Dialogue: Treatment of TV hosts disgusting

The treatment handed out to Paul Holmes and other specialist TV personalities by the Government lap-dogs who have been put in control of Television New Zealand makes me sick. It is further evidence of the noxious odour of bright pink socialism and its ever-present politics of envy that is permeating our society.

Even worse is the reaction of the chattering classes, who have made it quite clear that the tall-poppy syndrome isn't just alive and well in this country but is growing like bamboo after rain.

And those who prattle on about "taxpayers' money" make me wonder again about the mentality of some people. They obviously can't see that professionals like Holmes and the One News team help the Government-owned corporation to reap tens of millions of dollars in revenue, a large proportion of which ends up in the Government's (taxpayers') coffers.

Then there's the income and other taxes these people must pay on their substantial incomes - no doubt tens of thousands of dollars a year more than is paid by the bleaters who sit in their lounges night after night and pay nothing to watch these consistently top-rating artists perform.

The figures are irrelevant. It doesn't matter if a man or a woman earns $750,000 or $7500 - there has to be good reason to cut remuneration and in this case there is none but political posturing.

I wonder how the moaners would react if their bosses called them in and told them their pay had been cut by 10 per cent or more for no other reason than that a bunch of poacher-turned-gamekeeper former schoolteachers and union officials wanted to parade their spurious egalitarianism.

No wonder this country is going down the tubes so fast we'll be in the Third World before we know it.

Which brings me to another matter. On the front page of the (last) Weekend Herald's management section was an interview with Mark Douglas, general manager of New Horizons Computer Learning Centres. He was asked: "What will be the big business issue of the next decade?"

To which Mr Douglas replied: "I believe the big issue for business is really the same big issue for the country - the reassertion of the male psyche. We have had 25 years of feminist assertions that New Zealand would be a better place if women were in charge. Now they are, and our economy has never been in worse shape. But seriously, if you look back, it is clear that women needed enfranchising, but perhaps the pendulum has swung too far. There is now a social and business cost associated with this over-correction."

Until Saturday I had never heard of Mr Douglas or the company he heads, but I salute him for his prophetic wisdom. He is just the sort of business leader we need.

And now to a matter of great import, which has nothing to do with women except that they are much better at it than men these days. And that's cricket.

In all the weeping and wailing over the appalling performance of our international cricketers this season, no one has put their finger anywhere near what I see as the source of the rot.

It seems that no one has dropped on to the fact that the decline in our cricket fortunes dates from the appointment as chief executive of New Zealand Cricket of that sensitive, new-age guy, the ex-opera singer Christopher Doig.

Over the years Mr Doig has been in control, his philosophies seem to have trickled down right into the dressing-room so that what we have representing us in the Black Caps these days is a bunch of sensitive, new-age guys and, as the outspoken former test allrounder John Morrison once drily observed: "Snags get eaten."

Which would help to explain why the best coach we had in recent years, the gritty pragmatist Glenn Turner, one of our finest former batsmen and in whom there is no vestige of Snag, lasted no more than a season.

And why Turner and Morrison were dropped from the television commentary team. And why cricket was sold out to pay-TV instead of being left with free to air, depriving tens of thousands of supporters of their game.

And why a psychologist was appointed to the coaching squad who has head-banged the players to such an extent that it seems they no longer know whether they're sailors or cricketers.

What cricket needs is executives who produce results and a coaching squad of men who know what they're about - a head coach-cum-manager (Jeremy Coney?), a batting coach (Turner?), a bowling coach (Dipak Patel?), a fielding coach (Ian Smith?) and a paramedic-cum-physiotherapist.

The only thing touchy-feely does for a cricketer is have him caught by the keeper, slips or gully.

* garth_george@herald.co.nz