Val:

This ad sucks.  I changed it.  See if you can guess the change I made.

100% recyclable?  Sure,  if you can be bothered.  How about taking a reusable bottle and using the tap?  How about just not needing to have a drink every ten seconds?  Easy to twist?  This is a feature?  Since when was this a feature of things you buy?

“Help save the planet.”  Only arseholes could sell plastic throwaway water bottles and have that as their tag line.

Kiwi Blue Eco-Twist.  Kiwi?  Coca-Cola is Kiwi now?  Breathtaking.

I really don’t like telling people what to do… but, seriously, don’t buy bottled water.  It is so wrong, and so wasteful it should just be banned.

Final Score:

Val:

When I was first at uni Rage Against the Machine released their first album.  It had Killing in the Name Of, and Wake Up on it.  When I went to the flat of a (then) communist friend he played me Bombtrack.  At the time I tended just to play those three tracks on the album and nothing else, but I later realised that the whole album was awesome.  Know Your Enemy, Take the Power Back, Fistful of Steel… it’s just non-stop, incinerating rage.  Some fantastic lyrics on that album: (1)  Just victims of the in house drive by; they say jump you say “how high?”  (2) You know they went after King when he spoke out on Vietnam.  He turned the power to the have-nots
and then came the shot,  (3) Landlords and power whores / On my people they took turns / Dispute the suits I ignite / And then watch ‘em burn.

I used to tell people that Killing in the Name Of was what testosterone sounded like.  Nothing could make a middle class white man in nerdy glasses  want to thrash around his living room more than a RATM song.  20 something years later that album is one of the few from the 90s that I still listen to all the time, and still love.  Nirvana, Pearl Jam and all that – not so much – RATM’s album on the other hand really has not aged.  It still sounds f*&king pissed off at the state of the world, and still sounds like it will incite the next revolution any second.  Probably because when it comes to righteous fury not much has changed about complacent white men in suits in well-feathered nests at the top: still a deserving target, and still in charge.

Before grunge I listened to bands like Guns’n'Roses.  I loved the hardness of their sound (this is before the Use Your Illusion garbage), and the darkness of songs like Welcome to the Jungle, but I was irritated by their stupidity and sexism.  If only, I thought, I could listen to the hard sound without all the boorish, macho posturing.  Which was why grunge was invented (as far as I was concerned).  It had the hard edge, it had emotion, and it had lyrics that were often about something other than green grass and the girls are pretty.  What RATM had was politics.  Grunge was almost anti-political and quite navel-gazing in its preoccupations.  RATM really was not gazing at its navel, it was more grabbing you by your scruff and shaking you out until you got a nose bleed.

Because their first album was so good, I didn’t buy Evil Empire in 1996.  I didn’t want the band I had put on a pedestal to have their image tarnished by what I assumed was going to be a disappointing second album.  It turns out that this was a mistake.  17 years after this bad  decision I bought Evil Empire and I can report that it is exactly as good as their first album.  Rage, it turned out, had not dimmed in the four years between albums. Evil Empire is blisteringly angry and contemptuous of the lies of power.

And so my favourite trick at the moment is to listen to Martin Luther King’s speech Time to Break Silence interspersed with tracks from RATM as I walk to work.  It puts me in the right frame of righteous anger to teach Social Studies.

A little watched Brando movie is Viva Zapata.  It was directed by Kazan (who also did Streetcar and Waterfront with Brando), and had a script written by Steinbeck.  It has one of my favourite Brando speeches in it.

This land is yours. But you must protect it. It won’t be yours long if you don’t protect it. If necessary, with your lives, and your children with their lives. Don’t discount your enemies. They will be back.  And if your house is burned, build it again.  If your corn is destroyed, replant.  If your children die, bear more.  If they drive you out of the valley, live on the mountain, but live. You always look for leaders, strong men without faults.  There aren’t any. There are only men like yourselves. They change. They desert. They die. There are no leaders but yourselves. A strong people is the only lasting strength.

Today we had a room full of people, with no leaders but themselves, perhaps 40 to 45 students, who came to the human rights meeting at lunchtime and wanted to take action for the rights of women in Egypt.  Today I watched a documentary with my students where they recreated the execution of Christ and instead of seeing him as a religious leader I saw him as a symbol of every political prisoner tortured and killed by an oppressive power whether it be Steve Biko or Juan Gerardi or whoever.

It is wrong to make protest illegal.  The peaceful protestor is a symbol of civilised society.  I teach it every term at school, and students draw tremendous inspiration from the likes of the civil rights protestors in America in the 1960s, or the feminists in the 1890s or 1970s, and they feel a flush of pride when they learn about Kirk sending our naval ships to bear witness to the French nuclear tests in the Pacific of the mid-1970s.

Now what do we have in New Zealand?  We have the necessity of this:

I signed it tonight.  True democracy means that we are in power.  True democracy is open, fair and transparent and does not act against those that criticize.

Rage Against the Machine reminds me to stay angry.

To testify.

Topics of the Day include a discussion on the possible benefits of moving pictures for education purposes.

Evening Post, 20 May 1913, Page 6

Naturally there are a number of dangers to be considered.  The tendency of the French to produce work with an erotic sensibility, and of the American to produce sensational material.  Cryptically the Editor comments: “It is against the second of these tendencies that there is the most need for protection in this country.”  Presumably the sensible New Zealander is above erotic stimulation.

There are other dangers too,

Thankfully children’s shows nowadays steer well away from silliness, vulgarity and melodrama.  Nothing attracts juvenile viewers more than sobriety, and good taste.

Eleanor penned a story at Granny’s house.  It goes like this,

palace walls.  Her dress was palish pink, her eyes were as blue as the sea

and her hair was as brown as a tree trunk.

The King and Queen looked after their little Princess.  She grew up and when she was 18 her parents died.  She was 18 what would she do!  She decided to look for another family…

But she found Candy Land and ate lots of candy floss

My feelings about this story are complex.

Mainly I would like to say that the close up on the eyes of the princess is, frankly, terrifying, and makes me feel a bit like a lame gazelle suddenly observing two tigerish eyes glowering at me through a rather thickety underbrush.

I find myself in the unusual situation of liking a pope.

This is the first time I can say this in my life.  For most of my early life Pope John-Paul II was in charge of the Catholic church.  As popes go he was pretty well-regarded, but I personally disliked him for having made my life difficult.  When I was born and named John-Paul in 1973 there was no pope called John-Paul, and there never had been.  John-Paul was a pretty unusual name to have in New Zealand in 1973, but at least it was unusual without seeming to be super religious.  Most people would assume I was from a French background and leave it at that.  Pope John-Paul I (briefly) and Pope John-Paul II (lengthily) changed all that.  From 1978 onwards people assumed I was from a particularly religious background.  Never mind that I had been named before a Pope called John-Paul existed.  This put me in the position of unfairly disliking the pope, who had unfairly hijacked my name.  When he died I was (not so secretly) happy.  This almost certainly reserved for me a spot in hell.

After Pope JP we got someone who was easy to dislike: Pope Benedict.  So far so good.  Now at the age of 40 I find myself liking Pope Francis and wondering how long he will last.  Saying the kinds of things he is saying at the moment tends to shorten your life.  It didn’t do much for the longevity of the careers of RFK or MLK to speak out for the poor, and attack the culture of money.

Pope Francis has called on world leaders to end the “cult of money” and to do more for the poor, in his first major speech on the financial crisis.

Free market economics had created a tyranny, in which people were valued only by their ability to consume, the pontiff told diplomats in the Vatican.

“Money has to serve, not to rule,” he said, urging ethical financial reforms.

BBC

I wonder if he is aware that “ethical financial reforms” is an oxymoron, like “reliable public transport” and “military intelligence”?

My Understanding Religion class has been doing the Sermon on the Mount.  It’s quite eye-opening.  Eye-opening because it’s really much better than singing hymns in church while a mild man in a cardigan prattles on about God.  The Sermon on the Mount reminds you what was radical about Jesus, and why he is originally an anti-authority figure, and why it’s so odd that he is an establishment figure now.

It’s not enough, Jesus tells us, to obey the commandment not to kill, you shouldn’t be walking around angry with people, cursing people, you need to resolve these conflicts and find peace with people.  It’s not enough to love people who love you; you need to find love for those who hate you.

“…do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not much more valuable than they? Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life? And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?

…do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Matthew 6:25-34

As messages go it seems a long, long way from the carryings on of the church over the last, let’s say, 1600 years.

If you were on the side of the established church then Jesus was a pretty prickly individual to have around, and it is easy to see why the established forces of Judaism wanted to see him gone.  Jesus wasn’t happy with wealthy synagogues cozying up to the imperial oppressors; something he made quite plain.  In fact, he wasn’t much a fan of money at all when it came to religion as we see not only in the Sermon on the Mount (“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money”), but in the famous scene where he chucks the money changers out of the temple (“It is written,” he said to them, “‘My house will be called a house of prayer, but you are making it a den of robbers.’”).

You cannot serve both God and money.  This is a division that the church, and many Christian people really haven’t been into.  The occasional anti money figure who crops up in the story of the church – like Francis of Assisi – ends up having massive, wealthy institutions built around their poverty after their death.  Money does tend to co-opt and make comfortable.  Let’s face it; it’s easier to take the money and have some nice things for a change than it is to think about the kingdom of a perhaps non-existent heaven and live hand to mouth.

A lot of Jesus’ message is very hard to fit into a normal life, and we should never forget that he was an unmarried man with no children who died relatively young.  Sometimes he just reads like an unrealistic, youthful firebrand.

Sometimes though he feels perfectly right.  We do need to – for example – learn to deal with our anger, strengthen our humility, and drive money out from where it does not belong.

Under current law, private schools, fee-charging hospitals and food giants reap the rewards of tax relief with no obligation to donate some of their profits.  The Government is $600 million out of pocket each year as the charities sector swallows $400m through income tax exemption and $200m in tax credit refunds, yet Cabinet decided against reviewing charity law last year through “fiscal cost” fears.

Stuff

It was fairly easy to find my old school on the charities register.  Scots College is there as a registered charity.  It costs $20,000 in fees to go to Scots College for one year if you are a Year 11-13 student.  An education at that school from Year 1 to Year 13 must cost over $200,000 in fees.  And yet we find that it is a charity.  It has built an indoor cricket training facility, and is building a $600,000 recording studio and yet we find that it is a charity.  We find that it already receives government subsidies as all private schools do to help it survive and yet I sense a lack of interest in opening up some of those facilities to the general public who contribute every single year to its continuing existence.

Legislation let charitable trusts benefit from tax exemption while public organisations were obliged to pay 8 per cent of their net worth to the Government as a capital charge, a cost that bled the Canterbury District Health Board of $15m last year.

Stuff

The on the ground assets of Scots seem to be about $35m.

What exactly are its charitable works?  It’s hard to say from its detailed report prepared by Deloittes.  It seems, however, that “advancing education” is charity in of itself.

Goodhew (Community and Voluntary Sector Minister) admitted the New Zealand public “may not understand” the definition of charity under current legislation and that they might be “surprised” to find some charities listed on the charities register.

“The important thing for the public to have confidence in is that we have a robust system that ensures that within the Charities Act 2005 charities can’t actually be registered unless their purpose is charitable.”

Charitable purpose relates to the relief of poverty, the advancement of education or religion or any other matter beneficial to the community, she said.

I feel like the cash-strapped state school that my daughter goes to should now be applying to be a registered charity.  Surely a school with no zoning that has a focus on special needs and ESOL students does more good to the community than a school with a $20,000 per year barrier to entry?

Which is, as it turns out, why the law on charities has not been reviewed.

The Government decided against reviewing the law relating to charities last year through fears more organisations may have expected to be eligible for charitable status which could have “increased fiscal costs”, an Inland Revenue spokeswoman said.

And so it goes.

Former and current board members of Scots do legal work for the school and receive money for their efforts.  It reminds me of the advice in the book Pay Zero Taxes.  Want to take your spouse everywhere for free – make them an employee and apply for the deductions.  You’d be stupid not to.  Right?

Charity.

Perhaps Scots College and it’s ilk have misunderstood the intent of Jesus’ advice about charity,

“Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven.

 “So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

They may have heard the parts about secrecy, and missed the word “needy”.

As for the accounting firms, if I were going to set one up I can think of no better motto:

do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.

Associate Education Minister John Banks wrongfully withheld information about how proposed charter schools would be funded, the Ombudsman has found.

Stuff

Associate Education Minister John Banks has defended a proposed law change that would exempt charter schools from scrutiny under the Official Information Act, saying they will be more accountable than other schools.

Herald

This is not a post about charter schools.  It’s a post about wealth and democracy.

To me the interesting thing about the two articles I have quoted from at the top of this is post is the recurring theme of secrecy.  The wealthy always want it.  In their private lives they have as much right to privacy as you or I.  Secrecy on the other hand, when it comes  to the public world, usually spells trouble for democracy and fairness.

***

When I was writing about the closing of the freezing works at Patea I found that these works were owned by someone called Lord Vestey.  The Vestey empire turns out to be huge, and long-standing, and not particularly well-regarded in England for its contribution to the tax pool.  In 1980, for example, the Vesteys’ Dewhurst chain of butchers in Britain was found to have paid a tax rate of 0.0004%.  They paid ten pounds tax on a 2.3 million dollar profit.  It’s not so long after this that they were closing Patea because it was too expensive to keep on.  Edmund Vestey said, in 1980, in response to the story about the ten pounds of tax: “Let’s face it, nobody pays more tax than they have to.  We’re all tax dodgers, aren’t we?”

The Vestey’s tax avoidance has been carrying on for a century, and it forms the opening chapter of Nicholas Shaxson’s book about offshore banking and tax havens called Treasure Islands.  For someone with little interest in economics it was an eye-opening book to read.

In October 2010 a Bloomberg reporter explained how Google Inc. cut its taxes by $3.1 billion in the previous three years through transfer pricing games… ending up with an overseas tax rate of 2.4 percent.  Microsoft’s tax bill has been falling sharply, for similar reasons.

Without  giving a long list of examples, the book boils down to secrecy and manipulation.  Tax havens offer secrecy, and so do trusts.

Intrigued, I went to the library looking for any books that might have a New Zealand focus.  Aside from The Paradise Conspiracy, which I refuse to read on the grounds it was written by Ian Wishart, there wasn’t much.  There was an American guide to tax havens around the world (the Cook Islands are New Zealand’s local), and the services they offer, and a book called Pay Zero Taxes! written for the New Zealand market by Peter Sibbald.  The American guide and the New Zealand book had similar things to say about government: it’s bad and it should get its grubby hands off our money!

If paying less tax makes you feel uncomfortable or troubles your social conscience, it shouldn’t – after all, any money saved can be donated to charity (don’t forget to claim the rebate though).  As a patriotic and socially conscious New Zealander, I’m proud to be paying taxes and helping our country grow, develop and strive towards an ideal of providing a place in the sun for all New Zealanders.  The only thing is, I could be just as proud for half the money.  I’m sure you would feel the same way!

The book details income splitting, trusts, deductions – all the things you hear about when a wealthy MP missteps and gets caught out.  Bill English experienced this with his accommodation a few years back, Rodney Hide with his travel.

The chapter on how to claim deductions tells you all you need to know about who this book is written for.  Is it a book written for all New Zealanders?  Not really.  It outlines how to claim deductions for sport (“if for example your hobby is sailing” – yeah, right), meals (over business is ok), goodwill entertainment to oil the wheels of business (golf, anyone?), your spouse (hire them, and take them everywhere as an employee!), your gym fees (is it on company premises?  Sweet as!), your art collection (sometimes),  travel (almost always), drycleaning, lifestyle blocks… the list goes on, and on.  Who is this describing?  Not an average New Zealander.  Gym, golf, yachts, overseas travel, business lunches, drycleaning – it’s describing someone who is already well off, and wants to pay less tax.  A business man, in short.  And yes, I think it is describing a man, and not a woman.

I’m sure that John Banks, John Key and Peter Sibbald think that they are describing “Mum and Dad” New Zealanders all the time, but I think it would be fair to say that they are not.  They are describing, on the whole, well-educated, well-off people from the majority ethnic group, who have some extra money, and are comfortable in the milieu of finance, and trusts, and income splitting and tax deductions.  People who are “smart” with their money.

I am not smart with my money.  I never understood the tax cut argument that National ran in opposition.  I don’t want a tax cut.  I want the government to take in taxes and use them to maintain good social services and help people who need help.  I like parks and libraries and swimming pools (which come to me though rates), and I like hospitals and schools and law and order too.  I’m not interested in reducing any of that so that I can have more money to get a golf club membership.  I am also interested in businesses paying all the tax they are supposed to as a return on the benefits they receive from functioning in a well-ordered society.  There is also no reason for publicly funded charter schools to be exempt from the Official Information Act, or to have their outside funding kept secret.  No reason except that it is bad for business.  Secrecy on the other hand is bad for democracy.

Always.

It’s a good test of  where a government’s stance on democracy lies.  Whose privacy will they permit to be breached?  Whose right to criticise will be curbed?  Individual privacy in the case of law reforms around the GCSB, or business privacy in the case of charter schools?  Protestors against off-shore drilling, or tougher legislation to protect Petrobras?

I’m going to unplug Facebook.  I was told to join it a few years ago by a  teacher group who told me it was a great way to have meetings, and share information.  It is.  It’s also a great way to organise to meet people.  But I don’t care.  People can email me.  Or call me.  And I can email them.  Or call them.  Sure, I’m not the most reliable and regular guy when it comes to calling or emailing friends for a quick catch-up, but I’m even worse at checking Facebook so there’s no real difference.  The main difference will be that I won’t be complicit in Facebook’s increasingly fast slide into commercialism and politics.

There are two things I don’t like about money’s, shall we say, tendencies when it meets organisations that were previously free.  Firstly, when money enters the picture it tends either to cut off access to things I used to like, or it flogs things I used to like to death in order to make more money.  Secondly, money tends to make people undemocratic.

A long time ago I used to watch cricket.  In the late 80s you would often find, in the long middle of the summer holidays, after the glorious binge of Christmas, that there was a five day test match on TV One.  It was nice, if things were slow, to sit around and watch it.  Then we got SKY.  I haven’t seen a game of cricket since.  When SKY arrived in New Zealand I was pretty excited.  It sounded pretty good.  You pay some money and get channels with loads of stuff and no ads.  Whenever my mother and I stayed in hotels in the 90s one of the things that made it cool was that hotels always had SKY.  Which is how I learned that there is nothing on SKY I want to watch.  SKY have got around this problem by making a few good channels like SoHo, and making you pay again to get them.  Two pay walls to get at good content?  And networks wonder why illegal downloading is so popular.

Rugby, on the other hand, was sort of protected and didn’t entirely disappear into the SKY.  Money did something even more terrible to rugby.  It made it boring.  Even though the players are faster, and stronger and playing on fields that are 100 times better, they play so often, and for teams they don’t care about, that I have stopped caring about them.  Having branding on the All Blacks jersey was the thin end of the wedge.  Now we have All Blacks selling us all kinds of things.  Dan Carter is a very fine rugby player, but I dislike him purely for the vanity he displays by participating in Rexona, and Jockey ads.  I hate all of the trading on history, tradition, and pride these ads often do, when all of those things came from the amateur age.  I also hate being told that Dan and Richie and Nonu have to make a living.  That’s true.  But then I imagine their rugby contracts are pretty lucrative, and I imagine they could – if they were sensible – set themselves up for life off the back of it, without trying to sell me deodorant, or Visa, or Ford, or Weetbix, or Air New Zealand… (it’s a long list).

So, I have sort of stopped watching rugby.

And so it goes.  The ads on Youtube are getting increasingly pushy and irritating, and I see that Youtube are now planning paid subscription channels.  That will be fine for a while.  Until more and more content goes there, and you have an entity that is essentially pay TV on-line.  Tired of those annoying banner ads (that we introduced?) – why not try our fabulous ad-free subscription channels?   Facebook is looking for ways to make money now that they are a publicly listed company.  Google Ads.  Ads everywhere.  And what’s worse, the covert manipulation of it all which manifests itself in the “recommended for you” section of all these sites.  The horror that is TV advertising is at least a blunt instrument.  Everyone gets the same crap at the same time.  It’s not a matter of a site profiling you over time and pushing certain things to the top of the page and certain things to the bottom.  This is handy I suppose.  I mean, I do really like Robert Kennedy, so if Youtube pushes something to my attention about RFK then that is kind of handy, it’s just this slightly queasy feeling I have about having things selected for me.  Isn’t it normal to ask: “what aren’t you showing me?”  It’s probably nothing, of course, videos about One Direction and cars, but, it’s the not knowing that it’s nothing, and that it’s not always nothing, that niggles.

Which leads to my second problem, which is a lack of democracy.

Facebook’s founder is backing a US campaign to get immigration laws changed so they can get more tech people into the US.  Fine.  A lot of ads for this super wealthy lobby group make it on to Facebook (if you’re in America), but corporate customers running counter ads about why this is bad have had their ads blocked by Facebook.  Bill Gates is well-known for being a philanthropist.  He gives a lot of money to worthwhile things.  Some of these things are wonderful, but some aren’t really.  In my opinion.  Bill and I probably disagree about a lot of things.  That’s fine.  What I feel isn’t so fine is that he has thousands of times more power than me because he is rich.  Thankfully he is in America and I am in New Zealand, but even from that distance his enormous largess with charter schools has an impact here.  It enables fools.  Fools who believe in secrecy and business, instead of openness and democracy.  Bill can fund schools, and specific educators, and run campaigns, and lobby.  I can’t.  But isn’t my opinion of equal worth?

We have them here too.  Owen Glenn is a man who likes to spend money “to get things done”.  Owen Glenn seems an interesting person.  He should contribute to the debates if he is passionate about the issues, but – like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg – I wish he wouldn’t confuse wealth for importance.  He makes a lot more money in a week than I will in my whole life, but on the principle of democracy his opinion should be worth the same as mine.  The same goes for Mr Dotcom.  As interesting as he is to splash across the news, we don’t need him thinking he has more right to be heard than anyone else in the courts.

Somehow it seems appropriate that we end with Kim Dotcom, because he naturally leads us to John Banks.

‘I have your review in front of me and soon it will be behind me.’

G. B. Shaw

Hammy: You know I hate this kind of crap.

Val: Crap!?  Crap?!

Hammy: Yes, crap.

Val: Anyone can see that this is beautiful, and moving, and wonderful.

Hammy: Anyone except me.

Val: Man, I just want to sing the chorus of this song all day (hums “you’re worthwhile” while looking sadly into the mid-distance)

Hammy: It’s not a song.  It’s an auto-tuned news item.

Val: Bro, you just don’t get stuff like this.  Let’s face it.  But, don’t worry… you’re worthwhile.  No one can ever take that away from you.

Hammy: F*&k off.

If you ever need to be brought down politically I have plenty of material.

Have a great day.

JP