The King is dead-long live live the king

Since little Prince Willie Windsor's proposal to his long term girlfriend Katie or whatever her name is was announced earlier this week they have hardly been out of the news which amuses me in a sense. Don't get me wrong, I wish them every happiness which will be a huge ask given the fishbowl that they live in.

Living in a country where Willie's aging grandma is technically the head of state and where a large chunk of the population was born in the motherland (including my own mum I might add) there is always going to be some lingering interest and fascination in the goings on of the royals. Nowhere near as much as in the good old days when I was growing up and we all got a day off to stand on the side of the road and wave as some royal or another whipped past in a motorcade but a fair bit of sentimental interest remains all the same. Scratch the skin of many Kiwis (brown and white) and not too far back down the family tree the blood of Britannia flows.

I am sure that the sales of commemorative tea towels and mugs will go though the roof and we will get blow by blow speculative accounts on how the engagement and wedding will will pan out until the moment something different happens. Despite what my work mates might believe I am not champing at the bit to go online and order my china set or some teaspoons myself .

I can however imagine how mum and other ladies of her ilk are already getting excited about the prospect of sitting down in front of the tele early one morning sometime next year and watching the wedding of the century hugging a colour photo of the happy couple to their withered breasts as tears of joy run down their cheeks. Hopefully it doesn't clash with games in the rugby world cup because then there will be trouble in households around the country.

As you might have guessed I am pretty ambivalent about the wedding myself. I won't be getting excited about it. I also don't really care that a little old lady on the other side of the world is our technical head of state. I am also not at all concerned that the apparently loony Prince of Wales is next in line. I am sure that he is not a bad bloke really. Unfortunately he has inherited a bad habit of dropping the odd clanger and then there was the unfortunate marriage. Well who hasn't made the odd mistake in their lives?

What really amuses me is how our media - lets lump them all in together immediately seek to make capital of the immanent nuptials. It only seems a few weeks ago on a slow news day that the main news outlets were telling us that once the old girl goes good old godzone will immediately become a republic.

Despite what republicans would have us believe most of us don't really care about our form of government or that the Queen of England is our head of state. For years now we have appointed our own Governor Generals and our system of government seems to work ok for us.We are more concerned if we are concerned at all, that whatever their hue our politicians seem to think they are above the law and their partisanship in the face of economic and practical reality.

God help us if we became a republic and adopted a political model similar the that of the US or France-both dysfunctional and pandering to the lowest common denominator.

Long live the king!

Growing old disgracefully

A few weeks ago I bought a new bike after agonizing for weeks on how I could justify the expense. What did it for me was a trip to Christchurch in the aftermath of the earthquake. Although I know it intellectually, the fact that a major event beyond any one's ability to control had the ability to profoundly change people's lives and could happen at any time was reinforced by my trip.The earthquake had a profound and traumatic impact on people, even though most of them were not directly impacted by the event. It's not that I have suddenly become completely fatalistic and am going to spend, spend and spend with no thought for tomorrow. But I decided once and for all that there are things that I want to do while I am able because tomorrow I might not be able to, and riding my bike is one of these.

Enter a 2010 Husqvarna WR300. I am sure you will agree-a wonderfully sexy looking machine.

Unfortunately due to a little mishap with a slippery tree root or stump that I hit the wrong way towards the end of my first ride I haven't been riding for a few weeks and won't be back on the bike for a few weeks more. Maybe by the end of the month if all goes well.

The good news is that the bike is ok. The reflex action of sticking my knee out to save myself resulted in a severe strain or hyper extension. I am not really sure what happened but things got a big wrench and I knew I had done some damage to my already dodgy knee. While the swelling took a long time to go down it now looks as though things are settling down finally. While the physio I went to thought that I may have rooted one my cruciate ligaments my doctor thinks that it is ok. Well at least I haven't done any more damage to a knee that sooner or later will need reconditioning. Hopefully a visit to a surgeon this week will confirm that I don't need an immediate operation.

Until I saw my doctor a few days I thought I might have stuffed the knee properly and my brand new bike would be sitting in the garage for a while. To say that I was extremely frustrated was an understatement. Not only because I couldn't ride but because, especially in the first few days I couldn't do much for myself.

To make matters worse I haven't been able to sleep. I am a bit of a fidget so any time I rolled over in bed I would tweak my knee and wake up. And then wouldn't get back to sleep. For hours. To say that I have been grumpy is something of an understatement. This state of affairs was not helped by people at work making fun of me and my walking stick. For someone who considers himself to be more or less in his prime. Well ok in the autumn of his prime, being compared to a fractious stick waving old man was I thought pretty mean on their part and I wasn't happy about it.

For myself and she who must be obeyed the experience is an unhappy glimpse into a possible future where one us, well me probably is partially incapacitated and how much that that will impact on our quality of life. A quality of life that we take for granted.

I guess we'll have to deal with those cards as they are dealt and in the meantime I intend to age disgracefully.

Drilling for oil

The US government has named BP as the responsible party for the explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that has lead to the devastating oil slick spreading around the Gulf of Mexico. The perception is that it BP owns the rights to the Macondo Prospect so it is all their fault. But that is not entirely true.

For the Americans BP is a handy scapegoat. It is a foreign company-only 40% owned by Americans and American investors has a reputation for shoddy health and safety practices, and corner and cost cutting.

It didn't help that the CEO of BP, a man easy to write off as a chinless wonder with a penchant for putting his foot in his mouth tried to downplay the volume of the oil leaking into the Gulf.

In the face of rabid demands for action by the American public politicians are getting in on the act and are turning up the blow torch on BP to stem the leak and clean up the spilled oil that threatens to devastate marine and marshland ecology's in the region and destroy tourism and fishing industries for generations to come. But it is not that easy fix a gusher thousands of meters below the surface of the sea.

And all is not all that it seems in the murky world of oil industry and American politics. Not least that on the one hand America has an insatiable lust for oil but not for the by products of the oil extraction process when things go wrong.

It has also emerged in the last few days that a number of sensor alarms had been turned off on the rig at behest of Transocean staff and after the explosion a blowout protector didn't engage after the explosion. Hardly BP's fault since Transocean owned and largely staffed the rig.

So three months after the oil well explosion in the Gulf of Mexico that has allowed millions of litres of crude oil to leak into the sea the truth is starting to come out about who is actually to blame for this environmental catastrophe.

BP must bare a large chunk of the blame for the leak and the cleanup. They are the major shareholder in the consortium drilling the well. Who knows what that will cost them and whether they will even survive in their current form given the cost of cleanup and any fines that will result. But they aren't totally to blame and some other entities are soon going to come under the spotlight.

The interesting thing will be to see whether faced with the obvious lack of regulation of the drilling in the first place, probable corruption by local officials charged with oversight, and failure to to follow safety procedures by Transocean Americans face up to the fact that they only have themselves and their system to blame for the whole mess and the way the aftermath is being handled.

American politics at all levels seems so petty and partisan that it wouldn't be a surprise me that if at some time in the near future the whole country imploded into a number of ideologically pure warring mini states. Something like a continent of lawless nuclear armed Somalia's.

Doing my bit for the economy

With a bit of luck we are emerging from what is generally being described as the most severe downturn since the great depression of the 30's. Only time will tell whether the economy is slowly stirring into life or there is more pain to come.

Some indicators both here and abroad seem to indicate that that the worst is over. In the United States, still the engine of the world economy some indicators point to the greenshoots of some kind of recovery. Some pundits have been seeing these for a while now while others have been cheerfully being mowing them down.

There was a spike in activity earlier this year as businesses possibly restocked but activity has been flat over recent months. Plenty of businesses have managed to perform well in the face of adversity but if confidence doesn't improve soon and people don't start buying then they are going to have to start another round of cost cutting.

Many businesses will already have harvested the low hanging fruit or worse still are mortgaged to the hilt and no longer have any wriggle room.

The only way out of this is for us to start spending. Forget about saving or paying off the mortgage we need to spend and spend big if we are going to get out of this hole. If we spend with a bit of confidence then that confidence will spread despite what the experts say and in the words of that great Kiwi scholar Fred Dagg: 'she'll be right.'

I already know how I am going to help economic growth. I am going to buy one of these.

Buying a new bike will help the local economy and the local dealer and of course Husqvarna the manufacturer. I know this sounds a little self serving but it gives me a nice little warm fuzzy feeling that I am doing something for the greater good.

Politically Correct

You only have to watch the television news in this country on a slow day to understand what a quaint self important little backwater we are at times. The self important bit is because we think we have more influence on world affairs and opinion than we could ever hope to have.

Does Japan really care that a bunch of hairy legged cardigan wearers from this country don't want them to kill a few whales? Does China really care about us or are they merely using us to test their theories on how to deal with western democracies?

We are also a pretty boring breed really. A pretty violent boring breed with little respect for the law and other people's property by all accounts.

Low level mindless violence seems to have become so commonplace that it barely rates a mention these days unless the victim is white and photogenic or an animal of some kind.

On the other hand the media delights exposing the poor judgement of some of our more well known sports people-particularly members of the code that the media has a love hate relationship with.

Rugby is the one real area that we have been able to punch above our weight in the international arena. Well to be honest that part of the world that understands rugby -the mostly white parts of the old British empire. Despite widespread reports that soccer is gaining in popularity in this country, a good question to ask at the height of the football world cup rugby is still an important part of our culture.

In the good old days what went on tour stayed on tour. Today things are a lot different and many celebrities in this country, sports stars and others find themselves getting into trouble because whatever they do or have done is a story of some kind that someone can sell, gain their own fleeting seconds of fame, or inflict some pain by publicizing.

Not only do we serious national inferiority issues and seek to attack successful institutions in this country in order to bring them down to a collective level of mediocrity. We have built an industry out of blaming others for our problems. Ok it is not a good look for a well known and recently married sportsman to be found shagging a drunk teenage girl who was by all accounts semi conscious at the time. But you have to ask yourself how did he come to be there and was he entirely to blame considering that the couple had had consensual sex previously? And why did it take her twelve years to work out that this one night was a problem?

Not only do we have an industry built around blaming other people for our troubles and trying to extract as much cash as possible many people seem to think that money grows on trees and the rest of us owe them a living.

I'd love to have a baby every few years if it was physically possible so I could live a life of relative leisure on the DPB but alas not only am I too old but I am the wrong sex.

Maybe I could get a tax payer funded gender re-assignment. Yes we are a quaint wee place and long may it remain so

Bush riding in the rain

Visibility poor, pissing down with rain. Awesome riding and a few spills. A great way to spend an afternoon.

Lessons in life

My OE consisted a stint up in the Islands, Western Samoa as it was called then to be exact. I had visions of eking out a career as a well paid international agricultural consultant and a stint as a volunteer wouldn't do me any harm. That didn't work out as I planned and now it seems that I may have brought back something more than the interesting experience of living and working in a very poor Pacific Nation.

From the first winter I returned to New Zealand I have been afflicted by a form of dermatitis, something that sometimes looked like ring worm or at other times itchy dry and flaking skin. Over the years I have been prescribed all kinds of anti fungal and dermatitis creams and latterly have actually found more relief from over the counter anti histamines than anything else.

While experiencing generally rude health, I have always had this lingering feeling that all was not quite right and wondered if I was carrying around some kind of nasty internal parasite. I exercise regularly and eat reasonably well and get out and charge around on my motorbike. But I always felt that I should feel a lot fitter than I actually did.

At times I have had different series of tests but all of them have indicated pretty good health although now that my knees are knackered I am carry a bit of weight that I can't run off.

The change of seasons always seemed to be the worst time for the dermatitis outbreaks, patches of skin would get dry and itchy and I would rub some cream on them and take anti histamines for a few days and they would go away. In recent years I have hardly noticed the problem.

A few weeks ago what I took to be the annual autumn drying of the skin and the usual itch wouldn't respond to treatment so off to the doctor I went. The same doctor I might add that I have seen for most of the last 15 years or so.

This time he prescribed an oral treatment (terbinafine). The relief from the outward symptoms of the fungus were almost immediate. But it is the other affects that are most interesting. I wouldn't call them side affects, though I guess they are.

I haven't felt as physically good as I do now for as long as I can remember. To quote a cliche I feel like a new man with a lot more energy than I seem to have had for as long as I can remember since starting this course of treatment. The sudden feeling of well being was almost immediate.

The disappointing thing is that on reporting this to my doctor he couldn't come up with a reason why this would be so. I have done some research of my own on what might have been wrong with me but it would be nice to have this confirmed. I guess I had better change my doctor but I will give him another chance.

My doctor like any other professional that society unfairly deems should be perfect is only human. All of us make mistakes and make decisions that in the fullness of time prove to be bad ones. The measure I think is how they or we recover and put these mistakes right.

I also have to admit being the enlightened new age man that I am. That instead of wondering whether something was wrong and being worried that people might begin to see me as some kind of hypochondriac I wished I pushed a little harder when I felt that things were not right.