JET's & ALT's

Let me start by saying this...I don't really care for teachers. Like policemen and tax inspectors, they are a necessary evil. Part of the reason why I couldn't wait to finish high school was the motley collection of so called educators that I encountered on my journey through the education systems of 2 countries.  A small number of the teachers I had were genuinely good people who cared about what they were doing but most of them were merely clock watching drones who had little to no talent or power tripping egotists who got off on scaring small children. A relative who is a teacher of some eminence once said to me "there are 3 reasons to become a teacher...June, July and August". For me however, the old adage "those that can, do. Those that can't, teach" is one of those indisputable truths of life. The reason for this rant is that I have just read a book by a Kiwi guy who spent 3 years as an assistant language teacher (ALT) on the Japan English teacher (JET) scheme. It was a great read for a number of reasons but mostly for the fact he didn't take himself seriously. He seems to have had a lot of fun during his time in Japan because he realized this right from the beginning. 

The JET scheme has been running for 25 years now and is still enthusiastically supported by the Japanese government. For a small town mayor in backblocks Japan having an exotic foreigner on the payroll of the local high school is a boost to his prestige. The local school board can claim to be "international" and can demonstrate to the local people that they are taking all possible steps to prepare their children for the new globalized economy. As usual in Japan it's all about image and if this is the primary goal it could be judged as a huge success.  Less publicized is the inconvenient fact that the average Japanese student's English level continues to be abysmal. It's not really surprising when you consider when these so called "English teachers" are nothing of the sort. Because just about anybody can get themselves on this scheme it's no wonder that the results are woeful. While I believe most teachers in NZ are a waste of good oxygen I will concede that they have at least attended several years of training college, have gained experience in the classroom and have done their time in the system. Contrast this with the recruiting criteria of the JET program...

To be accepted as a JET you need to, A) speak English, and, B) have a degree in something (anything will do). And...that's it. Don't worry about the fact that you have no experience as a teacher. It doesn't matter that your degree is a Doctorate in Equine Psychology. You don't even need to speak any Japanese.  It's no secret that becoming a JET is the easiest way to exist as a foreigner in Japan. Your average JET is a twenty something American/Canadian/English/Aussie just out of university and on the lookout for a way of funding an overseas experience for a couple of years. Some of them have an interest in Japan while others are just there to meet people and get in adventures. Some may even have a genuine desire to teach English and to participate in the education of the students they will meet. Whatever their reasons, the JET scheme is their ticket to a life in Japan.

Now this is all good and wonderful. The Japanese Government and the local education boards get their progressive image and the foreigners get to live the dream, meet girls and drink a lot. Even the long suffering taxpayers who foot the bill for it believe it to be a good thing. It's a win-win situation....except, the internet is full of blogs with JET teachers railing about the injustices that riddle the Japanese education system and the abuse and intolerable working conditions they endure. Now I don't doubt for a moment that all of this is true and that they have some real grievances but they all seem to have forgotten the fact that they are not real teachers. For some reason these people expect to be taken seriously as bona fide educators despite the fact they have had no training or experience and their qualifications amount to the grand total of being able to speak their native language and that they managed to show up to enough lectures at university to get a degree in something. The only reason they work in education is the fact that they can't do anything else that qualifies for a visa. It's very clear to me that if the Japanese government had an interest in teaching English to children they would hire real teachers and pay them real money to do so. The Jet scheme is simply a feelgood exercise and is not intended to be a real career for anybody. You are not supposed to be there 7 years later and demanding pay and conditions to reflect your long service...you were supposed to have gone home years ago.  Anybody in this situation has missed the point of the program, which is to go to Japan, party, sight see, reinforce a few stereotypes about foreigners, learn some kanji and generally be a bit of colour for the local community for a year or two.

Road Rules

It's time I went back to Japan again and did some housekeeping. The trick is now to find a good airfare. Jetstar is undoubtedly the cheapest but I don't like having to transit in Queensland and I hate giving money to an Australian airline. I need for Air NZ to come up with a special like they did this time last year.

Mixin it up on the Midosuji

I read in the Japan Times that in Kameoka a teenager in a van ran over some schoolkids and killed 2 of them. It always surprises me that this sort of thing doesn't happen everyday. The traffic/pedestrian mix in Japanese cities is ludicrous. Despite having a huge automotive industry Japan is at heart a nation of walkers and has not yet come to terms with traffic. A lot of places there are no footpaths and the fact that houses and shops are allowed to be built without any setback from the road means that people are simply going to walk on the road. OK...but when they do that they seem to forget that cars and trucks are also using that same road. I've rarely seen anybody who looks even half aware of this fact. Old people are the worst. Some of them may have been living beside this road all their lives but still look astounded when a car comes along while they're shuffling across it.  Even though large numbers of motor vehicles have been driving around Japanese cities for over 60 years, I still get the feeling that they are viewed as something that has just come along and people don't yet quite know how to respond to them. In Kameoka I used to drive past a rock which was right on the edge of the road. When I say road, I mean the barely 2 metre wide path that everybody uses to access their homes. And when I say on the edge, I mean this thing was literally on the road. This rock was about 50cms high and had some kanji written on it. To me it looked like a shrine of some sort, the kind of which you see all over Japan. Driving by this rock I was always scared that even a minute twist of the steering wheel would result in me driving over some ancient monument and incurring the wrath of the natives. It was a stupid place to have a rock of any kind much less one of some importance or spiritual value but that's the kind of traffic hazard you see everywhere in Japan.

Bicyclers and scooterists are even worse. It seems that a lot of people disengage their brain whenever they jump on a bicycle. Weaving erratically around traffic and pedestrians with careless abandon is the name of the game when using any form of 2 wheeled transport around town. People ride straight through stop signs while using umbrellas and texting on their phones. I believe this stems from the tradition that in an accident the driver of the car is automatically guilty of causing it just like if a bicycle hits a pedestrian the cyclist is at fault regardless of the circumstances. The laws around bicycles are a great example of this lack of attention to traffic reality. Riding a bike on the footpath is forbidden except in places where it is not but nobody seems to know where they may be so everyone rides on the footpath. Riding at night without a light will get you a stiff fine while riding drunk will mostly likely get you a lot of finger wagging and a warning to not do it again. The cops are big on bicycle theft....(all bikes have to be registered) but aren't interested in enforcing laws like the ones prohibiting carrying other people on your bicycle or chatting on the phone while riding. One good thing about Japan is the lack of militant "cars are evil, everybody should ride a bike" activist bicyclists like we have in NZ. These idiots are usually to be found wearing bright coloured spandex and riding 5 abreast on busy roads. They know they are being unreasonable and don't care who they offend. I don't know which is most annoying....stupidity as seen in Japan or such willful stupidity as seen in NZ.

Where I come from roads are for motor vehicles. Sure you are entitled to be on the road on your bike or horse or scooter but be under no illusions....the car is king. It's up to you to stay out of the way and not do anything stupid. If you don't you'll be splatted and get very little sympathy from anyone. And that's as it should be..............

Version 2.0

Right...... it's time to re-boot this blog.

This blogging software sucks....you spend hours arranging text blocks and pictures only to find that when you publish it, it looks nothing like your compose post screen. WTF?  Trying to layout photos is enough to send you insane. Whoever designed this software should be taken around to the back of the Google mirror glass headquarters and shot. Rant over.

On the Beach

Another Summer has rolled past. Normally summer is filled with swimming, surfing, sailing and evenings spent on the beach. This year was different. Life has a habit of constantly changing but sometimes we get so wrapped up in the daily grind it can come as a surprise how much things have changed .Everybody seems to be busy now, busier than ever. Friends who would always be up for an adventure are now tied to family and business commitments. Girlfriends, bosses and customers have always been there off course but now they are joined by wives, children and mortgage payments and companies. Luckily everybodys health is good and in general, everybody in good spirits but there is that lack of time now to do the things we used to do.  The other reason this summer was different was the weather. It was without a doubt the worst I can remember and the general consensus is that we have been robbed of our best season. The forecast for the Easter long weekend was not good, but as it turned out, completely wrong. Several things occured in the fashion of stars aligning. I traded an old Toyota Hilux 4WD, Glenn came into posession of a Suzuki jeep, nobody had to work, the sun came out, the tides on the west coast were favourable......a beach trip was in the making.

 The west coast of Auckland is an long stretch of unspoiled nature, crashing surf, windswept beaches, tall cliffs, forests and sand dunes. There are a number of beaches, all with their own character, which are popular with surfers, artists, fishermen and daytrippers from the city. Piha is the best known and gets all the fame and glory with its elietist surf club and their TV show but, for me at least, Muriwai beach is the definative west coast beach. Muriwai is a special place. 50Kms in length, the beach is a endless empty stretch backing onto the Woodhill forest. The best thing is that theres enough space for everyone to surf, swim, fish, ride horses or mountain bikes, kite surf or just lie in the sun without bothering anyone else. I have even seen someone land a small airplane on the beach. For us however the main reason we come here lies at the far northern end of the beach. Here at the entrance to the Kaipara harbour is the old Kaipara weapons range. It's a wilderness of sand, water and wind with towering dunes and thick forest which the air force use as a practice area for dropping bombs out of airplanes. Now, seeing as we don't really have an air force thats capable of dropping anything these days, it's become a mecca for off road vehicles...a huge 4WD playground

 

 


 So...Sunday was the choosen day. Kids and wives were loaded into trucks and we rolled onto the beach at midday, just after the high tide. When driving on the beach wind and tide must be observed carefully. Theres no where to run if you get it wrong and the beach has claimed many vehicles over the years. At the right phase of the tide the sand just above the surf line is firm and can be driven on with ease. Just watch for waves sweeping in and soft spots that can take you from 80km/h to stopped in just a few metres. It takes about 45 mins to travel from the crowded south end to the lagoon at the extreme North end of the beach. theres no road access here and the only people you will see have come here by off road vehicles.

 Lunch was eaten and sand castles built by the lagoon. A little foray into the soft sand dunes resulted in a recovery operation as the Hilux is not really setup for these conditions but great fun was had by all.

Toll Insanity

Last night I went for a little trip up country. This involved using the one and only toll road in the whole of NZ. Using this road makes me angry, firstly because toll roads are a crime against motorists who have already paid for the road through fuel taxes and so on, and secondly because the toll collection system was designed by a moron. Japan knows how to do toll roads. Obviously the people who designed the toll collection system got together and asked themselves "whats the most important thing to consider when you're fleecing motorists?" Answer...make it as painless as possible. While people may not like paying Y700 to go on the highway they tend to put up with it because it's easy. Just slow down, toss a few coins at the old dude in the box then mash the gas pedal to the floor and off you go. If that's a little too much like hard work you can eliminate the tossing and braking parts and get an ETC card which bills you electronically as you blast through the toll gate. While you are justified in moaning about the cost you can't complain that they make it difficult. Here in NZ it's totally the opposite. At $2, the toll to use the Northern gateway is a bargain. Great new highway, designer bridges, sculpted native bush,  scenic landscape and a gleaming new tunnel make this a nice bit of road for very little money . Where it all comes crashing down is the hoops you must jump through to pay that money.

NZTA offers several ways to pay...all of which are a complete pain in the arse! You can use your mobile phone and a credit card but, as doing this while driving is illegal, you must exit the highway and stop. You could pay online but in order to do that you would have to find the internet so you must exit the highway and stop. You could also pay at the kiosks which are at either end of the toll road but as they are located some way off the road you must exit the highway and stop. Are you starting to see a pattern emerging here? It seems to have eluded the Muppet's in control of this road that the whole idea of a highway is that you do not have to stop for anything. I imagine they were possibly inmates of a mental institution and that the blueprint was drawn up on an big piece of cardboard using crayons.  Obviously a electronic gadget geek was on the committee as was some faceless bureaucrat who saw the opportunity to do some empire building. As they were desperate to avoid having any human component in the system it was decided to provide a vending machine type thing to deal with those stick in the mud, flat earth types who insisted on paying with actual money. Not for us a simple grandad in a box to take your coins with a cheery greeting....we get a touch screen robot which, as all sci-fi geeks know, is way more efficient and cool. Except it isn't. What it is in fact is confusing and irritating. I used the kiosk last night and paid by the archaic method of putting a single gold coloured coin in a slot. This procedure involved exiting the highway and parking the car in a car park. I then had to exit the car and walk over to the kiosk where the machine is located. Next you wait in a line of equally annoyed and confused people. When you do get to the machine you discover that you need to know the registration number of your car to make this thing work. As the car park is quite large this tends to involve a lot of shouting as people scream out letters and digits to each other due to the fact that the cars number plate isn't actually visible form the kiosk. As you go to type in your reg number on the touch screen you will find that it doesn't work that well due to the last user  having smeared grease all over it from a bucket of KFC that he was eating before he had to exit the highway and stop. After depositing your coin in the slot you are issued with a receipt...that is if the paper hasn't run out. Or the ink. Or that it just doesn't work. Which is what happened to me. Not only did this infernal machine swallow the first coin without crediting it, it refused to print out the reciept after the second coin was sacrificed. The next step it seems is to leave the receipt in the slot at the bottom of the machine. Throwing it on the ground also appears to be a popular choice judging from the amount of them littering the kiosk. Which is certainly better than having another useless piece of paper cluttering up the interior of your car. As you turn to leave you will inevitably be stopped by a confused European tourist and asked for instructions on how to work the damn thing. You are now free to continue your journey, or rather join the queue of cars waiting to continue their journey.

If this sounds like an awful lot of cocking about that's because it is. No wonder then that a large percentage of people using this road  say to themselves "fuck all that!!" and just drive on through without stopping. This works particularly well if you are driving someone Else's car. A spy camera on a pole takes a nice picture of the car's number plate and you have 5 days to pay the toll by credit card. No bill is sent and most people forget to do it, caught up as they are on the treadmill that is modern life. This is where the bureaucratic evil empire swings into action. Admin fees are charged and reminders sent out. If you don't pay promptly the penalties skyrocket. If  the driver of your car was not you but was in fact your cousin from Namibia for example, you can transfer liability to him. But only after you fill out a tedious form supplying his details to the toll Nazi's and and having it witnessed by a Justice of the peace. JP's are about as hard to find as rocking horse shit these days on account that nobody wants to do this thankless unpaid job. The ones that are willing tend to be about 70 years old and are available for witnessing statements for about 2 hours a day, usually between morning tea and lunchtime. Except Fridays as they have to tend to their rose garden. Or weekends as the grandchildren might be visiting. In short, if you're a 9 to 5 working stiff, you're screwed. Seeing as filling out forms and taking time off work to run around town looking for a JP, a 50c stamp, an envelope and a postbox is even more of a waste of your life, some people just pay the fine to make it go away. Others just ignore it until it gets passed on the the courts where it then wastes valuable time and resources. The admin and enforcement costs are so great that the road barely makes any money. The whole thing is a disaster from start to finish. So next time you come to a toll gate on the expressway say a big cheery Mai Do! (if in Kansai) to the grandad in the box and be satisfied in the knowledge that you're being robbed in the most efficient way there is all while staying firmly rooted in the past. Something Japan excells at.

KE35

 

Here's something I bought last week in an internet auction. It's a 1978 Toyota Corolla SR hardtop KE35. It is pretty much identical to my first car except for the colour (my one was red) and the Alloy wheels. It has had only 2 owners from new, the last one had it since 1980. It has travelled only 77,000kms. Cars like these are rapidly increasing in price these days as young guys looking for something different and cool are snapping them up. Finding an original low mileage 70's car is near on impossible now so when I saw this one I figured that it would probably be the last opportunity to own such a car for a reasonable price.

These Corollas were assembled here in NZ which is both a good and bad thing. The Aussie/NZ versions of this car were different from the US/Japan ones which had tacky interiors and hideous front and rear styling. We got nicer seats and carpets and proper chrome bumpers with out any of those silly rubber bits that were stuck onto the American ones. The down side is that they were assembled in a miserable place called Thames in a factory built from bits of pine trees and sheets of corrugated iron. The build quality was variable and the process for painting the cars produced here was abysmal and the cars started rusting from the day they rolled off the line. Be that as it may however, the Kiwi version is to my mind the prettiest looking Corolla ever made. The styling of the car is pure early 70's American . The roofline is Ford Torino as is the instrument cluster, the rear fenders and bootlid  look like a 74 Mustang and the quarter windows and front grille are replicas of the Australian Ford Falcon XA coupe. The vents in the bonnet and the frameless doors are classic design features of the muscle cars from the US. The main difference between them is the matter of size. Being a sensible Japanese car its a lot smaller of course. The 3K engine is a mere 1200cc. There also little in the way of extra options....you have to change gear and wind up the windows all by yourself. So, it was a sensible car for the sensible man who wanted the look of a fire breathing muscle car but without the fuel bills and the parking hassles.

Thirty four years on and these cars still turn heads, all the more so now because there are so few left. This one is 100% original which makes it even more special. The interior is in mint condition and there is nothing missing or broken. There are a few minor rust sports and the paintwork needs some attention so I will probably repaint it later this year. At first I wasn't too struck on the green colour but it's growing on me and I will probably keep it that colour.  As a coincidence this car has been living for 32 years at a house just down the street from the place where I worked when I had my first car. Getting into it and driving it past my old workplace was like being transported back to a time when I was 18. The sound and feel brought back so many memories. For that reason alone I feel it was worth buying this KE35 coupe for $3600....exactly the same price that I paid for the first one all those years ago! Spooky eh?

 

Summer Roundup

It seems that December and January have passed by really quickly. I have not put anything up here due to these reasons. 1 The weather this summer has sucked. 2 Business has been really good which has taken most of my time. 3 I couldn't be bothered. Anyway, here's a summary of what we've been up to....

 Christmas..... a lot of relatives showed up. My sister and a friend came from Melbourne, my brother from Wellington and my cousin from Gisborne and an Aunt and uncle from Ireland. Turkey and Ham and Mince pies were consumed in great numbers.

 Milking cows....Shizuka got a chance to experience the glamour of the dairy industry at my Cousins farm in Northland. Now she knows why they make so much money!

 Barbecuing...In between the rain and wind we have been doing this a lot.

 A bit of sailing.....an overnight to Great Barrier Island and an evening harbour cruise.

 Buying Landrover parts....for my old series 2A Landrover. This involved 2 day trips, one to Glenbrook south of Auckland and to Whangarei 2 hours north.

A day trip to Rangitoto Island.....to celebrate Shizuka's 11th anniversary of arriving in Auckland. We took the volcanic explorer tour to the top and checked out the lava fields and the old beach houses.

The Value Chain

The other day I bought a new TV. I didn't want to buy a new TV but events have forced my hand. Firstly, like Japan, NZ will change to digital transmission next year. That means my old glass CRT TV will be useless unless I spend $150 on a decode box thing. Seeing the TV's probably not even worth half that it's seems pointless to do this. Secondly, a local electronics store ran a special deal last week. I bought a brand new 47inch HD LCD which has the digital decoder inside it for ...NZ$499. Now it's a no-name Chinese brand but it has a full warranty and service backup. Five hundred bucks for a huge flat screen TV! It's not that long ago when these things were $5000. It's mind boggling how the prices of some highly engineered things can fall so steeply when at the same time the price of something as simple as a tomato can be heading for the stratosphere. I mentioned this to some friends at a gathering over some beers and it led to a rather interesting conversation. These guys range from a bit younger than me to quite a bit older. Some are employee's and some, like me, are self employed. One thing they all have in common is that they acknowledge the fact that the world has changed hugely in the last 3 years. 

 

Everybody thinks of September 2001 as a turning point of sorts. That's what the media have been trumpeting for years. But for most of us the only difference it made was that getting on an airplane became an even greater pain in the ass than it was before. 2008 is the year that matters to my group of mates. Before Lehman and sub prime and the credit crunch, most of these guys had plans for the future. These ranged from buying houses and building boats to cutting back on the amount of time they spent working and investing for their retirement. 2008 changed everything. All those plans have had to be modified due to plunging incomes, employment uncertainty and financial loss. We now tend to think in terms of before and after....as one friend put it "the world fell apart". It's taken 3 years for these guys to realise that the next 20 years are going to be nothing like the last 20. Everything has been turned on it's head. Things that were expensive luxury items have become cheap while basic staple food has risen significantly. Interest rates are at historic lows while our currency defies gravity. Tradespeople have jacked up their hourly labour rates but yet they all complain that they are not making any money. The rise in price of commodities like oil and milk and rice are squeezing people hard and making them nervous. There has been an enormous disconnect and uncoupling of things that were presumed to be set in stone.  All over the world, it's slowing dawning on people that things ain't what they used to be and will never be again. If you don't believe that think of it this way.... 10 years ago, what would you have said if someone told you that you would be able to buy a top of the line TV for the same price as 2 weeks worth of groceries.

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!