The joy of heterosexuality

Not a good week for straight sex, glancing at a few news headlines:

"An Austrian man allegedly imprisoned his daughter and abused her sexually for 24 years."

"Police arrested two boys, aged 14 and 15, after a 56-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and left traumatised as she left the Coopers Beach Bowling Club (Northland) last Friday night."

"Texas authorities have continued raids on a ranch belonging to a breakaway Mormon sect, removing a total of almost 200 women and children since Thursday. Police officers first raided the ranch after reports that a 16-year-old girl was physically and sexually abused. Detectives are looking for evidence of a marriage between the girl and a 50-year-old man. She is thought to have had a child when she was 15."

But the only fun story involving heterosexuality is also the only one labeled "scandalous":

"Brazilian football star Ronaldo has been caught up in a sex scandal with three cross-dressing prostitutes."

So the only reason why it was scandalous is that the ho's were mo's.

UPDATE: Queerclick has a very humourous take on the Ronaldo/Andre(a) "sex scandal". NSFW!

Auckland governance

The Royal Commission on Auckland Governance is busily updating its website adding all submissions it has received. Apparently there will be some 3,000 entries including over 1,200 from Waiheke Island alone! We are a very politicised island.
I am, of course, pleased to see my submission has been added too.
And Herald columnist Brian Rudman in most parts seems to have same ideas. So all good if that advice were followed in the Commission's final report.

An adult movie on TV at 8pm

It was good to see, even though it was somewhat surprising, an R18 movie on Alt TV at 8pm on a Sunday night. I had to check the BSA pay TV guidelines on this issue, and yes, R18 material is allowed in that timeslot.
The film was Edmond, a rather obscure (well, I hadn't heard of it before) piece.

Don't read on if you want to avoid spoilers.

It tracks life path chosen by a nondescript salary man, who suddenly wakes up to the realisation his life with his wife is too mundane and boring (sexually and spiritually) and decides to try something different. So he goes out in the big city to try and enjoy some of the deadly sins, such as wrath and lust (disguised here as racism and sexism). Some might describe it as a descent into anomie or hell as he gets frustrated, conned and robbed at every turn and he finally lashes out and kills the woman he didn't have to cajole, pay or force to have sex with him - even though the only penetration that takes place is with a knife.
The film is not exactly a great advert for heterosexuality, but many a viewer may squirm at the film's conclusion that longterm happiness, contentment and personal peace can finally and only be found in the arms of your black cellmate.

There must be better ways

50 ways to help the planet survive suggested on one handy website but there are plenty of false economic choices there:

6. Diaper with a conscience. Better: have no kids, far more environmentally friendly.
8. Go vegetarian once a week. Better: Why not every day? It makes your larder go further. And I bet you'll just eat 7 days' worth of meat in 6 days anyway.
17. Shower with a friend. Obviously dreamed up by someone who has never done this. Showering with a friend, in my experience, takes far, far longer than showering solo. Unless you're an adolescent insisting on long meditations about various body parts when in the shower.
20. Use your cruise control. Better: use public transport.
27. Greener lawn care. Better: don't have a lawn.
36. Choose matches over lighters. Better: don't smoke.
41. Fly with an E ticket. Better: don't fly.

My Dear Chick

Between 1916-19 Len Wilton, a young Wairarapa farmer, was 'away at the war', serving on the Western Front, including at Passchendaele. Unwell, and close to a breakdown, he later spent time at Brockenhurst Hospital in England. Meanwhile, at home, neighbouring farmer's daughter Ilma McLachlan carried on with her life which she recorded in her diaries. Len's letters to his "Chick" and Ilma's diaries form the heart of this book which also records their early and later lives.

NZ$ 35.00
Paperback
Author: Beth Sutherland
Published by: Fraser Books

You can order here

Autumn tour contd.

About 130 people were at the book launch at Aratoi Museum, plenty of books and paintings sold on the first day and we have heard of people who read it cover to cover immediately. So all good.

We continued our trip down State Highway 2 from Masterton, with a detour via Martinborough to sample the local vintage, to end up in Wellington where we stayed with a cousin in Owhiro Bay, on a very southern tip of the North Island. The road really ends here and the house looked out over a dramatic piece of ocean with sharp rocks and inlets breaking the surf. Just around the corner the ferry Wahine sank 40 years ago, and in 1982 a Taiwanese fishing boat, the Yung Pen, went down just offshore. Good wreck diving there, apparently.

We spent a little time in Wellington the next morning to visit Radio New Zealand to drop off the book for review and, hopefully soon, an interview, and to pop into the national museum Te Papa, which happened to have a small exhibition on about the Scots in New Zealand. It mentioned a Scottish engineer, Peter Seton Hay, who worked for the NZ Government and was involved in the design of some of the bridges of the North Island main trunk railway line, including the Makatote Bridge near National Park and the Makohine Viaduct near Marton. As chance would have it we traveled back north on State Highways 1 and 4 and were able to see those very structures as the road follows the railway line for part of the way. They are very elegant and slender bridges and quite worth seeing.

We spent the night in National Park after taking a detour on the road up the mountain to the base of the Turoa ski field. It was a misty day and out of season so it was all desolate, windy, wet and a cold 7 degrees at the end of the road at a height of around 1600 metres.
The welcome at the Ski Haus in National Park was warm - especially the huge log fire - the food delicious, the breakfast copious and the room spacious and comfortable, including a television set. Recommended, in the off season at least, as we were the only guests staying!

Then on the last day on the way home via Hamilton, avoidable at the best of times but this weekend especially with the petrol heads gathering for the V8 races. Not our cuppa as the tribalism involved between adherents of one American car company and another American car company is frankly ridiculous. And of course, it involves far too many clothes for our sporting liking.
Oh, and if you are a Holden fan, don't look at this.

Autumn tour

Like migratory birds we often like to take a short holiday after the Summer. After all, why leave our island during the Summer when it's such a perfect place to be, despite the extra holidaymakers.
This year, we are travelling down to Ewen's mother's birthday/exhibition vernissage/book launch in Masterton. The book is the story of the long courtship of her parents before they got married. It's set before, during and after the First World War years and the highlight of the book is the collection of her diaries and his letters from the Western front, which she had kept.
We visited some of the places where Len was in Flanders last year, as you may remember.

We are travelling down the North Island all the way on State Highway 2, which runs from Auckland - Paeroa - Tauranga - Whakatane - Opotiki - Gisborne - Wairoa - Napier - Hastings - Woodville - Masterton, and on to Wellington.
We stopped off at Kawerau, a paper mill town a few kilometres south of Whakatane, where we stayed at Westmead, a gay homestay run by Kevin and Lionel.
The town sits right next to Mt Edgcumbe, a fierce looking volcano. A 25km drive up a private metal road owned by the logging company and a 10 minute bush walk took us to the Tarawera Falls, where the Tarawera river re-emerges from the underground. The earth is so broken and porous here, the river disappears into a sinkhole a few kilometres further upstream. All very picturesque.

Then down the gorge to Gisborne on the East Coast, arriving in driving rain making the visit unmemorable apart from the stay at the local backpackers, called The Flying Nun, which had an earful of eye candy, if you allow me to mix metaphors, consisting of American and English surfies. We watched a movie together, and it was as much fun gauging their reactions as it was watching the movie, which was Jackass Two, normally not my kind of fare. The grossness of the skits, involving mostly pain and humiliation, is in contrast to some areas that remain taboo. The Jackass idiots do a lot of anal stuff but would never involve any male erections on screen - there are hardly any penises (limp or otherwise) on view in the film, compared to the acreage of male arse. John Waters's cameo making the wee man disappear was an inspired moment (if you haven't seen the film, it's not what you may think).

Further south the next morning via the Mahia Peninsula, mercifully devoid of holiday makers this time of year, to Napier for an R&R session with our mates Roger and Ross and their international assortment of hangers-on. Unmissable if you are ever in the Hawke's Bay. And then on to Masterton, where preparations for the book launch are in full swing.

Sex in the news

At first I thought it was a leaked script from an unreleased episode of "Allo! Allo!" but it takes that paragon of journalistic British pride, the "News of the World" to give us the inside running:

FORMULA One motor racing chief Max Mosley is today exposed as a secret sado-masochist sex pervert.

The son of infamous British wartime fascist leader Oswald Mosley is filmed romping with five hookers at a depraved NAZI-STYLE orgy in a torture dungeon. Mosley - a friend to F1 big names like Bernie Ecclestone and Lewis Hamilton - barks ORDERS in GERMAN as he lashes girls wearing mock DEATH CAMP uniforms and enjoys being whipped until he BLEEDS.
The multi-millionaire son of Sir Oswald, who was a pal of Adolf Hitler, plays a concentration camp commandant in a FIVE-HOUR torture chamber video.
Mosley - the most powerful man in motor-racing - barks orders in German as he WHIPS two hookers dressed in striped uniforms reminiscent of AUSCHWITZ garb while girls in Nazi uniforms look on.
At one point the wrinkled 67-year-old—who publicly likes to give the impression he has put his father's evil legacy behind him—yells "she needs more of ze punishment!" while brandishing a LEATHER STRAP over a brunette's naked bottom.
Then the lashes rain down as Mosley counts them out in German: "Eins! Zwei! Drei! Vier! Fünf! Sechs!"
With each blow, the girl yelps in pain as grinning, grey-haired Mosley becomes clearly aroused. And after the beating, he makes her perform a sex act on him.

Unhelpfully, they have removed the pictures and video that were previously there and in the printed paper. So maybe it wasn't all that saucy. But the old adage that the only good sex in Britain is "scandalous sex", still rings true.

New Great British coins

The Royal Mint has released the final designs for the new range of coins to be released during this year. And don't they look stunning and striking!
Does it mean Britain will not soon join the euro area as it invests in this redesign? It'll be easier soon when the euro hits parity with the Pound!

Submission to the Royal Commission on Auckland Governance

I have outlined it before but I have now sent it off to the Royal Commission. You can too here.

Thank you for the opportunity to make a submission as a private citizen.
I have no particular expertise in local government - apart from paying rates - but as a Waiheke Islander, I am concerned that the future governance structure in Auckland will take insufficient stock of the needs and wants of small geographically distinct entities such as Waiheke Island and the other Hauraki Gulf islands.
It's a pity we can't have our County Council back unless we have 10,000 residents (at the last census we barely made it to 8,000) which would be my preference. So for the time being we have to deal with Babylon-Across-The-Sea that is Auckland City.

My submission consists of two parts. One concerns the future governance structure, and two, an argument to replace the funding mechanism of local government with something resembling a more equitable burden sharing among the citizenry.

1. Auckland governance:
The Auckland Regional Council should become a geographical entity that will be known as Auckland around the world. The current city and district councils should be abolished and their current competences, such as planning, environment, dealing with central Government, transferred upwards to the new ARC. The regional council would also run and own the regional entities responsible for water, sewage, transport, roads, infrastructure and culture.
All localised issues such as district and local planning should be devolved downwards to the beefed-up community boards who should become responsible for local planning issues and all localised matters (following the subsidiarity principle that policies should be determined and carried out at the lowest possible level).
The ARC should have 50 elected members from a proportional region-wide list system where your party list gets a seat for every 2% it polls in the election. The leader of the faction which can form a workable majority on the Council should become leader - in effect a mini version of parliamentary democracy but with stricter proportionality.
Community boards should cover natural geographical entities within the region, but do not need to be of the same size or population. They should be approved by a popular vote after their design.

2. Local government finances:
Rates and other property taxes should be abolished. The new community boards and ARC should be financed from a portion of the income and business taxes paid to the national Government: say, 2 percent of your gross tax should be transferred to the local board where the taxpayer resides, plus, say 1 percent of locally generated GST should be refunded to the boards and council - rather than setting up a local sales tax.
This would spread the tax base of local authorities far wider and more equitably than the current system, and those percentages should be set locally with Government setting the ceiling.
These new transfers would offset any current central Government subsidies for local governments and are easy to administer and transparent for payers and receivers.
In essence, local government funding would be done completely from the national tax take instead of local authorities constantly pushing up local rates (which also push inflation), cut out a massive layer of bureaucracy and local authorities would be forced to live more frugally and work smarter with far more control, input and oversight of local citizens.

Yours sincerely.

Sex in the news

From the Manawatu Standard (7 March) quoted by Gaynz.com:

"An 18-year-old Christchurch man has been charged following an alleged sexual assault on a fellow soldier in the Linton Military Camp barracks.
The Manawatu Standard understands the victim, 17, had been drinking heavily when he encountered a group of soldiers on Saturday, February 3.
He was then reportedly stripped, covered in vaseline and put to bed as a practical joke.
But he woke the next morning in discomfort and undertook a medical examination believing he had been raped at some stage during the night.
Detective Sergeant Gary Milligan, of Palmerston North CIB, said police were called to investigate an alleged sexual violation in the barracks, but found evidence of a lesser offence.
"As a result of the enquiry an 18-year-old soldier was arrested and charged with indecently assaulting a 17-year-old soldier," he said."

Getting covered with vaseline by a platoon of soldiers sounds like a grand night out to me. But boys, please, Vaseline is an oil-based lubricant unsuitable for usage with a condom. If you're going to do drunk sex shenanigans, keep yourselves safe sex-wise and use a water-based lubricant. Not as much fun, I know, and it doesn't cure colds either.

And then we have to hear from another favourite setting for situational homosexuality, the boys' boarding school with this Herald news item:

"Two schoolboys have been suspended from New Zealand's oldest registered school over sexual allegations relating to other boys in its hostel.
The mother of an alleged victim told the Herald she had discovered that her 12-year-old son had been jumped on by other students of Wesley College near Pukekohe while in bed in his first weeks away from home. [...]
Wesley is a decile-two, state-integrated Methodist college. Its hostel, which is not state-integrated and thus remains a private boarding establishment, accommodates about 30 girls and 260 boys - the vast majority of the school roll.
A report by boarding manager Bill Leach, following interviews with two now-suspended students, detailed how one boy admitted "dry humping" two students over three weeks.
It continued that the other boy had said he had performed the action on five students before Easter."

He'll be punished by the church authorities for loving Jesus a little bit too much during Lent! I hadn't heard much about this "dry humping" craze before, I'm so naive in these matters! But then sex with your clothes on doesn't sound like much fun. Unless it's a jockstrap only.

ADDENDUM: There is now a "Frot Alliance" (NSFW site) to promote non-orifice-centred sex. Worth a rub.