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I’m not sure who said that; maybe it was Roger Douglas, back in the days when he meant something to the nation? Here are some of my random thoughts and observations over the past weeks or so.
Kow Towing to China
It doesn’t matter if Greens co-leader Russell Norman was grandstanding and not showing the visiting Chinese delegation of several hundred courtesy when he waved a Tibetan flag at Parliament and got glad-handed by Chinese heavies. It doesn’t matter if Russell Norman is a boring little fart. It doesn’t matter if his Tibetan protest was outside the regular mandate of what we normally associate with the Greens. It doesn’t matter that Russell Norman is an Australian disguised as a New Zealander.
What matters is that the Chinese invaded Tibet illegally are still there, oppressing a race of people and their gentle culture and that they need to know that the world, largely, disapproves.
The problem is, that China is too big, too powerful, too important, too influential and can pretty much do as it likes. And China has only really started. Wait until their economy gets into top gear and every living Chinese is a multi-millionaire. Then we’ll have something to really get worried about.
The Chinese are already showing a level of arrogance that should make us all nervous.
The fact that John Key apologised for Russell Norman’s behaviour and that the police didn’t want to press charges against the Chinese thugs, shows just how scared we are of them.
There’s an old adage of if you can’t beat them, join them, so why isn’t New Zealand showing the same attitude and approach to “progress” as the Chinese and making a great success of our great little country, instead of sucking up to them?
Value for Money
The person who invented red marker cones must be incredibly wealthy. So must the companies that make them. So must the companies who lay them out. There are so many of them they must outnumber the total New Zealand populations of human beings, sheep and rabbits combined. If red marker cones ever develop intelligence and decide to take over, we’ll be goners.
I have no idea how we ever survived without them. What did we do before red marker cones?
Red cones are one of the great growth industries and success stories in New Zealand. But I’m yet to work out really what their purpose in life is. They are light and flimsy so if I drive into them, they are no protection.
And I know they are not there in order to raise the level of productivity of our road gangs.
I know that because the other day I drove along lanes that were marked by at least 15 million of these red marker cones — so many that all I saw for the next two weeks was a bright red haze. On the other side of the marker cones were about eight or nine big, heavy chunks of machinery, only one was operating. It was a sort of digger and what it was doing must have been really important. There were a dozen men on these road works, ten of them were standing looking at what the digger was digging, the eleventh man was operating the digger while the twelfth man was sweeping the road with a small broom.
In the days before privatisation and red cones, these workers would have been paid by an organisation called the Ministry of Leaning Shovels. Nothing much has changed. I marvel at how road works actually ever get completed.
Daft Idea
I have no idea who is responsible for the suggestion that we should reverse into angled car parks and is working on a law change! It is something that is definitely on the agenda and it’s because “they” don’t want us reversing out of these car parks and backing over cyclists. This is an absolutely daft idea and one that could only have been dreamed up by a cyclist who has a hatred for cars.
Who is SBW
The media has been full of breathless “will-he, won’t-he?” stories about someone they refer to as SBW — and radio sports reporters have been particularly excited about this. SBW translates into language we all understand as “Sonny Bill Williams”. I have no real idea who Sonny Bill Williams is, nor why he is the attention of such a media frenzy.
Apparently he wants to play rugby after an earlier career in other sports. And the sporting media seem to regard him as the key to turning the All Blacks into an unbeatable, all-conquering team. He must be the God of Rugby because I fail to see how someone who hasn’t played rugby seriously before can be that good he appears to be make-or-break for the All Blacks.
There are many times when the sports media gets so far ahead of itself, it forgets there are ordinary people who don’t have their heads so far up into the sporting stratosphere as they have and we need some educating, or background.
Ted - 14 years ago
Reversing into angled car parks is mandatory in some NSW towns and once I got over the fine I thought it was a pretty good idea. It is especially useful when parked on the blindside of angle parked panel vans and large 4 wheel drives where your rear end almost need blocks the lane before you care able to see if it is way clear to reverse out. The idea does have merit.