Random Play by Graham Reid

Journalists are rarely given the gift of prophesy. And like some Alice in Wonderland character they are always running twice as fast just to keep up with current events. The luxury of second-guessing the future generally falls on columnists.

Contemporary journalism largely consists of two motivations which might be given the same adjective: reflective.

News journalism is reflective of the present but can also reflect on past events, as happened this week when the 15th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall made news.

It was an opportunity for us all, courtesy of prompting by journalists, to reflect on that historic event and what has happened since to the two previously separate Germanys.

It isn’t all good news. Freedom comes at a price and for many former East Germans they are still paying it: there is unemployment which runs at an astonishing 60 per cent of those left in the old state, but most have fled anyway, looking for the bright future that democracy and capitalism promised. Many have yet to find it, and some even speak of how much better things were in the old days. It would be wrong to overstate that sentiment however. Few want a return to a dictatorial communism, they simply long for the certainties of yesteryear.

There was also an extraordinary figure I caught on National Radio. I think this is right, that only 19 per cent of marriages in Germany involve partners from the former east and west. The Berlin Wall has been replaced by a bedroom wall.

Of all the statistics batted around about bankrupt cities in the east and job creation schemes which disguise economic issues that is perhaps the most telling. But then again, what did we expect?

This was not just a country divided but a people divided: separated by history, culture, social mores, expectation, education, consumer goods … To expect that once the blocks and barbed wire were removed that everything would be hunky-dory and there would be much holding of hands is naïve.

While we might reflect on the current problems of Germany it is also possible to be speculative, to indulge in the folly of prophecy, and turn attention to a country where a similar scenario will be played out some time sooner or later.

Right now the likelihood is later, but that is only going to make the problems of a united Korea even more manifest.

The divide between North and South Korea is much more pronounced than that of the old Germanys.

PJ O’Rourke once quipped that East Germans didn’t want democracy, they didn’t even know what it was. What they wanted was jeans and rock’n’roll. There is more truth in that than many would like to admit. In East Germany a generation grew up at least having some notion about what was going on in the west. Books and records were smuggled in, underground groups passed the gossip, there was some interaction with the outside world, even if it was just a radio picking up a western station or discreetly talking to a tourist.

North Korea -- the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea -- is a whole other scenario. Under the regimes of the two Kims (“the Great Leader” Kim Il-sung and now his son Kim Jong-Il aka “the Dear Leader”) the place has been steadily sinking into poverty and famines, all to the accompaniment of military parades and sabre rattling.

The vast majority of the population of 25 million (half that of the south) are rural and poor, and know nothing of life outside this crucible of cryogenically frozen Stalinism.

The few people I have spoken with who have been to the north -- and the country only allows very few tourists, and always with guides -- have said that because of their cultural isolation even the language of the north is now quite separate from that of the capitalistic, American-influenced south. The pronunciations of words are distinct, and the vocabularies are increasingly becoming quite different. I guess in the north you don’t need to have a word for “blog” if you have never seen a computer, let alone used one.

North Korea is an anachronism in the modern world and, despite the volatile nature of its political relationship with the south, China and the USA -- and its isolationism -- it relies on the west for aid, and technical assistance in controlling the meltdown of its Soviet-era nuclear plants. There are a few small signs of a rapprochement across the border which is patrolled by thousands of troops on each side of the No-Man’s Land between. Some business is going on and a few in the south can see massive opportunities for trade if there is a thaw in the very frosty political relations.

But most in the south see the north as a real problem and they are very fearful of the future. I have been to South Korea three times and the people I have spoken to across the country were just plain terrified of any sudden failure of the state in the north. There would be a flood of impoverished northerners in their streets within days (you can be at the border by car in 20 minutes from the southern capital Seoul) and they would be people who had no comprehension of capitalism, corporate culture, democratic principles or anything else the wealthy south takes for granted.

These wouldn’t be people who wanted jeans and rock’n’roll, they have no idea what those things are.

In the meantime it is also impossible to do much trade with the north because it is so poor. It can’t afford to buy anything, has nothing to sell and the place is falling apart. Literally in some places.

So while politicians and social historians are pecking over the changes in Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall their findings won’t necessarily be much use when, and it is not an “if”, the two Koreas are put on the collision path of re-unification.

Someone might want to start thinking about that, and the new American president who dumped North Korea in the “axis of evil” then has largely ignored it might be one of them. The rhetoric might need to be toned down and genuine dialogue begin, however distasteful it might be to the ideologues of both sides.

We have sent millions in aid to North Korea and three years ago our ambassador to the south was also accredited in P’yongyang, the capital of the north. We have had political delegations go there.

There’s no money in this for us of course, but the idea is to steadily erode the political and social isolation of a country which clings to an ideology that has been discredited everywhere else and is corrupt to the core.

Significant numbers of Koreans (from the south, obviously) live, work and are educated in this country. They are our neighbours and friends. Their concerns about the future of their country are very real.

If history is, as one historian said, just one damn thing after another then we might want to consider the lessons of the Berlin Wall. And not let events on the Korean peninsula -- the “land of morning calm” as it used to be known -- become just another damnable thing in history.

America has re-elected its president. Well, as Forrest Gump said, that’s all I have to say about that. Other than this.

When it all went down television’s Jane Young breathlessly informed us the election proved America was a deeply conservative country. Uh-huh.

This statement of the bleedin’ obvious, delivered by Young as if it were a mystic revelation, confirmed my belief that too many of our political observers view America through the distorted lenses of Los Angeles or New York.

It is from there we read most political comment and columnists, so it’s hardly surprising people here assumed everyone in America was wise to Bush’s canny ways.

Well, there is a fair chunk of America between those two points of liberalism and out there in the small towns people don’t read, hear or see much of that sentiment. They are, and have always been, deeply conservative Jane.

So while we are polishing opinions about the failure of Democrats to capture the White House -- “If you’re so smart why ain’t you president?” -- we might also want to consider this: we live outside America and our attention is on the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, those living inside that great slab between the two coasts of America (and even within LA and NYC) see the world differently. They are a country at war and discussion inevitably turns back to 9/11. We forget that too often.

“You don’t **** with America,” as one guy in Arizona put it to me so eloquently.

In future when we are thinking of “America” we might like to step back from easy generalisations and consider the multiple Americas there are, and that in their own minds they are at war. And few electorates dump a wartime president who is talking tough on terrorism.

Speaking of that on-going war, a new frontline for Islamists might be opening, although you won’t have heard about it on New Zealand’s television news. Yet is right in our backyard. Or more correctly, our holiday playground.

The murder of 80 Muslim protesters in south Thailand a fortnight ago, by police who dumped them in trucks and let them suffocate, has gone woefully under-reported here. As has the whole volatile politics in these southern provinces of a county where Kiwis like to holiday.

When I was in Bangkok a few weeks ago I was astonished at the daily reports of trouble in the provinces of Pattani, Yala, Songhkla and Narathiwat. Thailand’s six million Muslim minority -- around 10 per cent of the population -- live there and they are pretty poor by comparison with the provinces which coin it in from foreign tourists.

These people feel financially and politically disenfranchised in this predominantly Buddhist country and have nothing in common with Bangkok Thais.

The news reports, which I had noticed on previous trips but this time felt quite overwhelming in their number, tend to be about shootings at roadblocks -- the area is under martial law and you can bet the Army enforces that ruthlessly -- or of police being murdered. Then there are the reprisals.

This year more than 400 people have been killed.

Many Thai Muslims in these provinces speak Yawi, a Malay dialect, and the region was once part of the old Kingdom of Pattani, a semi-autonomous Malay region which adopted Islam seven centuries ago. Thailand annexed the area a little over a century ago, but the people still have more in common with Malaysia than Bangkok.

Muslim separatists began their struggle for autonomy in the 70s and then central government started pumping money in so things settled down a bit. But this year the insurgency has come back with a new and more frightening subtext.

Three weeks ago Time magazine profiled the region and suggested what was once a localis independence struggle has become part of the international jihad as young Islamic teachers, trained in Pakistan and Afghanistan, have returned home fired by the radical ideas of Islamists.

We’ve heard this one before from Indonesia and the drive for autonomy in these Thai regions now appears to have links with Jeemaah Islamiah.

There have been hints that the nature of the struggle was changing. In January Islamic militants attacked an army camp and seized more than 400 weapons, many of them M-16 rifles. Then in April there were a series of attacks on security posts conducted by young men in what seemed to be suicide attacks. Many were carrying a booklet about the virtues of martrydom and a jihad.

The Thai government’s response was typically ruthless and ended in the massacre of more than 100 of the poorly armed militants.

But events of three weeks ago have a more ominous overtone. The violence, a “massacre” according to many Muslim spokesmen, began when some 1500 demonstrators gathered at a district police station in Narathiwat. They were protesting the detention of six men accused of providing weapons to militants. Police used water cannons and tear gas, shots were fired (some reports say some demonstrators were armed) and at least six demonstrators were killed.

Then the protesters were tied up, forced into the trucks and piled on top of each other. More than 80 died while being ferried in army trucks to the town of Pattani five hours away. They suffocated on the journey.

This has, understandably, added fuel to the anger of local Muslims and now attacks on police have increased, as have the reprisals. Some Buddhist schools in the area have closed.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra -- facing an election -- has a problem on his hands. But he won’t countenance any moves towards autonomy and has even been dismissive of the tragedy.

It doesn’t bode well.

That the mentality of a jihad may have infiltrated the region and hijacked the former secessionist struggle is a worry, and if it takes on the character of an Islamist struggle then you don’t need to be too smart to figure out what regions, a few kilometres drive away, could be hit if the extremists want to cripple Thailand’s economy and drive out tourist dollars.

The word “Bali” comes all too quickly to mind.

At this point however no one is saying foreigners will be targeted, but if you want to see how terrorism morphs into being from local disaffections this might be an object lesson. Just don’t expect to see it on the television news.

And finally apropos of nothing and to end on a more cheerful note, I currently have the album Soft Commands by Ken Stringfellow on repeat-play. A former member of the 90s power pop band the Posies, some will remember him for a brilliant vodka-fuelled night at the Kings Arms a few years back when he and fellow-Posie Jon Auer turned up, played up and got liquored up to everyone’s delight.

They were smart songwriters and intelligent guys -- and further evidence is on Soft Commands. Musically it is glistening pop of the McCartney/Brian Wilson kind but his lyrics take weird and deep twists. My favourite is When U Find Someone which sounds like it could have come from the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. But here’s a sampling of the lyrics: “On this side a man, his hand on the free world, an army at his command …”

And, “Sharing a dream as a prisoner screams, hands on the switch as we throw it together.”

It’s a politically-charged love song with the chorus, “When you find someone who loves you like that, you want them back in your life.“

As an assessment of infatuation with the powerful it’s very astute. And, as we now know, prescient.

Maybe we could give Ken the job Jane Young has?

Craig Unger’s book House of Bush, House of Saud has made a compelling link between the first families of two nations. But to what effect?

I interviewed Unger three weeks ago for the New Zealand Herald, but space constraints and other events meant the piece hasn’t run. And as you may see, it was a pre-election piece. After this week it is probably of less interest, although it shouldn’t be.

Unger’s book unravels some of the strangest webs of business and politics of our time. So rather than let the article die I reproduce it here. Make what you will, but make sure you read the book.

* * * *
American author Craig Unger doesn’t sound the lefty conspiracy-theory nutcase his opponents paint him.

Back in New York after a European speaking tour supporting his House of Bush, House of Saud -- which persuasively lays bare the complex relationship between the ruling dynasty in Saudi Arabia, and the family and friends of the first and second presidents Bush -- Unger is credible, jocular and reasonable, and itemises his points with well-honed supporting evidence.

His book makes the powerful argument that the Bush family -- and its political and oil-rich business associates -- have been so close to the Saudi royal family for generations they could not admit the role they might have played in the attacks on September 11. This despite 15 of the 19 terrorists that day being Saudis, and Saudi Arabia’s export of the radical Islamist philosophy of Wahhabism.

Unger says the flight of 140 Saudi citizens -- many of the extended Bin Laden family -- from the United States two days after September 11 (when all other aircraft were grounded) was undertaken with the tacit approval of President George W. Bush.

House of Bush, House of Saud opens with this extraordinary event then weaves back through the Bush family’s connections, and the Saudi business community in Texas which sought out political players such as James Baker, the former White House chief of staff under President George H. W. Bush and senior partner in the Carlyle Group which had numerous Saudi investors. The influence of the Saudis also made its way into the White House with flamboyant and astute Prince Bandar, a personal friend of both Bush presidents.

Unger -- who investigated the Iran-Contra scandal and was deputy editor of the New York Observer -- is an expert on Saudi-US relations, yet his book has been dismissed by Bush supporters and ignored by much of the mainstream American media. He admits this was not unexpected given the uncomfortable ideas he was inviting Americans to consider.

“The right wing noise machine uses the conspiracy label as a way of trying to discredit me without addressing what is being said.

“What I'm saying is that if you've done business with people for more than 20 years, more than a billion dollars worth, the chances are you regard them as colleagues, friends and business partners. So you are not going to submit them to the third degree.

“September 13 [when the Saudis left] was when war on terror should have begun but Bush saw Bandar -- who visited him that day -- as an old family friend. He didn't press the issue about Saudi involvement in the terrorist attacks.”

Instead, as Bandar and Bush went onto the Truman Balcony at the White House for a private conversation, the Saudis left.

“I don't know what Bush knew when he met with Bandar but I know he didn't start a war on terror, instead he went after the wrong guys. They were thinking of invading Iraq as early as 2pm on September 11.”

Despite Unger’s scrupulously researched book his case against the Bush family seems to have gained little grip at home. He has been interviewed over 500 times, the best response coming from European media, but in the United States has had little mainstream media coverage. That is a reflection of the symbiotic relationship between the power elite and journalists.

“We have this myth of a liberal media which is hogwash. What I am saying is outside the comfort zone. If you are covering the White House or Pentagon for one of these big media organisations the way you make your career is through access. You want that exclusive interview with Donald Rumsfeld and you are not going to get it if you raise these questions. You are barred and they will never talk to you again. So it's not in reporters’ interests to ask this stuff.

“My book is a counter-narrative as opposed to the official narrative propounded by Bush, which is largely unchallenged.”

He talks of the fabricated media spectacles such as Bush arriving on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in May last year wearing a flight suit with a “Mission Accomplished” banner behind him, and the control of information from the embedded media during the war.

Unger admires Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore for placing difficult questions about their president before the American public, but a book like his barely makes the needle of public discussion flicker.

“People just don't read in this culture, but for me this was the only way to tell this story, it was so damned complicated. I've worked in the mainstream press but I couldn't get this out there for the life of me, finally Vanity Fair published it.”

A year ago an extended article by Unger in that high-end glossy explored the dangerous liaison between the oil-rich cabals in Texas and Saudi Arabia. With Moore’s film, and books by Watergate investigator Bob Woodward and Kitty Kelley’s expose of the Bush family there is some small change in awareness of the issue.

Yet Unger, who grew up in Texas, understands why people in middle America are not picking up on this crucial issue, even during a presidential campaign: “Out there Mom and Dad both work and are busy with the kids. The newspapers are terrible and then you have right wing radio. The book has gained some traction, although I don't think any book has ever influenced a presidential election.”

Unger believes what he is up against is that Americans love spectacle but abhor instability. The issues he raises about the power of multinational oil companies goes to the heart of something deep in American culture: the infatuation and identification with the automobile.

“We have 165 million automobiles and they are a mythic part of our culture. So we are addicted to Middle East oil and the Saudis are our pusher. So as powerful as this nation is on some levels we are very vulnerable but don't like to admit it. This is a sensitive issue to the point of being taboo.

“One of the great ironies is that Bush has given us the worst of both worlds in that he was soft on the Saudis in terms of their role in terrorism, but despite an administration of oil executives [Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney] our ties to Middle East oil are more tenuous than ever as a result of the war. We may be entering the endgame of that relationship.

“Prince Bandar doesn't have the clout he once he had within Saudi Arabia, so even though he is close to the Bush's we don't have the inside track we once did.”

With the rise of power players like Saudi Arabia’s Prince Nayef, who has close ties with the militant clergy, the long relationship between the houses of Bush and Saud may be fractured, whatever the outcome of the war and the impending presidential election. A new relationship with the Middle East, its oil companies and ruling cabals will need to be forged.

This complex and evolving issue dates back to the mid 60s when oil-rich Saudis arrived in Houston and made friends like George H.W. Bush, and then his son.

“It is complicated, but I think you can get this down to 800 words for a newspaper. Even less. It‘s this: ‘The Saudis are the biggest funders of terrorism in the world and Bush has been doing business with them. Isn't that a problem?’

“It's as simple as that.”

House of Bush, House of Saud, by Craig Unger, Gibson Square Books through Addenda, $39.95

The new old Puritanism, again. A fortnight ago while researching and ringing around for an obituary piece on the late Maurice Shadbolt, I came across some quotes by him about the puritan ethic in New Zealand which was still endemic in the 30s and 40s. He said he was in “antagonistic reaction” to it.

We’d like to think that sniffy, furrowed-brow and arrogantly holy attitude might have died off -- after all, wasn’t that what we fought the 60s wars for? -- but it is still evident.

In my previous blog I fired a couple of late shots at those who condemned the young actress Keisha Castle-Hughes for her part in the new Prince video. The clip hadn’t actually been screened here at the time other than a snippet on a television news programme, which I also thought came at it with a variant of a “be prepared to go ballistic” intro. And indeed a few people did, adopting that puritan arrogance and wagging finger attitude.

Puritanism is still out there but that religion-based ethic has been replaced by what people have come to call “political correctness“.

We’re almost past the PC days of the 80s and 90s -- although the moronically un-PC phase is getting a little tedious already -- but if you listen to the way some people and politicians speak about smoking, for example, it is now in there with the seven deadly sins. And remember when Michael Cullen dismissed complaints about the new liquor tax which hit sherry drinkers? From a cloud somewhere in holier-than-thou land he sniffed about pensioners drinking a couple of bottles of sherries a week. Bugger it, if pensioners wants to drink themselves comatose every day of the week they might have just earned that right.

Like the old felluh in the wheelchair who was banned from his RSA for having a bit too much a bit too often. Dammit, the man was in a wheelchair, how much harm could he do?

But oh no, the pursed-lipped puritans weigh in, those who know better than you or I how we should live our lives. You know, safety nazis like the anti-fireworks folk who have determined that we, the great unwashed, shouldn’t be allowed to enjoy bonfires and skyrockets and so on in our own backyard with our neighbours. Gee, didn’t November 5th used to be such fun? My guess is that this year it will pass almost unnoticed and another opportunity for fun will have been lost and legislated out of existence.

(And don’t tell me that because people have no idea who Guy Fawkes was that’s reason enough to get rid of bonfire night. Go down that path and Easter is looking in serious jeopardy, along with Christmas, Labour Weekend and the Queen’s Birthday break.)

Already there are letters appearing in newspapers about how Halloween is an imported northern hemisphere festival so has no place here. Now just think about that for a minute.

I was reminded of how disconnected from contemporary reality some people are when reading the letters to this month’s North and South.

You may have seen the magazine advertisement in which a father and son are seated in a grandstand enjoying a game of rugby. Around them are a few teenage girls looking bored. The caption reads that for her birthday Dad took his daughter to the NPC. Or something like that.

I read it and laughed. But not everyone saw it that way. Jane Cookdale saw the ad in North and South and … Well, she went ballistic actually.

Unless this is a joke (and please God let it be one and I have got this way wrong) she said the advertisement “is not only chauvinistic but is actually making light of the demeaning behaviour the daughter is exposed to as her needs for attention, respect and appreciation are selfishly neglected by her father.”

But wait, Jane from Milton is just warming up.

“Is New Zealand a country where this kind of misogynistic stereotyping is considered funny enough for advertising?”

Light fuse and stand well clear, because here she goes: “Will the advocating of abortion of female foetuses be next?”

I thought such leaps of idiocy were long gone, back when Broadsheet was spinning on its axis and former supporters were flying off.

I feel sorry for Jane (but more for people in her orbit who might have to listen to such diatribes) and can only suggest to her and such people to raise their sights from the manuals of correctness and start enjoying life, there is plenty of it out there. And even more than before.

This hits home to me every morning at the letterbox. In my block of 21 apartments I am the only person who subscribes to the Herald. People are getting their news and entertainment from elsewhere, or perhaps not at all. When I moved in almost three years ago I was told the body corporate didn’t allow Sky digital dishes because they looked unsightly. I rang the body corporate guy and pointed out that my end wall faced a railway line and the only people who could possibly complain would be train passengers. If you’ve ever travelled by the western line -- or indeed, unlike our new mayor, on any Auckland suburban rail line -- then you’ll know that digital dishes are the least of the unsightly sights. So my dish went up.

Now in my block there are at least 10 dishes visible (not that ugly looking actually). And that tells me people are turning off mainstream Kiwi television also.

That’s what happens when you sign your programming over to Touchdown and “reality” shows I suppose.

I’m old enough to remember when people at work would talk about what had been on television the previous night, knowing everybody had seen the same programme. Now there are more choices on the screen from about 40 channels to DVD and video selections, X-Box and God knows what else. At night you could even read a book or magazine. That’s if you want to stay at home.

A couple of Wednesdays ago we went out to dinner in a suburban Ponsonby restaurant-cum-bar and the place was packed. We also went out last Monday to a Viaduct place and it too was heaving. People don’t just wait for the weekend to party down as they used to. People have lives and are enjoying them.

Some might consider them hedonists, (insert your opinion here, Jane from Milton) but they don’t seem bad people to me. Although some of them were shamelessly smoking.

The pinched-mouth puritans of old New Zealand and their neo-conservative offspring must cringe when they see what has happened to their world.

Jane in her letter said she couldn’t believe that “any intelligent person would find [that rugby advertisement] attractive or appropriate.”

Appropriate, Jane? For what?

And this came from Milton -- a town once called after its chief feature, a mill -- but now sharing its name with the great visionary poet? Still, he was a Puritan. But also one who was a humanist and defended free will.

How appropriately ironic.

Auckland elections: Hurry up and wait.

I wasn’t going to write about the Auckland mayoral election because … Well frankly, why would you bother?

People have said it was the dirtiest campaign in years, I just thought it downright depressing. I don’t have a particularly long recall about such things, but has there been in recent memory a more disappointing group of contenders than the three main-players on offer? Little wonder it descended so rapidly into playground name-calling. (But calling in the school bully to sort it out seemed weird, huh?)

It goes without saying that Banks and Fletcher were never contenders for my modest vote, but really: Dick Hubbard?

The man seemed stunned by the attention he received on announcing his bid, and remained tongue-tied and off-message in subsequent weeks. Whatever that message was. That he wasn’t Banks? Well, I’m not sure that’s enough, although the size of his majority suggests it might have been for many.

As the figurehead of the biggest city in the country Dick has all the charisma of a ping-pong ball. And, given his promises on election, I suspect a similar intellectual rigour also.

My guess is that Dick, nice guy that he probably is, will be outsmarted -- he is certainly outnumbered -- by those of City Vision who have ridden the anti-Banks wave. They are hungry for power and you can bet the sniping and in-fighting which comes from clashing egos will start sooner rather than later. Already there are some slightly whacko announcements.

It was easy to be under whelmed by Hubbard on the night of the election. (And I’m sorry, but while his wife is perfectly entitled to her faith the cynicism rose in me like bile when I read of her quoting from the Bible. Humorists take heart, there is life after Banks.) His chinwag to Linda Clark on Monday was even less reassuring: he spoke of vision and a feel good factor, of building a team and so forth. Okay, it’s early days but when someone rabbits on about what the city might look like in six or nine years it rather sidesteps what that person might have to contribute in the interim.

And Michael Barnett of the Chamber of Commerce is right saying we should be setting our sites on Sydney and Melbourne as a point of comparison rather than thinking of ourselves as a bigger and better Wellington.

I wasn’t surprised when Dick had to admit that he hadn’t taken a train in many, many years. These people who bang on about better public transport seldom have. There’s something that smells patrician about that.

When Hubbard talks of cleaning up crime in the CBD I suspect he’s not talking of corporate theft and greed in the high-rise banks and insurance companies but … But what? Not boy racers again is it?

Well, sadly it is. What would mayors do without them as a scapegoat?

When Hubbard talks about making the city safe in the early hours of the morning my guess is he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Does he go there regularly at 2am? I doubt it. He’d heard about the problem from others.

As one who has worked and partied in the inner city for the past couple of decades I have to say I haven’t actually seen a lot of crime. Lord knows there were mornings when, crawling from some club or other, I would have been an easy target for a malcontent or thug. Never happened. So I wonder where all this crime is. Maybe Banks, unbeknown to us, sorted it out when he puffed his chest about the boy racers and started in on the spitters?

Here’s a prediction: by the next election crime will not have been “cleaned up” in the CBD. It will be business as usual on the law’n’order front as an election issue. It always is.

Well, good luck anyway Mr Hubbard, you got my vote. But I was given no other option really.

Although there was one I could have pursued and seriously entertained the idea: to not vote at all. Yes, I know democracy was won when blood flowed on the streets of Paris, and probably Flanders Field and so on. But to not vote is actually a viable, considered choice. Herald columnist John Roughan wrote as much last Saturday, and got in before me.

I have always been amused when the self-righteous start banging on about the civic duty in voting, of making a choice. But if you weigh up the options and decide not vote then you too have made a choice. I felt genuinely sorry for the MP Ashraf Choudhary, an obviously intelligent man, who abstained from the vote on the prostitution bill and was berated far and wide. The man seemed to me quite sincere: he had heard the opinions from all sides and had decided not to vote either way.

When he recently opted out of voting on the Civil Union Bill the National MP Judith Collins said he should resign if he couldn’t make a decision.

"It seems that on these difficult conscience issues, Mr Choudhary has no conscience," she trumpeted. What an insulting and obviously stupid remark, but really no surprise coming from her I guess.

We are quick to demand people make their minds up on complex issues. Talkback radio depends on instant opinions and I was disappointed to see that the STV electoral option is being derided because it takes a bit longer to get a result. Are we in that much of a hurry that we can’t wait an extra day to get the council or government that the majority of the people would be happy with?

I’m not a great supporter of STV but it seems that if the best we can say against it is that’s a bit slow then maybe it has more merit than I think.

So maybe slowing down, taking time and thinking things through isn’t such a bad idea. And if you do that on an issue and come to no clear conclusion then what’s wrong with that? It’s just a twist on Keat’s “negative capability” I reckon.

What we must recognise it that there is active and passive apathy: in one you don’t act because you can’t be arsed, in the other you don’t act because you’ve weighed it all up and figure it isn’t worth the effort, that your actions would change nothing.

(If you wanted to see that old black vs white bogey tossed around as opposed to clear thinking and an ability to balance conflicting ideas, you need go no further than the recent Kerry vs Bush “debate” over the question of whether an anti-abortionist’s tax dollars should be used for abortions. You can guess who saw the thing in monochrome.)

There’s also that argument that the people who don’t vote shouldn’t complain about what they get dumped on them. Well, it’s always been my gut instinct that people who don’t vote out of sheer indolence also can’t be bothered writing letters to newspapers, getting out on street marches or even ringing talkback. They don’t complain, at least not in any way other than over a beer, and that seems harmless enough. We all do that. If these people are, as the French say, disengage from voting then they are probably disinterested in all that other tiresome stuff as well.

But while we’re taking a lofty view of our fellow civilians: I have to say I agree with those who wrote to the newspapers and berated Keisha Castle-Hughes for appearing in that Prince video. I too thought it was shocking and that little miss is getting just a bit too big for her boots. Imagine “a leading actress and role model to young New Zealanders” (such as Andrea Warmington of Royal Oak) behaving like that. It is indeed a matter of concern the parts she is choosing to accept, although I believe her agent Graham Dunster is probably poisoning her mind. He showed “a patronising lack of respect to the victims events many consider far too serious to be trivialised in a music video”, according to Nigel Godfrey of Sandringham.

And Mr Godfrey was quite right when he suggested Dunster donate his commission to a charity picking up the pieces of terrorism.

From the moral high ground you occupy, sir, can you see one from there?