Cracker by Damian Christie

Michael Laws once again proves why he’s an excellent candidate not only as Mayor of Wanganui, but as a human being:

I don’t often watch Out of the Question, Prime’s increasingly budget (they’ve shed two panellists and pruned writers since going to air) current affairs answer to A Game of Two Halves. But channel surfing Tuesday night I came across this little gem from his Worship.

If you can’t watch the video clip, here’s a transcript:

Question: Who would you rather have a heart transplant from, Hugo Chavez, Hugh Grant or Britney Spears?

Laws: Oh well you wouldn’t want Britney Spears

Hosking: You can rule Spears out immediately, why would you do that?

Laws: For a couple of reasons, one, she’s got, it’s all the fast food she eats; second, given her maternal nature…

Hosking: She’s got bad genes…

Laws: She’s got the Kahui genes.

Canned laughter: Titter, titter.

Yeah. Farkin’ hilarious, bro. Would he have said it if there were more than 0.6% of New Zealanders watching?

It contrasts quite sharply with a SST column Laws penned on the topic. I guess he thought making jokes about child killing wouldn’t play so well in print.

One line does stand out from that column though: “Letting these people have kids is an invitation to tragedy.”

Careful readers will note it’s not letting “these people” keep their kids, but letting them have them to which Laws objects. I’d be interested to know whether his proposed solution involves involuntary surgery, because I don’t see too many other options. Cutting off social welfare payments certainly doesn’t stop babies being born into poverty – as a quick look at any DPB-free third world country will prove. However it does have quite an effect on infant mortality rates.

I don’t listen to Radio Live, but I’d be interested whether Laws is making jokes about the Kahui deaths there too. If you do listen, your feedback as always is welcome, and Laws welcomes it himself via his SST column:

My absence from the blogosphere and the weekend’s Great Blend has been duly noted. Apologies: I’m in the process of moving to Wellington. A job and house have been secured; I’ll be meandering along SH1 this weekend, so please reduce your speed and be careful overtaking on blind corners.

Keith, if there’s room at your illegal backroom poker game, count me in. Last time I was down I dropped $30 within an hour, then overheard one of the students mutter “cool, I can buy groceries this week!” Always happy to do my bit for the Knowledge Economy.

With front-line correspondence from veteran journalists such as Russell and Graham, you probably care how I was affected by that day.

Which is good, because I wasn’t. Not really.

I was at the airport, about to depart for a two-week reporting stint in Wellington. An announcement came over the PA.

“We’d like to advise, blah blah blah, Christchurch Airport has just been closed blah blah blah… in addition a number of Northland destinations have also [CLICK]”

Everything went dark.

For a split second I freaked. Something had gone terribly wrong in Christchurch (no great loss, but what if the survivors moved to Auckland?), Northland had been removed from the map, and now Auckland was in the dark. Could the Greens be right? Is this The Day After Tomorrow? No, I reassured myself, it can’t be. It’s Yesterday.

But before I could start hyperventilating, the Auckland Airport generator kicked in. The fluoro’s of the Koru lounge flickered back to life and I went back to enjoying my flat white, biscotti and morning paper. She’s a hard life sometimes.

On the plane it was good news and bad news: “Hey folks. The flight will be a bit quicker today, thanks to the 200km/h tail winds we’ve got pushing us along. However it will be pretty rough, so for safety reasons we won’t be able to serve tea and coffee.”

“Pretty rough” doesn’t quite explain what it was like landing at Wellington Airport, but as you’ve probably picked up, we made it.

A slew of responses (if that’s the correct collective noun?) to my last post about police discretion and walk-thru breath testing. Some had also been turned down a ‘pre-driving’ breath test, others found the police quite accommodating, while Adrian had the same experience as me, basically arguing until the officer capitulated:

i asked one of the officers if i could do a breath test and he said no, and it wasn't until I said 'What if i go out there, hit someone drunk and kill someone?' that he felt guilty enough to test me (which i passed a-ok). He was already sitting in his car, the machine was right next to him, so it struck me as a little disappointing that they wouldn't test me when i asked... If they're so concerned about stopping drink drivers then surely this is very little to ask!

Quite. Although I thought rather than speculating wildly, I’d do some *actual investigation* (see Russell, I’m all growed up now) to see if there was an official policy. Sure enough, the Media Relations Manager at the Office of the Commissioner got back to me with an answer.

Bottom line? The policy is not to test. Apparently it raises a number of potential legal issues. The non-evidential testing thingamies may not be entirely precise, and if you get the “all-clear” from one, it’s possible to run into another checkpoint shortly afterwards, and fail. You’d then have a defence (of sorts) that the police told you it was okay to drive. Alternately, people may consider passing the test cause for celebration, and an excuse to have another for the road.

Worst of all, you can imagine the media frenzy if, after being given the go-ahead, you managed to crash into a busload of orphans. Legal issues or otherwise, it’s not a headline anyone wants to see.

With uncharacteristic good timing, my sister (in Auckland) gave birth the day before I headed south. She was supposed to be born on the 6/06/06, but all the jumping up and down, cups of tea and praying to the Dark Lord wouldn’t budge the little blighter, so I gave up on my campaign to have the child named Damianella. Or Damianette. Such pretty names for a girl.

But as a proud first-time Uncle, I hope you’ll bear with me as I show remarkable restraint in posting only one of the 60-odd photos I snapped of my freshly spawned niece, Morgan, some six hours after her arrival:

So anyway, I’m in Wellington. I’m yet to see any skirts over trousers, but I’m assured the capital’s claim to fashion infamy continues in some quarters. It’s cold, wet, windy and I don’t know anyone. Calling all friends, past, present and future – get back in touch, it’d be nice to hear from you.

4am, Saturday morning. I was heading home from a night out drinking. It’d been a long evening, starting with after work drinks and continuing into town. Even though I’d put away quite a few over the course of the night, I felt pretty good about driving. I’d slowed down over the last couple of hours, and had capped off the night with a nutritious meal at Burger King.

Still, when I saw the flashing lights on Hobson Street, I wasn’t exactly filled with confidence. I was about to unwittingly become part of the police’s weekend drink-drive blitz.

Thinking surprisingly quickly given the late hour, I immediately pulled over in front of the entrance to a parking building. Better to be towed I thought, than to risk losing my license. I got out, locked my car, and wandered towards the checkpoint. I spied a young policeman standing on the footpath.

"Excuse me officer, I was thinking about driving [okay, a small lie] but I’ve had a few drinks. Is it possible to breath-test me to see whether I’m okay to drive or not?"

“No, sorry we can’t do that.”

“What do you mean? Of course you can”

“No, the only way I can test you is if you drive through the checkpoint.”

“And if I fail there, you’ll arrest me.”

“That’s right.”

“But you can’t tell me now, before I break the law?”

“No, sorry.”

I don’t know about you, but I found this pretty ridiculous. Surely somewhere within the phrase “safer communities together” lies the ability to help someone determine whether they are breaking the law and putting the general public at risk. I kept arguing. The young officer agreed it didn’t make a whole lot of sense, but said his hands were tied; he had no discretion in this matter.

Until, that is, the friend I was dropping home mentioned we were journalists.

Out came the bag, in went my breath, and I passed with the slightly misleading “Fail Youth” result. I returned to my car, waited 15 minutes just to be sure, then drove towards the checkpoint. Ironically my car was simply waved through– they were obviously only stopping every third or fourth car.

Relating this to my pals as we squinted through the fog of Saturday night’s game, it turned out an acquaintance had also been stopped that night. Fearing the worst (she’d been drinking), as she sat in the queue to be tested, she decided to relax… by having a quick toke in her car. Yeah, I know.

When her time came to be tested, she didn’t even register on the most basic test (the one where you say your name and address, and any alcohol on your breath is supposed to produce a fail). The policeman had slightly better honed senses however, smelt the ‘erb, and cautioned her under the Misuse of Drugs Act.

“Is there anything in the car you’d like to show me before I search it?”

Helpfully, she rifled through the glovebox and handed over an E with the rest of the joint.

Helpfully, he threw them both on the ground, stomped them into the road, and told her to drive carefully.

Now that’s discretion.

[Disclaimer: Drinking and Driving is NEVER COOL. You will note both drivers in this story were under the limit. Whether the acquaintance should've been driving after finishing off a joint is another argument for another day.]

Generally I have a lot of sympathy for bus drivers, and it's awful to hear stories like this one from Christchurch, of bus drivers being assaulted for no good reason.

But by Christ I could've throttled the bus driver this morning who thought it appropriate to whistle – loudly and tunelessly – an unending number of irritating ditties. I'm fairly amenable, even before my morning coffee. But "I'm a yankee doodle dandy" in a key alternating note by note from b sharp to c flat? There wouldn't be a jury in the land, I tells ya.

I went out drinking last night. Today, a friend I was with said she thinks her drink was spiked, because she was all over the place. I agreed, and suggested if someone had slipped something in her drink, it must've been in her 18th drink, because she was okay until that point. I also suspect someone spiked my 23rd drink, because I can't remember much after that. Bloody spikers.

Yes I know, it's not what we drink, it's how we drink. But don't you find that the drunk people on those ads are soooo much more interesting than their sober selves?

Outside the bar two people were trying to get in. One uttered the immortal line "don't you know who I am?"

If you have to ask, surely you already know the answer. What are you expecting to happen?:

"Oh sorry sir, I didn't recognise you for a second. It's Brett, right? Brett Stevens? From Telecom customer support? I do apologise. Go right in. Tell the bartender I said your drinks will be on the house tonight."

A few weeks ago I saw an even more embarrassingly inept approach:

"Sorry sir, we're only taking people with members' cards."

"Well, I don't have a member's card. But I do have this. Do you know what this is?"

"No sir."

"It's an American Express Platinum Card. Do you know what this means?"

"It means I'm still not letting you in."

(Perhaps his retort wasn't quite that sharp, but the net effect was the same…)

On last post's taxi driver issue, I've had quite a few responses. Many were sharing their own stories, a couple (one from a taxi driver himself) helpfully pointed out that it wasn't only the taxi driver industry which has racists among its ranks. I thought this was obvious enough not to say at the time, but for the sake of clarity:

There are many, many taxi drivers who aren't racist, and who are in fact hard-working, honest, reliable decent people. I've just had my share of those who aren't. And the difference between a racist taxi driver and a racist shopkeeper, is that you're not in a confined space with a shopkeeper for half an hour while they expound their worldview. I've never walked into a video store, handed over my money and had the clerk say "So what about those bloody Maoris eh?"

I should also add I wasn't suggesting Corporate Cabs was any better or any worse in this regard. Almost without exception its drivers are excellent, polite, punctual and so forth. Which is why I was so taken back by this individual. But rather than make an example and report him, I'd rather Corporate dealt with the situation by way of a general reminder to all drivers as to what's acceptable behaviour.

Danyl writes with his almost unbelievably shocking tale of a cab ride (not Corporate) in Wellington :

'Gidday Mate. Where are you going?'

'Just to Aro Valley thanks.'

No problem. Right - what do you get if you cross a Maori with an Asian?'

'Errr . . . what?'

'A rapist who can't drive.'

'That's um . . . isn't that offensive?'

'Oh fuck me! You're not one of those politically correct poofters are you?'

'I . . . guess so . . . I mean, I'm not gay, but . . .'

'Fucking sounds like you are. Nah - I'm just kidding mate.'

'Oh. Ha ha.'

Haha indeed. Happy weekend all

I’ve discussed the phenomenon of racist taxi drivers before, but it never fails to surprise me when middle-aged men decide it’s okay to share their vitriol with me. I know I’m ostensibly white, and if my infinitesimal Ngati Whatua heritage doesn’t stop me from burning in the Auckland sun, I guess it doesn’t warn off taxi drivers either.

Not that white people shouldn’t be offended by racism, but I’m sure our differently-pigmented brothers and sisters don’t have to act the confidante to some “White is Right” wannabe. (And yes, I realise that they probably put up with active, rather than passive racism…)

So I was in a cab (*cough* Corporate *cough*) the other day, listening to the driver recounting a story about an accident he’d been in. “Did the bus stop after it clipped you?” I enquired sympathetically. “No, but I caught up with him and told him he was a Black C***.”

From the Corporate Cabs website:

Expect something special when you travel with Corporate Cabs. Your courteous uniformed driver will welcome you, open and close your door and ensure you arrive promptly and safely to your destination. Your driver is committed to going that extra mile for your comfort and satisfaction…

…whether you’re a coon, spick, wop, dago or kike.

I don’t care whether someone opens the door for me to be honest, and I’d even let the C-word slide (I’m hardly a delicate wee flower stricken with Consumption). But can I just jump in a cab and not be subject to overt racism? Anyone?

On the other hand, I wouldn’t have a problem if Peter Jackson decided not to change the dog’s name in a remake of the classic war flick Dambusters. Having a dog called “Nigger” in a movie set in WW2 is not racist, it’s historically accurate. It was a popular name for black dogs back then. My great aunt and uncle had a black lab so named. And I’m sure they had Heaps of Maori Friends.

As David Brent says on this exact topic (the dog in Dambusters) “That's not offensive. That's the dog's name. It was the forties as well - before racism was bad”. Jackson could change the name of the dog to “Trigger” though, like the original did for the US market.

Of course, all this speculation is academic. Jackson has said he’s not making the remake. Pity, I’d love to see it.