Negatives add up to positive

GRIDLOCK: Traffic at a standstill on an Auckland motorway.A-180215NZHDPCRASH01

IN the late 1950s and early '60s - just before the dulcet rhythms of acid rock and heavy metal emerged - the air waves were bopping with the new "pop" music.

Now, you've got to be careful how you apply the term "pop" because, of course, "pop" is just short for "popular". So Beethoven's piano concerto in C major was the pop of 1795 - and boy, did that long-haired lout Ludwig cop plenty of flak from parents who couldn't for the life of them understand what their teenage kids saw in the young punk.

But here I'm talking about other timeless classics such as Judy's Turn To Cry, or Johnny Cash's Ballad of a Teenage Queen (this was a pre-Black Johnny ... in his earlier The Man In Powder Blue phase).

Anyway, that sort of stuff was hot for a while, but it was a bit like a steady diet of chocolate donuts and Tim-Tams. Good for a year or two, but then the body starts to hanker for a bit of grit in the vittles.

So along came folk music. This was where dudes in denim shirts and chicks with long blond hair - usually with the demeanour of having just shrunk their favourite T-shirt in the wash - played acoustic guitar and sang about pandemics, shipwrecks and riding rails.

The great Louis Armstrong was still in the picture at that stage, so someone asked him what he thought of this new-fangled folk music. Much to his credit, the astute Satchmo replied: "I ain't never not heard no music that 'tweren't played by folks." Now I'm not sure if those were the exact words he used, but I quite like that version because it shows how a quintuple negative can add up to a positive.

It is also interesting to conjecture that, a few centuries down the track, Sid Vicious' version of I Did It My Way may be offered as an example of 1970s folk music.

Ahh, finally we arrive at the point, which is that while occasionally many negatives can add up to a big positive, usually they just add up to ... well, a stonking big negative.

Take Auckland. True, it has had to labour under an ugly name all its life, but for all that it was once a healthy settlement on an isthmus bulging at the seams with rich natural assets - a paradigm for an enviable, balanced lifestyle mix of cosmopolitan advantages and environmental playground attractions. Instead, it has become a casebook example of how to pile negative upon negative and trash the very assets that comprised its hitherto true prosperity.

Another cultural event of the 1960s was a pretty weird Aussie movie called The Cars That Ate Paris. I didn't see it, but the title is quite catchy - and if you substitute Auckland for Paris, you have the nub of the present Auk dilemma in a nutshell.

A recent survey showed the average Aucklander spends the annual equivalent of 12 days waiting in traffic. Not commuting time - just time actually stuck in queues and gridlock. This is not good for Aucklanders' mental health.

These enforced periods of inactivity cause the driver (usually the only occupant) to inevitably dwell on the enormity of the gut-dropping mortgage he/she has just signed up for.

The cold sweat pouring off their brows pools and rots the car upholstery, further aggravating their financial woes. This impacts on their ability to work the 60 hours a week needed to keep the Australian bank holding their mega-mortgage in the manner to which it wishes to remain accustomed.

But the grotesquely fascinating aspect of all this is that the citizens of Auk have convinced themselves that this is living the high life.

To help perpetuate this fiction, ex-Waitakere mayor Bob Harvey has been despatched to Singapore to push Auckland's bid for the Lee Kuan Yew World City prize - billed as the "Olympics" of world city liveability and sustainability.

This could be a sound choice. Back in the seventies, Bob used to run an advertising agency, so he's got good street cred in spin.

Rumour has it that while he's overseas he's going to approach the newly-available former Fifa boss Sepp Blatter.

Auckland's looking for a steady hand to steer its stellar course.