No Punches Pulled: Offences, Outrages and Other Observations

Preface

For almost half a century I’ve been writing regular newspaper and magazine columns, to the extent that it could be accurately described as my occupation, yet curiously I’m always described as a businessman. Apart from three intense years up to the age of 24 whereupon I retired, and then an intensely busy six years comeback from 1985, my commercial activities have been little more than a watching brief while I pursued other interests. But even in that hyperactive 1980s period I was producing a weekly column which appeared in every New Zealand newspaper outside of Nelson.

Readers have sometimes accused me of being deliberately provocative. Apart from obvious teases I’ve never once done that; rather, not pulling my punches and always seeing the funny side of things has been my approach.

Today the internet provides instant reader feedback. Do these reactions reflect the wider society, I wonder? I certainly hope not, given the frequent misrepresentation of what I’ve written and occasional bigotry in many of these responses.

Beaten to the punch by the immediacy of electronic news sources, opinion writers now dominate newspapers’ content. They fill an important role in widening interpretation of events, exposing cant and also, hopefully, of stimulating and entertaining. Unlike the days of the first great columnist, H. L. Mencken, it is now a crowded field, but modern life is so fast-moving and complex that diversity of opinion is desirable. Mencken wrote about 5000 words, but that wouldn’t work today. The columns in this book are all circa 800 words and better for it.

The columnist’s bugbear is editorial interference, frequently on absurd grounds, which is why this collection is described as unexpurgated. They are what I wrote rather than the diluted versions that were published.

Bob Jones

July 2014

PEOPLE

Fat of the Land

As a boy I was taken to the annual A & P show in Upper Hutt. My mother feigned an interest in the farm stock being paraded and insisted I do likewise, she deeming this ‘educational’. But my attention was focused longingly on the out-of-bounds carnival clamour at the park end, this my mother dismissing as for people of low-breeding.

One year, I escaped and ventured into this forbidden wonderland of wickedness. There were the dodgems, rides and a candyfloss vendor, but I was drawn to the freak shows, these stemming from the American circus tradition of accompanying sideshows, which back then no self-respecting circus would be without. Today they’re considered tasteless, but, more pertinent, the freaks I saw are now the norm.

For the two absolute ‘musts’ in those yesteryear freak shows were the fat lady and the tattooed man. I paid my sixpences and gazed awestruck at a large negligee-clad woman who today would be considered almost anorexic, and then at the tattooed man, marvelling at such inane self-abuse.

Who could have guessed that six decades later the capital’s pavements would be widened to cope with the hordes of heaving beasts, emerging mainly from government offices, each on my estimation having stripped fighting weights in excess of 300lb. More astonishing, most are in their twenties, this phenomenon being a recent years’ development. And while obesity is not just a female issue, the fact is that the Wellington CBD culprits are mostly female.

A chap like me, being of a delicate and sensitive disposition as readers have doubtless discerned, must now when venturing out be balletically twinkle-toed for fear of being crushed into pulp. It’s like being back in the boxing ring of my youth as I dance and weave, avoiding these moving mountains, for once in motion, like supertankers, they cannot easily stop. Sooner or later someone will be killed.

One of my company’s Wellington buildings marks the city’s highest pedestrian count. Currently one ground-floor shop is vacant, required temporarily for engineering work above. In April I placed a sign in its window announcing that in a fortnight a freak show would occur within at midday. On the day a full window replacement sign declared:

FREAK SHOW

Today at midday

FREE ENTRY

See the freaks; a slim woman and an untattooed man

Inside I had seated a scantily clad, pretty young girl of my acquaintance, and alongside, a young chap in a pair of shorts.

In fact the girl, Elitsa, has double freak credentials. She’s Bulgarian-born, and I, being a student of such matters and knowing Bulgaria, can assure readers that pretty girls are not conspicuous there.

First in were three old ladies declaring they were looking forward to this event. It did not live up to expectations, they dismissing it as ‘more of this installation art rubbish’. Thereafter came a steady flow of young blokes hitting on Elitsa, and indignant heaving horrors (we had the double doors open) who abused her for ‘letting down the sisterhood’.

All of this is alien to Auckland CBD occupants, they lacking city government offices for mammoth supply, and also because downtown is crowded with stunning Chinese beauties obeying their genetically pre-determined requirement of non-stop frock and shoe purchasing.

There’s a current vogue of claiming these grotesques are victims of their genes. It’s nonsense. Everyone over 50 will tell you they can remember the name of the one fat kid at school, so rare were they.

This extraordinary latter-years obesity outbreak, unprecedented in human history, is not peculiar to New Zealand. America, Australia and Britain are also weighed down by this heavy problem. Indeed an English professor last week claimed that American obesity alone equates in resource consumption to an extra billion population. But can you imagine a dumber government action than that now proposed in England, namely to criminalise mocking the obese, in line with racial and sexual discrimination laws?

These human hippos are self-made, and ridicule may inspire them to unmake their degrading situation. It’s not hard. Just stop stuffing yourself with rubbish. Recently, the front page of the Wellington newspaper bore a large photo of a superbly built young Maori man in a pair of shorts. I assumed a new All Black, but not so. For alongside was a smaller photo of a lard mountain, only the eyes making this blob discernibly human. It transpired this was the fighting fit, lithe young bloke in the main photo, one year earlier. He’s 22, now a university student and, in his own words, ‘living life to the full’. A year back, filled with self-pity, he sat at home all day. How did he do it? ‘I stopped eating KFC, the weight fell off and exercise did the rest.’

26 June 2012

Follow the Leader

Last year I recounted how my then 15-year-old daughter’s mother had suggested I would be pleased to learn that she (the daughter) had opted to study the classics. On receiving my concurrence, she had then startled me by saying, ‘Good: it will cost you $7,000.’ Seven thousand dollars for textbooks seemed a bit rich but, as it transpired, ‘studying the classics’ in the capital’s top private girls school comprised gallivanting about Italy, Crete and Greece, gazing at rubble. This nonsense led to a mind-blowing post-trip school report, advising that this jaunt had enabled a ‘better understanding of movies with a classical era theme’. God help us. We’re doomed. Subsequently, the headmistress ran off with a senior Anglican cleric, a demonstration of abysmal taste on both their parts, so the possibility of improvement arose. But alas, not so, for rubble-gazing absurdities continue.

I say that because this year’s lark — which I’ve refused to pay for, thus foolishly her gullible mother has — is that this now 17-year-old daughter is to travel to New York on (steel yourselves) a ‘future leadership course’, a matter of deep distaste to me. ‘Who do you propose leading?’ I asked her scornfully. She’s a smart aleck and promptly retorted, ‘My followers.’ I boxed on. ‘And where will you lead them?’ ‘Wherever I choose,’ she replied gaily. Observing that the only place she will be leading anyone if she continues wasting her time with this rubbish is to a checkout counter operators’ diploma, which I imagine Massey University offers, fell on deaf ears.

I used to argue with Alan Duff about this leadership guff. ‘Where are the Maori leaders?’ he would lament. Suggesting that Maoridom was awash with carved-walking-stick-leaning-on poseurs, their so-called leaders, was precisely the problem, didn’t wash with Alan, who nevertheless meant well. But in my view, the last thing Maori youth and particularly boys need are ‘leaders’, but, instead, more personal self-reliance. If I was running a boys college I’d discourage team sports and promote instead individualistic sports, be they athletics, fencing, swimming, tennis; the scope is enormous. Plus, it goes without saying, get them excited about history et al. Chinese kids now dominate our schools’ top academic performance lists published each year-end, and usually go on to further success. Thank God they’re here, but where are the Chinese leaders inspiring them? No one worth their salt needs ‘leaders’, which by definition implies they’re gormless followers. Training kids to be ‘future leaders’ as Rotary, doubtless well-meaning, does, will merely turn them into ghastly prigs, doomed to disappointment. It’s an ignoble ambition and the mind boggles at what they teach in these courses.

Still, I have been heartened by some recent experiences. A few weeks ago I visited Christchurch’s Cashmere College, a decile 8 state school, to talk to the approximate 100 senior classics and history students. Most intend going to university next year to pursue degrees in these subjects, which is precisely what we need. I say that because we live in an age of unprecedented technological change which will need thinkers to make sense of it all. When I asked the students whether they were concerned about future employment, most raised their hands. Mind you, that might well be the case with any class subject. Nevertheless, I pointed out that, by way of example, my company only employs history or classics graduates, as by dint of their choice they demonstrate curiosity and independence in not running with the mob, and were therefore easy to teach. We’d certainly never let a BCom type near us, and as for MBA dullards — possibly the greatest of all the many disgraceful cons currently occurring under the much abused broad umbrella of ‘tertiary education’ — they’re doomed with this badge of mediocrity. We don’t allow class actions in New Zealand, although it’s now under consideration. Should it eventuate, I would enjoy promoting a class action against mercenary universities for massive damages for flogging these non-academic, MBA pretend degrees to the gullible. Success in commerce amounts to common sense, a broad knowledge and an open, enquiring mind, which no loser enrolling in this tripe has by definition. I should emphasise that there’s nothing intrinsically meritorious in the classics, history or philosophy et al, but instead that they are absolute key background subjects towards achieving a broad knowledge, pending students deciding on their ultimate careers, whatever they may be.

Recently my Auckland office employed, part-time, a young woman in her last year finishing her classics degree. I was pleased to learn from her that at Auckland University there were several hundred classics students. Perhaps they’re the same as the Cashmere pupils, for most gratifying of all in an enjoyable day was when I asked how many ultimately intended to be self-employed and most raised their hand. It’s all very encouraging.

25 June 2013

Note: I made a mistake with this column. It transpired that my daughter did not fly to New York to train as a future leader but instead as a ‘future world leader’. As she has the memory span of a goldfish, the world will be in big trouble when her time arises to take over.

Blaming Others

Wellington’s newspaper The Dominion Post has acquired a risible reputation for its sometimes ludicrous front pages. On its current form, if World War III broke out it would play second fiddle to a blaring front-page account of a cat up a tree.

The Dom, as it’s colloquially known, plunged the depths last year with a ridiculously over-the-top full-page photograph of a QC caught driving over the limit; justifiable treatment only if he’d won the Nobel Prize or climbed Everest naked. But it excelled all previous idiocies recently when it devoted 90 per cent of the front page to a mind-blowingly non-story relating to a mortgagee house sale. Across the top it ran three photographs of a weeping Mrs Fesuiai. Underneath, the bold-type lie: ‘An $800 debt spirals into $79,000’. I say ‘lie’ because it transpired that the original $800 car tyres loan back in 2003 was subsequently added to by further borrowings, ‘to cover family events, gifts and other expenses’ in Mrs Fesuiai’s words. The interest rate quoted is the standard one for hire-purchase, credit cards and the like. In short the debt wasn’t $800 at all.

In taking these loans Mrs Fesuiai now blames others. ‘We were gullible and were taken for a ride,’ she asserted, although by whom she doesn’t say, but being of that mind, five years ago she decided to stop making payments on her then $11,000 debt obtained for ‘family events, gifts and other expenses’ and instead to sue the lender for ‘unjustly burdening’ her and her husband with these loans (I’m not making this up) plus for damages for the inconvenience of being asked to pay them back.

‘We were almost laughed out of court,’ she is quoted hurtfully, adding, ‘the judge was almost asleep. Our lawyer wasn’t up to standard — we didn’t have a hope in hell.’ Further on she blamed ‘bad financial and legal advice’ for her troubles. Nothing to do with her of course, but all other people’s fault. The court rightly threw out her claim and ordered $40,000 in costs against her, one suspects for wasting its time. Remember, courts are expensive tribunals, the running costs borne by taxpayers. Indeed, the British government is investigating privatising the courts system for commercial litigation to stop these costs falling on the public.

But back to Mrs Fesuiai. It transpires, despite the lender’s overtures to accommodate her and her husband, both in full-time employment with their children grown up and gone, she remains obstinate, refusing to make payments, thus forcing the lender to pursue a mortgagee sale. Their house has a valuation of $250,000 and they have equity in it of $120,000.

I researched the lender, Finance Now, and discovered it’s owned by one of our most respected and oldest banks, The Southland Building Society, formed in 1869. Last year it was awarded the Financial Institution of the Year honour at the Roy Morgan Research Customer Satisfaction Awards. That’s quite a tribute, hardly suggesting usury.

All of this raises two issues. First, the incompetence of The Dom in insulting its readers with such front-page rubbish, a classic case of a newspaper creating the ‘news’. But it also highlights the mind-set of many of our citizens with an unjustified sense of entitlement, an attitude The Dom promoted in presenting Mrs Fesuiai as a victim, which she most certainly is not.

Not all such stories are unworthy of reporting. Consider the account in this newspaper recently regarding the Avondale School Ball. The school prevented pupils attending whose parents haven’t paid the annual ‘donation’ of $175, despite paying $110 for the ball-ticket.

The Herald ran a photo of a Mr Tony Hunt and his crest-fallen daughter whose name I shall not repeat for reasons I’ll leave to reader’s imagination. ‘This is extortion,’ Mr Hunt complained. In response, the school’s board chairman correctly pointed out that the ball was an extra-curricular activity, thus they could set their own terms but ‘in the case of hardship the school would come to the party’. The account did not detail Mr Hunt’s financial circumstances, still, one questions his priorities if he forks out $110 for a ball-ticket but won’t chip in a tax-deductible mere $3.50 a week to aid his daughter’s education, as all but three of the school’s 2700 pupils’ parents have done.

State schools are substantially funded by the wider tax-paying community, but across the land parents chip in a further $100 million annually in donations. But not Mr Hunt, because in his mind he is entitled to an education for his daughter at everyone else’s expense and to expect him to contribute is extortion.

How have we descended to this situation where so many citizens feel no moral qualms in living off their fellow citizens’ toil? Our welfare society’s excesses are morally bankrupt and we all know it.

4 June 13

God-bothering

Recently, to much mirth, the capital’s new Anglican bishop despoiled his lovely cathedral’s entrance by residing there in a wooden crate mocked up as a prison cell, for a week’s baying at the sky. This, apparently, was to urge God’s intervention to facilitate prison reform. Despite his criminal-class sympathies, however, the bishop took no chances and wisely ensured his crate was protected by a high-security steel fence.

In the event, preoccupied delivering typhoons, earthquakes and other earthly interventions that week, God ignored His Grace’s pleadings, for no heavenly smiting of prison walls ensued. Not so, though, another befrocked minister, namely Justice Minister Collins, who snapped that this sort of display is why people are leaving the Anglican Church in droves. She may be right, but this sort of display has characterised the Anglican clergy to everyone’s delight for yonks. This zaniness is understandable, as endless cups of tea with old ladies and delivering weekly platitudinous sermons would drive anyone mad, a point made a few years ago by the head banana of the Australian Uniting Church, this a union of Presbyterians, Methodists and others. Following the revelation that one of their clergy had been having it off with an impressive array of parishioners’ wives, he told the media, ‘You must remember, all parsons are mildly deranged.’

The new Wellington bishop is named Justin, wears long dreadlocks and trots about barefooted wielding the ultimate cliché of a Maori-motif-carved bishop’s staff. He was plucked from a commune in which his forte was kindness to derelicts, this following a scandal involving his predecessor having it off with the headmistress of Wellington’s top private girls school. What, one wonders expectantly, will be Justin’s next trick? Flagellation, self-immolation; time will tell. Rejected by Heaven and state on this occasion, in time-honoured Anglican clergy fashion there will inevitably be a new stunt, perhaps uni-cycling to Auckland for a fresh cause; a cunning ploy given the justice minister’s own renown prowess at this activity. There’s a Circumcellion whiff about Justin, and one suspects in another age he would crave the martyr’s stake or perhaps a beheading as with his original namesake.

Anglican clerics have always been a source of fun for cartoonists with their regular mini-scandals involving parishioners’ wives or other embarrassments, such as Justin-type antics, taking up line-dancing and such-like. The Dominion’s cartoonist Tom Scott has often portrayed them chained to a wall clad only in saggy underpants and a dog collar, being flogged by leather-clad dominatrices for which activity in Britain they certainly have form. Given polls there showing that most of them don’t believe in God, an afterlife and all the other absurdities of their trade, these diversions are explicable. They even extend to their wives.

A former Australian cricket captain told me of a 1970s tradition when playing in a certain major city, of how they would wholeheartedly welcome in their midst a gullible local Anglican parson of the tweed jacketed, ale-quaffing, pipe-smoking, one-of-the-chaps ilk. Meanwhile, unbeknown to him, his wife would service the entire team during the duration of the test, an excellent example of applied Christian charity for, in the years she was on the job, they never lost there.

Talking of Australia reminds me of the 2003 Rugby World Cup and an ABC radio discussion (as occurred here prior to hosting it) on the over-hyped economic benefits that would flow. One commentator, the president of the Victorian Brothel Owners organisation, was sceptical, claiming conferences and other such events saw no boost in trade. But suddenly he became excited, saying there was an outstanding exception — namely when the city once hosted the Anglican Synod, following which they had to close for a time to allow the girls to recover.

But back to Justin’s protest about prison reform. Most people in prison are decent and useful citizens who had a single lapse. They do their time and resume useful lives. Others waste their lives in and out of prison for which the bishop blames the prisons, saying this shows they don’t work. In fact they work superbly in keeping recidivists out of action in their unrelenting war on society.

It’s no secret that current Justice Minister Collins is probably the toughest we’ve had when it comes to criminals, for which I commend her. Nevertheless as corrections minister she increased prison work programmes and introduced alcohol and drug treatments. She’s certainly a damn sight more knowledgeable than the bishop about the true nature of recidivist criminals.

A friend of mine angers at Justin-type waffle. He was a prison doctor for years, acknowledges the presence there of single-lapsing, basically good people, but is realistic about the hardened psychopathic recidivists who, he says, are simply through and through bad. God certainly got this one right for a change when he gave Justin the finger.

5 November 2013

The Brotherhood

Some readers may know my comic novel Degrees for Everyone, its thesis being the recent years’ devaluation of universities. Once centres of academic excellence, today they’ve sunk to shameless degree-vendors providing, no matter how much one’s dimness, a degree tailored to accommodate it.

Typical of this disgrace was Victoria University Philosophy lecturer Stuart Brock’s recent announcement that he’s introducing a course on conspiracy theory studies. God help us! Psychology, yes if you must, but what has that nonsense to do with philosophy?

What astonished me is Brock’s listed conspiracies to be studied. They’re all wearingly there; the Kennedy assassination, the moon-landing hoax, 9/11, Jewish world domination and so on, but Brock then insultingly included David Icke. This is outrageous. If you haven’t heard of Icke, then Google him, although he has many followers in Auckland among his millions worldwide. Briefly, he’s English, was a professional soccer player, then a TV sports commentator. Subsequently he made his way to Arabia where, like others before him, a vision revealed ‘the truth’. This led to a stint as British Green Party leader, but he abandoned that to warn the world of an outbreak, circa 2005, of earthquakes and tsunamis, which among other things, would see New Zealand sink below the sea. He got the first bits right, but miscalculated the date of the last. Nevertheless, readers would be well advised to buy a boat, or failing that, practise long-distance swimming.

But what Icke is most famous for is his revelation that the world is controlled by evil reptilian creatures known as the Brotherhood, bent on doing harm and with the ability to transform themselves into human form. Most are male, although Icke