Shops on wheels

When I was in Vietnam last month, as on previous visits, I was impressed by the street life, in particular, the way a public space, like the footpath/sidewalk, is taken over not only for parking motorbikes and scooters (presenting a barrier to pedestrians), but for a whole range of mercantile activities and services.  While waiting outside a city centre hotel for some fellow travellers en route to Ha Long Bay, I snapped a few passing hawkers.  

What they all had in common was wheels, without which their little businesses wouldn't have been possible. Or at least, they would have been much curtailed.  As I watched the passing traders, I realized that the possession of a bike gave the owner an opportunity to set up and run a mobile business. In short, possessing a bike is a form of empowerment.   With a bike, the women concerned -- and these bike shops are mostly run by women -- can transport their merchandise (mostly foodstuffs) from a farm or market to a town centre location where there will be people wanting to purchase.  If one location doesn't prove worthwhile, the shop keeper can easily move on, and this kind of wheeled relocation is often to be observed. The kerbside shop also means that motorbike or scooter based shoppers don't have to stop and park, but can simply transact their purchase from the saddle. 

The next step in the mercantile chain involves a motorbike.  While I was waiting, a motorcyclist and his passenger stopped by to make a delivery of what looked like some kind of prepared vegetable.  So, wheels also provide the basis of a delivery service.  

There is a whole mercantile ecology to be found on the streets of any Vietnamese town or city.  The push bike based shop occupies one of the lower ecological niches, and, hard work though it undoubtedly is, it provides a living -- probably a marginal one -- for the women shop keepers.  All this entrepreneurial street activity reveals the mercantile bent of Vietnamese, and, traffic ridden and polluted though these streets are, I couldn't help but feel that they also have a buzz which is lacking in the well ordered town centre of Henley-on-Thames!  

Getting It Wrong

As I am now an aged driver, at regular intervals I have to renew my driving licence.  A Driving licence renewal application Form D46P  is sent, and has to be completed and returned in order to receive an updated licence.  Item 3 is as follows:

Your eyesight   Please put X as appropriate

A.   Can you meet the legal eyesight standard

for driving using classes or corrective lenses if needed?        Yes   No

B.    Do you need to wear glasses or corrective lenses

to meet the standard?                                                                Yes   No

I don't need glasses or corrective lenses to meet the legal standard for driving. How, then, to answer item A?  For that matter, how to answer item B? 

Anyway, I got one of them wrong.  So, the document was returned to me with a request to correct the error. 

This set me thinking.  Or perhaps worrying.  Am I in the early (or even advanced) stages,  not of loss of vision, but loss of comprehension faculties? 

Surely only one question is required in order to confirm the state of one's vision, and that is question B.  If you have to wear glasses or corrective lenses to meet the standard, then presumably the reissued driving licence will include this requirement.  

It does seem to me that the DVLA has made a meal of this item. Or maybe it is me who is doing so!  

SO THAT WAS 2013, THEN

Years never end in quite the way that had been anticipated on 1^st January, and this was certainly the case with 2013, which began with a sunny 1^st January, continued with a late spring, and eventually provided a good summer, with a long, late autumn.  In between, I visited New Zealand, something completely unenvisaged on 1^st January, while in September, our grandson, Oli started school, and the year ended with an unexpected work assignment in Vietnam.  

That’s the personal stuff. Meanwhile, on the national scene, there has been an  increasing awareness that the government,  which reassured the electorate that the NHS would be save in their hands, is systematically dismantling and flogging off chunks of it to the private sector, EU competition legislation being conveniently deployed to aid and abet this process, while the sinister (and evidently deaf and deceitful) IDS (Ian Duncan Smith) is ‘rationalizing’ the social security system with maximum ill effect as the hugely complicated IT systems needed to implement it limp behind schedule. 

A new lexicon has entered the language: ‘bedroom tax’ has become the label for one of the government’s vicious little schemes, while ‘reform’ has become the deceitful label for anything that the government (sorry, ‘Coalition’) is doing in pursuit of ‘efficiency’ and ‘austerity’ and ‘fixing the mess left by the last government’.  Beware ‘reformers’. (See thoughtful article by ex MP Tony  Wright on ‘What is it about politicians’ in latest issue of The Political Quarterly at http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html )

On the international scene, the Syrian situation goes from bad to worse, with the Assad regime looking likely to stay in power as being the lesser of two evils, the greater being ANF, SIF, SILF and the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS), forces associated in various ways with al-Qaeda. (See NYRB article by Sarah Birke http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2013/dec/27/how-al-qaeda-changed-syrian-war/ )

In fact, the Arab Spring – a term which surely invited disaster– has turned into Arab Winter in Egypt, while in non Arab Turkey, that some time darling of the Western world, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has proved to be a winner takes all politician with a self serving and distorted notion of democracy.  His current corruption problems are entirely in line with this set of attitudes. Meanwhile, that stalwart of the rule of law and human rights, Vladimir Putin, has been named not only Russian Man of the Year (by the Russians), but also International Person of the Year for 2013 by that erstwhile great journal of record, The Times.  Is this parody, I wonder, on the same level as Obama’s 2009 Nobel Peace Prize? 

Two notable and, one hopes, beneficial events in 2013 were the Snowden revelations, which have, worryingly though not surprisingly,  created few ripples among the political class in the UK (cf the USA ), and the election to the papacy of  the hitherto obscure Cardinal Bergoglio from Argentina.  See a very thoughtful review of the Pope’s first year by James Carroll in a recent New Yorker: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2013/12/23/131223fa_fact_carroll

Tragically, but all too predictably, the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan continue. Fortunately for her own good, Malala Yousafzai, didn't receive a prize in Oslo, but what can she and others like her do in the face of the corruption, veniality, incompetence and blindness that seems to characterize the situation in her ruined home country?  As to Iraq, it appears have joined Syria as the site of a proxy war between the Sunni world, pay-rolled by Saudi Arabia, and the Shia world, under the aegis of Iran.  The fragile détente reached between the ‘West’ (i.e.,  the USA ) and Iran could be, as they say, a game changer, but the influence of the Saudi regime can be, and is,  nothing  but malign and they will work to destablize any rapprochement. (See Patrick Cockburn in a recent Independent article:  http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/sunni-monarchs-back-youtube-hate-preachers-antishia-propaganda-threatens-a-sectarian-civil-war-which-will-engulf-the-entire-muslim-world-9028538.html )

And so one could go on, and on and on.   What about climate change?  A climate change denier is now PM in Australia.  Yet, the scientific consensus appears to support man made climate change.  The kind of climate instability that is increasingly common, as in the hugely destructive typhoon in the Philippines,  is in line with predictions made years ago when climate change first became an issue.

As is the movement of populations in pursuit of land, water, security and that elusive goal, ‘freedom’.   The harrowing instances of foundering vessels and drowning passengers en masse in the Mediterranean is in line with the kind of population movements predicted in the past and which, thanks to climate change and political instability, are now so common.  The response of the world at large has been pretty paltry and mean spirited.  

I have written at length elsewhere on my visit to New Zealand, a country which itself is undergoing significant demographic changes, together with a realignment of identity as a Pacific and near SE Asian nation, rather than being an antipodean version of the Old Country.  This reorientation is entirely realistic as the hemisphere combining Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea and, above all, China, has become a major centre of the world economy and a significant market for Kiwi produce, as well as a source of new citizens.    

My year ended with a visit to this very region, albeit one country within it: Vietnam.  I first visited Hanoi in 1995, and more recently I’ve worked in Danang, as well as paying brief tourist visits to Hue (old imperial capital) and HCMC (formerly Saigon).  This visit took me via Bankok (change of flights) to Hanoi, which has, like VN itself, moved on from being a country emerging from a period of prolonged economic underdevelopment, to an almost frighteningly vigorous and booming nation. 

The road traffic symbolizes this transformation.  The motorbike and scooter remain the predominant means of transport, thanks, I was told, to the coming to market of cheap Chinese machines which have brought this means of transport within the means of large swathes of the population.  And I mean large swathes, as men and women of all ages use them, they are the usual form of family transport (2 parents + 2 children are a common sight) and from the viewpoint of mobility and economic emancipation, they have had a tremendous, beneficial effect.  Since 1995, with accelerating prosperity, motor cars (including luxury brands like Bentley) have also increased by huge numbers , so now there is a frightening mix of two, four and multiple wheels at large on the roads which, in the main cities are pretty good, if crowded, but are woefully inadequate inter-city.

Although there are some traffic lights in the major cities, much traffic is unregulated, and conventional adherence to rules of the road,  as normal in the UK, seems to be largely unknown and, if known,  unpractised.  Even so, the system does work, albeit  in a way which is both unnerving and baffling to a foreigner -- and despite everything, the traffic keeps moving.  One principle appears to be to ignore any traffic coming behind you, it being the responsibility of a driver who can see traffic ahead to take whatever evasive action is needed.  Performing U-turns in the face of on-coming traffic is common,  it being their job to avoid you,  as is changing direction with little concern for following vehicles.  The worst challenge, however, faces the hapless pedestrian, who, unless at a rare light controlled intersection, must try to identify a break in the traffic stream, and set off at a steady, confident pace across the highway, in the hope that on-coming traffic really will take evasive action.  Loosing the plot, and stopping half way across is to invite disaster. 

In Saigon, I was staying on an ‘island’ from which, fortunately, I didn't have to stray on my way to work, five heavily polluted minutes from my hotel, the colonial Continental Hotel Saigon.  However, obtaining sustenance other than at the hotel required an expedition ‘off shore’, and this certainly gave an edge to the appetite! The main concern was the number of life-threatening crossings to ‘spend’ en route to a targeted restaurant. 

The overt chaos and hidden system of traffic management did seem to sum up our experience as trainers.  Andy and I were contracted to run three two week leadership courses for university lecturers as part of major national curriculum reform (or ‘restoration’) in foreign language teaching (i.e.,  mostly ELT).   Promulgated in the form of a ‘Decision’ in 2008 (i.e.,  legislation), and now the subject of a cascade form of implementation, NFL2020-P as it is called, is already about two years behind schedule.  This is partly because of the unwieldy nature of the system itself, as well as a result of multi-agency machinations and lack of coordination within the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET). 

It is a characteristic of a regime run by an autocratic party like the Vietnamese Communist Party (which is doggedly and determinedly clinging on to power and privilege, like its Chinese equivalent), that information is difficult to obtain, and is acquired in dribs and drabs from a variety of sources. Even then, it’s difficult to form a coherent picture of the system. Thus it proved to be for Andy and me, and even at the very end of our venture, we were still making discoveries. For instance, during my final week, I learned that the ETCF  (English Teachers Curriculum  Framework), largely the product of an American advisor, had not yet been signed off by MOET,  so it exists in a kind of administrative limbo as it isn't yet ‘official’. Until it is, the ETCF doesn't seem to be fully in the process of being implemented.  Of course, reluctance to implement decisions and guidelines that aren’t yet fully ratified isn't confined to members of the Vietnamese education system, but learning about this administrative glitch helped to explain why decisions take so much time to put into effect and why, despite the NFL2020-Pl egislation and the curriculum development that has already been achieved, the project is into penalty time already. 

Combined with a dearth of linkage across divisions and agencies within the education system, the slowness of decision taking and dissemination helped account for what we regarded as a woeful absence of coordination.  People attending our courses had been told with very little notice (like 24 hours) that they were to attend. In many cases, this meant arranging at short notice overnight train journeys and accommodation at the venue.  In virtually all cases, it meant rearranging their university and private classes, not to mention making considerable domestic rearrangements (a majority were married women with families).   The coup de grace came when the Danang group were told by the representative of the P2020 office that he wasn't sure when their promised expenses would materialize.  To say that this put quite a dampener on the rest of the afternoon is an understatement, the participants not being alone in feeling angry and upset by this state of insouciant mismanagement.

The apparently ramshackle and corrupt way things are run in VN makes visitors wonder how come it has an expanding economy?  Evidently, within private sector enterprises, things can and do run efficiently, as witness the overnight tour I did to scenic Ha Long Bay, near Hanoi, or the superb theatre troupe, AO,  performing original and imaginative acrobatics with a modern twist at the Saigon opera house.  Why, one wonders, can't these skills be scaled up to national level?  It’s very clear that Vietnamese are diligent, hard working and, given the right kind of leadership, as in the AO troupe, are able to perform wonders.  They are quite different from their near neighbours, the Thais (who are regarded as, to put it diplomatically, too easy going), and although much influenced by Chinese culture, they are in turn quite different from their mighty northern neighbours, with whom they maintain a very ambivalent relationship, there being a long history of Sino-Vietnamese border conflicts from 1979 to 1990, while the Spratley Islands (their Vietnamese name: Quần đảo Trường Sa) dispute is on-going.   We hope that ultimately it gets back on track.  

Apart from the well maintained and rather fruity architectural relics of French colonialism, such as the Saigon opera house opposite my hotel,  and the occasional food influences, such as the baguettes which are widely available as street food, in Vietnam there was another unexpected and ubiquitous influence from the West: Christmas.  Within days of arriving in Saigon, our hotel, the Japanese owned Nikko, sprouted a splendidly dressed two storey Xmas tree in the lobby, which is no surprise to anyone who has lived in Japan, while outside, other even more extravagant seasonal decorations appeared at the posh shopping malls.  The absolute climax of Christmas decorations and lighting was to be found in booming Saigon, where they were a major attraction for the Saigonese, who came on their motorbikes in droves to photograph and be photographed.   Taking selfies and family pics and artful shots of young women fetchingly posing became a virtually 24/7 activity in the centre of Saigon.  Few Vietnamese are Christian, but all recognize a retailing opportunity, which says much about their flair in making the best of an imported cultural and commercial influence. 

After a day trip to part of the Mekong Delta, a vast agricultural area which produces three rice crops a year, I started the long journey back to Blighty via Hong Kong (don’t ask: I didn't make the travel arrangements).  This provided time for a brief spell in another Asian phenomenon, including a visit to the Peak, where, since my last visit, a huge visitors’ centre has been constructed at the top of the cable car route.  Ignoring this crowded attraction, I walked along Lugard Road, overlooking Central and Kowloon and the harbour.  When we spent a month at the nearby HK University in 1992, this walk, in the company of many locals, was part of my morning routine, and I always try to retrace it whenever I visit the city.   On this occasion, I found that a luxury hotel wishes to situate itself above the route, and is seeking permission to close part of Lugard Road for its unique benefit.  A protest movement is in progress.  This intrusion of rude commerce on part of the island’s heritage (and on a much used and loved public walkway) left me with a sadly sour taste as I took a taxi down to Hong Kong station and travelled in the Airport Express to the splendid British designed terminal (Foster and Partners) to await my midnight flight back to LHR, and the country, parts of whose former empire are now at the heart of a significant new economic, cultural and political hemisphere. 

1^st January 2014

Delivering misrelated participles

In posting this comment on the crap grammar of public discourse, I join a large number of like-minded complainants.  This little rant was prompted by reports in this morning's news of 'golden handcuffs' payments of £300,000 each to three British Rail senior managers. Apart from the sense of grievance evoked by the size of this payment in order to retain their already well paid services, and to prevent their defection to the massively overpaid private sector, I was struck by the words of a BR spokesman as reported in the Telegraph.

“ Recognising the huge importance of what this company needs to deliver - better train punctuality, reduced cost and expanding the railway to relieve congestion - retention payments for three key people were made to see through the delivery of our plans."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/transport/10195658/Rail-executives-to-pocket-900000-to-stay-in-jobs.html

This is a classic example of contemporary corporate language, in which agency is avoided, management jargon terms like 'deliver' and 'delivery' are liberally used, and readers are left as confused as they are outraged.

'Recognising' is the participle which has been delivered in this particular sentence.  Participles crave a subject.  But if we scan along the sentence, skipping over the desirable things that are to be 'delivered', we come to 'retention payments'. 'Payments', retention or otherwise, cannot logically be the subject of 'recognise', which requires a sentient subject, such as 'the Board' or even 'we'. (The extent to which either of these could be considered sentient in this context is another matter.)  

The avoidance of agency is augmented by the use of the passive voice: payments 'were made'.  The use of the passive is, of course, a classic way to avoid attributing agency -- and responsibility, with its twin, accountability.   So, the reader is left none the wiser as to who was responsible for a decision to pay these three 'key people' £300k 'retention payments' -- or as would be less politely termed, 'bungs'.

I doubt that the spokesman would recognize a misrelated participle; indeed, there is evidence that he doesn't. Whether Mr Gove's determination to teach grammar will lead to a generation of correct participle use is to be doubted.  There is no evidence that being taught grammar actually improves the quality of writing.

Sixty years ago, George Orwell proposed six rules for writing, all of which have been flouted by this BR spokesman.  None of Orwell's rules mention correct grammar, nor is he concerned with literary use of language, because, as he says, what he is concerned with is 'merely language as an instrument for expressing and not for concealing and preventing thought'.  Unfortunately, the use of language both to conceal and prevent thought is as widely practised today as it evidently was in Orwell's time, and his advice remains as pertinent today as it did then.

SATIS

Earlier this month, The Economist published an obituary of Marc Rich, who had died at the age of 78.  Who he?  He was aptly named: he was 'king of commodities' and had, during a life 'walking on the blade', at the very sharpest edge of trading in metals, mineral and oil, accumulating a fortune estimated at $2.5 billion, citizenships (Spanish, Swiss and Israeli) and criminal charges (racketeering and trading with the enemy).  He showered Israeli good causes with donations and help, and  somewhat controversially, was pardoned by outgoing President Clinton in 2001, thus regaining entree to the USA.   Clearly, a man of huge ability and 'feline charm', he accumulated much wealth and membership of a network of the very rich and very powerful (King of Spain, ex-head of Mossad).

This obituary set me pondering on the question, When is enough enough?   On a daily basis, the media carry reports of what to many people would be considered excesses. The Guardian of Tuesday 16 July reported the 'UK way ahead in EU's list of bankers paid €1m-plus' -- 2,436 City staff on seven figures, compared with the EU as a whole total of 739.   Meanwhile, from time to time the Euro Lottery reaches  unimaginable and grotesque jackpots in excess of £100 million, while that stylish catalogue of conspicuous consumption,  the FT's 'How to Spend It' magazine,  provides a window onto the life style possibilities of the 1%.  And now we learn that the heir to the throne's royal estate appears to be gaming the tax system in what looks like a similar way to that played by pilloried firms like Google, Amazon and Starbucks -- only unlike them, medieval precedents and royal privilege are invoked. Finally, the utilities firms are criticized for paying excessively generous dividends to their shareholders.

At the same time, the various charities to which we donate are constantly hectoring us with requests for additional contributions.  It's a sad reflection in the world's state of affairs that for charities, whether national or international, enough is never enough.

We seem to live in a world in which dissatisfaction seems to be the default state. For the kind of City staff for whom 7-figure pay is the norm,  or for the Marc Rich of this world, income is a success and status marker in a size matters ranking.  Shareholders in firms like the utilities, which are virtual monopolies, are being showered with largesse at the expense of investment.  It's difficult not to feel that the old slogan, 'Greed is Good' in the newly deregulated world of the late C20th has now become the guiding principle of early C21st society.

It could be -- and will be -- argued that it is  thanks to dissatisfaction that homo sapiens has moved from being a hunter gatherer to a city dweller in a hugely complex global culture, rich with possibilities.  And it was Marc Rich's dissatisfaction with the level of rewards as a trader at Phillip Brothers that led him to achieve such a massive fortune through a buccaneering career as king of commodities.  But he is now in a grave in Israel.  Homo sapiens' exploitation of the planet's resources entails a huge threat to sustainability.  How much damage and exploitation has to be done before we are truly satisfied? When is enough enough?

PART SEVEN: REFLECTIONS

 This visit ‘home’ had been undertaken almost spontaneously, and had been intended to be both a trip down memory lane as well as an opportunity to see some parts of my native country which I had never visited – thus the time spent in Marlborough.  It was also to be a voyage of discovery and rediscovery which might reveal things about NZ and about myself.  The visit to Te Papa introduced a significant theme: identity.  What I was exploring and discovering was, in part, New Zealand’s contemporary identity, and what, as an expatriate kiwi, is my own.  How has one contributed to the other?

I think the first thing that struck me was less the lansdcape, significant though that is, than the built environment because, of course, there are buildings everywhere, some dating back to the Victorian and Edwardian eras,  many from the interwar years, and some from recent times. Some have been cherished and preserved, others have been repurposed, some abandoned, some gussied up in a style which would have puzzled the original builders, others wrecked by natural forces like the Christchurch earthquake.   The built environment is layered, with a rich patina, and I came to realize that it provided a kind of visual metaphor for the country and the changes which have occurred over half a century, while the reflections of some provided a counterpart to the distortions and misunderstandings of my own view of my birthplace.  The buildings that I recognized from childhood provided an anchor, taking me back to a period when I simply took such structures for granted.  Some, which I had been unaware of, a lifetime later take on a new significance. Art deco has acquired meaning in adulthood, and it is part of a small area of knowledge and experience acquired since leaving NZ.  

Other parts of the built environment also took on new significance.  The settlement and history of NZ can't be separated from the construction of roads, railways and bridges, harbours and wharves, the country’s infrastructure.  My railway journeys took me through landscape which offered a huge challenge to the railway and civil engineers.  With imagination, grit and a hard working labour force, they pushed the railways through and helped to knit together parts of the young nation.  Today, those railways are not so much a means of transport as a vehicle for leisure, representing yet another change since my departure. 

Finally, there’s the landscape itself.  In its pristine state, as when Abel Tasman navigated its coast in the C17th, the landscape of NZ must have been quite spectacular, though alien, being largely covered in dense forest.  There was an exotic bird life.  There were no vermin or snakes.   Although Maori had made some impact on the landscape and its fauna – they had driven the huge moa to extinction, for instance – when the first European settlers arrived, vast areas of the country were more or less as nature had made them.  Within a couple of generations of European settlement, huge tracts of forest had been cleared and replaced by pasture, and with this clearance came a decline in the native bird population.   Today, much of the landscape, as in Canberbury and the Manwatu,  is completely man made, and even in such isolated places as the Marlborough Sounds, there are huge areas in which the native forest and its bird life have been obliterated to be replaced by pasture or pine forests.

Now NZ has woken up to the environmental effects of these man-made changes, and what was formerly a resource to be plundered is now a damaged landscape to be restored or unspoiled forest to be carefully maintained in its pristine state.   Restoration trumps exploitation. For instance, Kapiti Island, which gives its name to the Kapiti Coast, is a strictly managed wild life reserve, and there are other islands which are being used as refuges to encourage the breeding of indigenous bird life. 

Restoration has also been applied to the land and resources of the Maori.  The most conspicuous form of restoration applies to the language. Fifty years ago, the Maori language (Te Reo) was not widely spoken and was little known.  My school, FAHS, sported a Maori motto, "Kia Toa Kia Ngakaunui” ("Have Courage, Desire Greatly"), a local substitute for the usual Latin moto.  There was also a constant reminder of the language in the countless Maori place names. However, their pronunciation was heavily anglicized and little of the music of  Te Reo survived its encounter with the pakeha tongue.  A truly massive change has taken place.  Te Reo is now widely taught in schools, many more people speak it, it has a highly visible place in public life and literature – my NZ passport is in two languages, English and Maori – and there are two Maori TV channels.  Most significantly,  great care is now taken in pronouncing Maori accurately and authentically, so the TV weather forecast presenters for instance, who necessarily have a whole range of Maori place names to articulate, do so as to the manner born.

The changing status of the Maori language has for some time been accompanied by a growing Maori assertiveness and what some would consider to be the overdue restoration of long denied rights and benefits deriving from the misappropriation of Maori land. Since the 1990s, governments have worked at restoration of use and ownership rights, though the so-called Waitangi process (after the treaty of 1840) has not been without controversy, particularly among  some of the pakeha population.   Likewise, the acquisition of significant sums by tribes and tribal groups hasn't always led to intra or even intertribal harmony. Even so, the so-called Waitangi process has attended to long-standing Maori grievances and attempted to put right injustices.   This represents a truly huge and desirable change since the 1960s.

So, Maori are secure in their own homeland and can look forward to a prosperous future. Or can they?  Some things don't change, and the socio-economic status of Maori hasn't changed so drastically as to move the majority into the property owning,  fully employed middle class.  I heard a radio interview with an MP regarding a controversial development in his constituency, North Auckland, which could bring employment to a region much in need of it. He pointed out that there was very high unemployment among Maori youth, a situation repeated on the East Coast where there is also a high Maori population.  Both areas are predominantly rural, with limited economic opportunities other than farming. So, despite their higher status and their significant contribution to NZ identity, the plight of Maori still remains problematic.  Like some of those old buildings, this unfortunate aspect of  NZ life lingers on.

There is likely to be another issue which will arise, as far as Maori are concerned, deriving from the considerable increase in immigration, especially from Asia.  It is projected that 250,000 Asian immigrants will arrive between 2006 and 2026, while even today, 23% of  New Zealanders were born overseas. (Cf 13% in the UK where immigration has become a significant political issue, at its worst verging on xenophobia).) Evidently most of New Zealand's  23% live in the Auckland region.  Although Maori are by a large margin a minority in their own country, the arrival of new immigrants further dilutes their proportion of the population,  so it is not difficult to see that migration could be a source of contention not only among the majority pakeha population, but also among indigenous Maori.  

Such immigration can and will have an effect on NZ identity, but in ways that it is difficult to predict.  I've already commented on the orientation of NZ towards the Pacific and Asia apparent in the displays at Te Papa.  How meaningful and acceptable this orientation will be to newcomers from beyond Asia, such as the Turkish waiter in the Devonport restaurant, is open to conjecture.   What contributions to the cultural mix will such newcomers make?  How accepting will they be of the specifically Maori seats in parliament? And how in turn will immigrants’ aspirations, attitudes and values affect NZ identity?

As my visit and the many changes in population and material culture demonstrated, for all its isolation in the South Pacific, NZ is fully integrated into the globalization which links the rest of the world through flows of goods, information, ideas and people. The original European settlement of the country represents an earlier phase of globalization,  when colonialism by such powers as GB brought a form of globalization in which the flow of power and ideas was distinctly asymmetrical, and remained so for many generations. With the expansion of settlement and livestock farming, NZ became a pioneer in the shipping of chilled and frozen meat and dairy products to the Mother Country and thousands of young NZ men heeded the call for troops to defend its interests, beginning with the Boer War in 1900.  This truly significant involvement in global conflict is commemorated in the ubiquitous war memorials, such as those found in Feilding, Palmerston and Auckland, and, in an invisible form in the demographic impact brought about by the deaths and disablement of a significant percentage of the most economically active male age cohort during the 20^th century.

Attitudes to the Home Country (aka UK), though largely favourable and carefully maintained by regular royal visits, inevitably began to change in the latter part of the C20th. Especially significant in this change was the entry of Britain into the EU because, while NZ could still continue to export to what had been its prime market, new markets for its products would have to be found to compensate for the reduction in exports to the UK.  Happily for NZ, a vast and rising market was available in a region of the world which till then had provided a relatively limited outlet for NZ produce: Asia and the Middle East.  Where trade goes, people and ideas also go, and with the striking economic development of such countries as China, Malaysia, Singapore and India (not to forget the leader, Japan), NZ’s focus has been literally reoriented. 

The integration of NZ into the globalized world has also been strengthened by the Kiwi diaspora.  Nearly half a million NZ born people live abroad, of whom around 360,000 live in Australia, including children of my two cousins and my hosts in Paramata.  Such a diaspora involves travel and the flow of people and ideas across the globe.  This is augmented by the flow of British and American TV and films onto Kiwi screens, including, with the cinema career of Peter Jackson, an important burgeoning of production skills and a wave of tourism in and to NZ – or Middle Earth. 

His films are a global phenomenon, but represent a European, even English Home Counties fantasy world.  The real world of NZ seemed to me to be somewhat unrepresented on NZ TV, in which all channels are commercial, and in which so many programmes were imports.  For once I could begin to understand the French obsession with protecting their cinema industry. Even more striking was the fact that Sky TV as seen in NZ is actually based in Australia, so the majority of the news items appeared to be Australian, and the space devoted to actual NZ news seemed to be comparable to the ten minutes allocated to ‘the news where you are’ on the BBC news in the UK.  In the UK, however,  ‘where we are’ is just a county, so this portioning out of space on the national news is understandable. But NZ is a whole country!  I suppose with such a small population, Aotearoa simply doesn't generate enough news for Aussie Sky. 

Alone among the unrepresentative sample of TV programmes that I saw, only two were made in NZ. The first was a crime series set in Auckland, with New Zealander Sam Neale playing the role of a police inspector trying to protect his team from the dysfunctional ambitions of his superior,  who was more concerned with getting ‘headlines in tomorrow’s Herald’ than with the just resolution of a current case, which appeared to involve a Polynesian family and the building of trust between the police team and the family in an attempt to achieve a satisfactory outcome rather than headline news. 

The other programme was one which presented a really important part of NZ society and culture to the Kiwi audience: the ANZ Young Farmer of the Year Grand Final.  Even here, globalization wasn’t far from the scene as one of the finalists had worked for a time under Gordon Ramsey, so that in addition to his many skills as a livestock farmer, he was able to rustle up a gourmet dinner.   This bit of reality TV, while drawing on a format developed elsewhere, presented an authentic slice of NZ to the nation’s viewers, reinforcing a central part of the national identity, that of the down-to-earth, multi-skilled give-anything-a-go laconic male Kiwi (there not being, evidently, any female young farmer finalists this year).  The finalists also served to challenge the stereotype of the Kiwi farmer immortalized in Fred Dagg from Taihape (New Zealand’s self-styled Gumboot Capital), a comedy character created by satirist John Clarke in the mid 1970s.

What I have come to realize, reflecting on this visit, is that identity, whether national or individual, is a continual process, a work in progress,  and not a fixed product (politicians obsessed with nationality quizzes please note).  Like the country itself, identity is continually constructed and bits of the old are left behind or are repurposed, while the new is introduced and maybe with some discomfort or irritation and adaptation is integrated, and an altered configuration/identity emerges. As NZ has evolved as a country and as a nation, its identity has been influenced and subtly altered with each generation and each wave of immigration. Fortunately, some of the old attitudes and behaviours have, like many of the old buildings, been retained in up to date guise, and some less desirable ones become largely extinct, if not entirely, as the anti-Semitic comment of the Christchurch taxi driver revealed.   Even so, Kiwis remain open, friendly, helpful , hospitable, unpretentious,  and critical of anyone who pulls rank or uses their position to gain advantage – as the unwise Mr Gilmore discovered.  Aotearoa is still a homely, comfortable place, despite the overlay of globalized sophistication.

When I left NZ in 1963, quite obviously I didn't leave my NZ identity behind like a discarded garment.  I took it with me, and since then, as with the country I had left, that identity has been a work in progress, subject to many influences and incorporating quite a few changes. What this visit made me appreciate is the basis of that identity: like the Marlborough sauvignon blanc, made and bottled in New Zealand/Aotearoa, but matured elsewhere.

On my last evening in Wellington, I arrived back at the Paramata railway station and started heading towards the 200 steps up to Derek and Rosemary’s house overlooking an inlet. As I looked out over the familiar Porirua Harbour towards the Ngatitoa Domain, which during the day provides a pleasant though unremarkable vista, I realized that in the fading light the scene had taken on an unfamiliar,  almost magical quality.  I whipped out my mobile and snapped the clouds, the evening sunlight, the reflections and the water,  capturing images that mirror the impact and memories of my visit --  some vivid, some permanent, some distorted, some as fleeting as the quietly magical scene before me.

Haere ra Aotearoa!

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PART SIX: WAIHEKE ISLAND

Rangitoto is one of the many islands in the Hauraki gulf, and among these, Waiheke is one to which Auckland has expanded.  Fifty years ago, this was the kind of place where alternative life stylers lived or where city dwellers would have a batch – a simple, informal beach house.  Very few people living on Waiheke would have worked in Auckland city.  Since then,  Waiheke has evolved and there are now about two thousand people who commute daily to the CBD, a small wine industry has developed, and the simple batches of old are no more, most of them having been bought and demolished to make way for smart  -- or, to use a common Kiwi term, ‘flash’ -- holiday homes.  The most luxurious and most perfectly sited are worth very serious money – multiples of millions of dollars – and aren’t necessarily owned by wealthy Kiwis.   So, the character of this delightful island is changing and instead of a place where alternative life stylers can hang out, it has become a venue for well paid city workers and the very well heeled absentee owner.

To get to Waihekei, I took one of the regular ferries, joining people who, like me, were visiting the island for the day, together with a few residents returning from the city.  Although it was early winter, the day was warm, there was a balmy breeze, and the sun was shining.  The journey takes around 45 minutes on one of the ferries run by Fullers, who also run the Waiheke bus services and provide conducted tours of the island and the vineyards, a neat bit of commercial synergy.   The voyage provides a good view of the CBD and harbour area, as well as a perfect view of Rangitoto, a long extinct volcanic island which has true iconic status in Auckland.   Matiatia, the modest harbour where the ferry docks,  is overlooked by one of the multi million dollar houses. Also unexpectedly present on the wharf was a staff member who happened to be a Sikh. Auckland's multi-ethnicism has extended to Waiheke Island.  

The population expansion wasn't particularly obvious at the beaches -- it was 'winter' despite what, by UK standards, could pass for a summer's day. There were few people wandering along the deserted beach at Onetangi bay, where I left the tour bus and stopped for lunch at a smartly casual seaside café, which offered a sophisticatedly informal menu, a good range of wines, and a table from which to enjoy the view and the comings and goings of fellow customers. All the incredients for the good life were present, including some very smart holiday houses in which to enjoy it.

By now,  my visit to Aotearoa was coming to an end.  On my last evening, I took the ferry to Devonport,  a short trip across the harbour from the CBD .  At the restaurant where I dined I was greeted by a continental European hostess, waited on by a Turk, and ate food prepared by Korean and Philipino chefs, working to a menu designed by the absent French head chef.  The waiter, who had been in NZ for ten years, said that he liked Auckland because everyone minds their own business and you can live your own life: live and let live.  This seemed to be an encouraging view of my home country, and as I waited for the ferry back to the CBD,  I took in the night time view of the city, reflected in the harbour, and engaged in a few reflections of my own, the subject of my final blog, Reflections.

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