England’s HaKa – the HoKey-CoKey
The England rugby team are on track to complete their preparations for the Rugby World Cup according to the plan laid down by coach, Martin Johnson.
England’s warm–up games have not so far shown the sort of form that suggests that they are real contenders for the title, but Johnson declares himself satisfied with where they are.
“We are what we are, and we must work with what we have,” Johnson says. But he acknowledges that a change of identity is an important part of the plan.
“The first step in the plan has been achieved,” he says. “The players are getting used to the black uniform, and no longer cringe with embarrassment when they put on the black jersey. We have encouraged the team to wear the black jersey in a wide range of situations – in bed, going to the supermarket, joining in riots, so that they cease to think of it as anything out of the ordinary. They now have some sense of what it feels like to be in a team with a better than 75% win rate over 106 years.”
Johnson agrees that many members of his squad were World Cup winners eight years ago. “Advancing age is an insidious condition, though,” he says, “and memories have faded over the years. Most of those players remember nothing other than that the way to win is to do nothing until the last minute and then give the ball to Johnny to drop a goal. We needed some way of reviving memories for the players who have difficulty remembering 2003 of what it means to be in a world-class team.”
England have worked hard to change the composition of the team – again with a view to updating its identity. “We have to move on from 2003,” he says, “and we need to introduce new – that is to say, non-English elements – into the team.”
“We have worked hard to ensure that a high proportion of the players introduced since 2003 are not English. This seems to us to be our best bet for matching what overseas teams are able to achieve.”
“In particular, I have been keen to put anyone with a vaguely Polynesian name and/or appearance straight into the team. It all helps to create the illusion for the players that might be able to play as well as Samoa.”
Johnson revealed that there are still some tricks up his sleeve. “We will require team members, including the non-Polynesian minority, to acquire tattoos before the World Cup.” He rejected suggestions that being tattooed was a long, arduous, and exhausting process. “In line with our approach that it is perception rather than reality that matters, we have purchased a high-quality range of transfers that players can choose from the night before a match. Players can choose from a wide range of options, including “Kiss me quick” and “My old man’s a dustman.”
Johnson was unwilling, however, to say much about what we understand is regarded by England’s management as potentially the coup de grace. We are led to believe that England are concerned at the advantage that they see the All Blacks as gaining from the haka. Work is well advanced on an English equivalent – something that will intimidate opponents and gain a psychological advantage for England.
Johnson was dismissive of earlier efforts made by other teams to match the haka. In particular, he poked fun at the Australian use of Waltzing Matilda in trans-Tasman matches. “No one is going to be too terrified of a single guy strumming a guitar and singing a song about a dancing sheila,” he scoffed.
We understand that the first effort at an English haka focused on the Morris dance. After several practices in secret, however, this idea was junked. “The tinkling bells, pretty ribbons, and skipping steps didn’t quite do it,” according to one well-placed observer (thought to be Steve Thompson who, it is reported, didn’t feel that it was quite him), “and it took us twenty minutes to change out of our gear when we had finished and into the black uniform.”
We understand on good authority that the current plan is to do the hokey-cokey. “Performed by large men, singing loudly and scowling, it will, we think, produce the right effect,” says the same well-placed authority. “Putting your left leg in and then your left leg out in unison can seem very impressive and intimidating. And, like the haka, it has a cultural history that makes it a real statement of English resolve.”
More work is needed however. It seems that the front-row are having difficulty in distinguishing their left legs from their right legs. Martin Johnson, though, is not deterred. “If the team can get this difficult technical exercise right, then the World Cup should be a piece of cake.”
Bryan Gould
16 August 2011
John Key is Missing
Concern is mounting over the whereabouts and welfare of the Prime Minister, John Key. He has not been seen on television or heard on radio for nearly two hours. Worried aides say that they have no idea where he might be. The Diplomatic Protection Squad have enlisted the help of the public who are asked to monitor their television screens and radio stations for any sign of him.
“This is completely out of character for John Key,” a police spokesperson said. “There is no recorded instance since he became Prime Minister of his absence from the media for as long as two whole hours.”
The Prime Minister’s office, however, says that there is no need for panic, and no evidence that anything untoward has happened. Their only concern is that Mr Key apparently suffers from a rare medical condition that means that – without the stimulus of a television camera trained upon him – he is prone to falling into a coma. “It is essential that we get him to a television studio as soon as possible,” an aide said.
One theory as to why the Prime Minister has disappeared is that he had been upset when a camera malfunction meant that an interview he gave as he lifted weights at the World’s Strongest Man competition could not be broadcast. His office said that this was an unfortunate incident. “It’s possible that this triggered the onset of withdrawal symptoms.”
The last confirmed sighting of the Prime Minister was as he disappeared – concealed as the back end of a pantomime horse – at Trentham racecourse. The horse was eventually recovered but the back end was empty.
There was a brief glimmer of hope when he was subsequently seen on regional television dressed in a hula skirt but it was rapidly established that this was archive footage, taken from an hourly programme called Getting To Know Your Prime Minister.
Television news broadcasters said that they were worried but the situation was not yet critical. They conceded, though, that if the Prime Ministerial absence continued into a second day, they would have to re-schedule their programming to take account of much shorter news bulletins. They also hinted that if the Prime Minister remained missing, there was the risk of some job losses among camera crews.
The organisers of a popcorn popping contest in Auckland today said that if the Prime Minister was not available to judge the best popcorn, they had a stand-by arrangement that meant that Marc Ellis would step in. “We don’t think the children will notice,” one said.
Organisers of other sports contests, children’s parties and charity events through the day had made no contingency arrangements, however, and feared that they would have to cancel. There was good news for some, though; the Defence Minister confirmed that if the Prime Minister’s whereabouts remained unknown, RNZAF pilots would be given the day off.
The Deputy Prime Minister has called an emergency Cabinet meeting, so that Ministers can be advised on how to answer questions and make statements about their portfolios. “Ministers will need some special coaching,” he said, “since most will never have had the experience of dealing with these matters themselves.”
There has been little impact on the stock exchange so far, and inquiries overseas have only just got under way. First indications are, however, that the Prime Minister is unlikely to have gone offshore. A White House spokesperson, asked if he knew anything about the whereabouts of John Key, said “Who?”
Bryan Gould
6 May 2011
Made in Dagenham
Last week I went to see Made in Dagenham – a film that had a special significance for me since I was the MP for Dagenham for eleven years. I thoroughly enjoyed its uplifting account of a successful struggle for women’s rights at work.
Sadly, of course, one’s pleasure at such moments does not survive long the harsh reality of today’s news headlines. Discrimination in its many forms is still alive and well right across the globe. And discrimination against women, even in New Zealand, is still a daily reality.
The horrific death of a young woman who was burnt alive is – thankfully – something we do not expect to see in our country. But, lest we dismiss it too readily, let us recognise our shamefully high incidence of domestic violence, the majority of whose victims are women.The statistics record only those cases that are reported. They take no account of those women who suffer in silence, resigned to their fate. Nor do they recognise those many women who are abused psychologically rather than physically or sexually.
The New Zealand legislation on domestic violence was amended in 1995 to include psychological abuse (or what is now referred to in the literature as “coercive control”), but New Zealand judges, lawyers, counsellors and psychologists have made little attempt to acknowledge that psychological abuse exists, let alone provide a remedy.
Discrimination against women, of course, takes many forms, not all of which necessarily involve violence. In recent days, for example, two UK Sky sports reporters have been dismissed after their sexist and demeaning comments about women (as well as their casual and laughably mistaken assumption that a female lineswoman could not understand football’s offside rule) were mistakenly broadcast live.
The Sky journalists made the kind of comments that can be heard in any pub or club in both New Zealand and the UK. Their mistake was to have them broadcast. But the dismissive assumption that this was merely “laddish” behaviour and that no harm was done – a view apparently shared by some of our own sports journalists if Martin Devlin’s comments are anything to go by – entirely misses the point. It is doubtful if those who treat the matter so lightly have any idea of how damaging such discrimination is to the self-esteem of women or of how much it owes to a deeply entrenched prejudice that has been deliberately used to enslave and devalue women over many centuries and in virtually all societies.
My thirteen year-old granddaughter, who is intensely interested in issues of discrimination, recently asked me what I thought was the most damaging and pervasive kind of such behaviour. She was a little surprised when, after a moment’s reflection, I replied that, in my view, discrimination against women was the most significant. All forms of discrimination are of course deeply offensive and damaging to their victims. So why – given the wounding treatment of minorities on racial, religious, sexual orientation or disability grounds – do I think that discrimination against women is the most serious?
In purely numerical terms of course, discrimination against women, affecting as it does over half the world’s population, must take pride of place, not just for its impact on those billions of individuals but also on the societies in which they live. But it is not merely the numbers that count.
What distinguishes discrimination against women from other forms of such reprehensible behaviour is that it is an integral, deliberate, and entrenched element in cultures and religions around the world and from time immemorial. It is to be found as the foundation stone of most social orders. Men in all societies and cultures have used their physical strength and their freedom from the burdens of child-bearing and child-rearing to ensure that women are subjugated and enslaved.
How is it that boys who love their mothers, are brought up with their sisters and eventually dote on their daughters can grow up to be party to such systematic abuse? How can they not only tolerate but enforce codes that allow them – indeed, require them – to stone women to death, mutilate them physically and sexually, treat them as chattels, and deny them education and the freedom to choose?
In today’s Western societies, it is true, these extreme behaviours are no longer tolerated. But the efforts are still made to keep women in their place, as the women of Dagenham and the English lineswoman found.
The explanation is not that the strong male cannot help but assert his superiority, but that the weak and frightened male needs to hide his fear by burying it deep in centuries-old religious, moral and social codes that ensure that women are kept under control. And what is it that men are frightened of?
The answer is that it is the power of women’s sexuality that frightens men. From Eve in the Garden of Eden to the present day, men have found it necessary to counter that fear by destroying, restricting, commodifying and demeaning that sexuality, and by identifying it as the origin of sin and of many of society’s ills. The rules that male-dominated societies – and that means most societies – have put in place and that are supposedly justified by religious belief or the need for social order are in the end no more than an attempt to limit the power that women should legitimately claim and exercise to everyone’s advantage.
Bryan Gould
30 January 2011
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 7 February 2011
Hambledon
Like most New Zealanders, I have at times found the television pictures of Christchurch’s earthquake disaster too much to bear. I find that I need to take a break, in a way that those directly involved cannot, from the scenes of personal tragedy and total devastation.
But, as for others no doubt, there is from time to time a report that has a particular resonance and significance for me. Such a moment came at lunchtime on Saturday when it was reported that a historic mansion on Bealey Avenue had been demolished.
No one can doubt, as Mayor Bob Parker has said, that the primary focus in the immediate aftermath of the disaster must be the people caught up in the tragedy – the loss of life, the rescue of those who were trapped and injured, and the suffering of families who have lost loved ones.
But, in the fullness of time, we will have time to reflect on the loss of heritage as well – of so much that was part of Christchurch’s history, so much of its very heart and soul. We can already see the scale of that loss in the damage suffered by the Cathedral and other iconic buildings. The now demolished mansion in Bealey Avenue was one such.
In 1850, my great great grandfather, George Gould, sailed to New Zealand with his young bride, Hannah. They arrived in Wellington on the 5th of November. The young couple spent a few weeks in the North Island before sailing again, this time for Christchurch, where they disembarked on the 11th of February 1851.
While in the North Island, George Gould had built with his own hands the framework of the house he intended to erect. He had taken the “pre-fab” on board the “Camilla”, and – on disembarking at Lyttleton – he then had to transport the structure via Sumner and the Avon river to Christchurch.
The house eventually reached its destination near the south-east corner of Armagh and Colombo streets and was erected before the month was out. It was the first completed wooden house in the Christchurch city area.
The building became not only a home but was also the first site of a store and farming services and trading enterprise – what eventually developed into Pyne Gould Guinness and which gave its name to the Pyne Gould building in which so many died when the earthquake struck. The business prospered, and George Gould became one of the most successful and prominent of Christchurch citizens.
By 1856, he had amassed enough money to move from the “pre-fab” to a house he had built on a 100-acre site he had purchased on the west side of Springfield Road. The new dwelling was best described as a Victorian gentleman’s residence, though built in the colonial style. It boasted, in addition to spacious living quarters and a large number of bedrooms, many other features ranging from a large butler’s pantry adjacent to the kitchen to a panelled ballroom. The house looked out onto extensive grounds, which included a large, formal garden.
George Gould had been born and brought up in Hambleden, a small English village on the banks of the River Thames. His grandfather, Caleb Gould, had been a famous lock-keeper at Hambleden; visitors to the lock to this day will see displayed many references to Caleb Gould and an account of his exploits is to be found in most histories of the Thames. George Gould decided to name his splendid new house after the place of his birth.
With his new house established as the family home, George than arranged for his parents, Joseph and Susan, to come out to New Zealand to join them. Joseph and Susan lived in a small house that George built for them in the grounds of Hambleden.
When I returned to New Zealand from Britain in the mid-1990s, my sister, Ngaire, and I spent some time on a visit to Christchurch looking for the old family home. It was feared that it had been demolished. We could find nothing in Bealey Avenue that looked like the photographs of the original house. It took us some time to realise that the photographs were all taken from the front garden of the house, across the extensive grounds which had long since been filled in with small houses, and that what could be seen from Bealey Avenue was in fact the unphotographed back of the house.
We discovered that the mansion had become the residence of the Bishop of Christchurch in the later part of the 19th century, and had eventually spent part of its more recent history as a private hotel – also known as “Hambleden”. I had the pleasure of staying there overnight on one of my visits to the city.
The demolition of “Hambleden”, and the sad and unfortunate link through the Gould family to the fate of another building that – with its occupants – has been a tragic victim of the earthquake, means the loss of another small part of Christchurch’s history. In bringing it to the attention of a wider readership, I discharge an obligation I feel to the memory of George Gould.
Bryan Gould
26 January 2011
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 1 March.
Bridging the Teaching Divide
The recently published assessment that New Zealand has the best education system in the world is a valuable antidote to our predilection for beating ourselves up about our supposed failings in this regard. It should not, however, reduce our vigilance in identifying issues that will continue to need attention.One such issue is the perennial complaint of tertiary institutions that school-leavers are inadequately prepared to study effectively at tertiary level. This complaint has been around for as long as there has been university education. To some extent, it is simply a reflection of the belief of every older generation that standards have slipped. Supposedly sliding standards of grammar, spelling, and general literacy have all been targets.But the issue may not be as simple as that. One example of an area where the complaints may have particular substance is in maths and science, and particularly physics. Universities are constantly urged to produce increasing numbers of graduates in these areas, but – all too often – school-leavers themselves are deterred from studying these subjects because their secondary education has left them short of the level required for university study.Whatever the truth of that, there is growing concern about a new and different problem, involving not so much what is taught as how it is taught. Secondary education has, over recent years, undergone major changes. The introduction of the NCEA, in particular, has signalled and required a substantial shift in how students are taught and how they learn.There is a growing acceptance across the education world that these changes have been – on the whole – beneficial. Students themselves have responded well. Most students have flourished in a regime which encourages them to work and to stay involved over a whole period of study, rather than one that simply requires cramming when it comes to exam time. Our top world ranking suggests persuasively that we are reaping the rewards of these changes.These worthwhile changes may nevertheless have created a new disjunction between the methods and skills needed for studying and learning at the secondary level, and those required at tertiary level. It may be that tertiary education has not yet fully woken up to the new and different skill sets that students bring with them as they begin their tertiary studies.Much secondary teaching now rests less on formal teaching, where the teacher provides the information and tuition and the student then assimilates and regurgitates it, and much more on informal collaborative and group work, on inquiry and project work, on assembling and exploring relevant information from sources other than the teacher. The aim is to raise involvement and interest levels and to prepare students for new kinds of life-long learning in the modern world.These changes are of course not only a function of different teaching methods. They also reflect the student’s experience outside the classroom – an experience greatly influenced by today’s electronic media and in particular by the internet.The results, however, have a downside – at least from the viewpoint of the traditional university teacher. The first-year student is increasingly unfamiliar with what is required for university study. Taking in, understanding and then articulating a particular body of knowledge, mastering it accurately and comprehensively and then demonstrating that by putting it in written form in a properly constructed paper or essay which offers a reasoned conclusion – these are skills that have not been practised by many of today’s school leavers. Little wonder that some struggle to adapt.The evidence that this should be a cause for real concern is still quite fragmentary. Further research is needed, and is currently being undertaken in a number of projects supported by Ako Aotearoa – the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence. It is clear that if we want our tertiary institutions to produce the best-equipped graduates, we must be alert to factors such as this which might inhibit the ability to get the best out of tertiary education.To identify this possible disjunction is not to apportion blame, or even to think that there is blame to apportion. But, if the gap exists, it should be addressed. The benefits of the changes at secondary level have been too great to be cast aside, but we will all benefit if tertiary students are helped to achieve a better learning experience by closing the gulf between the demands of secondary and tertiary education.It is already the case for some students who are thought to have been disadvantaged at secondary level that they begin their tertiary study with an introductory course in what is needed for success at that level. This should perhaps be provided as a matter of course to all first-year tertiary students. It would of course add to the costs that taxpayers and students alike have to bear for tertiary education. But, if the outcome is that we get better value for the resources we put into tertiary education, wouldn’t that be worth it?Bryan Gould
4 November 2010
This article was published in the NZ Herald on 17 November