I live 99% of my life in urban areas. My house is within the city fringe. I work in the CBD. On weekends I might visit one of Auckland's parks or beaches: Kohimarama, Waiheke, Piha (if I feel my feet have been bad and need punishing). I am an unashamed urbanite. But I don't pretend to be anything else.

I have never been to any number of remote Northland beaches. I've visited Mt Maunganui and Gisborne, but the great wild tracts of East Cape coastline in between remains a complete mystery to me, and will in all probability stay that way for the rest of my life.

Similarly, there are swathes of National Parks I will never set foot in. Either because a) I don't own a helicopter, b) I don't enjoy tramping, or, c) frankly, the effort of reaching these places doesn't justify the reward (oh look, more ferns!).

Which is why the current (and sure to increase) roar about 'protecting our coastline' and 'keeping it in Crown ownership for all New Zealanders' is suddenly starting to sound suspiciously like a right wing version of last year's left wing mumbo-jumbo about 'protecting our national parks from mining' and 'do you really want to see heavy machinery digging up Milford sound?!" etc etc.

In other words, hysterical rhetoric, from a bunch of city dwellers, about preserving the sanctity of places in which they will probably never in their lives set foot, at the expense of those to whom they represent significant commercial or cultural opportunity.

Uninformed bullshit from either side of the political fence is still just bullshit. And I simply haven't got the nose for any type of shit, whatever the stripes.

Our ancestors were continually plagued by life and nation threatening issues: war, famine, disease, slavery, death during childbirth, lice, inadequate housing.

What do 20th century people worry about? Gluten. 

Not a shortage of bread, but, rather, too much f**king bread. The irony. Three words spring to mind. Not necessarily in the following order: Yourselves, Over & Get.

Naturally wanted to add my voice to the comments. My comment received 2 or 3 instant 'likes'. Unfortunately, Close Up - a current events show which should be observing high standards of accountability and transparency - then deleted my comment.

Shame on you, TVNZ.

Luckily, I remembered what I wrote. Here it is, reprinted in full:.

"Of course the real winner on the night was Close Up. 75c/txt. Show me the money! But seriously - you would have doubled your profits if you'd included an option C: None of the Above".

Spam worthy of being deleted? Hardly. Makes me think they must be very, very uncomfortable about the profit motive behind their regular SMS polling.

At the bottom of Parnell Rise, is a busy 4 lane intersection between Stanley Street, Beach Road and The Strand. Cars plummet down Stanley Street, every morning, from the Port motorway exit, heading to the waterfront, frustrated by yet another 2 hour slog on the congested Southern, Northern or Western motorways. (Nobody held a gun to your head and forced you to live in the suburbs, mate.) Intimidating articulated trucks rumble along Beach Road from the Ports or Auckland, turning right, at great speed, into Stanley Street, heading in the other direction back towards the motorway.

Like most traffic-lit intersections in New Zealand, the sequencing is painfully, child-bashingly slow. The statistical probability, however, that a such an intersection has ever caused anyone to a) lose their job, b) miss a freight delivery, or c) die of cancer, lies somewhere between zero, and sweet f**k-all.

And yet, sitting on the Link Bus this morning, like many mornings, enjoying a slow, advertising-harrassed, but otherwise pleasant journey to work, I counted, in one sequence of lights;

• 3 cars pull hard U-turns at the end of Stanley Street, around the median barrier, into oncoming traffic turning left off Parnell Rise towards the motorway.
• 1 large removal van do the same.
• 2 enormous articulated trucks run a red light, exiting right out of Beach Road, heading into Stanley Street, after the Beach Road pedestrian buzzer had already sounded. A small group of people were about to step out onto the road. Furthermore, traffic was congested on Stanley street, so one of the trucks only managed to edge his nose in, leaving his fat, shit-break trailer blocking half the intersection, including our bus, light for a full cycle.

The irony of all the childish driving behaviour that takes place at this intersection every morning, is that it occurs right in front of the Stanley Street police station. And not once have I have ever seen the police monitor this location for driving offences.

A recent article in The New Yorker, on Moscow’s 24/7 traffic gridlock, quoted that the number one cause of traffic congestion was not the number of cars, the quality of roads, or the engineering of traffic lights, but bad driver behaviour. Moscow has all of the former issues to contend with (in fact, they haven’t even gotten round to putting paid parking zones in the city centre) but the main reason their countless 8 lane crosstown boulevards are permanently congested, bumper to bumper, is because Muscovites drive like a hoard or rampaging, rape-crazed Kossacks on a 1945 blitzkrieg to Berlin.

So while, back home, there has been a great deal of recent whinging about Auckland City Council adopting traffic-busting tactics (primarily in fining people that drive in bus lanes) that were seen as purely revenue generating schemes, I would argue that, in fact, the council, traffic enforcement, the the police, should be doing more. Much more.

Kiwis are fiercely loyal to the cars. In a pioneering, everyman-for-himself country with no public transport and a leaner driving age a mere 2 years out of childhood, New Zealand teens are thrust upon the roads in aluminium, Japanese sardine cans - after passing a multiple choice test that can be purchased at a service station - imbued with a genuine belief that they are not only the most important, but also the only prick on the road. Anybody who so much as dares suggest otherwise, is clearly part of an enormous conspiracy theory designed to deprive them of their basic human right to drive like an ape, while taxing their hard earned income to "give to the bloody Maoris".

Our me-first, pioneering spirit sadly even extends this lack of basic manners and civic courtesy off the road, into many social situations. You can test this the next time you take an elevator, by politely letting someone go ahead of you. You will inevitably be regarded with a look of thinly-veiled suspicion, like you must have a hidden, quite possibly Jesus-based, agenda.

The real issue with this ingrained societal dysfunction, is that it underpins an almost caveman-like, repressed evolution of foresight and collective responsibility. Manners didn’t evolve because they were drilled into us by matronly Aunts or episodes of Upstairs/Downstairs, they evolved because they smooth the gears of large and complex social organisms. Without basic manners, all hell breaks loose, and you end up with, at best, a taxi ride through Mumbai, or, at worst, Liberia.

The way a person behaves on the road is like a litmus test of a their underlying manners. Behind the glass protection and sound proofing of an automobile, people act on base instinct, often displaying a casual disregard for their fellow road users that, were it to occur on the footpath, would almost certainly end in blows. Even on the road, it often does.

Scale this up to a national level, and it could be argued that the way a countries’ citizens drive, the courtesy (or lack thereof) they display on the road, directly reflects how advanced (or, in New Zealand’s case, retarded) that society is.

But even on a simpler, micro level, submitting your immediate personal gain to the collective will, although at first counter intuitive, invariably results in much quicker travel times.

For example;

• On the Autobahns of Germany, drivers are given the freedom to travel as fast as their cars will allow. However, when there are roadworks, or lane reductions, speeds will be incrementally reduced in 20Kph chunks over a distance of several kilometres. Watching the many cars on an Autobahn slow down together, stay in lane and drive in even, tight formation at each speed reduction, thereby avoiding congestion, is almost hypnotic.
• On New Zealand motorways, by contrast, even a whiff of lane closure prompts an almost epileptic fit of lane changing, braking and speeding up, as every one jostles for the best position, causing concertina traffic jams even outside of peak hours. It is for this reason, that the four new lanes to Auckland airport probably won’t make a bean of difference to traffic flow.
• In London, merely looking at an orange light or bus lane the wrong way, or accidentally nosing more than a millimetre onto yellow intersection lines, will result in an instant fine of 200 or more pounds. The road rules are heavily, painfully enforced, but the result is that, for a city of more than 10 million people, with roads built during the horse and cart era, even at rush hour, traffic often flows eerily well.

Many (not all) New Zealand drivers are unable to grasp the simple facts: that selfishly disobeying the road code, and fighting daily for every inch of tarmac at the expense of every other driver, as if their jobs depend on it, actually has the immediate effect of slowing down their journey.

It’s not rocket surgery.

Just ask yourself - taken to the logical extreme, if we all completely surrendered our driving free-will to a sort of Terminator-style traffic super-computer that moved us around a grid, in perfect sync, without the need for traffic lights, signs or even road markings, would we get to where we’re going slower, or faster?

It’s no secret that I’ve got a problem with the way Kiwis drive. And while the collective slip of logic just described makes me mad, what I really, really hate about bad driving in this country, is the way it demonstrates our inherent lack of civic courtesy. Which only serves to reinforce New Zealand as the ill-mannered, devolved, sliding-down-the-OECD backwater that we are so dearly threatening to become.

Or maybe I just need to shut my own whine-hole, get behind the wheel of a V8 Holden, find a pedestrian intersection packed with pensioners too poor or stupid to own a car, and scare their underpants soiled with a classic Kiwi "red light run".

How else, after all, can I prove to my wife and kids that I’m a real man?

Wow..! Robyn Malcom is an amazing copywriter. She should get into advertising. Or speech writing. 

Dear  Selwyn, This Saturday at 11am, I and thousands of other New Zealanders will march up Queen Street, for something which will profoundly impact not only our own backyard, but also New Zealand’s global reputation. I really hope you can join us. We are marching against the Government’s proposal to open up Schedule 4 protected conservation land for mining. I have just visited two of the proposed mine sites, and been awed by their beauty. Check out this short video of my time in the amazing Paparoa National Park with Lucy Lawless. We must as voters stop this incredibly irresponsible proposal dead in its tracks. The simple fact that the Government is prepared to consider going into this highly protected land, which is staggeringly beautiful, with a huge and rare forest and bird life, should be enough.   The fact that a National Government made a promise 13 years ago to protect that land “no matter what” and now seems to have forgotten that promise should be enough. The fact that the Government has also made it very clear that this is just the tip of the iceberg and they are planning to mine many more currently protected sites should be enough. The fact that we are now under scrutiny from the rest of the world and our most precious trading “ace card” is being questioned should be enough. All these things are enough, but the thing that really motivates me to get out of the house at 10:30, put my walking shoes on and join all those other great people at the bottom of Queen Street is this: New Zealand is my country, it is unique in its size, its landscape and its people. It is my back yard. I simply want to help protect it.  I for one do not want to be part of a New Zealand that stood by and allowed its Government to trade away our most loved, precious and valued assets. Come march for a bottom line. Come march for your back yard. Love Robyn PS. If you can't make it on the day, you can be there in spirit with a virtual placard Make a placard If you can't get there on the day you can be there in spirit with a virtual placard. Paint yours online here Mother's Day gifts that make a difference

The following short story was emailed through to me by a Mr M.E. Lehmann, who felt it prudent to bring to my attention the "bajillions of NZ teachers who come over and relief-teach in London every year." 

Mr Lehmanns story promises to reveal the truth behind "ERO, the livestock origins of Tim-Tams, and New Zealand's military intelligence agency MINTIES"

You can read more of his musings on his blog http://booksadventures.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Selwyn

Heathrow Injection: A Day In the Life of Drake Savage

Drake Savage stepped off the Tube at Paddington Station and into a vivid memory of his first day in the UK. He’d emerged onto the concourse from the Heathrow train and plunged into the station’s mix of boozy toffs, murderously harried commuters, wayward backpackers and general background hatred. A “barista” in Starbucks charged him ten NZ bucks for a coffee and clocked the accent:

‘Kiwi?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Once were Warriors, man, sheep shagger, yeah, Shortland Street, and that ooga chaka thing. You know, the baby dancing from Ally McBeal. Your rugby dance, the ooga chaka.’ Drake eyed the man and contemplated killing him. He did not kill, and by choosing simmering bitterness over honest feeling, had already become a true Londoner.

Now, six months later, Drake was supply teaching in a West London primary school, his morning commute running westbound through the backstreets of pre-dawn Ealing, passing factory walls blazoned by bright graffiti. A text message arrived from one of his sisters back on the South Island, Shirelle, Blondelle, Florelle or Narelle...it was Shirelle.

Alrite m8 gud luk at j0b try 2 bag urself a hot chk LOL! L8r SHRL x

Drake smiled quietly. His sister was always encouraging him to get back in the game since his last girlfriend had been stampeded to death during a failed attempt to herd Tim-Tams. Four hundred of the blighters had trampled his beloved Maeve to so much purple fruit leather in the Whanganui National Park. Drake’s dashing manliness and quick wit had long been tempered by this loss, and the darkness it had created within him. But one day, just maybe...

He looked up and accidentally caught the glance of a West London vision of loveliness, with fake tan, zero-carat bling and belly flesh rolling over the elasticated lip of her tracksuit. She popped her gum, hoicked her undies from her crack and looked him dead in the eye.

Maybe not...he told himself. You’d be better off with one of the girls from Beautiful Creatures. Ah, the films of Peter Jackson...For a moment Drake was overwhelmed by Kiwi nostalgia. He imagined himself back in NZ, lying beneath the shade of a tree, while Bilbo Baggins whittled a pipestem and Aslan sang requests from the Neil Finn songbook. London just couldn’t cut it by comparison.

Drake was buzzed through the school entrance by a bored-looking receptionist who signed his visitor’s pass and directed him to the staff room. Drake walked in to find the morning briefing had already begun.

Miss Huff, the deputy head, was busy elaborating on a point of Health and Safety: ‘One cannot simply take a pen and write on the whiteboard. There must be a risk assessment. The cap may ping off the end and blind a child, or lodge in their windpipe. The cap must be secured. Whiteboard marker fumes might overpower the teacher – if you collapse and your TA is on a break, the children will be left unsupervised!’

‘Aww, she’ll be right, mate,’ drawled Drake instinctively.

‘She most certainly will not be right,’ piped up Fanny Damilton, the Head Teacher. ‘This is a Health and Safety nightmare. Which is why all staff using whiteboard markers must wear this– ’ Miss Huff modelled a fetching surgical facemask – ‘and use this.’ Miss Huff now displayed a large muzzle which held the pen cap firmly in place. Mrs Damilton thanked her and then stared at Drake for a long instant.

Miss Huff eventually spoke: ‘Ladies, gentlemen, may I present to you our new cover teacher, Mr Drake Savage of New Zealand. He comes to us with the highest recommendations.’

Mrs Damilton continued: ‘Mr Savage, one point of order – if you examine the dress code with which you were furnished, you will note that staff must remain appropriately covered up.’ Mrs Damilton was pointedly staring at Drake’s bronzed, muscular Kiwi chest which showed to the navel beneath an unbuttoned denim workshirt. Reluctantly, he buttoned it up.

‘Kay, Dammy,’ he said, ‘but don’t think I’m givin’ up goin’commando – even a quick ride in the Ute leaves the old undies ridin’ up me crack.’ Mrs Damilton winced at the verbal crassness, but she was the exception: many a barefoot babe on both islands back home had succumbed to Drake’s rough charms, and his hidden Tiki tattoo, after a hard day rustling Tim Tams.

Sometimes Drake wondered if he’d made the right choice leaving the fields for the classroom. He adored the roar of the quad bike beneath him, the lasso spinning around his head then snapping out to catch a fine specimen of the Tim Tam breed. But among livestock farmers, Tim Tam branding and tagging were ever more commonplace, and one couldn’t stay an outlaw forever. Drake had hung up his fedora and searched for a respectable, stable profession. Failing that, he’d become a schoolteacher in Pommie land.

Someone showed Drake to his new classroom – a wonder of technology and resources. Back home in Tasman District, resourcing was a question of ‘Will the kids ever have shoes?’ or ‘When will we be able to afford four walls and a roof?’ In Britain, it was like a fire sale in the Apple store – a free iPod with every classroom. Drake switched on the whiteboard and it spoke to him in a synthesised voice.

“GREETINGS PROFESSOR FALKEN. WOULD YOU LIKE A GAME OF THERMONUCLEAR WAR?’

‘Gee, mate, I’m more a tic tac toe kind of a guy.’

‘ARE YOU SURE YOU WOULDN’T PREFER THERMONUCLEAR WAR?’

The whiteboard disconcertingly began to flash pictures of Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy. Drake tried that old staple, turning it off and on again. It seemed to work, thank God. After all, Kiwiland was a nuclear free zone and it would be good to keep the classroom the same way.

It was eight-thirty. The kids were due in a quarter hour and Drake set about his preparations, but to no avail. He was interrupted with a Handwashing Policy to write (for OFSTED), Performance Management for his Cleaner (for OFSTED), and a Health and Safety check on his jacket (cuff buttons presented a dangerous snagging hazard – for OFSTED). Finally he asked his TA, Elizabeth: ‘What is this OFSTED anyway?’

‘Office of Standards in Education: I think you’ve got it in NZ...ERO? Aero?’

Drake smiled in understanding and flashed back to his last assessment by the Educational Review Office. Warm, creamy, melting in your mouth, the tang of orange, the freshness of mint, surprising, delightful texture of the bubbles... He had always admired the peaceloving Kiwi practice of naming government agencies for confectionary. Freedom quailed in the face of America’s ‘Department of Homeland Security’ or Britain’s ‘Ministry of Justice’, but it thrived in the warm embrace of New Zealand’s gentler MINTIES – Military Intelligence Network against Terrorism, Insurrection, Espionage and Sweetie-theft.

‘What kind of sweet would OFSTED be?’ he mused aloud.

‘Hard and bitter,’ said the long suffering Elizabeth, before returning to the jobs on her to-do list: these involved using her hands and knees to crawl around the floor in the filth picking up mess while simultaneously marking her group’s numeracy books, checking the homework folders, and using her free hand and teeth to make a 3D element for one of their wall displays.

‘Oh Lawd, if only I’d gawt qualifications instead of leavin’ the workhouse wivvout a penny nor a letter to me name!’ She bawled. ‘A young girl in such dire straits ‘as only two choices, master Savage, and seein’ as the ladies of the night fought me too fick for their line o’work, it was a TA’s life for me.’ With this, she quietly but spiritedly broke into a rendition of ‘For As Long As He Needs Me’, Nancy’s song from Oliver!

When the bell sounded and the squabbling horde of children began to burst through the door, it was almost a relief.