Residents throughout many of our popular tourist destinations are unhappy at the increased number of visitors, supposedly encroaching on their section of New Zealand paradise.

These, classically first-world, complaints come only days after reports that ‘Tourism has overtaken Dairy as the country’s biggest earner’…

New Zealand’s so-called tourism hotspots, such as Queenstown in the South and Coromandel in the North, according to locals, have become so ‘overrun with tourists’ that their ‘lifestyles’ are being ‘compromised’.

…Makes me wonder if perhaps dairying needs a boost in these areas; remove all traces of benefits brought about by tourism – improved financing of respective councils along with improved commerce across the area, thus vastly improved infrastructure and living standards in general – and let’s bring in another few thousand of those smelly, noisy, muddy, hungry, messy, mooey and pooey, yet always friendly, dairy cows…

Those fortunate enough to own a portion of idyllic New Zealand in one of the aforementioned regions, understandably, would like conditions to remain the same as they were when these people purchased that slice of paradise all those years ago; understandable idealism, but unrealistic logic.

…Given the nature of New Zealand’s population growth over the past few decades – additionally with a major reduction in sheep numbers and increase in dairy cows – from 3.5 to now over 4.5 million of us cotton-wool-packed, flaccid-backboned, sugar-coated jelly-babies, as one might expect, so too has there been a shift in the nature of the land on which this swelling army of budding malcontents reside…

Along with the rest of this, now electronically intertwined, world, New Zealand must keep moving with the times; we must realise that without the blessing of international visitors there would be no funding, perhaps even no need, for the public recreation facilities, for the attractions, features or displays – also abundant public amenities – that we as Kiwis take for granted.

…Indeed through Internet, television, movies, and general international hype, New Zealand’s desirability as a tourist destination has become world renowned, and it seems only to be this reign of ‘classic Kiwi ignorance’ (a trait which those unnamed ‘ignorant’ prefer to pass off as their ‘she’ll be right Kiwi attitudes’ and which they actually consider an endearment because, let’s be fair, when it comes to self-assessment/reflection/acknowledgement, us Kiwis aren’t great) which is perpetuating this month’s token complaint (this is the clear result of a nation with insufficient genuine hardship – shortage of war, famine, persecution, displacement etc – to keep its people occupied) of ‘Somehow finding fault with the fact that most things about our country are great and that most people across the world happen to share this sentiment, but this is for some reason, a less than great result’…

‘Freedom campers’, campers who come to the country with little more than a vehicle and a tent – often also a surprising amount of expendable cash – have long been a source of discontent for Kiwi locals, the primary issue being one of ‘improper waste disposal’; that is, human waste which is frequently not disposed.

…Human congestion aside, it seems the actual reason behind New Zealanders’ apparent unwillingness to share with the rest of the world this bountiful tourist destination of ours, has less to do with ‘overcrowding’ and in fact more to do with ‘mistreatment’ – seemingly foreign overstayers fail to treat our land with the respect that we believe it ought to be treated…

Obviously the more tourists passing through our fine land, the better the infrastructure will have to become, therefore the more people we can have through thus the better the facilities and attractions around the country will become for everyone; additionally the more tourists the better the employment opportunities for Kiwis hoping to involve themselves in this industry, which would quickly see an end to that other issue the malcontents are constantly bemoaning – the apparent shortage of New Zealand job prospects.

…Curiously enough, this supposed ‘mistreatment of another nationality’s country’ sounds suspiciously akin to the way, as reports would have it – nay it sounds exactly like the way – (as reports would have it) that Kiwi tourists often act when we travel abroad.

Tourism benefits New Zealand; New Zealanders need to stop being such intolerant hypocrites and start benefitting from tourism.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by True Iswall Kim

Photography by Slicer Perry Dais

 

 

 

Possibly the world’s most recognisable leader, Donald J Trump is still further setting himself apart from the ordinary.

Indeed this extraordinary man will surely be remembered throughout American history, but perhaps for one aspect in particular: his ability, his desire, his unwavering dedication to maintaining election promises.

In the lead-up to the 2016 US election, while most Opposition party leaders were talking up the future prosperity of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, republican Donald J Trump went the other way, maintaining it would be ‘damaging to America’, and vowing to drop it the first chance he had.

Not a month after Trump’s being sworn in as President of the United States of America the US were officially no longer a part of the TPPA which – as well as rendering a few hundred hours of former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key’s time wasted time, spent travelling to and fro, also in talks with, former US president Barack Obama regarding that very agreement – must have been confounding for all those ignorant US (also bandwagon-jumping NZ) protesters who had for months previously been lobbying ‘against the TPP’, before seamlessly transferring their source of malcontent to the result of the US election, only to have the (already fervently contested, demonised and outright vilified) 45^th US President make this grand gesture (a move seemingly conducted in unwitting support of the protesters) by scrapping the TPPA meaning the protesters could no longer in any logical way protest, bitch or moan, either about Trump’s election or the TPPA.

He pledged also to step back from the Paris Climate Accord – citing another of his election promises – on the basis that forcing the foot of the world’s second biggest carbon footprint to effectively clean and trim its toenails was on course to ‘negatively affect’ Mr Trump’s intention to generate ‘increased employment opportunities across the States’, which was purportedly an integral part of his overall intention to ‘Make America Great Again’.

The arguably impetuous act to not be a part of this newly orchestrated attempt at managing Climate Change likely has something to do with Mr Trump’s previously publicised opinion that ‘Global Warming is a myth’…

If Trump were to perform some quick research he might discover that in fact the world climate is changing (this much is beyond dispute) and more likely the aspect he meant to discount as mythical was the supposedly scientific stance that Climate Change is occurring entirely as a result of manmade pollution or that the only way it can be rectified is with additional human intervention (even though the main cause of Global Warming is obviously the result of too many warm-bodied people existing and causing too much heat in general), which does sound terribly reminiscent of ‘scare-tactics stemming from years of ridiculously expensive company-funded research’; it also sounds conveniently biased, ignorantly narrow-minded, and just plain silly.

…Yet he has left a number of world leaders somewhat bemused as to, rather than immediately condemning it, why Trump would not just amend the Agreement to the US’s satisfaction but then, as the US – along with the rest of the world – must surely be coming to understand, Donald J Trump doesn’t make concessions, he makes promises; which he apparently keeps.

Inflammatory as his approach may have been so far and certainly, as much adverse publicity as he has garnered during this short term to date, President Donald J Trump genuinely does appear to have the best interests of his country at heart: in his opinion America was ‘falling apart’; the solution as he saw it, ‘get more people off the streets and into jobs’, which to his credit, is exactly what Mr Trump, even if sometimes in his roundabout and classically backhanded fashion, is endeavouring to achieve.

According to President Trump the reason for the US’s faltering economy – also the rise in terrorism – has largely to do with lenient border control hence excessive immigration into the US; so he promptly stepped forward in an attempt to put a stop to that, too.

As promised, Trump became suitably incensed when North Korean Dictator, Kim Jong Un, refused to cease his world-intimidation of test-firing potential nuclear warheads – admittedly harmlessly but indeed worryingly – into the ocean; engaging the portly Asian child in a much less damaging and rather more mature (but still potentially damaging and pretty immature) war of words including the issue of hollow threats, ultimatums, and/or propaganda.

In fact it seems the only major election promise that Trump has yet to put into action is his building of a wall between the US and Mexico – at Mexico’s expense no less – which, at this comparatively early stage in his presidency, no one could rightfully be any in doubt of the man’s intentions to do just that.

The fact that Donald J Trump is a nearsighted bigot is a truth that he seems to embrace rather than hide, yet once citizens of the USA have stopped playing Queens of Melodrama – the role for which they are so widely reputed – and eased the hysteria surrounding signing in of their unorthodox 45^th President, they might just come to realise that he is in fact not as self centred or as overcome with megalomania as many have been making out, and nor is he totally intent on destroying the environment or for that matter the entire free world…

(North Korea’s Kim Jong Un appears quite capable of managing that last part all by himself.)

…It would seem that President Donald J Trump, believe it or don’t, is actually in it for the people.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Meg Layman-Aya

Photography by Nat Jouster Blue-Hard

Paremoremo prison malcontent Arthur Taylor is at it again, this time lobbying to bring the Power of the Vote to New Zealand’s incarcerated.

It is generally understood that if a person commits an act deemed by society to be ‘unlawful’, society must then do its best to remove that person from society – say, by sending that person to prison – primarily based on that person’s refusal to conform to the laws, the rules and regulations set by that society…

Arthur Taylor is someone who does not typically conform to our established ‘rules of society’ – who, on account of his ability to constantly find fault with, thus bring lawsuits upon, the system under which he is currently being held at our Government’s (taxpayer’s) expense, must be the most costly prisoner New Zealand Corrections has ever entertained – and is someone who is doing his ongoing best to cost the taxpayer still more money by dragging through the judicial system yet another of his ‘jailhouse grievances’.

…Through a person’s decision to not conform to the laws, the rules and regulations of an established society, obviously, implicitly, that person has accepted that they must forego many of the rights otherwise promoted by their – now ostensibly rejected – ‘society’…

60-year-old Taylor has for 38 of the past 40 years been a guest of Paremoremo, where he has for the duration of his stay been causing his outspoken, loutishly ignorant yet pretentiously intellectual, variety of domestic unrest; all the while wasting Corrections’ and Government time and money which, while neither were rightfully his to waste in the first place as a democracy of the New Zealand Government, Paremoremo Correctional Facility is beholden to provide.

…Arthur Taylor happens to be one such, supposedly free-thinking, quintessentially idealistic sophist who, as a result of his lifetime dedicated to establishment-spurning, ill-conformity and downright lawlessness, has spent the majority of his adulthood under incarceration, where his most recent source of upset is regarding his fellow prisoners’ right to vote while in prison…

Renowned with some kind of misguided affection as the ‘Jailhouse Lawyer’, the extent of Mr Taylor’s consumption of Police resources spans 152 convictions including bank robbery, burglary, fraud, and drugs charges – that’s without taking into account the twelve occasions he has escaped Police custody (more recently finding freedom alongside double-murderer Graham Burton) hence the additional costs incurred throughout each of those recaptures – surely painting this slimy cretin as one of New Zealand’s greatest liabilities.

…When did someone decide that jailed prisoners – with all their ‘lack of concern for society’, with their inexplicable ‘will to devastate and destroy life’, with their astonishing ‘deficits in empathy’, with their totally ‘self-centred and self-serving demeanours’, with their weak, selfish and utterly gutless ‘compulsion above any and all else for self-preservation’ – when did someone decide that these deplorable urchins ought to have the same benefits and liberties; the same rights as the nation’s law-abiding?…

Arthur Taylor is without question New Zealand Corrections’ single biggest consumer of resources – while not officially documented the total financial cost of accommodating/subduing/pandering to this creature’s demands must reach well into the tens of millions – yet this travesty of a citizen only ever demands more from his homeland.

…The Vote in New Zealand’s democracy is a privilege which has been set essentially by our people, in order to ultimately benefit the good folk comprising our society…

He has already taken so much from New Zealand society – he has outright exploited, and is in the process of further exploiting, our nation’s system of democracy – also indirectly the people who make our society great; certainly the only thing Arthur Taylor now deserves is less of our time and indeed, much less of our attention.

…Failure to recognise, to uphold the basis of New Zealand society is to relinquish the right to be a part of, to elect who stands for, or to make any decision about, that society.

Assuredly, the only thing Arthur Taylor, anyone surrounding Arthur Taylor, or anyone sharing Arthur Taylor’s views, deserves, is less.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by A R Seoul

Photography by Paul Yer Heading

 

 

The ACT party is pushing an initiative that would see a portion of Government tobacco tax used to increase safety around New Zealand’s cigarette retailers.

Disgracefully, Auckland dairy owners are still having their livelihoods torn apart at the hands of petty criminals, who no doubt perceive these – typically Indian – convenience store operators as ‘easy targets’ or ‘an easy way to get some quick cash’…

This audacious spate of ‘petty’ lawlessness – where intruders enter a shop, scare/beat the attendant into submission then help themselves to cash/cigarettes – has for some time been an issue across New Zealand, and particularly the Auckland region (see, Tim Walker’s Thug II, III, IV, and V) yet inexplicably, it is not an issue that appears to have ever been properly addressed.

…Last month multiple attacks were carried out on Auckland dairies, with several more in the month before that, but with the severity of a number of these attacks resulting in the hospitalisation of the shop’s proprietor or other on-duty staff member…

It’s the ACT party who have finally stood up and demanded an end to this ridiculous run of lawlessness; they want part of the Government’s allocation of tobacco tax to be used in helping those people who, despite providing such a fine service for our communities, are being abused by select groups in those same communities.

…Either the New Zealand Police Force don’t consider the security of our humble dairy owners a priority or – perhaps the feeling is that the juvenile street thugs who are being talked into perpetrating these acts (often gang prospects acting under instruction from older gang members) just aren’t worth their time because Police have so many more important crimes to manage such as busting otherwise good folk for smoking weed – there is simply too little policing available to make any kind of notable difference to this cause…

ACT maintain that some of New Zealand’s tobacco tax revenue should be used to fund additional policing around these problem areas, and/or go towards implementation of the self-service cigarette machines historically used in pubs and bars, which would certainly remove a good deal of the onus from, thus making life a lot less dangerous for, these mortally endangered shop keepers.

…Given that dairy owners are effectively risking their lives to sell goods that ultimately – after subtracting the wholesale cost of the product then taking away the percentage of what’s left that must go into lining the Government’s pocket – earns the aforementioned retailer a decidedly miniscule profit, the New Zealand Government must surely feel some responsibility towards ensuring the safety of their tobacco vendors…

In under a decade the cost of a pack of cigarettes has more than doubled (in taxation) while the number of Kiwi smokers has reduced by less than 10 percent therefore, given that in 2012 smokers paid the Government $1 billion in taxes while costing the Government $1.1 billion in healthcare (see, Tim Walker and the Future of Smoking), by 2017, obviously our Government is taking a hefty profit.

…Regarding the comparison of ‘danger incurred’ against ‘profits gained’, for a family man hoping to see his kids grow up in Auckland, such is the lack of incentive to even sell cigarettes anymore that a number of Auckland dairies are now boasting signage, ‘Cigarettes Are Not Sold Here’, in the hope that by removing themselves from the cigarette trade they might avoid the related scourge of these Devil Sticks…

The New Zealand Government has for years effectively been using service stations and dairies in order to reap massive gains in tobacco tax; surely then that Government is implicitly obligated to provide protection to those who deal in this product, on their behalf..?

…It’s a fact that alcohol ultimately costs the nation (see, Tim Walker’s Smoke IV), as it seems that alcohol duty has always been insufficient to cover the exponentially increased cost of special event, and general weekend nightlife, policing, also the ACC cost stemming from alcohol-induced violence (that’s street and domestic), as well as the crime that booze inspires, and that’s without even touching on the healthcare side of it (liver disease etc); yet smokers have only ever had their various ‘related illnesses’ and the Government has always made damn sure that they have covered themselves financially for that aspect, thus to the point: assuredly, there is tobacco-related money in the Government stash for additional security outside dairies…

As a country are we honestly prepared to stand by while this kind of, supposedly petty, offending continues to take place right in front of our faces; do we seriously find it acceptable that peoples’ livelihoods, these people’s lives, are being ravaged and destroyed by shitheaded gangs of delinquent thugs?

…Perhaps more to the point though, do we actually not care about the wellbeing of one of our country’s most valuable resources – New Zealand’s vast populous of working migrants – do we truly have so little respect for these fine men and women?

The ACT party cares; they are determined to do what it takes to tap into this Government cache of tobacco tax for the safety, for the protection and for the wellbeing of New Zealand’s Indian dairy owners.

Respect.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Indie Anne Wurka

Photography by D Savra Spect

The fact is that Auckland house prices have for years been rising at a speed disproportionate to that of other New Zealand cities; the belief is that this inexorable pricing increase is rendering housing in Auckland ‘unaffordable’.

At what point did the majority of (Auckland) Kiwi adults start upholding the belief – perhaps after leaving home at a young age then whiling away an early adulthood producing not much of substance but while renting an overpriced city flat and surrounded by a cohort of like-minded imbeciles thus likely spending the bulk of any income on a frivolous array of questionable purchases as well as of course, rent – that after going through that youthful ‘insipid’ phase where a delinquent will make every effort to exert on life as little effort as possible yet still expect to reap gains similar to that of those who have put in the hard hours while also enjoying the novelty of a lifestyle of uninhibited excess coupled with minimal responsibility and maximal sloth resulting in optimal squalor, when did they seriously start upholding the belief that they ought to be able to simply step out of the aforementioned juvenile existence, and straight up into ownership of their own home?…

Given that the minimum deposit for a house across much of Auckland region is 20 percent of the house’s entire value, and given further that the median house price sits at somewhere around $1 million, generally, that’s maybe $200 grand a buyer needs to have available if they wish to engage the purchase of a home.

…A remarkable young woman appeared on the News the other night in a fine example of – in fact it must have been very much akin to what people used to do back in the days before everything was required to happen ‘instantaneously’, ‘right now’, ‘immediately’, ‘at this second’, ‘without delay’ or, ‘without any real planning or effort needed on my part’, and indeed – what sensible folk surely still do when they prepare to enter the housing market…

Realistically, for a first home buyer at least, one would expect the total house price to be significantly less than $1 million and ideally (but not invariably), a housing novice would first enlist the support and/or financial backing of a currently home-owning family member or such.

…The above, extremely mature, brilliant young lady demonstrated a fine example of what today’s New Zealand is so clearly lacking as, still only in her teenage years, she casually explained how she was proud to be ‘well on the way’ to becoming an Auckland property-owner, courtesy of the fact that she had ‘started saving for a house when she was 15’…

Obviously the best way to accumulate that elusive first house deposit is over time, as opposed to all at once, yet in this modern age where the art of planning, organisation or, dare I say it, forward thinking, seems to have dissipated along with our rapidly diminishing attention spans, the whole ‘over time’ thing is not a concept that many of us feel we should ever have to entertain.

…“Get off yours butts and build more houses,” is the Opposition’s frightfully short-sighted rebuttal, in the face of public nagging regarding Auckland’s high house prices/housing crisis in general; but obviously, in order to build more houses more land must first be made available and in order to provide more land the city of Auckland must continue to expand out over its fringes thereby potentially encroaching on valuable agricultural land currently needed to produce the nation’s crops (see, Tim Walker’s Sprawl), which is another (wholly informative and rather boring) issue altogether…

The main issue is in fact the issue hidden beneath the issue that these northern folk are so readily bemoaning; it’s not so much ‘high house prices’ caused by ‘the housing shortage’ which is making houses ‘unaffordable’ for most people; oh no, it’s that ‘most people’ appear to lack the foresight, the dedication, the maturity, the basic sense or indeed, the brainpower to comprehend the premise of building one’s savings over time in order to begin the purchasing process of their very first home.

…Also interviewed on the News the other night was a young couple who, when asked “…do you own a house in Auckland?” replied, “Fortunately we do, but we’re selling it and moving south…” (where they will likely find themselves occupying a freehold home, also having a great deal of expendable cash in their pockets); yet many people stuck in Auckland complaining about ‘the cost of living’, ‘having no job’, ‘having no home’ or perhaps even, ‘no foreseeable future’, don’t seem to realise that there is (almost) a whole other country out there, and it’s one hell of a lot less expensive to occupy than this so-called Auckland Super City…

I started saving for a house when I was 16 years’ old and still living under my parents’ roof; at the time it made sense to me to do it that way, and making further economical sense four years’ after that, was buying my first home when I was 20, in Canterbury.

…Times have changed a lot in past years admittedly, but the principle by which life is lived has not: ‘Nothing worth having ever comes easy’ – despite the prevalence of opinion that life ought to be just that.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Byan D House

Photography by Sam Weir-Else

 

 

 

I sympathise with the families of the men lost in the Pike River Mine disaster of November 2010.

The New Zealand Government has since then maintained the stance that the ‘Pike River Mine is not to be entered’, on the grounds that to do so would place in peril the lives of a potential recovery team…

A recent video witnessed by a number of the families involved – past footage of several men inside the mine entrance tending to a robot designed to more deeply explore the mineshaft – has caused uproar among this bereaved mining community, implicitly delivering the understanding that the mineshaft in question is, and perhaps always was, quite able to be entered.

…Following the initial explosion on that fateful day – resulting in the deaths of all 29 men inside – along with the succession of explosions throughout the ensuing months, geotechnical engineers deemed that due to the dangerously high concentration of methane gas the air quality inside the mine was of an ‘unsafe standard’, and seemingly that is unchanged today…

The families of the lost miners ultimately want the ‘bodies’ of their loved ones returned to them, and this recent footage has sparked new debate over the legitimacy of claims the mine is ‘not safe to enter’.

…For the first few months after the Pike River Mine explosions the decision to delay mine re-entry was understandably undisputed, and it wasn’t until many more uneventful months had passed that the families of those lost began to push in earnest for a recovery expedition…

Despite the video the Government’s position remains firm: air quality inside the mineshaft makes it unsafe for people to enter.

…Almost seven years after the fact, having seen no attempt at recovery of the men’s remains and with none in the forecast, for it to then transpire that there have in fact been souls inside the mine, with all their living and their breathing, must inspire if nothing else, a great deal of uncertainty…

The families are vehement in their opinions they should have been told about the existence of this, supposedly secret, mineshaft footage; Prime Minister Bill English is similarly adamant in his response, “The footage is no secret and of most, or all of it, you actually were.”

…The families deny the Government’s claim that ‘they were made aware of these videos some years ago but maybe they just forgot about it’, and have renewed their efforts to ‘see justice done’…

The families have since reiterated their demands that the ‘bodies’ of their loved ones be retrieved from the mine.

…PM English is standing his ground, undoubtedly maintaining a philosophy something akin to, ‘Regarding the recovery of any human remains in the mineshaft, so long as a geotechnical team inform me there is so much as the slightest modicum of risk to life inside that mineshaft, there shall be no re-entry – the families affected by this terrible tragedy have already lost their sons and their husbands to that mine, how do you think they’d feel if the names of more men joined the list of the dead, particularly while they were involved in the task of trying to gather the remains of those dead?’

Interestingly: ‘Goodwill and compassion notwithstanding a nation’s governing body is under no obligation to share with its public documents or footage that it deems to be sensitive or private unless it pertains directly to the lives of those involved.’

Regardless, and as much as I do sympathise with the families’ plight, the lives of the 29 deceased miners will be eternally remembered in New Zealand history and – as was more or less forecast in a statement by the mine’s owner, Solid Energy, in the months following the tragedy, in 2011 – the remains of those lost are likely to forever be entombed inside the Pike River Mine, which will become, solely, a burial site.

Given the circumstances, is that such an awful outcome?

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Fawl N Minors

Photography by Wrest N Peece

 

 

New Zealand state-owned enterprise, Landcorp, has sold 1400 hectares of Fiordland land to Chinese buyers, for an undisclosed amount.

News of the transaction has caused outrage across the area, with Te Anau residents in disbelief that their neighbouring sheep and beef farm should be sold to Chinese businessmen, rather than to a local farmer…

A Southland farmer did offer to pay approximately $8.5 million for the aforementioned Jericho Station, but was seemingly priced out of the deal.

…The details surrounding this particular sale of Government/taxpayer land are highly reminiscent of a proposed deal almost two years’ earlier which, if I recall, in all its ostensibly xenophobic wisdom, the New Zealand Government prevented from taking place…

Given Landcorp is an SOE thus ultimately owned by the people, regarding the sale of Fiordland’s Jericho Station, Chief Executive Steve Carden’s primary focus was apparently on ‘getting the best deal for the taxpayer’.

…Roughly ten times the size at almost 14 thousand hectares and valued at over $70 million, Lochinver Station went on the market in 2015 and, similar to the recently sold Jericho Station, was quickly snapped up by a group of Chinese investors; the main difference though is that where Jericho was sold by, in 2015 the sale of Lochinver Station was halted by the New Zealand Government…

Mr Carden maintained: “We want to make sure that we are giving local buyers every opportunity we can to make a competitive bid and we work with local buyers quite significantly on that to help them – but once the process is finished we need to make the best decision for the business.”

…Back in 2015 the level of cash flow throughout New Zealand was scarcely conducive to the purchase of farms, let alone farms worth over $70 million; for Lochinver Station’s owner/s to have a prospective buyer for their farm, and furthermore willing to pay the asking price, must have been a near perfect outcome…

Federated Farmers evidently share the sentiments of Mr Carden, claiming: “Landcorp is a commercial operation so it has every right to sell a farm to whoever they want, but within the constraints of the Overseas Investment Office.”

…Personally, to sell a New Zealand farm to overseas investors, given that the majority of required labour, farm equipment, stock and supplies, as well as living costs and other expenses, will logically be sourced from New Zealand anyway, meaning that most farm-related expenditure will end up going right back into the New Zealand economy, where in fact the only things likely to be sent abroad are whatever profits the farm yields, which if I know farming is generally only a fragmented percentage of a farm’s entire turnover – although admittedly this elusive ‘profit margin’ does only occur in the good years – therefore as much negative hype as it caused in its day, overseas interest in our farms never was as bad as our conveniently uninformed thus typically ignorant malcontents liked to make out because unless these ‘overseas investors’ physically disassembled and actually took the farm back to their own land, they never were really taking ownership of New Zealand land to begin with…

This overtly hypocritical move by the Government seems to have gone largely unnoticed by the nation’s resident team of protesters but be assured, this is one of the finest examples of Political Double Standards seen in recent New Zealand history.

…Jericho (sold recently) and Lochinver (2015 sale halted) Stations are both expansive farming operations dealing primarily in sheep and beef; yet does the fact that Jericho spans just a portion of the area that Lochinver covered make it exempt from the National ruling of years gone by – or has that ruling suddenly changed?…

In 2015 the infamy of ‘Asset Sales’ – where New Zealand-owned institutions were being sold by the National party to other countries in order to turn over some quick cash – was doing its best to vilify our Government; understandable then at that time National probably saw the opportunity to stop another international sale (particularly one involving private as opposed to Government ownership that henceforth would not directly benefit them), namely Lochinver Station, as a way to claw back some credibility.

…Whatever the case a few months after the sale was quashed in 2015, Lochinver Station did go on to sell to a private New Zealand buyer and although, like Jericho, it was for an ‘undisclosed amount’, thanks largely to Government intervention, I am doubtful that it would have been for anywhere near the asking price.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Polly T Call

Photography by Hypo Crute

Prime Minister Bill English has made a big call in limiting the number of migrant workers allowed entry to New Zealand.

The increasing public pressure that ultimately forced our PM to make these restrictions can be summarised in a few brilliantly insightful, tremendously inspired – mildly ignorant but – classically Kiwi phrases: ‘Bloody immigrants, stealing all the jobs…’, ‘Bloody immigrants, they’re a menace on our roads…’, ‘Bloody immigrants, can’t understand a bloody word half of them say’; or the 21^st century addition, ‘Bloody immigration, that’s the reason why house prices are so bloody high, swhy a typical Kiwi bloke like me can’t get me and the missus and her six kids and two dogs into a home, and it shouldn’t matter that me or the missus can’t work cos we’re bofe on disability cos we’re recovering mef addicts or that we ended up trashing our last house the tight-arse Gov’ent gave us then blowing it up as well cos nah, we got as much right to get into our own home as the next family cos this is New Zealand, everyone deserves their own home eh’.

The main issue with our Prime Minister’s decision to lower the number of immigrants permitted to work in New Zealand is that many of the nation’s best workers in fact are migrant workers; to say that those ‘immigrants are stealing Kiwi jobs’ is an entirely ignorant statement and is at the very best a partial truth…

Rather than worrying about cutting back on immigration the New Zealand Government might be better positioned focusing on the aspect of dealing with/culling out the number of born-and-bred Kiwi folk who really provide nothing for, but who are more than happy to take from, their country; a fine example of whom are the number of ‘homeless’ Auckland people/families who – on account of the shortage/expense of homes in the area coupled with an ostensible shortage of brainpower/financial nous suffered by these same folk in the same area also the inability to take responsibility for or indeed to plan/organise/manage/sort out/show some Goddamn foresight in their own lives – have been stuffed into motels at over $150 per night (well over $1000 per week) at the Government’s/taxpayers’ expense then as though their wellbeing is everybody else’s responsibility and is in no way their own, the majority of these people are still complaining that they’ve ‘been forgotten by the system’ or, more confounding still, are ‘not being looked after’.

…The majority of immigrants attempting to make a home in New Zealand seem content to occupy the positions of employment that, so often, our so called ‘typical Kiwis’ either lack the ability, the dedication or simply the desire to fill…

A reprobate group of Northland teens were recently filmed attempting to kick in the glass door of a liquor store; these thugs were later filmed giving supposed insight into their actions, claiming: “Oh we gotta do it eh, cos there’s no other way to get stuff round ‘ere … Cos there’s no jobs out there eh … Oh yeah like none of us got jobs eh, cos there’s no jobs … So come on Government, create some more jobs and we won’t do the crime eh…”

…The owner of a Northland trucking firm, Stan Semenoff Transport, recently appeared on the News, albeit dejectedly, maintaining that on account of recent migrant restrictions he was suffering a shortage in workers meaning that almost a quarter of his trucks were sitting, driverless, in his yard; Northland fruit pickers have also been in demand this year as it appears the leisurely task of picking fruit for little more than the minimum wage, but significantly more than the dole, is a job that most out-of-work Kiwis feel is beneath them…

These new migration restrictions have seen the implementation of a ‘projected income to duration of visa ratio’, meaning that the greater the wage an immigrant is forecast to earn, or indeed the higher the skill level they currently possess, the longer their New Zealand working visa may extend.

…A truck driver’s wage isn’t terribly impressive and nor are the formal qualifications required to fill that position; these factors disqualify most truck driving migrants from long-term working visas as heavy haul drivers, yet as Mr Semenoff explained, “…while the jobs are definitely there, it does take a special sort of person to handle a big rig…”…

Prime Minister Bill English once in the past found himself in an uncomfortable situation as he – as then Deputy PM – was quoted making the remark: “A lot of young Kiwis who are available for work are pretty damn hopeless.” – this comment was inspired by the revelation that many youthful New Zealand jobseekers were finding it difficult to pass a company’s standard drugs test then of those who did, many of them lacked the dedication to turn up on time – if at all – for their first day on the job.

…Among New Zealand dairy farms Filipinos make up a large portion of the workforce and are by all accounts superb workers; Chinese and Japanese immigrants oversee a large portion of New Zealand’s takeaway outlets while Indian folk operate the majority of New Zealand dairies then are still somehow free to drive many of our taxis, yet still there are vacancies in New Zealand’s employment market…

In order to hold down employment a person must want to do so – it is so very easy for an out-of-work youth to claim ‘there are no jobs’ or ‘migrants are taking all the jobs’ simply because these are the fashionable statements among today’s jobless yet – if somebody genuinely wants to work they will.

…As a stoic National supporter it pains me to see the Government doing something so patently short-sighted and worse still, so clearly pandering to the nation’s alarmingly high percentage of malcontents; that said if the ‘malcontents’ are indeed comprising the majority (as one would be forgiven for believing they do in New Zealand), what with election season approaching…

From construction labourers to farm workers, from supermarket workers to fast-food vendors, there has never been and likely there never will be a shortage of rudimentary employment possibilities in New Zealand.

…Migrant workers have for generations been filling the gaps in New Zealand’s job market generally left vacant by those positions that our beloved ‘typical Kiwis’ simply, don’t want to do.

This country needs migrants for without them our nation of malcontents, rather than languishing on a Government-funded lifestyle while complaining about the trans-Tasman wage-gap, might be forced to work jobs they feel are beneath them thus would soon become a whole lot more mal-contented.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Minnie Mom-Wage

Photography by Mel Can-Tent

 

 

 

 

All this negativity surrounding New Zealand’s supposedly ‘polluted rivers’, ‘unclean streams’ and ‘unswimmable waterways’ seems to have pissed off the freshwater gods.

The diluvium that recently swamped Edgecumbe residents in New Zealand’s northern dairying hub, Bay of Plenty, soon after making landfall mercifully moved offshore; if only to allow the next cyclone an unobstructed run at the area.

I can almost imagine the conversation from upstairs: “Ungrateful mortals still seem to think the water’s not clean enough in New Zealand – I say, have they been to China? We’re hardly ever seen there anymore and they don’t seem to mind.”

“Yes, I must concur, in this day and age, it’s unbelievable, it really is.”

“Interesting, yes, New Zealand, such a puny slice of land, so very pervious to onslaughts of most any kind … Hmm, and despite our recent, prolonged absence from the east of their southern island, they’re still not complaining much there, are they?”

“No but then, those one’s never seem to complain about much of anything at all, in fact the only complaining we hear in regard to that portion of the country, is usually done by citizens at the other end of the country, on their behalf.”

“What, do those mortals at the southern end have difficulty articulating?”

“I don’t believe so, they just appear more content and indeed, less given to whinging than their northern counterparts.”

“Hmm, doesn’t make a lot of sense now, does it?”

“No it doesn’t, and what’s more, it’s usually the same groups of malcontents, too, doing the complaining.”

“Hmm, so what do you propose we do then, about this, apparent, plight of theirs?”

“Their supposed lack of freshwater..?”

“Quite, their supposed lack of it.”

“Well, we could always give them more autumn rainfall..?”

“More autumn rainfall – do you not think northern New Zealanders receive sufficient precipitation as it is?”

“Certainly, yes, I do, and they do, but if they are still unhappy with their freshwater quota, well, what else can we do?”

“I’ll tell you what else we can’t do, and that’s that we can scarcely allow them to go on grumbling about such a potentially serious issue – why they could end up giving us and our entire weather-god cohort a bad name in New Zealand, and we couldn’t have that now, could we?”

“You are correct, we could not have that.”

“However, at the same time we do need to teach these ungrateful mortals a lesson – we can hardly afford to have them thinking that whenever their situations become dire, they can simply start complaining and all their worries will soon be over, now, can we?”

“Again, you are correct, we cannot have that.”

“So, what do you propose we do?”

“Well, I suppose, we could unleash a second biblical flood upon them..?”

“True, drastic but true, although how would we isolate such a large storm so as to not punish those mortals in the lower half of the land? They after all, have done nothing to anger the gods and indeed, those ones seldom do.”

“I think, perhaps, a smaller flood then – big enough to devastate, but small enough to be contained by just one realm.”

“Even still, we must consider the errors encountered last time – the deluge cannot remain exclusive to just one area while leaving others completely untouched or, obviously, these modern mortals will realise something untoward is upon them – they will sense the divine influence.”

“Yes, I do agree … In this case I feel we must concentrate our rainfall over the problem area, while still soaking the rest of the nation in the process, but of course not to the same extent.”

“Hmm, yes, that might work … What are your thoughts on successive weather systems?”

“You mean, like, two in a row?”

“In succession, yes.”

“I suppose, if it was keeping within the guidelines of feasibility, it could be done.”

“Yes, well, I think you are forgetting that in this modern time – with what those idiot mortals like to refer to as ‘climate change’, even though the phrase they really ought to be considering is ‘evolving planetary weather cycles’ – regarding weather phenomenon, most anything is feasible.”

“Yes and incidentally, those ‘idiot mortals’ to whom you just referred, with their ‘climate change will destroy the world’ and ‘save the people from themselves’ mentality, are the very same bunch of idiot mortals who are unhappy with our recent allocation of fresh, clean and – you’ll like this word – ‘swimmable’ water.”

“Hmm, that is upsetting, but like I said, regarding the weather phenomenon pertaining to the projected devastation of this portion of northern New Zealand, you need not be concerned about ‘feasibility’ – in this modern era on planet earth, weather gods now have free reign, indeed, anything goes.”

“You do make a valid point.”

“Shall we say successive cyclones then?”

“I suppose that would work – but what will we call them?”

“Hmm, I think we should name the first after a woman.”

“You always name them after a woman, let’s name them after a man for a change..?”

“No, I decree the first, and the most devastating, shall be named Debbie, after the most tempestuous harridan I ever knew … You may name the other whatever you wish.”

“The second is to be not so powerful, is that correct?”

“At this point it seems only fair.”

“I shall name mine, Cook, then.”

“I thought you wanted a man’s name..?”

“’Cook’ can be a man’s name.”

“’Cook’ can also be a chef’s name.”

“Irrespective, I feel that the name ‘Cook’ is well suited to my, as you have it, lesser powered storm.”

“Or, in the spirit of fairness, we make both equally devastating..?”

“Man alive, how much do you dislike these mortals?”

“No, you’re right, but there still must be two – make sure the cyclones are successive.”

“As you wish – the first devastating and the second, not so much..?”

“Well, that will ultimately depend on how the mortals react to the event in question, in that, after the first – Debbie – they may be unprepared for a subsequent deluge.”

“I suppose, but, if you will permit, I would still like to instil in mine – Cook – a reasonable amount of destructive force, if only to measure those northerners’ resilience..?”

“As you wish.”

“Shall we put this ‘tutorial’ underway then?”

“Let’s, although, and this is perhaps the most important aspect, however violent the nature of the individual weather systems, it is imperative that the total ferocity of both storms is large enough to ensure that once the water has receded, leaving lakes, ponds and reservoirs flushed, rivers rerouted et cetera, to ensure there can be no more mention of ‘unclean waterways’.”

“Agreed … Let it be so.”

“Indeed … LET IT BE SO.”

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Suggy Gummies

Photography by Wea Tarse

Apparently an idiom is a ‘word or group of words that take on a new meaning when used in a different way to their usual sense’, which just sounds complicated.

‘Raining cats and dogs’, at the tender age of 17 hoping to learn once and for all the meaning of the word ‘idiom’, upon looking it up in the family dictionary, reading the explanation but drawing a blank, was the example given…

Idioms are perhaps better recognised as those hackneyed or clichéd words or phrases, often involving metaphor, hyperbole or other parts of speech that don’t strictly remain true to a word’s literal meaning, but which bring to the party a particular, often light-hearted and usually more memorable meaning.

…I would have put money on the fact that the idiom in this case was the word ‘raining’, but then the whole ‘cats and dogs’ thing really didn’t sit right with me either; 17-year-old me felt that he was pretty clued up when it came to recognising metaphors though – so did it turn out that ‘idiom’ was really just a fancy way of saying ‘metaphor’? …

Idioms can be described furthermore as the inane and largely meaningless, daft little quips, two-bit remarks, or silly additions/tags/add-ons at the ends of sentences that really offer nothing extra but which pompous folk are sometimes heard to utter in the belief that their words make them appear clever in the opinions of their audience, while in reality, as we all know – because it honestly doesn’t take a brain surgeon to work it out – unnecessary words are a good way to lose your readers’ interest.

…’Raining cats and dogs’, in my 17-year-old-opinion, was a cheesy saying that old people used to use when it was pissing down outside, which was all well and good but I still couldn’t for the life of me work out which word in that sentence was actually the idiom…

To a nervous orator speaking off the cuff, idioms are a Godsend – prefabricated statements that slot effortlessly into speech and which are easily recognisable to an audience – yet there is a major issue to be taken with idioms: they’ve lost their way.

…I recall glancing hopelessly between the definition presented to me and the example, thinking, ‘Yes, but what does it mean?’ All I (thought I) knew was that somewhere within the saying ‘raining cats and dogs’ there was an idiom, but God only knew where…

Idioms are generally figurative/metaphoric by nature (meaning that when someone says ‘literally’ then proceeds with an idiom, someone else might well shake their head despairingly), for example (‘literally’) ‘that car must have been going a million miles an hour’, and are renowned also for being hyperbolic (refer again to the above bracketed segment), for example ‘that car couldn’t pull the skin off a rice pudding’ (despite earlier being spotted travelling at somewhere close to a million miles an hour).

…A little way down the track it dawned on me, ‘raining cats and dogs’ was the idiom; therefore, I concluded, an idiom was basically the same as what I’d been referring to for years as ‘an adage’, ‘a cliché’, ‘a proverb’ or, to a lesser extent, ‘a saying’, and, if I’m honest, regarding the revelation I mean, the whole thing was a bit of a let down.

No question, idioms are out of control. Some of the world’s more modern idioms are just so ridiculously figurative that they do indeed take some figuring out, and even then they sometimes make no sense at all.

All at once it seemed that the world population started to notice they’d been putting on large amounts of body-fat; this was around the same time that Political Correctness had come into vogue though, so instead of implementing logical (but potentially inflammatory) labels to describe these corpulent characters, such as ‘big’, ‘large’ or ‘oversized’, as a global populous we developed the pleasantly inoffensive, also decidedly ambiguous, compound idiom ‘overweight’.

Shooting into fashion almost immediately after, or perhaps as a result, was the ‘dieting’ phenomenon; better yet were the variants of these poor life choices – ‘the nut diet’, ‘the vegan diet’, ‘the Atkins diet’, ‘the kiwifruit diet’, ‘the lemon-detox diet’, ‘the seafood (also the beloved adaptation, the ‘see-food’) diet’, ‘the low-carb diet’, ‘the high-protein diet’, ‘the gluten-free diet’, ‘the Paleo diet’ and so forth, and often around again – from which another single/compound/duel-word idiom was borne, ‘weight-loss’; then to go with this newly coined idiom, of course, was the counterpart – even though if they’d just done some exercise they could have eaten practically whatever they’d wanted and there would have been no unexpected – ‘weight-gain’.

The exception to the above convoluted formula is when throughout this (hypothetical) exercise regime a dieter builds significant muscle – because that also surely weighs – but apparently this ‘over/weight-loss/gain’ thing doesn’t actually refer to weight at all but to body-fat – which surely weighs as well – yet if somebody is visibly larger than they were last time they were seen, they are not said to have ‘grown’, ‘swelled’ or ‘upsized’ as one might expect, but to have ‘gained weight’, and if another is maintaining a steady weight on the scales but is becoming flabby to the eye, they might also consider they are ‘gaining weight’; but then if someone reduces their actual weight but doesn’t consider they’ve downsized at all, technically, in their opinion, apparently, that’s not ‘losing weight’, either.

I did give ample warning that these idioms could be complicated but please, bear with me, I have examples for Africa.

Speaking of international countries – also ridiculous state-of-the-art idioms – it turns out that in order to fill the void in New Zealand’s construction sector, we are having to bring in tradies from abroad, while also encouraging more people to undertake training to become tradies…

This sounds logical – tradies of course being tradespeople, such as plumbers, electricians, carpet-layers, mechanics, carpenters, bricklayers, greens-keepers, engineers, hairdressers, butchers, bakers and cabinetmakers – indeed more tradies sounds like just what New Zealand needs at the minute.

…Imagine my confusion to hear on the News the other night, backed by footage of a team of carpenters busy at work, that a ‘number of high school leavers were keen to be starting their apprenticeships as tradies’, implying that ‘tradie’ is now a position all of its own and perhaps more worryingly, a young person with no skills can start their career as a tradie…

I recall during my apprenticeship as a diesel mechanic, I had a boss who was recognised as a ‘qualified tradesman’; I know furthermore how every apprentice aspired to earn that recognition as a ‘qualified tradesperson’ in their respective industry – bricklaying, plumbing, engineering etc – where we could then refer to ourselves as ‘tradespeople’ or, I guess, as fashion seems to be dictating, ‘tradies’.

…Yeah, turns out that somewhere amid the confusion of the rebuilding of Christchurch, the term ‘tradies’ became the universal reference – idiom – for ‘carpenters’ or, as I believe they like to be known among their cohort and around the traps, ‘builders’.

For the record those of you who wish me to stop speaking might like to tell me to ‘shut up’, of course forgetting that I can be equally, if not more annoying with my lips sealed as with my mouth agape; why then would someone seeking the cessation of speaking use such a cryptic command as ‘shut up’, when they could be straight to the point with ‘silence/be silent’, ‘quiet/be quiet’, or simply, ‘hush’?

Maybe the most infuriating form of idiom though is spoken through a ‘pleonasm’ – a term which essentially translates to ‘unnecessary words’, about which we spoke previously before but in a disparately different context – meaning that when the good Samaritan can see with his eyes that he must retreat to go back to transport and deliver the still-living breathing tuna fish to the safe haven then revert back again to solely one of his various different types of pre-existing psychological mindsets before stopping in to visit his old grandmother by 4 p.m. that afternoon while the sun still shines brightly up in the sky, he could well be considered the embodiment of ‘pleonasm’ and as such, be outcast for the rest of his idiomatic life.

On that note, please pardon me while I tuck in my shirt for it is hanging out; also hanging out were a bunch of mates rocking it at the beach while lapping up the sun but whom, incidentally, weren’t even wearing shirts, if you get my drift.

Tell you what though, if all that exposure to the UV Index ended up giving those young bucks the Big C, well, their lives could soon be hanging by a thread, but, ah well, can’t win ‘em all you know, I suppose, them’s the breaks, I mean, if I’m honest, you can’t control fate so, I don’t know, you know, to be fair, literally, it is what it is, done and dusted, stick a fork in me I’m done and whatnot, so, let’s face it, like, to be honest, I mean, to be fair, what are you gonna do you know – know what I mean?

Typical of the way the cookie crumbles, as a child I was blessed with a nervous bladder; unwanted urination in this capacity was usually referred to as ‘an accident’…

‘An accident’ nowadays of course, is a traffic incident but they don’t call it that, do they? They being the Police Force, the media, and the population in general; no, they don’t even have the decency to call it the infinitely more logical title of ‘an incident’, they just go on blindly calling it ‘an accident’, as though it was unavoidable and nobody involved had any choice in the matter, simply because it was accidental.

…Understandably then when I heard on the News last night that an old lady had ‘had an accident just one hundred metres from her home’, every shred of my empathy went out to her; I felt I knew exactly what she must have been going through – I have always found it frustrating how the urge to urinate seems to compound the closer you know you are to a toilet…

One has to assume that, as they are unintentional the majority of traffic incidents are mistaken happenings, or mishaps, thus not the intention of anyone on the road at the time, but to have ‘an accident’ just sounds so very smelly and, in fairness it doesn’t really do justice to the severity of the situation, as I am confident would be done by the term ‘incident’, ‘mishap’, ‘smash’ or just plain old ‘crash’.

…So imagine my shock to hear the poor old biddy had also caused a car crash.

Pee in your knickers and your Vitz in a fence, what a day.

 

 

Article by Tim Walker

Edited by Vic U Oss

Photography by Ed A Umb