Beware the tides of March

6.45am

Wake to frankly scary and alarming news that broke while I was sleeping.   

Also there is a tsunami warning. We’ll deal with the big news once I’ve fully absorbed and processed the shock and trauma, but first what's the story with those waves?

8.20 am

Hold that thought, it’s not one or two earthquakes and tsunami; it’s three! There’s just been another one!

Cue a whole morning of checking the social media and listening to rolling radio coverage, and they do it well, this stuff, do RNZ.

Corin Dann is altogether more than his usual highly-fizzing self, giving strong and clear warnings about potential damage to the East Coast and Whangarei.

Not to be a dick or nothin’ but what there is of his reo goes entirely out the window at moments like this and quite a lot of damage is being done to Whangarei already. 

Everyone is loving the phone call Kathryn Ryan has with Far North mayor John  Carter, who is not breaking stride as he makes the rounds of a beachside village alerting everyone to the coming danger. A civil defence minister is a civil defence minister for life.

Also, John Carter is, was, and will forever be, Kiwi as. Cutting away from his conversation with Kathryn, he calls:

Rachel, you need to evacuate there’s a tsunami warning... sorry about that

It is the nature of we, the people of this shaky land to be apologetic in  the most endearing way.

Just these, we say, as we hand over our purchase.

Sorry, said whoever was in charge years ago at the 30th birthday party of Ben Thomas.

Sorry, not sorry, says our Civil Defence Warning, once, twice and a third time today in tone and decibel fashioned for fullest impression. Yes, I grasp the aim and intent but it doesn’t get any less jolting, does it?

The Minister who’s facing the cameras for this is Kiri Allan and the share of audience hugely impressed by her work appears to be approximately 110%.

No matter how good your leader may be, there's also a hunger for an apparent successor. It can also be damnably hard to come up with one, always much better if one simply reveals themselves.

That’s what seems to be happening here.

It's the hardest thing in the world to be a capable leader who makes you feel included and communicates well and inspires confidence. There’s a whole lot more in there as well, but the real magic is that they make it look easy.

That goes for talent in many fields: the making it look easy, but in leadership, it’s everything. People instinctually know it when they see it, and they see that it’s there with Kiritapu Allan.

1.30pm

In due course there’s an all-clear and no harm done and boy does that feel good. Ella Shepherd is on Twitter capturing the Zeitgeist:

In the 1970s I struggled to grasp how the Brits could go on with normal life in the way they did with the possibility of an IRA bomb looming the way it did. What you come to understand is that even with peril all around us we sort of habituate. Maybe, even, the more perilous things get, the more we work at parking it enough to be able to live a daily life.

Maybe the real accomplishment here is that we never parked the pandemic as much as the deniers and the plan B types did in the countries that have suffered so badly from indecision and reluctance to take more decisive and determined action.

Anyway how long will this go on, do we think? Scientists put the chance of another big Kermadec region earthquake in the next week at about 80%. Maybe keep watching, then.

In the longer run, we live in an irretrievably - to use an old Beehive podium expression - seismic region. We perhaps got here roughly a billion years early.

We have a lot on our plates, and a lot riding on them. They are fluid. Highly fluid if you speed a billion years up to a couple of minutes. Get a load of this and tell me we’re just not on a mechanical bull ride our whole life long.



1.45pm

Now let’s finally get to the huge alarming shocking news.  A big singalong of Sailing? Give me strength, I was sick of that song a week after it came out and that was nearly half a century ago now.

I’m not saying anything that hasn't been said a thousand times before, but it’s still hard to believe that someone who could be doing Mandolin Wind and (I Know) I'm Losing You and Blind Prayer would in just a few years be turning out godawful shlock like Tonight’s The Night and all the rest of it.

Crying shame.

While I’m at it, haven’t we suffered enough already at the hands of boomers playing their 17 favourite songs until death and also the sort of people who choose the music for public occasions and the  big TV moments and always get so absolutely literal in their song choice?

For example:

• Jump when people are jumping

• Let Me Entertain You when the entertainment is about to start

• Sailing to prop up a rich people’s sailboat regatta

Please, do better, or get Kiri Allan to choose.


2.15pm

MTAF reader Paul - hi Paul! - got in touch after last nights newsletter to share a few horrible facts about fishing that he picked up when he was involved with the recreational fishing lobby. Buckle up, it’s not good news.

Rec fishing takes about 4% of the total fish taken and accounted for in NZ waters. That's a generous estimate as well - up to 4% would be better. It varies from place to place but overall, that's the figure.

I think they'll happily wear 4% of the blame for impact.

The fishing industry only counts fish it brings to shore - so that 96% hides a bigger number - the fish caught but dumped over the side.

It works like this - you might have a licence for 200t of a lesser fish which you've caught but you're still out there hoovering up whatever's left when all of a sudden you're inundated with snapper. Blimey, the skipper shouts, let's dump this lot and bring in the good stuff.

That all goes by the by.

Or let's say you don't have a licence for some species but because fish don't swim in straight lines you catch them anyway. Let's say you've caught UNDERSIZE fish. Well, you can't land those so again, over the side they go. They're already dead of course, or dying, but that's not your problem. You've got a target to hit.

The commercial fishers would have you believe they're like farmers, caring for the stock and the land. But they're not. They don't put anything back - they destroy the ocean floor destroying spawning grounds and they vacuum up significant numbers of fish beyond those they're allowed to bring to shore. I have hopes David Parker will sort it all out but then I was hopeful last time round too and nothing's changed. We still don't even have cameras on the boats.

There's much more - so much more - about the way our quota management system doesn't actually manage overfishing but that's for another time.

4.20pm

Will I play all those excellent Rod Stewart tracks next week? Quite possibly, if I remember. But let’s start with this one.

Aussie band Python Lee Jackson brought in Rod to do the vocals, because in the years before stardom, he was a session work guy. For this they paid him with a new set of car seat covers.

They released it in 1970, and it went nowhere. Then Rod got big in 1972 ,so they released it again, and it was no huge hit but at least it made the charts.

He got way more than a set of car seat covers for Sailing, but this is far the better song.