31 October

I had almost forgotten about it, but 31 October is kind of a special night in my biography and not for any pagan ritualistic reasons to dress up and scare the locals (I don't need an excuse of Halloween for that).
On 31 October 1980, a few mates and I organised a punk rock festival at the local youth club Djevano in a very middle class Catholic suburb. About 5 bands were scheduled to gig, but within an hour the local citizenry were alerted to and alarmed by the display and parade of about 1,000 technicolour-haired, leather-clad punks of indeterminate gender (as was the fashion then - I remember wearing a white woollen ski jumper, I mean, I wanted to stand out from the black-attired crowds!).
The cops were duly called and arrived in a few VW-combi vans. In the middle of a set, one burly law enforcement officer took to the stage to declare the proceedings over. I'm not sure what they teach these guys in cop school about handling crowds of a subculturally, shall we say, volatile nature, but the reaction from the amassed crowds, many of whom came from a large area of Western Europe for the occasion (the event had been publicised in a large number of fanzines, what with no internet and all) was rather irate.
So it all ended in tears: chairs were thrown onto the stage, the cops retreated with batons drawn and clubbed their way out, grabbing a few punters left and right and dragged them into their combi-vans, which by this stage had been reduced to window-less and smashed motorised pig-crates. The suburbs hadn't seen such a display of the arm of the law meeting the unmoveable force of speedy punks on a high. White Riot indeed.
It, of course, made the papers the next day, but at the time I was unaware of the damage caused outside the club, since I was busy clearing up the debris inside as every youth club committee member was wont to do after each night. Two days later I was summoned to the cop shop for a statement. My sociological explanations of the happenings - I had freshly graduated three months before and keen as to display my research findings (I had done, after all, my BA thesis on punk rock) - seemed to interest the duty sergeant but his supervisor, who was sitting in on our interview, just went from ginger to red to beetroot in the face the longer I went on. There was some thumb thumping, shouting and general frustration all round, but in the end they had to let me go - even after threatening to sue for damage caused to their beloved cattle trucks. Of course nothing came of that, but I guess they really had to cover their cop arse: several punks who were randomly arrested on the night were fined, even though it was completely impossible to find the rioters responsible for the damage caused.
In the end, the youth club, where I had been hanging out and working for six years, cancelled my organising committee membership, but I was not banned from the premises. The club soon after closed for good.
So that was 25 years ago last weekend. It was also, auspiciously, Radio Centraal's first broadcast night. I worked there for 6 years and my media career was born.

Isn't that what we pay them for?

Our favourite royal (still the only one I would consider sleeping with, no change there), Prince Harry, or, "Wales" as he's called in the Army, was played a prank on by his sergeant at Sandhurst. Harry was told to drop his pants to confirm the rumours he had his girlfriend's [vomit] name written on his arse (or "bum" as the English press dubbed it).
I'm suprised that this was a rumour among the troops for so long. I mean, do these soldiers not wash or sleep together? Have they not seen the royal ginger minge in the shower? Does the sergeant no longer supervise personal hygiene? Or watch the royal backside when he heaves it into his bunk before lights out?
When I get to date him I will know what to aim for with my paddle!

An island in foment

Things are afoot on our little rock in the Pacific Ocean.
The natives are stirring against the powers-that-be in the Babylon city 17 kilometres to the west.
The City Council bought a piece of land - currently the car park for all commuters who take the ferry daily into town - from private developers for the incredible sum of $12 million. This was not an open market price or transaction but city ratepayers, including us islanders, and island commuters will have to foot that endless bill, since the Council has not set an end date for paying off the purchase amount, by way of car parking charges, which come into force on November 1 ("Fee Day").
Also, from Sunday, all bus fares in Auckland City are going up by about 10%, which in New Zealand is standard policy when they try to entice more people to use public transport.
On top of that, petrol prices have been going down lately but that reprieve is surely only temporal.
And ferry prices can't be far behind, even though they went up from $245 to $260 only in August.
So in all a fair whack to your island hip pocket - but never mind, only rich people live here.

UPDATE: Two days into the car parking charging and there are FUG (Ferry Users Group) pickets every morning dissuading would-be parkers. Result: the car park is more than half empty. Will this mean doubling the charges soon to "protect the revenue"?
Good newspaper reporting here.

Bad boy alert

"All men look better under arrest" - John Waters

A housewife? Not me! Desperate? Never!

Jesse, the half naked gardener, had disappeared, and even the plumber hasn't taken his shirt off for a couple of episodes, so I was a bit flagging in my keenness to watch Laura Bush's favourite soap.
But then it suddenly all got interesting again. The gardener's flatmate, Justin, turns out to be a closet queen desperate to sort out whether he's gay or straight - I would have thought rooming with Jesse Metcalfe would pretty much settle that fast! - by pashing the only decent looking female on the show and then he didn't feel anything. Snogging Jesse would have been conclusive immediately, but then during a pool party he was found snogging the horribly miscast Andrew Van Der Kamp dude who is on the swim team (with a flabby body like that no swim team would have him!). It's simply not good enough!
Contrast this syrupy state of affairs with the Shameless episode, on afterwards, involving seed-filled condoms being thrown around to try to prove hetero manhood. You would never see that getting Laura Bush's approval!

Aren't we lucky we're not a state of Australia!

Little Johnnie Howard is trying to out-Blair the UK government in its new anti-terrorism legislation. No Right Turn has the gist:

The extended geographical jurisdiction for offences is being used here not just to cover sedition, but also treason. This is utterly unprecedented. To the extent that either sedition or treason are crimes, they are crimes of disloyalty, predicated on some obligation to be loyal to the Australian government. What Howard is saying is that everyone in the world has a duty to be loyal to and not criticise Australia, on pain of imprisonment.

So supporting the English cricketers in the Ashes test, the All Blacks in the Tri-Nations or any other team playing against Australia is tantamount to treason. Didn't Lord Tebbit formulate this test of loyalty before? Can't Little Johnnie invent anything new, ever? Australia doesn't need terrorists or traitors to dispense with its civilised status, its own politicians will do that job nicely. Or was that the plan all along to get rid of all those troublesome citizens with human and civil rights? It certainly is putting the con back into conservative.

A new Government

A list of the posts allocated in the Third Labour-Progressive Coalition Government is here. It's very much a non-leftwing Government with social democracy trying to keep capitalism afloat. Any progressive policies will only get a marginal look-in as the Greens have been sidelined. It'll make the choice in 2008 even harder to distinguish between the (major) parties and their policies. At least they didn't go the German Grand Coalition way, but for all intents and outcomes I think they might as well have. How different things might have been if the Green party got 1250 more votes. Well, that wasn't my fault!
The economic problems remain the same: a low wage economy with low (because unaffordable) savings, high private sector indebtedness, an export sector that is being strangled by high interest rates and currency levels, brain export, and real estate speculation leveraged on overseas borrowing. But there are, of course, some bright sparks: New Zealand is 3rd in the lowest corruption rankings from Transparency International just behind Iceland and Finland; and my island growing the best wine ever.

Beat the petrol price hikes, catch a bus. Or so we're advised.

I have never driven a car in my life, although I currently co-own one - with chauffeur, naturellement, is there any other way of owning a car worthwhile? I have always lived in places where public transport was abundant and, if not cheap, convenient to use. Not so in Auckland, which notoriously has a reputation, even among its own citizens, of having one of the worst public transport systems in the developed world. The upshot is that as soon as any adolescent hits 15, they want to join the car owning public and clog the roads even more. A policy to up the driving age to 18 would be met by rioting in the streets. No doubt about that, even though that would be a public policy priority that needed implementing sooner rather than later.
I'm digressing a bit but wouldn't putting all those 16 year olds on bicycles fight obesity far more effectively than any amount of fast food tax? And think of all those firm-thighed lycra-clad young men that would be racing around town. More fetching than the current crop of overweight boy racers in their souped up and lowered gas guzzlers who blight downtown and get in the way of the bus.
Which brings me back to my plight of having to use this really crappy public transport system. For the last couple of years they have been installing this GPS-driven system of indicator boards at bus stops, which are supposed to state how long it will take for the next bus to arrive. Relying on it has been fraught so far, since it has a permanent warning that the "system is under test". You can see the entries count down the minutes before the bus is supposed to be there until it switches to "DUE", followed several minutes later by "DLY" and then disappears off the board without a bus ever showing. I think "DUE" stands for: maybe some time in the future, and "DLY" for: come back tomorrow, sucker.

Watching some good stuff on the dread gogglebox:

Burn It: Riveting series about 3 Mancunian Hacienda veteran mates and their current not-so-glamorous life after the "Madchester" comedown. Super soundtrack for that drug-sodden generation - nothing angsty about them! - but I can't somehow imagine that any of our heroes had Morrissey posters on their bedroom wall at the time. Quote (on how to make up after falling out between mates):

"I showed him my arse and he showed me his."

Shameless: Roaring great fun with Frank and his brood on their northern English housing estate. The episode with the lesbian pub toilet scene was priceless - giving Kev the biggest hardon in his life! And the Xmas Special featuring a memorable blowjob scene behind an army truck and involving some suspiciously white underpants on the signalman being serviced.

My name in Japanese:

Sure looks cute. Shall I get it as a tattoo?
Get your own name in Japanese here.

NZ elections

Election post-mortem and the lowdown on the Exclusive Brethren involvement in our democracy. Read the Biblical thruth here and be verily amused. Thanks godess verse 11 was on radio only, we didn't want that picture!

Beat the petrol price hikes, catch a bus. Or so we're advised.

I have never driven a car in my life, although I currently co-own one - with chauffeur, naturellement, is there any other way of owning a car worthwhile? I have always lived in places (Antwerpen, London) where public transport was abundant and, if not cheap, convenient to use. Not so in Auckland, which notoriously has a reputation, even among its own citizens, of having one of the worst public transport systems in the developed world. The upshot is that as soon as any adolescent hits 15, they want to join the car owning public and clog the roads even more. A policy to up the driving age to 18 would be met by rioting in the streets. No doubt about that, even though that would be a public policy priority that needed implementing sooner rather than later. I'm digressing a bit but wouldn't putting all those 16 year olds on bicycles fight obesity far more effectively than any amount of fast food tax? And think of all those firm-thighed lycra-clad young men that would be racing around town. More fetching than the current crop of overweight boy racers in their souped up and lowered gas guzzlers who blight downtown and get in the way of the bus.
Which brings me back to my plight of having to use this really crappy public transport system. For the last couple of years they have been installing this GPS-driven system of indicator boards at bus stops, which are supposed to state how long it will take for the next bus to arrive. Relying on it has been fraught so far, since it has a permanent warning that the "system is under test". You can see the entries count down the minutes before the bus is supposed to be there until it switches to "DUE", followed several minutes later by "DLY" and then disappears off the board without a bus ever showing. I think "DUE" stands for: maybe some time in the future, and "DLY" for: come back tomorrow, sucker.

October, 1990

It's 15 years this month since I left Europe to come live in New Zealand.

Royal Procreation Watch

Crown Prince Filip and Princess Mathilde of Belgium just had their third child, Emmanuel, delivered.
But more scandalously, next door in Luxembourg, Grand Duke Henri's third son, Prince Louis of Luxembourg (pictured left) became a father at age 19 after he made his 20-year-old girlfriend, an NCO in the Luxembourg army, pregnant without being married.
I know some Luxembourg army personnel are irresistible (picture below), but you would have expected any possible heirs to the throne are taught how to use a condom.

Pictured, your intrepid correspondent checking out the Grand Ducal Palace Guard in Luxembourg City (he was not pleased with the attention!)

Talking Turkey

A lot of umming and ahhing going on in Europe about the possible membership of the European Union for Turkey. The USA and Britain are in raptured favour of it (you have to ask why the US is so enthusiastic they're not inviting it to join the US proper - or a federation with their new client state in Iraq), while those pesky continentals are less enthusiastic.
It was a considerable issue when the French and Dutch voted no in the European Consitutional Treaty referendums.
Now the negotiations proper are to start, Austria, which has a long memory (1529!) of the Turks at the gates of Vienna, wants Turkey to have a "privileged partnership", i.e. cattle class stuff rather than business. I'm not sure whether that would work - no other country has been offered that arrangement. A better solution is becoming an European Economic Area member, like Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Iceland and Norway so it can benefit from free trade with the EU, and if Turkey wants to veer off again from its reforms demanded by the EU, it can do so.
In my opinion, Turkey should try and set up a EU-style arrangement with the rest of the Middle East (and even North Africa). Building democracy and enforcing human rights, as has happened in all the new EU members, is a far better policy when it has an enormous economic advantage attached to it and is a more productive route than trying to build a democracy by way of the gun, suicide bomb and torture prison. You could about imagine a Middle Eastern Union, including Israel and Palestine, Iraq and Iran, with free movement of capital and labour, and no more irrational land disputes. It could take a while, for sure.
And I'm still waiting for the New Zealand Government to apply for EU membership. We could sail right in.

Test your knowledge about the EU and Turkey here. I got 9 out of 11 correct.