Quitter

I've voiced many notable people while working for an international television network, the Japanese Prime Minister is a regular personal favourite.

But today I reached the pinnacle, being the Pope when he quit.

Millions around the world heard me quit as Pope and I am most amused.

Kai

I've finally got my first food poisoning of the middle east. It's not the worst I've ever had, but it's still front page news.

The culprit could be turkish, indian or even the hotel food as I whet my palette yesterday. The potential for me to have created a personal concoction is high.

Still, I try to look on the bright side. Sure I was up half the night writhing and sweating, but at least I'm looking slim.

Spam

Aside from work, I tend to work. I'm currently trying to organise a varied array of bits and pieces for my return to New Zealand including marketing, media and merchandise for the New Zealand Ice Hockey League and everything that goes along with having a show in the New Zealand Comedy Festival.

Both are a tall order and fairly difficult to stay on top of when coupled with my 12 hour day job. It's inconceivable to me that any work I do isn't rinsing yet another drop of blood from the stone and errant emails tend to mean being strapped in and watching Leatherface slowly walk towards me with a bucket.

With the massive laundry list I have to deal with on a daily basis, I tend to fire off emails thinking I've done what I needed to do, immediately moving on to the next objective.

"..Love from Jez Brown", *SEND*, gone, forgotten.

The problem with this workflow is obvious, if the email never reaches its target, I receive a square boning.

The obvious solution is the most time consuming one as there is no way I can follow up every email I send and what point is there anyway if the follow up goes in the trash too?

I was recently looking into just how much web traffic I create through my various web page visits and outbox activity.. I suspect any professional spammers would be jealous of my numbers. Maybe one of them has a picture of me on the office wall somewhere with an hackneyed quote emblazoned across the front which he points out while yelling at other staff members pleading with them to find the wherewithal to "..be more like Jez".

Sadly not, for noone spams inboxes like I do. A relentless stream of consciousness not unlike this blog, but delivered at an almost constant rate for 14 hours of every day. I email when I wake up, during work, during meals, on the toilet and in bed before I pass out.. emailing.

And what do I get for this effort? A self perpetuating torrent in return.

Sometimes I fear opening my inbox. I stall, knowing how much attention its contents will require. On more than one occasion I just haven't bothered. I've gone to do it, but stopped, pursed my lips, delved a moment of consideration, given a rude gesture and returned to being a real live boy.

I do wonder how often this happens to other people as email begets email.

Before starting my own business I used to have a policy of turning my phone off on weekends, but it's been three years since I have.

I could create a timetable for when which kind of work is appropriate, but each time I try I leave myself hung out to dry by everyone's insistence that things must be done "now". I stand to attention and salute.

"Now" is a word I could do without. I hear it far too often and what's worse, I pass it on. Another link in a chain which seems to answer only to a clock whose tick sounds like galloping hooves.

A relentless thunderous beat which gathers speed and echoes the sound of your heart as you move with haste towards an early grave.

And so I stare into my monitor.. feeling my ulcer kick when that little number ticks up from 517 unread to 518. I wish I hadn't seen it. "I remember when that number was below 500" I think to myself nostalgically. Always hoping that there was a magic way to clear my inbox a la the Sorcerers Apprentice, but we all know how that ended and dealing with angry white men in pointy hats has never worked out well for anyone.

So a solution must be found to cut down the volume of insipid correspondence and help my brain maintain order when it comes to reaching through the dusty covers of yesterday's memories.

Maybe yoga is the answer?

Racist

This reminded me of home today

Link for clicking

Bright sparks

I'm against asset sales. Huge surprise. But I thought I would at least explain my reasoning.

In New Zealand we have opinions, lots of opinions, frequently without any reason or purpose. Sometimes it feels a bit like America with people either batting for the red team or the blue team.

The media has a huge part to play in this as short sound bites are used to divide us into palatable easy to digest chunks, you like this, you don't like that.

What's worse is we swallow this fishhook whole. Far too many of us simply accept that I play for this team and therefore I like this and I don't like that. It's easy and it makes me vomit.

For me it's about accountability, not just for now, but for the future. It often feels like the two are completely removed from one another, so I have to slam my head in a door to feel normal.

The nice rich people selling our assets aren't all bad people, they are just behaving in a way that makes sense to them. They have money and their ideology suggests that we all should and isn't it fantastic.

They are heavy proponents of a free market economy because it has been good to them. The flipside is that you rarely see someone with no money championing their cause so loudly.

To me that shows more of a belief in the economy than in us as people to work our problems out and its this way of thinking which I am now at odds with. The blind faith we show in the economy reminds me of a lot of other blind faith shown around the world.

Despite what we may gripe about, and as Kiwi's we do that a fair bit, we don't have it all that bad. We are however lead to think we have it bad because our neighbours have it "better". It's this quirk of human behaviour which has lead us down the garden path.

We're now prepared to give up many of our rights, freedoms and wealth in favour of what might be more money. Not wealth, money. For "wealth" is what you make of it, money is money.

Just being a Kiwi comes up frequently in conversation in the middle east, usually after the word "hello". Every bastard and his dog wants to know how they can move to New Zealand. They are not worried in the slightest about the pay, they see New Zealand for its freedoms, natural wonders and lifestyle. To them that is our true value and it is invigorating to see and hear.

Then I think, man, we sure are a bunch of whiney little children.

Make no mistake, I run my own business back home and part of the reason I came to the middle east was money, but I will not be complaining about anything but apathy from now on.

The problem I have with asset sales is that it somewhat flies in the face of basic capitalism, ie: wealth through accumulation. You know, the way people get rich. So then we must assume that we are poor and need to pawn our mothers jewellery to make ends meet.

Except we're not that poor, these businesses we want to sell are profitable.

The only reason a rich person would ever sell a profitable business is if they didn't want to be in business anymore.

And here we find the real guts of neo-liberal politics "advocating support of economic liberalization, free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation while decreasing the size of the public sector and increasing the role of the private sector in modern society."

This is the real reason the government wants to sell our assets and its an ideology that doesn't actually make economic sense for New Zealanders.

Essential services worldwide are big business and the reason is because they make a lot of money. They're essential after all.

Many countries either refuse to sell these services into private ownership or only lease them for an allotted duration, avoiding the pitfalls and ramifications of losing control.

The problem is that those services once sold into the private sector come under the pressure of share holders to constantly lift profits and I have a bee in my bonnet when it comes to profiting from what is deemed to be essential.

I have no problem with a company like Apple making mega bucks from being clever and getting us to buy their products. However when you don't have a choice, when you simply need a service such as electricity to survive, then I don't believe society benefits from a wholly private model.

The flow on of selling our power companies is that we will lose the profit we currently make from them and the expectation of share holders will drive up power prices costing us more.

It's an extremely round about way of MP's initiating the tax increases we all loathe so much, tax increases which would cost us less and prevent the need to sell anything or even get into debt in the first place. It boggles my mind that the amount of borrowing our country currently does wouldn't even exist if the last round of tax cuts hadn't gone through.

Stealing from the mouths of babes.

I would much rather we hang on to the power companies, take some of that profit and invest it in research and development to further improve and innovate on what we do. Being in the middle east shows me just how much the world is crying out for energy solutions and wouldn't it be so cool if some clever New Zealanders lead the way and helped our country make another tidy profit at the same time?

I personally think that's what is missing. The vision to see how we really fit into the world, that we're clever.

If we're smart and take care of what we have and each other, if we prioritise the right things in life, health, education and happiness, we can do great things. But it starts with us, showing faith in each other and not just in the economy.

Good ideas make a difference and selling our power companies, in my view, is not a good idea.

So no matter what team you play for, be it the blue team, the red team, even the green team or your own team. Think about this issue carefully. Get a second opinion, get a third! And if in the end you agree with me, sign this bugger and at least let the country decide for itself.

http://signathon.org.nz/

And check out some other good ideas

What is happening in Britain