Is Christopher Luxon a liar or deluded?

Will Luxon resign if rents don’t stop rising? No! What a crock of crap. What happened when Student allowance went up by 50.00 per week? https://www.stuff.co.nz/a/nz-news/350211394/pm-christopher-luxon-argues-renters-will-be-grateful-interest-deductibility?lid=m8nx4u1zsz2r&utm_source=newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=two_minutes_of_stuffLandlords almost universally lifted their rents when this happened. This is not a bash the Landlord post. Currently you can get 6.5% interest on fixed term, with first mortgage security on low risk investments. So Lets say I bought a rental for 800,000 k with a 400,000 deposit. That 400 k could earn me 26000.00 gross or 500.00 per week. If I wanted a 6.5%cash return on a 800,000.00 dollar home (1000.00 per week) I would need to be getting about 65000.00 per year in rent or 1250.00. I would be paying 2,606 per month over 60 years for the mortgage or interest only 2200.00. It is not the job of a commercial landlord to subsidise housing. The responsibility for the provision of affordable, safe, healthy housing lies at the feet of society via the State, the Church, NGOs or Charitable organisations. We as a society can afford to do this, we cannot afford the consequences of not doing so. We have seen these consequences From The mid 1970’s on, the initial instigators of this were in fact Labour and then National doubled down. This will only end when those who are most affected by this actually use their electoral power and vote in a Government that will deal with this. The biggest problem with Labour’s last term was squandering its electoral mandate on issues that actually would not have addressed the prime roots of poverty in our society and that is the cost of housing. This is not about higher wages or benefits it is about lower rents and an ability to buy property at an affordable price. Here endeth the lesson.

A Dollar In My Pocket

I was talking with someone today, they had pair of vintage dungarees accidentally disposed of. I know the back story and even helped trying to find such a pair. I understood, empathised and advised how to put it into perspective. I have lost some things in my life that at the time were quite devastating. It reminded me of how small things can seem huge.

I was off shopping for Christmas presents when I was 12. I had my own money I had saved, $8.00. I had a job where I got paid $1;00 per day for delivering groceries on a behemoth of a bicycle. On this day I had bought all the presents I needed and had one dollar left. I felt like a rich man, I reached into my pocket and out it fluttered, quickly scooped up by the person behind me whom when I asked for it back said “finders keepers”. I was devastated, I even went to the Police who said sorry sonny, no proof, can’t help. That was it. In the scheme of things it didn’t matter as I had bought everyone a present, the last $1.00 was going to possibly buy me an ice cream soda. Now why would I remember this 50 years later, even now as I think about it I remembered an earlier loss of a coping saw, brand new and left on a bus. Another incident occurred the week of my first wedding (I know married more than once the loss in that is a whole nother story). I was in town to pick up the suits. I got to the shop and reached into my pocket for the $60:00 and it was gone, I rushed off to backtrack my steps but came back empty-handed, the proprietor said I see you have a cheque book sir, I said yeah but not the money in it to pay for the suits, he said post date it for two weeks and then we will worry about it then. Although I was relieved and thankful the fact that it has stuck in my memory indicates to me that it was a significant blow.

I have yet to work out why some of my most embarrassing, hurtful and frustrating moments seem to be indelibly scorched into my memory. Sure there are moments of triumph and wonder that still reside there. Perhaps I will do some reading about it as I think it is an important factor and can bog us down or leave us stuck when what is essentially a moment in time can impact us in a big way yet the thing is really trivial. I know it didn’t seem trivial then and everything needs perspective however the biggest perspective is that we come into this world with nothing and we take with us out of this world nothing material.

I have a judeo-christian set of beliefs about this life however my beliefs about the next are pan, that is they will pan out in the end. In many ways it is not about what we lose in this life it is about what we leave behind. What is our legacy? What memories do we leave behind for others? What impact on others do we leave behind? It is those things that really matter. I am not talking about money here, I am talking about things that help lives change. It is those moments that cancel out feelings of loss. Looking back and seeing the impact on others, (sometimes we will never see that impact).

Psychologist Julius Segal, in looking at what helps children overcome adversity, wrote that “one factor turns out to be the presence in their lives of a charismatic adult — a person from whom they gather strength. And in a surprising number of cases, that person turns out to be a teacher”. Being an influence that overcomes the adversity of others is not limited to teaching we must remember that if we mourn the loss of $1:00 how much more we must celebrate the people in our lives who bring the gift of overcoming adversity. In doing so and realising this we need to be intentional in doing this in any way we can, whether it be small or large actions. We never know when the smallest act can make a difference.

With love

Paul

Moral dilemmas,

I have been through a few, some I have failed at, others well I have managed to stand true. I am fortunate, I have a place to live, food to eat, even some toys. I am living week to week at the moment but I still have choices and I can improve my lot.

Some time ago I bought a small boat, not a lot of money, however enough. I have been out fishing three times. I want to fish more but needed to make some adjustments. I am safety-wise, I have life jackets, VHF, cell phone, first aid, and fire extinguisher and I won’t go out of the Harbour at the moment as I lack the experience to go across the bar at Waihi Beach. I am a member of Coastguard and put in trip reports (p.s. you don’t need to be a Coastguard member to put in trip reports).

I decided I would get a backup motor, I had two I had bought cheap, and regretted it, hard to start, I scrapped them this week. So I bought a brand new motor. Unboxed it and was gobsmacked, instead of the 999.00 motor in the box there was a 1600.00 one. Now as far as the law is concerned it was mine, a contract had been entered into and money exchanged hands. It felt good for a little while and I found myself justifying keeping the motor. That was dilemma number 1, very shortly after dilemma number two appeared.

I decided I better register my boat trailer and get it legal. I checked the registration plate and it was listed as stolen. My heart fell to my boots, you see for me that’s a no-brainer. It doesn’t belong to me. I may have bought it but stolen is stolen! I had a small pity party then called the Police, took that which was mine off the boat and hitched it up to my car. At the same time, I reboxed the motor and put it into the back of my car. Law or no law my conscience couldn’t keep it. Times are tough and retailers cannot afford to lose 600.00. I took the boat to the Police and returned the motor.

I would love to tell you that I felt great but actually, I didn’t. The boat thing happened as I did not do a fundamental check and run the plate number through the system. If it wasn’t listed as stolen or a security registered against it I would have been covered via an insurance system. To be fair I had ignored my niggles, it was;t super cheap or anything, there was just a quiet voice and I was ignoring it as I didn’t want to lose any money.

The Police Constable said you could have kept this thrown away the number plate and sampling removed the plate number that was painted on. I said it comes down to this I call myself a follower of Christ (thank God for Grace as sometimes I am not that flash at it) I also believe in integrity then there are the other po (posts that inform ny life). My Family and friends. A house that has only three walls or posts is not very strong. In the end if I have nothing but God, Family, Integrity and Friends then that is enough, I am a rich man.

Well I got a call from the Police, the only stolen thing on my boat was the number plate, the boat was not listed as stolen and the trailer that the plate matched was not a boat trailer. Could I please come and pick it up from the lock-up. I felt good, but not vindicated. I didn’t see it as a reward for doing the right thing. I got the money back that I had put down on the motor, so I decided to wait for an auxiliary rather than buy the one I was going to. That money needed to go to help some people who are away from their families working. to support them and I am putting on a Christmas Lunch for them. Once again I don’t feel that I am good and I don’t expect any reward here’s why.

My reward in life comes from knowing that doing the right thing as an outworking of my faith is my reward. To maintain faith in a living and practical way that also demonstrates how faith should be is something that the church just doesn’t do very well. Many people try however for many others, they go to church on a Sunday, they may put some money in the plate and that’s it.

Here is the kicker. Times are really tough for a lot of people right now, New Zealanders from the middle to the bottom of the economic scale are being smacked around in every corner. I will talk about that in my next post,

Be Strong and steadfast,

Paul

Feb the 1st

Feb 1 has come and gone, Feb 1 was my mums birthday, I thought about her as I often do and wonder how things might have been different if she were alive today.  She has been gone 23 years now and whilst I still miss her it is nowhere near the intensity of when she first passed away.

Waiting for God

I have been corresponding with a friend of mine recently, her mum is seriously ill, hanging on to life by a thread, she has had a reasonable innings and also has cancer, so if her current illness doesn’t get her the cancer will.  She is waiting for God, I haven’t met her at all but from what I know she has had a full life

Bring On The Clowns.

I was reading a book this morning and it reflected that life was like a circus.  Well perhaps the author has seen my house on one of our chaotic days, joking aside I thought about the preposition and it had some merit.

Manopausal perhaps?

Actually I think that dress makes your bum look big said no man ever…. well possibly not ever.

Jars of Clay

I went to church tonight as I am want to do on occasion, yes Friday night anyway that is for another time.  the speaker was talking about the future and my mind flicked over to a poem I wrote, one of the first that I wrote, it is called Jars of Clay

Jars of Clay

Lumps of dirt,
sweated from the ground.
Pounded and minced.

Faking it, not me….

I am not so good at it these days. A whole lot of reasons really, sometimes I think I am just too old for that crap these days, but am I? I gave my children some money to spend on clothes the other day, not a whole lot but enough for a few things and then I did something I haven’t often done, I stood back and left them to it and they went and bought clothes. My daughter, a beautiful young woman bought herself a pair of boyfriend jeans, similar to these but with a few more rips and frays etc.  I remember once saying to myself as a friend bought some “pre stressed jeans” bloody hell, paying extra for half worn out s..t!

Well my only instructions to my children were to consider the season, we are going into winter and she did that, they were not shorts! Well my daughter proudly showed me her loot and produced these jeans and then asked me if I liked them, and like George Washington and not Bill Clinton I could not tell a lie and said I didn’t, she was devastated.

I was at pains to assure her that actually it didn’t matter what I thought as it was her choice but she was still disappointed. Now should I have said something different? Well so it is with my life. I can paint on a grin for a while but when things are not so flash it is not hard to read me. I was reminded of this the other day when a student was really concerned about me, I re-plastered my grin and said I was fine when on the inside I was far from that. Most people who know me are not that easily fooled.

I have been told before that I wear my heart on my sleeve and I guess I do in a lot of ways, I can be very professional and have had to be at times when dealing with trauma and damaged children, with dealing with offenders who are repugnant to me I have remained relatively dispassionate and nearly always professional, rapists, killers, pedophiles I have worked with them all. I have had friends who are racist and bigots, although these days most of them are gone by the wayside as I am want to be truthful with them.But if you know me then you will know, if you ask a straight question you will get a straight answer.If you ask me how I am I will tell you, it may be the edited version but it will be authentic. Sometimes it may be warts and all, and sometimes that is not so pretty. But like I say often, never ask a question that you do not want to hear the answer to.

I read this little piece in Relevant magazine a few weeks ago it said that “authenticity begins with acknowledging, rather than hiding, that we have shadows in our souls” In some ways I count the ability to be truthful with others as a burden because to be truthful to others is to be truthful to yourself first.   In doing so we face our own shadows, our imperfections, foibles and frailties. On a personal level, authenticity begins with acknowledging, rather than hiding, that we have shadows in our souls. http://www.relevantmagazine.com/god/practical-faith/there-such-thing-being-too-authentic#Oy126vbiR4rBh2oD.99

Often in reply to being asked how I am I say that God is good and his mercy is everlasting because I am a terrible sinner at times. I try to be authentic as much as I can, as a teacher when I read a piece of work I look for something to say that is encouraging and truthful like hey that’s great so much better than last week, here is what we have to do to improve it. You won’t get bullshit from me however, if it doesn’t meet the mark I will tell you whether you are a student, a boss, a politician, lover or friend. It is a risky business at times because there are many people who cannot handle authenticity because I think that it exposes the shadows in their own souls, for some they are shadows that have not seen the light ever or for a very long time, and people can be very afraid that should those shadows see light they may consume them and shake their worlds beyond that which they can handle. They often remain crippled by doubt and making the same mistakes in life and love over and over again, and yet I am told it is that authenticity which makes my writing compelling and interesting, a reader wrote to me that they felt almost like a voyeur reading my writing, almost like looking in my lounge window yet they felt drawn to read more.

 

So for me being authentic remains at my core, it drives my belief in family, friendship and love. It would be so much easier to be less authentic and I am sure that I have paid what at times seems to be a high cost for authenticity and I may be about to pay the price again as I grapple with decisions I need to make but I know this for sure that authenticity is that which gives me hope for the future, it enables me to have relationship at all and to look in the mirror. Authenticity gives me integrity and without integrity I am nothing merely dust on the soles of a dirty pair of shoes.

We have to dare to be ourselves, however frightening or strange that self may prove to be.”

With Aroha,

Paul

No White Flag (even though I may have sand in my shoes)!

Tihei mauri ora, if you have ever head a Maori orator speak you will be familiar with this phrase.  Loosely translated it means the breath of life, like the first sneeze that a baby has as it takes its first breath.  I have witnessed this first breath as I have also witnessed manawa kiore, or last breath.  The first of these two is a rare and wonderful privilege.  The second of these is quite different.  A rather strange subject you may think, first and last breaths? I was out for my walk tonight and took a brief sojourn through the old cemetery in our town, nothing more forlorn than a headstone saying nine days old.

It got me thinking, a little about life and death as I walked, and then two minutes later a car pulled up on the other side of the road, something was not quite right. Next minute there was loud shouting and cursing, a full on domestic in the car, I noted the registration, called the Police and decided it was time to intervene.  Just as I walked towards the car it drove off at speed.  My mind flashed back to the Woman in South Auckland and how she was calling for help and no one came.  In this case no one was calling for help.  I didn’t feel very vulnerable, I had a decent Maglite baton torch on me and I had called the Police already.   But in the end I did not have to do anything.  The Police are following up and I will probably never know the outcome of my decision not to mind my own business.

The thing was I made a decision. Indecision has been crippling me in some ways for the last year. I dropped the ball with weight and fitness under the stress of a pretty torrid personal situation, added to that is severe ongoing pain.  But I still could have made a decision.  I was listening to Dido last night and there were two songs that stood out to me, Sand in my shoes and White flag, both talking about a love lost, well that is not my narrative tonight, I don’t want to go down that road at this time, perhaps another night, but the theme that came through was no surrender.

It reaffirmed my decision around life in general.  If I live a life of quiet acceptance, crawl back into my shell, allow the weight I gained to stay and increase then I have gone down with my ship and waved the white flag.  I had lost my urge to write and the writers block seemed to be there except for the fact that I had not tried. I had made a couple of desultory attempts to  write a blog but I hadn’t sat down and hammered something out.  No poetry has fallen on to my slate for a long time apart from one small commissioned piece, but that has been a self imposed hiatus, (awaiting publication of my book) put on hold as other things took more priority .

The thing is this, we can become consumed by our battles in life, overwhelmed by the unfairness, the harshness, the lonely nights and the numbness of feeling alone.  Tiredness was eating at my heart and soul.  But doing nothing is not an option. You see doing nothing is an act of deviance it is the cruel mistress of mediocrity and I will not have that curse upon my lips or life. I am sure that sometimes I  will make the wrong decision and my hope and prayer is  that in doing so I don’t bring any hurt or harm and anyone else.

I can’t make any long term decisions at the moment and I guess that is kind of de-focussing and disappointing, but I can plan for the day, the week the year, beyond that who knows.  The awful reality is that none of us know what tomorrow brings us, we can organise our lives as much as we want, have our lawns manicured and our cupboards as tidy as we want but in the end things can change in an instant.