II've suddenly rediscovered the essence of being Kiwi which is waking up in the morning to a blinding light,getting out of bed to a freezing room specially designed to keep sexual activity and lust down to a  minimum and facing the world from your own home. Can't be Kiwi without a house either owned or rented  and the worst part of the damage done by the two Friedmanite heros, Roger and Ruth is that there's been a big increase in rent payers (and rent)because of the rise in house prices and the failure to build state housing for rent. People have to own to become as miserable as the rest and to feel the pain of interest rate rises designed to punish them for being insufficiently Friedmanite.

The cause of this rhapsody is that after three weeks of living in motels,an essential inductioin process into Kiwism and other people's houses we have now moved into na lovely white house with a garden (to be neglected and a washing rotisserie and two dustbins. Home at last in the University house provided for the visiting fellows but maintained (because a condition of being a visiting fellow is to be DIY incompetent as all geniuses are) by the U of C Property Services Department.

Morning has broken like the first morning-or rather like my first in NZ when I was dazzled by the light and could look out from our little house then in Dunedin now in Christchurch and see ungainly lumps of school kids,the lads in short pants the girls in St Triinians school uniforms and listen to the omnipresent sound of lawnmowers-then pushed, now petrol butNo dead Kiwi can know he's reached heaven unless he can hear not an angelic chorus but the sound of lawnmowers. Now there's also the occasional mad jogger (often with a rucksack either to make it more painful or to show his nationality)No housewives or be suited men. There were then going to the bus. Now they drive past hastening to join the enormous traffic jams getting in to town It's surprising with the Centre of Ch Ch still looking like a building site,so many people want to drive there. At lest earthquakes create parking spaces

.

It's like being in paradise but now without Aunt Daisy or the succession of Australian soaps like Doctor Paul. Linda has immediately gone out and bought all sorts of things we don't need. I've lounged around and watched Master Chef Australia and read books (not provided). Linda is making plans to produce a Kiwi counterpart which I've suggested should be Master Chef Pies,or even Master Chef Stewart Island but given that the only local content on TV is endearing animals and country Calender I doubt if they'd finance it. Better to turn our lovely front room into a restaurant and work therer while I'm away lecturing.She appears not to fancy that idea. 

Induction to work has now begun and it's probably easier for a camel to pass through the eye oif a needle than it is to get a job at the University of Canterbury. An invitation to lunch with the Vice Chancellor sometime in January or February. A visit to the registry to be photographed and issued with a pile of documentation on rights and responsibilities and what socks to wear. The issue of a pass. NO fingerprinting and burly security men dressed as cops who look as though they're carrying guns though its probably  only a pepper spray for breaking up student parties. There are also posters warning the students against sex, booze and dope though those used to be the main reason for coming to Uni in the first place. 

Then a quick tour. The university is now in big concrete blocks where I taught in a tin shed in town . I never wanted to move to Ilam in the first place. A university should be urban so that anyone can get to it and there are all the supporting services like pubs rather than suburban as Canterbury now is. There its  going to epater le bourgeoisie though the staff own houses round about and its easy to surround with A ring of steel if the students revolt. But today's students aren't revolting.Just numerous-14,000 as opposed to the 2000 when I was here.

My only duty in these early days of settling in is to speak to the graduates and award winners to congratulate them and tell them how much better off they are than in my bad old daysThe meting is in the Keith Jackson Room (when we told Ben his son that there was a room named after his father he said "dad would have wanted a strip of coast") We mistook the floor and went to the sixth rather than the fifth.Finding no Keith Jackson room I opened the door of the only staff member who seemed tl be around and asked where the Keith Jackson room was.HIs face clouded "I'm sorry to have to tell you but Keith Jackson passed away ten years ago"

The students ,when we found them were a lovely group and unnerving because they listened respectfully to my retrospective ramblings-a totally new experience for a politician.Not a heckler in earshot though to be honest I'm so deaf I'd never ha ve heard them anyway. I'm going to like the transition to lecturer. They were probably shocked by my recollections of how Canterbury used to be a hot bed of the left with Wolf Rosenberg and Winston Rhodes publishing the NZ Monthly review ever issue of which was the same because it explained why the revolution hadn't come yet--with Bruce Jesson and Owen Gager (NZ's favourite-probably only- Trot)and Mike Hudson-later economic adviser to the British CP. Those days are gone. Now its the Ruth Richardson College of Friedmanite Knowledge and she even has an honorary degree here  in recognition of her achievement of wreaking more damage than the earthquake

For the rest we've explored Christchurch,explained to people how they need to build  a few hills because its too flat. and seen parts Ive never seen before because when I worked here we didn't have a car. Went out to Sumner which is lovely but marred the visit by falling flat on my face after missing a step so I'm all cut and bleeding but this being New Zealand people rushed to pick me up and brush me down (perhaps because they didn't want too much blood on their sea front)

The Sumner medical centre bandaged me up beautifully,a feet repeated next day by the University Medical centre.It cost only $25 though the bandages must have cost more 

. We got home to find that our sponsor and guardian angel Bronwyn Hayward who's looked after us so well had been concussed by being hit on the head by her husband closing the garage door. Before they treated her at the hospital she had to be interrogated to make sure it wasn't domestic violence. I've told Linda to beware or I'll grass on her.

Bloodied and wounded. But it's still great to be here.

Almost a Kiwi

II've suddenly rediscovered the essence of being Kiwi which is waking up in the morning to a blinding light,getting out of bed to a freezing room specially designed to keep sexual activity and lust down to a  minimum and facing the world from your own home. Can't be Kiwi without a house either owned or rented  and the worst part of the damage done by the two Friedmanite heros, Roger and Ruth is that there's been a big increase in rent payers (and rent)because of the rise in house prices and the failure to build state housing for rent. People have to own to become as miserable as the rest and to feel the pain of interest rate rises designed to punish them for being insufficiently Friedmanite.

The cause of this rhapsody is that after three weeks of living in motels,an essential inductioin process into Kiwism and other people's houses we have now moved into na lovely white house with a garden (to be neglected and a washing rotisserie and two dustbins. Home at last in the University house provided for the visiting fellows but maintained (because a condition of being a visiting fellow is to be DIY incompetent as all geniuses are) by the U of C Property Services Department.

Morning has broken like the first morning-or rather like my first in NZ when I was dazzled by the light and could look out from our little house then in Dunedin now in Christchurch and see ungainly lumps of school kids,the lads in short pants the girls in St Triinians school uniforms and listen to the omnipresent sound of lawnmowers-then pushed, now petrol butNo dead Kiwi can know he's reached heaven unless he can hear not an angelic chorus but the sound of lawnmowers. Now there's also the occasional mad jogger (often with a rucksack either to make it more painful or to show his nationality)No housewives or be suited men. There were then going to the bus. Now they drive past hastening to join the enormous traffic jams getting in to town It's surprising with the Centre of Ch Ch still looking like a building site,so many people want to drive there. At lest earthquakes create parking spaces

.

It's like being in paradise but now without Aunt Daisy or the succession of Australian soaps like Doctor Paul. Linda has immediately gone out and bought all sorts of things we don't need. I've lounged around and watched Master Chef Australia and read books (not provided). Linda is making plans to produce a Kiwi counterpart which I've suggested should be Master Chef Pies,or even Master Chef Stewart Island but given that the only local content on TV is endearing animals and country Calender I doubt if they'd finance it. Better to turn our lovely front room into a restaurant and work therer while I'm away lecturing.She appears not to fancy that idea. 

Induction to work has now begun and it's probably easier for a camel to pass through the eye oif a needle than it is to get a job at the University of Canterbury. An invitation to lunch with the Vice Chancellor sometime in January or February. A visit to the registry to be photographed and issued with a pile of documentation on rights and responsibilities and what socks to wear. The issue of a pass. NO fingerprinting and burly security men dressed as cops who look as though they're carrying guns though its probably  only a pepper spray for breaking up student parties. There are also posters warning the students against sex, booze and dope though those used to be the main reason for coming to Uni in the first place. 

Then a quick tour. The university is now in big concrete blocks where I taught in a tin shed in town . I never wanted to move to Ilam in the first place. A university should be urban so that anyone can get to it and there are all the supporting services like pubs rather than suburban as Canterbury now is. There its  going to epater le bourgeoisie though the staff own houses round about and its easy to surround with A ring of steel if the students revolt. But today's students aren't revolting.Just numerous-14,000 as opposed to the 2000 when I was here.

My only duty in these early days of settling in is to speak to the graduates and award winners to congratulate them and tell them how much better off they are than in my bad old daysThe meting is in the Keith Jackson Room (when we told Ben his son that there was a room named after his father he said "dad would have wanted a strip of coast") We mistook the floor and went to the sixth rather than the fifth.Finding no Keith Jackson room I opened the door of the only staff member who seemed tl be around and asked where the Keith Jackson room was.HIs face clouded "I'm sorry to have to tell you but Keith Jackson passed away ten years ago"

The students ,when we found them were a lovely group and unnerving because they listened respectfully to my retrospective ramblings-a totally new experience for a politician.Not a heckler in earshot though to be honest I'm so deaf I'd never ha ve heard them anyway. I'm going to like the transition to lecturer. They were probably shocked by my recollections of how Canterbury used to be a hot bed of the left with Wolf Rosenberg and Winston Rhodes publishing the NZ Monthly review ever issue of which was the same because it explained why the revolution hadn't come yet--with Bruce Jesson and Owen Gager (NZ's favourite-probably only- Trot)and Mike Hudson-later economic adviser to the British CP. Those days are gone. Now its the Ruth Richardson College of Friedmanite Knowledge and she even has an honorary degree here  in recognition of her achievement of wreaking more damage than the earthquake

For the rest we've explored Christchurch,explained to people how they need to build  a few hills because its too flat. and seen parts Ive never seen before because when I worked here we didn't have a car. Went out to Sumner which is lovely but marred the visit by falling flat on my face after missing a step so I'm all cut and bleeding but this being New Zealand people rushed to pick me up and brush me down (perhaps because they didn't want too much blood on their sea front)

The Sumner medical centre bandaged me up beautifully,a feet repeated next day by the University Medical centre.It cost only $25 though the bandages must have cost more 

. We got home to find that our sponsor and guardian angel Bronwyn Hayward who's looked after us so well had been concussed by being hit on the head by her husband closing the garage door. Before they treated her at the hospital she had to be interrogated to make sure it wasn't domestic violence. I've told Linda to beware or I'll grass on her.

Bloodied and wounded. But it's still great to be here.

Almost a Kiwi

II've suddenly rediscovered the essence of being Kiwi which is waking up in the morning to a blinding light,getting out of bed to a freezing room specially designed to keep sexual activity and lust down to a  minimum and facing the world from your own home. Can't be Kiwi without a house either owned or rented  and the worst part of the damage done by the two Friedmanite heros, Roger and Ruth is that there's been a big increase in rent payers (and rent)because of the rise in house prices and the failure to build state housing for rent. People have to own to become as miserable as the rest and to feel the pain of interest rate rises designed to punish them for being insufficiently Friedmanite.

The cause of this rhapsody is that after three weeks of living in motels,an essential inductioin process into Kiwism and other people's houses we have now moved into na lovely white house with a garden (to be neglected and a washing rotisserie and two dustbins. Home at last in the University house provided for the visiting fellows but maintained (because a condition of being a visiting fellow is to be DIY incompetent as all geniuses are) by the U of C Property Services Department.

Morning has broken like the first morning-or rather like my first in NZ when I was dazzled by the light and could look out from our little house then in Dunedin now in Christchurch and see ungainly lumps of school kids,the lads in short pants the girls in St Triinians school uniforms and listen to the omnipresent sound of lawnmowers-then pushed, now petrol butNo dead Kiwi can know he's reached heaven unless he can hear not an angelic chorus but the sound of lawnmowers. Now there's also the occasional mad jogger (often with a rucksack either to make it more painful or to show his nationality)No housewives or be suited men. There were then going to the bus. Now they drive past hastening to join the enormous traffic jams getting in to town It's surprising with the Centre of Ch Ch still looking like a building site,so many people want to drive there. At lest earthquakes create parking spaces

.

It's like being in paradise but now without Aunt Daisy or the succession of Australian soaps like Doctor Paul. Linda has immediately gone out and bought all sorts of things we don't need. I've lounged around and watched Master Chef Australia and read books (not provided). Linda is making plans to produce a Kiwi counterpart which I've suggested should be Master Chef Pies,or even Master Chef Stewart Island but given that the only local content on TV is endearing animals and country Calender I doubt if they'd finance it. Better to turn our lovely front room into a restaurant and work therer while I'm away lecturing.She appears not to fancy that idea. 

Induction to work has now begun and it's probably easier for a camel to pass through the eye oif a needle than it is to get a job at the University of Canterbury. An invitation to lunch with the Vice Chancellor sometime in January or February. A visit to the registry to be photographed and issued with a pile of documentation on rights and responsibilities and what socks to wear. The issue of a pass. NO fingerprinting and burly security men dressed as cops who look as though they're carrying guns though its probably  only a pepper spray for breaking up student parties. There are also posters warning the students against sex, booze and dope though those used to be the main reason for coming to Uni in the first place. 

Then a quick tour. The university is now in big concrete blocks where I taught in a tin shed in town . I never wanted to move to Ilam in the first place. A university should be urban so that anyone can get to it and there are all the supporting services like pubs rather than suburban as Canterbury now is. There its  going to epater le bourgeoisie though the staff own houses round about and its easy to surround with A ring of steel if the students revolt. But today's students aren't revolting.Just numerous-14,000 as opposed to the 2000 when I was here.

My only duty in these early days of settling in is to speak to the graduates and award winners to congratulate them and tell them how much better off they are than in my bad old daysThe meting is in the Keith Jackson Room (when we told Ben his son that there was a room named after his father he said "dad would have wanted a strip of coast") We mistook the floor and went to the sixth rather than the fifth.Finding no Keith Jackson room I opened the door of the only staff member who seemed tl be around and asked where the Keith Jackson room was.HIs face clouded "I'm sorry to have to tell you but Keith Jackson passed away ten years ago"

The students ,when we found them were a lovely group and unnerving because they listened respectfully to my retrospective ramblings-a totally new experience for a politician.Not a heckler in earshot though to be honest I'm so deaf I'd never ha ve heard them anyway. I'm going to like the transition to lecturer. They were probably shocked by my recollections of how Canterbury used to be a hot bed of the left with Wolf Rosenberg and Winston Rhodes publishing the NZ Monthly review ever issue of which was the same because it explained why the revolution hadn't come yet--with Bruce Jesson and Owen Gager (NZ's favourite-probably only- Trot)and Mike Hudson-later economic adviser to the British CP. Those days are gone. Now its the Ruth Richardson College of Friedmanite Knowledge and she even has an honorary degree here  in recognition of her achievement of wreaking more damage than the earthquake

For the rest we've explored Christchurch,explained to people how they need to build  a few hills because its too flat. and seen parts Ive never seen before because when I worked here we didn't have a car. Went out to Sumner which is lovely but marred the visit by falling flat on my face after missing a step so I'm all cut and bleeding but this being New Zealand people rushed to pick me up and brush me down (perhaps because they didn't want too much blood on their sea front)

The Sumner medical centre bandaged me up beautifully,a feet repeated next day by the University Medical centre.It cost only $25 though the bandages must have cost more 

. We got home to find that our sponsor and guardian angel Bronwyn Hayward who's looked after us so well had been concussed by being hit on the head by her husband closing the garage door. Before they treated her at the hospital she had to be interrogated to make sure it wasn't domestic violence. I've told Linda to beware or I'll grass on her.

Bloodied and wounded. But it's still great to be here.

Back to Christchurch to prepare for work

Christmas is a'coming and the Kiwis are getting fat-well they already are fatter than I remember them.The image was of a lean and rangy man eyes looking to the far distance, chin jutting but now there are more be-stomached men and waddling women and the average avoir du poids is up. So they're not getting fat so much as Christmassy which means more santa claus hats with white bobbles, decorations in the shops and adverts about presents. In Dunedin the local brothel wishes clients a happy Xmas and a satisfied new year and the travelling service provider who advertises that she'll go as far as Cromwell and Alexander (by taxi) hopes to see clients in the New Year so Xmas is definitely cumming there.Indeed I saw one table full of ladies in Christmas red and hats in a restaurant

Weather did improve and the sun actually appeared in Dunedin whereat people ran for cover, fainted, and turned red. I basked. Diane invited us to the Dunedin Club (which used to be called the squatters club) My joy. I never got invited there when I lived in Dunedin (and only once to the Christchurch club)but it's even more high status than the Koru club where the national elite meet and greet. Dark panelled, pictures of George V, old paintings  and an almost empty dining room. Very English and therefore presumably very bankrupt but it still keeps going.

Last time we went I met Dorothy Fraser wife of Bill the MP for St Kilda and in my day press officer with me as her junior, to the Dunedin Labour Representation Committee.Not today though. She's dead. I gather though that Bill's drinking mate, Brian MacDonnell who started out as my bank teller at the ANZ is still alive.He became MP for Dunedin Central but was de selected stood as Independent Labour and lost that.

While Christmas is  coming we're going. North. Time to leave Dunedin City of my Dreams with its changeable weather. We've seen everyone we know that's still living, eaten well and on the last day seen Stan the Man and Anne who's full of tales about the Lange Labour government and why it all went wrong (threatening crisis and Lange had no guts). They live out at Mosgiel four or five miles out of town where housing is cheaper (but colder) and more spacious.

Then it's hit the road Jack for the world's most boring drive . I'd call it the Great North Road except that in NZ it's always better to travel south (though you should stop before  Stewart Island unless you like rain as a way of life. It's long, straight  and every boring since there's nothing but sheep cows and hedges hiding houses to look at.Thank the Kiwi god (Hedon) we decided not to do it in one day but to break in  Timaru at a smashing motel with a very depressed owner. Linda chose it because other motels had comments like "friendly owner who chatted with us at breakfast" "wonderful warm reception" or "friendly folk".She'd rather not have that though I think it's the best way of finding out about places.

Our search in Timaru is 1) for the port where Linda's grandfather,promoted from head pilot at Port Chalmers -"a good year-only three ships ran aground" to be harbour master  who in those days must have been a real power in the land 2) for a house which once belonged to a relative -which Linda says has a light house-sorry the lighthouse, in the garden.Sounds unlikely and we don't find it 3) for a restaurant-which we do actually find  where the glamorous birds (all four of them) congregate, gloomy couples sit and stare at the room and the food is very good. I'll be turning into a blue cod at this rate.

I'm a great advocate of small towns-the backbone of NZ until  Roger decimated them,but it's difficult to see what the point of Timaru is.Lovely beach lots of motels busy port but what do they all do.Linda says she used to come every year for her holidays but there's no candy floss non ice cream stalls no game arcades or Kiss me Quick hats.Holidays in NZ must have been a serious business. Now they're just a tragedy.

Onward to Christchurch via hundreds of is of even more boring road and flat countryside  stopping at Temuka to look for Grandfather's house-the one he retired to where the McDs used to stay. Two story house called the Anchorage.No lighthouse in the garden. But no one knows anything about it there are hardly any two story houses(not worth having a second story in S Canterbury there's nothing to see out of it-that's my storey and I'm sticking to it)and when we drive down drives to look at houses hidden by hedges the owners think we've come to buy. It takes some explaining,

Now doubtless the word has gone about Temuka (there not being much else to talk about)that a strange woman millionaire is looking for a two story house to buy.Estate agents are looking through their files to see what can offer. Owners of the few two story houses in Temuka are putting for sale signs in their gardens and property values are rocketing as a result of this insane search for the long dead house of a long dead relative 

Eventually persuade her to give up. It's been pulled down,blown up by Jihadis,turned into the Temuka brothel. Anything. We resume the drive and the search for roadside toilets. Stop for a milk shake at Ashburton-same place as we had one going down-it's sad not to be going the other way-and listen to a radio programme about a women's group which provides tonnes of mince meat and cheese sauce for soup kitchens. Like all NZ journalism it goes on far too long. And makes me feel hungry.

Arrive back at the same motel we stayed at when we arrived. Next door a big can arrives with a dozen girls wearing hijabs. Is this a load of Jihadi brides for export? Better not crack that joke. It might upset people.

from Paradise Lost to Jihardi Brides

Can't stay happy forever. Even in N Z where hedonism has replaced presbyterianism as the national religion-which is probably why they abolished Sundays. We could have stayed longer in Wanaka. We should have stayed longer in Wanaka-sun healthy walking beautiful lake but daft as brushes we decided not to because of the pull of a few days in Dunedin which I assumed would be paradise re-visited and the place where I'd been so happy when I first arrived.  Now it's Frigidaire re-vested.

So we set out assuring ourselves there was plenty of time and we could call in at "all the little places"on the way there. There wasn't and we didn't because I'd chosen what I was later told is the longest and most boring way to Dunedin with only one stop of interest in Clyde. So we arrived in heaven tired, thirsty and hungry to find that  global warming has made it part of Antartica-freezing cold, no sun and a wind cold enough to take the balls of brass monkeys which had had the sense to move North only to find that we could only get to our motel on George St by going miles North then coming back because the Santa Parade (something they never had when I came) had taken over George St.

All my happy memories froze and had to be put into cold storage. This is vest and overcoat country where the smart shoppers wear anoraks as well as the compulsory rucksack and the even smarter ones stay home and put the electric fire on. I'm sure it was never as cold as this in my time. It can't have been or I wouldn't have survived though it was the base for Operation Deepfreeze.

Apart from temperature it's not changed a great deal. No DIC any longer, Arthur Barnett's horse  (sadly in need of a coat of paint) survives but not Arthur Barnett's shop. Wardell's has gone but Radio 4XD "coming to you from the roof of the Calder McKay company"may still be here but not on the roof because Calder McKay's  gone too. The industrial area has lost all the jobs but gained a new coat of paint. The Hillside railway workshops are gone, along with the railway sold for peanuts to union busting Wisconsin railway which closed most of the track down and fired most of the workers before selling it back so the station is now an art gallery cum museum of sport thronging (like our motel and the shopping streets) with Japanese tourists taking photos of the stained glass windows and the decorative tiles. The plaque outside says opened by Sir Joseph Ward Minister of Railways in 1905 but there's none to say "Closed by Sir Roger Douglas" It's a marvellous symbol for Dunedin: "wonderful,planned with great hopes now dead but redecorated" They're now struggling to save the law courts opposite and preserve them. 

Lunch at the Best Cafe (best place for whitebait patties) with Stan Rodger and Anne. He's gloomy about the state of Labour because the old core the trade unions and the working class vote are gone and now its a question of pursuing causes like the environment, feminism and being kind to animals (except Sheep) all over the place.He's just back from a re-union week end for all the Labour MPs elected since 19935. Roger Douglas came but not Prebble and few from the 1999-2008 cabinet. Sounds like a good occasion. But like us you can't hold a party together on memories,and invocations of Michael Joseph Savage.Marvellous as they are.

Next door the  Early Settlers Museum is as good as ever. A new wing on Maori but still the room of pictures of the early settlers looking down disapprovingly and sternly at the hedonistic generation that's inherited their city with  four computers giving their names and the ships they arrived on .Bet they're wondering whether it was all worthwhile when they see their successors. Still anything was better than Scotland at that time.

In the evening we went to hear the Dunedin City Choir's Messiah. I've heard it in Huddersfield but this was as good-if not quite as exciting. But it brought together the old Dunedin : grey haired (even the women-who in Britain would have dyed grey hair blond are all white, not a dark skin in sight, all nice and all old and all quick to evacuate and go home to bed when it was over. Very few rucksacks so its not a your audience but a good many anoraks among the Harris tweed jackets.When Linda comments to Diane that it's an old white audience Diane replies (truthfully)"but that's what we are" Dunedin is the last resting place of old,good, nice New Zealand qualities which get fewer as you go further North until you reach Auckland.

Town is full if mums and dads kids and cameras for degree day when the graduates all in colourful hired gowns march up the main street to the Town Hall to get their degrees. (George St should be permanently blocked off for everything :a parade a day keeps the blues at bay)It's a great occasion which we never had in my time. Right too for the Uni to display how many kids and how much money it brings into Dunedin. The University is Dunedin now with old industries gone to Australia the only industry is educating South East Asia. And Southland

Highlight of the visit though was seeing Jim and Emily Flynn who worked with me in Canterbury but now looks like a marxist sage with a beard and grey hair.Jim as brilliant as ever though he's only written three books since I last saw him two years ago. and as acerbic on NZ politics. His view is that the Alliance should never have gone into coalition with Labour but should have retained its freedom to bring in its own bills. Jim Anderton,he argued wanted to so something before he retired so he joined the government and the party fell apart. What it should have done was hurt Labour which it did by steeling their votes. It got 18% on its first election and 14% at the second big enough to pressure Labour into moving left to bring them back rather than to the soggy centre as it did.

In his view Rogernomics triumphed because the Labour Party had no ideaology no thinkers, no schools and lacked the backbone of the unions to keep it true to the workers and Helen Clark's government wasn't able to pull it back to Labourism still less socialism because they'd ceased to be socialist in any sense. So Roger triumphed because there was nothing to oppose him and no one to point out that it was all barmy. 

Rings true except of course it isn't as easy for one of the two major parties to move left because of the fear and hostility that would be generated so Labour parties get pulled to the centre to win=unless there's a crisis and now there's no hope there either because a sufficiently high proportion are sufficiently well off to make them scared of the changes Labour needs to make. Go home in gloom and despair.

Cheer up next day when we visit an old school (Southland Girls) friend of Linda's and spend the lunchtime reading through old school magazines for the fifties including  the accounts of Southland coming third in the speaking competition for the Anthony Eden Cup in Gisborne

But Wednesday for a change is warm and sunny, Now Dunedin City of my Dreams looks lovely . Its the perfect size for a city in the perfect situation surrounded by the perfect country and kept alive by its wonderful University. How lucky I was to find myself here (largely by accident) half a century ago. Apart from the weather Dunedin's perfect and its even more so now that it's retired from the real world. You cant promote it on the slogan"Dunedin a Great City to Retire to"But it is. Reminds me of Vic Oliver's joke when he came here "What a beautifully laid out city. How long has it been dead?"

I laughed at it then. I resent it now. 

Shock Horror. The head of the security intelligence service (SIS) a woman naturally, tells a parliamentary committee that there may be up to a dozen Jihadi brides from NZ. That will surely give Jihadists better living conditions and cleaner lavatories.

A good Kiwi read: Wanaka and more about Pies.

As contentment grows so my world narrows; from the universe to New Zealand. From NZ to Wanaka. Soon it will encompass only the house Diane has loaned us out of kindness to refugees (non huddled masses section). We're happy hiking,unfashionable dressed drinking DB and eating pies. Kiwisation is working and Pomerania turning into an unhappy land far away. Feels good.

We've been walking for exercise. I made heavy work of it slow and stiff pretending to keep stopping to blow my nose which has been constantly running since we came or to photograph the view-which is lovely though like all NZ Beauty it just sits there looking cold and beautiful while I plead desperately for it to inspire me

Walks are another NZ Con. They always minimise driving distances pretending to do in three hours with a stop for pies a distance which takes us six. Walking is worse. Seeing a sign for a lakeside walk to the waterfall we decided to do it. Only other people on the walk were a Chinese couple (Linda asked them where they came from and they said "Auckland") plus a few cyclists hurtling past without bells to warn us to get out of the way. The walk took us an hour and at the end  a native gently explained that there was no waterfall. Just Waterfall Creek and that's another few miles (kilometres they call them) up the hill. We gave up in despair and trudged back. In the rain.

Wanaka itself is a collection of sheds at the end of the lake. Some of the sheds are brightly coloured with restauranteurs, Kiwiana sellers and ice cream makers stood outside their shops waiting for customers who don't come, a crowded Whaka Pai and a thronging pie shop and the bigger sheds stashed away in a little valley out of sight. This includes another big Mitre 10. Why do they need such enormous Mitre 10s in a holiday resort. Do the millionaires spend their weekends doing plumbing and DIY?

What's happened to the number eight fencing wire the all purpose Kiwi tool?

Nothing happens in Wanaka. People sit around reading travel supplements to the local papers  about holidays in Europe, Canada or USA with pictures of Lake Como,Yellowstone and the Rockies. Why bother when you've got Wanaka. Indeed the most dramatic event since the gold rushes was a march for the environment on Sunday. Several hundred people including lots of kids carrying placards bigger than they were  paraded through town while the tourists chomped on their pies and Kiwi breakfasts and ignored them,not realising that the end of the world will include Wanaka

Wanaka will be crammed with folk come the Christmas break when all the cities close down and everyone goes to the beach, the lakes or the hills. That as I've often remarked would be the time to invade NZ and occupy it, so that when the Kiwis come home and back to work they find the cities run by Jihadis, men with beards occupying Parliament and the courts operating Sharia law. I was going to say "that'll surprise them"but on second thoughts  I'm not sure they'd notice.

Linda has caught the Rogenomics bug (undiagnosed when I first came) and is busy thinking of businesses she can introduce to make her a millionaire. The two current ideas are a factory for taking the stones out of olives which will then have an enormous sale now that every magazine newspaper and television programme is about food.I have to explain gently that they can probably do it cheaper in China like everything else.

The second money-spinner is the sale of whole fresh chickens ("chooks"they're called) apparently these days you can only get frozen whole chook or little chook bits in the supermarket so there'll be an insatiable demand for whole fresh chook for Christmas dinner just like when she was a kid. With any look she'll forget the idea or move on to some other insanity like breeding whitebait in home fish tanks. Rogernomics has perverted people. In the old days she'd only have thought of cleaner toilets.

The other occupation has been reading-if only we could do it while walking  but that's probably forbidden  by the NZ hiking  and related trades association. In my time the literary greats were back-blocks books like a River Rules My Life or Crumperature. There's still a lot of that. No Crump but books on life on the Gorge River ( not exciting) or Martindale but no Crump any more probably because the hills are alive with the sound of helicopters looking for animals to kill rather than smelly men killing them on foot.

The main gap now is small town stuff like God Boy and End of the Golden Weather and suburbia-lite which no one has written about -and good writing has moved on to Big City life-hence it's  only about Auckland but bloody good stuff  by Charlotte Grimshaw built round contemporary issues politics and people. Probably in an intimate society like NZ where its more difficult to write the truth and the politicians are only semi literate smaller democracy the best way of describing the crude realities of politics  and the true personalities of politics is to fictionalise it.

I have to report quiet contentment creeping over me. Every day in every way I get more Kiwi. Though you won't get me watching rugby.

Queenstown

ACCLIMATISATION. BLOG FIVE

Kai bar for breakfast.Mine is the Full Kiwi. Huge. No wonder people are getting much fatter than I remember them. I need a Pickford's lorry to carry me out but snce they don't have them Linda puts me in the car and we decide to go where we'd vowed not to go:Queenstown.

It's an impressive drive over the Lindis passed though huge brown hills empty of everything. In Yorkshire the mean buggers or farmers would built dry stone walls up the sides and right to the top. Here there's nowt.Not a sheep.Not a hiker.Not as soldier in training.I guess no one's ever bothered to go to the tops. So they just sit there..

It's odd that the Kiwis haven't merchandise their wild South. Sheep would have to replace buffalo but you could have films,songs, legends and books about sheep-not cow- boys,rustlers,bandits,stage coaches and Presbyterean brothels and booze palaces. Shearers would be the heros rather than sheriffs and you'd have to make it all up  but that's what the Americans did with their wild west;the whole thing was an invention made for money.

. All NZ has in place of merchandisable legends  is tall tails about sex with sheep and prairie oysters and books by women about their back country lives like A River Rules My Life ,living on (not in)the Gorge River and,one I'm just reading Snow on the Lindis about  life on the Morvan station round Lindis.All interesting stuff but more  NZ Women;s Weekly than Gene Autry

Magnificent view from the top of the Lindis but like every other magnificent view it is obscured by Japanese tourists doing  selfies. NZ has changed from Britain's overseas farm to Japan's overseas holiday haunt where people pay enormous sums to come and take pictures of themselves. 

And go to Queenstown. It's always been a show place.When I was in Dunedin the better off like Maurice Joel all had cottages they called cribs there. They may have been palaces but I never got invited so I don't know. When I came with Parliamentary select committees pursuing a diminishing supply of facts round the world and able to invent reasons for coming to NZ, at enormous public expense we were always taken to Queenstown, not to find out new and exciting facts but just to see it in the way all parliamentary visitors to the old West Germany had to visit Berlin.

Now you can't see the lake for tourists taking selfies and jet boats racing each other.The local shops have all been replaced by brand selling boutiques, the cribs replaced by expensive hotels,built like the Ziggurat of Ur, the quiet chugging of the  Earnslaw by jet boats,the TAB by two casinos-maybe more, and the streets are filled with adverts offering a hundred ways of killing yourself: in the air, up the hills, in the water and at the end of Hooker's elastic bands.  It could all be merchandised as Dignitas for the athletic .With the added attraction that for a small extra fee on the booking ticket they'll guarantee to ship the body home, securely preserved in glacier ice with aromatic herbs and lightly drizzled with pesto.

Queenstown is paradise for every form of para except plegic:parascending,paragliding, parachuting  but not the Para Rubber company which I remember being mystified by when I arrived in Dunedin.Was I stretching my imagination too far, back then, when I wondered if it sold contraceptives-rubbers as they called them in England? Has it been bankrupted by the advent of the pill?

Queenstown is turning into a crowded hell in paradise Warren Cooperisation has ruined Queenstown and the way the council hands out planning permissions to destroy its natural beauty it will end up like Dubai with tower blocks of luxury flats, another Shard with a view of Coronet Peak from the top flats and the botanical gardens turned into an Indie car racetrack and a canal dug up from Bluff to allow cruise liners to sail down Lake Wakatipu, to feast on gluten free venison at Glenorchy. At the moment the final straw is a huge Mitre 10 at Frankton.Must be the biggest in the world,presumably so millionaires can do a spot of DIY and fit gold taps in their palaces. Bad on you Mitre 10 .You've fucked up again.

Queenstown isn't NZ. It's hell in the hills,lapidary by the lakeside . Gore has a huge trout at the entrance to the town and Cromwell a dying fruit bowl. Queenstown should have a huge flashing dollar sign

Long drive back. Exhausted. Linda offers to get the TV set which I screwed up on arrival working again For the first time I can watch NZ television.Things have changed since my day. It's in colour!. There's even a parliamentary channel which announces that Parliament isn't meeting.Eagerly I wait for the news which is delivered by a mom and pop team standing up rather than sitting down as TV presenters do in Pomerania. Probably to ensure they stay awake.

I don't..

Kai Whakapai (Yes really)

I'm Rip Van Kiwi Winkle. He woke up to find they'd abolished George III and proclaimed a republic. Not quite the same for this Rip Van now I'm beginning to winkle but they are having as referendum on whether to abolish the flag. They're doing it in a roundabout way by deciding which replacement they like best before deciding whether to get rid of the one they've got. Well the bathwater swirls down the plug hole the wrong way round here.That might explain it.

But more Winklish because every one I want to see is dead and I'm halfway there. The ideas men, John Roberts, Bob Chapman, Erich Geiringer, Bill Oliver, the colleagues like Keith Jackson,Angus Ross, Willy Morrell all shuffled off the coil without waiting for my return.Who'll tell me what to think now?

Fortunately there's no need to think any more. We've got the internet to do that for us. Except we haven't Diane's house isn't wired up and smoke signals from the garden are no use in this wind. So we go to the Lakeside hotel next door, order two cups of tea and use their's. Since we look old, rich (in Linda's case) and clean (in mine) they don't mind. And they don't charge either unlike the next place,the local bar hang  out called Kia Whakapae (translated as the food ship bearing pies) which charges $2 per half hour which is just about long enough to read the guardian Times,Observer and Sunday Timers to find out that nothing is happening in Pomerania but the streets everywhere else are filled with Robocops bearing guns. They'll only be necessary in Britain when George Osborne announces that he's cutting everything Except Robocops

Kai is the local hippy haunt (is that still the name) they look like Jihadi lumberjacks with their straggly beards and in France they'd be shot but here they sit around outside the bar rolling their ciggies and drinking free water. They look weedy.Not like the world's image of a Kiwi as tall,tough and built for the rugby pitch

Since it rains all day (worst spring we've ever had one woman tells us)I go to sleep in the afternoon then we venture out to the New World supermarket.  "Why is there so much gluten free stuff?"  Linda asks an old joker on the way out "cos they're all bloody mad"

Time like an ever rolling stream

Argument about time not over we go for an early breakfast allowing us to reach the radio station at 9-45 to the Gateway Club house .Which has four clocks giving the time in London Singapore New York and London which solves the problem. We've got up two hours early. To share breakfast with polyglot nationalities,all slim and vigorous and touring Kiwis all fat and slothful. How do they get like that? Can't remember any of these ambling pie mountains when I first came..Kiwis were all slim and tough looking. Not now -They've replaced the fish and chips of yesteryear with Fat Food.Another thing to blame Roger Douglas for.

Kill time by our own  ramble through the ruins of what used to be Christchurch which is now a patchwork of concrete slabs bomb sites and containers Brownlee's work,like God's is never done. Cost of reconstruction has now escalated to $40billion which should be a major Keynesian boost to the economy though there's not a soul of anyone working,anywhere. However the cardboard Cathedral is nice .Inside a woman preaching .Outside a black befrocked clergyman escaping.

At 10-45,exactly on time a man comes to open the radio station,print out the front pages of the papers and tune in to Stephen Nolan rambling on about pensioners being over paid, getting too many perks and generally mollycoddled-preparatory presumably to indicting his two overpaid pensioners Edwina Currie and me. Particularly me of course for gallivanting round the world as an overpaid pensioner..The news is cold snow and sleet in the North while I'm sitting 13 hours ahead of them in beautiful sunshine.

The programme rattles along for its one hour rag bag with Edwina allowed to say anything she wants at Edwina length while anything I say is immediately interrupted and talked over by insane questions about whether I deserve my free bus pass and am I screwing students by taking money from them.Explain that it isn't a zero-sum game but can't be heard over Nolan's interruptions of my brilliant analysis..

Our minder seems to quite like the programme-ruder,he thinks,than anything local. He suggests a route to Wanaka where we're going for a rest  and recuperation but like all New Zealanders asked for travel times he minimises it. They either think their country is smaller than it is or they drive Ferraris because  any of our journeys always takes two hours longer than Kiwis tell us it will take. David Lange was the same with his fast night drives from Auckland to Wellington (or was it vice-versa?) which Hamilton couldn't have done in the time Lange claimed.

The main national artery from North to South has been made as boring as possible so that the delights at the end look better and bigger. It should be measured in distances between dairies where you can stop for milk shakes and pies in the way Poms do at service stations..Miles and miles of fuck-all hidden behind huge hedges It only becomes interesting after the turn off to the lakes where the route becomes beautfiul but in the cold distant way of NZ country which is more hostile than the British coun tryside probably because in Britain there are all sorts of walks churches and rights of way but here it's all owned by someone who doesn't want you on it.

Even worse there are neither dairies nor toilets.In fact the one place we stopped had a huge sign saying "No Restroom" and another proclaiming toilets 14 miles back the way we'd just come.Probably done to make you drive faster. I makes me want to stand by the road and pee for England as that other great Yorkshire man did when he took possession in the Pre-Pie and Pom years.Now they've probably got concealed pee-cameras and helicopter patrols to stop that and arrest peeing-poms.Makes me wonder  what the Japanese tourists do because in the only toilets we do find there's a notice instructing people to put used toilet paper down the toilet rather than in the waste bin but judging from the accumulation of damp toilet paper in the waste bin the tourists haven't  understood.. What's the Japanese for damp toilet paper?

In  the old says the fields were occupied only by sheep (plus occasional posters inviting people to vote National)) Now there are all sorts of exotic animals;llamas (wondering if they can escape back to South America) deer, cows heifers calves and vast irrigation sprayers moving like H.G.Wells's Martians slowly across the fields. The only roadside buildings are galleries,craft centers,art shops,rustic furniture builders and museums of agricultural implements. All closed.None offering rest rooms.Not a dairy in sight.What the hell are those cows doing all day?

All told its a beautiful but boring seven hour run to Wanaka where we arrive buggered. Will the super market be open to get some food. I say it won't-after all in Britain they close at 4-00 on Sundays and this is religious NZ. Wrong they've converted from Sabbaterianism to $atarianism

Ca y est.Wonderful Wanaka where nothing ever happens but cold beauty reigns.We manage to find Diane's house where the key is buried in the garden and our suitcases are too heavy to carry upstairs But we can just manage to get in up and eat and then to bed.Buggered.. Vaut le visite as the Guide Michelin might say of places much easier to get to. 

La vie en Christchurch: have they lost the Webb Ellis trophy already?

How bright everything is. Not necessarily the people. I've never seen Jim Flynn's analysis of Kiwi IQ.They're probably brighter but slower because less challenged and more easy going. But the light. So bright compared to the land of mists mellow fruitfulness and  VW pollution. It struck me the first time I stayed in a motel in ChCh. Unremitting brightness. "This is Kodachrome country thought I,rather sadly because you couldn't get Kodachrome then because of import restrictions-so how the hell did they produce all those books of NZ in Colour?

Too bright for me to be allowed out according to Linda because as soon as I sit out to bask in it I'm snatched back in and told that the pills I'm taking (I'm being kept alive by the British chemical industry to guarantee their profits) will turn me red. I thought they'd said green but never bothered because there wasn't enough sunlight in UK to produce puce or even pink.

So I can only go out wearing a hat and dark glasses and possibly a hijab though we don't have one with us not wanting to be viewed as Jehadis .

A first day of catching up with life .That requires us to go to Riccarton Mall. All human life is there and all New Zealand by the look of it.  What did all these people do on a Saturday morning when the shops were shut as they were all week end when I were a lad.. Stood there meditating on the Mallisation of NZ life (Fleurs du Mal-or is it maul?)

Crazy thing is NZ's great invention-the verandah over pavements (something they could do with in ever raining Manchester) lies neglected.The poor shuffle along it looking in the shops. The rest fight for parking places,messily mauling in the melee at the Mall

Meanwhile Linda tries to get her mobile phone re-simmed for NZ (they can't do it)in which process she's interrupted by a tall Khaki dressed Kiwi buying a mobile to brain damage his five year old kid who tells her the price in pounds and when she thanks him sarcastically tells her that she's a bitch and needs to be a lot more charming  is she  has come to live here. Extraordinary. She's upset and l'esprit de l'escalier chimes in too late for her to ask him if he works for  Welcome to NZ.? Stupid rudeness of a kind one would never have expected in such a nice country. Mull it over for hours afterwards. Can't be inverted colonial cringe can it? Or just dyspepsia?

Then to McDonalds-slowest service in the world and no hash browns my staple food since I read about processed meat and bowel cancer-and out to the airport where we're told phones are cheaper. Not true. Everywhere at the airport is more parked up than Riccarton Mall. Have all these people fled the country fearing another earthquake? Why bother when On Street parking is free?

Evening to Bronwyn Hayward's house for dinner and to get my instructions for the lectures.12 of one and a half to two hours twice a week.For eternity probably. They'll find it difficult to stop me raving on to an empty room for years while parties oif students are shown round "this is what MPs were like before we had them doctored for PR" Lovely evening but unable to agree what time I should present myself at broadcasting for my broadcast to UK tomorrow. UK is 13 hours behind (and probably 13 years too in terms of the good life). Should I present at nine am for a ten o'clock start or eleven a.m Unable to sleep worrying about it

Then back to motel to make the phone work and prepare to meet staff from the U ofC. And ask some of them if they'll accommodate some of our suitcases (because if they fit into the economy car we can't) .while we go to Wanaka. Hope they will because otherwise I'll have to leave Linda in ChCh and go by myself to give the suitcases a scenic tour. Baclk at the motel the All Black flag is at half mast. For Joshua Lomu? Or have they lost the Webb Ellis cup  in misdirected luggage coming back from London?

Journey to New Zealand

The hardest part of getting to my People's paradise  is getting to Manchester. Six thirty departure to find the M62, the North's Hadrian's Wall, traffic jammed to hell (Lancashire) People must have to go to work in Manchester by 5am to arrive on time. It's awful, slow crawl, long stops, angry feeling of impotence  as departure time approaches. Which we miss (the time two hours before) not the departure. In the terminal I shoulder my super new carry on rucksack to have it  fly open and everything-including my precious lecture manuscript which now weights two tons fly all over the coffee bar. It's really too heavy to carry but I soldier and shoulder on.

Air travel is a combination of two purgatories. On the plane where it's difficult to sleep even in our business class beds, and  the long march through the shopping malls to get to yet another departure gate. The Americans, who once shoved transit passengers into a grim brown lounges now march them through brand paradise of shops, airline lounges (we go to the wrong one) and duty free booze dealers to extort our money. It's a combination of exercise gym (because the gates are kept miles apart) and super shopping of over priced impulse buys.

"I remember you" says the air NZ hostess "Keep quiet it shows your age" but NZers dress for travel as if they were going on a camping holiday in Wanaka. It's not a concours d'elegance though first class (which we're not allowed to see and may have been abolished) may be more up--market. No NZ papers, no Metro, no North and South not even a NZ Woman's Weekly of happy memory (does it still exist?) Just glossies like Vogue and even a new Kiwi-glossy which I've never heard of. No inflight mag either. Has the muse gone silent? No bottles and lotions of NZ smells and sheep grease chained down in the toilet In fact the only traces of NZ are the flying-helmeted figure who peers at you peeing on the wall of the toilet and the information video presented by hip-hop All Blacks which is incomprehensible. What's the country we're coming to coming to?

At long last bleary wet dawn over miserable Mangere "Isn't it wonderful to be back?" asks the chief steward. I mumble some reply about it's been a long time Then realise he's not talking to me but to the woman in front.

And its untrue. The automatic passport readers don't work.They chew up the entry cards forcing us into another long queue at the "Can we help you?" desk. Which can't. "Aw ... technology!" is the answer to our queries. Auckland International (they all are, even Queenstown) isn't an airport so much as a collection of tin sheds on a swamp so having collected our four big suitcases we trundle them down the walkway wondering why NZ hasn't exploited the opportunity to sell things with shops, Pie stalls, and rest tents offering shelter tea and biscuits on the 12 minute open air walk-only to find we've got someone else's suitcase. Could be a drug smuggler or contain the dismembered body of a security agent or guns and weapons for the South Island Interfada, but not my suit newly purchased from M&S or my shirts and clean underpants. Go back or press on and hope? Air NZ can handle it. Press on. They can't.  Being staffed entirely by gentle geriatrics who ask "Can I help you?" then take a long time explaining why they can't. And don't. Linda has to go back fight her way through the Do Not Enter under pain of Death signs and then swop the bags. Which takes an hour while the departure time for our Christchurch plane slips away. Only just make it in time for another viewing of the safety video by Rip Torn (who he?) and the Belligerent All Blacks. Awful but better than last time's which was presented by Hobbits. Perhaps they're less popular now the huge bird hanging from the roof of Wellington airport has crashed down. No more Tolkien bird droppings now

Then tired, smelly (Linda sniffs)and psychologically broken we arrive in  Christchurch with hundreds of Japanese tourists led in flocks by persons with flags.When I first arrived NZ was all white (even the All Blacks) Now it's very mixed race. But the journey south by crowded crammed plane is much less enjoyable than travel by train and inter-island ferry. That was like the wild west with open platforms between carriages and pie stops at Taumaranui, to be met at Dunedin railway station buy the entire staff of the History department. 

Rejoice ! We've reached Christchurch a vast collection of suburbs without a city. Most NZ Cities are because the suburbs have grown too big for the pawky centre built earlier but Christchurch is worse because the City Centre was destroyed in the earthquake. Indeed it looks as though business has migrated into the houses. So many signs advertising modest suburban houses for language teaching, hairdressing beauty treatment, mortuaries or taxidermy that they must have managed to do without a centre. None of the houses seem to contain a restaurant so we cruise round for two hours to eventually find one. Japanese eating with chop sticks-always difficult with rice. But boy did I need it.Very New NZ. 2 months old and delicious.  We could have been in Notting Hill not central Christchurch.

Leaving Britain

"My country, how I leave my country"mnAs Pitt said on dying though Disraeli was told by a House of Commons waiter that it was "I think I could eat one of Bellamy's veal pies" But as I'm off to New Zealand for a couple of months here's a few departing thoughts.

Jeremy Try looking like a leader not a dishevelled  pensioner and think before you speak. Don't say we mustn't shoot terrorists say "Of course security services will have shoot to in incidents such as those in Paris but in general its better to catch people alive and get information from them"  Don't say we shouldn't vaporise Jehadi John say "of course  we'd like to put Jehadi John on trial for his monstrous crimes but since that's not possible a drone killing is the only way of stopping him"

They'll misquote you whenever they can but don't give them the raw material to do that

Labour: Stop sulking and criticising the leader. Listen to what the rank and file want and oppose the Government like hell instead of bickering with each other..Jeremy is our leader and he's there for the duration until he decides to go.

The nation. No use rioting or striking but each section should mobilise its resistance by telling government loud and clear that austerity won't work, That means the NHS saying we need at least two billion now or people will die. The police saying we can't do this that and t'other without more money,Local government warning that social services will suffer throwing more costs on the NHS. Say it loud,  say it clear, say it together

The tide is turning as it becomes clear that austerity not only isn't working but can't work.The "recovery" is petering out.House prices can't go on rising forever .When they stop the bubble will burst and all the funny money that's come in will begin to leave, The scale of our deficit means that confidence  will collapse .The pound will fall heavily sooner or later.Then interest rates will go up Then an over-borrowed nation of debtors is screwed

Hold the fort till I get back!

DEPARTURE TIME makes it time to start a new blog

A BEAKER FULL OF THE WARM SOUTH

Keats meant Provence. I mean a far better place: NEW ZEALAND. My Kiwi Blog begins here

LABOUR SCREWS UP ON THE EU

LABOUR SCREWS UP ON THE EU

We humble Labour voters can forgive many of Labour's regular screw ups ; idealists are always a bit naive. But the screw up on the EU is dangerous and damaging.

The Euro-fools in our ranks are proclaiming a vacuous enthusiasm for a project which has been damaging to Britain because we entered on unfavourable terms snd totally unrepresentative of the attitude of the British people most of whom find the relationship unsatisfactory and want it changed in different ways. Even the CBI doesn't dare say its members favour Europe but rather that they prefer to stay in a "reformed" EU which of course we haven't got. Labour isn't even saying that. We're proclaiming the virtues of  Europe as it is warts, CFP, CAP, and Euro and all

This is plain silly and weakens Cameron's already pathetic negociating position Why don't we dare to say how we want it improved ? Or are we also enthusiastic about its high food prices, the rape of our fish stocks, the gaping trade deficit the growing cost of membership and the fact that the Euro has turned the Eurozone into the low growth high unemployment blackspot of the world?

We're also ignoring the fact that membership of the EU will pose problems for an incoming Labour government if it ever comes in. A country whose balance of payments deficit is now 6% of GDP cant afford a budget contribution already eleven billion pounds plus all the costs of the CAP and related projects which will put the cost of belonging over twenty billion across the exchanges

Nor can we ignore the fact that any attempt to rebuild and boost Britain's manufacturing industry,have an industrial policy,or support failing or new industries will be ruled out  by EU bans on aid to industry,or that its difficult to expand social provision education and housing if we cant control population inflows or that we can't boost demand by higher wages if mass immigration from Eastern £urope holds wages down and pushes social security costs up.

All this is so naive it's insane but the really pathetic part of our vacuous enthusiasm for a club that's messy and falling apart and damaging to us is the failure to understand some basic points;-.

First that they need us more than we need them because of the big trade deficit so the fear of them taking measures against us is wrong. Secondly all the grants that flow from Europe are are own money back with their costs taken out. W e are net contributors. 

Thirdly to bang on about the "benefits"we get from Europe in terms of workers and union protection etc give nothing that we can't do better for ourselves  .Fourthly fat cats are for Europe but ordinary people lost the power to control their own democracy and make their own decisions through their own government. Democracy is sovereignty

It's time Labour listened to the people not the fat cats, Euro-pensioners and vested interests. Most of all it's time that Labour stopped being naive.

The outing of Osborne

Sorry George but I have to break it to you that your day is done,your leadership chances are evaporating and you're increasingly being seen as what you are:,a prejudiced pillock rather than the modern Machiavelli you aspired to be

Couldn't have happened to a nicer chap but you brought it on yourself by the obstinate pursuit of idealogical policies which won't work:rolling back the state when only the state can defeat recession, cutting spending when it needs to be boosted,easing regulation when it needs t be tightened and putting all the sacrifices on the  poor to slash demand not the rich who caused the problem 

You've been helped by the Bank of England printing money and keeping interest rates flat  but even sop you've lost the country 15% of GDP growth we should have had, failed to reach your debt and deficit reduction targets  and hit those who most deserve help; the poor, the women,the north,the vulnerable

Even your efforts to distract attention from that appalling record have failed.The messy devolution proposals which are really an attempt to devolve blame for the coming social service cuts at the price of messing up local government, the HST whose cost will be enormous is an unneccessary sink hole for money,the agreement to build Hinkley Point is ruinous and the march of the makers is turning into a fighting rearguard action.

Time to go but probably for you time to change This Prime Minister just lets ministers get on with it  however badly they're doing it so you're probably safe even if you don't reealise the damage you're doing and have done to our country.

Whither Labour? A Blastfurnaceman's view...

Labour'd in  mess-not as big a mess as the pundits say but still not a cage of happy budgies. The mess isn't so much the problem of the sulkies  constantly complaining about Corbyn and capturing committee chairmanships. It's the wavering policy line.

John MacDonnell who's pretty good on most issues, and certainly well advised, first accepts Osborne's barmy balanced budget law (like legislating to say the earth is flat)then rejects it. The SNP oppose  May's surveillance state,(Theresa knows when you're watching porn). Burnham grovels before it. Corbyn knows a Labour government will be stymied by the EU but then rushes to support it. Harman pushes the party to support moderate austerity.Then it's left to the Lords to reject it

No wonder the electorate and I are beginning to wonder what Labour stands for. Apparently that's anything the government wants but not much of what was promised.

Let's be clear. When party members voted for Jeremy they were voting against austerity, against cuts ,against war and for the welfare state not the surveillance state.It's now up to the Parliamentary party to make that work rather than ditching it or sulking and giving the government the opportunity to do whatever nasties it wants

That means the new leadership having the courage of its convictions and the party trying to make the new left wing approach work rather than cowering from the predictable media barrage and desperately trying to look respectable and as Thatcherite as the next man.

It should work. Austerity is a failed and fading god. Concern about equality and fairness is growing and people want a clear alternative They need the opposition to oppose policies they feel are wrong but they need reassurance to tell them why .

But if it doesn't work then Labour always has the option of Corbyn choosing to stand down on age grounds paving the way for the prince across the water, Miliband D. because by then  everyone, left or right will see the need for a leader of stature who looks convincing and won't have to face the barrage of hostility and distortion Jeremy has. 

George Osborne Growth Blocker

OSBORNE : GROWTH BLOCKER

George Osborne has always been better at singing his own praises than he is at economic management tells us ( a thousand times and at excessive volume)that Britain is recovering thanks to his "long term economic plan"

Balls. The plan was to roll back the state to let the private sector grow. In fact cutting back the state damages growth and Osbore himself has become the greatest barrier to improvement. Let me explain why

1)    He's dedicated to slashing borrowing. Recovery demands that the state spends more than it's income to boost growth. That gap can only be funded by borrowing

2) Cuts in public spending hit those who need it most hardest Yet recovery requires giving more to those sections who  are more likely to spend it and boost demand than the rich to whom Osbore is transferring . Growing inequality reduces demand which comes from the people

3) Austerity boosts asset prices not earnings where recovery requires it to be the other way round. Rising house prices mean more  investment goes into mortgages rather than business so builders build only expensive housing . The best stimulus would be  building public housing for rent for those who cant afford to buy. Osbore refuses to do that On the contrary he's selling off housing stock and crippling building by housing associations and councils

4) Rebuilding a viable industrial base so Britain can pay its way in the world requires a degree of insulation and a competitive exchange rate. Osbore is the enemy of both with the result that we are dependant on pulling in funny money selling assets and building up a growing overseas debt leaving the UK very exposed to confidence collapse.

 5) Success requires public and private sectors to work together for the common purpose. Cameron believes only in lop-sided growth by a private sector which can't make it on  its own

6) Productive exporting industry needs  cheaper utilities but privatisation has increased the costs of  water, power, tele-communications so the privatised utilities can increase profits while local government reform has increased council tax on business

Unless Cameron has the good sense to transfer him to a department where he can do less harm (say the Foreign Office) Osbore will persevere obstinately down the wrong road stopping full recovery,ruining Britain''s prospects damaging the social fabric and, the only hopeful factor,ending  his own prospects of becoming leader . The Tories may be the stupid party but even they can recognise a mess when it begins to damage their electoral prospects as tis attempt to build a neo-liberal paradise surely will.