More people to slap

#1. Let's slap people with blocked phone numbers

I used to feel happy when my mobile phone or office phone rang. Maybe it would be someone waving a multi-million dollar contract or Lotto letting me know the good news. OK, a mate or associate calling. Last resort, a call centre trying to prize my wallet open or shampoo my carpet. Sometimes, I even returned missed calls (still do), in case it was anything important. It never is. It's always a sales person with acne.


That was in the days before phone spam. Is that the right term? You know, the slick sounding con men "from Wall Street" and the nice lady saying "How are you today" against a background cacophony of hundreds of others in a Phillipino sweatshop.


About that time, I started feeling uneasy when 

Police car chases - are they worth it? Well yes, actually...

After the last car chase death, the Candor Trust spokesperson Rachael Ford appeared on TVNZ News. She wanted any measures taken by the cops, in the course of protecting our property and our safety, to “fit the crime”. Her manner is hideously unattractive and there is an offhanded arrogance about her. She fills me with the dread I only reserve for those haughty, blithering, egotistical types you sometimes find dominating at friends of distant friends' dinner parties. The type who, armed with a limited command of common sense, a captive audience and a few carefully selected facts about a narrow subject area, make enormous leaps of so-called logic. They arrive at blanket solutions for age-old issues that have previously defied the best thinkers in the world. She is the type that would force you to seek urgent refuge in the kitchen and crouch in the corner clutching your head, quietly rocking.

Who is Rachael Ford and the Candor Trust? – just Google any article by Candor and if you can negotiate through the typographical nightmare and puerile ranting without tearing your hair out, (look what happened to me), you’re either as barking mad as they are or you are a saint). Anyway, they are the sort of people who

Fear of failure

How many times have we found that organisations claiming to have long and distinguished “zero accident” records are simply kidding themselves? They may even believe their own all-important statistics, but the fact is, all they are doing is pushing reality underground and bringing on the next disaster by a culture of fear and blame.

Why are boards of directors and senior executives so purile as to think that their obsession with negative indicators like Lost Time Injuries has any connection with reality? Perhaps they actually know this, but the only thing they really care about is what looks good in reports and on fancy charts. No, I’ll amend that statement. It IS the only thing they care about.


It turns out (surprise, surprise), that workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig,

Blizzards and bluster

Anyone who has read my other blogs or articles on the website will know me as a highly vociferous critic of what has become known as "health and safety gone mad". They will also know, therefore, that I have largely concluded that it's not the rules that are wrong, it's the way they are being interpreted by lazy, arse covering bureaucrats and church committees.

These people are bereft of intelligence or the ability to use creative options for safety. They shy away from what I believe is a duty to understand and constructively influence human behaviour, instead taking the lazy options to ban and prohibit. I also think for many of them, they experience cruel joy out of restricting others because it validates their empty little lives.

So my response to today's topic may surprise you. It's all about snow and ice, Whitehall and misplaced bluster.

You see, during the recent "Big Freeze" in the UK,

People with white coats

Every year, my volunteer firefighter colleagues and I take part in the local santa parade. This isn't your big city affair, just a 20 minute cruise down our local main street. Fire engine lights and sirens, a wave to the kiddies, hand out a few lollies and go home. Everyone loves it, the guys get a bit of recognition and the kids get tooth decay. Been that way for years.

Of course, we all knew that throwing lollies is frowned upon. Mainly of course because there are some stupid kids who are greedy and feral and therefore unable to stop their own little fat legs propelling them under the fire truck in an effort to retrieve a lolly worth 0.00001 cents. So we don't do that. We walk up to the little darlings and place the lolly in their hands. Hazard identified, reasonable level of risk achieved. Job done.

Not this year (2009). This year, the hideously inept "organising committee", which,

Time for New Zealand drivers to get serious

I have the solutions, so don’t panic. It should have been clear to anyone with half a brain and it should have been done 40 years ago but no one had the vision or political will. They still don’t, so it’s up to me to rant and rave.

First, let’s go back in time. To November 26th 1979 to be precise. At some point or another, I would have had to admit that I’m not a native of these shores and therefore I would have received the usual defensive brickbats, so let’s get that out of the way. I arrived here from "Mother England" in 1979. So I am really a Kiwi now. But if I describe New Zealand drivers in general as sloppy, selfish, discourteous and aggressive, I am actually acting with restraint, so if anyone wants to trot out the “Whingeing Pom” label, try to understand that it’s because 1. I care and 2. It’s actually the truth, so try and take it like an adult.

On November 26th 1979, I had just stepped off a ‘plane and surfaced after a weekend recovering from jet lag. It was Monday morning and someone lent me a pushbike to go to the shops

Cultivating wimps

I can’t help but think that we are well overdue for a very long awaited re-adjustment in the way we deal with individual responsibility in society. For decades we have been moving inexorably down a path, initiated by Grey People, of subjugating everything “individual” in favour of the common good, the group, the community, the disadvantaged, the minority, our cultural and personal safety and health, our environmental responsibility and our mental welfare. What we have sacrificed in the process (or would sacrifice if the Grey People had their way), is leadership, competition, individual responsibility and risk taking.

We did, however, badly need the culture change that “political correctness” – (call it what you will) –brought for us. Those of us inhabiting the middle ground socially and politically were generally approving of the fact that cheats, bullies, bigots and zealots got themselves placed at a fair and reasonable distance from their selfish goals and ambitions now and then. We even took some vicarious pleasure in watching as minorities gained political representation and mixed it up with the elites, as “para-olympians” crossed the finishing line on wheelchairs, as women were given better protection under the law and rightfully occupied positions of power and influence, as children were given freedom of expression and validation, as unscrupulous employers were held to account for exploiting people and the environment.

Unease sets in

Then, we started to feel a little uneasy: