.5 million in cyclone recovery aid which was slow to be deployed. The visit coincided with a joint ministerial forum that was supposed to bring the Cooks government and NZ’s closer – the Cooks have been increasingly independent in foreign policy over the last decade or so. However, this forum was postponed or cancelled – for reasons unclear – just before the visit.

Meanwhile, Aitutaki mayor Tai Herman was being criticised in the CI News for releasing ‘aid’ money to people to work on their houses. Great, accept these people were friends and family of Herman’s (or potential voters) whose houses had either not been damaged, or were only lightly damaged, while badly damaged houses were sitting untouched.

Cook Islands officials expressed concern that the aid should be distributed to those who need it, but McCully stated he wasn’t there to meddle in Cook Islands’ politics.

So why was he there? Was his trip funded by part of that aid? How much did it cost?

It can easily look as if the Cooks has been treated as personal fiefdom by proxy for some NZ officials, who don’t seem to take any sort of hand with the Cooks’ notoriously troublesome governance – there have been scandals and crises galore over the last three or four decades, under the watch of several NZ governments in succession, including, of course, Labour.

After his visit to the stricken atoll, McCully was reported in the Cook Islands News as having enjoyed his visit. He said had been to the Cooks several times before. He said “We hope that you feel fortunate to be New Zealand citizens”!

He concluded an article in the Cook Islands News (April 9th, page 7) “This is a fantastic place – I say that officially and unofficially. Unofficially it is spoken for by my frequent personal visits which will only become more frequent as the ungrateful public of New Zealand tire of my services at some future point. I just want to say it’s great to be here.”

Well, better to get the government to pay for your holidays under the guise of official business, hey Murray? As it’s easy to imagine that February is simply too hot for visits – tourists avoid the Cooks in February. April is much nicer.

The Cook Islands are absolutely gorgeous, despite the fatuously cliché ‘Pacific’ resorts that have parasitically invested the nicest beaches.

The Cooks Islanders seem unfailingly polite and knowledgeable. The food is incredible, the swimming is unbelievable … But New Zealand’s official attitude to the Cooks makes me really uncomfortable. I can’t fathom it.

I fear New Zealand is doing Cook Islanders a disservice.

But I may be wrong.

I was at a Locally Left meeting in Grey Lynn  last year when I could contain myself no longer. “What does Labour actually stand for?” I asked Labour list MP Phil Twyford. “I don’t know any more.”

He didn’t appear to either. He couldn’t answer.

It’s not his fault – it’s Labour’s fault.

Back in the 1930s, it was really clear what Labour was and what the party stood for. Now Labour is ‘National Lite’ or ‘Slightly Left National’.

Which do you prefer? Well, I hate both.

We all know Labour is well on track to lose the next election. It seems like Phil Goff and his ill-advisors are the only people who don’t know. As I’ve said before, I know people who know Phil Goff and they say he’s intelligent and a really nice guy. Great. So what? Prove it, Phil, to me and everyone else. Because so far you haven’t even begun to, and this is a huge disappointment.

But I can tell you what Labour needs to do. It’s actually pretty plain.

1/ Stop pretending you’re going to win the next election.

You’re not. National can tighten the screws on society a lot more before New Zealanders cry ‘uncle’. They’re still hoping for that big tax or business break that’s not going to come.

Mr ‘Get Along With Everybody’ hasn’t had any real issues he’s had to publicly deal with yet. He hasn’t even been put to the test. This is partly because the opposition is pathetic, partly because two of the most potentially vociferous opponents are part of the government (yes, that’s ACT and the Maori Party), and partly because Key is adept at playing Mr Nice Guy in public while leaving the dirty work (which will only increase) to MPs like Brownlee and Bennett. So people actually believe he’s doing a good job. Which is incredible to anybody who can see what’s really going on, but that’s not more than a few of the voters. Yet.

2/ Work out what Labour’s vision is for New Zealand. At the moment, Labour doesn’t have one.

If Labour does have a vision, what is it? Why can’t I explain it? Worse, why can’t Labour explain it? Because it doesn’t have a vision. If it does, it doesn’t make sense, for even people inside Labour don’t know what it is or how to put it across.

So go back to the drawing board and create that vision.

Face it: Labour was rubbish in the last term, spending all its energy on turf protection and reactionism instead of creating real policy people could understand they could benefit from. This is what happens when there’s no vision.

3/ Sell the vision. Some people will hate it – at least at first. Accept this is how it will be. This is how it should be. Wear your colours and be proud. Give us something meaningful to fight for.

For example, Scandinavians accept they pay high taxes because they understand the benefits in their societies.

A capitol gains tax will patently solve lots of New Zealand’s export and business investment problems, but many Kiwis will squeal like stuck pigs at the prospect. But because they’re used to the passive and traditional investment in property does not mean it’s good. So harden up.

Be brave, Labour. It really does beat ‘pathetic’. Work on making it clear what Labour’s vision means and how it’s good for me, and for you, and for all the other ordinary New Zealanders.

4/ Win the election after the next one.

Simple, really.

Back in ye olde distante past-ey, I had a couple of quite different jobs, one after the other, sticking at each for just over a year. This was in the late ’70s and early ’80s, in Auckland.

I started, and they told me what my wage was, when I’d be reevaluated, and what the wage rise would be at that point. They told be what the promotions available were, and what the wages were if those posts were obtained. I could see my working life stretching out before me, and figure out what I’d be earning. I could plan my life – what I’d buy, and even when I might possibly look at buying a house. (Of course, I quit and went to Europe.)

When I got back to New Zealand, everything had changed. We were supposed to negotiate our own contracts. The unions were pretty much smashed. The bozo sitting beside me picking his nose and faffing about could be earning twice what I earned because he was better at talking to the director, or promoting himself. There were no more regular wage rounds because the boss knew it was best to ignore them.

My immediate department head could be on three times my salary – or the same.

People regularly lost their jobs simply because they had talked their wages up too much to be tenable. In my firm, the useless or timid negotiators stayed the longest. The rest were out there like sharks, getting continuous promotions and spending more time on ‘negotiating’ and self promotion than on working.

Just look at Telecom to see what effect this has had. Because now, many of these people run things.

And now we consider ourselves a ‘low wage economy’, compared to Australia. Australia still has powerful unions. All of New Zealand’s deregulation was supposed to ‘empower’ bosses. It’s empowered them to run bad businesses because greed was allowed to become the driving factor.

Now these bosses have even more of the situation they dreamed of – a National Government.

It’s been disappointing, though, even to them. New Zealand businesses cannot plan for their futures, with the result being a crisis of confidence and worse, either shutting down or moving offshore.

I went to a fascinating discussion the other day, run by the newly resurgent NZ Fabian Society. The talk, which was presented at an obscure if surprisingly plush chiropractic college in Ellerslie (and yes – I don’t know why, for both counts), was presented by Ganesh Nana (Wellington-based economist with BERL Forecasts), Selwyn Pellett (wealthy entrepreneur), John Walley (CEO of the Manufacturers and Exporters Association) and economic commentator Rod Oram.

Pellett and Walley both stated this wasn’t a matter of left and right. I’m not sure Walley would have even bothered to make that statement a year ago (I could be wrong, but I assume it would be accepted he was of the right, back then).

All were terrific speakers, and all had something to say. Considering the political and economic span they represented, I found it notable they all pressed the same four points:

1/ New Zealand needs leadership. It doesn’t have it.

2/ NZ’s currency needs to be regulated.

3/ We need a Capitol Gains Tax (of which, more later) and;

4/ An economic crisis is coming. We can manage our way down through it, but if we ignore it, it will be more calamitous than we seem able to imagine.

Anyway, back to the Capitol Gains Tax. Why should you pay a tax on property transactions? Many reasons:

• NZers borrow money from banks to buy property as we perceive that as being the safest option. This is almost inevitably from Australian banks, as they own most of the ‘NZ’ banks. Tellingly, they’ve all made huge profits in the ‘recession’. Australian banks made a third of their income ‘offshore’ (from Australia, that is). So we’re making Australia richer. And the interest we bank is used for Australian investment, not for NZ investment.

• Banks here therefore lend happily to home buyers, but not to businesses for business development or expansion, or R&D.

• Buying property artificially raises the price of property, making it harder for people to buy homes to live in. A house changes hands four times in a decade, say. It’s sold for $300,000, then $400,000, then $550,000, all for the same house. Crazy. Capitol Gains Tax would put a curb on the market.

• Property transactions do not benefit the NZ governments (and therefore, us), because there’s no tax or other levy on them.

• Worse, unscrupulous Kiwis use property as a sink for tax and GST write-offs. So even less tax arrives in government coffers.

One idea mooted at the presentation was overall tax reform that actually benefits the country and does not tinker with GST. I got the impression these four guys could work out a proper tax reform in a week – how come the government task force did such a bad job of it?

Oh yeah, Don Brash was involved. [Oh, I take that back, seems he wasn't.]

The Fabian Society is worth a look, by the way. I know there have been some notably bad Fabians but there have also been some notably great ones. The Fabian Society has the opposite of the Anarchist ‘direct action’ ethos. It promotes left wing thought by discussion and dissemination of knowledge. So it can lead to fascinating insights if well managed, as this inaugural event patently was. And if good speakers are presented. Once again, tick.

I look forward to more. Check out the forthcoming presentations by the Fabians in Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

There’s talk of New Zealand becoming a republic. Now even some WII veterans are saying it’s time to move on, and some even agree it’s time to ditch our ridiculous flag.

That Union Jack in the corner drives me nuts. It’s irrelevant – a historical footnote, sure. Mention it in history books, then.

Worse, our flag looks like Australia’s. What’s the point of that? Aren’t we all 100% sick of being mistaken for Australians out there in the big wide world? I sure am.

But anyway, back to the republic. While I welcome any moves to become one, and a truly independent sovereign nation at that (which we act like, but technically we’re not), one thing I don’t get is all this agonising over ‘who would be the head of state’!

That’s rubbish. What’s the Prime Minister? Why would we need a largely symbolic heard of state (king, queen, president, CEO, oil baron …) with no real governing power anyway? It’s ridiculous.

“A republic is a form of government in which the head of state is not a monarch and the people (or at least a part of its people) have an impact on its government.” That’s from Wikipedia. Does that not sound like New Zealand?

Further, “The word ‘republic’ is derived from the Latin phrase res publica, which can be translated as ‘a public affair’.”

Machiavelli divided governments into two types: principalities ruled by monarchs and republics ruled by their peoples. He should have known.

So why on earth do we need a titular someone over the top of the person who is patently at the helm (or playing at it, as is the case with John Key) of the country?

It’s simple. We don’t. Can’t we think of something else to throw money at that’s worth nothing, does nothing, has no impact on the country’s affairs and is mostly ceremonial?

We sure as hell can – we can add an ugly architectural excrescence to Auckland’s waterfront for a sport which is declining in popularity, and whose followers don’t actually care what we build on the waterfront as long as they have a clear path to puke into the harbour after wasting their money on copious amounts of NZ lager.

Of course, if Labour was in power, the same amount that would be erstwhile wasted on a ceremonial Grand Poobah on a social service, or education, or health. Because a ‘president’ of NZ would just be a highly paid honorary position for one underserving crony or another.

We do need a new flag.

We do need to be a republic – it’s time New Zealand grew up.

But we don’t need a ‘head of state’ when we already have a Prime Minister.

It’s really simple, and really obvious.

The start of a new year and a new decade seems as good a time as any to look at God, and religion.

I consider religion the result of failures by human beings to acknowledge and do anything about their own problems.

I flatly reject that we need a Judeo-Christian (or any other superstition-related, artificially constructed) framework to make us, or keep us, morally worthwhile beings. This is a crock.

Conversely, I consider most religions, especially in their more fundamentalist guises, to be anti-human, as they seek to artificially curb and counter so many frankly human traits we should be embracing. Do we expect tigers not to act like tigers? Cows not to act like cows?

I am a morally good person. I help people. I am courteous (mostly). I do not lie. I do not steal. I do not lend money for profit. I do not speculate. I am trustworthy. I even let cars in when I’m driving (that’s rare, for New Zealanders).

I don’t need any God bogeyman to keep me in line. If you do, get some help. It’s pretty clear to anyone with a modicum of perception what is right, and what is wrong.

And while I have met many, many Christians, I can count the‘good Christians’ amongst those on one hand. Without using all the fingers.

Typically, Christians in my experience are narrow-minded, sanctimonious, ignorant and judgmental, especially about those things they know least about.

And the same goes for most other religious practitioners I have met, including all you smug Buddhists who focus on yourselves above all else. And maybe I have just had really bad luck (which I sincerely doubt), but that’s been my experience.

Christianity at least has something in common with the left. Looking at the Bible, it’s pretty clear Jesus had some left-wing and humanist principles. It’s possible this was made into a religion just to get people to accept it, considering the deep state of ignorance many may have been in a couple of thousand years ago, but wow, did it ever get out of hand!

Also like the left, it’s been easy to get Christians arguing amongst themselves and splitting up into ever more squabbling and disparate factions.

Partly this is because the Bible is such a mess – all those different sources, the several translations it’s been through, the clearly schizophrenic relationship between the Old Testament (an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth) and the New (love your neighbour, forgive transgressors) which puts them entirely at odds with each other. Not to mention the different takes on even the same stories (try reading the resurrection accounts, for example) … it’s hardly surprising it has been virtually impossible to follow and enact, in any meaningful and consistent way, the Christians’ holy book.

(I hope you have gathered I have read considerable amounts of the Bible, and books about religion. File under ‘know your enemy’.)

But even the Ten Commandments, which you’d think even an idiot could follow, have proved impossible to most Christians.

“Thou shalt not kill” … seems pretty clear. Can anyone misread that? So how can there be Christians in the armed forces? Crikey, there are even ministers in the armed forces. That serves as a great and shining example as to just how flawed Christianity appears to outsiders.

The commandments start so:

I am the Lord your God (who is? Fine, whatever.)

You shall have no other gods before me (how many are you allowed ‘after’? Are they the dollar god and the profit god?).

Then:

1/ You shall not make for yourself an idol (cuts out reality TV, doesn’t it? And calling bit-players on small-country soap operas ‘stars’).

2/ You shall not make wrongful use of the name of your God (define ‘wrongful’. It really depends on your viewpoint).

3/ Remember the Sabbath and keep it holy. (Sure. Shut the malls, then. I’m all for it.)

4/ Honour your father and mother (even if they’re child-abusing arse holes? Like hell.)

5/ You shall not murder (seems fair. But once again, if someone attacks your kids, a human would retaliate …)

6/ You shall not commit adultery (seems fair, if you married in a Christian church. Widespread evidence to the contrary notwithstanding).

7/ You shall not steal (I can think of many examples in which stealing would be morally correct).

8/ You shall not bear false witness against your neighbour (what about the bloke two doors up?).

9/ You shall not covet your neighbour’s wife (sounds ridiculously difficult in many circumstances. And it excludes women – are they allowed to covet their neighbours’ husbands? Doesn’t sound fair at all!)

10/ You shall not covet anything that belongs to your neighbour. (But yeah, can’t help thinking their TV is better than mine. Does that make me a sinner? I’m not going to do anything about it. Besides, our entire Western Civilisation’s – and increasingly, the East’s – economic system is built on just that).

I think it’s pretty clear these commandments have had their (violent, bloody and ineffectual) day.

Likewise, the Biblical 7 deadlies are: Lust, Gluttony, Greed, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, and Pride.

Yet if gluttony was a sin, where does that leave the US? The US has huge rates of obesity and consumes most of the world’s resources. Yet if the contender for office isn’t Christian, forget it.

Lust helped me have kids; did it not work for you?

Wrath … why did the US invade Iraq, again?

Sloth – um, what about the ‘holidays’? Originally called ‘Holy Days’.

Greed and envy fuel the economy of the world. Always have.

And pride we are told is good – we’re supposed to be proud of our achievements and proud of our kids and proud of our country and proud of our All Blacks and blah blah blah.

I cannot understand why a civil society like ours can’t have secular aims we should all attempt to hue to.

Mine would be:

1/ We should not kill

2/ We should respect our planet

3/ We should respect the living

4/ We should respect the past

5/ We should endeavour to be honest and fair

6/ We should value virtue before profit

7/ We should endeavour to help those in need

8/ We should not steal the honestly acquired property of another
9/ We should consider the opinions of others, as they should consider ours

10/ We should honour and protect these precepts for all humans.

No God required. And we should learn these at school. And your comments are welcome.

As I feared, it appears Labour MPs and party members have accepted the mindset that Labour will lose the next election in two years, and that’s how they’ll change from the Old Guard, starring Phil Goff, and move on to something we can believe in.

If the Old Guard had any balls, they’d start doing something about this now and set up a future Labour, as I’ve said before.

But it’s unlikely. Pride must triumph for a decent fall to result, I fear. So we’ll suffer another term of National because of this stupidity – National happily privatising NZ services to both make them more expensive for users, to depreciate their utility and to line the pockets of National’s wealthy dependents and speculators.

And then Labour will have to buy them all back, at even greater cost, to get services running again. But what will National’s cronies care for this? Nothing – it’s a license to print money, after all.

When I really think about it, I don’t actually know what the Labour Party stands for any more. Do you? To me, currently, it looks like an ineffectual left wing of the National Party.

This may sound harsh, especially as Labour was responsible for a lot of good over its three terms. But Labour was also responsible for some embarrassingly pedestrian miss-steps. And who can forget the ghosts of Labour c1980s? We can’t forget because, like a slap in the face, that arch right-winger Roger Douglas is back in parliament under his true colours, leering at us and cackling like Muldoon.

Meanwhile, National’s business supporters wait in hope for the True Blue moves they’ve been dreaming of. These will let them ‘compete’ more (shorthand for ‘make more money with less regulation’). And the farmers await their National nirvana too; they’re already asking for cuts to welfare benefits to save money to lower the currency so they can sell at even better rates, while charging those same disadvantaged New Zealanders more for second grade, home-market agri-produce due to their pecuniary god called ‘export requirements’.

Will their hopes be fulfilled? Not while John Key remains fixated on his personal popularity. But he can’t have it both ways. The dam will break.

Meanwhile, it’s enough to make any caring human quail. It also brings back other ghosts – of the 1920s and ’30s, when Labour first rose towards power, and when Wellington and the farmers used to entrain people into Auckland to beat up unionists and break strikes. Farmers had to get their produce to market and, unfortunately for them, a lot of it had to pass through Auckland. And boy, they just couldn’t get Auckland wages low enough, could they? All this while the business owners sat in their Remuera hills and pulled strings.

Back then, it was damn clear what Labour stood for. Labour literally stood for those who laboured – the eight-hour day, non-dangerous workplaces, better conditions, fair wages, equity and rights.

But now it feels like Auckland against the rest again. That Auckland comprising suburbs of workers and unemployed, anyway. And it’s up to MPs like Phil Twyford and Jacinda Ardern to rally the cause.

But what’s the cause, Labour? Without clear branding, you’re lost. If you can’t tweet it in 140 characters (or at least, tweet a link), you don’t exist.

And we won’t be getting a new manifesto from Phil Goff and co.

In Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West, by John Ralston Saul, (Penguin 1993), the author discusses how Marie Antoinette became the first star in the modern sense of the word. He wrote “She was never really the Queen of France. That was merely her role. She played queen.” (My italics.)

This ditzy Austrian had a huge influence, unfortunately, despite being dragged from her carriage by a mob and, eventually, murdered. The leader as star has become de rigueur for the Western world.

Since then, it’s possible to become a star for practically anything, and often, curse it, for practically nothing. In Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture (Schwartz 2005), author Ariel Levy discusses (among many other things) how Paris Hilton, the cUS$28 million dollar heiress to the Hilton hotel fortune, actually became famous for a leaked (?) tape of her having sex. “The net result of these adventures in amateur pornography was that Paris Hilton became one of the most recognisable and marketable female celebrities in the country.”

This would once have been perceived as disgusting. At the very least, as troubling. Not that long ago, she would have become a disgraced exile.

If only. Nowadays, maybe she should run for office.

At least she can talk fairly coherently.

Nowadays, our politicians, at least at their worst, find it necessary to act as if they, too, are stars. If only they thought it necessary to act like responsible leaders. Even Obama, who I have some respect for, succumbs to guest spots on talk shows. At least he (and his advisors, I presume), dictate what he says on Letterman and its ilk.

Unlike our own ‘leader’ who mumbled through some partially inaccurate, risible crap about New Zealand at the behest of the Letterman shows’ producers.

Anything for the limelight.

For we have, as New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, a colourless individual at the best of time blessed, thanks to venality and greed, with a considerable fortune. And very little else. He doesn’t speak well, apparently makes decisions on poll results and plays politics like a boy trying to stay in with all the bullies while still being perceived as Mr Nice Guy by the other pupils. That he was the best the National Party could offer speaks volumes for the type of people in the party. Worse, it speaks volumes for anyone who voted for the schmuck.

New Zealand is a country, Mr Key. It comprises people. It’s not a medium-to-large business. And it doesn’t need an uncharismatic bore to pretend at being its star. If the uncharismatic bore did some Prime Ministering, things might be different. Or does that interfere with swanning about as a c-grade celeb?

For, despite an utter lack of charm or even an attractive simplicity, our Key just can’t resist a TV camera. He’s drawn to it like a moth to a tungsten light bulb. His performance on American TV was pure embarrassment. If he had good advice he wouldn’t have done it. Key patently does not get good advice, unlike his Labour predecessors.

If he’d had any nerve at all, Key would have insisted on saying what he wanted to say, to promote his image and his country, but no, the lure of a TV spot at any cost proved irresistible. He just did what was expected, as any gauche and third-rate plenipotentiary from a vassal state would have.

Then Key cut short his US travels to appear in Samoa after the devastating quake. Coincidentally, the beach he inspected was close to where he had stayed, in considerable luxury, just a short time before.

I would like to imagine he was in the island state from some kind of concern. Concern for the people of Samoa, not for the luxury resort business he has so enjoyed.

But I suspect he was there for a different reason.

The TV camera.

In New Zealand, currently, there is some disquiet about our exceedingly high ranking of numbers imprisoned. We rank well above many other Western-style democracies. New Zealand seems to be throwing people into prisons at an unprecedented rate.

The prison population was too high under Labour (a slightly left party that has been in power for three terms until ousted last year by the more right wing National Party). However, it’s now higher still, and National’s response has been to build prisons from shipping containers and to make more prisoners share rooms.

This is so typical of the difference in right versus left philosophies, I just have to comment.

The left (again, and understandably, generalising) tends to look at why people commit crimes, and tries to target resources accordingly. Not that this was super-effective under nine years of labour. But the left generally believes that people are good, although guidance can be called for.

But the right, generally, thinks people are bad. The right therefore prefers to capture and punish offenders, rather than try and figure out why they are offending. You can tell somebody is right wing as soon as they start spouting off about locking people up, and getting certain people off the streets, and about ‘punishment’.

The difference is illuminating. Philosophically, the left is saying ‘as people, how can we assist other people to be/do better?’ while the right is saying ‘criminals are other. As so  they are beyond redemption; they should be segregated from normal society.’

The left’s efforts get characterised as those of a ‘nanny state’. Anyone against the left eagerly seizes on such catchphrases and they get repeated so much, any real meaning soon becomes lost.

But what do the right’s efforts get characterised as? Perhaps the left just isn’t as good at one-liner denigrations.

(Perhaps it should be.)

But that’s beside the point. New Zealand has a high prison population because we have large disenfranchised minorities, and because the gap between rich and poor has been growing quickly over the last two decades.

Just as wealthy people seem to be much more preoccupied with securing themselves and their property, they also seem to be much less willing to look at the possible causes of high offending rates. Partly because they are, themselves, partly responsible.

I’m not defending criminal activity, by the way. I find violent crime utterly abhorrent. Physical violence immediately denies a victim their human rights. It’s prehistoric.

But yes, it’s very effective. When you have nothing, or you have a drug habit, or when you’re bored out of your mind, it’s a relatively obvious and immediate option.

So expect National to keep throwing people into every more crowded jails as they protect the farmers, the landed gentry and the business-owning classes from the other, while promising ‘better’ (as in lower) conditions that can be forced upon workers because of high unemployment.

Does it make you feel proud?