Kiwiblog

It seems to me we’ve had a culture shift in recent years.  Teachers, coaches and parents now hold “making an effort” with the same importance as excelling or winning.

I’m a soccer Mum (no, not a Palin-styled ‘hockey mum”).  I accept that in the early years it makes some sense to give the “player of the day” award to a different child each week.  At five and six years of age a “player of the day” award can encourage a child to stay in the game, and develop enthusiasm for the game.  When they’re just learning we tend to share around the awards so that the enthusiasm continues.  Saying that, at that age they do understand winning and losing, and the importance of scoring goals.  They do want to be the best in their team, and they do know who the best player in their team is.

At some point though we need to recognise performance and competition.  It is a transition that needs to occur.  Some go down the line of competition being a “bad” thing, and turning up and being part of a team much more important than winning or losing.  That, in my esteemed opinion, is a load of rubbish.  It’s not to say that we should be assessing the achievement of five year olds in the same way that we do for adults or professional athletes.

In exactly the same way that we would assess a Sunday league player differently than a professional athlete, the way to deal with a five year old is very different to a nine year old.  My issue is that there is a growing culture and understanding that turning up rather than winning is enough.  We are breeding mediocrity.

You may have guessed that sport is my metaphor for life.  If we can’t teach winning and achievement as important on the sport field, or indeed the classroom, then why should we expect them to be important in real life?

What is so wrong about parents knowing where their child’s achievement levels are compared to the child’s peers?

Why do we award reaching an average level and then cut down those that are the best in their class?  I’m all for ensuring parents can see improvement in average Johnny, but why does average Johnny have to get an award in assembly just because he turns up?  Does it really matter if book smart and sport-savvy Georgia gets award week after week.  Didn’t she earn it  and shouldn’t we hold her up as an example to her peers in the hope that they too will follow her?  And how much of awarding average Johnny is about edifying the parents as opposed to encouraging Johnny?  Bullshit awards like “for sitting nicely in assembly” are just that… bullshit!

I know the Left (and others) will attack this as being elitist but have they stopped to think what will happen if we stop rewarding achievement and innovation?  It’s simple.  We won’t have any.  We’ll plod on.  As economic units we’ll become increasingly unproductive and we won’t be able to support the public welfare, education, superannuation and health systems that they covet so much.  Oh wait… we are there.  We have reached that untenable point.

I say, bring back achievement.  Bring back winning and losing.  Stop being so bloody protective of our kids and let them experiment, fall over, climb something too high, create and problem solve. Letting children think that mediocre and average is okay just means they’ll continue believing that their entire lives.

Achievement is not just about being book smart, but is about rewarding the best… and encouraging all children to be the best they can be.  I hate how many parents, teachers and coaches limit children by their own experience and limitations.  I for one am glad that titular honours are back – they’re a very public way of knowing that the person in front of us is someone who is the best, and became the best that they could be.

Friday’s aren’t very special when you are on the benefit. I mean you don’t work during the week so for me every day is a Saturday. I’ve got no money spare so I can’t go out and even if I could I’d have to find someone to sit the kiddies. The best we get is watching Sky and grabbing some takeaway or looking on the internet.

I sit at my window glancing down the street watching over mortgaged, over financed people arrive home from work after 7pm and I ask myself, why?

If Fridays are a huge relief then what are they a relief from? Working. If working is so horrible then why do people do so much of it? To buy their over priced homes, to drive in their over priced car so they can send their children to over priced schools in the hope they won’t turn out to be like me.

Then we have low income workers always upset about low pay, but what do they do about it? Join a Union to pay for someone else to go and bargain a higher pay rate so they can afford more debt on more things.

I ask Kiwiblog readers, why? Why do you bother working say more than 9-5pm five days a week. Does it get you anywhere? Does it make you more money than standard hours. Does your employer value your extra contribution? Is your small business making you money and therefore worth the effort, or is it all just a giant waste of time and effort?

If it is and you are disciples to the Friday evening, then why do you do it?

And don’t just answer to pay for people like me. That’s a cop out.

If I wasn’t here you’d be contributing to some other taxpayer funded scheme or whim. Because you are all the same. You all like paying tax else you would vote for parties like ACT that would make me get off my backside, hand me a mentor such as Muriel Bloody Newman and monitor my life like Gestapo.

You feel guilt. You feel as though taxation paid gives you cleansing of that guilt.

It shouldn’t. I watch you arrive home at 7pm on a Friday straight from the office and I keep wondering.

Why?

Tuesday afternoon was the highlight of the on shore events – the Circle of Fire helicopter ride. You spend 45 minutes in the air getting a view you will not see anywhere else on the planet I imagine.

The official guidelines said the helicopters fly at 500 feet above the ground. That’s a load of shit. Our pilot had us down to a few dozen feet at times- you could almost jump out if you were so minded – well apart from the fact it might be into lava!

This was an A+ experience. It does cost a lot, but something you will remember.

You fly over a huge amount of bush for several minutes getting over to the lava.

Then you start to see where the bush has met the lava previously. The lava won.

Some colour

I told you we got close to the ground.

The crater boiling away

Note the remains of the road. This whole area used to be inhabited.

This is the only house remaining and the owner Jack still lives there as he finished building it just a few months before the main eruption 25 years ago, and won’t move. He gets to and from his property by driving a motorcycle over the parts of the lava which have cooled. Hate to think how much sulphur he breathes in every day!

A close up of the lava taken when the helicopter tipped onto its side to allow some vertical shots. Again we were not far off the ground.

What happens when the lava hits the sea? Lots of steam.

A close up of the base of the steam.

And another shot showing how large the steam cloud is. You can also see under the water how the lava has spread out.

The chopper back at the airport.

As I said, it was magnificent getting the aerial view.

Also quite stunning was the view from that ship at around 10 pm that night as we sailed past where the lava hits the sea. You could see three or four red trails hitting the sea. The camera didn’t capture them well, but the view was superb as they so stood out against the night sky.

When outraged observers talk about the behaviour of our politicians being worse than children, they have almost always just watched Question Time.  This is a vociferous and often fractious one-hour ritual played out on most House sitting days mainly for the benefit of the near-catatonic Press Gallery hovering above.

Having closely observed more Question Times than may be healthy, I’m still a little old-fashioned in the sense that I believe it is a critical part of a robust Parliamentary democracy.  Ministers are held to account and forced to justify their decisions under pressure.  For Opposition members, it can be a chance to raise issues and increase their profile.

Certainly, Question Time can be pedantic and petty, it can be nasty and noisy.  Listeners may struggle to hear what a Minister is saying over an orchestrated barrage of interjections but that is the rough and tumble nature of politics sometimes. 

During the nine-year term of the last Government there were two decisions by the Speaker which resulted in significant changes to how Question Time operated.  One was a significant improvement, the other, in my opinion, contributed to a drop in respect for Parliament as a whole.

The positive change which I will cover in this post was a seemingly minor ruling by Speaker Hunt that the National Opposition (as it was at the time) had a set number of supplementary questions. 

Both primary and supplementary questions are allocated proportionally and minor parties, depending on their size, may get only one or two questions (or even none) on any given day.  Largely by tradition at the time, National had two supplementaries for each of their primary questions and one supplementary on every other question on the order paper.  This meant that National was expected to ask a supplementary even on the most mundane Government patsy question – and they duly did.

This system operated unchallenged for a number of years.  One day, in the middle of a heated series of questions late in Question Time, Speaker Hunt refused to allow Nick Smith (from memory) to ask his second supplementary question which, up until that point, would have been standard procedure.  When pressed on his ruling, Speaker Hunt said effectively that National had used up their allocation of questions for the day based on their (low) number of seats in Parliament at that time.  It was pointed out to him quite strongly that the tradition was well established but the Speaker said he was bound only by Standing Orders.

At the time, very little was made of this ruling which appeared to be largely motivated by a desire to shut down a long-forgotten line of questioning on an issue which does not stick in my political memory.  It did however dramatically (if unintentionally) change the dynamic of Question Time. 

National was no longer obligated to ask supplementary questions on patsy questions or questions from other parties they had no interest in.  They were also no longer limited to two supplementaries on their own questions.  Instead, they could choose to almost “dog-pile” three, four, five, six questions onto what they thought was the biggest issue of the day.

It is fair to say that Labour ministers initially on the wrong end of the dog-pile were not overly enamoured with the new system.  The Opposition could keep asking questions on the issues of their choosing rather than having to think up and ask a worthwhile supplementary on the latest developments in Patagonian Toothfish quota management. 

While perhaps an unintended consequence of the original ruling, this change meant Question Time became more dynamic, more tactical and more focussed on the issues of the day.

In a future post, I will examine a later Speaker’s ruling which had quite the opposite effect.

Stuff reports:

Maori Party MP Hone Harawira has proposed a novel way to cut his travel costs – he will hitch-hike around his electorate.

Te Tai Tokerau MP Mr Harawira, who with travel expenses totaling $67,000 in the first six months of the year was one of Parliament’s more prolific travelers, said hitch-hiking was one way to cut costs but it carried a number of other benefits.

“It’s not a big deal, I’ve been doing it for the last three years,” he told Radio New Zealand.

He said that by travelling this way he would run into people that he would not otherwise meet and it allowed him to relax and “enjoy the day”.

“You get into a car and sooner or later they’ll start talking to you about the issues that are important to them.”

He said that Prime Minister John Key would have no problem travelling around Te Tai Tokerau in this way, though he said he wouldn’t have recommended Don Brash do the same when he was National Party leader.

Heh I’ve got visions of Hone and John hitchhiking their way up North together.

I don’t agree with everything Harawira does or say, but he is a breath of fresh air with his attitude.

My NBR column is now online.

I discuss the suggestion by a Maori Party MP that a Maori Flag fly not just on Waitangi Day but on all days of significance.

Tuesday morning (Wed in NZ) was a tour of areas which had previously had lava flows on the big island.

First we headed down to the black sands beach. The last 200 metres or so it is solidified lava from a flow around 15 years ago. The surface itself is no longer hot of course, but the sun reflecting off the black surface made it fucking hot. I reckon you would not survive a day out on it, without water.

The lava formed around a fish when it flowed, and a bit like in Pompeii, you can see the shape it was.

Looks bloody inhospitable, but even after just 15 years there is some plant life returning.

Out towards the sea it has become black sand, and some planted tress are doing well.

We then headed to a second site, with the lava formations being from the 1950s and have been shaped by the tide.

This site was swept by lava 210 years ago and it almost fully restored. You can see the crack in the ground caused at the time, running through much of the site.

This is a lava tree. What is a lava tree you ask?

Well this in the inside of the lava tree. So it formed around the tree which of course died off, leaving the hollow lava structure remaining 200 years on.

I found the trip really fascinating and give it a B+. There are not many places in the world where you can walk over lava flows from 15 years, 50 years and 200 years ago and learn all about them. I highly recommend people do this if you are into geology etc.

The gift that keeps on giving for caption contests. From the Dominion Post. As always funny, not nasty.

We’ve had a strange few months.  Since the budget we have seen the word “entitlement” pop up everywhere, and an increasing sense of entitlement exhibited by so many New Zealanders, not least of all our politicians.

We’ll start with the budget.  Hon Bill English repeatedly talked about entitlements when referring to welfare benefits – oh, and now he’s talking about increasing taxes as to meet all the demands for entitlements (sorry, I meant “to aid economic recover”.  Here’s an idea for economic recovery – give some money back or take less tax and let New Zealander’s have a direct impact on the economic recovery.

More recently, we’ve had the likes of Natasha Fuller, rightfully exposed by Hon Paula Bennett.  I think the DPB has a place but not when it is clearly rorted for long term lifestyle.

And, we’ve now found the politicians well and truly exhibiting extreme levels of entitlement.  Today’s comments from Sir Douglas add more fuel to the fire.

The issue I have with entitlement is that it isn’t generally well-earned.  It is assigned.  Often there is a maximum limit and mostly people will ensure that they can qualify to the limit (politicians on accommodation allowances being an obvious example and Natasha Fuller another).

How much is entitlement for the sake of it part of NZ culture?  So many New Zealanders seem to expect the State will be there and that they are all entitled to a slice of other people’s (and I admit some of their own) money.

I hate that the last Government made middle New Zealand into a new class of beneficiaries.  Worse still is that middle New Zealand now has a sense of entitlement for their new benefit, Working for Families.

I hate that there is a huge churn going on with middle New Zealand especially.  Why take middle New Zealanders tax dollars just to churn them through the bureaucracy so that the Government can return it as Working for Families?  Why couldn’t the Government have trusted middle New Zealand families to make their own decisions about their money and never take the tax in the first place?

I hate that many of my middle New Zealand friends voted for National based solely on whether they would keep Working for Families in place.  The reality is that no pragmatic politician will take Working for Families away or reduce it because middle New Zealand families now count their Working for Families payments as part of their back pocket income.

And then there are the calls for universal student allowances.  Why?  I worked two part-time jobs for my first degree and then a full-time job for my second degree and post-grad.  My Father did the same many years ago (yes, before fees and the like were free).  Why the F*** can’t the students of today? Plus, they have student loans under extremely good conditions.

Then, shall I move on to superannuation?  Ouch.  Yep, that great bug bear of New Zealand politicians.  Why do those in power sit on their hands on this one?  Why can’t we have a serious conversation without upsetting the oldies? Why can’t we get past the 60+ age groups’ concerns of their own security – face it you lot you’ll be fine – and focus on the fact that many baby boomers haven’t provided for their retirement and worse still have a huge sense of entitlement to NZ super.  I am seriously concerned about this one because I can’t see how an under-productive generation X and Y could possibly generate enough in tax revenue or to the Cullen fund to support the boomers.  Can you?

My problem with New Zealanders’ sense of entitlement is that we don’t work for it.  We just get something for nothing, or for sweet FA input from us.  Why can’t Government trust New Zealanders more so that we are taxed less.  Why do successive Governments take away our choices of where our money goes so that we also give away our personal responsibility.  It follows through into so many areas.  We don’t take notice of what’s happening over our neighbour’s fence because no doubt the Government will sort it out.  It’s not our problem, we’re not responsible and they are probably entitled to some sort of help or assistance.

We’re breeding a sense of mediocrity in this country and it scares me because my children will have to live in the results (or lack thereof).

A few Kiwis will become regular readers of this blog – UNDP Watch.

I only discovered it after it linked to a profile I did of Helen Clark a few months back.

The blog is not run by the vast right wing conspiracy, but by a group of UN staffers who are critical of the UNDP for its lack of transparency.

As the Ocean Centre did not take as long as expected we also took a drive to the Iao Valley.

People cooling off in the river that runs through the valley,

Wonderful lush greenery in the valley

A small climb and then you have the Iao Needle behind you

The river going down the valley

This was an easy trip to do, and it was nice to see some nice green bush, having been up a crater and underwater. New Zealand has scenery just as good of course, but it was still worth a trip to. I’d give it a B.

After we went up to the top of Haleakala Crater, we headed to the Maui Ocean Centre – or the local aquarium.

It was pretty good, as they had some fish and sharks you don’t see much. But not the best aquarium I have been to. The Sydney one I rate a fair bit higher. It only took an hour to pretty much see everything. I’d give it a C+ – worth seeing if you have the time.

Not sure what this fish is, but it looks tasty!

This guy has armour!

Fish galore.

I like the simple black on white

Great camouflage

Don’t see crabs like this back home

As the turtle is just below the surface you can see its reflection upside down

Jellyfish in blue

The hammerhead shark is always easy to spot

Looking at this, you can understand why Steve Irwin was killed so quickly. I wouldn’t one of those stingers going through me.

Ex-MPs travel perks made the Herald today.

Quick and Dirty solution 1: scrap them.

Quick and Dirty solution 2: publish all instances where they are used and by whom.  Transparency will no doubt drop the number of takers, and we can also see who the biggest spenders might be.

For the second day in Maui we decided not to do an organized tour but just to hire a rental car, and see some of the best spots ourselves. It was a great decision as not only was it quite a bit cheaper, we had more flexibility, got to see more stuff and got to travel by car not bus.

The rental car agency tried to get me to upgrade to a convertible for an extra $50. I declined, but then she kept lowering prices until it was only $20 extra for a convertible so we went for it. I have to say that Hawaii is the perfect place for a convertible – you just can not get cold and I love having the open air, the sun shining and the radio going.

The drive to the top of the Haleakala Crater is very steep and winding. You end up 10,000 feet above sea level.

Sadly the last few miles to the top saw us go into the clouds and at the top the visibility was crap.

But just as we were heading down, the clouds parted so we did a u-turn and went back up. It was a good call as we then got much better views.

The crater is all rocks. It reminds me of pictures of the moon also. In fact I later learnt NASA used this place in the 1960s to train astronauts for moon landings.

It is a huge crater – around 2,700 feet deep and with a circumference of 21 miles. Note is is only dormant not extinct!

Almost a dozen observatories up here near the summit – a mixture of academic, NASA and military. This is meant to be the 4^th best place in the world to observe space from.

Maybe it is more like Mars than the Moon with all the red. This is a shot from the summit.

I really enjoyed the drive up – probably because I was driving and not stuck in a bus. And while not scenic in the traditional sense, it was fascinating to see the crater and the red rocks. Add on being 10,000 feet above sea level and I give it an B+. If the weather had been better might have been an A-.

Hon Bill English has been talking PPPs… finally!  The Deputy PM and Infrastructure Minister spoke at the New Zealand Council for Infrastructure Development this morning outlining some of his thinking on PPPs.

The big question is when are we going to see the product of this talk?  The Government really needs to get some decent PPP contracts signed before the next election to show that they mean business – and can be believed that it’s not all talk.

It’s encouraging to see Bill say:

“There is a range of opportunities for more private sector participation in prisons – from the current approach where input is limited to construction, right through to designing, financing, building, maintaining and operating facilities.”

Aside from roading (where the general public  seem a little more ‘ready’ to explore PPP), prisons are the next most obvious place to start.  I would hope that using the private sector to build NZ prisons would see them built faster, more effectively and certainly at a reduced cost than public sector efforts.  It’ll also be interesting to see what contracts are put in place to maintain the prisons.  The question is whether a National Government would go as far as allowing private companies to also manage prisons and prison population?

English points out that:

“In the Budget, we outlined capital spending of $7.5 billion over the next five years.  Much of this will be used to build and upgrade schools, roads, housing, hospitals and telecommunications.”

Why not ensure that there is good value for money on that spend and allow a bit more private involvement?

Much has been said about private involvement in the building of prisons, not so much has said about schools.  The upside of a PPP to get a school built (and maintained for a specific and significant period of time) is that Principals can focus on the day-to-day running of the school NOT on the maintenance and repair of buildings.  I think there’s a lot of scope for some really positive achievement in this area from this Government; whether they have the will to do it may be a different story.

There’s been plenty of discussion in my posts as to whether I am “real”.

Rather ironically mostly from people with pen names and I see when I log-in to post my pieces, clearly fake email addresses on sign-on to Kiwiblog.

So the question I have for you all who doubt that I exist – are you “real”? Are you all really of the opinion and confidence you portray here? Or are your views privately very different from the clear lack of confidence I bet you display publicly?

Hundreds of comments from the same sort of people, same names. What kind of person comments in that I should have an abortion? Or have my children taken off me? That I am some sort of low life. That I don’t count because I’m not like you. While some comments have been supportive (thank you) and some constructively critical (thank you), plenty have just been far too personal and utterly vile.

Clearly there are two sorts of people who read Kiwiblog, those intelligent souls who read, absorb and think (the vast majority of thousands), then the small amount (about 20-30) of absolutely nutters (commonly termed David Farrar’s troll farm) who feel free to spout nonsense that they wouldn’t freely speak of for fear of being written off in public as sad, old and downright creepy.

Little wonder women do not blog if this is the reaction they get for being opinionated and not deemed high achieving enough to be accepted by men. And its not right or left wing here that is the issue, it seems that the hatred is not even political as I haven’t even started to post about who I vote for and what policies I support. Little wonder I cannot use my real name. I would fear that one of you were nutty enough to turn up on my doorstep.

A lesser person would be put off but I shall continue posting until David returns from his well deserved holiday to listen to your abuse. For no other reason than I am better than all of your hatred. That’s right, freezing works and all I’ve seen slabs of dead meat with more love and kindness than the 20-30 of you that ruin it for the rest of the audience.

Trolls is not a good term for it. Trolls are fun and amusing and serve purpose in children’s tales. You guys are just pathetic and need to stop spreading your negativity, either get more gainful employment, girlfriends or get out and meet people that aren’t just like you. Because you all live your lives around this blog and your computer.

That is really sad.

Jadis has asked my opinion on the sickening child abuse and murder statistics among Maori.

The answer is – I don’t know. I don’t bloody know. And neither does anyone reading this blog, anyone in Maoridom or New Zealand in general because if they knew they would have fixed it by now. Everyone has an opinion on it, reading some of the men comment on the topic would be funny if I didn’t think in this instance it was what they actually believed. No one seems to have a solution other than “individual responsibility” and “choice”. That would be fine but the individuals in this case have failed and can’t cope. They will be punished by God and by the laws of New Zealand.

Jadis tells her touching story of post natal depression and I commend her for that and do not want to belittle her for her reaction to it. She comments, “I also find it really upsetting when a family friend of this woman attributes some of the blame to post-natal depression”.

But just like depression in general, some people react differently to others, some people have a more significant attack than others . Some jump off bridges, some take tablets, some pull themselves up and deal with it. Some people are still in bed right now because they can’t get up. Post natal depression hits the rich and the poor, Maori and non-Maori. It is real. It is not an excuse to kill your baby. I do believe however it can be a reason for women to do something this terrible. It should not provider her with a defence for what she did but it should shorten any sentence she receives.

Most comments on Jadis’ post lead me to believe that Kiwiblog commentators are in favour of smacking. I am not. I am not because as Jadis rightly points out, where does it stop? Everyone gives their child the odd encouraging tap, I’ve hit my kids but only when what they are doing is a matter of their safety. I’ve felt like whacking them harder at times when I thought it was all too much. But I stopped.

Sometimes it stops when it is too late. That sometime is one time too many.

Curia did some polling for the Drop the Rate, Mate campaign, and the full results of the polling are on curiablog.

The eight organisations behind the campaign are not ones you would normally see agree on much. You have Federated Farmers and the Unite Union. You have the Consumers Institute and the Federation of Maori Authorities. You have NZUSA and TUANZ, plus the new mobile carrier 2degrees and Airnet.

They are calling on the Government to accept the recommendation of the Commerce Commission and reduce the termination rates telcos charge each other as these rates keep competition out, and keep costs higher.  You can sign the online petition on the campaign website.

The Commerce Commission previously recommended the rates be lowered speedily by regulation, but Trevor Mallard on behalf of the then Labour Government rejected doing this, in favour of a deal with the two big telcos for smaller slower voluntary reductions (with a guarantee the reduction in the wholesale fee would be reflected in their retail fees). The Commerce Commission has concluded these did not go far enough and has recommended more dramatic drops. It is thought the current termination rate for a text message is around ten times greater than the actual cost of receiving a text message and passing it onto a phone.

I’m not surprised to see NZUSA supporting the campaign, as I found out first hand what a hot issue this is for both secondary and tertiary students. We had a couple of focus groups with students aged from around 16 to 24 and I was astonished by how passionate they were about their dislike of the current billing arrangements caused by the high termination rates.

Many said that their choice of mobile phone provider has nothing to do with personal choice, but totally dependent on who all their friends are with. Hence in Wellington most students are Telecom and in Auckland most are Vodafone. Again many of them simply will not text (or call) someone on a different network due to the cost.

I sometimes wonder what a mess we would have if ISPs charged a termination rate for e-mails. Imagine having to pay 7c to e-mail someone on a different ISP. You’d end up with only a couple of ISPs probably as no-one would want to send e-mail to people at a different ISP. This might explain why up until recently we have had only two mobile phone providers but many dozens of Internet service providers!

On Sunday (Monday NZ time) we berthed at Maui and went out snorkeling. The boat was operated by the Pacific Whale Foundation.

First we went over to the Molokini Crater (pictured above) and snorkeled for an hour or so there.

A photo taken underwater

I probably shouldn’t blog this one, but an unusual shot as the photographer dived down and took it from below as they were heading up. The sun up above gives a nice halo effect behind me!

Another underwater shot of the fish.

It got pretty choppy towards the end of the first snorkel, and getting back onto the boat was quite a fun challenge as the ladder would move up and around by a metre or two as you are trying to grab it, or even more fun while holding onto it.

The only mishap was one guy got seasick and ran to the side of the boat to chunder. Sadly he did not make it, and chundered over me and the girl behind me. I joked that I had not been chundered on since university! The staff were great and got me a change of top and a shower down.

We then went to Turtle Arches where the sea turtles are. This second spot had great coral – almost as good as the Great Barrier Reef.

A sea turtle swimming away.

Then we had the trip back to port. “Captain Doug” announced to cheers that not only are we getting lunch, but an open bar. So had several mai-tais on the return trip. Above is the boat on the way back.

The staff were superb with their attitude and friendliness. The snorkeling was damn good also. Better than most Pacific places I have been to. And the water and climate was great. Highly recommended – I’d give it an A.

The post on abortion as a climate change measure was not meant to be funny. I wrote it before I left actually, and set it on time delay.

It was using satire to make a point. A political party in Parliament has seriously proposed that the appropriate response to the challenge of climate change is to reduce the national dairy herd by 20%.

If people are seriously going to propose policies such as reducing the national dairy herd by 20%, then they should expect a robust response. To be blunt their policies and claims do not get enough scrutiny as it is, so I don’t regret for one second that post.

And for those who get all yucky because it mentioned abortion, I’ll point out this post by a Labour MP basically stating John Key is responsible for increased abortions due to the folic acid in bread decision. And that was a serious post, not even satire.

Anyway this is my first political post while on holiday. The others were all time delayed. Back to holiday blogging.

One of the particular aspects of blogging which really sets it apart from more traditional forms of media is the instant feedback generated through reader comments.  I was delighted the first comment (FIRST!) on my first post (FIRST!) was a rather clever reference to the origins of my blog name.  Kudos to dog_eat_dog.

However, phil u felt obliged to imply that my first post was actually rather boring.  As a regular reader of quality political blogs, I naturally had no idea who he was.  Thanks to the wonders of Google I eventually found his site which appears to consist of him posting media articles seven times a day.  He doesn’t even make little editorial comments like David P Farrar does (“Pleased to see Lady Thatcher agrees with the post I made last week on this very subject…” or “I said the exact same thing to my good friend the Dalai Lama at the gym.”)

Burrowing through phil u’s archives, I came across one of his earliest posts entitled “apologies to readers.”  I expect he has produced a similarly-worded post every week since 2005 but I could not be bothered checking.  He wrote:

any readers(?) of this site should be aware that this is the bare bones/ first days of [this website].

Points for honesty on the readership levels if nothing else.

being technical luddites we are reliant on those who know how to do that stuff to do it for us.  they are otherwise engaged at the moment but i have been told i could get hopeful this weekend, or soon after.

Next on the technical to-do list – install a computer with a Shift key to enable use of capital letters.

so bells, whistles, and more links than you can shake a stick at, (all our stories/reports will link to our sources; this in the cultivation of a culture of transperancy), are just part of the upcoming menu.

It would seem that phil u, not Al Gore as previously thought, invented the concept of linking articles on the internet.  Spell-checking does not seem to have appeared at any stage on the upcoming menu.

whoar.co.nz will, among other things, become an apolitical (as in editorial stance) forum for (we hope) reasoned political/social debate, with lashings of humour. so, bear with us. all this and more, (as they say), will be revealed soon.

I guess the reference to being apolitical could broadly be considered humorous (if unintentionally) but the claims to “lashings of humour” surely need examined by the Advertising Standards Authority.  At least the ( and ) key work on his keyboard…

Given it is just the Internet after all, I have decided to simply continue to aggravate phil u in my own way by using capitals and punctuation appropriately.  I belief his unique writing style is based on a horribly misguided political philosophy – I think he honestly believes that you can’t have capitalism without capitals.