A Tale of One City

This is a tale of a city that outlived its usefulness.

The problem for the city was it sat at the centre of a region with vast natural resources that the central government wanted to exploit. There was considerable and varied local opposition to this largely because of the effects on the environment.

This was a wealthy city which had developed as a light industrial hub for the traditional rural economy of a wealthy region. Clever manipulation of national laws aimed at privatising the public sector had enabled the local government to maintain effective control of much of its assets. But the concentration of population and wealth was seen an obstacle to the Government’s plans to exploit the region’s natural resources, and to sell off the city’s assets.

The Government’s first move was to declare the elected Regional Authority to be incompetent and to install commissioners selected by, and answerable to, it. The region’s elected Mayors, organised by the City’s Mayor, all actively collaborated with this.

The government’s next move was to support the re-election of those city and district mayors who would work with them in the exploitation of the region’s natural resources.

Plans were well under way when nature stepped in and gave the Government a helping hand in the form of natural disaster. The shock of this disaster, and an effective PR machine, ensured the election of government-friendly mayors right across the region. More importantly, it gave the Government the justification for creating even more swingeing legal powers.

A second, even more catastrophic disaster, resulted in the Government creating an overarching authority run by people selected by them – which had complete power to do whatever the government deemed necessary. The powers given to the central government and bureaucrats were unprecedented in peacetime.

The city’s re-elected Mayor proved to be a very popular figure in the aftermath of the disaster and was very useful to the Government in managing the public response to it, but he too was to outlive his usefulness. He continued to work in the way he always had, doing deals behind closed doors and colluding with the CEO to reduce the effectiveness of the council.

The Mayor’s power base in the city council began to be challenged by a group of councillors who attacked the way the council was being run. The dissidents presented themselves as champions of the people whilst, probably unknowingly, actually doing the work of the Government. The Council split into two opposing camps.

The local press started a campaign which seemed to be about demanding greater accountability and democracy but which had the effect of further undermining local confidence, not just in the Mayor and CEO, but the whole council.

Even with a mayor and councillors who were prepared to stand up to the government, the Council would have struggled to represent the people of the city and stop the plundering of the city’s and the region’s assets. In the political and managerial void left by the increasingly dysfunctional council and CEO, the Government’s new Authority rapidly expanded its role.

And then came the proverbial straw – an action by the Mayor and his supporters that outraged his opponents and, when it became public, also outraged the population of the city. People had had enough and many disparate interests coalesced around the understanding that, while this Mayor and CEO were in charge, their city was never going to be rebuilt into a vibrant modern version of what had been destroyed.

The calls for the sacking of the CEO and Mayor began. Normally compliant and conservative city dwellers flooded the local media with their angry views and began to stage protests. Councillors who had approved the action that had sparked the outrage called for the dissolution of the Council and blamed the dissident Councillors for the mess.

The Mayor, despite having colluded with the sacking of the democratically elected regional authority, put on his grave, pro-democracy face and warned the population to be careful what they wished for.

The CEO, who had always stayed out of the media limelight for the very good reason that he was PR-challenged, tried to make amends and made matters worse.

The government appointed a single observer and claimed not to be interested in the dissolution of the Council, unless it had no alternative.

Central to the Government’s long-term plan was the depopulation of large areas of the city and key satellite towns. These happened to be the areas occupied by people likely to be troublesome to the government’s plans for the region. The effects of this diaspora had already been felt in the national elections. Many people had been left to camp out in their ruined homes and neighbourhoods for months before the government declared swathes of the city as uninhabitable. The months of anxiety, inactivity and uncertainty were followed by offers for resettlement that appeared to be fair and generous but which actually made it impossible for many people to stay.

This was a forced resettlement. On the surface people were given a choice – the government appeared to be generous by offering to buy people’s homes and land from them but, leaving the development of new land to the market resulted in a free for all – and land, rents and building prices sky rocketed. 

Many people found that they had to increase their mortgages to afford to replace like with like. Others, unable to afford larger mortgages or refused loans, had to downsize – or ended up renting or were forced to leave town.

The Government’s writing off the land also gave the insurers an out. They not only saved money on some payouts but they avoided future liability by the Government forcing large numbers of people away from a region that was deemed no longer worth the risk of insuring. 

And behind these actions lurked the spectre of bigger commercial interests, the exploitation of the region’s water and oil resources.

A government of the people, for the people, by the people would have stood up to the insurers and forced the insurers to meet their legal and ethical obligations.

It would have purchased land and created new subdivisions and sold them at prices that enabled people to replace what they had lost.

It would have leased land on 999 year leases and given the freehold titles to the Council or community housing associations.

 It would have assisted in relocating whole communities that wanted to stay together.

It would have invested in land remediation leaving only those areas which should never have been built on to be turned into nature reserves and parks.

It would have given people security and choice by buying the mutual insurance company it had already underwritten, merged it with its own earthquake insurance bureaucracy and created a state insurance option for domestic dwellings and local and central government infrastructure.

And it would have more wisely and circumspectly managed the vast reserves of taxpayers’ money that had been built up over decades in the national disaster fund.

But, this was a government of big business, by big business, for big business. It not so much got into bed with the insurance industry, as bought the best bed on the market, made it up with fine linen and a goose down duvet, tucked the industry in, made it a mug of milo and read it a bedtime story.

What happened to the city? Well, it ended up less than two-thirds of its original size. Its political structure had changed forever and much opposition to the government was wiped out as formerly cohesive and well-organised communities were fragmented and dispersed.

Go there today and it’s a pretty sad place. The city centre still has great gaping holes where buildings once stood because there’s no incentive to build. Vast swathes of its suburbs are weed-ridden wastelands.

The region’s once glorious rivers and waterways are polluted and depleted by the intensive agriculture that exists solely to feed an increasingly unsustainable international neutraceuticals industry.

Its resources are being exported and the promised wealth has not trickled down to the populace although some have become even richer and retreated further into the safe confines of their gated communities or moved north.

No doubt I’ll be labelled a conspiracy nut or accused of being unhelpfully negative and pessimistic by painting this picture of Canterbury but I think that the people of this region need to wake up and smell the fertiliser because this is what has been and is being done to our region.

We do not have a vote in local regional democracy until 2013; in all likelihood the people of Christchurch soon will not have a say in the running of their city as it may be a matter of time before the CCC is dismantled. Every action and inaction of the council combined with the low public profile and high pay of its CEO are more nails in the coffin of local democracy.

Local councillors were powerless enough before – they are seen as a waste of public money now. The wealth of Christchurch and Canterbury as a whole is about to be sold off to the private sector, not to rebuild the city and region, but to be milked for as much short-term profit as can be extracted from it.

I do not believe that this government has any loyalty to Canterbury. It doesn’t want a big, bold, wealthy city guarding and drawing on the natural resources of the Canterbury plains and seabed.

It wants to sell the best stuff to its mates  – the people in whose interests it governs, which – let’s face it – isn’t ordinary folk. Some will profit – the vast majority will not. In fact, an awful lot of us will be impoverished, left further in thrall to the banks and/or forced to relocate from the city and region we call home.

I have a big emotional investment in Canterbury – I never knew how much until I saw it threatened. And I’m not talking about the threat of the 9000 or so earthquakes since September 201, I’m talking about the political and economic quakes. They’re what will destroy NZ’s second city and take most of the Canterbury we knew with it.

Racism

“I wouldn’t feel comfortable… like all Pakehas would be happy with their daughter coming home with a Maori boy? The answer is they wouldn’t.”

What struck me about this statement when it was first made was the patriarchal prejudice that who might impregnate your daughter is more important than who your son might impregnate. Who your son marries may be a different matter of course.

But I was more interested in the fact that Hone Harawira’s statement and the "white M-F’ers" quote, (written in a private email and published without his knowledge or consent) were widely cited on public fora as a counterbalance to racial remarks made by several white commentators.

Harawira may have meant what he said or he may have been winding people up by recycling a common Pakeha prejudice. Whatever his intention, it resulted in him being accused of being racist and to the simplistically, and to the ideologically minded, "Māori racism" cancels out "white racism".

We humans are intensely social animals with very distinctive faces and an extraordinary ability to recognise subtle difference in facial and body gestures. We devote a large amount of our brain to deciphering and storing visual information about other humans.

In the course of our social evolution we have developed such widely differing cultures that the members of those cultures can find it hard to understand each other and not just in terms of speech.

But, you only have to look at the babies and very small children of all cultures and classes – to see the indicators of a common heritage. Tiny tots are never racist or snobs. That’s acquired; learned for the most part from their parents.

Recognition and wariness of difference or a preference for those who are the same as you, does not necessarily mean you are racist.

Racism is commonly defined as prejudice or unfair discrimination based on race. For that definition to mean anything there has to be an underlying acceptance of the idea that there are distinct "human races", the members of which possess definable attributes and characteristics.

This is the basis of the broad, quasi-scientific categories of Australoid, Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid. There is a complex debate about the extent to which there may be definable "racial" differences but racism is not about any actual differences, it is about relative superiority and inferiority.

The origins of racism lie in the misappropriation of Darwin’s ideas about evolution to create a "scientific" basis for the superiority of the white skinned peoples of the world – and the English speaking white peoples in particular.

If humans evolved from ape-like ancestors any humans who, because of the shape of their skull or colour of their skin were closer to that ancestor, were deemed to be not as highly evolved.

These ideas, which reached their peak at the height of Britain’s imperial expansion, proved to be useful in legitimating colonialism and assuaging guilt over slavery.

The horrors of the early African slave trade had not required an ideological mask largely because the lives of the ordinary European sailors, labourers and paupers were not so far removed from those of the slaves, ie they experienced a lesser degree of exploitation and brutality and had only nominal freedom.

But science and the rise of an educated middle class demanded a more sophisticated justification for such a brutal and cruel economic exploitation, and for the processes involved in annexing other people’s countries.

The answer lay in the twin hierarchies of race and social class, helped along by notions of male supremacy.

Colonisation was said to have brought the benefits of white (superior) civilisation to the dark (inferior) races; just as industrial capitalism brought benefits to the (inferior)  labouring classes.

Thus a natural curiosity about or even wariness towards those who don’t look or act the same as us, morphed into beliefs about "racial" superiority and inferiority that were used to justify brutal economic exploitation, enslavement and genocide – and still are.

That brutality in turn was justified as being the result of "human nature".

But this didn’t and doesn’t happen simply because of human nature. It’s as much human nature to be inclusive, cooperative and compassionate, as it is to be exclusive, uncaring and harshly competitive.

Racism as an ideology serves a definite function; it divides – and to divide is necessary in order to conquer and rule.

I get very concerned about the overuse of the term "racism" – because the application of it to any and all prejudiced views or conduct risks emptying it of all political meaning.

The fact is, we all discriminate; every waking moment we make choices about how to act that are based on perceptions of difference. We also all prejudge, i.e., we arrive at conclusions based on incomplete or biased evidence – very often what someone in a position of authority has told us is true.

Sometimes those processes of discrimination and prejudgement result in outcomes that are good ones for us and not harmful to others; but sometimes they result in unjust attitudes and conduct towards others.

There are those for whom it is advantageous that people take decisions based on biased or incomplete information. A most potent element of this ideological strategy is the creation and promulgation of negative stereotypes based on exaggerated difference, and the counterposing of those against equally exaggerated positive stereotypes.

If those stereotypes gain added legitimacy through an appeal to religion or science or by tapping into real concerns and fears, their ability to increase prejudice and to foment division is enhanced.

The fact that many societies place a social premium on lighter toned skin is often cited as evidence that colour prejudice is both universal and natural. But the origin of this isn‘t "racism" but social class.

The labouring classes or castes had weathered skin. Only those who had others to labour for them could keep the soft, paler, clean skins they were born with. Thus a paler, soft skin on the face and hands was and remains the most potent symbol of privilege, marking out the owner of it as a person who does not have to labour.

The Chinese fetish of tiny bound feet had a parallel in the Victorian fetish of tiny corseted waists. Exaggerated fashions such as sleeves that hang down over the hands, extremely high heels, very long fingernails were (and are) social markers sending out the message that this is a person who does not labour – either at all, or at least, not by hand.

The seeds of social Darwinism’s racial hierarchy fell on very fertile soil.

Martin Van Beynen (Press, Oct 16) argued that Paul Henry was not being racist because he did not overtly promote the superiority of one race over another.

But, as a current affairs presenter, Henry’s personal prejudices are combined with a considerable power to influence public opinion. That combination of race-based prejudice and the power to influence others took his statements into the realms of racism.

The same applies to Tony Veitch’s statement about Serena Williams, to Paul Holmes’ labelling of the UN General Secretary as a "cheeky darky", and to Michael Laws’ steady stream of prejudice. We all know that the "feral underclass" is code for brown-skinned people.

Racism needs to be viewed as the combination of negative prejudices based on skin colour or social or cultural attributes, and unfairly discriminatory acts that gain legitimacy through the exercise of social, political, economic or military power.

That was, and largely remains, a European phenomenon but it is not inherent to Europeans. Does the ruling class in China, in its pursuit of the wealth of Africa, have a greater regard for the African people than the Englishmen who grew rich on the slave trade?

This is where Hone Harawira needs to be careful. He may have very good reasons, historical and contemporary, personal and cultural, for feeling antipathy to white New Zealanders. But the moment he generalises the conduct and characteristics of some white New Zealanders to all white New Zealanders and uses his political power to add weight to his words, he enters that arena where personal prejudice becomes racism.

However his power to influence is arguably way less than that of the white majority.

To understand why the words "nigger" or "black Mfer" in the mouth of a white person has more power than the words "honky" or "white MFers" in the mouth of a black or brown person, you only need to look at which continent is still being pillaged, what peoples are still at the bottom the world’s hierarchy of power and privilege.

In the vicious, divisive and cruel hierarchy of colour, white still trumps everything, yellow trumps brown – and yes, sometimes brown trumps black.

Africa – the cradle of human kind, whose peoples’ forced labour laid the foundations of industrial capitalism and the Europeans’ world dominance, is the richest continent with the poorest people.

And that’s the context in which remarks like Henry’s and co have to be put.

Bin Laden

Katherine Gillard (Press, Friday May 6th) called Osama bin Laden a "murderous coward" and cited the initial reports of him having hidden behind a woman. As any good spin doctor knows, even if proven to be incorrect subsequently, this is the image most people will retain – the man who sent young men to die for his cause, using one his wives as a human shield.

I don’t really care that bin Laden was assassinated by an American hit squad. I don’t care about any men of violence – especially those who stay safe in their places of worship or their corporate HQs or seats of government and send young men and women out to die.

The differences between the men who control the biggest military force in the world and men like bin Laden are a matter of ideology and degree. Each would have us believe they are defending all that is good and true and each are at great pains to hide the essential truth – their own calculating self-interest.

Contrary to spin doctrine, fanatics don't all pray in mosques nor are all those who pray in mosques, fanatics. Most who pray in mosques are decent people who want nothing more than to bring their children up in peace and prosperity – and there are many who pray in churches who ignore the important elements of Jesus' teaching.

When it suits, they take up the intellectually and morally undemanding "eye for an eye" credo, replacing gentle Jesus meek and mild with the Old Testament God – fear-inducing, misogynistic, capricious, blood thirsty and above all, vengeful.

And, when people choose to believe they are made in that image, there are no limits to their hatred of difference and capacity for cruelty, violence and vindictiveness.

The poll on Telecom’s Xtra website on May 7th asked if bin Laden should have been caught and brought to trial. The responses – written in the typical schlock Xtra style were : "Yes – everyone’s entitled to a fair trial"; "No – killers shouldn’t have rights"; and, "Not sure”.

At the time of writing this, 70% of respondents had replied "No – killers shouldn’t have rights". 

Now, it has to be said that the Yahoo!Xtra website poll can be depended upon for producing a hefty majority on the politically Right side of most issues – which, from my perspective, is usually the wrong side.

Often the poll outcome is influenced by the way both questions and responses are phrased as well as the way the site presents its stories, which it gives prominence to, how it headlines them, and which it allows comment on. I

However, it must also be, in part, a reflection of the people who subscribe to Xtra, and a disturbing number seem to be full of rage and hatred. This is confirmed by the calibre and content of the comments on some stories.

A suggestion that Hone Harawira be gagged by "shoving a grenade down his throat" is not atypical. Xtra fuels this nonsense with headlines such as "Hone opens his big mouth again." This headline was a link to a blog – usually full of trite nonsense or the voices of unreason.

“So-called justice system, lunatics running the asylum, low-life, mockery, mamby-pamby (sic) criminal lovers, bunch of academics and bureaucrats, spineless politicians, liberal ideology, politically correct nonsense, do-gooders, politically correct sham.”

No prizes for guessing which sensible guardian of law and order wrote a rant containing all the above. It was of course that flag bearer of the Right, Garth McVicar, self-annointed champion of law and order brigade, and disciple of Sheriff Jo Arpaio.

The belief that killers – or even all criminals – shouldn’t have rights is worrying; the point of a trial is to establish guilt or innocence beyond reasonable doubt and to determine an appropriate punishment. Dispense with that and we are no better than those our governments gun down in the name of freedom. Even Nazi mass murderers were brought to trial.

But let’s face it – the belief isn’t really that killers per se shouldn’t have rights – it’s just certain killers. The questions of which people deserve summary execution, and who decides and who carries out the executions are ignored because the way through such difficult questions simply cannot be found with a zealot’s moral compass.

His execution may have saved the Obama presidency but that has been at the cost of making bin Laden a martyr and fuelling fanaticism. It paves the way to war.

The USA storms around the world launching military actions in other sovereign states and kidnapping the citizens of other countries – all in defence of democracy. It is of course acting in the defence of the US industrial-military complex and international finance capital. Any spin-off benefits to some of the world’s peoples are incidental and could be withdrawn at any time. Try voting in the wrong sort of government and a lot of us could easily slip from being the privileged recipients of fringe benefits to being hapless victims of collateral damage.

However much it protests after the fact that it was done in the name of freedom and democracy, every illegal action by a state undermines its credibility. It corrupts and erodes the very things it is supposed to protect.

Because we may never know what bin Laden’s crimes actually were, the spin doctors on both sides can now have a field day whipping up different forms of jingoism with those old tried and true fervour-raising agents – mindless patriotism and its boon companion, fear and hatred of others. 

I repeat that I don’t care that bin Laden died a violent death, and I feel the same about all men who unleash destruction on innocents from a distance and call it collateral damage, but the current hypocrisy and triumphalism are sickening.

Those who are busy whooping should be aware that a moral high ground constructed by spin doctors is about as stable as the ground beneath Christchurch and no place to build a future.

You know you're extremely right-wing if...

(With apologies to the originators of the "redneck jokes" I hijacked..)


You know you're extremely right-wing if ....

You get off on the idea of people being tortured but cry about a dog being beaten – unless it's by you.

You support taxation only when it's used for arming the police and building roads.

You read about a murder and your first reaction is to want to do worse to the killer.

You line up outside courthouses in high profile trials and hit the van carrying the defendant.

You skip logic in an argument and go straight to verbal abuse.

You skip verbal abuse and go straight to kicking the crap out of your opponent or cheering when one of your meaner mates does.

You read about the practice of selling postcards of lynchings in the US and wonder where you can buy some for Xmas cards.

You think calling black people "monkeys" is a term of endearment.

You think dropping the atom bomb on Japan was justified.

You think people of mixed race are half-white when they are world class in something, half black when they are not, and all black when they are criminals.

You think the theory of relativity has something to do with inbreeding.

You think "potsmokingdolebludger" is one word.

You think cyclists who are killed by cars shouldn't have been on the road because they don't pay road tax.

You see no inherent contradiction in using the term "do-gooder" as an insult.

You use the word "mongrel" at least 30 times a day.

"Half-caste" to you always means "half black".

You think someone's an intellectual if they know the difference between "their" and "there".

You use the term "political correctness" as an insult at least thirty times a day but have absolutely no idea what it means.

You used to think the term '"feral underclass'"meant a wild cat under a schoolroom, but now you know that it's right-wing code for brown people.

Your gene pool doesn’t have a deep end.

You used to think that genitalia was the name of an Italian airline.

You still think genitalia is the name of an Italian airline.

You think that the war dead really are "glorious".

Your idea of a political debate is to see how many personal insults you can pack into a single sentence.

You think "agit prop" is an obnoxious rugby player.

You think clear felling tropical forest is a good thing because it means you can afford to extend your deck.

You support the right of a porn salesman to promote his sleazy products with public parades of semi naked women on motor bikes but you want to castrate rapists and lynch paedophiles..

Your sense of humour rarely clambers out of sexual innuendo but you despise "perverts". 

You think the demand to "use a bullet on the scumbags" is way too liberal.

You find it hard to construct a sentence without the word "scumbag" in it.

You want to zap, shoot, flog, hang violent criminals and preserve the right to beat your kids.

You see no connection between the two attitudes or your persistent feelings of incipient rage.

You always use hyphenated words like do-gooder, bleeding-heart, liberal-leftie, touchy-feely, namby-pamby, wishy-washy, tree-hugger, feral-feminist when describing the political opposition.

You think Martin Doutre is an internationally renowned scholar and that holocaust deniers are victims of a touchy-feely, namby-pamby, do-gooder, wishy-washy, tree-hugging, feral-feminist, liberal-left conspiracy.

The A list

We can all sleep sounder now we know who are Canterbury's fifty most influential people – the Power A-Listers or PALs.

These sort of lists fall risk slipping into the category of junk journalism. They are as much about who isn't on them as who is, and say a lot about the priorities and values of the compilers.

We're constantly bombarded with lists of the most beautiful / sexy / wealthy / well-dressed or whatever, and despite trying hard not to, I couldn't resist doing an analysis of our home-grown "movers and shakers".

These human earthquakes are almost exclusively white, mostly male and (judging from photos and biographical details) are in, or heading towards the older demographic.

In fact, there's only one person under 30.

Three quarters are male and all, bar one, are Pakeha. (I was also guided by biographical details and photos in arriving at this figure.)

Of the female PALs, 11 are involved in politics, the arts, education or health. The twelfth is a former maker of public policy who is now a consultant on public policy.

There are two current and one former National MPs; one former and one current Labour MPs, and one former Christchurch Mayor turned "environmental entrepreneur". 

Three are married to prominent businessmen a fact which no doubt helps in carrying out the charitable works which affords them their PAL status. The Arts especially benefit from PALs with time on their well manicured hands.

National heads the overall party PALitics list with a total of four current and three former MPs.

Education makes a very good showing – well, that bit of it which deals with people over the age of 18. Of the six education A-Listers, five are men and four are involved in the tertiary sector.

Both in terms of secondary schools attended by PALs and the two princiPALs on the list, Canterbury's old boy network is – as you'd expect – well represented.

Clearly the days when the leaders of student politics were significant are long gone, but I cannot see why no one from primary and early years' education figures.

There's only one churchman – the vicar of a suburban church and an outspoken supporter of the conservative Anglican Latimer Fellowship.

The sole media figure on the list is the editor who commissioned the list and who sees his newspaper as setting the City's agenda – to some measure one assumes, by publishing the list.

There are no practising doctors or nurses – the health sector PALs are both managers. Why am I not surprised?

There is no one from the labour movement unless you count the Labour MP who was a union lawyer. So, no surprises there either.

There are no specific representatives from the older population – unless you consider that is covered by the average age of the members of the list. However, given the socio-economic location of the PALs relative to the bulk of the older population, that may be an assumption too far.

The two PALs from within the criminal justice system are the tough-on-crime top cop and the elegantly attired crown prosecutor. There are no human rights advocates or prominent defence lawyers.

In the green corner we have an entrepreneur, the Chairman of ECan, and a wealthy patroness. So if you are concerned for the future of Canterbury's environment, you have every right to be.

In the "business" sector which, predictably, leads the table in terms of numbers, Christchurch City Council is far and away the most influential organisation.

There's the Mayor, the CEO of the council, the Chairman and Chief Executive of the Council's commercial arm, Christchurch City Holdings Ltd, and the Chief Executive of VBase, which manages the Council's property portfolio.

Given the Council's majority stake in the Airport, Orion and Lyttelton Port, the inclusion of the CEOs of those three organisations makes the CCC federation pretty formidable.

As an aside, given the commercial arms are managed by boards and CEOs, there's no education or social services to manage and no large scale housing – how does CCC justify paying its CEO more than the PM?

In addition to the heavy hitters from CCC Inc there are three heads of state-owned or former state-owned enterprises, three notables from the finance sector, two from retail and one each from insurance, recruitment, real estate and property.

And – ONE who heads up a company that actually makes things.

That brings me to the forty also-rans – the sixteen women and twenty-four men who are listed as examples of the social cement which holds the city together. They are granted the irritating title of "Community Hero", but let's face it – they are the B-listers.

However, their efforts are pretty important for the PALs because if you move and shake something that isn't stable, it might well fall to pieces.

Most of the B-listers run a heroic business or work in a heroic job; others (the true heroes in my book) volunteer in various community projects.

One panellist (rather naively) suggested that this is not a "rich list" but is about "influence and outcome".

Hmm. The fact that there are so many B-listers beavering away among the physically, intellectually, economically, generationally disadvantaged in our city does raise the question of how effective the PAL's influence is and how good their outcomes can be said to be.

"Kill violent people, bring back capital punishment"

Now that we have a "centre, yeah right" government committed to considering ACT's "three strikes and you're in for life" policy for violent offenders, maybe Garth McVicar will reissue his call for Arizona-style army surplus tent prisons.

Perhaps we'll see more bumper stickers like those produced by Carterton's Mayor, Gary McPhee -– "Kill violent people, bring back capital punishment".

McPhee either has a great sense of humour or was blissfully unaware of the irony. He said at the time that it's not the American justice system he wants to copy but China's – i.e., where there are sixty-eight capital crimes, over half of which are non-violent offences. He also said NZ had moved too far to the political Left, so will John Key's soft-focus coalition go far enough to the Right to satisfy the law and order brigade?

A while back, a circular email was extolling the virtues of tent prisons introduced by Sherriff Joe Arpaio in Maricopa County, Arizona. Lo and behold, a Fox News item appeared on NZ television over the holidays which reported on Arpaio's latest tactic – a reality game show aimed at luring criminals out of hiding with the promise of fame and fortune.

It's not surprising that Arizona, the US state with most people on death row, should have spawned a law enforcement officer like Arpaio. An Irish judge said of him that "he gloated over the inhumane treatment he dishes out to his inmates", and "appeared to take a chillingly sadistic pleasure in his role as incarcerator."

Arpaio forces prisoners to wear pink underwear, allegedly to prevent theft. He's even extended his "pink" theme into handcuffs. As a sideline, he flogs these items off to his adoring fans. Like his real estate deals, Arpaio's sale of these "collectables" has been the subject of legal scrutiny.

He's an enthusiastic advocate of a "restraint chair" the use of which has been condemned by Amnesty International and in which one remand prisoner died and a paraplegic's neck was broken.

The black and white striped pyjamas that members of his chain gangs (for men, women and juveniles) are required to wear are uncomfortably reminiscent of those worn by Nazi concentration camp inmates.

And then there are his army surplus tent prisons which Sensible Sentencing Trust spokesperson McVicar wants to see in NZ. In Arizona, the temperatures in these tents can reach 150 degrees F – hot enough to cause brain damage or death – not that Arpaio would lose any sleep over that possibility.

As another way of "saving taxpayers' dollars", he limits prisoners' meals to two a day at a cost of around US30c. He denies them coffee and salt; the former, because he claims it causes violence and the latter, because it saves around US$20k a year. Given the body's need for salt in extreme temperatures, it might actually be in the hope that some prisoners will die and save even more tax dollars. Given he serves out of date, oxidized food, death by diet in Arpaio's jails is not a remote possibility.

To put Arpaio's workhouse-style parsimony into perspective, lawsuits have cost Maricopa County over $40 million in settlement claims so far during Arpaio's tenure. Many other law suits are pending, and he's also facing a class-action lawsuit for violation of constitutional rights brought by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of remand prisoners.

Some people argue that his excesses are worthwhile because he has reduced crime but there is no evidence that his policies do anything of the sort. This Hero of the Right has been responsible for the deaths in custody of a mentally handicapped man, a blind man, and a drug addict who was in withdrawal and suffering delusions. His officers' use of a restraint chair resulted in a wheelchair bound paraplegic losing the use of his arms. The man was restrained because he demanded a catheter; he'd been arrested for possessing a gram of cannabis and calling an Irish bar owner an "Englishman".

The crimes of the others are as revealing. The blind man was serving six months for shoplifting; the mentally handicapped man was arrested for loitering; the drug addict was arrested for a minor assault on a police officer.  No doubt the crimes of the desperados netted in his TV sting operation are unlikely to fall into the category of the "most wanted".

But, enough of this nasty little man. Should we do as our own champions of law and order, McVicar and MacPhee suggest, i.e., introduce tent prisons and bring back the death penalty?

Whilst there are some criminals (and people whose money and power mean they never get labeled as such) who I'd be happy to see towed way out to sea in a leaky boat with no oars, my thirst for vengeance is always eased by the thought of an innocent person facing death at the hands of the state.  And it is slaked completely when I consider the implications of the socioeconomic and ethnic profiles of the prison population – in both Arizona and Aotearoa-New Zealand.

Of all executions carried out in the USA between 1930-1968, 1,751 of the inmates were white and 2,066 were black. Black people comprised around 6% of the general population but 53% of those executed for capital crimes. Even more chilling is the fact that, of the 453 executed on the bar a rape conviction, 48 were white and 405 were black.

These statistics speak both to race and class and should speak to us if we contemplate learning lessons from the likes of Arpaio and his supporters.

NZ already has an appallingly high incarceration rate and half the prison population is Maori. If you are poor and/or brown in Godzone you are more likely to be arrested, charged with a more serious crime, found guilty and receive a heavier sentence than if you are white and/or affluent. This is a reality that the law and order brigade may be content to ignore or consider to be justifiable. I do not.

A town by any other name ...

Recently I overheard a woman in a shop in Rangiora loudly declaiming about the use of flaxes to replace herbaceous borders in public gardens. She was bemoaning the mindset that leads to this and other "PC madness" such as Māori street names which English immigrants can't pronounce.

I asked her if she thought the town's name should be changed.

'Yes' she stated firmly, 'to something English'.

She was then distracted by the mental effort of having to enter her pin number so I wasn't able to suggest some English town names more in keeping with her mindset such as Nasty, Dull, Ugley or, especially apposite in her case, Pratt's Bottom.

This encounter reminded me of a column by Rosemary McLeod last year in which she wrote of her dislike of harakeke and wharariki - New Zealand flaxes – and her love of roses and all they symbolise. Well, with a name like hers who wouldn't love roses?

Perhaps, the woman in Rangiora also hankers for a simpler, whiter time when there was civic pride, band rotundas, and a small army of gardeners to maintain the perfect lawns and formal plantings which spoke to some of "home" – and "home" was – well, not here.

The flax versus the rose is a semiotician's delight: the indigenous versus the exotic; the utilitarian versus the decorative; the authentic versus the artificial.

The native flax makes a sterling wind break; it feeds native birds, in the right setting it can be startlingly architectural, it is drought and flood tolerant, it more or less looks after itself and - it belongs here. I love it.

Roses on the other hand are about as unnatural and contrived as a plant can be and they are always trying to get back to what they were.

Hybridised roses are nutrient and water hungry, pest and disease prone and when they're not blooming, they're miserable looking things. Pick them and they drop their petals in protest –sometimes within minutes. A shower of rain and the blooms rot or let any one of our three prevailing winds blow and the petals fly off leaving stumps that have to be dead-headed.

If you don't prune them correctly, they produce multiple small flowers or shoot out green branches from the root stock. The older they get the worse the thorns are – they become like some newspaper columnists – all spiky and defensive.

Rose growers have to use an array of chemicals to control the white, green and black fly, black and brown spot and scale insects that beset the poor hybrid things. This chemical arsenal includes products like imidacloprid which, along with killing plant pests, also kills bees and lady birds, causes egg thinning in birds, is acutely toxic to earth worms, freshwater fish and crustaceans and causes thyroid problems in mammals.

While there are organic sprays and disease resistant plant varieties the fact remains – most of the chemicals that are put into the ecosystem in NZ are to keep wanted exotic plants alive or to kill unwanted exotic plant, insect and animal species.

I love the tangle of an English hedgerow but here, for the most part, the vast array of exotic weeds which festoon our hills and roadsides look fugly.

My house looks straight out at Maukatere – Mount Grey for those who don't know it by its original name – which is a lovely mountain despite all that's been done to it. There are a few tiny pockets of its original east coast beech forest left in gullies too steep for commercial planting but much of the mountain is a blighted landscape of pines and gorse. A few sad natives try to survive outside the gullies, and lupins do their best to brighten it up but mostly it's a miserable place.

I know that pre-European Māori did their own bit of species eradication but the scale and pace of European settlers' impact on this landscape in the 160 or so years of settlement is almost unparalleled. They set about deliberately trying to turn this unique group of islands into a little England.

Ironically, much of what was seen as quintessentially English was artificial. It featured plants imported from all over the world and hybridised by clever gardeners employed by land-grabbing men who became rich through the triangular trade.

The idealised 'English landscape' was a product of imperialism, and about as natural as a tea rose.

That's not to say it isn’t glorious – it is – but it's also hugely expensive to establish and to maintain. The formal garden, like the perfect lawn, is an artifice and a status symbol – for those individuals and societies with the time, money, water and space to indulge in it.

Maybe, in these cash-strapped times, those who hate the humble but hardy native trees, flaxes, and grasses, should volunteer to seed, pot up and plant out all the annuals, lift and divide the perennials, seed, feed, weed and mow the lawns; do the deheading, pruning, mulching and spraying to help maintain those blooming exotic emblems of empire.