My thanks to Gavin from New Zealand for sending me a batch of chucklesome images to lighten my mood. Here is a selection of them.
gavin Marriott
Policing In New Zealand: A Guest Post
This is a short guest post from Gavin Marriott about a change in police procedures in his home country of New Zealand.
He has a personal connection, which is explained in the article.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350175518/concern-over-police-plans-pull-back-family-harm-callouts
Now my dad was a policeman. He was an armed policeman during WW2 in Samoa amongst the Japan v USA conflict & is not eligible for a war medal due to policeman being the wrong occupation. If he was a railway porter or postman he would have got one.
I remember dad for his famous quote when a passerby asked him “is Z cars just like the real police” & my dad responded with “No, my men copy Z cars”. That quote is so real as people in occupations try to emulate their TV characters.
My dad retired in 1976 after 38 years service. He got out when the NZ Police went to computers. I went to his retirement party. What an honour. Police from throughout NZ came & shook my hand. “Wow, you are Ray Marriott’s son”. They spoke so highly of him & again it was his very short speech that shook the place. “We need to make it easier on new recruits so they will enjoy this job, not make it tough for them”. He received a standing ovation.
However having read the above Stuff article, dad would say “I told you so”.
Over the years, the NZ Police have got out of most of their core roles – & the wonder why crime is rampant. They no longer walk the beat & check on shop doors. They no longer stand at railway or bus stations watching known passengers. They no longer attend neigbourhood disputes, flagging that as a civil matter. They no longer ticket parked cars as thats now Councils job. They no longer arrest people for drinking in a liquor ban area as thats also Councils bylaw. And that list goes on. When I call them to a fight in the street, its “make a report over the phone”, we’re too busy to attend. When I called about a stolen car parked in the street with engine still running I was told “Its Councils job to remove it”. Council says “they had to contact the owner first”.
So what are the police busy with, given they now have 1,800 more staff. They are busy dealing with the aftermath of mental hospitals closing & desk jobs. After 5 years on the frontline they deserve a desk job.
It is sad when they state on TV “We have 200 men on this murder case”. What about preventing these murders by being seen in the streets & attending our calls.
Now I finish my blog today with a true story . . . I was in the Palmerston North Plaza mall a couple of years ago & saw 2 policemen watching the passerbys in the mall & chatting to them, saying hello to the shop staff. I went up to them & said “Wow, nice to see you guys here making me feel safe. How come you’re here?”.
“Oh we’re doing what we call a ‘Marriott duty’ ” & then laughed.
I asked what that was.
“Oh an old boss we had here in Palmy. He made us all do the beat & so when we have down time & walk the malls, we call it a ‘Marriott duty’ “.
“Nice to meet you guys, keep it up, my dad Snr Sgt Ray Marriot would be proud of you”.
You shoulda seen the look on their faces as i walked off.
The chased after me to shake my hand. “Are you really?” I showed them my drivers licence & they shook my hand.
I wonder what they said on return to station??
But do their bosses let them down?
Generation Z: A Guest Post From Gavin Marriott
Gavin lives in New Zealand and acts as a Justice of the Peace there. He has some thoughts about the current generation.
Generation Z = those now at high school till early 20s.
I saw an article on Stuff, which I have quoted from, and it answered a few questions for me. Over the last couple of years, I have had high school and now working kids, come to me as a JP and dictate the terms of engagement. That is, when I ask them a question, they will answer with “you can’t ask me that”. Several even told me “I do not want you talking to me”. When I told one she had filled out a form wrong, she replied “You have no right to tell me I’ve done something wrong”. They will usually arrive with a “support person”.
Naturally I reported on all this to our Federation training sessions, to find others have had the same experience. One magistrate reported that she got scolded for daring to tell one of these Zeds what to do. When one chap was given a sentence, he replied with “I don’t like that, I will do this instead”.
They are described as believing they can work as actors in a Hollywood movie where they can live their truth – the egocentric La La Land. But current Hollywood stars describe them as “annoying”. “They’re like, ‘Nah, I’m not feeling it today, I’m gonna come in at 11am.’”
In emails where their grammar is incorrect, they’re like, “Why would I correct that, isn’t that kind of limiting?’”
How will they own a home when they only want to work 4 hours. They are demanding flexibility to work remotely, more time off, better perks and higher pay = a defiant approach to employment. 80% expect to be given mental health days (yes a new epidemic of mental illness). For example, having a conversation with a stranger is so stressful. Being told off requires involvement of the school counsellor.
70% want to work remotely. This is a generation that completed university degrees in their childhood bedrooms. For them, working from home is the norm.
They have a new language, a jargon. Words like “quiet quitting” (where employees do the bare minimum, without putting in any extra hours or effort). Their version of success is not our version of success. They don’t know the difference between work and holiday.
Will Gen Z’s reluctance to work have an impact on productivity? Americans fear it could end capitalism. In NZ older people who generally vote National will be dead by the time this generation would not tolerate National with a barge pole and curse our current elders. You will note the Green vote is growing in NZ and worldwide.
A study put this generations attention span at 8.25 seconds – a goldfish can last for 9.
What has led to all this?
They are the result of “helicopter parents”.
Technology may have a good deal to answer for. Their soft brain matter had been moulded by screens from day one with instant gratification.
I believe the answer lies in WHEN they were educated. That is between 2005 to currently. Have you noticed current high school students all out protesting? Where do they learn that from? Teachers? The syllabus? Is this generation being brainwashed?
What I do know, is you don’t tell them off!
Guest Post From Gavin: Outdoor Adventure
Gavin Marriott from New Zealand has sent me this short post, which I am pleased to feature.
Outdoor adventure training for our young adults
Disclaimer: I want to make it clear that these courses I am referring to are not boot camps for offenders – which have been proven not to work and has been found to make better faster criminals.
I am sure there are similar organisations in your countries, and I know there is in Scotland, but here in New Zealand, in addition to school camps (where there is average of one death a year), there are 2 major outdoor adventure training courses mostly for school leavers. One is on a sailing ship and the other in a remote rural area of hills, bush, sea and flowing rivers.
I will not name them here to avoid mis-representing or embarrassing them.
The courses range in duration from a week to a few weeks and are expensive. Hence participants usually get sponsored – often by employers or service clubs. They do sailing, kayaking, high ropes, rock climbing, survival, tramping including a solo experience on a wee island. The day starts with a cold sea swim and students are pushed to the max.
Now for those not familiar to New Zealand, the Gurkhas & British SAS train here. We are also the home to bungy jumping, Mt Everest and Antarctic training.
However all is not well
Employers today are noticing more young employees (67%) are not “willing and able to adapt to new situations”. Also in this age group, anxiety and depression rates have risen (70%).
Participants of these courses are failing in droves and in fact they cannot recruit participants now where once there was waiting list.
Reasons given for the failures is they cannot cope with no KFC or cell phones (or drugs). They have no sense of danger. They cannot work with or help each other. They cannot follow basic instructions. There have been increased cases of aggression.
It’s Snowing Down South: Guest Post From Gavin Marriott
While some of us in the northern hemisphere are sweltering in a humid summer, it is easy to forget that it is midwinter for many countries in the world. Gavin’s guest post brings that home to us, with suitable photos.
It’s snowing down south
That is a well known cliché here for when a woman’s petticoat shows below her dress.
But here I enlighten you of life in a part of the Antarctic that New Zealand owns. They have a research team there all year round at Scott Base.
There are regular summer RNZAF flights down there and they leave from near my house here in Christchurch. The USA and Italy also leaves from here too.
It is currently minus 57 degrees Celsius down there. The next sunrise is mid August.
In the New Zealand wintering-over team is a chap call Matty Jordan. Here are his photos.
Matty pours a can of Coke but sadly is unable to drink it, let alone add Vodka.
Even a hot drink thrown outside freezes.
The southern aurora over Scott Base.
The Milky Way is a regular sight in NZ.
There are videos online of both serious and comical photography, including frozen toilet paper.
Guest Post: Humour From Gavin Marriott
Today, Gavin has sent me something humorous.
God, she is marvellous.
God created Seniors. Most seniors never get enough exercise. In His wisdom, God decreed that seniors become forgetful so they would have to search for their glasses, keys, and other things, thus doing more walking. And God looked down and saw that it was good.
Then God saw there was another need. In His wisdom He made seniors lose coordination so they would drop things, requiring them to bend, reach, and stretch. And God looked down and saw that it was good.
Then God considered the function of bladders and decided seniors would have additional calls of nature, requiring more trips to the bathroom, thus providing more exercise. God looked down and saw that it was good.
So if you find, as you age, you are getting up and down more, remember it’s God’s will. It is all in your best interest even though you mutter under your breath.
Nine Important Facts to Remember as We Grow Older:
#9 Death is the number 1 killer in the world.
#8 Life is sexually transmitted.
#7 Good health is merely the slowest possible rate at which one can die.
#6 Men have two motivations: hunger and sex, and they can’t tell them apart. If you see a gleam in his eyes, make him a sandwich.
#5 Give a person a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to use the Internet and they won’t bother you for weeks, months, maybe years.
#4 Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in the hospital, dying of nothing.
#3 All of us could take a lesson from the weather. It pays no attention to criticism.
#2 In the 60’s, people took LSD to make the world weird. Now the world is weird, and people take Prozac to make it normal.
#1 Life is like a jar of jalapeno peppers. What you do today may be a burning issue tomorrow.
Welcome To The Future: A Guest Post From Gavin Marriott
When we click ‘accept cookies’, or open up our lives online for any reason, we can already see some of the implications. Your smartphone is listening to you, and that Alexa in the corner is also recording any product or service you might mention. The webcam on your laptop is watching you, (put some tape over it, really) and the amount of data stored about your life is far greater than you might imagine.
Gavin has sent me this guest post, which highlights where we might all be heading in the not-too distant future.
Gavin of Canterbury
Welcome To The Future
CALLER: Is this Pizza Hut?
GOOGLE: No sir, it’s Google Pizza.
CALLER: I must have dialled a wrong number, sorry.
GOOGLE: No sir, Google bought Pizza Hut last month.
CALLER: OK. I would like to order a pizza.
GOOGLE: Do you want your usual, sir?
CALLER: My usual? You know me?
GOOGLE: According to our caller ID data sheet, the last 12 times you called you ordered an extra-large pizza with three cheeses, sausage, pepperoni, mushrooms and meatballs on a thick crust.
CALLER: Super! That’s what I’ll have
GOOGLE: May I suggest that this time you order a pizza with ricotta, arugula, sun-dried tomatoes and olives on a whole wheat gluten-free thin crust?
CALLER: What? I don’t want a vegetarian pizza!
GOOGLE: Your cholesterol is not good, sir.
CALLER: How the hell do you know that?
GOOGLE: Well, we cross-referenced your home phone number with your medical records. We have the result of your blood tests for the last 7 years.
CALLER: Okay, but I do not want your rotten vegetarian pizza! I already take medication for my cholesterol.
GOOGLE: Excuse me sir, but you have not taken your medication regularly. According to our database, you purchased only a box of 30 cholesterol tablets once at Chemist warehouse, 4 months ago.
CALLER: I bought more from another Pharmacy.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your credit card statement.
CALLER: I paid in cash.
GOOGLE: But you did not withdraw enough cash according to your bank statement.
CALLER: I have other sources of cash.
GOOGLE: That doesn’t show on your latest tax returns, unless you bought them using an undeclared income source, which is against the law!
CALLER: WHAT THE HELL!
GOOGLE: I’m sorry sir, we use such information only with the sole intention of helping you.
CALLER: Enough already! I’m sick to death of Google, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and all the others. I’m going to an island without the internet, TV, where there is no phone service and no one to watch me or spy on me.
GOOGLE: I understand sir, but you need to renew your passport first. It expired 6 weeks ago…
Guest Post: Medical Advice From Gavin
Gavin has good advice about the prevention of choking on food, using his many years of experience in the Ambulance Service in London, and New Zealand.
Hi folks, 2 things I feared most when I was in the ambulance service. One was asthma & the other similar was choking. I was the first in NZ to teach the Heimlich manoeuvre & got into trouble for it. I’m pleased to see in the video in the news story courtesy of Wellington Free, they have brought it back.
(This is not the video clip mentioned, just an illustration of the technique-Pete.)
Some advice
Never sneak up on someone while they are eating or give them a fright, such as saying HI by slapping them on the back. Eat small bites of steak and not chewy bits – no need to be polite, spit them out. And don’t forget Oranges. The meat on that is a regular choker as the acid can make you gulp. For children, eating oranges like we did at half time is safest, not peeled or Mandarins are better.
Only advanced paramedics have the equipment & can do cricothyroid punctures, certainly not in rural areas. An off duty doctor would struggle without the right gear but a midwife did it successfully in the Hawkes Bay a few years ago.
Guest Post: Cyclone Devastation In New Zealand
My thanks to Gavin Marriott for this guest post.
Cyclone Gabrielle
For most in England the news about New Zealand is that their English Cricket team (led by a Kiwi coach & captain by the way) is touring here at the mo. So we gave them a welcome of wet pitches. The same welcome given to Princess Anne who is here at the moment too.
New Zealand has just had its first tropical cyclone (only in the upper North Island). We knew it was coming and it brought gusts of 160 kilometres an hour (100 mph). Many parts of northern New Zealand were already waterlogged by a record rainfall a fortnight previous. Cyclone Gabrielle added much more along with 11 metre (36 foot) waves. Scientists say it fed off unusually warm seas driven by climate change and La Nina weather patterns.
There are many towns cut off with no power or communication. Deaths include a volunteer fireman and bodies have been seen floating down rivers.
The RNZAF here seen winched hundreds of people off the roofs of their houses. At the same time the RNZ Navy had to rescue a yachtsman in the storm some distance from land. New Zealand may be the same land mass as Great Britain but most of it is mountains, up to 12,000ft, therefore limited places to build towns. The English settlers of 180 years ago built in places they shouldn’t – alongside rivers, next to lakes, on drained swamps, onhillsides, cliff tops and flood plains. An interesting fact here is when our settlements were designed back in England, they were built to face the sun. We are in the southern hemisphere – so they were the wrong way around!
After the Christchurch earthquakes a dozen years go (which I survived) we suffered at having a large city built on swamp land. Folks, they are rebuilding on the same land and on new drained swamps. Our new hospital on a riverbank has permanent pumps operating. This cyclone has followed a tough time during Covid recovery where we borrowed Billions– in addition to the Billons borrowed for the Christchurch earthquake rebuild. That resulted in high insurance premiums nationally and so many in New Zealand couldn’t afford to insure. Crop producers have endured previous flooding and so Britain will not get much of our exports at a time they have left Europe.
In comparison to Britain, for a population of 5 million, we have highways the same length that some will need a total rebuild and re routing around hills, same as railways, with many new bridges.
Its going to be a massive financial blow and I don’t know how we will recover, given this is most likely going to be repeated, and thanks to global warming – soon.
After the recent Pike River mine tragedy (29), the Mosque massacre (51) and the White island eruption (22) – is anyone interested in the cricket?
Guest Post: Gavin Marriott
My thanks to Gavin for this interesting article about one of New Zealand’s ‘finest’.
A Fairlie good story about Sir Bill Hamilton.
I’d like to tell you about a farm boy brought up from the same locality I was, albeit 50 years earlier. Much information is in the newspaper article below (if you are able to open it).
The area down here is called South Canterbury but will have its Māori name of Aoraki used. It is in the centre of the South island and nearby our highest mountain Mt Cook and alongside multiple lakes all a turquoise colour (to do with the glacier rock flour). The night sky is a world heritage site and one of the best places to see the stars. It’s a tourist mecca. My family church is one of the most photographed in the world.
Apart from the lakes the place is a barren desert of tussock grass, rabbits and sheep. But the lakes supply hydro power down some rivers. So it must be in the water down here that such a remote place in the world in a mostly unheard of nation where world leading inventions are made. Ed Hillary trained on the mountains here (with my uncle) and Richard Pearse flew here before the Wright Bros. The ski plane was invented here too. The main town here is Fairlie, named after a town in Scotland. The district is called Mackenzie after an infamous Scottish sheep stealer that is more legend around here. The local pipe band is often heard. The rugby team is called the Rams as you could guess and the town is the butt internationally of a certain sheep joke (deserved).
Boats.
Most have propellers but a few now have a jet unit that pushes water out the back at such force the boat can go faster, reverse immediately, spin around and sail in very shallow waters (like a few inches). To put it in perspective, many on the River Thames, the fast English channel ferries are jets as is the new Shannon class RNLI lifeboats.
https://www.google.com/search?q=shannon+class+lifeboat+youtube&oq=sha
nnon+class+lifeboat+youtube&aqs=chrome..69i57.14290j0j7&sourceid=chro
me&ie=UTF-8#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:1b6b5cc3,vid:rYFEIdVcptQ
These jet units are called ‘Hamilton jets’ named after Sir Bill Hamilton and still manufactured by his family just around the corner of my main home in Christchurch city.
But Bill did much more. During the depression he invented farm machinery and hydro electric schemes to save the farmers money and during the war munitions inventions for Britain. But as is usual, the locals in Fairlie were not overly aware of him so I thought a statue a good idea and the article if you can read it will show that project.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/timaru-herald/life/131064544/fairlie-memorial-
unveiled-for-hamilton-jet-inventor-sir-bill-hamilton
beetleypete 