Reflections and Hopes for 2012

Reflections, elections and hope for a new year

Christmas is a coming and the goose is getting fat,

Please put a penny in the old man’s hat.

If you haven’t got a penny a half-penny will do.

If you haven’t got a half-penny then God bless you.

The Rugby World Cup and the elections are over and “we won”!

Well, the All Blacks won the World Cup by the skin of their teeth, but I’m not sure who the winners are in our election results. A sad aspect of the recent elections was the low voter turnout. 70% is apparently a very good turnout compared to many other nations but I hoped we’d do better than that. It saddens me that people can be so apathetic when it comes to exercising their hard-won democratic rights.

However you might feel about the election outcome we have to acknowledge that we here in Aotearoa have the closest thing to real democracy as can be achieved in the world of today. We should be proud of that and cherish it, if only people would all get out and vote. (And I do wish we could get rid of the rash of pre-election polls and ‘worms’ and other forms of media prediction in the weeks leading up to elections.)

Given the pending partial sell-off of state owned assets you can’t convince me that the competitive market model is the right one when it comes to distributing our energy resources, particularly electricity. A competitive market will always encourage more consumption because more consumption brings greater profits. Surely we should be encouraging energy conservation by every means possible. Recent times have shown just how unstable and sometimes unworkable the free-market model can be.

I find it somewhat ironic that we’ve been living through times when debt has been encouraged as the way to get ahead, that the smart thing to do is to use someone else’s money to achieve your own ends. So we now have a generation of young folk who take living with debt for granted, and we have nations folding financially because of their debt burdens. I think I’ve been lucky in heeding my parents generation’s advice to never buy anything you can’t pay for at the time of purchase (except perhaps a house).

I was talking with one of my grandchildren the other day about the fact that their great-grandparents grew up through the 1930s, the time of the ‘great depression’. Their generation learned to be frugal whereas today folk expect to get whatever they fancy and get it now, even if you have to go into debt to get it. My grandson pointed out that now we’re in a ‘recession’ where as the 1930s was a time of ‘depression’. “They weren’t broke”, he suggested, “they were just really sad”.

Channel 7 and Maori TV are the channels I’m most likely to watch if and when I can be bothered watching TV.

I find those two channels are often the most interesting and the most informative, and I’m sure it has much to do with the fact that they are not strongly commercially driven. Channel 7 is due to close in this coming year, now that makes me sad.

But now is not a time for sadness. Now is the time for Christmas season cheer.

There are end of year parties to attend and the hope of good things to come in 2012.

Fritha will be taking a break from her duties as the Guild’s executive officer for some time in the new year but we’ll be keeping on keeping on. Do encourage your colleagues and cohorts to join the Guild so that we have a mandate and a voice to represent all screen production workers as best we can.

Here’s wishing you all the best for the silly season and the new year.