Opportunities for change

Every once in a while, I come across an interesting story in a very indirect way, and it’s even better when it’s a topic I’m both insterested in, and that’s also timely. Creating green hydrogen in Australia using some Kiwi can-do is just the sort of thing I might not expect, particularly when it came by way of Facebook.

The video up top is from Australia’s “A Current Affair” programme from Channel Nine. The specific segment, abuot producing hydrogen in Australian using solar power, came to my attention because of a Facebook post by “I Fucking Love Australia”, an unabashedly lefty Facebook Page that often talks about politics, including the dire affect the USA’s Felon in Chief has on the world. The post was also published on the “IFLOZ” Substack, and it was on Substack that I saw the video.

I was interested in this story because I’ve said for years that producing green hydrogen should be a major focus for New Zealand. “Green hydrogen” production is carbon neutral because it’s made from water using solar, wind, or hydro electricity. When produced from fossil fuels, it’s usually called “blue hydrogen”, unless it’s made from coal gasification, when it’s called “brown hydrogen” because it’s usually made from lignite, aka “brown”, coal.

As you may be aware, New Zealand is surrounded by water, and we have ample sources of hydro, geothermal, and, increasingly, grid-scale solar power. The story in the video is about using hydrogen to make fertiliser, but they mention making it to be used as fuel, too. When hydirgen is burned, its byproduct is water vapor, not deadly gasses like fossil fuels produce. If NZ fully commited to hydrogen, we could be self-sufficient in carbon-neutral fertiliser AND fuel for our vehicles, and no idiotic war on the other side of the planet could affect our fuel and fertiliser ever again.

Australia, because of its size and suitability for solar power, could become an exporter of fertiliser from green hydrogen, and help the world turn its collective backs on the volatile Middle East while also helping other countries reduce their carbon emissions. There are so many wins.

There’s one final twist in the path to this particular story. This evening I checked Facebook and saw a post from the IFLOZ Facebook Page saying they were going to concentrate on Substack, where most of their content will be by subscription. They’re doing this, they say, because Facebook has been de-emphasising content from the political left, and that results in declining ad revenue for the content creators, and they had charts to back that up. They also suggested that Facebook is doing it because their future plans will require consent from the current US regime, and so they’re basically turning down the volume of the Left in order to avoid problems with the regime. Whatever the specific reason, many left-of-centre content creators on Facebook have complained about suddenly declining page views, and so, revenue. I have no idea whether the speculations about the motivations are correct or not, but given the current regime’s constant posturing against the First Amendment to the USA’s Constitution, the speculation is at least plausible.

Still, it’s always nice to run across a topic I’m intertested in, no matter how roundabout the course may be. Apparently I won’t have a repeat of this particular path, though. There’ll be others.

As he sowed

So: Kevin McCarthy now goes down in history as the first Speaker of the US House to be removed from office. Who could ever have seen that happening? I mean apart from everyone on the planet, of course. This was always going to be his only legacy: The worst Speaker of modern times, perhaps ever, created the path to his own inevitable demise from the very beginning. In the end, his ejection from the Speakership was exactly what he himself set the stage for.

McCarthy always came across as a cynical opportunist, willing to do whatever was necessary to get the Speaker’s gavel. He enabled and encouraged the lunatic fringe of his own party, and the worst excesses of the supposedly somewhat less-fringey rest of his caucus. He made his ejection inevitable by repeatedly worshiping at the feet of the party’s deified corrupt and indicted Dear Leader, a man so reviled by ordinary Americans that—mostly because of him and his clown car of sycophants in Congress—Democratic candidates in the elections of 2018, 2020, and 2022 exceeded expectations.

The realty is that in 2022 Republicans only won control of the US House because of gerrymandering in Republican-controlled states, something that the courts are now undoing. If it wasn’t for that gerrymandering, the Democrats would’ve retained the US House. And, of course, Democrats also retained control of the US Senate in what was supposed to be a good year for Republicans.

McCarthy didn’t seem to be too stupid to to see how all that pandering to the lunatics in his party would end. When the inevitable end neared, it was obvious and inevitable. There’s now a golden opportunity for true bipartisan, responsible action—which is precisely why it’ll never happen: The few relatively sane Republicans in the US House could join with Democrats to elect Hakeem Jeffries Speaker, then eject the Republican lunatics from their various committees, and allow the House to get back to actually doing its job again, not playing stupid extremist games, wasting the time and money of US taxpayers.

What will happen is that there will be a bitter Republican internal war as the lunatics demand a lunatic be made party leader and then Speaker. The few sane Republicans will—if they have any brains at all—oppose that. However, how long can that go on without causing even more trouble for the country—or even utter disaster? No one one knows, and the Republican lunatics couldn’t possibly care less. They’re too busy acting like 12 year olds.

Still there are two things we know for certain. The first is that the arrogance, stupidity, and hubris of the lunatic Republicans in the House, and also of the party’s deified multiple-indicted Dear Leader, will only increase ordinary people’s revulsion for Republicans generally, and that will cause the party lose more seats in 2024 than they otherwise might have if they had grownups running their party. The other thing we know is that all of this was inevitable. Kevin McCarthy has absolutely no one to blame but himself. He sowed the seeds of his own destruction, and he richly deserves that walloping he’s received.

Good riddance to the first Speaker to ever be removed from office: It took fifteen votes to install him, but only one to eject him. My only sympathy is for the American people who have to watch this Republican shit-show as the party’s lunatic clowns and morons continue to do absolutely nothing of any value to anyone. The sooner all of them join McCarthy in being forced out in disgrace, the better for everyone—especially the Republican Party—though it looks far more likely that it would take a new, sane conservative party to emerge in order to put grownups back in control of conservative politics, and to finally kick the lunatics out of power for good.

Hope springs eternal, and all that.

A road to happiness

Something amazing has happened, something that will quite literally change EVERYTHING for me and that will reconcile my strained relationship with Hamilton: A new road opened. That may seem like an odd thing to say, but, in reality, I’m probably understating its importance.

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about it here (though if I have, it wouldn’t have been much), but when I bought my house I was told about a road that was going to be built connecting our housing development (“subdivision”, in Americanese) directly to the rest of Hamilton. Specifically, it would connect us to one of the most important intersections in this part of the city, one that, in turn, connects we with pretty much everywhere I’d want to go in the city.

At the time, with the development was only partly finished (though all the streets were completed(, and the long alternative route to get to the same place didn’t bother me. After all, I’d come from the last house that Nigel and I shared, and to get anywhere from their required a 20 minute (or more) drive.

Over time, more houses were built, including in new developments nearby, and still there was no action on the new road. It became a labyrinthine tale of many, many missed deadlines, of political intrigue, including the city council trying to change the deal after the fact, and also lots on unexpected things—like Covid lockdowns, the resulting global supply chain disruptions, and geotechnical issues on site that turned out to be complicated. In addtion, the developer and city council kept arguing over who was responsible for paying for changes the geotechnical issues required. In other words, a more or less normal developer vs. city council relationship pushed completion out to more than six years after the development itself was begun.

I actually began this post a couple weeks ago when we got word that the project was finished, the city council had signed-off on all the approvals, and the developer had filed the paperwork to transfer ownership of the new road to Hamilton City Council, a process that “should”, the developer told us, take 10-12 business days (weekends don’t count), and that the road “should” open the week of June 26. I hesitated finishing this post because after all the delays and frustrations, I was sceptical. It turned out, that scepticism was well-placed.

It turned out that the government body responsible to registering property titles was taking longer than it should have, so the developer followed up—twice—and the agency then told them they needed two more bits of information to complete the transfer. That was done the same day—June 29— and it was where things stalled again.

Finally, on July 5—the day before yesterday—the developer confirmed that title had been transferred and their contractors would start removing the barriers, construction fencing, etc. Them without fanfare, the road opened yesterday evening.

I don’t like driving in the dark, if I can avoid it, so I drove on for the first time today, and took Leo with me. I was surprised at how short the road is—a couple hundred metres or so—and I couldn’t help but think, “all that hassle and frustration for THIS?!!”

Of course, there’s more to it that just the distance of a football pitch: There will be a commercial area, including some shops, going in the area around that road, a school is going to be nearby, and two other roads connecting to even more development areas will connect one day.

Today I noticed that what will be the intersection with those new roads is all set up for traffic lights when the roads are built, and the fact they’re ready to go suggests that it may not be too long before those roads are begun—at least, maybe not as long as it took for our new road to be built.

For me, this new road is all about connection: I’ll be able to take the shortest route to the intersection with Te Rapa Road, the main North/South route in this part of the city. I need to get to that intersection in order to get to nearly everywhere I go in the city, including The Base shopping centre (where the mall Te Awa is located, along with one of the home centres I go to, among other shops). It’s also the road with the other home centre, both supermarkets, my dentist, and Leo’s vet. Going through that intersection is the way to my doctor, the family who live on the eastern side of the city, and even to the other mall I’ve been to, Chartwell. In fact, there’s pretty much no place in the city that I drive to that I couldn’t get to by going over the new road.

However, for the past three and half years the only way for me to get to that intersection with Te Rapa was to drive south, turn left from a stop sign onto a usually very busy road, get through a very heavily trafficked roundabout (fed by three busy roads), get through a traffic light to get to another traffic light that provides access to the road that was just connected to the new road. Depending on traffic, getting from my house to that last traffic light can take 10 to 15 minutes. With the new road, it’ll take, at most, 5 minutes to get to that same traffic light—well, until the new connecting roads open, but the new route will still be far more direct.

Shaving 10 minutes off a round trip may not sound like much, even if you take into account that the time saving can be more than that on some days or at some times, but it also means dramatically less hassle to get to the places I want to go. There have been many times when I wanted to pick something up, looked at the time, calculated how busy the roads were, and then decided not to go, putting it off until a better time the next day. I won’t have to do that anymore.

Also, the area I live has had very poor public transport. The new road will connect our area with the transport hub which is where the train to/from Auckland stops, and that also is a hub for several bus routes. When the new road opens, a new bus route will connect us not just to that transport hub, but also to the centre of the city—where car parking is notoriously bad, so much so that I avoid ever driving there (it then continues on to the university in the eastern part of the city, then back). That new bus may or may not be if any use to me, but it’ll make a huge difference to the quality of life for those of us living in the area now, and the several hundred more who’ll move here in the next couple years as the several housing developments currently under way are completed.

The development I live in is only about half done: A housing area hasn’t been started yet, and others in the area aren’t yet completed. That new small-scale business area around the area of the new road is likely to include a café, a superette of some sort, and some office space. When that stuff gets built, I’ll be able to walk up to buy a bottle of milk instead of having to drive somewhere. Maybe they’ll have a place I can grab a coffee, too.

Add all this together—faster and low-hassle access to the places I go to the most frequently, the improvement in public transport, the opening of some businesses, and, eventually, Council building the parks and recreation space they’ve also promised, and this will become a lively, desirable area to live. This area will finally become the sort of area I actually wanted to be in when I was looking for a house in Hamilton. Back then, there was no reason to think it’d take this long to get to this point, but I now know that sometimes it really is about the destination, not the journey.

And Leo? Well, he’s not actually very keen about going for a car ride, probably because I strap him in, and when we got back home after our short ride, he wasn’t ready to go back inside. So, we went for a walk around the block, the first time we’ve ever done that (we have, of course, done shorter walks). Best of all, Leo also peed on a walk for the first time ever.

Who could’ve ever guessed that a new road could cause so many good things?

This post has been updated. Follow the link to see the update.

Real plastic changes

There’s a clear momentum in many countries for companies to move away from single use or hard to recycle plastics. Whether that’s because of consumer demand, government regulation, or cost is irrelevant: They’re doing the right thing and that should be acknowledged—even as we urge them to keep moving toward sustainability.

Last week, the obviousness of change was brought home to me through two supermarket chains. Last Friday evening, hours before New Zealand’s new plastic bans took effect, I stopped in New World on my way home from a family get-together. I was curious and looked: Their produce section already had paper bags for customers to use, and there were no rolls of plastic bags that I could see. They may have made the switch ages ago, for all I know, because I wouldn’t have noticed: I’ve had reusable mesh bags for produce for several years. Regardless, it was good to see they were ready ahead of the deadline.

A few days later, I was placing a delivery order with Countdown (part of New Zealand’s other supermarket chain), and I saw the ad at the top of this post, one of several that cycled through their main web page. In January of last year, I blogged about how only some plastics were easily recyclable, and coloured drink bottles weren’t among them. I was glad to see that the Coca-Cola company was taking responsible action.

Throughout the slow walk away from single-use and hard to recycle plastics, the degree of acceptance has varied, particularly among affected businesses. Both supermarket chains started working on produce bag replacements by the time plastic shopping bags were banned, and spokespeople for both companies talked about problems. There’s nothing quite like a looming deadline to spur action, and whether or not that was an immediate motivator for the supermarket chains or not doesn't really matter because it imposed a deadline—and both companies got there.

The bottle change is a bit more interesting to me, and, of course, I had to learn more. It turns out that the decision was announced on May 1 of this year. According to the company’s website:

Coca-Cola in New Zealand has today announced that after nearly 60 years Sprite’s iconic green plastic bottles will switch to clear plastic, making them easier to recycle into new bottles.

While green PET plastic is recyclable, it’s usually converted into single-use items like clothing and carpet that cannot be recycled again.

The change is being made globally, because it “reflects the company’s commitment to prioritise sustainability and drive packaging circularity”. I actually think this is true: It’s good business for companies to make an effort toward sustainability, but if they’d persisted with difficult-to-recycle green bottles, sooner or later there would’ve been consumer backlash—just another reason the move made good business sense. Still, it’s no small thing considering that the product has been in green bottles since it was introduced in the 1960s (the no sugar version has been in clear plastic bottles for a very long time).

These two things—making an early change to paper rather than single use plastics, and changing a plastic bottle colour to one that can be recycled multiple times—are each obvious moves for the companies to make. The first was needed because a rule change made it necessary, and the second because consumer demand could ultimately drive sales down without the change. However, there are also incidents of companies that resist, such as, continuing to use banned plastics, and those are the sorts of things that get reported by the new smedia. I think we should acknowledge that, regardless of motivation, sometimes companies just get on with what needs to be done.

And yet, there’s still so much more to be done.

Almost two years ago, I wrote ”The problem is more than plastic”, a blog post in which I talked about some of the problems remaining. Nothing much has been done about the problem with things made from mixed plastics or that otherwise can’t be recycled. Personally, I’d like to see government come up with a plan to ban such plastics, too, but that’ll take alternatives and support from companies (like food and food product manufacturers) to make that happen.

In the meantime, I’d like to see a sustained effort, with significant government support, to educate people on sustainable alternatives to using plastics of any kind. At the same time, we all need to take responsibility for living more sustainably.

I’m trying to practice what I preach. Just as I researched and found reusable mesh bags for produce long before the single-use plastic versions were banned, so, too, I’ve been researching and trialling alternatives that, at the very least, reduce the amount of plastics I use—not merely hard-to recycle plastic, but all plastics. I’ll soon start blogging about my efforts in the hope that they may be useful to others.

On the meantime, though, things in New Zealand, at least, are moving in the right direction. We’re far from solving all the problems associated with the use of plastics, and there are some big and difficult challenges in the way, but just a little more determination can go much farther toward getting us there.

Important Note: The names of brands/products/companies listed in this post are used merely for purposes of description and clarity. No company or entity provided any support or payment of any kind for this blog post. The opinions I expressed are my own genuinely held opinions, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the manufacturers, retailers, or any known human being, alive or dead, real or corporate. Just so we’re clear.

Some rare good news

The storms that plagued New Zealand, and Cyclone Gabrielle in particular, haven’t left much room for good news. But the Lotto NZ has provided some.

The image above is an email I received this morning from Lotto NZ letting people registered to play through their App that this past Saturday's “Special Must Be Won Draw” raised $11,770,000 to help people impacted by Cyclone Gabrielle. This was part of the government’s response to help people affected by the cyclone, and it’s something that’s been done in the past for other disasters, too.

The funds will be distributed through the Lottery Grants Board, which distributes the net proceeds from Lotto’s games to community organisations. In this case, the $11.7 million will go specifically to the affected communities, meaning a lot of help for the communities in that region specifically

I bought a ticket for the draw, and so, gave a bit of money to the effort, as did hundreds of thousands of other Kiwis. Small, simple things like this make it very easy for people to help.

For the record, I did not win any money in the draw. Even so, I was glad to see the communities affected by Cyclone Gabrielle did win.

Virtue is its own reward

Virtue is its own reward, right? And if anyone talks about something “virtuous” they’ve done, especially on social media, why, it’s nothing but "virtue signalling", just attention-seeking self-aggrandisement—well, that’s what the commentator class, those self-important, self-appointed adjudicators of all things proper, constantly declare, anyway. I see things differently: What’s a person’s motivation for sharing a story about something “virtuous”, and what’s the lesson?

That’s all a necessary disclaimer before I tell this story, one I wouldn’t have mentioned at all, except—well, that’s getting ahead of the story.

On Tuesday, I talked about how I went to a home centre called Mitre 10 Mega to, among other things, look at stuff for my various projects. One thing I bought was a 30cm metal ruler that I need when I’m using a craft knife. All I had was a plastic one, and the edge had little gouges in it from much use. I need a good edge when I’m cutting things, like right now as I work on an ongoing (and boring) project.

Tuesday evening, I went through the things I bought and noticed that the ruler had two hang tags, one flopped over, which seemed peculiar. I looked closer: There were two rulers stuck together, their vinyl sleeves aligned so perfectly that it looked like one ruler—until one hang tag flopped over. I didn’t notice it in the shop, and I know that the checkout operator didn’t notice, either: I was only charged for one.

I considered keeping the extra ruler. After all, it was “less than six dollars”, and that “big box retailer” probably wouldn’t even miss it, but: I didn’t pay for it, and the dollar amount really didn’t matter. I decided to take it back to the shop—an easy decision, since I had to go back to the shopping centre the next day, anyway.

Why didn’t I just keep it? Many people would, and that could’ve been me, too. However, I’d just seen the evening news and the brutality and war crimes being committed by the Russians in their war against Ukraine. The lunacy of the Covid “protesters”, both here and in the USA, was also fresh in my mind. There’s SO much negativity, aggressiveness, and ugliness in the world today, and I didn’t want any part of perpetuating that. Returning a $6 ruler I didn’t pay for wouldn’t and couldn’t make a bit of difference to any of that, obviously, but it’d make a difference to me, and that’s all I have power over.

So, yesterday I went and finally exchanged that stuff I meant to take Tuesday (putting it in front of the door worked!). Afterward, I took the ruler back. The lady behind the customer service counter seemed genuinely surprised, but I could tell she was smiling under her mask.

I carried on with my errands, and the next shop I drove to was the New World supermarket nearest to my house. Once I got home Tuesday, I found out I still needed a couple more things from the supermarket, and New World was near my final stop yesterday. It was a normal shopping experience yesterday, and as I was putting the last of my stuff in bags in my car boot, a gentleman roughly my age came and took my shopping trolley to return it for me (along with his own). I don’t think that’s happened to me more than a couple times in my entire life—if it ever has. I thanked him, of course.

The first thought I had was that it was a kind of karma-like thing: I did the right thing, and then something good happened to me. I don’t actually see things that way, and I feel it’d be pretty arrogant and self-centred to think the universe, were it a sentient being, would reward me for doing something so insignificant—especially because it was merely doing the right thing, not anything meaningful.

But… what if that really is how the universe works? What if making a conscious choice to do the right thing does get rewarded in a way that’s proportionate to the thing we did? Maybe the only way I can find out is to do more good/right things.

The lesson I took from this story is simply that doing the right thing is always the right thing to do—and that virtue really is its own reward. But it’s also made me think that maybe rejecting the world’s prevailing negativity might help spread the opposite energy instead. Even if it doesn’t, so what? Doing good things certainly can’t hurt. And that lesson—that reminder—is the most important one of all.

I took the photo above because I thought that me returning the ruler would catch the staff off-guard (and it did), and that they might not grasp how it could’ve happened. So, I took the photo to show them, to make it easier for me to explain. It turned out that I didn't need it. At least I probably gave the lady at the customer service desk a funny story to tell others—and I got a photo to use here when this story took on a new direction for me.

The bubble opens

New Zealand and Australia now have a quarantine-free travel bubble between the two countries, the first time two major countries, both without community transmission of Covid-19, have opened their borders to each other. And the first day was magical to watch.

New Zealanders and Australians—despite rivalries and even disagreements—are closer than probably any other two sovereign countries. Our citizens live and work in each other’s countries freely, without the need for residence or work permits, and used to travel back and forth visa-free. Many people—including me—have family and friends on the other side of the Tasman, but our easy access to each other ended more than a year ago.

The global pandemic closed borders worldwide, and that included the two countries that are more like cousins than rigid nations, New Zealand and Australia. For more than a year, people have been separated with little practical ability to hug each other, even as travel eased somewhat in recent months.

That all changed on Monday when the bubble officially opened.

I watched some of the live feed from TVNZ’s One News, and I kept thinking to myself how much it reminded me of the final scene in the 2003 film Love Actually (a video of the sequence is below). Turns out, of course, lots of people thought the same thing.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern talked to the news media about the bubble opening, but was unable to be there. “I just would have loved to have been a bystander, to see those families reunited for the first time,” she said. “I think something like a scene from Love Actually is probably how I anticipate it would look and how it would feel. And I imagine it’s pretty close to it.”

A media scrum surrounding reunited people.

That evening, TVNZ’s Seven Sharp programme reinforced the idea by ending their show with a montage of news footage of arrivals throughout New Zealand, with the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows” [also: WATCH/LISTEN]. It was actually quite nice.

I’ve long thought that the arrivals halls of major airports—international arrivals in particular—are among the happiest places on earth because of all the friends and families reunited there with tears, hugs, kisses, smiles, and love. It’s hard not to tear up watching it all.

We can’t know for sure that this bubble experiment will work, but for the sake of all the people finally reunited, those still planning to be, and also the tourism/hospitality businesses who need foreign visitors, I certainly hope it succeeds. The worst thing for everyone would be if the bubble is abruptly popped by one government or the other.

Right now, though, I prefer to remember the happy scenes at the airports yesterday. Here’s to many more.



The photo at the top of this post is a screenshot of international passengers’ entryway into the public arrivals hall, with a sign from Auckland International Airport above it. The photo of the media scrum is also a screenshot, and chosen to avoid showing the people at the centre of it.

More good news from the election

It’s pretty awesome that there’s still good news coming from the recent US elections, and today I learned of another: Zach Wahls was elected as a State Senator for Iowa’s Senate District 37. He first stood out in 2011 when he stood up for his family. Now he can stand up for all the families of Iowa.

Zach rocketed to fame in 2011 when, as a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Iowa, he testified to the Iowa State Senate when that body was considering an amendment to the Iowa Constitution to ban same-gender couples marrying. It was a speech that captured the attention of people all over the country:



It was an awesome speech, but tempered by the fact that it was even necessary. The amendment passed the Iowa House, which was controlled by Republicans, a few days later, but Democrats in the Iowa Senate vowed to block the amendment, which they did. Obergefell v. Hodges made the whole issue moot in 2015.

In April 2012, his book, My Two Moms: Lessons of Love, Strength, and What Makes a Family was published. In June, Zach, an Eagle Scout, founded Scouts for Equality to lobby the Boy Scouts of America to change its anti-gay policies.

That same year, Zach said:

To be clear, I don't consider myself an ally. I might be [a] straight cisgender man, but in my mind, I am a member of the LGBT community. I know the last thing that anyone wants is to add another letter to the acronym, but we need to make sure as a movement we're making a place for what we call "queer-spawn" to function and to be part of the community. Because even though I'm not gay, I do know what it's like to be hated for who I am. And I do know what it's like to be in the closet, and like every other member of the LGBT community, I did not have a choice in this. I was born into this movement.

In December 2017, Zach announced that he would run for the Iowa State Senate in a seat being vacated by a Republican state senator, who was not running for re-election. He won the Democratic Primary on June 5, the same day he received his Masters Degree in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

In the General Election campaign, his issues included health care, education, workers’ rights, and natural resources, among others. He won the election to the four-year term on November 8, flipping the seat from Red to Blue.

Like most people, I was thoroughly impressed by Zach’s testimony in 2011, and it didn’t surprise me that he’d run for office, nor that he’d won the election. My surprise was just because I hadn’t heard anything about it until today. It’s a very nice surprise.

In the years ahead, we’ll be seeing more from Zach, who is now 27. I have no idea how far he could go, or even what he wants to do, but we need far more politicians like him. I’m very happy that he’s one of them.

The photo above is from the media kit which was made available through Zach’s campaign website.

Justice begins

This is an important moment for New Zealand: Today Justice Minister Andrew Little announced that the first two men convicted under now repealed laws against men having sex have had their criminal convictions expunged—it’s as if the convictions never happened. It won’t take away the pain or suffering caused by the injustice, but it is nevertheless a huge step forward.

The Criminal Records (Expungement of Convictions for Historical Homosexual Offences) Act 2018 received its First Reading in Parliament on 6 July 2017, which I blogged about at the time. The bill had its third and final reading on 3 April 2018, and Royal Assent on the ninth of that month.

When I talked about the bill’s First Reading last year, I noted:

“The convicted men would be obligated to reveal their conviction for any number of reasons, such as applying for some jobs or for visas to visit foreign countries. Having the law on the books also left gay men open to blackmail and extortion.”

In the USA, expungement is even more important, because the men convicted under the archaic laws were usually required to register as sex offenders. Many of them are elderly now: Imagine an elderly man applying to live in an assisted living facility, and when they ask if he’s a registered sex offender, he’d have to answer yes, and be denied. All US states need to expunge these wrongful convictions.

However, there’s a problem here, beyond politicians’ reluctance to right historic wrongs, and that’s the fact that things could easily go backwards if the Republicans get to install one or two more extreme radical rightwingers onto the US Supreme Court.

In 2003, the US Supreme Court’s ruling in Lawrence v Texas struck down all remaining state sodomy laws. While some states repealed their laws after the Lawrence ruling, there are some 17 states that have not repealed or appropriately modified their laws to reflect the Lawrence ruling, including three—Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas—that specifically outlaw gay sex. This means that if a future Court reverses Lawrence, those laws will be in force once again. If that happens, free states should refuse to recognise those convictions, since they couldn’t happen in free states.

None of that can happen in New Zealand. The country’s sodomy law was repealed in 1986, and now men convicted under the old can apply to have their records expunged. It is so much better here.

Important constitutional change

Today the New Zealand Government announced that “Cabinet has approved, in principle, a move to amend the New Zealand Bill of Rights Act 1990 to provide a statutory power for the senior courts to make declarations of inconsistency under the Bill of Rights Act, and to require Parliament to respond.” This is a huge and important change.

Up until now, courts lacked any mechanism to force Parliament to review laws that are in conflict with the Bill of Rights Act (BORA). That law describes, protects, and promotes New Zealanders’ fundamental human rights, as well as committing the country to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The fact that the government of the day could ignore conflicts between BORA and laws passed by Parliament was an ongoing problem.

What will happen once the law changes are made is that senior courts will be able to make declarations of inconsistency, which will compel Parliament to look at the issue. Parliament could then amend, repeal, or stick with the law as originally passed. The point is that they won’t be able to just ignore the inconsistency, and it may hurry up the process of making laws consistent with the BORA, something that at the moment is entirely dependent on politics and the support of the government of the day.

This new system won’t invalidate any inconsistent law, so it’s not full judicial review like the USA has. However, declarations of inconsistency have never been explicity permitted in New Zealand law, and this is an important change in having some oversight. Basically, it’s judicial review, Kiwi style.

The Constitutional Advisory Panel, which was appointed in 2011 to review constitutional issues, consulted with the public and considered amendments to the Bill of Rights Act. In 2013, it recommended that the Government explore options for improving the effectiveness of the Bill of Rights Act, such as giving the judiciary powers to assess legislation for consistency with the Bill of Rights Act. This bill is a result of that.

This is an important constitutional change for New Zealand, and one that’s long overdue. This doesn’t compel Parliament to fix the inconsistency, but forcing it to at least look at that inconsistency is a big step forward, and that’s what makes it so important.

NZ’s mainstream media has given this scant coverage. And that right there is one of the major problems we have in this country: There’s no one to hold the government to account. Fortunately, this time the government is doing that itself. Even so, I’ll be watching to make sure they follow through.

A little (more) good news

From time to time, John Green, best selling author and one of the Vlogbrothers on YouTube, produces a video in which he talks about the good news that’s all around us, but which we may not see. It’s particularly good when he does one in December to help close out the old year, and to keep hope alive for the new year. The video above is one of those.

As far as I know (because I shared it here on this blog), the last time John did one of these in December was in 2013 (though he’s done some in other months since then). What I noticed about this one are a couple references to the awful side of social media, which has been particularly noticeable this year. Personally, I feel the same way he does, but, also like John, it doesn’t cancel out realisation that there is much good that is still going on in the world, no matter what it may sometimes look like.

It’s difficult to remain positive in the face of relentless bad news, such as when a particular person’s latest irrational and unhinged Tweet leads the news cycle yet again, or somebody else shoots masses of innocent people, or we see criminals and dictators getting away with their crimes.

It seems to me that it’s precisely because there’s so much bad that sometimes we need to be reminded of the good. How else are we ever going to rise above the awful if we don’t see that there are good reasons to be hopeful? Hope alone won’t help us defeat evil, of course, but it’s a pretty good place to start.

And I certainly hope that the new year is a better year than the one we’re leaving—basically the same thing I wish every year, actually. Videos like this help remind us that in some ways, at least, that wish is granted every year.

Much to be thankful for

Today is Thanksgiving in my native USA, a day on which—among other things—people typically reflect on what they’re thankful for. That can include anything, often unique to an individual, but for most it’s other people who rank pretty highly on the list. As they should. But there’s so much to be thankful for.

The video above from Vox highlights nine things we should be glad about, because they’re things that are getting better. In fact, as I often point out, there’s a lot that’s getting better all the time. Yes, there absolutely are bad things and people in this world, but there are good things and good people, too. Too often we focus on the bad and ignore the good.

I admit that these days I’m far more pessimistic than I am optimistic, at least when it comes to my native land. But the things that bring me down the most reliably are also the things I can do the least about. So, instead, I focus on what I CAN do something about.

When I go to shops, or deal with anyone who has to deal with the public, including people working for government, I’m always nice. I smile. I try to be friendly so that even if every other customer they deal with that day is a prize prick, for a few minutes they have one interaction in which they’re treated like a fellow human being. I don’t think that’s all that hard to do.

I try to acknowledge the good things other people do, to cheer their successes, and to encourage their good feelings, even if only in small ways. It doesn’t matter if I share their feelings about, say, a movie, I can nevertheless cheer their enjoyment, because them being happy is a good thing, and me not liking whatever they like is irrelevent (Arthur’s Law is a good thing, I tell ya). I don’t think that’s all that hard to do.

Mostly, I just try to be human and civil to others I interact with, or I hold my tongue. Most of the time, my challenging other people isn’t necessary and won’t accomplish anything. Besides, I’ve finally learned that I don’t actually have to be “right” all the time. I don’t think that’s all that hard to do.

I fail—a lot. I’m sometimes unkind or, at least, unthinking. Sometimes I’m not as supportive as I should be. Sometimes I just don’t feel like smiling at a store clerk or being chatty. Sometimes I have a bad day, maybe even a very bad day. But I’m trying to make all that the exception, the increasingly rare deviation. Maybe I’ll eventually even get there. But the point is, I’m trying to get better, too.

So, I’m thankful for all the wonderful people in my life, whether they’re at the core of my life, like Nigel, or people further out who inspire me or teach me or light up the world around me. All of them make me want to be a better person, and it’s what I’m trying to do all the time. Sure, I don’t always succeed, but I can see where I want to be, and who I want to be, and all those people have helped me make it this far.

With the world doing better in so many demonstrable ways, and with so much to be thankful for personally, how could I be anything but grateful and thankful? Thanksgiving Day is a holiday. Being grateful and thankful ought to be a way of life, I think.

There’s much to be thankful for.

In which John Green is stunned by Kiwi kindness

In this video, John Green talks about how Kiwis’ expression of kindness meant a lot to him by gathering and sending him “thousands and thousands” of the now discontinued New Zealand 5 cent coins, all because of the tuatara that was on that coin. And from this story, dear reader, we learn that we should never underestimate the power and effect of helping someone with something small, because it can be quite big to them. Even when it’s a small denomination discontinued coin that means so much more—to them.

Related
Change for the better – my 2006 post on the end of the five cent piece and other currency changes

While we wait

While New Zealand continues to wait for Winston Peters and his New Zealand First party to tell us what our government will be, there’s some time to have a look at something minor from the election, something so small that it didn’t even get a mention in the mainstream press, even though it’s good news.

The good news is that, once again, religious extremism failed to gain any traction in New Zealand elections. In my own electorate, a guy, Ian Cummings, ran as an independent candidate and lost badly—very badly. This is good news because he was a rightwing Christian (among other things…) and he put his religious beliefs at the centre of his campaign, without being totally transparent that it was the main focus of his campaign.

I wrote about the guy’s appearance at a local “meet the candidates” event back in August. At the time, I wrote:

I’d seen his ads in the paper, where he talked about being a “family man”, which I thought was a dog whistle to social conservatives, especially because he also touted his being on the Board of Trustees for a Christian school as being a qualification for being a Member of Parliament. Turns out, I was correct.

All of his materials, and his speech at the meeting, stressed that he was opposed to abortion and euthanasia, even though no bills to reform abortion law or to allow assisted suicide (not euthanasia) are likely to come before Parliament any time soon. For most things, it was necessary to use a little intuition to hear his dog whistles and what he was actually trying to say.

Under a section on his flyer called “Family” he said that he was for “reducing government interference in the rights and decision making of parents”, though it didn’t explain what all that was supposed to mean. Given his overt religiosity, he probably meant things like repealing the anti-smacking legislation, and maybe allowing parents to put their kids through “ex-gay” torture programmes (which may be legal in New Zealand, anyway). That’s what other supposedly “Christian” candidates usually want.

Another point was “insisting educators teach our children how to think not what to think”. This dog whistle probably meant that schools couldn’t teach tolerance and acceptance of, among other things, LGBT students. That’s been a big issue among rightwing Christians in Australia, and, to a lesser extent, here in New Zealand.

Finally, he also had “protecting our borders from immigrants that are aligned with radical religious idealism”. This had to mean keeping Muslims out. I draw that conclusion not just from what such a dog whistle has meant elsewhere, but also from his refusal at that candidate meeting to explain what it meant or to deny that he wants only Christians to migrate to New Zealand. That was under “Family” because the other two areas were headline “Life”, which only mentioned abortion and euthanasia, and “Property”, which was a mishmash of unfocused populist slogans vaguely relating to property.

When he said at that meeting that he "doesn't like evolution", I knew he had odd viewpoints, and his answers that night reinforced that view. I wasn’t worried about him though, precisely because he was an independent: Under our system, the only way an independent MP can have any influence over a government is if the government needs their vote to form a majority in Parliament. Otherwise, they’re like the crank who shows up at a community meeting to whine about grass in the park being 1cm too long: They have a viewpoint, sometimes even a point, but they have absolutely no way to actually get the policy they care about enacted and no one really listens to them.

The voters in this electorate felt the same way about him: According to the final results, he came in fifth out of six candidates, receiving a mere 710 votes out of 40,270 valid candidate votes cast. The only candidate who did worse than he did was the guy from the Act “Party” who was only on the ballot so that he could attend candidate meetings to ask for a Party Vote for Act. As far as I know, he had no campaign signs or materials of his own, unlike Cummings, who paid to have NZ Post deliver his flyer at least twice, advertised in the local papers (and in premium positions), and apparently had at least some signs. Money totally wasted, that was. I’d be very surprised if he spent less than $10 for every vote he received; he probably spent considerably more.

As I’ve said many times, overtly religious candidates, in this case meaning fundamentalist Christians, never do well in New Zealand, and no overtly “Christian” party has ever won any seats in Parliament since MMP began in 1996. There’s still no indiction whatsoever that this will change.

I realise that I’m utterly dismissive of the religious guy, but that’s actually because he clearly had no clue how Parliament works and what an MP’s job includes. That’s fundamental, so to speak, for anyone seeking the job, and not understanding it is unforgivable. The fact that he didn’t know how to campaign is kind of irrelevant, because there were other candidates who didn’t do a good job, either (as I mentioned in talking about that candidate meeting). Even his religious agenda and ideology wasn’t an issue per se; rather, it was his attempts to hide it under a bushel in order to deceive the vast majority of voters who don’t share his religious views—or political views, for that matter. Still, what he did say made it pretty clear that his one-note tune wasn’t one the voters of this electorate wanted to hear.

So, this very minor story had a good ending. It happens sometimes.

An appeal with presidents

This video is an appeal for donations help in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. What’s so unusual about it is that all five living former US Presidents have joined in making the appeal. This is how you do being a president. The sad thing is, though, that I’m certain by the time the next one or two hurricanes are done, more help will be needed. That’s something they plan to help with, too.

The website for the One America Appeal, which is what the presidents are fronting, said that “preparations are in place” to help Americans affected by Hurricane Irma. “What started as a specific appeal to address historic flood damage in Texas will be expanded to help victims from both storms. The nature of that assistance will be dictated in large measure by the storm’s track and impact,” the site said.

Because people worry about such things these days (often rightly), the website also explains:

“All funds collected through the One America Appeal will go into a special account at the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library Foundation, a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization, to ensure 100 cents out of every dollar donated goes to hurricane victims. All monies collected will be distributed immediately to the designated recovery funds. All donations will also be tax-deductible.”

Funds raised will be distributed through “the Houston Harvey Relief Fund focusing on the greater Houston region, and … the Rebuild Texas Fund assisting communities across the state,” the site says. Clearly more will be added later, as needed, due to Irma.

I think this is a good thing, and I applaud the presidents for doing this—even the ones I didn’t vote for! Seriously, if they can come together for the good of everyone, why can’t we?

The change we don’t notice

The video above is an ad currently in rotation on New Zealand television. The ad is significant not for what it sells, but for the change it represents. It’s also a reminder that we sometimes don’t realise how far this country has come.

I watched the very beginning of the recent test match between the New Zealand All Blacks and the British and Irish Lions. While I watched, I noticed something when they played the New Zealand national anthem: Participation.

Nowadays it’s customary to sing the first verse of the national anthem first in Māori, then in English. This is something that’s been done at netball matches for a very long time, but with rugby test matches, it was always English only.

In 1999, Hinewehi Mohi sang the anthem in Māori only at the test match at Twickenham. The outcry was palpable. The debate was useful, however, because it led to the current tradition of singing the first verses of both the Māori and English versions of the national anthem.

In 2014, TV3 (now called newshub) brought on a new weather presenter, Kanoa Lloyd. She frequently used Māori placenames in her reports, and referred to the country as Aotearoa. People complained. “I've never really encountered people who take offence to Maori being used," she said at the time.

By 2016, TVNZ had introduced its new lineup for its Breakfast morning programme. From the beginning, the presenters have routinely used Māori placenames and greetings, and one commenter on Facebook was not having it: “I watched this week and hated the maori [sic] greeting nonsense and the maori [sic] place name nonsense.” He said that on Facebook. Where everyone can see a person’s real name and, more likely than not, quite a bit about them. Well, points for owning one’s racism, I suppose.

The thing is, there are always racists and monoculturalists in New Zealand as elsewhere, and there probably always will be. Despite common belief, they’re not all foreign-born, either, but they do seem to make up an extraordinarily large segment of listeners of talkback radio.

Be that as it may, the people who become apoplectic at the use of, say, Tāmaki Makaurau instead of Auckland are becoming fewer and fewer as the use of Te Reo Māori becomes more common.

Which brings me back to the test match. The cameras panned across the faces of the All Blacks, and most were visibly singing along to the Māori version. So were the people in the stands—and the fact they were was obvious in the audio. They all also sang the English version—which was, admittedly, louder, no doubt because so many people still don’t know the Māori version.

But it struck me how far this country has come since the national controversy in 1999, and how clearly the Māori version of the national anthem was being embraced, especially by proud younger New Zealanders, but by all age groups at the rugby match.

Then, a day or two later I saw the ad up above, and noticed how strongly everyone sang the anthem in Māori. 20 years ago, such an ad would never have been made, let alone broadcast, and not just because the anthem at rugby matches was English-only 20 years ago: The idea of everyday Kiwis embracing Te Reo Māori, even if only a bit, was still little more than a dream.

So, sure, we have our very own racists and bigots, and we have people who resist change just because it’s change. But we also have millions who embrace New Zealand’s unique identity that merges Māori and European cultures in a way not like anywhere else, and more and more these days that means embracing, at the very least, Maori words and phrases—and a verse of the national anthem.

We ought to take stock of how far we’ve come. Sometimes a mere ad can drive that point home.

The lyrics of the New Zealand national anthem:

E Ihowā Atua,
O ngā iwi mātou rā
Āta whakarangona;
Me aroha noa
Kia hua ko te pai;
Kia tau tō atawhai;
Manaakitia mai
Aotearoa

God of Nations at Thy feet,
In the bonds of love we meet,
Hear our voices, we entreat,
God defend our free land.
Guard Pacific's triple star
From the shafts of strife and war,
Make her praises heard afar,
God defend New Zealand.

Complete lyrics are on the website of the Ministry for Culture and Heritage, which is the arbiter of everything related to use of the national anthem.

Six months later

There’s a reason why people often talk about recovery from accident, illness or other health related condition as a “journey”, and not a single event. That’s because the road back to full health can be a meandering, un-signposted one. Six months ago I had my hospital adventure, and the time since has been exactly like that.

My own journey has been a forward one—never backward—and yet there were more than a few detours and lay-bys along the way. There was the persistent gout for the first seven weeks, and its recent return visit. It prevented me from getting quite as much exercise as I wanted and was supposed to have.

However, despite the physical limitations, I still made progress: My blood pressure is under control, and I’ve lost 6.9kg (a little over 15 US pounds) over the past six months. I’m happy about both. I also know that if I get my weight down some more, I might get a lower dosage of the blood pressure medicine, and I may not need to increase the dosage of allopurinol to control the gout.

There are still a few things I don’t know: How easily will I lose more weight? How are my cholesterol levels (I’ll be tested next week)? And one thing more: Every once in awhile I get scared that things might eventually get bad again, since I wasn’t aware it was happening the first time.

But despite the bad things, the worries, and the unknown things, overall it’s been a case of steady progress, and I feel better than I have in years. Here’s an example: Today I had a lot of physical chores to do, such as changing the sheets on two beds, removing, washing, and putting back a super-king size duvet cover, I washed a dog, vacuumed the house, and went grocery shopping. In the past, any one of those things could have wiped me out for a couple hours. Not today: I felt fine—good, in fact, though a little achy in too-seldom used muscles, maybe.

As far as I can see, this means I’m in a good place to push on ahead to lose that last bit of weight (I’m roughly at or near the halfway point), and to get fitter and generally healthier still. Six months ago, all of that seemed like a dream I couldn’t achieve. Since then, I have.

And it’s a very good feeling.

President Obama Awards the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Biden

In a surprise move, President Obama awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Vice President Joe Biden. It was a well-deserved honour, and I wholeheartedly approve. Joe is thoroughly decent fellow, and, it’s pretty clear, has had an outstanding working partnership with President Obama.

I met Joe Biden once, decades ago, as I wrote about back in 2008. Even then I saw how decent he was—even though at that time we were in different parties.

Over the years, I grew to admire Joe as a US Senator. He was tenacious in fighting the good fight, never giving up.

As Vice President, Joe Biden has been great. Able to speak more freely than President Obama could, he sometimes cleared the are and swept away the bullshit that tends to pile up in Washington, DC.

So, I think he deserved this honour, more than any other vice president of my lifetime. I’m glad he was honoured in this way.

Here we are in 2017

So, here we are in 2017, eh? Will this year be better than 2016, worse, about the same? There are plenty of good reasons to believe any one of those alternatives, and at any given point, any one might seem most likely. Whatever this year ends up being, we’ll need a healthy dose of humour to get through it.

The image above is of something I posted to Twitter this morning. Although the subject is true—the weather really was better much better this year than on New Year’s Day last year—I was clearly being tongue-in-cheek, and for a reason: This year, particularly beginning 19 days from now, there will be many negative things to think about and worry about, but there will also be good things, or better things, too. I believe we mustn’t lose sight of the good and positive, or the merely humorous, or else we’ll be consumed by the negativity.

We need strength in order to be able to fight what’s bad and awful. When the times themselves are bad, strength is even more important—and more difficult to maintain. So, I think that we need to make room in our lives and minds, going out of our way, if need be, to find and celebrate good things, positive things, funny things. It’s a way to keep our emotional batteries charged for the times we most need energy, and for the times when true outrage will be required.

Not every day will be bad, not every moment a disaster. Many will be good, and some will be awesome. I intend to celebrate the good precisely so I can better resist the bad.

In the year ahead, I’ll share my views on politics, just as I always have. But this year I also plan on sometimes deliberately NOT commenting, just as I did in 2016. Last year I finally learned that I don’t need to address every outrage, nor correct every myth or lie. Life is far more than that.

2016 blogging by the numbers

Despite all the difficulties, last year ended up being my fourth most-blogged year, that is, it’s ranked fourth for the number of published posts. The annual rankings: 1. 2008, 2. 2011, 3. 2007, 4. 2016, 5. 2009, 6. 2013, 7= 2010, 2012*, 2014, 2015, 11. 2006. (*2012 has one more published post than is visible; I re-set one 2012 post to draft and may one day restore it). Most blogged months: 1. November, 2= October, December, 4. February, 5. January, 6= July, September, 8. May, 9. March, 10. June, 11= April, August.

A little local good news

The other day we were running an errand, and on the way there we saw something nice. Later that evening, I shared it (picture above) on the page for the Facebook Group for the neighbourhood the story happened in. And that taught me some things about good news.

The story struck a chord with people: Last time I checked, it had 537 “reactions” (“Like”, “Love”, etc.), all of them positive, along with a couple dozen positive comments. What I found interesting about that is that people were clearly appreciative of seeing some good news.

People on social media can be intensely negative, as we’ve all seen many times. The news often carries stories that are either negative or just bad news, and often to the exclusion of positive or good news, or even the positive or good sides of otherwise negative or bad news.

I’ve blogged about all that several times, and have made a point of sharing good news—and every time I do, those posts are among my least read. So, knowing that, and the very positive reaction to a little feel-good story I shared on Facebook, I’m beginning to think that what people actually want is good news that’s local.

To be sure, we’ve all grown cynical about news reporting: We may think it’s biased, or that we’re being manipulated, or even that we’re being lied to. So, it could be that we start out with an unwillingness to accept good news at face value.

Or, maybe we’re all too used to tuning out when reading good news that just doesn’t concern us, as well as ignoring any sharing of the previously unreported good or positive aspect of a story we’ve already heard. When it’s local, especially in our own community, maybe that matters a little more. Maybe it also helps that the subjects of the story I shared weren’t anyone well-known (or political officials…), just ordinary people doing ordinary, but good, things. It’s also relevant that the story was about local kids doing the good and right thing without prompting; that was probably bound to be popular.

I wish people wouldn’t be so intensely negative on social media. I wish the news didn’t carry mainly stories that are either negative or bad news to the exclusion of positive or good news, or even just ignoring the positive or good sides of otherwise negative or bad news. But maybe sharing local good news stories more often might just help people to start being more receptive to seeing other good news stories, too. Maybe.

In any case, I just thought it was a nice story of local kids doing the good and right thing, and I wanted to share it. I think that sharing a little good news is a good thing to do, too. We all need it sometimes.

Footnote: The Facebook group is public, but my personal Facebook isn’t, so I shared the exact same thing on both, moments apart.