MODERN TIMES

The Dominion-Post recently ran a lengthy article about a young couple who’s little bloke is about to start school. The guts of the piece was the need to build a new school in their burgeoning suburb, their lad for example, having to be driven 3 ks to the nearest one.

My, how the world has changed. When I started school at 5 years of age in 1945 I walked 3 miles to school every day, and even longer back. That’s because I’d often do the return trip via the adjacent Boulcott and Hutt golf courses and best of all, down to the Hutt river, a veritable wonderland for a 5 year old. Then I’d drift back home, oblivious of the time, hours later and cop punishment. That changed when a new primary school was built only about a mile away when I was 8.

In fairness it was a very different world, notably in the almost total absence of traffic. People only began to own cars in the mid to late 1960s. For example, I was 10 when I had my first ever ride in a car, to the end of the street and back. Prior to that I’d had two rides in a truck at 8 years of age.

Over my eight plus decades I’ve witnessed enormous changes on so many fronts, not always for the better.

For example, and perhaps readers can enlighten me, why can modern female pop singers apparently only “perform” in their underwear? And on the other side of the ledger, why can their male counterparts only “perform” wearing dark glasses? Note I say “perform” as singing no longer is a requirement for today’s pop so-called singers. Imagine if a real singer such as Kiri, emerged on stage in her underwear. And on that topic, why is the spectacle of an American negro bending over chanting nonsense categorised as music? It’s not as music by definition requires a melodic aspect. Of course there are no shortage of so-called academics who’d step forward and claim this “rap” rubbish is music but that’s easily explained.

Every university teacher, watching their lives peter away while still locked in the school-room, has an abiding passion to be on television. And the gilt-edge route to that fulfillment is to say something perversely against the evidence and common-sense.

We saw that with covid as numerous hitherto unheard of “experts” emerged to preach the end is nigh and the need for everyone to hide under their beds. Overnight they become famous. Now they’re back to their well-deserved obscurity, their message having been shown to be grossly excessive and their abrupt fame having turned to dust.

My favourite example of this behaviour arose when the Khymer Rouge were in full murdering mode decimating Cambodians four decades back. A goofy English so-called academic seized the opportunity for instant fame and spoke up in their defence. Expecting a hero’s welcome he then flew out to Cambodia and was promptly murdered by them.

There’s no doubt New Zealand would be a great deal better off had the now silent Covid television- hogging academics of 2021-2 all been murdered.

Continuing with modern life’s many mysteries, why do New Zealand rugby players all pathetically shake hands with their team-mates in the dressing room before running out on to the ground? Surely they’ve met before one would think.

Then worse, after the game they all indulge in intimate hugging, this clearly suggesting suppressed homosexual tendencies.

There’s no doubt we’ve all become immensely better off materially over my life-span, but conversely in so many other ways we’ve gone backwards.