Monthly Archives: February 2016

Tim Walker’s Waitangi

Prime Minister John Key’s decision to not attend the Waitangi commemorations this year has left some groups outraged.

In Uncle John’s defence though, despite each year of his leadership having turned up at the Waitangi marae thereby effectively placing himself at the feet of Maori protesters’ vicious affront, he did have a good reason…

The shameless irony is that those very groups who are now whinging about our Prime Minister’s Waitangi absence, and how it indicates a distinct ‘lack of respect’ towards the agreements upheld by the Treaty itself, are largely the same groups of activists who in years past have held assaults on Mr Key, invariably confronting the man with verbal, and sometimes physical, abuse, amid a demonstration in which translation of the ‘respect’, that these people claim to hold hold so dear, has obviously been mixed up.

…The moment Steven Joyce received his world famous turkey slap was presumably the same moment that John Key thought something along the lines of: ‘Gosh, you know, I’ve actchy had enough of ungrateful people for the time being; I do what I know is best in the long term for New Zolland – even if so much of the population remains ignorant thus intransigent and chooses to do what it does so well by going off half-cocked and complaining about a concept about which it has little knowledge because stuff nowadays is just so difficult to learn so it’s actchy sometimes easier just to not bother and to carry on exhibiting blind obstinacy – but the people of New Zolland, bless their chubby little hearts, in turn are just so nasty towards me and, you know, I just don’t understand it, like, you know, because I’m actchy a pretty nice guy once you get to know me…’

I often fill out surveys of a political nature and a question they always ask me is: In one word what do you think is the biggest problem facing New Zealand today?

Invariably I respond: Malcontents.

People who are never quite satisfied with the way things are eventuating around them are, in my opinion, the scourge of this great nation.

Therefore to New Zealand’s thriving contingent of malcontents I offer this: if something bothers you, instead of immediately kicking up a big public stink about it until the dust around you is so thick you can’t see anything else, try approaching the offending issue with a level head, and how about first trying to understand it, try to understand what it is; how about doing some research and trying to understand why it’s happening then after that, possibly the most important piece, try being a little bit vicarious, try employing empathy, try and see the issue from the other’s perspective – how would you respond given a similar situation but – and this is the most important piece, you’ll need to be true to yourself and for God’s sake don’t be a hypocrite about it.

Of the Seven Deadly Sins – Greed, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, Anger, Pride, Sloth – it always amazed me that hypocrisy didn’t make the cut.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Nae Shorn

Photography by Mel Corn-Tent

Tim Walker’s Meds

Hallelujah – New Zealand’s medical profession have just come upon a means of controlling ADHD using totally natural products.

True to form of our miraculously open-minded and always ground-breaking medical profession, they made a discovery that my very own mother passed down to her hyperactive child when I was still an ebullient young lad.

Once full of nothing but ridicule for the vitamins and minerals abundant on the surface of our planet, it now seems that’s exactly what doctors are being instructed to prescribe to these cases of Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder.

Obviously the medical profession will need to do something about these supplements’ innocuous natural health packaging, also fabricate a few warnings about overdose or such and make up some potential side-effects because, well, otherwise it’s just not a medical drug; then of course they’ll have to bump up the health store retail price to run more in accordance with typically exorbitant pharmaceutical products…

I’ve said it in past posts and I will not hesitate to say it again: New Zealand’s medical profession with its expensive research and its extensive testing seems to always ensure it is at least ten years behind the nation’s natural health practitioners.

…So it looks as though New Zealand’s children might be saying goodbye to their side-effect-laden Ritalin and, providing our drug manufacturers don’t over-synthesise these natural products thereby ruining their integrity (as they almost certainly will), this new era might just mean the end of today’s children’s congenital deficiencies in magnesium, selenium, Omega 3; C, D, E, and B-vitamins.

We’ll see.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Kasha P Guise

Photography by U Lugger/B Hind

 

Tim Walker’s Protesting VI

Unsurprisingly all this talk of the ‘Greatest Trade Progression in the History of the World’ – the Trans Pacific Partnership agreement – has riled a large portion small-minded New Zealand.

In the coming days Prime Minister John Key intends to sign a deal with basically the entire first world extending and ensuring the future prosperity of our great nation; in the coming days a rabble of ‘peaceful’ protesters intend to voice their displeasure at this impending agreement for no other reason than they feel their collective voice has not been heard on the matter.

The phrase ‘future prosperity’ relates directly to aspects such as better healthcare (about which protests have been abundant), lower poverty (plenty of protest there, too), more jobs (about which one cannot escape the protesting…), higher wages (…unless it’s protesting this topic) and basically, improved standard of living; yet these protesters seem to consider it a violation of their democratic rights…

Gosh I’m confused; thus my one question of these protesters, what I would very much like to know to the point that in fact no, screw it, I demand to know, what is it that you people find so very disagreeable about progression? That’s all it’s going to be: the country of New Zealand will be going forward along with the rest of the first world while, I guess, you ignorant protesters will be standing on the street, waving your homemade banners, reciting your hackneyed chants and, despite posing a considerable impediment to the lives of many unfortunate and unrelated people, claiming that ‘what you’re doing is completely legal so you cops can’t touch us’; then when a policeman does politely ask you to move and you spit at his feet eliciting a firm removal from the premises unearthing your fresh protests of ‘police brutality’ because your mind just isn’t sharp enough to come up with anything original to call it, while you watch the rest of the world pass you by for the simple reason that you are against any change especially change for the better.

…Annoying me further was hearing some of these protesters’ Maori contingent gleefully joking that, ‘oh yeah, once we’re done here, it’ll be off to Waitangi for the protests there’ – protests – shit, do you people even know what you’re protesting anymore?

My God, from what I can make out you ungrateful pillocks are complaining about treatment from the man who is ultimately paying your weekly benefits, without which you’d have no time to complain in the first place.

Work that one out.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Noah Thyme

Photography by Mel Con Taint

Tim Walker’s Theory XXVIII

I believe in this modern era that in order to achieve optimum prosperity, to my immense chagrin, as a people we do not only find it an acceptable practise, we seem to be expected to lie.

This week’s Theory therefore pertains to (in fact it pertains to most every bloody piece I’ve ever written) my unequivocal detestation of, yet the way that the world appears to embrace as an integral part of everyday life, insincerity.

Allow me go back to the first half of last decade, possibly to the moment where my loathing, my utter abhorrence for untruths was developed – as mentioned in previous posts, something about being a heavily brain damaged 17-year-old deep in the rehabilitation stages of his injury seemed to appeal to a number of attractive young women who I’m sure would have otherwise ditched me for a more smooth-talking alternative.

Although I’m sure I didn’t realise it at the time these girls lied to me constantly – presumably in order to capitalise on the fact that I was a responsible young man doing my best to hold down a fulltime job, living with my parents while having for the foreseeable future sworn off the booze that I had been so enjoying for the three years’ prior thus always had money to burn while they, at the respective ages of 18 had applied for the dole and gone out flatting where the only thing that could stem the flow of Kahlua was funding thus rarely had any money at all – about things that now, from a relatively level mind, I cannot believe I ever entertained…

As I read back through I would totally understand if that right there were the reason for my hatred of everything duplicitous yet curiously, we’re not even yet at that defining moment so please, just bear with.

…They’d tell me what a amazing person I was and how any woman would be ‘sooo lucky to have me’, before passing down the classic, ‘Oh no, I would never risk jeopardising our friendship with a relationship – relationships come and go, friendships are forever,’ then somehow merge that in with the fact that they were two weeks late on the rent…

I know; still not there though.

…It was when these wonderful young ladies decided they needed a new sound system and one Saturday allowed me to drive them into the city that I saw firsthand an example of their shameless deceit. (They ‘had no gas’ so driving them in was the least I could do; the most I could’ve done would have been to actually put fuel in their cars – that came later.) They quickly picked out a $2799 stereo system complete with surround sound and told the youthful attendant they’d like to purchase. He asked how they’d be paying. They blinked their eyelashes and asked him if they could do finance. He said no problem, he just needed to do a brief background check…

Standing to one side dressed in a faded check shirt, grease-stained jeans and oil-drenched work-boots, all which combined to somehow emit the delectable odour of stale diesel (the skinless knuckles and blackened hands drooping from my belt further eliminated doubt about the profession), I had wondered why the girls had made such a grand effort that morning on their appearances – two typically flighty, ordinarily casually but always scantily attired teenage girls, could not have appeared more composed or well dressed.

…From my not-too-distant chaperone standpoint I heard the store attendant ask my charges of their professions; he transcribed to his form that they were both lawyers, earning $80,000 a year – but that was soon to go up, he was advised.

The sound system was brought back to the house which, incidentally, I now recall they had also secured under the premise of ‘professional women’, and after a number of big nights with bigger tunes and all manner of liqueurs splashed throughout the CD tray, was repossessed a few months later.

That kind of carry-on didn’t bother me particularly until – as well as a number of angry phone calls I received from Baycorp following the girls’ hasty departure from the country, after having been unknowingly named as their reference (there it is) – years later I visited a similar store in the same mall looking to buy a television on hire-purchase. (At the time I didn’t even really want a new TV, it was just that I had never had anything on hire-purchase and had no credit rating per se, which for some reason I felt was a bad thing.)

I went into the shop, selected a nice $3000, 50 inch model, advised the man I wished to hire-purchase it, he brought out the forms, I answered his questions, not worried about my meagre income on the basis that I was a home owner; he informed me that the finance company had rejected my application.

“How can that be?” I asked, not without frustration, “I own a house – that’s a pretty bloody good safety net..?”

“I know,” said the attendant quietly, “I don’t know what to say.”

“But hang about,” a memory rushed back, “the information you wrote on that form, that was all true … I’ve had friends who were a shitload worse off than I am and they were given the stuff they wanted without question – so what should I have done, lied?”

The attendant peered at me, unblinking but with slightly raised eyebrows.

“Because I can be damn sure,” I went on, “that those dropkicks who came in here a few years back and left with two and half grand’s worth of stereo equipment, only to have it repossessed down the track, lied their pretty little arses off.”

“Well maybe that’s it,” after a short pause the attendant offered his conclusion even more quietly.

 

That was years ago admittedly, but today the act of lying has become so prevalent that it’s almost accepted as though it’s normal behaviour.

Small businesses often lie about the merits of their products or how they are better than their rivals’, as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

On the radio, people call in and recount their stories; some of them are just so far out that there is no way they are true, but that’s what the radio DJs want – it’s what they expect, as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

All those Police shows on TV – or even in reality – when the officer asks the offender a question he/she seems to expect his/her response will be a lie, as though there’s nothing wrong with it; as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

What about in small claims court, nobody seems to care when two stories are being told about the very same instance yet both are markedly different; when one is found innocent nobody bothers to point out that by implication the other is a dirty rotten liar, as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

When a man/boy picks up a woman/girl in a bar, (I have heard this and it is disgraceful) I truly think she expects to be fed line after line of bullshit, then it’s not until the morning after that the lies must be sorted from the facts as if that was all just one big stupid game; as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

Or regarding the above, I’ve known marriages that have been formed on a foundation of lies; as though that morning-after chat didn’t contain quite the level of veracity they’d hoped it would (but then what can one really expect from a lying shit-bag), and where they seem to try and work some sort of precarious balance between truth and falsehood, but which invariably ends up in divorce when one half of the arrangement is finally revealed as the filthy cheat that they are, as though it’s acceptable behaviour. It’s not acceptable behaviour, it’s shit.

My conclusion therefore, my Theory: How the hell can an honest guy expect to make any kind of headway in this life when he’s surrounded by lies? Truthfully, I don’t think he can.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Blum Lass

Photography by Nossup Ta Ball

 

 

Tim Walker’s Parking II

Two years ago New Zealand parking wardens were forced to waive around $2.5 million of fines; last year that increased to over $3 mil.

Obviously, Auckland citizens particularly, the New Zealand public is outraged; hackneyed quotes from years gone by are being unearthed and revered for their timeless brilliance: “Bloody revenue gathering is all it is,” claims one man, obscuring the licence plate of his illegally parked, recently ticketed, vehicle.

“Failed cops, is all that lot are,” asserts another, once the parking warden is safely out of earshot.

The sad thing is few people actually deny parking their vehicle illegally – until it comes time to pay the fine…

Indeed most people are quite aware that once they have overstayed their 180 minute shopping mall car park time limit, or left their car parked half over a driveway because there were just no other spaces, they are in fact committing an offence; they are aware furthermore that there are a lot of other cars in the area for the warden to check through and that’s a whole heap tyres to chalk so the chances of being hit with an infringement are slim.

…Of course the reason for this increase in waived fines likely has less to do with reckless chalking/ticketing of parking wardens and a whole lot more to do with modern New Zealand’s indifference at bullshitting their way out of trouble…

 

‘To who it may concern,

I am writing in regards to a parking ticket I got issued with by youse guys the other day. I parked my car in a westfield carpark and me and my missus and my kids got out and did some shopping. One of youse guys must of chalked my tyre when I was gone. Then we took the car over to KFC for some lunch. Then I came back and must of parked in the same spot. And the chalk mark must of been in the same spot to. Freaky coincidence ae but I dont think youse should be aloud to charge me cos I wasnt always there.

Thanks for being so cool about it.

 

Jimmy Holdsworth’

 

…Because it is just so very easy to lie and anyway, despite illegally parked cars creating millions of dollars worth of lost revenue to business last year, the above scenario’s not that hard to believe.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Elle Eagle-Parker

Photography by Jimmy Holdsworth