Let me be very clear about this

There’s one immutable rule in politics: never trust a politician who prefaces a statement with the word “frankly”.

Actually, make that two rules. You should also never trust a politician who says, “Let me be very clear”.

Anyone who begins a statement with the word “frankly” is signalling that whatever he or she is about to say (it’s usually a he) is fearless or radical.

Alas, it never is. The speaker might desperately want people to think he/she is being fearless, radical or even simply outspoken, but no one is fooled.

Moreover, “frankly” is superfluous, since we’re entitled to assume that the person always speaks frankly – or in other words, honestly.

To put it another way, use of the word could be regarded as implying that everything else he/she says should be regarded as insincere. Which may be true.

“Let me be very clear” falls into a similar category. It too denotes boldness and decisiveness.

Someone who says “Let me be very clear” is not to be trifled with. Nothing will shift them from their principled position.

Again, alas, they are likely to have forgotten within days, if not hours, what it was that they were making themselves very clear about.

What prompted this reflection was a commentary by Tova O’Brien in which she referred to an interview she did last week on TodayFM (yes, it’s still on the air, though its audience is now possibly numbered in the hundreds) with Christopher Luxon.

The subject was Posie Parker. We won’t bother with O’Brien’s opinion of the British women's rights activist, other than to say it demonstrates that we shouldn’t assume someone who made her name as an aggressive political journalist is necessarily a sharp or original thinker.

The exchange with Luxon was, however, revealing. National's leader has provided a masterclass in equivocation on the rather important question of free speech and he wasn’t going to allow O’Brien to pin him down.

"Would you allow your MPs to attend Posie Parker’s rally?" O’Brien asked.

"I haven't had that conversation with them, I couldn't imagine there will be many that would be very interested in it," Luxon responded.

O’Brien persisted. "But are you going to be blocking your MPs from attending her speech?"

Luxon: "That's a decision they can make individually, frankly, but I can't see that there will be anyone that would be that interested.”

There it is – that “frankly” word. But what does it mean? Nothing. In fact worse than nothing. It implies he’s saying something meaningful when the exact reverse is true.

I don’t know whether Luxon has ever said “Let me be very clear”, but I’d put money on it.

Things I don't understand (#1 in a series that could go on forever)

There are lots of things I don’t understand – new ones every day, in fact.

Some of these involve language. I accept that language is dynamic and fluid and constantly evolving, but some changes – many of them perpetrated by journalists who should know better  – are plain daft.

Being “across the news”, for example. Pardon me? And “going forward”, which is rightly mocked in the same way as the pompous phrase “at this point in time” was several decades ago, though it keeps popping up regardless.

The strange thing about “going forward” is that in almost all instances you can chop those two words off a statement without changing its meaning in the slightest. The phrase is superfluous, added in the mistaken belief that it somehow gives the statement greater weight or expands its meaning.

Language, of course, is prone to the whims of fashion and the human urge to conform to whatever ghastly phenomenon happens to be in vogue. “Going forward” is the linguistic equivalent of tattoos and mullets. I suspect a lot of trendy phrases originate in HR departments, which are fascinated by anything that conveys the illusion of being ahead of the pack (or should I say “cutting edge”?).

Some changes in pronunciation similarly defy rational explanation, other than the obvious ones of ignorance or laziness. I’m still wondering where the first “l” in “vulnerable” disappeared to, along with the “g” in “recognise”. Neither do I understand how “t” became “d” in words such as community and security.

But what most perplexes me most at this point in time (forgive me – I will have my little joke) is the practice of attaching words such as “up”, “out”, “down” and “on” to verbs so that they serve as intensifiers, as grammarians would call them.

Some of these grammatical constructions have been with us for a while. “Check it out” is endemic, although the “out” adds nothing.

"Watched on” seems to be a favourite of reporters, despite the “on” being totally (or should that be todally?) unnecessary. I suspect people confuse it with “looked on”, but the two constructions are different. “Watched” doesn’t need any elaboration because it stands alone; you can watch something but you can’t “look” something. You have to look at it or on it. "Watched on", therefore, is a nonsense.

“Covered off” is another usage that has inexplicably taken root in journalism, as in “we covered off that story”. (Even more bizarrely, I’ve heard “we’re covered off on that”, apparently with no awareness of the obvious contradiction between “off” and “on”.)

The same goes for “signed off”, which similarly often carries a nonsensical “on” – as in “the council signed off on the long-term plan”. What the hell happened to “approved”?

More recently I’ve noted “parked up” (“the caravan was parked up in the camping ground”), “chased down” (“witnesses chased down the robber”), “swap out” (“I had to swap out the old batteries for some new ones”) and even “bleed out” (“the patient was bleeding out when paramedics arrived”). More colloquially, there’s also “fessed up” for “confessed”. And when my teenage grandson wants to find the answer to something, he searches it up.

Oh, and then there’s “listen up”. Listen up where, exactly?

These are just a few examples off the top of my head. I’m sure there are plenty of others.

The common factor in all the above examples is that the second word adds nothing. As my edition of Fowler’s Modern English Usage (admittedly, published 20 years ago) remarks, it doesn’t affect the meaning of the verb it’s attached to.

I can see how “parked up” came about. Originally it signified a vehicle that was in storage or left in the same place for a matter of days, weeks or even longer, as opposed to one that’s parked overnight or for a few hours, but that differentiation seems to be disappearing.

As for those others, they are inexplicable.

There are precedents of a sort. Mothers used to urge their small children to “eat up” their din-dins and racehorse trainers are still heard to say that their charges “ate up” all their oats, which I gather is a sure sign of robust equine health. New Zealanders of a certain age will also recognise the phrases “cook up a feed” and “write up a story” (which in due course also became a noun, as in “I saw that write-up in the paper”). 

The question remains: where do these usages spring from, and what causes them to suddenly take root among people who are supposedly trained to use the language properly? All theories welcome.

The steady march of American vernacular

On a scale of atrocities running from one to 10, misuse of the language usually warrants no more than a 2. Yet New Zealand English is a defining aspect of our unique culture and one I believe the media should try to honour and preserve.

One linguistic irritant that I see with increasing frequency is the American term “lawmaker”. Even when referring to the British House of Commons, New Zealand media now routinely refer to “lawmakers” as opposed to Members of Parliament.

It’s lazy form of journalistic shorthand that has gained currency because of the all-pervasive reach of American media. There are no MPs in the United States, so for the benefit of their domestic audience, American journalists writing about politics in other countries use the same term that they apply to senators and members of the House of Representatives. The word then finds it way into our news columns and bulletins via American news services.

There was a time when conscientious New Zealand sub-editors coming across “lawmaker” as a synonym for MP in overseas news stories would have changed it to conform to local usage, but media outlets no longer bother with such niceties. It’s probably only a matter of time before our own press gallery reporters, eager to appear ahead of the curve, start using the same terminology to describe our elected representatives (that is, if it hasn’t happened already).

The march of American vernacular is as relentless as that of American fast-food brands. Thus yachts become sail boats, walking and cycling tracks become trails, swimming tournaments become swim meets, biscuits become cookies, mates become buddies and trampers (a term that Microsoft Word doesn't recognise) become hikers. I’ve even heard the folksy “oftentimes” used as a synonym for “often”.

As I wrote in a column in 2013, New Zealand has developed its own rich, colourful and often highly inventive vocabulary – a variant of the English language that’s uniquely ours. We should do all we can to repel intruders.

One morepork, two moreporks

You sometimes have to smile at the confusion that can result from misguided attempts to display cultural sensitivity.

Many New Zealanders (me included) long ago dropped the “s” from the plural form of Maori names and words, since there’s no “s” in the Maori language. Hence Maoris became Maori, tuis became tui, pauas became paua and so forth – this despite a valid argument that as long as the words were being used in English, the English practice of adding the “s” should be followed.

Where it starts to get a bit silly is when people become so locked into the habit of dropping the “s” that they reflexively start doing it with non-Maori words too. There’s an example in a story about native birds in today’s Dominion Post, which quotes a Te Papa bird expert as saying that “morepork were common around Wellington”.

Hello? Morepork is an English word (onomatopoeic, since you ask – the same bird is found in Tasmania, where it’s called the mopoke). Ergo, the same practice should be followed as with the plurals of other English bird names – for example, thrushes, seagulls, hawks. So, moreporks and fantails, though not tuis and wekas – or rurus or piwakawakas, come to that. 

Because the morepork in this instance was mentioned in the context of birds that are commonly known by their Maori names, either the bird man or the reporter (I don't know which, because the bird man was quoted using reported speech) apparently couldn't see the distinction.

The bias you have when you don't know you have it

(First published in Stuff regional papers and on Stuff.co.nz, January 9.)

At the end of each year, dictionaries like to highlight significant new words or phrases that have entered the English language over the previous 12 months.

The Collins English Dictionary declared “single-use” its word of the year for 2018, a year when disposable plastic supermarket bags became a symbol of wasteful consumerism and environmental harm.

Observant readers will note that “single-use” is actually two words, but then so was “fake news”, which was Collins’ word of the year for 2017.

The Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year in 2017 was “youthquake”, which was defined as “a significant cultural, political, or social change arising from the actions or influence of young people”.

Oxford’s lexicographers chose it because of the role young voters played in that year’s British general election, which nearly delivered an upset victory for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Corbyn’s brand of cloth-cap socialism struck a chord with the impressionable young, who are not old enough to know that socialism always turns out badly.

Oxford’s choice for the year just ended was “toxic”, a word that cropped up in a variety of contexts. We had toxic relationships, toxic cultures, toxic waste, toxic chemicals and “toxic masculinity” – a feminist label for appalling male behaviour as perpetrated by the likes of Harvey Weinstein.

It can be seen from the above examples that the word of the year typically reveals something about the mood of the times. Others included “Brexit” (Collins, 2016) and “post-truth” (Oxford, same year).

Which leads me, in a roundabout way, to my own word of the year – except that, like Collins, I’ve cheated and gone for a phrase that consists of two words.

My phrase of the year is “unconscious bias”. This is something you’re guilty of if you’re white and middle-class, and more so if you’re male, able-bodied and heterosexual.

If you tick those boxes, you are automatically considered to hold an unconscious bias against people who are none of those things – in other words women, people of colour, people who identify as gay, lesbian or trans-gender, and those with disabilities.

At least this is what we’re told by people who promote the concept of unconscious bias. And we just have to accept that they must be right, because the essence of unconscious bias is that you don’t know you have it.

Most New Zealanders may think of themselves as fair-minded, tolerant and full of goodwill toward their fellow human beings, but those who accuse them of unconscious bias know better. They know that beneath our smug complacency, most of us seethe with malice and are determined to maintain our status in society by crushing those less privileged.

The genius of the phrase “unconscious bias” is that people who are accused of harbouring it can’t deny it, because by definition they’re unaware of it. They are expected to stare shame-facedly at the floor and admit they’re guilty even though they never realised it.

In fact the act of denying guilt may serve to confirm it. At a seminar on hate speech last year, I heard one speaker assert that “the heartbeat of racism is denial”. In other words, if you deny you’re racist, you probably are. In this topsy-turvy, Kafka-esque world, you’re condemned either way.

While logic dictates that there probably is such a thing as unconscious bias, I believe its grip on society is grossly overstated, the aim being to heap guilt and shame on white middle-class people so that they meekly comply with activists’ demands for special treatment of supposedly oppressed minority groups.

Of course, unconscious bias wasn’t the only new term we had to get our heads around in 2018. Another was the adjective “woke”, which derives from “awake” and came into common usage as a result of America’s Black Lives Matter movement. If you’re “woke”, you’re alert to racism and social justice issues.

Meanwhile, in Britain, the political insult du jour is to call someone a gammon.  An English term for ham, gammon is used to refer to pale-skinned men on the conservative side of politics who supposedly resemble pigs.

“Gammon” is closely related to the phrase “stale, pale and male”, which was also frequently heard in 2018.  All other stereotypes based on sex, age and skin colour are strictly forbidden, but older white men are the one demographic group that it’s okay – in fact almost mandatory – to disparage.

But at least this ideological contradiction throws up the occasional humorous irony, as exemplified by the impeccably “woke” Auckland columnist who wrote a furious rant about pale, stale males only months after turning 60 himself.

Either it was an unconscious expression of self-loathing, or he somehow imagines he’s been sprinkled with fairy dust which renders him magically exempt from the label.

The kiwi is a bird. I am a New Zealander.

(First published in The Dominion Post and on Stuff.co.nz., December 13.)

Call me the paper’s resident Grinch. While other people make lists of cards to send and presents to buy, I’ve been compiling an inventory of things that get on my nerves. Here are a few:

• I am not a kiwi. When I look in the mirror, I don’t see a freakish-looking bird with nostrils at the end of its beak. I do not scurry around in leaf litter at night probing the soil for grubs and worms.  I am of the species homo sapiens, not apteryx australis.

Accordingly, I cringe at the fashion across all the media for referring to New Zealanders as “Kiwis”. It’s patronising, cloyingly sentimental and just plain wrong. It promotes a comforting nationalistic myth that we are all the same, with common characteristics, opinions and aspirations, rather than representative of what the philosopher Immanuel Kant called the crooked timber of humanity, in all its glorious complexity.

In any case, we managed perfectly well with “New Zealanders” until someone decided to infantilise us. It may be four syllables rather than two, but I think we can still get our tongues around it.

• That Air New Zealand engineers’ strike threatened for the week before Christmas. Déjà vu, anyone?

People over 50 will recall the Cook Strait ferry strikes that just happened to coincide with school holidays, or the walkouts by freezing workers that left yards full of sheep at the height of the killing season – anything to maximise the pressure on the employers to cave in.

A generation has grown up with no memory of the enormous economic harm done by industrial disruption during the 1970s. Some would say the subsequent labour law reforms which stripped unions of much of their power went too far. But by cynically and heartlessly calling a strike at the busiest time of the year for domestic air travel, the Aviation and Marine Engineers’ Association has obligingly reminded of us how things used to be.

The sense of nostalgia was sharpened by hearing the engineers’ spokesman interviewed on Morning Report. He spoke with an English accent, recalling an era when New Zealand unions were infected by British class warfare.

• What has Jacinda Ardern got against the letter T? On the TV news the other night she referred to hospidalidy and modorists. I’ve previously heard her speak of credibilidy, creadividy and inequalidy. And because the prime minister is an influencer and role model, other people are already imitating her pronunciation.

Nothing is more susceptible to the whims of fashion than pronunciation and language. The letter L seems well on its way to extinction in some usages – note how often you hear “vunnerable” and “howth” in place of “vulnerable” and “health” – while other words have inexplicably gained an extra syllable, so that we now have “befor-wah” and “unknowen”.

Now the inoffensive letter T, which never harmed a soul, is being usurped by a rampant, invasive D. Someone should mount a campaign to prodect the integridy of spoken English.

• Someone from Otago University watched 24 James Bond movies and read all the Bond books, carefully noting every occasion on which he drank alcohol and the high-risk activities that he engaged in afterwards. I’m not sure what the purpose of this exercise was, but I’m assuming the taxpayer paid for it.

Perhaps we’re supposed to assume it was a bit of a jape, but that wasn’t obvious from the interviews given by the professor (an academic title that once commanded respect) who led the project. He po-facedly pronounced that Bond drank a potentially fatal quantity of alcohol on one occasion and was a consistently heavy drinker over six decades.

But for heaven’s sake, Bond is a fantasy character. So what did this exercise achieve? Are the Otago researchers trying to persuade us that we shouldn’t try to emulate Bond’s drinking?

That would be consistent with their obsessive taxpayer-funded wowserism. But New Zealanders are no more likely to mimic Bond’s drinking patterns than they are to tussle with komodo dragons or indulge in any of the other absurd escapades that occur in his movies. What the research project really reveals is that the Otago academics don’t trust us to distinguish real life from Hollywood escapism – just as they don’t think we can be trusted to drink responsibly. 

• On a cheerful note more appropriate to the festive season, it was a joy to hear the prickly Chris Finlayson, former Minister of Treaty Negotiations, frankly unburden himself on radio of his feelings about the iwi leaders who for years have frustrated attempts to achieve a Treaty settlement in the Far North.

Finlayson, of course, is stepping down at the next election, so could afford to be blunt. But what a shame that politicians should have to wait for their impending retirement to tell us what they really think.

How identity politics has changed language

(First published in the Manawatu Standard and Nelson Mail, March 23.)

What a minefield language has become since it got mixed up with identity politics.

In her acceptance speech at the Emmy Awards last year, Viola Davis – named outstanding lead actress in a TV drama series for her performance in How to Get Away with Murder – talked of herself as a "woman of colour".

I wish we could make up our minds once and for all.

Fifty years ago, black Americans were referred to as Negroes. “Coloured people” (or “colored people”, in American spelling) was a more formal alternative.

“Negro” and “coloured” have long since ceased to be acceptable terms, although ironically the latter term is retained by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the leading black civil rights group.

There’s nothing intrinsically offensive about “Negro”, which is simply Spanish for black, but it fell out of usage because of its association with the highly pejorative "nigger", used by white racists.

Similarly, “coloured” ceased to be used because it was seen as the language of a time when black people were regarded as inferior and subservient.

I was reminded of this when I visited the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee, several years ago (it's located in the former motel where Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated) and saw signs from the 1950s saying “Colored entrance only” and “Colored Seated in Rear” – grim echoes of a time when racial segregation was enforced.

As the civil rights movement gained momentum in the mid to late-1960s, “black” became the preferred term. Its adoption coincided with the emergence of the black consciousness and Black Power movements.

Nina Simone sang in a 1969 hit about being young, gifted and black. It was an affirmation of black identity and pride.

Then the 1980s rolled around and we started hearing a new term: African-American.

“Black” became not so much unacceptable as unfashionable. African-American was a bit of a mouthful (it’s hard to imagine Simone singing “young, gifted and African-American”), but the mainstream media, anxious to avoid accusations of racial insensitivity, fell into line.

It seemed the issue was finally sorted. Then along came Viola Davis last year, and suddenly we had to reckon with the phrase “people of colour”.

There’s a slightly different nuance here. “People of colour” doesn’t refer only to black Americans but to all non-whites, who are supposedly bound together by the common experience of racism.

According to Wikipedia, “people of colour” is preferred to “non-white” because rather than defining people by what they are not (i.e. white), it frames the issue in positive terms.

I get that. Nonetheless, I wish the arbiters of politically correct language would settle on something and stick with it. As it is, right-thinking people have to keep adapting their vocabulary to keep up with the shifting fashions of identity politics.

Besides, I’m left scratching my head over the distinction between “coloured people”, which isn’t acceptable, and “people of colour”, which is. It’s all very confusing.

We have been through all this before. “Queer” was once a term of derision for gay men, but now the word is proudly embraced. Being different from the mainstream, once seen as a stigma, is now something to be celebrated.

That’s what identity politics is all about: minority groups defining themselves by their point of difference and using it to get political leverage. 

Nowadays, no one but an out-and-out racist questions the right of black people – or people of any race, for that matter – to be referred to in a non-discriminatory way. But it’s almost as if there’s a race to be first with the latest politically correct terminology.

It’s a game of linguistic one-upmanship in which you risk being scorned as some sort of bottom-feeding reactionary if you don’t keep up.

New Zealanders, being essentially a liberal lot, have demonstrated over time that they’re willing to change their vocabulary where it’s clearly discriminatory or stereotypes people.

“Hori” was once considered unobjectionable as a synonym for a Maori (the Howard Morrison Quartet even used it in the song My Old Man’s An All Black) but is now rarely, if ever, heard. Similarly, “Japs”, “chinks” and “Chinaman” have been consigned to the linguistic dustbin because of their demeaning connotations.

But the politics of language can be perplexing. For example, we no longer describe people who are physically or intellectually impaired as “handicapped”. That’s verboten. “Disabled”, however, is permissible. 

The distinction between “handicapped” and “disabled” seems purely semantic. But for whatever reason, one is deemed to be derogatory and the other isn’t.

It wasn’t always like this. We know that “handicapped” used to be an acceptable term because it’s the “H” in IHC, which originally stood for Intellectually Handicapped Children.

Similarly, CCS – as in CCS Disability Action – originally stood for Crippled Children’s Society. But try using the word “crippled” today and see how far you get.

What happened to make words such as “crippled” and “handicapped” objectionable? I have no idea. But I do know that the whole area of disability has become highly politicised, often with no obvious benefit to many of the people afflicted.

It's the same language, only different

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, November 6.)

George Bernard Shaw famously described England and America as two countries divided by a common language. It’s only when you spend time in the United States that you realise how true that is.

It soon becomes apparent that while Americans use the same words as we do, they can mean quite different things.

I have to remind myself of this every time I go there. It’s a bit like having to remember that in America, the driver’s seat is on the left-hand side of the car (my wife always spends the first few days going to the wrong side, out of habit) and to look left, rather than right, when you’re about to cross the street.

New Zealanders are brought up to speak the version of English used by the British. And although that’s gradually changing as we succumb to the increasing American influence on popular culture worldwide, linguistic differences can still create misunderstandings – or at the very least, provoke blank looks.

Take a simple word like “holiday”. We talk about going away for the holidays or enjoying a holiday – meaning a few days or longer – at the beach. But to an American, “holiday” refers to a specific day of celebration such as July 4 or Thanksgiving. What we call a holiday, they call a vacation. When you think about it, it’s a sensible distinction.

Ask an American if you can borrow a torch, and they’ll wonder why on earth you’d want to wrap flammable cloth around a piece of wood and set it alight. To them, a torch is something associated with Ku Klux Klan rallies or the Statue of Liberty. What you want is actually a flashlight.

Cars are a prime source of confusion. Ask for directions to a petrol station and you’ll cause bewilderment. In America, you fill up with gas.

You don’t put things in the boot; you put them in the trunk. And the engine isn’t under the bonnet; it’s under the hood (which is in front of the windshield). 

When I tell American friends that we own a caravan, I have to remember to call it a travel trailer. To them, the word caravan is likely to conjure up romantic images of a camel train wending its way through the desert toward Samarkand.

Our six-month old American granddaughter doesn’t wear nappies; she wears diapers. Her parents keep their clothes in a closet, not a wardrobe, and they get their water from a faucet. And so on.

Of course, none of these differences should be too problematical. But things can get tricky, for those unfamiliar with the vagaries of American English, when you come to order a meal in a restaurant.

Here it pays to understand the nomenclature.  First, don’t request tomato sauce to go with your chips. In America, tomato sauce is what spaghetti and other pasta dishes are served with. We’d call it pasta sauce. (In Mafia movies, there’s always a huge pot of it cooking on the stove.) What you want is ketchup – a word that can be traced back to the Chinese ke-tsiap, which was a spicy condiment made from pickled fish.

Chips, meanwhile, are always referred to in America as fries, or French fries. Order chips and you’ll be given what we call chippies, or what the English call crisps.

And don’t make the mistake of asking for a white coffee, because Americans don’t recognise the term; ask for coffee with milk. (And don’t confuse them by trying to order a flat white or a latte, because most of America hasn’t succumbed to coffee culture as we know it. In a Starbucks café they might know what you’re talking about, but even there you’d be taking a punt.)

Most perplexing of all is the American habit of referring to the main course as the entrée, which can create real confusion for people unfamiliar with American menus.

Americans proceed from appetiser to entrée to dessert. It doesn’t make sense, but there it is; it’s their country, and their right to use whatever terminology they choose.

At worst, these linguistic differences might cause mild embarrassment or temporary puzzlement, on one or both sides. Fortunately, scope for a potentially serious social faux-pas is limited – but it does exist.

An example is the verb to “hook up”, which in New Zealand is usually regarded as meaning to make contact with someone or spend time with them. In America the phrase has an overtly sexual connotation – so an innocent suggestion that you hook up with someone could lead to quite the wrong impression.

Conversely, “fanny” is a word that causes no offence in America. Americans talk about patting someone on the fanny, which would have an altogether different meaning here.

What Americans call the fanny we call the bum, which simply compounds the confusion. In America a bum is a hobo or a no-hoper; the good old Kiwi phrase “a kick in the bum” would make no sense at all.

So Shaw was right. Nominally we speak the same language, but there are enough points of difference to create plenty of scope for misunderstanding and misinterpretation.

And that’s without even beginning to consider the additional complications posed by accents, which range from the lazy Southern drawl of Louisiana and Texas to the “Valley Girl” babble that originated in the Los Angeles suburbs but now seems common among young American women everywhere. Factor these into the mix and you have a formula for mutual incomprehension.

At a service station (sorry, gas station) in a small Mississippi Delta town a couple of years ago, I asked for directions to a local point of interest. The woman serving me said she’d never heard of the place, but an elderly black gentleman sitting nearby pricked up his ears. He knew where it was and went to some lengths to explain exactly how I could find my way there.

I was grateful for his help and listened intently, nodding as he carefully gave me the directions. I didn’t have the heart to tell him I didn’t understand a single word.

Sport: one melodrama after another

(First published in The Dominion Post, March 8.)

SPORT has morphed into pure soap opera.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this happened; perhaps somewhere between David Beckham and Tiger Woods.

There have always been occasional instances of sportsmen whose lives became tabloid newspaper fodder (the footballers George Best and Diego Maradona come to mind), but these days it’s constant.

Just think back over the past few months. It’s been one melodrama after another.

There was Lance Armstrong fessing up as a drugs cheat on Oprah’s TV show, a spectacle watched by millions.  

Before that, there was the overwrought weeping and wailing over Black Caps captain Ross Taylor’s sacking by new coach Mike Hesson (a man I can’t see without being reminded of the character Brains from Thunderbirds).

There was the slow, painful unravelling, week by week, of the Wellington Phoenix – a saga that came complete with a textbook villain (Gareth Morgan) and a stoical hero (Ricki Herbert), nobly sacrificing himself for the greater good.

There was the pantomime surrounding media darling Sonny Boy Williams’ boxing match with the “lumbering oaf” (Sir Bob Jones’ description) Francois Botha – a fight that was supposed to go for 12 rounds but was suddenly and inexplicably reduced to 10 when it seemed Botha was getting the upper hand.

So many allegations and counter-allegations flew around in the aftermath of that encounter that the media hardly knew which way to turn – not that it mattered, since boxing is now so irredeemably sleazy that you have to wonder who still takes it seriously.

But wait, there’s more. There was the international media frenzy over the death of Oscar “Bladerunner” Pistorius’s glamorous girlfriend.

There was the sensational case of talented young English cricketer Tom Maynard, fatally hit by a train while on drink and drugs and fleeing from police. Even the Coro Street scriptwriters would have been hard-pressed to come up with a more dramatic storyline.

And what about Australian rugby league glamour boy Ben Barba, very publicly heading for a private clinic to deal with his personal “issues” while his managers wrung their hands and solemnly vowed to stand by their wayward idol? It all seems tediously familiar.

Former All Black Zac Guildford, too, was back in the headlines as he prepared to face disciplinary proceedings over an alleged assault, although nothing so dramatic as the famous Rarotonga incident in which he got drunk, took his clothes off and started hitting people.

Now he has been joined in the naughty corner by cricketer Jeetan Patel – injured, we are told, in an “alcohol-fuelled” (aren’t they always?) altercation with a pub bouncer. Explanation: he was struggling to cope with the death of his mother. Pure soap.

In the circumstances, it seemed almost anti-climactic to watch this week’s prissy tut-tutting over the behaviour of Black Cap Doug Bracewell, whose only offence was having a few rowdy mates around to watch the rugby. For goodness sake, couldn’t he have managed a drunken brawl or drug overdose? At least that might have justified all the fuss.

To think that sporting heroes such as Brian Lochore, Peter Snell and Bob Charles lived their lives in the public spotlight without a whiff of scandal or notoriety. What a dull lot they must have been.

* * *

AS SOMEONE brought up in Hawke’s Bay, I wince when I hear people refer to it as the Hawke’s Bay.

It was never described thus when I lived there. It was simply Hawke’s Bay, as it should be.

The only explanation for the use of the definite article is that it’s a convention applied to some other regions. For example, we talk about the Waikato, the Manawatu and the Wairarapa.

But there’s no logical consistency here. We don’t refer to the Otago or the Taranaki, still less to the Northland or the Southland. Why the definite article attaches itself to some regional names but not others is a mystery.

What we need is a statutory body empowered to impose some consistency and slap heavy fines on non-compliers. In fact I would like to nominate myself as chief executive, with a salary of – oh, $250,000 sounds about right, with a performance bonus thrown in, which would of course be paid regardless of how poorly I did the job.

* * *

THE LATE Phillip Leishman personified a species of broadcaster fast approaching extinction.

He wasn’t flamboyant and he didn’t have a big ego. He had a style New Zealanders related to easily: not flashy, but relaxed and personable.

It was probably just as well that Leishman carved himself a niche in the last 15 years of his life with his golf programme, HSBC Golf Club, because mainstream television programmers have long since lost interest in broadcasters like Leishman. Wrong age, wrong sex.

The sole survivor of that breed is Peter Williams, another consummate professional. I hope I’m not putting a hex on him by pointing this out.

 

Navigating the language minefield

(First published in the Nelson Mail and Manawatu Standard, August 15.)

Language is a social and political minefield, one that’s getting ever harder to navigate.

There was a time when the worst that could happen if you used the wrong word was that you would be exposed as uncultured or uneducated.

In the 1950s, an English linguist came up with the terms “U” (for upper-class) and “non-U” to distinguish between the language favoured by the upper crust and that used by the middle classes. His thesis was that you revealed your social status by the words you used.

Ironically, “U” people often used a more down-to-earth form of speech than their social inferiors, who thought that fancy-sounding words made them sound more refined.  Hence it was “U” to say “false teeth”, “pudding” and “napkin”, whereas non-U people favoured “dentures”, “dessert” and “serviette”, thinking they sounded more classy.

The concept of “U” and “non-U” was unknown to my siblings and me when we were kids but even so, our mother brought us up to prefer certain words over others, even if they were not in line with popular usage.

For example, we were encouraged to say “lavatory” rather than the more common “toilet”. Our house had a sitting room rather than a lounge and we always ate dinner, never “tea”. Mum was anything but a snob, but she was fussy about correct speech, which may explain why some other kids thought my family were up themselves.

Back then, you risked committing a social rather than political faux-pas if you used an infelicitous word of phrase. Things began to change, however, in the 1960s, when language became politically sensitive.

Black Americans had long been known as Negroes, from the Spanish word for black. But at about the time of the civil rights movement, Negro became unacceptable because of its long association with slavery and servitude. (It was also the source word for nigger, a demeaning term used by white-trash racists.)

“Black” became the preferred term, but it too fell out of favour among the politically correct, to be replaced by “African American”. (Ironically, “black” was once considered more offensive than “Negro” or “coloured”, showing that where language is concerned, what goes around comes around.)

With the advent of sexual politics, gender became a touchy language issue too. Feminists ruled that “lady” was belittling and “girl”, when used as a synonym for a grown woman, was quite beyond the pale – although strangely enough, the latter term is still permissible when used by women enjoying a “girls’ night out” or talking about the “girls” in the netball team.

But if the language of race and sex is fraught with difficulty, the language surrounding disability is even more problematical. This was brought home to me recently when the Radio New Zealand programme One in Five examined the issue.

What emerged was that while many people with disabilities have firm opinions on the language used to describe them, their views are not consistent. Neither do they always seem entirely logical.

As with the language of race and sex, the language of disability has become highly politicised. It’s generally accepted that words such as “cripple”, “spastic” and “mongol” are now out of favour. What used to be the Crippled Children Society got around this problem by renaming itself CCS Disability Action.

There may be nothing inherently offensive in these words but they are considered pejorative, so we avoid them. (Interestingly, my Chambers Dictionary describes “cripple” and “mongol” as offensive but not “spastic”, although the latter is more commonly used as a term of derision.)

Slightly more perplexing is the recent taboo on the word “handicapped”.  It is not, as far as I can see, a derogatory or judgmental term. For decades it was part of the name of the organisation that represents people with intellectual disabilities – it’s what the “H” in IHC (intellectually handicapped children) stands for.

My dictionary defines a handicap as a physical or mental disability that results in partial or total disability to perform social, occupational or other normal everyday activities. Alternatively, it’s something that hinders or impedes.

These are factual, neutral statements. To me the word “handicapped” carries no connotations that are not also conveyed by “disabled”. Yet “disabled” is acceptable to most people with disabilities (“impairment” seems okay too), but “handicapped” is not. I have to ask, what’s the difference?

Even “disabled” is too discriminatory for some, although the organisation that speaks assertively for people with disabilities calls itself the Disabled Persons Assembly. Many disabled people also bridle at the use of terms such as “special needs” and “wheelchair-bound”.

Sometimes the objections seem to come down to hair-splitting semantics. One disabled woman interviewed for One in Five admitted that she depended on her wheelchair, yet didn’t like the phrase “wheelchair-bound”. But it’s only a figure of speech – a slightly easier way of saying “wheelchair-dependent”, which in her case was literally true.

Someone else on the programme said we should look at the person first and the impairment after that, a position I can sympathise with. In other words you should say “a person who is blind” rather than “a blind person”; but in practical, everyday terms, it’s unrealistic to expect everyone to observe such fine distinctions.

And just to confuse the issue, it’s apparently okay to talk about “deaf people” because, as someone said on the programme, “they [deaf people] have their own culture”. But how can the non-disabled be expected to understand these finer points of difference?

The radio interviewer wanted to know whether people should refer to “disabled people” or “people with disabilities”, to which the answer was: “The jury is still out on that one”. All which makes it extremely difficult for non-disabled people to know which terms are considered acceptable (or in today's jargon, "safe").

People with disabilities seek respect and are entitled to it. They also want inclusiveness with the wider community and are entitled to that, too, as far as it’s practicable. But by creating uncertainty and trepidation over what language to use when dealing with them, they may be unwittingly erecting a barrier between themselves and the community they wish to interact with.

Listening to One in Five, it seemed to me there’s a real danger that the non-disabled will be deterred from engaging with disabled people for fear of causing offence with an unintentional faux pas. At that point the insistence on “correct” language risks becoming self-defeating. That’s how much of a minefield the language of disability has become.

As with so many things, a question of balance

It’s one of those debates among journalists that are never satisfactorily resolved. How much should you assume your readers know?

In sport, the assumption seems to be that readers know lots, otherwise they wouldn’t be reading the sports section. Hence no effort is made to explain why an overcast sky can make a difference in a cricket test, or what a mankad is.

Lately I've read several references to the influence cloud can have on the outcome of a cricket match - the latest example occurring in yesterday’s Dominion Post preview of the first test against South Africa - but I’m no closer to understanding why. Sports journalists clearly don’t feel any need to explain. It’s assumed that anyone reading these stories has been initiated into the ineffable mysteries of cricket and would probably be irritated if they were spelled out.

And don’t even get me started on the vagaries of pitches, which are routinely referred to in language that’s as impenetrable to me as Urdu. Fairfax sports reporter Mark Geenty managed to squeeze two cryptic references (by which I mean cryptic to anyone who isn’t a cricket geek) into one sentence yesterday when he wrote that cloud cover and swing bowling were likely to have a bigger say on the outcome of the first test than a pitch with the living daylights rolled out of it. Then he made things worse by quoting Daniel Vettori: “Overhead conditions dictate what it’s going to be like. You talk to the Otago guys and they say it’s a completely different wicket depending on the overhead conditions.”

A little elaboration would have been appreciated. Surely I’m not the only person reading the sports pages who scratches his head when he comes across statements like these?

Similarly, only a few weeks ago in the Dom Post sports pages I read a reference to something called a mankad. What could this be, I wondered – some sort of grotesque garment, perhaps, like the mankini made famous in the movie Borat?

Well, no. It turns out that it’s a controversial run-out in cricket, one that’s regarded as poor form and not in the traditions of the game. The name comes from its original perpetrator, Indian cricketer Vinoo Mankad, who pulled the stunt in 1947 and whose name, as a result, lives in cricketing infamy. Should your average reader be expected to know this? Is it reasonable to expect them to go to their computer keyboard and google the word to satisfy their curiosity?

There’s no simple answer to this. I would argue that in the case of the mankad, it would have been a simple matter – and a courtesy to readers – to slip in a sentence enlightening the ignorant. But such matters are not always straightforward.

Years ago there was spirited debate in newspaper newsrooms about whether it was necessary to explain what Maori words such as hui, iwi and whanau meant. At what point do we accept that such terms have entered common usage and no longer need their meaning spelled out? There’s no sharp, clear line to help journalists make these decisions. It’s probably safe to assume, after all this time, that such common Maori words are well understood; yet even now there are probably people in New Zealand who mutter resentfully whenever they encounter them.

Certainly it can be exasperating to encounter a word or phrase whose meaning isn’t clear. My late colleague Frank Haden used to rage against the use of foreign expressions in newspaper stories, partly because journalists more often than not got them wrong ("Wankers!" Frank would thunder), but more because he regarded it as a form of one-upmanship over readers and therefore bound to get their backs up. I know what he meant, because I subscribe to The Spectator and often stumble over Latin or French words and phrases written by people who have doubtless received a classical education at Oxford or Cambridge and probably assume all Spectator readers have done likewise.

Yet there is a powerful counter-argument that I would deploy in debate with Frank. A newspaper or magazine can just as easily insult its readers’ intelligence by treating them as if they have the reading level of 10-year-olds as offend them by going over their heads with high-falutin’ language. The line between the two isn’t sharply defined and a good paper will constantly cross from one side to the other. Apart from anything else, how can people’s vocabularies expand if not by being exposed to new words? If the reader is occasionally provoked into picking up a dictionary to check a meaning, as I am, then surely that’s no bad thing.

Where newspapers can avoid antagonising readers is by shunning exclusive jargon. This is most commonly encountered in sections such as sport and business, where journalists can safely assume they are writing for an audience with a higher degree of specialist knowledge than those reading the general news pages. Here the line becomes even fuzzier, and it’s all too easy for journalists to fall into the trap of using “in” jargon to demonstrate their familiarity with the subject. This may signal to the cognoscenti who read those pages that the journalist is up with the play, as it were, but it breaches the basic principle that the purpose of journalism is to communicate to the widest audience possible – not to a narrow clique of insiders.

Some business stories are damned near incomprehensible, but here we encounter another problem: spelling everything out in words that anyone can understand, particularly where the subject is complex (as is often the case with business stories), is not only cumbersome but consumes precious space.

As with so many things, it’s a question of balance. And at the moment, I don’t think the journalists who write for sports and business pages always get the balance right.

Bitten on the bum by MMP

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, January 3.)

HOLD everything!

Dismiss the government. Call another election.

The John Key-led coalition government has no legitimacy and no mandate to do anything. This is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the non-stop wailing emanating from those still smarting over the election result.

Labour and the Greens insist the government has no mandate for the partial sale of state assets. As Labour stalwart and marijuana law reform activist Phil Saxby explained it in a letter to this paper, parties supporting partial asset sales won only 48.98 percent of the vote. Because parties opposed to asset sales won an infinitesimally greater share (50.29 percent), he seems to suggest, the government is morally obliged to abandon its plan.

But if that’s the case, the Left can surely argue that none of National’s policies were endorsed by a majority of voters. It follows that the party must abandon everything in its manifesto.

There would therefore be two choices: hold another election (and just see how the voters like that), or go into a state of suspended animation for three years during which nothing would happen.

But let’s back up for a moment. In the general election of 2005, Labour and Jim Anderton’s Progressive Party formed a centre-Left coalition with a combined share of only 42.26 percent of the vote. Funny, but I don’t recall the democratic purists of the Left protesting then that the Clark government had no mandate.

The truth is, of course, that it’s mightily difficult for any party to secure an absolute majority under the MMP system. If National can’t even do it with 59 seats to the combined 48 seats won by the two main centre-Left parties, chances are that no party will ever pull it off.

This is the very reason so many anti-MMP campaigners complain that the system can lead to political paralysis.

Of course it suits the Left to argue, now that we have a centre-Right government, that it has no mandate. It must be a bitter disappointment that MMP, which the Left saw as a way of weakening the National Party’s traditional dominance in New Zealand politics, has let them down.

The exquisite irony is that Mr Saxby was one of the original promoters of MMP, but cries “unfair!” when the system delivers a centre-Right coalition. Well, he asked for it.

* * *

ARE GREYING rock fans being played for a bunch of suckers?

In recent years a steady procession of reformed 1960s and 70s bands has passed through New Zealand on the concert circuit, hoping to capitalise on nostalgia for the glory days of rock.

Some are still capable of “doing the business”, as they say. But with others, you get the impression that things are a bit – well, desperate.

Ads for the forthcoming “Creedence Clearwater Revisited” tour trumpeted the fact that the band includes original Creedence Clearwater Revival members Stu Cook and Doug “Cosmo” Clifford. But anyone familiar with CCR knows that the heart, soul and creative brain of the band was John Fogerty, who wrote and sang the band’s songs as well playing lead guitar.

Promoting the tour on the basis that it features Cook and Clifford (the original CCR bass player and drummer) is like announcing a reunion of the Beach Boys featuring David Marks and Ricky Fataar, or the Bee Gees starring Colin Petersen and Vince Melouney.

Of course you’ve never heard of these individuals. They once played in those groups, but no one remembers them.

That the faded remnants of CCR continue to tour, even after Fogerty tried to prevent them from using the name Creedence Clearwater Revisited (which cleverly retains the initials of the original band), is testament to the public’s enduring fascination with the music of rock’s golden era. But a decent pub covers band could probably replicate the CCR sound just as well.

* * *

ALL MY LIFE, the word “fatality” has been pronounced with the stress on the second syllable: fa-TAL-ity. But in some radio news reports on the holiday road toll, the emphasis has mysteriously shifted to the first syllable, so that it comes out as “FAY-tality”.

A similar fate has befallen the word “flotilla”. Traditionally it has been pronounced as flo-TILL-a. But when Israeli commandos boarded a fleet of Turkish relief ships approaching Gaza in 2010, television and radio newsreaders decided this was all wrong. Suddenly it became FLOW-tilla.

Similarly, broadcast reports on the Foreshore and Seabed Act often referred to the public DO-main, rather than do-MAIN. This quaint pronunciation is reminiscent of parts of the American South, where people call the POL-lice when someone’s causing trouble.

Why these peculiar inflexions? It can only be ignorance. A new generation of journalists and newsreaders appears not to have encountered these words before, so makes up whatever pronunciation feels right. Then it starts to spread virally.

Sadly, resistance is probably futile. This is a language in flux – a process as unstoppable as the phases of the moon.

It's inappropriate to be judgmental

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, August 3.)

IT SEEMS that in the 21st century, the worst thing anyone can be accused of is inappropriate behaviour.

We seem to have forgotten words like evil, wicked, outrageous, immoral, scandalous and reprehensible. They might as well be erased from the dictionary. They have been replaced by that one all-purpose weasel word “inappropriate”.

A policeman who beats up a suspect is accused of behaving inappropriately. A paedophile teacher admits inappropriate touching (whatever that may be). A politician who watches blue movies at the taxpayer’s expense confesses to inappropriate use of his ministerial credit card. A developer whose building mysteriously gains an extra three storeys acknowledges an inappropriate breach of the district plan. A Hollywood celeb caught snorting cocaine with one of his mistresses tearfully breaks down on television and admits it was an inappropriate lapse for which he hopes his wife and fans will forgive him.

This linguistic contamination has now spread to sport. New Zealand cyclist Julian Dean, head-butted in a sprint to the finish line during the Tour de France, said his assailant’s behaviour was “really inappropriate”. No doubt Springbok lock Bakkies Botha’s head-butting of All Black Jimmy Cowan was inappropriate too.

At this rate it can only be a matter of time before murderers like Clayton Weatherston stand accused of acting inappropriately toward their victims and Adolf Hitler is condemned in the history books for inappropriate behaviour toward the Jews.

Does it matter? Of course it does. “Inappropriate” is a mealy-mouthed word, a namby-pamby word. It is a prissy euphemism devised by schoolteacher liberals who don’t want to seem judgmental. It is a word that diminishes the gravity of bad behaviour and in so doing, subtly conditions us to excuse all manner of sleaze and vileness.

* * *

MY LOCAL paper recently published a photo taken at the opening of a newly established “hub” for a variety of community services.

The accompanying story announced that the offices would be shared by a plethora of organisations including Career Services, Workbridge, Supporting Families, a free budgeting service, Family Planning, addiction services and gambling help, a couple of Maori community organisations, Child Youth and Family and Work and Income.

The picture, which showed a predominantly female audience listening to a speech by government MP Paul Quinn, illustrated a striking phenomenon of our times.

A vast network of taxpayer-funded, or at least state-subsidised, community agencies has sprung up, all operating in similar fields and with functions that often overlap.

Their proliferation seems unrelated to whichever political party is in power. Labour governments create them in the belief that there’s no problem that can’t be solved by state intervention, and National leaves them alone because dismantling them is just too much hassle.

But who knows how much good they are doing? What scrutiny are they subjected to? How do we know we’re getting value for money?

No doubt some of these organisations have the ability to transform people’s lives, but it’s odds on that others are an utter waste of time, space and money. Trouble is, how do we know which is which?

A sceptical view, based on our stubbornly dismal statistics for child neglect, poor health, drug and alcohol addiction, teenage pregnancies, welfare dependency and family violence, is that they’re making bugger-all difference to anything. But they certainly provide careers for a lot of well-intentioned, middle-class women.

An even bleaker view is that these organisations may be part of the problem rather than the solution, discouraging people from taking greater responsibility for their own lives in the knowledge that helping agencies are always on hand to sort things out for them (in a non-judgmental way, of course).

* * *

AT THE core of the increasingly hysterical debate over liquor abuse lies a choice between a free society – in which we accept that a minority of people will behave criminally or irresponsibly, and take reasonable steps to control them and minimise the harm done – and an un-free society, in which unreasonable constraints on the responsible majority are justified by the need to control the behaviour of the irresponsible minority.

Of course, in the un-free society, much of the criminal minority disregards laws and controls anyway, so that the burden of compliance largely falls on the law-abiding and responsible. One example was the proposal (now on hold) to lower the legal blood alcohol limit to a level that would trap many safe drivers, but do nothing to deter potential killers who repeatedly drive while grossly intoxicated.

Other examples include the compulsory microchipping of dogs, which subjects law-abiding citizens to unnecessary compliance costs but is totally ineffectual against rogue dog owners; and the criminalisation of smacking, which puts good parents at risk of prosecution but does nothing to deter real abusers.

These are kneejerk laws passed to create the illusion that something is being done. They simply scratch a political itch.

The best that can be said of the people agitating so evangelistically for restrictive liquor laws is that they are convinced they are acting in our best interests. Like the Labour government that New Zealanders tossed out in 2008, they don’t think people can be trusted to make their own choices.

Media label dogs Kurariki at every turn

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, March 30.)

IF Bailey Junior Kurariki becomes a hardened lifetime criminal, as now seems inevitable, then I’m afraid my fellow journalists will have to accept a large measure of responsibility.

The media were captivated by the image of the 12-year-old Kurariki’s wide-eyed face peering over the top of the dock when he was found guilty of the manslaughter of pizza delivery man Michael Choy in 2002, and they haven’t been able to leave him alone since.

He immediately became branded as “New Zealand’s youngest killer”, a tag that has dogged him at every turn.

In a very narrow, technical sense, I suppose the description is correct. But does that justify its endless repetition? I’m not so sure.

It’s important to point out that Kurariki didn’t actually kill anyone. He was a decoy who gave the signal for one of his older partners-in-crime to leap out and hit Mr Choy. He must have known the plan was to assault Mr Choy, but there was no proven intent to kill – otherwise the charge would have been murder.

In any case, Kurariki was under the influence of older associates. Significantly, we don’t hear anything about them these days. Of the six who were convicted, Kurariki was singled out for continued media attention solely because of his age.

I would have thought this very factor was a compelling reason to leave him alone, so that he might have had some chance of rehabilitation away from the public eye.

In fact the exact reverse happened. Kuraraki has been subjected to such unrelenting media attention that he had no chance of settling back into a normal life after his initial release from prison.

The media played a direct hand in his latest brush with the law. Two female journalists from the Herald on Sunday, a reporter and a photographer, went to interview him after he finished a one-month sentence for wilfully damaging a TV camera. (The media again. Fancy that.)

Kurariki is alleged to have exposed himself to the two, masturbated and groped them. Naturally they lodged a complaint with the police, which in turn led to his latest arrest last week after he failed to appear in court.

I hope the two Herald on Sunday journalists feel pleased with themselves. For two apparently attractive women to visit a troubled and unstable young man in his home was perilously close to baiting him. But never mind, the paper got what it no doubt wanted: a story headlined Child killer becomes sex pest.

Kurariki’s life is a tragedy playing out in slow motion, and it’s not hard to predict how the storyline will unfold. This is not the New Zealand media’s proudest moment.

* * *

THERE IS a certain type of officious Englishman whose image is seared into the New Zealand psyche.

We have all encountered him. He carries a clipboard and has a pocket bristling with pens. A typical example of the subspecies pommus pettibureaucratus has a moustache and wears a white dustcoat. He loves to give orders, preferably citing the minutiae of council bylaws and Acts of Her Majesty’s Parliament.

He has an accent which identifies him as a member of the English lower-middle class, a social status of which he is probably acutely aware and possibly resentful.

Though thousands of miles from home, he has found an ideal habitat in the lower regulatory branches of government.

Here he has secured a form of employment which enables him, at one stroke, to fulfil his dream of improving his social and economic standing – to “make something” of himself in a country blessedly free of class rigidities – while simultaneously asserting authority over people who, in different circumstances, might be his betters.

Any career with the word “inspector” in the job description – health inspector, building inspector, fire safety inspector – is irresistible to him. If there’s a uniform with the job, so much the better.

Local government is rich in such openings. In this capacity he is able to indulge his natural talent for nitpicking and gleefully pouncing on the supposed shortcomings of others.

We have seen a striking example of this personality type in a recent “reality” TV show. I leave it to readers to guess which programme I’m referring to.

* * *

PEOPLE used to suffer harm. They exhibited different types of behaviour. They demonstrated competency of one sort or another. Sometimes they would indulge in misconduct.

Then someone decided, for no obvious reason, to append the letter “s” to words that had managed perfectly well without it. So now we have harms, behaviours, competencies and misconducts.

Even worse, I’ve recently seen reference to knowledges, evidences and learnings (this last from a police officer talking about the lessons police learned from a security breach at Premier House during Prince William’s visit in January).

Happily these atrocities haven’t yet crept into everyday English, but it may be only a matter of time. Predictably, teachers, social workers and other “caring” professions have adopted them with gusto. Or should that be gustos?

Going where no country has gone before

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, March 16.)

NOW that the heat has gone out of the global warming scare, if you’ll pardon the pun, how is our government going to justify its ill-conceived emissions trading scheme?

When the ETS kicks in later this year and people start squealing about higher power and fuel prices, how will National explain the fact that New Zealand, alone in the world, has chosen this quixotic stance?

At the time National rushed through its ETS legislation late last year, the global warming alarmists were in full cry and the government was eager to make a good impression ahead of the Copenhagen climate conference.

We all know what’s happened since then. Copenhagen was a fiasco and the discredited climate change alarmists are in undignified retreat.

The credibility of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (which National relied on to justify its ETS) has been shredded and the really serious polluters, such as China and India, are carrying on unrepentantly.

In Australia, the United States and the other developed economies with which New Zealand trades, policies to counter global warming are stalled.

Meanwhile, here’s good old Enzed going it alone with an ETS that is going to cost a huge amount – some estimates are as high as $1 billion a year – and won’t make a blind bit of difference to global warming, assuming such a phenomenon exists.

When people see their already extortionate power bills rising later this year to pay for the ETS, prime minister John Key will have to do an awful lot of smiling to convince people it was a good idea.

* * *

I GENERALLY like Americans – heck, one of my children is married to one – but I wish something could be done to check the spread of some of their more irritating expressions.

My electricity company, which I’m disposed not to like anyway, insists on sending me email newsletters exhorting me to “Listen Up!”. Nothing is more guaranteed to ensure I hit the delete key.

Whatever offers Genesis may be dangling in front of me, I’m not remotely interested in hearing from a company that addresses me in the language of skateboarders and US Army drill instructors.

Facebook, meanwhile, sends me emails that start, “Hey, Karl”, as if assuming I’m one of those people who chew gum and wear a baseball cap back to front.

Addressing me with the words “Hey, Karl” does nothing to enhance my enthusiasm for Facebook, which I have come to regard as the digital equivalent of a dog turd that sticks to your shoe and defies all attempts to shake it loose.

* * *

BELATED congratulations are due to the Dunedin District Court judge who refused to continue a suppression order on the name of former Green MP Sue Bradford’s son, who was acquitted on charges of sexual violation.

Judge Paul Kellar acknowledged it was unfortunate that the stigma associated with serious allegations was rarely erased by acquittal, but said he had to weigh up whether the harm caused by publication of the accused’s name outweighed the public interest in open justice and the freedom to receive information (as set out in our Bill of Rights Act).

That Bradford’s mother was a high-profile person was not a determining factor in his decision, Judge Kellar said. “The law should apply equally to all.”

These are simple principles that many judges seem to have difficulty grasping, judging by the suppression orders granted recently to rugby players, entertainers, businessmen and a former MP.

When I was a court reporter decades ago, name suppression was rarely requested and even more rarely granted. Hard-bitten magistrates took a lot of persuading that offenders’ names should be kept secret because their grandma was sick, or they might jeopardise their career prospects, or any other of the plethora of excuses that were commonly advanced. “Tough luck” was the usual response from the Bench.

If name suppression was then the exception rather than the rule, these days it often seems the reverse is true – especially on defendants’ first appearances, when suppression now seems almost routine.

One of the most dangerous consequences of soft suppression rulings, especially those that create an impression of protection for the privileged, is that they undermine public confidence in the courts – a risk you’d expect judges, of all people, to be acutely aware of.

* * *

I WELCOME approaches from people who might wish to join me in forming the Happy Philistines Society Inc, for people who have no interest whatsoever in attending anything to do with the International Arts Festival now on in Wellington.

Being of a curious disposition, I peruse all the articles and reviews about festival events – I can hardly avoid it, since they take up a big chunk of my Dominion Post – and I’m satisfied that I haven’t missed a thing. Better still, I have saved myself a heap of money that I can spend on worthwhile purchases like Barry Manilow CDs.

We no longer expect politicians to tell us the truth

(First published in the Curmudgeon column, The Dominion Post, February 2.)

AUSTRALIAN Opposition leader and practising Catholic Tony Abbott brought a hail of criticism down on himself last week for expressing a conservative view on virginity. Feminists and leftist academics predictably pounced, denouncing Abbott as an unreconstructed male chauvinist.

But hang on. Regardless of what anyone thinks of his views, shouldn’t Abbott be given credit for expressing his opinions honestly and openly? That’s what democracy is supposed to be about: politicians saying what they think and letting the voters make up their minds.

Trouble is, politics is now so contaminated by spin-meisters and risk-averse media minders that we no longer expect people like Abbott to tell the truth.

Are his critics saying they would prefer it if he prevaricated and dissembled, like so many of his colleagues? It’s a strange old world, all right.

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HOW entertaining it is to see the fear-mongering campaign of the global warming alarmists unravelling.

First there were the hacked emails and documents that indicated a conspiracy to massage scientific evidence in favour of the manmade global warming hypothesis. Then came the almost comical revelation that a predicted melting of Himalayan glaciers – one of the most alarming assertions in the 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – was a fiction, utterly lacking in any scientific validity.

Now a sheepish IPCC has had to admit there was no scientific basis for claims that global warming was linked to a supposed rise in natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods.

This latest backdown came as no surprise to me. I recently watched a compilation of old movie newsreels dating back to the 1920s, and in virtually every year there were reports of catastrophic weather events – most of them every bit as bad as the more recent floods and hurricanes allegedly caused by climate change.

The global warming alarmists insist that a few embarrassing porkies don’t detract from the overwhelming weight of evidence pointing to an impending climate catastrophe. But the truth is that they reveal a shocking lack of scientific rigour and in doing so, raise questions about the credibility of all IPCC reports.

None of this should surprise anyone. When scientific report writers are little more than propagandists, they will inevitably be tempted to use whatever scrap of dodgy information they can find to support their case – even to the point of making things up.

And when gullible governments and charitable foundations are handing out massive grants for research into global warming, what mug is going to choke off the flow of funds by saying it isn’t happening?


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THE funniest comedy on television is often to be found on the 6 pm news.

In a lead item last week on the Auckland power blackout, One News excitedly crossed to reporter Jack Tame who, we were told, was “across developments” (my thanks to media critic Denis Welch for picking up this latest fatuous expression).

Then we saw Tame standing at a city intersection at peak hour, telling us about the traffic problems supposedly caused by the outage. Trouble was, viewers looking over his shoulder could see no sign of congestion. In fact vehicles were moving as freely you’re ever likely to see in Auckland.

I have a suggestion for TVNZ’s Auckland newsroom when covering such stories in future. Perhaps they should hand out petrol vouchers to motorists as an incentive to remain stationary, banking up at the lights and tooting impatiently, so as to replicate the traffic gridlock One News is so anxious to report.

Aucklanders are an obliging lot, after all; I’m sure they would be happy to comply.

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IN THE sports pages of this paper last week, Phoenix football team chief executive Tony Pignata reportedly said he was “in agreeance” with another club about the undesirability of a recent on-field fracas.

Agreeance? Pardon me?

The word “agreement” has served the English language very well for a long time, but what the heck – let’s make up a new one.

Come to that, why doesn’t everyone just invent whatever new words happen to come into their heads? Then people can babble away in their own private languages and make even less sense than they do now.

Speaking of new words, what about “firefight” and “lockdown”? Reporters love them, presumably because they convey a sense of drama – but what do they mean?

I assume a “firefight” (the word originated in the Vietnam War) is what we used to call a gun battle, in which case the latter term seems a lot more accurate.

As for lockdown, I hear it used freely by journalists but don’t have a clue what it means. How can an entire neighbourhood be placed in lockdown, as is sometimes reported? And why are prisoners now said to be locked down when, only a few years ago, they were locked up?

A free weekend in Paremoremo with the partner of your choice for the most convincing explanation.

Joe Bennett and a preposterous neologism

Catching up on the papers after a couple of hectic weeks, I finally got around to reading Joe Bennett’s latest column.

I love Joe’s writing and regard him as a columnist of world class. He’s funny, eloquent and perceptive even on his off-days, which are rare.

Of course it helps that I almost invariably agree with him, particularly on matters related to the use of language – which made this particular column a little different from the norm.

After wittily skewering the pretentiousness that frequently characterises restaurant reviews in newspapers and magazines (and of which I’ve probably been guilty myself), Joe confronts the terms “waiter” and “waitress”.

He notes that the “ess” suffix has fallen out of favour, supposedly because it’s demeaning. Disappointingly, he seems to capitulate on this issue when I would have expected him to put up a fight.

Although acknowledging that he has never met a waitress who said she found the word demeaning, he nonetheless turns his attention to the quest for an acceptable, gender-neutral alternative and comes up with “waiters”.

This term, Joe writes, describes their job precisely and is by definition sexually non-specific. But alas, “it has been deemed unsatisfactory by the people who resolve such matters. It seems that usage has smeared the word permanently with testosterone.”

He then pounces with glee on the preposterous neologism coined to get around this non-problem – namely, “waitron”.

I’ve seen this term used occasionally and assumed the usage was tongue-in-cheek; a satirical poke at the political correctness that now contaminates the English language. How could it be otherwise?

But no; it appears the word is making a serious bid for acceptance. It’s not in my 2005 edition of the New Zealand Oxford Dictionary (though the hideous “waitperson”, a word that almost justifies the reintroduction of capital punishment, is). However we have seen silly, gender-neutral words infiltrate the language before, and a googling of "waitron" indicates it might be gaining ground.

I’m with Joe when he laughs this ridiculous word off the page. He says there are only four words he can think of that end with -ron: cyclotron, electron, neutron and moron. “One is a machine for boffins, two are sub-atomic particles, and one describes the character who invented the word waitron,” he writes. Classic Bennett.

Joe then, almost as an afterthought, puts up a rather half-hearted defence of “waitress”. But it was disappointing that he earlier appeared to accept “waiter” as a legitimate alternative.

While sharing his contempt for anyone using “waitron”, I would argue that waitress is a perfectly respectable word – along with actress – and that we should vigorously resist the attempts of the language Nazis to expunge it from the vocabulary.

I agree with Joe that there’s nothing degrading about being described as a waitress – or an actress, for that matter. The words waitress and actress simply acknowledge the reality that these people are intrinsically different from their male counterparts.

Does anyone think less of Katharine Hepburn, Meryl Streep or Julia Roberts for being called actresses? Any discriminatory connotation exists only in the minds of crazed ideologues.

But there’s more to it than that. The English language is a wondrous tool that enables us to narrow down meanings and nuances very precisely.

One of the purposes of words is to create mental pictures and impressions. A writer or journalist using the gender-neutral terms waiter or actor leaves the reader in doubt as to whether the person in question is a he or a she.

This can be a crucial distinction. If I were to write that I had chatted up a cute waiter in a Courtenay Place bar it would create a very different impression than if I had used the “ess” suffix.

Either scenario is highly unlikely – but it illustrates why people who use words for a living should fight like fury to prevent the English language from being de-sexed.

Footnote: Elsewhere in his column Joe noted, “A perfect dinner is one where you don’t notice what you eat.” Spoken like a true Englishman, Joe.

A good joke, but they muffed it

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