Island Life by David Slack

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.

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.

As if the Maxim scoop wasn't impressive enough, Public Address is once again proud to bring you news you'll be reading in tomorrow's mainstream media. Here is a leaked list of the top ten suspects in the disappearance of Napier woman Pania of the Reef. These people should not be approached without a camera phone.

Brownlee, Gerry
Means: Big fella, burly. Woodwork teacher, would know how to wedge her off the plinth.
Motive: Keeps damaging his paperweights in "frank exchanges of views" with McCully.

Clark, Helen
Means: Was in PNG at time, so could easily have got to Napier and back without anyone noticing..
Motive: Best way to keep Maori Party off front page is to get some other Maori on it.

Clark, Linda
Means: Took one day off air this week. Same day, statue went missing.
Motive: Just 48 hours prior, conducted long discussion on her show about collecting art.

Farrar, David P
Means: At time of disappearance was in "transit" on return from "trip to UK." Blogging output suggests he never left the country.
Motive: No new hot chicks on findsomeone.co.nz for six days now.

Lunch, Eating Media
Means: Vast production budget, wide range of dubious associates.
Motive: New series about to air.

Morrison, Howard
Means: Just as fit today as he was when he was a young fullah.
Motive: Needs campaign mascot to show Maori women how to get a bit trimmer.

Radar, Te
Means: Maori TV production crew at disposal.
Motive: Would make interesting guest on new show.

Shadbolt, Tim
Means: Still has trailer and tools for the odd concrete job.
Motive: No national publicity for Invercargill for nearly a week and a half now.

Suppressed, Name
Means: Has committed vast range of crimes. No-one able to identify him.
Motive: Serial offender.

Twins, Evers-Swindell
Means: The perfect crime: no-one could say which one had done it. Hawkes Bay locals.
Motive: Always doing crazy shit like this.

It is an article of faith amongst the grumbling types that the European Union is the flag- bearer for everything that is wrong with modern bureaucracy. So stand by for another round of EU-bagging, courtesy of a joke that begins: How many men does it take to change a light bulb in a British church?

"Thanks to the European Union's "Working at Heights Directive" the answer is four -over three days at a cost of more than 1,300 pounds." This news courtesy of Reuters, who probably picked it up from this item in the Daily Torygraph.

For many years, Father Anthony Sutch of St Benet's Church in Norfolk had been getting a firm in to change the light bulbs high up in the walls of the nave. It took one man and a ladder couple of hours and cost about 200 quid.

But the one man and his ladder got a bit unreliable, so they tried a local electrical firm instead, who told them that a new set of government regulations had just come into force and they'd therefore have to do a full risk assessment before they got underway. And they'd have to use a scaffolding tower to do the job.

Result: two people took seven hours to put up and take down scaffolding to reach five light fittings.

Cost: 1300 pounds.

So what do we have here: another example of rampaging bureaucracy strangling the aspirations not only of right-thinking entrepreneurs and shareholders everywhere but now hapless parish priests as well?

Depends how relaxed you feel about people breaking their necks.

Consider this unhappy story from Iowa. A 17 year old working in a building supply store falls 18 feet from a fibreglass extension ladder. He was changing a light bulb when he dropped to the concrete floor. A few minutes earlier his boss had tried to change the bulb from the ladder without success and had decided instead to change it after work using a forklift.

You could say that job was just a matter of someone shinning up a ladder, as the Torygraph columnist grumbled about the church lights, but you don't have to fall very far to do yourself a hell of a lot of harm, and oddly enough, people seem to keep doing that.

There are two aspects to this that interest me.

The first is the matter of the language the authorities employ to deal with this kind of thing.

The other is the inordinate cost these days of getting a couple of blokes around to do a job of any kind.

Language first. Here's what a spokeswoman for the Health and Safety Executive had to say about these new rules. Their intention is to discourage people from using ladders from "working at height", or to quote a spokesperson:

"Schedule six of the regulations says that ladders can only be used if a risk assessment shows that the use of more suitable work equipment is not justified because of the low risk," she said.

"Risk assessment". There's a terrifyingly vague-sounding expression that connotes nothing so much as many pages of jargon and an expensive consultant or two clocking up the billable hours at your expense.

I do believe that bureaucracies everywhere would do themselves a huge favour by using plain language. In fact, they do, at the sharp end of the, er, client interface. The trouble is, it's often overly simplified, while one layer deeper into the bureaucracy, where you will inevitably find yourself going reluctantly with your application form in triplicate, there is a different breed of bureaucrat who has become familiar with the jargon and acronyms of their particular little corner of the bureaucratic universe and who will blithely pepper you with them in their impenetrable correspondence.

When someone in the organisation does actually decided to deploy that plain language, though, the sun fairly glows. Here: look what risk assessment means, according to Britain's HSE*

What is risk assessment? A risk assessment is nothing more than a careful examination of what, in your work, could cause harm to people, so that you can weigh up whether you have taken enough precautions or should do more to prevent harm. The aim is to make sure that no one gets hurt or becomes ill. Accidents and ill health can ruin lives, and affect your business too if output is lost, machinery is damaged, insurance costs increase, or you have to go to court.

You are legally required to assess the risks in your workplace. The important things you need to decide are whether a hazard is significant, and whether you have it covered by satisfactory precautions so that the risk is small. You need to check this when you assess the risks. For instance, electricity can kill but the risk of it doing so in an office environment is remote, provided that 'live' components are insulated and metal casings properly earthed. and self-employed people to assess risks in the workplace.

Applying this now to the church in Norfolk, I'd say the risk assessment should take, oh, five minutes? Maybe fifteen if it takes a while to write it down.

What you're looking for, surely, is a simple description that says how high up the lights are, how stable you'd be at the top of the ladder as you took the old light out and put a new one in, and how severely mashed your skull might be if you took a header. That sort of thing. You might tone it down a bit for the vicar. And of course, you should describe a means of doing it where no-one is likely to get hurt: does it warrant a scaffold or a platform or not, and if so, how do you do it?

I don't see that any of that should necessarily entail any significant complication of daily life. The discouraging part is coming to realise that: the bloody lights are too high up; that someone could get hurt changing them, notwithstanding that they've been doing it for years without incident; and, of course, that it will all cost money.

Which brings me to the second aspect: 1300 quid seems a bit stiff, you have to admit. But maybe it would be a good idea to be doing something about building design. It's not just the EU that's doing this nutty stuff; most OECD countries appear to be doing much the same thing. If you adopt safety requirements for working at height, it comes at a price. If you don't want to pay for the scaffolding and the cherry pickers and the like, you might want to look at your building plans and ask what you can do to mimimise the cost of that mid-air maintenance.

You could just pray nothing bad will happen, I suppose, but back at St Benet's, Father Anthony is taking things into his own hands and looking at ways of getting bulbs and fittings that last a bit longer and dropping the light fittings down so they are a little easier to reach.

* Health and Safety Executive. Just how much do those acronyms piss you off when you're not in the loop, though, eh?

There's plenty in this new government for a bemused Australian to chuckle about, and look - The Australian is bemused and chuckling about it.

Assisted by our very own Fran O'Sullivan it has a story headlined "Bad joke Foreign Minister for Kiwis", the thrust of which is that Winston Peters - an outspoken, anti-immigration protectionist who promotes racial profiling of Muslims - will become the public face of New Zealand on the world stage.

Of course, Australia has heard that one before. Take a bow, Sir Les "I'm that low I could parachute out of a snake's arsehole and still have room to free-fall" Paterson, cultural attaché to London, and fine role model for the newly-elevated Minister for Courtenay Place.

Just for curiosity's sake, I photoshopped Winston's Italian locks into a Sir Les mop of grey hair.

It's pretty instructive. Even with disheveled hair, your Maori scrubs up way better than your Sydney Catholic pisshead.

So no danger there. He can look the part. And if he's prepared to read the executive summaries of the executive summaries that I'm informed they used to scribble for him last time he held a Crown Warrant, well then, he'll do what's required of him, no worries.

Of course, this position gets him way the hell away from the tent altogether, to use this week's most over-used metaphor. For those weeks when he isn't out spreading the good word about Tolerant, Inclusive, Progressive, Nuclear Free New Zealand in exotic locations, though, what's Helen Clark going to do to emulate Jim Bolger's highly effective late night coalition-management sessions with Winston over a bottle of hard liquor?

Perhaps she might be well-served by adding a useful item of equipment to the beehive gym. You know those mechanical bulls they have in Texas bars? Stay on for 10 seconds and you win a 32 ounce steak -that kind of thing? I think if you were to put one of those next to the cross-trainer, it might be a good idea for H1 to hop on to the bull each morning and see how long she can stay in the saddle.

If she can hang on to that, Winston should be a piece of cake.

Oh, but you have to laugh. Who knows? Maybe this is a perfect expression of the extremely pragmatic nature of our politics, and of that ultimate political survivor. Helen Clark.

You push to the right to get yourself a stable majority, and in the process, by cuddling up closer to a clutch of centrist policies, you also soak up some of the oxygen of the party that had given you a hell of a fright.

To the extent that National fashioned a platform out of resentment, this potentially cuts out a good bit of the supporting timber.

In rhetorical terms, it leaves them less room to move on Treaty issues, less room to move on Tax, and less room to move on Nanny State and PC criticisms.

It also resurrects an old First Past the Post favourite: the marginal electorate. Look at those resuscitated prospects of central government roading money for Tauranga and Wellington, and ask yourself how much that differs from, say, Think Big Money for the marginal seat of Whangarei in 1981.

Pragmatism through and through, then. Enough to make you, well, Green around the gills if you're of a more idealistic persuasion.

In my interview with Andrew Sharp for the Civil War book, I asked him about the large part that pragmatism plays in our politics. He said we don't like our ideas played out and exposed and shown for what they are. He also said he thought those characteristics in society have both good and bad effects. If either of those things changed a lot, he says, we'd change.

From the point of view of people like Rod Donald and Jeanette Fitzsimons, that must be starting to seem like something of a remote prospect.