Children don’t invent racism, they learn it.

A truism amongst many others. Its beauty is that it explains many ills in society. Children don’t invent bullying, partner violence, crime, and many of the other societal ills that we are plagued with.

WALK A MILE

Walk a mile

I have being having an internal debate recently about what to do about someone who shouts at his wife. No, not here at home however close enough for me to hear. I was contemplating calling the Police as I see it as a form of violence (yes I have been guilty in the distant past) or calling the child welfare Oranga Tamariki. In the end, I decided to either speak to the shouter or to the shoutee. Today the opportunity came up to speak to the shouter, just as I was getting ready to say hey mate he opened up. He said that you have probably heard me shouting at my wife, I just nodded, knowing when to listen is important. He then relayed his story, his journey.

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” Why Food Banks are not the answer.

is a phrase coined in the 1500s, well before state welfare even existed, is the mantra that sits behind the government’s preoccupation with outsourcing to food banks, says Danielle Le Gallais. https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/13-12-2021/why-food-banks-arent-the-answer . Danielle provides around 150 people a week a meal on a Sunday for the people she calls people who are facing food insecurity. Danielle says the lockdown impacted the food she normally could provide in terms of quality and quantity. Is Danielle some rich lister? I doubt it she is a single mother of two who’s busy studying law at

POTENTIALLY OFFENSIVE POST

Don’t read this if you are evenly moderately easily offendable.  I think it is a wonderful piece of writing that sums up Trump very well, don’t say you were not warned if you do read it. A great piece of opinion.

The Truth Never Wins A Popularity Competition

I read this today, It was originally written last year.  I am sharing it because it is poignant, shocking and brutally honest. 

The Dwarf who moved

Peter Williams QC was a New Zealand Lawyer who had a reputation for being fearless in his 60 year career he defended some 600 murder defendants.  The book I read recently is titled The dwarf who moved: and other remarkable tales from a life in the law. The book was entertaining and informative.

Ghosts of the past

The past is the past.

One of the challenges many people have to face in their lives is to move on past negative experiences they have had in their life.  I will use me now instead of they, I hope that in this post people may recognise or identify with the things I put onto this page.

I have had some negative experiences in the past some really distant and some not so distant, these have left various impacts on me. Some have seared their way into my mind and have showed this by invoking a set pattern of response when I encounter these things. Some words can do it for me, whatever is one of them I could explain to you how I feel or what I think when the word is said, but why, enough to say that it does, so how does one get past the word whatever? Backtracking a little I think a small explanation of whatever is necessary to illustrate the reaction. The urban dictionary defines whatever as being used in an argument to admit that you are wrong without admitting it so the argument is over. Merriam Webster says anything or everything, no matter what, or can be used to express surprise or disbelief, it can also mean no matter what.  This is not an exhaustive definition of the word, it does go to show that there are a variety of meanings and some of those have positive connotations, some didactic and some decidedly negative in tone.

Whatever for me is associated with a throwaway remark that denotes either a derisive attitude or a dismissive go away, why you may ask? Well the past, in the past that is my experience and it brings an almost conditioned classical Pavlovian response, that of defence, not hackles raised and growling but a shrinking of my soul and a fight or flight response, rapidly followed by a, what did I do, internal referencing, soul-searching, navel gazing, waste of time. Why a waste of time? Well simple really, because most of the time I actually don’t have a reference to put the word into, no locus.  So the reaction that I have is just the ghosts of the past beating their drums inside my head.  Well it’s not like that for me I hear. Well that’s good for you but here it is for me.

This reaction produces nothing worth having the question is how to get past that response so here are a few ideas,

1. When you say whatever, can you be a bit more precise, I need some clarification.
2. Did I say something wrong?
3. Is something the matter?
4. I need a bit more direction.

You get the general picture, it can be a loaded word but my response is already loaded, I am packing buck shot, finger on the trigger ready to shoot, (ok hyperbole but I am a poet).  The thing is the word most likely comes up in a conversation with someone significant in your life, it certainly does for me.  I could ask the person not to use the word but it is me who has the issue.  There are words that are more than words, derisive, nasty put-downs.  Whatever is unlikely to be one of those and my partner certainly does not use those words towards me, so why am I charged.   As I said it is past ghosts.

Some ghosts have to be exorcised from our lives, the memory is too painful, embarrassing, traumatic even.  I have a good memory, far to good in fact and I have carried a lot of hurts with me over many years.  I am aware of these and reflective enough to know when I am being triggered albeit sometimes not in time to prevent an instant response but enough to know when I need to reflect and move some things along.

My mother’s advice about saying nothing if you have nothing good to say is sage and has been given universally, some people mistake that as a weakness, ah there I have you now, nothing to say I must be right, the temptation is to rise to that but it is again not worth the effort, people like that are generally insecure and have a deep need to be right, I know, I used to be one.  I will leave this here for now bar the disclaimer that I am not perfect and still get caught in this behaviour, but less and less these days, try to think before you engage in a disagreement, try to decide is this worth having conflict over, I learnt as a child that I couldn’t be beaten into submission physically, and any verbal beatings to induce agreement are shallow, hollow victories that are just pale and worthless.

Love well and laugh loud, if you can’t sit on your tongue to stop yourself from talking then just breather through your nose

Paul

John Campbell gone, a tragedy, travesty or a wake up call?

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Well the axe has fallen, like a slow rolling locomotive, John Campbell and his supporters have been put out of their misery.  Now I have to say I like John Campbell and supported his programme.  I have enjoyed seeing various politicians, shysters, crooks, and generally mean people squirm under the intense scrutiny of the Campbell Live team.  I will be eternally grateful that I don’t have to pass by the honey traps that the dead sea secret mud sellers set in the shopping malls.  There is no doubt that John Campbell has done a power of good.

It is a moot point whether Campbell has paid the price for pricking the consciences of the powerful, it is what it is. TV3 is a private enterprise and entitled to make decisions, as of course we as consumers are. I will make a point of not buying anything advertised in the replacement show of Campbell Live.  Here is the nub for me, the thing I find obscene, distressing and sickening. On Facebook someone lamented who would highlight child poverty, who will keep politicians and bad people accountable, I read this and was enraged, we have abrogated our responsibilities to the suited crusader, Mr John Campbell esquire.

Let me explain, I am an agent of social change, I attempt to hold people accountable, call out loudly when I see things that alarm me, challenge injustice when I see it.  I have written before how it is tiring defending yourself and dealing with your own injustices let alone others https://kiwipaulspoetry.wordpress.com/2013/09/24/this-frog-is-tired-of-being-boiled/.  However when we rely on a highly paid high profile, journalist to be our social conscience then we are in trouble.  I have lamented how people just don’t care about issues, I guess I am not completely correct but what we have seen with the slow death of John Campbell is a clear definition of where the problem lies.

It is no secret that the National Party celebrate the loss of the Campbell Live show, the question has to be asked why.  Is it possible that they realised that our society’s defence against the epidemic arising from the economic policies of neo-liberal politics had come to John Campbell? That the electorate did not care about the excesses of neo-liberalism, the causalities of our “free market” economy was abundantly clear in the results of the election.  Campbell was a thorn in their sides.  Well I see that as a moral failure.

Any reasonable person who has a simple grasp of the reality we live in should be able to see that people are living at the margins of society, that vulnerable people are being hurt, hopes dreams and normality is destroyed as a growing number of people are being excluded from participating in society.  The answer from political parties as a whole is inadequate.  Labour wants to in fight about the politics of funding transgender surgeries and National throws 25.00 at families and crows about how generous it is.  Enough to make me vomit. The Greens are written off as looney lefties, New Zealand first is more concerned about a bit more tar seal in Northland, Peter Dunne well if he was ever the answer the question was exceedingly stupid and The Maori Party have become as irrelevant as the ACT (the association of charlatans and tax avoiders).

The only politicians who care are soon shut up by their political masters because the voters only want to hear good news, they don’t want to have to be the ones who tell us that we need to either pay more tax or grow the cake.  Perhaps we need to make sure that the multinationals who profit so much from the free market and flexible labour laws pay their share, perhaps we need to make sure that those who profit tax free from property do so no longer and perhaps we also need to say enough… demand that our Government does what is should and eliminate poverty and its close cousin of abuse in New Zealand.

Rest in Peace Campbell Live, but it is time we stood up as we should.

Paul

How is your day?

A simple question often asked, a nicety, exchanged as a way to kill the silence, friends who know me will know my motto of don’t ask a question you don’t want to hear the answer to……

I Hate Small Towns Part Two

Often after people find out I used to work as a social worker one of the questions that they used to ask me was what does a child abuser look like, I used to say pick up a mirror and look at the reflection.  Abusers come in all shapes and sizes they are a percentage of the population.  In a population you will find all sorts of people however, living in a small town amplifies deviance.  Clique groups and power brokers seem to wield influence beyond their sphere of influence and conservatism rules.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, the problem lies with how deviance is defined.  The fact that my children are relatively safe walking the streets compared to where we used to live is an example of a how in a small town deviant behaviour is much easier to see, and to a degree it is not tolerated.  This is fine when we are talking about anti-social aberrant behaviours which are harmful to others however, the way behaviour is classified as deviant in a small town is very different to big towns and city.

There are a number of reasons for this, small towns should reflect big towns, society should be made up of the same kinds of people and in similar kinds of proportions, there in lies part of the answer, what may seem to a large group of deviant people in a city is perhaps not so true, they are probably just a whole lot more visible.  Just as there are more deviant people there are likely to be more tolerant people who live in  city, what it comes to is the amount of influence that these people have.  That is the theory however my experience tells me a different story.  You see here in Morrinsville many people see me as deviant.

I am deviant because I don’t vote conservative, I am left wing, how do people know this, well I stand up for what I believe in.  I have been involved politically, I don’t shut my mouth when I encounter injustice and I don’t fit into the mould. Some of  those moulds have changed since I was a young person but here in Morrinsville it is the conservative, conventional suits that rule, no ifs no buts no maybes, and to be honest I see them as deviant, is there any midway between.

Well I guess common ground can be found but I am not sure enough could be found for either of our points of views to meet in a real meeting of minds but I am not completely set in my ways, my views can be changed because I know that I don’t have the answer for everything and that is what makes me normal, well normal is a wide kind of a label but it is the word that comes to mind.  Deviant is a loaded word that carries a lot of baggage, and as I have written before when we label people it is so much easier to denigrate, ignore and debunk their beliefs.  In reality that is an approach that is used so that people do not have to engage with their own issues, they cannot admit to being wrong about one thing in theory life because that may mean their whole world view could be challenged.

I am not writing here of people that like or don’t like Paul Henry or Mike Hoskings or Julia Christie.  I am talking of people who in the face of overwhelming evidence will deny there is a problem, like bullying, deviance starts at the very top of our country, parliament.  Politicians deny things that are so glaringly obvious that it beggars belief.  If I had such an aversion to the truth I would probably be locked up in a mental hospital and labeled deviant, yet politicians get away with it, go figure. So I guess the way I look at it is deviance is contagious we catch it from politicians.

Remember for the little crazy they calls you deviant and lock you up, for the big crazy they call you Prime Minister and pay you lots of money,

yours in craziness,

Paul