Jim Hopkins: Meeting culture leads to placid existence

Old John Langley had a firm

C - E - C - E - O

And on this page he had a moan

C - E - C - E - O

Had a moan, moan here

And a moan, moan there

Hear a moan, share a moan, everywhere a moan, moan

Old John Langley had a moan

John-Key-didn't-go.

Elsewhere, of course, they've got bigger fissures to fry. In Europe, there's more foul fog and clouds of hot air - and that's just the British election.

Iceland's volcano is also at it again. In America, the suppurating crack in the Gulf of Mexico is still spewing untold tanker loads of oil.

Further north, another fractured zealot attempts to blow Times Square to kingdom come. Greece is wracked with ruin, so too is Thailand.

In Australia, goodness, virtue, decency and even the planet itself have been casually consigned to oblivion by Mr Rudd's decision to defer their ETS.

No such travail besets us here. In this tiny, self-absorbed parish, the Rabbit Board of the civilised world, the issue du jour is much more minor.

What's got us all of a tizz-wozz is meetings. Who had them, who didn't; who was there, who wasn't; whether they should have been, whether they shouldn't; this is Outer Roa's bone of contention.

Our most recent outragee is the very indignant Cognition Education CEO, Dr John Langley.

He thinks John Key has been "short-sighted and irresponsible".

He feels we've squandered a trade opportunity because the PM decided to go "scuttling back to New Zealand" rather than travel to the Gulf ("one of the wealthiest regions of the world") to meet and greet and shake hands with the sheikhs during last week's "incredibly important mission" - made even more important, no doubt, because Dr Langley was there.

Coming home was "a knee-jerk reaction", opined this indignant trader.

Yes, there had been "a terrible tragedy" but was that "a reason for the Prime Minister to abandon his international obligations and rush back to New Zealand to do little more than pander to New Zealand public opinion and our moralistic and judgmental press"?

(Like the well-known public service broadcaster, TVNZ, whose idea of a moral show is Hung. Which poor old GI John very publicly was.) Although, if his non-attendance at trade meetings is an issue, so too is his attendance at others.

Indignant critics have condemned the PM's secret meeting with the Pentagon's No 2 man - presumably because the general might have sneezed and given him his war germs.

Mr Key's meeting our troops in Afghanistan has also provoked indignation.

"It's just a photo op," sniff the disapproving. "He should be here, sorting out things like the ETS."

These nitpicks should look on the bright side. Perhaps the SAS asked him to defer it. In which case he probably will.

Heck, they asked him if they could stay in Kabul and it looks like that'll happen. If the moaners had a meeting with the SAS and then the SAS had a meeting with John there's no telling what might transpire - SAS ETS RIP, perchance?

See, that's the lesson of Afghanistan - or, more precisely, the Prime Minister's visit. Meetings are good. Meetings are nice. People have cups of tea at meetings.

And sandwiches with cucumber in them. They chat. Things get sorted.

We shouldn't get indignant about meetings. They're better than riots. And much better than poisoned coastlines or belching volcanoes or bankrupt economies or nearly letting a would-be murderer fly out of the country when he was supposedly under surveillance and should have been nabbed long before he boarded the plane.

If all we've got to fill the front page with is meetings then we shouldn't be moaning.

We should be merry. We should be thanking our southern stars that life is so blissfully bland. If meetings are all that matters then we've got it made.

They're not even particularly important meetings - despite Dr Langley's opinions. Certainly not as important as those that will, perforce, take place if the Brits hang their parliament. (Apparently, according to one news report, Gordon Brown is now out on the night shift "trying to galvanise support among steel workers".)

Well, good luck to him. And good luck when he meets Britain's own John Langley, his fellow Labour candidate, Manish Sood. Sood, the sod, has called Mr Brown "the worst ever UK leader".

(Perhaps Mr Key should meet someone in London and offer to send our SAS as peacekeepers for that little chat - it's going to be Bennett vs Fuller on steroids.)

But merely because Dr Secret Sharples had a meeting in New York to affirm the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indignant People doesn't mean we've got to go constantly troppo.

Maybe, next to the Meeting Room, we should build a Perspective Room and keep every journalist in it!