M without the fat

Chief executive John Allen is understood to have indicated to staff he expects more than 200 jobs to go as the ministry is restructured under Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully's plan to create 'a leaner, more adaptable organization, better able to meet New Zealand's future needs.' [NZ Herald 9.1.12]

The transformation of Mfat (Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade) into Mlean (Ministry of Low Expectations Among Nations) is well under way, and I'm sure I'm not the only New Zealander excited by the change. It has never been clear to me why we need so many diplomats and ministry staff, many of whom waste their time learning foreign languages and studying the customs and culture of other nations in order to represent New Zealand abroad. I think I would be right in saying that Murray McCully himself didn't get where he is today by learning other languages; a smattering of English generally gets the job done for most New Zealand politicians overseas, and if foreigners fail to understand what we're on about, well, that's their loss.

My only criticism of McCully, as he wields his mighty axe like the Norse god he sometimes resembles, is that he has been too timorous in retaining the ministry at all. Keeping in mind that its chief executive formerly headed NZ Post, we should abandon diplomatic posts altogether and replace them with diplomatic postshops, minimally staffed but with stylish decor and interactive displays. I also support the idea, advanced last year by my old mate Johnny Globe, of a reality TV show in which ordinary Kiwis with potential international appeal compete for the right to represent New Zealand overseas. Contestants would be required to sing, dance, crouch, touch, pause, engage, look good in a swimsuit and know where places are on the map—though some latitude (and indeed longitude) could be granted in that respect. That'll widen the talent pool.

On the scene

Brian Edwards rightly takes the New Zealand Herald to task for publishing an interview with a clinical psychologist speculating on what might have been going through the minds of the 11 people in the hot-air balloon as they faced certain death.

'The events,' he writes, 'are simply too raw for the relatives and friends of those who died to see such horrific scenarios canvassed in the media.'

I agree. Needless comparisons with 9/11 are made in the interview and exaggerated into the desperate headline EXPERT SEES 9/11 LINK IN DECISION TO JUMP.

Please.

Having said that, I don't think it is entirely morbid for people to wonder what exactly happened when tragedies like this strike (in fact, it's very human—we all do it), and it is often because of the dearth of definitive information that speculative scenarios start to run rampant. Up to, say, 30 or 40 years ago media could often get close to the scene of a terrible accident and report what they saw. Old newspapers teem with extremely vivid descriptions of crashes, disasters and crimes. These days, disaster scenes are swiftly sealed off by the police, reducing journalists to picking up what details they can around the edges, while relying on the authorities to hold media conferences or make statements. Of course there are very good compassionate and forensic reasons for this, but I sometimes wonder if on behalf of all media a single, senior, pooled reporter shouldn't be allowed into a disaster scene to describe soberly and responsibly what she or he sees, without being offensive or insensitive. No pictures or film need be taken, though even that might be possible, within strict limits. Such a policy would help—in such cases—to satisfy the public hunger for information, which I don't believe is necessarily ghoulish; on the contrary, I think it is part of the instinctive sympathy we feel for the victims of tragic disasters. Responsible, controlled coverage just might avert the irresponsible stuff that arises in its vacuum when all we have is the 'official version of events' to go on.

Art and history

To an exhibition of work by Harry Watson at Aratoi, the Wairarapa Museum of Art and History in Masterton. Watson's work certainly fits the gallery's brief: it marries art and history in a stunning series of meticulous wood carvings, most of them drawing on 19th-century colonial imagery. For example:



Yes, it's our old mate Edward Gibbon Wakefield. Actually, I don't recall seeing him in the show today, though he has been used to promote it. But he's typical of Watson's cast of Maori and Pakeha characters—some of them actual historical figures—depicted either naturalistically or surrealistically as stand-alone statuettes; in beautifully framed miniatures; or, in two or three cases, as tableaux set into magnificent wooden cabinets. Some hold guns but many offer flowers or feathers of peace. Watson seems to be satirizing the Europeans in particular while relocating them in an alternative narrative. Viewers of the exhibition will each have their own ideas about what that narrative might be; to my eyes it suggests the essential absurdity of the colonial enterprise while not being entirely unsympathetic to the players caught up in it. And they were players too, condemned to act out the parts dictated for them by British imperialism. One feels that they might just as well have been made of wood, so inflexible were they in their stuffed shirts and tight uniforms, so convinced of their own rectitude. Yet Watson is not unkind to them. As the exhibition's title says, That Was Then: This Is Now.

If this superb show comes your way, or if you're visiting Masterton, I urge you to go and see it. It's on until 11 March.

A terrible day

As it happened, we were coming over to the Wairarapa from Wellington today. Just before we left, we saw the news of the hot-air ballooning tragedy. We passed the road leading to the site of it at about 1pm. We had stopped in Carterton, which the TV1 report tonight described as a town in shock, but of course many people were going about their business as usual. What else do you do? Life goes on, as Auden memorably told us, even while terrible things are happening close by. I was also sorry to see TV1's reporter call Carterton a 'close-knit community,' because this silly cliche is wheeled out every time there's a tragedy in any place smaller than a big city. But it's petty of me to quibble about things like that at this time. Out of a clear blue sky, something unbearable to imagine happened in a field outside Carterton early this morning; and I think, like everyone, I am in shock about it. In Masterton we talked to a woman who has family in Somerset Rd, where the burning balloon came down, and I heard enough then to make me not want to know more. This is a terrible, terrible day.

Wise up

'Holiday misery drags on as more storms loom': thus the Herald this morning, rubbing in the point made here five days ago. Many holidaymakers have reportedly abandoned camp and gone home, and Weather Watch head analyst Philip Duncan says there'll be rain and cloud for at least another couple of weeks.

Further confirmation, if it was needed, that the true New Zealand summer has abandoned its washed-out camp in December-January and relocated in a drier, sunnier spot a few weeks further on. This actually happened some years ago and the pattern is well established now. Yet the insistence on starting the school year at the end of January condemns families to take their holidays just when the summer weather is worst.

'Keep in mind,' Duncan advises Herald readers, 'that February and March are often very settled.' QED. He knows, we know it. When is the Department of Education going to wise up?

Hard done by

In industrial disputes like the current one at the Ports of Auckland the media are almost always at pains to tell us how much it costs the employers when workers strike. We learn today, for instance, that the industrial action at the Ports of Auckland 'has cost the port $2.82 million in lost revenue.' Quite how such figures—usually supplied by management —are arrived at is never explained, but let's take them in good faith. If normal businesses is impeded for whatever reason, naturally you're going to lose money.

But how come we never, never hear how much money the workers lose by going on strike? Reporters should ask. It would not be so hard, I imagine, for a union to provide the total amount of pay lost by its members over a given time. (Maybe in this case the Maritime Union has an arrangement whereby its members still get paid when they go on strike, and if so, I'd happily stand corrected; but I doubt it very much. They certainly lose pay when they get locked out, as has happened at the ports).

The net effect of this imbalance in reporting is to put the weight of sympathy on management's side. They're losing income, they're inconvenienced, they can't get on with what they want to do. What about the other side? Workers' incomes in the first place are lower and more vulnerable to depletion, and by striking, they also jeopardize their employment prospects. One doesn't have to take sides in the ports dispute to feel that there's something wrong about a scenario in which only the employers are portrayed as being hard done by.

Anarchy from the UK

The death of Ronald Searle, announced today, brings memories not so much of the St Trinian's illustrations for which he was perhaps most famous but of the Molesworth books he illustrated for Geoffrey Willans. For a boy like me growing up in the 195os they were part of a staple diet of British schoolboy fiction; others on the menu included the Jennings series by Anthony Buckeridge, Richmal Crompton's William and of course Billy Bunter, who though dated by then still did the business for me anyway. I believe I read dozens of these kinds of books, which in their own way probably did for my generation what the Harry Potter series (another variation on schoolboy fiction) does for its.

The Molesworth books were more anarchic, though. Nigel Molesworth was a brute of a child who took no prisoners and was forever plotting evil schemes aimed at the downfall of teachers or fellow pupils. His withering characterization of the hapless Fotheringay ('He is utterly wet and a weed') stays with me still. He was also a shamelessly bad speller, as any fule kno. Searle captured his essential thuggishness brilliantly with a savage spiky style of drawing that was clearly a big subsequent influence on Gerald Scarfe and Ralph Steadman.

When I read in the news what I hadn't know before, that Searle was imprisoned by the Japanese at Changi during the Second World War and worked on the Burma railway, I remembered that someone else with an extraordinarily anarchic imagination—Mervyn Peake, author of the Gormenghast books—was one of the first civilians to enter Belsen concentration camp in 1945, and his mind was seared by what he saw. On the same spectrum would be the ultimate anarchist, Spike Milligan, whose Goon Show creations were very much a product of his wartime experience. There is no pattern here. Millions of men went to war and didn't create brilliant works and memorable characters as a result. But these three did, and I thank them for it.