So farewell
Then
Milton Friedman
Taken from us by
The invisible
Hand.
Now that you and
Ronnie are
Gone,
Maggie is the
Only one from the old gang
Left
Unless you count
Pinochet.
As you arrive in
The luxury wing of
Heaven
I wonder if
Ron will
Remember you
And if you will have to pay for
Lunch.
Yesterday on Nine to Noon Kathryn Ryan asked me which of the stadium options I preferred. I gave in to glibness by making a throwaway comment about the North Harbour one. What I should have said is that I don’t really favour any of them. I feel railroaded.
I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about the idea of an ‘iconic” development, and for as long as I have lived in Auckland I have hoped that we would manage to make more of our waterfront.
But this is a very dubious way of going about it.
This whole exercise has come about because they are 12,500 seats short at Eden Park for a rugby game, the promoters are up against the clock, and they have their hand out for taxpayer money.
For this, we are asked to suspend all the usual considerations: sustained, informed debate; the RMA; fiscal prudence, and all, quite possibly, at the cost of the very aesthetic delight upon which the whole notion is purported to pivot.
There hasn’t yet been an Olympics story that hasn’t begun with horror stories about construction delays and ended with a gleaming stadium completed on time. I daresay this one could be completed in similar hasty glory. But the reason those stories have a happy ending is because as the deadline looms, the big chequebook comes out and the hapless mug who meets the cost of the thing is called upon to stump up with the shortfall.
I have no reason to believe this would not be our sorry lot.
I also foresee a peculiar New Zealand phenomenon that would also come into play: even as we pay more to see the project completed we will also see every single adornment, embellishment and flourish that might make the complex truly impressive thrown overboard like so much surplus weight, the better to contain the burgeoning cost and keep the foundering ship afloat.
Thanks to Dick Hubbard, the air of public discourse has become purple with the meaningless prose of the management paperbacks – all the way from "failure is not an option" to" "we’ll be eating, breathing and sleeping stadium for the next ten days". His over-excited choice of the expression: Ready, Fire, Aim tells the sorry story.
These management texts and their preternatural optimism have their place, and that is: propping up a wobbly office desk. But they have no place holding up a scheme as precariously unstable as this one.
How in God's name do you come up with a discouraging revelation to top the one the Government had to offer us this week? Well of course it's impossible.
Impossible, that is, unless you draft in the wit of The Onion's Scott Dikkers (otherwise known as Dr. Oswald T. Pratt).
In his charming little publication You Are Worthless: Depressing Nuggets of Wisdom Sure to Ruin Your Day, he offers page upon page of reasons not to bother getting out of bed in the morning.
-You hate your job. And it's safe to say that no one at your job is particularly fond of you either.
-When you pray, no one is listening. Furthermore, you look ridiculous.
-That special bond you think you have with your pet is imaginary. As long as it has food and water, you could get hit by a train tomorrow, and your pet wouldn't think anything of it.
-Next time you have sex, fixate on just how horribly unattractive your body is.
-Killing yourself would be a good idea. The only problem is that you don't have the guts
He's joking, surely, you will say, and yes, he's doing it for laughs. But it's a rare joke that does not have at least a kernel of truth to it.
Faith Hill declares she was just having a joke at the Country Music Awards this week, but take a look at the clip, and judge for yourself as the camera captures her apparent disgust at being passed over for the coveted title of Female Vocalist of the Year. Is this what she claims it to be: an act for the cameras, or just an unguarded moment of petulance?
I like the unvarnished truth of the thing. I don't know how many rictus grins I've seen on the faces of the vanquished at these awards ceremonies.
In that respect, the President of the United States of America offers a shining example. I watched him eating his plate of humble pie on CNN this morning. His was a mightily strained effort at good grace, with hints of petulance.
If he's still feeling disgruntled, he should probably forgo the fun of firing up The Google and checking the entries for "miserable failure" for a while; it might turn up this Slate piece, cataloguing - in painful detail - the epic scope of Rumsfeld's errors.
Indeed, Rumsfeld's dominance of the cabinet and the Bush administration may have guaranteed that America chose the entirely wrong paradigm for the past five years. Notwithstanding the spectacular violence of the Sept. 11 attacks, America might have done better had it not chosen a war paradigm to fight terrorism and instead chosen to employ a comprehensive array of diplomatic, intelligence, military, and law enforcement approaches. Doing so might have encouraged more of our allies to stand by our side. It might also have put America on a better footing to sustain its efforts for what promises to be a generational struggle against terrorism.
The President might grouch that hindsight is a wonderful thing, but to do that, he must overlook the fact that had he been willing to take a few ladles from the punchbowl of bipartisanship a little sooner in the evening, he would have found himself in conversation with any number of people willing to offer that revelation to him; even, in fact, before the fighting started.
Still, we live in an age where you must eat your own dogfood and keep smiling. With a big tip of the hat to SpareRoom, consider this truly wretched instance of life in the modern salt mines.
Bank of America merged with MBNA at the start of this year which strengthened their position, apparently, as the largest issuer of credit cards in the U.S. Well, you know what a merger means - plenty of meetings and conferences and cheerleading sessions and getting-to-know-you presentations. Inevitably, someone decides to sing a song. A U2 song. Adapted.
Watch the clip and see if you can get through the whole thing without covering your eyes. I could not. Dear God.
One commenter at Gawker captured the essence of the thing nicely:
These corporate brainwashing festivals were the worst part of my corporate career. And there was always someone really talented at singing, video production, comedy or poetry who did something like this with their talent. It always made me sick and this video is no exception. I have never been more proud to be out of the corporate world.
The one thing I'm waiting to find out is precisely who arranged what. Are these authentic employees who happen to be pretty good at putting on a song and remembering every line of their ghastly, but technically well-crafted, lyrics? Or could they be...hired guns in costume?
I smell something fishy here, and if it hadn't already been coined and given another meaning I'd say a good word to describe the whole disturbing business might be: starkish.
This is the farce that Dick built. 
This is the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the MP with trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the journalist all forlorn,
That called up the MP with trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the spin doctor tattered and torn,
That blandished the journalist all forlorn,
That called up the MP with trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the Chief of Staff hours before dawn,
That reamed out the spin doctor tattered and torn,
That blandished the journalist all forlorn,
That called up the MP with trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the Chief of Staff hours before dawn,
That reamed out the spin doctor tattered and torn,
That blandished the journalist all forlorn,
That called up the MP with
trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
This is the chook farmer sowing her corn,
That kept the cock that crowed in the morn,
That waked the Chief of Staff hours before dawn,
That reamed out the spin doctor tattered and torn,
That blandished the journalist all forlorn,
That called up the MP with trousers all warm,
That bossed the official,
That hired the expert,
That hustled the builder,
That laughed at the mug
That paid for the farce that Dick built.
I have already filled my weekly quota for discouraging revelations with that shabby marathon result, so there will not be a Friday one.
Besides, how could you top the artist’s impression on the front page
of this morning’s Herald? Wellington gets an intelligently-designed Cake Tin, Auckland gets a hastily-devised and monumentally ill-conceived Haemorrhoid Cushion dumped on our harbour front by a fanatical Rugby-head minister, aided and abetted by his boss. I am thus in the mood to devote a few moments to railing at the Prime Minister.
Her incapacity to see things from someone else's point of view is her great liability, I submit, and although the stadium would be another such instance, I refer in fact to this business of the Food Miles.
It's all very well for her to cite actual data, hard statistics and compelling logic, but really, Prime Minister, don't try to kid a kidder.
The Earth-in-crisis debate has reached its present position not only because thoughtful analysis, earnest debate - and, of course, Al Gore and his PowerPoint slides - have moved concerned citizens. The debate has also reached this political tipping point because canny operators like Greenpeace didn’t come down in the last acid rain shower. They have long apprehended that certain hearts and minds can only be won with cute devices, artful spin and cunning games with the ever-fickle human emotions.
Buy this magazine or the dog gets it is one of the oldest propaganda tricks in the book. Take the Halloween racket. I was limbering up this week to have another curmudgeonly shot at it when New Zealand's warmest-hearted mother unleashed a preposterous piece of heart-melting extortion upon the nation’s blog readers. There is no way on God’s earth you can hope to rebut a photo of loveable costumed preschoolers, honest innocent faces gazing up in expectation at a knocked door. Cute and cuddly will trump you every time.
Food Miles are not cuddly, to be sure, but as a concept they are most emphatically clever, and in their own slightly desiccated way, cute. The concept that underpins them is snappy, it's readily grasped, and it has the air of the irrefutable about it.
Challenge me, it sneers, I just dare you. Come on, pussy, whatcha got?
I say do not be cowed by these Eurocrats with their Food Miles, Prime Minister! Outflank them. Don't try to convince them that they're wrong; they're not listening. Your only realistic option is to scare them out of taking their Food Miles seriously.
How? By proposing that we apply their cute little concept to every damn consumable thing on the planet: Music Miles, Fashion Miles, TV Miles. If it comes from more than a few miles away, count the cost and ban it! Our children and their children and their children's children will thank us etc.
Most crucially of all, I suggest we embrace a regime of Sex Miles. Set up some stiff - and I use the word advisedly – environmentally-friendly rules about getting your end away.
If the object of your lurid desires is fully hot, you will be entitled to travel as far as three miles to get busy with them. If it's a friends-with-benefits hook-up, you can go two. Skanky ho, deadbeat or loser: end of the street.
Who can deny the logic? You might be burning all your own energy when you get there; but you’ll be using up the planet's resources to get yourself from your door to theirs.
Three miles seems more than far enough for any responsible citizen. We must remember, after all: we didn't inherit the bedroom - or shower, or sofa, or backseat of the Toyota - from our parents, we borrowed it from our great-grandchildren.
We owe it to them to do the right thing, and put the cushions back afterwards.
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