MMP

MMP....A lottery

When you divide your time between two countries you naturally end up doing Lot's of comparisons. The differences are stark. Japan has it's huge population of 127 million while NZ is relatively empty with only 4 million. One is heavily industrialised while the other is basically a glorified farm. Race, language, culture, history, attitude....all poles apart.  Physically speaking there's some similarities....both consist of a string of islands in the Pacific Ocean. Roughly the same land area, at the same latitude North and South with similar volcanoes and earthquakes thrown in. For me however the greatest similarity is the way the people of these two countries have buried their heads in the sand when it comes to the choosing who should run the country. NZ can be summed up with this....A country with tremendous potential which will never be achieved due to the fact that it's people insist on letting a bunch of dummies run the place. For Japan it's like this......A country which achieved it's full potential 20 years ago and is now in decline due to the fact that it's people insist on letting a bunch of dummies run the place.

The reason for this particular observation is that it is election time here in NZ. Yes it's that time that comes around every 3 years where the elite try to persuade the peasantry that they actually live in a democracy and that what they think really matters. I don't ever bother to vote here as I don't want to participate in this farce. People say to me "if you don't vote, you can't complain".  Whenever anyone says this to me I want to punch them in the face and scream "wake up you moron" at them. This statement is not only a worn out cliche but is completely wrong. By not voting I have more right to complain about the result than someone who has.  If you vote you are supporting the system and directly influencing the result....therefore you cannot complain as you got the result you contributed to. By voting you give politicians a mandate to pass all sorts of laws while agreeing that you will only hold them accountable on a day 3 years in the future. It's not that I am anti democracy, it's just that I don't care for our style of democracy. Foreigners who live in japan often complain that they pay taxes but aren't allowed to vote but really, would you want to? It's even more of a scam than NZ. There are parties within parties and anyway it's all irrelevant as it's the bureaucrats that actually run the country. If I had the right to vote in Japan I'd sell it for the price of a bottle of Kirin beer and consider it a good deal.

Aiding and abetting NZ's politicians in this smoke and mirrors show is our fantastically ridiculous electoral system called Mixed Member Proportional or MMP. Now most people have never heard of MMP. It was dreamt up shortly after World War II by the victorious allies. Fed up with the German's penchant for marching all over Europe, the big winners decided that an electoral system that kept Germany weak and divided was the best insurance to avoid a re-run. (Remember, Hitler was voted into power). Voila...MMP was created. As Italy was guilty by association, MMP was also forced onto the Italians. 65 years of peace in Europe and 60 Italian coalition governments since 1946 show that it's worked a treat. Yep...Coalition governments are the name of the game under MMP so you know that another Mr. Hitler isn't comming up through that system.  Japan dodged this particular bullet when the Americans decided to run Japan as their own colony and appointed General MacArthur as head honcho. He went on to become the best leader Japan ever had and set the country up for great things.  The only other place of note to use MMP is Venezuela where El Presidente Hugo Chavez seems to be having a lot of fun with it.

For some weird and unexplained reason New Zealand adopted this insane system of it's own free will in 1996. (the huge disinformation campaign that was run at the time may have had something to do with it). At the best of times coalitions tend to be unstable marriages of convenience that are cobbled together by some unlikely bedfellows. They tend to have uninspirational leaders and avoid contentious issues in case one of the partners gets upset and throws their toys out of the cot. Middle of the road Mediocrity flourishes under this system but ironically, MMP provides a home for extremists, personality cults and one  trick pony parties too. The party list vote is the real joker in the pack with MMP. I won't bore anyone with the details but under MMP, people who get soundly rejected by their electorates can slide on into parliament on their party list. Cannabis smoking hippies, militant unionists, professional protesters, radical free marketeers and Maori separatists have all made it to the big time much to the disgust of the average Kiwi who has taken 15 years to wake up to the fact. Another perverse consequence is the advent of minority governments, something which is not supposed to happen under a proportional system. Election night is more like watching the lotto results as nobody knows how things are going to shake down. Even after all the smoke has cleared the results can be mind boggling. Parties who get 4.9% of the popular vote can get nothing while parties with 2% can end up with 3 or 4 seats! Under MMP the average voter has no clue who will actually benefit from his vote so the parties can fill their ranks with talentless dummies. Negotiations and horse trading on forming a government can go on for weeks. Principles and promises get dumped rather quickly when the prospect of a ministerial limousine is dangled. History teachers can become finance ministers and lawyers can run hospitals. One party managed to stitch together an arrangement that lasted 9 years and which rammed through some highly unpopular and controversial laws in order to keep it's coalition partners happy and itself in power.

Elections are always a circus of false promises and bribes but under MMP the promises and bribes must be so much bigger as you have to appeal not only to your voter base but to those of your potential coalition partners. This has led to some ruinous policy and bad legislation which breed huge problems for future generations. Our welfare system is unaffordable. Our superannuation system is unsustainable. Our immigration policy undermines our culture and traditions and our education system is a failure. Our current PM is a likeable chap who has spent the last 3 years smiling and waving at everyone while telling them that everythings going to be OK and that we don't need to change anything. He's smiling because he's figured out a couple of things. NZ doesn't have a written constitution so there's nothing that isn't negotiable. There is apparently a bill of rights but nobody knows what it says because nobody has read it. So governments can make things up as they go along. 

There are only a handful of things Kiwis really care about. 

1 The right to go to the beach and catch a fish. 

2 The right to see All blacks rugby games live on free to air TV. 

3 The right to speculate in residential real estate and pay no tax on the profits. 

4 The right to watch Coronation Street (a long running British soap opera) on prime time TV

These things are taken as sacred and God given. Any government that messes with these rights will find itself out on it's ass in short order. If it didn't mess with these things a single party government could do whatever else it liked....Want to turn the country into a Republic?....No problem. A new flag perhaps?....lets have a design competition. Our current PM knows he could slip a lot of things through that would be good for the country but he won't rock the boat because he knows that in MMP coalition governments the tail wags the dog and if you want to stick around in his job it's better to do nothing.  Our PM is going to smile and wave his way into a second term because he knows this.

RWC

Opening night

It's that time here in NZ again. November is my favourite month here. It's starting to warm up but it's not yet sunburn season. The nights are cool so sleeping isn't difficult. The mosquito's and other such bugs are not around yet but the days are stretching out so we have fired up the barbecue a few times already. Everyone seems to be in a happier frame of mind at this time of year, even more so this year as the All Blacks did manage to win the Rugby World Cup. 

The whole RWC thing went off with out too many hitches it seems. Opening night was something special with huge fireworks on the water front and at Eden park. We saw it all go down from Shane's Yacht, floating just off Westhaven along with everyone else who owns a boat in this town. The harbour was packed with everything from dinghy's to cruiseships but that was nothing compared to the crowd on the waterfront. Half the city turned out to see the opener and as a result of the Auckland Mayor, Lefty Len, and his transport people urging them to use public transport, most of them did. The woeful train and bus system had a meltdown while the few that did use their cars found lots of available parking and a smooth run into and out of the city. Once again, it has been proven beyond doubt...Public transport does not and will never work in Auckland. The people here live in detached houses mostly on plots of land larger than 600sq Metres. People here can't believe that in Japan people can have houses on 100sqM. Just walking around the city shows anybody with eyes and a brain in their head that Auckland is not Tokyo or London or anywhere else that has a working train system. The city is big, spread out and is built around 2 harbours and a mountain range. The population is just not dense enough whatever manipulated statistics our socialist mayor and his left wing cronies have put about. These people want us to believe they are competent enough to run the city when it's glaringly obvious to everyone that they couldn't even organise a fireworks show properly. Faced with a potential international PR disaster, the national government stepped in and booted Lefty Len and the Auckland council into touch,(to use a rugby term) and took over all the arrangements for the rest of the tournament. The IRB who own the competition did not earn much admiration or respect either with their propensity for dispensing fines for small infringements of their rules. One player copped a fine for wearing a non approved mouth guard. Their over zealous policing of the sponsorship arrangements didn't earn them many friends here.

 Now I'm not a rugby fan and I only watched the final but I believe the event was good for the country and all the talking heads on TV agree it was the best RWC yet. International Jet setters flew in for it, Mega yachts tied up for it. Everybody got into the spirit and there were national flags flying everywhere. Even the most obscure rugby playing countries like Namibia and Romania were well supported by the locals. The Japan team was particularly welcomed as it is full of Kiwis anyway. Even though they did not win any games they are a popular team here and everyone is sure that with a bit more time and money they will progress. 

Even though Rugby is a fairly violent sport it seems the fans are not. There were very few arrests and no incidents of any note. Completely different story from soccer where hooligans in Europe regularly cause riots and rivalry between clubs is anything but friendly. It's enough to safely conclude that Rugby people are of a higher class than soccer types!

Foreigner Rule #1

The other day I read an article in the Japan Times by an American guy who has lived in Japan a long time. In it he was moaning about the fact that despite his long residency and participation in his local community he is still seen as an outsider and a foreigner. Consequently his few long term friends are all fellow ex-pats. He feels that just because he owns a Japanese passport that the native people here should accept and embrace him as one of their own. It seems to me that anybody who thinks this way really needs to wake up and face reality.

The first thing that I learned about spending any time in this country is this.... 

 You are not Japanese and you never will be. 

You can think of it as the golden rule or being a foreigner 1.01.... 

This can be kind of difficult to grasp for westerners who come from countries where there are lots of immigrants. In NZ people show up from all kinds of countries and cultures and after being here for about 5 minutes proclaim themselves as Kiwis. Buy yourself an All Blacks shirt and we tend to throw in a passport with it. Australia is much the same...learn how to drink their awful beer and you've pretty much passed the citizenship test. Anybody can lay claim to being a Kiwi/Aussie/Canadian/American and therefore, these words have ceased to have any real meaning. A brilliant example of this is an idiot named Hameed Sooden who went to Iraq a few years ago to save some souls for his activist christian type group and got himself kidnapped by some members of an  Islamic extremist type group. This was big news here in NZ because he was described as a New Zealander. The local media here had a field day over this poor Kiwi who was in great danger. But then a few facts came out. Mr Sooden is an ethnic Indian who is a Canadian citizen. His claim to being a Kiwi came from the fact that he has (in his Canadian passport no doubt) a NZ residency permit. His occupation was "a student". In short he is a foreigner with no connection to this country who came here to exploit our lax immigration rules and suckle on the cow that is the NZ taxpayer. He could have asked for help from the Indian or Canadian governments but of course he choose to sponge off the easiest one...NZ. When rescued in Baghdad by the British SAS he distinguished himself by refusing to co-operate with his rescuers and displaying a stunning amount of ingratitude to them. Sorry....Hameed Sooden is not a Kiwi in my book and should not be allowed to pass himself off as one. He is in fact an international mongrel/hybrid who flits from one nationality to another whenever it suits him. It's a shame that the Jihadist's didn't lop his head off. The Japanese have kept things clear and simple while we have devalued and debased our national identities by allowing all and sundry to adopt them at the drop of a hat.

Japan is not like this. It doesn't matter that you have lived there for 50 years, that your wife is Japanese, you speak fluent Japanese, the company you work for is Japanese, you live in a traditional Japanese house and wear a kimono on your day off. You can try all you want to look/sound/smell/behave Japanese but you won't succeed. You are and always will be a gaijin.  Now lots of people get all pissed off by this and feel that this is a bad thing but I don't agree with that. When you hear of someones nationality being described as Japanese you are in no doubt as to what to expect that person to look/sound/act like. I am in no doubt that this is a good thing. 

Missing the Point

Today some fearless internet warrior who goes by the name "anonymous" left a comment to the effect that he didn't like my approach to being a foreigner in Japan. He went further by comparing me to a Chinese peasant and asked if I spat on the platform. (No, I didn't spit on it like a Chinese peasant nor did I urinate on it like a Japanese salaryman)

OK, whatever, it's not like I actually give a fuck what he thinks but some of the things he said confirm that he missed the point I was making by a spectacular margin. So for people just like "anonymous" here it is in plain language.  

Life anywhere is full of pros and cons. Being a foreigner in Japan carries with it a lot of negatives. On the other hand there are some positives. If you don't take advantage of the positives you will end up with a life where the negative outweighs everything else. Being a foreigner here means you do not have to conform with a lot of the pointless rules and bullshit conventions that the Japanese have to. They don't expect you to. And that's the point. You can pick and choose which ones work for you and just ignore those that you don't like. That way you have a counterbalance to all the disadvantages and discrimination that you will encounter here. And to my friend "anonymous", the word is "stereotypical" not "prototypical". I do hope you weren't teaching English when you lived here.

Gaijin-San

Gaijin-San

Last month Shizuka returned to Aichi to visit her family. She was there for 3 weeks and returned with an interesting point of view. Because she has spent the last 10 years living in NZ she now feels like a foreigner in Japan. Now you may think that feeling this way would make anybody a little bit sad but not so with Shizuka. She says that feeling like a foreigner means you tend to act like a foreigner. With this new found attitude she can get away with doing and saying things that ordinary Japanese would dearly love to but are afraid of doing.


She thinks this is great and has learned to become as rude and pretend to be as ignorant as any gaijin. I witnessed this myself when we were in Nagoya last year. We were about to buy tickets at a train station when all the ticket machines crashed and shut down. Now I've never seen this happen before so didn't really know how to respond to it. Not so for the 50 odd schoolkids behind us. They knew exactly what was going on and en mass they all ran to the only manned ticket window. So now we were faced with standing in a line of squawking schoolkids for god knows how long. Not a problem for Gaijin Shizuka however. She calmly strolled to the front of the line and just cut in. I couldn't quite believe that A) she had done it so blatantly and B) not one of the kids protested. Because I am obviously a  foreigner and she was behaving in such an unJapanese manner everybody assumed she was too. I like to think of this as the "gaijin Privilege"....you never have to stand in a line of Japanese schoolkids!!