Cracker by Damian Christie

Holiday's are a shocker, aren't they? At least in terms of news, in most other regards I guess they're pretty sweet. Parliament closes down, sure, and responsibility for the entire Government is covered by the duty minister, who this year was Trevor Mallard. Lucky New Zealand, eh, good to know he's at the helm should anything important crop up...

Taking its cue from the Beehive, the news media around the country shut down too. There's no late news, breakfast news, no hard hitting interviews, savvy analysis, even such seminal fora as publicaddress.net go into a state of hibernation. Instead we get subjected to second string radio hosts, talkback discussions on the best way to prepare a side of corned beef; silverside. (Golden syrup, brown sugar and an onion apparently, in case anyone's interested).

But I can't believe that around the world, or even within our own fair shores, that the number of reportable news reduces by the same proportion as our current affairs output. Which means, if you follow my reasoning, that we, the public of New Zealand, are gently shephered into a holding pen labelled 'blissful summer ignorance'.

The build up to a war in Iraq is progressing with all due speed, and the screeches of the Washington hawks didn't diminish markedly over the past month.

Tony Blair, who normally leaves the bird-impressions to his harpy of a wife has been playing a game of hokey-tokey with the UK's commitment, and most recently been doing a good imitation of a pigeon, doddering around in circles and shitting a lot in his own habitat.

Fortunately the public of the UK, who are in the large part opposed to any unilateral/bilateral action against Iraq, may in the end be the factor to sway Blair's political mind. Bush on the other hand, with a reasonable majority in his favour, has nothing to lose and everything to gain. "After all", he is noted to have said "this is the guy who tried to kill my dad".

Everytime I watch or hear more news about the build-up of troops in the region, coupled paradoxically with the ongoing reports of nothing (I first wrote this before they found some empty chemical warheads in a bunker, so stay tuned...) from the UN weapons inspectors and the International Atomic Energy Agency, I get angry. And there's nothing I can do about it. I haven't felt more frustrated and impotent since the last time I tried to have sex.

Meanwhile, in the red corner, there's North Korea. They've got nuclear facilities, they've kicked the UN monitors out, they're openly baying for the blood of the capitalist running dog Americans. "Look at us, we've got nukes!" they cry. "No you haven't, you silly Koreans, stop being such show-offs" the US administration calls out in reply. It seems that to win against the US at the moment, all it takes is a bit of reverse psychology. If it continues to take it to Uncle Sam, it looks like North Korea will end up with negotiations, talks and inevitably some form of appeasement. America can't afford a war on two fronts, and there ain't no oil in them thar hills...

It's enough to send me muttering to myself and pacing around around the house with worry. If only it weren't summer. Pass the coconut oil. Mmm.

With New Year's revelry safely behind me, some state of compos mentis regained and a renewed resolution to keep in touch with friends and acquaintances, on 3 January 2003 I turned my cellphone back on.

To be honest, I don't know why I bothered.

I've got some very eloquent, educated, erudite friends and many of them had kindly chosen to think of me and send me a text message as the clock ticked over to the new year. But with a few exceptions -- even allowing for most of them being in a New Year's State of Mind -- I was once again struck by the impact that this relatively new celluar medium is having on the English language.

HPY NU YR

HV GR8 NY CU IN IT

I can see why these truncations occur; text messaging isn't as friendly on the fingers as sitting at a computer keyboard, although the introduction of such niceties as 'predictive texting' hasn't seemed to increase the prevalence of vowels in my Inbox recently. And the plague seems to be spreading.

Internet Relay Chat (IRC) and various other Internet-based forms of communication have had a similar detrimental impact on the way we write to one another on the information superhighway. When speed is of the essence, or repetition the norm, such as in the hustle and bustle of a chat room, abbreviations serve a purpose. But their use doesn't stop there, and this is the problem.

Where the rot has truly set in is when pen hits paper. Not so long ago I saw a note written by one of my nearest and dearest, left out for the flatmates to read:

GN 2 GT F&C
B BK SN

Dietary concerns aside, this note alarmed me. Are the humble vowels, the a's, e's, i's, o's, u's and sometimes y's, on the road to extinction? Will the only constants in our future be consonants?

Many would say it doesn't matter, who cares, as long as we can still communicate effectively, still get our point across. What we are beginning to lose however, is nuance. Tone. Replaced instead with a general vagueness, in which ambiguity seems to rule the roost.

I've been on the receiving end of this ambiguity, both in emails and text messages, and it has resulted in many an unnecessary heated exchange. I've learnt to take the time to insert the odd comma into my text messages, parentheses where necessary, even the odd semi-colon if appropriate. Call me anal retentive, but I've never had my loved one return from the supermarket with chops instead of chips.

I'm not about to rally for an abolition of split infinitives, I'm not calling for the death penalty for ending a sentence on a preposition and I've pretty much given up on even trying to prevent the continual bastardisation of the apostrophe (recent example from a magazine headline: "He Mean's Business"). The Americans had it right when it comes to "realize" and "capitalize" - they're not about to lose the letter Z in a hurry.

We have to do something to prevent the loss of our vowels. If nothing else, next time you text or email, remember that both these forms of communication are more or less instantaneous; you did without them completely ten years ago, so you can probably afford the extra second or two it takes to add in a couple of a's and e's. Not only are you dramatically reducing any chance of being misunderstood, you're doing your bit to keep this wonderful language of ours healthy and bursting at the seams with letters. Vowels: They're a fifth of our alphabet, they're kinda nifty, and without them my name ain't all that.

Otherwise I’ll forever be, yrs, Dmn.

Candour, I’m sure you’d agree, is a trait that we admire. It seems all the more precious and hence admirable – by virtue of its rarity – when it is displayed by members of the Government. I’m not talking about this Government in particular, but just the many and varied inhabitants of the hallowed honeycombed offices over the years.

Still, even with candour, there’s a time and a place, so it disappointed me to hear our Beloved Leader being widely quoted across the media a day or so ago talking about the upcoming premiere of the latest instalment of Lord of the Rings. “Helen Clark liked the books better!” they exclaimed, as I guess I am now too.

So the Prime Minister preferred reading the Tolkein trilogy back in 1967 to seeing Peter Jackson’s celluloid rendition in 2002. Fair enough. Can’t blame her, damn good books they are too. Nothing wrong with an honest opinion.

Nothing wrong that is, other than the fact that with New Zealand (or at least a small but very talented subset of New Zealanders) in the spotlight, an event almost as rare as Bill English giving a definitive policy statement, could her timing have perhaps been better? It’s not so much a case of “if you can’t say anything nice…” but “It's your job, so you'd better say something nice”. It seems hard to believe that anyone said to Clark "so which did you prefer, the book or the movie?" Or at least if they did, it wouldn’t have been a hard question to sidestep, surely, not with the (Christian) Cullen-like flair Clark has had to develop over the past term-and-a-bit at the helm. Clark unfortunately went on to sound even more grudging, stating she never went to see the film adaptation of books she had read, but would make an exception in this case because of its New Zealand connection. Doesn’t exactly paint a picture of someone sitting on the edge of their seat in anticipation, does it?

It might seem like a small point, and of course it is. Any smaller and you’d put it in a tiny patterned zip-lock bag and sell it for $100. It’s the ill-considered nature of Clark’s statement, its timing, and the fact that she must have known what coverage (of which I'm unfortunately now a part) was bound to ensue from anything less than full support for the Jackson trilogy. A trilogy which has, after all, provided untold employment, and influx of tourism and international kudos.

It's not like we're not into it as a nation either. We’ve got a Minister of the Lord of the Rings, we've got hobbit stamps, we’ve even bent over, touched our toes and temporarily changed our country’s name -- “New Zealand is Middle Earth!” for God’s Sake! What was the correct response? All Helen had to do was give the same line my partner always uses when I nag about her previous lovers.

So which was better, the book or the movie?

They were just different.

Hands up everybody who wants an extra week's holiday! Yeah exactly, me too. Imagine that, four weeks every year sitting around doing sweet F.A; Hanging around the beach, getting unproductively good at Playstation, taking a short course in Ceroc dancing, pottery, terrapin raising, whatever spins your wheels.

The debate's on, as PCP MP Matt Robson is pushing the Government to tack on an extra 5 days to our existing three week's annual leave. The Labour Party are committed to the idea in theory, but say the timing's not right yet. It doesn't help Robson's chances any that Labour have promised Business that the timing's not going to be right for this term at least.

Business, in particular the Employers' & Manufacturers' Association aren't too happy about the idea of 4 weeks' holiday saying they've had enough new costs to deal with lately, not the least of which was Laila Harre's brainchild [sic], the Paid Parental Leave Bill. Without needing to string together words like turkeys, Christmas, voting and early, it's not hard to see that they were never likely to be enthusiastic at Robson's proposal.

Last week on the Thursday Wire (12-2pm 95bFM) I spoke to Robson as well as Alasdair Thompson of the EMA. Whilst Thompson's responses were fairly predictable, $1b cost to the economy, not the right time now, we'll agree to it later - honest; the real surprise was the paucity of convincing arguments coming from the red corner. Apparently we need four weeks' holiday for, inter alia, the following reasons:

(a) Some other counties have 4 weeks' holiday, although many don't;

(b) Because people spend money when they are on holiday, it would actually be GOOD for economy;

(c) If we had a fourth week, we'd use it for things that were good for us, like going to the doctor and the dentist.

(d) Lots of people already get four weeks' holiday, it's not fair on everyone else.

Point (a) aside - because when was the last time we did something just because another country did (oh that's right, Afghanistan...) - there's not a lot of weight behind Robson's arguments. When was the last time you went on holiday, only to come back and bemoan the fact that you didn't have enough time to spend all your holiday money or go to the dentist? Besides, aren't dentist visits a really good excuse for an afternoon off work every now and then?

And if we don't have enough time to spend our holiday money, what are we doing with it? We're forever being told we're not a nation of savers, so it's obviously being spent somewhere, just not on socially necessary holiday industries such as tickets to MOTAT and candy floss.

So a lot of people are getting four weeks' holiday. A lot of people are getting a lot of things, and a lot of people are missing out. My friends in the record business get 4WDs to drive around; I get Thursday afternoons off to do my show and my mate Ben gets to photoshop pictures of models in bikinis all day - every job has its perks. A playing field that's levelled off won't stay level any longer than it takes those with bargaining clout to renegotiate their contracts.

Okay, but then at least everyone gets four weeks' holiday, right? Sure, Apart from the self-employed of course. And those with more than one job, or people on casual contracts, or people whose job it is to look after their kids.

My point is this. There's nothing intrinsically better about 4 weeks' holiday, at least not on any research I've been shown. And it ain't free, although you'd never know given the 93% of people who think an extra weeks' holiday is a winner of an idea.

If employers have an extra cost imposed on them, you can be damn sure it's going to come out somewhere else. Or did you really think the shareholders and directors were going to just throw up their hands and say "Oh well, there goes the profit for this year"?

How will an extra weeks' holiday manifest itself in terms of cost? Lower wages, or at least less increases to wages over time? Everyone else in the office having to work harder while someone takes their month off (6 weeks including stats)? Higher costs to consumers for goods, who in the end are all workers too, so it's basically the same as lower wages? How much are you willing to pay for that extra week?

Something to think about when you're lying on the beach anyway. The holidays are just around the corner - see you at Ceroc...

The last time these beloved isles of ours were divided on an issue of race it was 1981. I was wearing stubbies, whilst politicians wore sideburns and flared brown suits. People marched in the streets, rugby fanatics on one side, the anti-apartheid crew on the other. In New Zealand's own charming little way, it was our national game that got people off their arses and into the realm of political opinion.

If the newspaper headlines and the buzz on talkback radio is anything to go by, we're heading pretty rapidly in that direction again. This time it's not about a sports team coming, it's the 50,000 odd people who come to New Zealand each year as immigrants and refugees.

It's a political hot potato, one which Winston Peters has grasped firmly in both hands and tucked down the front of his y-fronts. It's not one issue, but many, and the lines between them blur just as easily between facts, statistics and opinions.

If everyone in the world was one colour, (and I like to think it would be the colour of that caramel flavoured Primo), the immigration issue would be a hell of a lot clearer. How many of these homogeneous caramelese people do we want coming into New Zealand, what skills do we want them to have, and how much money should they bring with them? But we're not one people, and so the issue gets clouded with xenophobia, political grandstanding, and plain ol' ignorance.

"Half of the refugees coming to New Zealand have AIDS" claimed Winston Peters, "and that's a fact". But it wasn't a fact, never was, never had been, and even though he'd later deny ever saying such a thing, the damage was done. But who is a refugee, what do they look like, and how do we know the difference between them and an immigrant? Does that mean the guy who works at the Golden Lucky Eagle Horse takeaways down the road from my place is best steered clear of? How do I know the difference between a rich Asian on a business investment entry visa, a foreign fee paying student, a tourist, or my Chinese mate who was born in Whakatane? If it were up to half the talkback callers I've had the misfortune to hear, they'd be forced to wear patches on their arms to help tell them apart. It's the direction we're heading in.

We should, as a nation, be able to have a debate on immigration policy. We should be able to decide what sort of people we want, in terms of skills, money and the like, and how many. Shold we be able to decide on the basis of "who fits in best", including the changes made last week to English language standards? Is this just racism under a veil of Government legitimacy?

Don't ask me. I just live here.