Hold that stone

A couple of blogs ago I cited Bill McKibben’s book Deep
Economy. Actually, I never read it in the end, not least
because I was put off right at the start by his use of one
of the ugliest metaphors ever to gain currency. On the
first page he writes:

For most of human history, the two birds More and Better
roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and
hope to hit them both…

But the distinguishing feature of our moment is this: Better
has flown a few trees over to make her nest. That changes
everything. Now, if you’ve got the stone of your own life, or
your own society, gripped in your hand, you have to choose
between them. It’s More or Better.

It’s a great point McKibben’s making, but what a crass
way of putting it. The ‘kill two birds with one stone’
metaphor has no place in civilized discourse. Just think
about the image you’re creating when you use it and
you’ll see what I mean. For years I've been campaigning
for phrases to replace it. When she was about 12 or 13
my daughter suggested ‘hang two socks with one peg,’
which totally does the business without generating an
unpleasant image; I also like ‘sew two buttons with one
thread.’ Further suggestions are welcome, and while
we’re at it, ‘no room to swing a cat’ has got to go too.

Sutch speaks

They do not design, spin and weave fine textiles
in cotton and wool just because they have textile
institutes or industrial design schools. They are
eminent in these things because they also stress
their essential concomitants—fine architecture,
sculpture, ballet, fine printing, film production,
ceramics, operas, music, drama, research, higher
learning, anthropology, science, philosophy,
literature, respect for and knowledge of man’s
achievements.

It is impossible to imagine these words—uttered in 1963
by public servant W B Sutch when he was secretary-
general of the Export Development Conference—by
anyone remotely connected with the levers of political
power today. He was referring to the desirability of
New Zealand's emulating the way that the Scandinavian
countries, especially Denmark, added value to their
exports. The phrase 'essential concomitants' is, to me,
like a shaft of light from a time when it was still possible
—and perhaps, even then, only by a few individuals like
Sutch—to grasp the connections between all parts of
an economy, to see how the whole is formed by them,
and, above all, to take political action accordingly. For all
its drawbacks the concept of the state by which Western
nations functioned through the middle of the 20th
century tended to foster such thinking; the market
model by which we have lived since the 1980s rewards
the opposite kind of thinking: that all is fragmented,
discrete, competing rather than complementary, and of
worth only insofar as it can be quantified, categorized
and monetarized. Margaret Thatcher summed up this
view most infamously when she said, 'There is no such
thing as society.' Give me Sutch's philosophy any day.

At some stage

$1 BILLION EXPRESS DELIVERY blared the front-page
headline of the Waikato Times on 27 August, above
a story that began:

Waikato roads are about to get a near $1 billion boost
with a third devoted to finishing the long-awaited
Waikato Expressway.

The Government today announced details of a $938m
package, $300m of which is earmarked for fast-tracking
the Waikato Expressway from Auckland to Cambridge,
including bypasses for Te Rapa, Cambridge,
Ngaruawahia and Rangiriri…

[New Zealand Transport Agency regional director Harry]
Wilson said the announcement this morning sealed a 32
per cent increase in roading funding for the region on the
previous three years' spending.

'This is tremendous news for the region and New Zealand,'
Mr Wilson said, adding it would likely contribute major
economic growth to the wider Waikato region…

Hamilton East MP David Bennett, who described the
announcement as 'a big win for the Waikato'…also said it
would be a catalyst for economic growth.

What we see here, pure and undiluted, is a mindset so
entrenched that it goes, literally, without saying. The
newspaper itself has totally signed up to it. The equation
runs something like: roads=development=growth=jobs
=more money flowing into the region=higher living
standards for the people of Waikato—and the bigger the
roads, the better for everyone. And why not? In most
people’s minds, this apparently simple arithmetic has
served New Zealand well so far. For most of us, it's
virtually automatic to think that way. To not think that
way is to somehow feel that you're going backwards into
a darker, dirtier past. Horse-drawn traffic. Poo on the
streets. People wearing sandals. That sort of thing.

Hovering over the whole equation like a golden halo is
the spirit of Progress, which, as Bill McKibben says at
the start of his book Deep Economy, has for most of
human history been predicated on the idea that we can
have More and Better at the same time. Objectively, the
double whammy of peak oil and global warming has put
paid to that idea, but the realization that from now on it
has to be More or Better is taking time to get through to
our comfortable, cushioned minds. It has barely disturbed,
for instance, the collective mentality of the current New
Zealand government, which is cheerfully pouring money
into highway development as if there were no tomorrow—
which, in their minds, on this evidence, there clearly isn't.

Of the $938 million allocated to Waikato by the Transport
Agency with the government's blessing, $25.6 million will
be spent on public transport and $4.4 million on cycle and
pedestrian projects. Weep if you may. The story is being
repeated in other regions around the country.

Four days after publishing the above, the Waikato Times—
a paper, by the way, that I generally admire—editorialized
excitedly about the roading spend-up: ‘The handbrake has
come off… a spectacular result for the region… Bulldozers
could be on the Te Rapa bypass next year.'

It would be interesting to know, reading this, what planet
the Waikato Times imagines its readers belong to. The
editorial goes on to ponder, briefly, the merits of a train
service between Hamilton and Auckland but dismisses the
immediate need for that by briskly concluding that a train
service is a 'want' but a completed expressway is a 'must.'
The real kicker, however, comes in the last paragraph,
when the writer loftily declares (my italics): 'At some stage,
Waikato and the country in general are going to have to
address public transport issues.'

Ah yes. At some stage. That's the day after tomorrow, isn't
it? Or is it the day after that? Your guess is as good as mine.
But it's no guess that the world's oil is running out fast, and
that alternative technologies for petrol replacement haven't
a bolter's show of fuelling the volume of traffic that's
supposedly going to be zapping up and down the Waikato
Expressway within the next few years.

'Surprisingly,' noted the Times, to its own apparent
bemusement, 'there has been muted reaction to the [big
roading spend-up] moves. Hamilton Mayor Bob Simcock,
a former National MP himself, while acknowledging the
impetus it would provide, lamented the lack of commitment
to public transport.'

Perhaps the paper could now produce another front-page
story, only this time one that tries to find out just why there
has been 'muted reaction.' Could be there's a change in the
air out there that the Waikato Times—which normally
strives hard to reflect what its readers want—hasn't picked
up on yet, and that the mayor has. The Romans loved
building more and better highways too. Most of them are
walking tracks now.

Sure to rise

I see Philip Pullman has written a book arguing that the
whole idea of the risen Christ was cooked up by the
apostle Paul, who saw in the life of Jesus—a relatively
obscure Jewish rabbi—the basis on which he might
build a whole new religion. It doesn't invalidate the
religion in question to say that this is how it began, but
already the bishops are huffing and puffing, saying that
there is no scriptural authority for Pullman's argument.
I look forward to the book, The Good Jesus and the
Scoundrel Christ, because I'm one of those who were
captivated by Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, but
he's by no means the first to advance the idea that Paul
was basically a brilliant PR man for Christianity. As I
remember it, in Nikos Kazantzakis's novel The Last
Temptation of Christ (memorably filmed by Scorsese)
Jesus doesn't die on the cross but marries and has a
family, discovering to his great relief that he doesn't
have to bear the sins of all humanity and can just get on
with being an ordinary joe. One day he comes across
Paul in the marketplace preaching the resurrected Christ
to the people, like a huckster selling patent medicine.
Hang on, says Jesus, you can't go around telling people
I died on the cross and rose again—look at me, I'm here,
I'm married with kids, I'm not the Messiah! To which
Paul, indicating the number of converts he's already
making, says, sure, but that's not what they want to hear
...they want something big to believe in, and I'm giving it
to them. Yes, it's a lie, but just look at their faces—they
love it! Now get out of my way and let me get on with it.

Thus the birth of Christianity—and modern marketing.

Gainsay the AA

Here’s the AA promoting the Waterview motorway link
that will rip through the Auckland suburbs of Mt Albert and
Avondale, requiring the demolition of hundreds of houses
and the concreting-over of at least five hectares of parkland.
Well, they would say that, wouldn’t they. The Automobile
Association exists to promote driving and the use of private
vehicles, and naturally it will lobby for anything that aids
and abets those activities. Since its formation in 1903 it has
grown to be a powerful, well-funded organization regarded
—as its website correctly claims—as the ‘leading advocate
for New Zealand motorists and their interests.’ Fair enough.
What I want to know is: where is the leading advocate for
New Zealand public-transport users and their interests?
Where is the powerful, well-funded organization that exists
to promote the use of buses and trains? There is none.
There are many small groups throughout the country
dedicated to improving public transport but no overarching
nationwide lobby group. If we had one that spoke out as
frequently and as forcefully as the AA does, with the kind of
research resources the AA has, the debates over such issues
as roading, peak oil and public health and safety would be
greatly enriched and far less one-sided, especially at a time
when the government of the day believes that the transport
budget is best spent on more and bigger roads. We need the
public-transport groups to coalesce and fight as one.

Look at the Waterview debate, for instance—such as it is.
The campaign against the overground motorway is being led
by a local group called Tunnel or Nothing. Good on them,
but it's like trying to fight bushfires. You might damp down
one but another flares up. And these are volunteers doing
what they can in their own time and at their own expense.
The case for public transport in this country needs to be
made in a nationally coordinated, professionally resourced
way, because the National-led government, supported by
bodies like the AA, is scorching the earth everywhere with
its motorway firestorm.

Footnote: in the link above, the New Zealand Herald reports:

Auckland University senior economics lecturer and former
Treasury employee Rhema Vaithianathan, a Mt Albert
resident, has meanwhile calculated that keeping the $1.4
billion earmarked for the [Waterview] project in the bank
for 10 years would earn enough interest to halve bus-fares
throughout the region.

Ain't that the truth? On ya, Rhema.

Heady stuff

Who is he, this Yukio Hatoyama, the new prime minister
of Japan? Barely elected to office he has, according to a
report in the London Times, ‘made no secret of his
distrust of market fundamentalism.’ Apparently, too, he
has ‘strongly condemned’ global capitalism. Did we ever
hear newly elected John Key express such sentiments? I
don't think so. ‘We are not denying all market principles,’
says Hatoyama. ‘We just don’t think market principles are
a fundamental necessity.’ Be still, my beating heart! Of
course, it remains to be seen whether Hatoyama and his
Democratic Party really will ‘sever ties with vested
interests [and] abandon the pork barrel,’ let alone maintain
such an heretical attitude towards the great god market, but
what a start. First Obama, now Hatoyama. They even
rhyme. It already begins to seem New Zealand’s misfortune
that, just as other nations are electing, well, not exactly
radical lefties but progressive liberal leaders, we elect a
conservative government that lacks the imagination to
think outside the tired old paradigm of 'market-led' growth.

Gould to Garth

Speaking of the Herald, its op-ed page generally
maintains a high standard of opinion-writing from all
sides. Thursday 3 September was a good example.
There were three pieces on the page, each of them worth
reading in their own way. Outstanding was Bryan
Gould’s take on executive bonus culture, in which he
exposed the puerility of the argument in favour of
bloated salaries and bonus payments for business
executives (‘If we are to attract the talent we need,’
droned a spokesperson for the Institute of Directors,
‘we have to pay salaries to match those paid in the rest
of the world.’) Yeah right. Writes Gould:

It’s a wonderful thing, the global economy. It requires
us to push up New Zealand’s top salaries to match
world levels, but at the same time requires wages for
ordinary employees to be driven down to the
benchmarks set by the lowest-wage economies.

The supposed need to pay a top executive 100 times
the income of his skilled employees is a self-serving
nonsense produced by a small charmed circle who claim
the right to set their own (and their mates’) pay rates.

Well said, that man. Then there’s a typically discursive
opinion piece from Mike Moore, who, whatever his
political shortcomings, has a sharp original mind and a
gift for putting things in a memorable way, eg,

I coughed my coffee through my nose when I heard the
Law Commission release the stunning revelation that
young people ingest alcohol late at night. All this time I
had thought they drank booze.

(Subtext: get a life, Geoffrey Palmer.) Moore comes down
from his solo flight over referendum territory after only a
couple of speed wobbles (what exactly is 'light, corrective
patting'?) and taxis back into the hangar with this:

Most people behave well, they are just sick of a political
culture where you expect, at any moment, someone to
intrude on your television set and tell you to sit up
straight and not to eat too much meat.

Much of this is worthy and possibly even good. Esperanto
and vegetarianism are probably good ideas, too.

And to cap off this page of wonders, we even have Garth
George sticking up for the idea of dedicated Maori seats
on the Auckland super-city council. Writes George:

It seems to me that those who espouse the ‘one
nation, one people’ concept are invariably white,
and stand to the right of the political spectrum.
That, in itself, is a cause for suspicion.

Cripes. I also remember George, whose neck generally
gives the impression of being bright vermilion, writing
a column earlier this year in which he said he was quite
impressed by the Green Party. Just how red is that neck?