Joanne McNeill: D-Week for arts centre vote

The Hundertwasser

It took two attempts to ignite the solstice bonfire; possibly not a good omen, perhaps of the past returning to haunt us if recent events are any guide.

Shockingly, the hoary fight over hair in secondary schools persists. Wasn't it won and lost during 1960s Beatle-mania?

Ever since Delilah cut Samson's locks to sap his strength, tyrants have imposed submission by controlling hair. It's a power trip. The sooner secondary schools stop enforcing superficial conformity and start teaching young people how to think for themselves, not what to think, the better.

Iraq has come back to bite too. Tony Blair quickly washed his hands of responsibility, as if bombing the place to smithereens had no effect on subsequent turmoil. Yeah right.

The US/UK attack on Iraq destroyed a relatively wealthy, functioning country on the pretext of non-existent weapons of mass destruction.

For the US, it was partly a handy, kneejerk, post 9/11 reaction, but mostly it was about old boys controlling oil, as will be any future military involvement.

Hopefully, the international move away from dependence on fossil fuels, albeit predicated on the dodgy climate-change agenda, might eventually suck heat out of the Middle East.

Ridiculously, just as all hell broke loose in Iraq, raising the cost of crude oil, Transport Minister Gerry Brownlee announced an election-sweetening $40 billion spend on NZ roads, while continuing to neglect rail; the only strategic asset capable of economical bulk transport in an oil shock.

Meanwhile, PM John Key and his jolly hench-people cavorted around America playing silly cricket with the leaders of the so-called free world and compounding our unwise complicity in foreign battles and draconian secret trade agreements without consultation.

Key supports a form of targeted military air strikes on insurgents in Iraq on our behalf apparently because "we've effectively designated them to be a terrorist" (sic).

Heaven preserve us from smarmy, inarticulate, semantic dictators.

Had I my way globally, war weaponry would be limited to swords and bows and arrows. Those who declare wars would be obliged to lead the fray, in person. The bloodbaths would be held in the decrepit ruins of redundant former sports stadiums of the planet. The television rights should be worth something.

When an 11-year-old letter turned up associating the Labour Party with the very same disgraced wealthy Chinese skeleton the National Party has suffered for having danced with, it was certainly political mischief, but was it National utu or a disaffected Labour sector trying to roll a seemingly unelectable David Cunliffe before it's too late?

An election campaign return to discussion of vital issues - regional development, child poverty, sustainable energy planning, housing, and equitable wealth distribution - rather than formation mud slinging would be welcome.

Locally, 24 years later, the spectre of another Whangarei District Council final decision on the Hundertwasser Art Centre looms this week.

Those who opine some other hypothetical idea could be more impressive are like the philistines who, faced with challenging art works, blather "my toddler could do better".

The point is never whether they could, but whether they have.

Let's hope WDC's most arts-grudging councillors see the light so the HAC's second coming is, like my solstice bonfire, finally crowned with radiant whimsical glory.