Bill's Rabbits With Bill Faulkner

You may remember me! I used to contribute a weekly column telling some of what really went on at City Hall. That used to upset a majority of elected members - not so much for what was written but what might get written.

Confidential matters were sacrosanct but many times there was carry-on that should have been written about.

If the unsuspecting trusting voters knew the half of what some of their uprighteous elected members said or did, as opposed to what they said they would do when seeking election, it would make Donald Trump an attractive option. Writing that column was enjoyable, at least to me, but churning it out week after week was a chore. Just like being a Baby Boomer (BB) has turned out to be. Last week's Rogers Rabbits editorial prompted this perspective.

They really were mostly “the good ol' days”. We weren't heavily regulated, we were allowed to be individuals, we could go more or less anywhere unhindered without some Govt Dept Nazi trying to control us such as DOC, Regional Council, Local Council, and the plethora of bureaucrats we suffer today. The blight of cellphones, reality TV, internet, Facebook, twitter et al had not descended to corrupt and influence society's most impressionable. But you said most of that. It wasn't all roses though. Downsides could be extreme and totally unacceptable. Police rarely attended “domestics.” Some families got the living daylights beaten out of them regularly.

Beatings at school

Beatings by teachers were the custom at school. Caned for not wearing a cap. (Not me!) A few teachers and priests (and others) were predators who stalked vulnerable students and got away with it because “that sort of thing” was ignored by the hierarchy. Having long hair as a student was almost a hanging offence! Wages were low. Real low. Some got a State Advances loan for a 3 bedroom Beazley box on a 1/4 acre. You could capitalise your child benefit (about $6 per week per child) to get the deposit. These were about 1000 sq.ft but were a roof over your head and home. Sixty years on they stood the test of time. Today the focus is on repopulation by immigration.

Half failed

Mum didn't have to work and stayed home to look after her family. Simple formula for stability? A lot of us paid 18% interest on the mortgages over the years. If you could get one. Local Bay Savings Bank had a points system where you had to save so much for so long to get enough points to get in the queue for a mortgage. But joy of joy no RMA so we didn't have to comply and pay for a set of rules we may not have needed.  No Worksafe, OSH, double glazing, scaffolding and so on. BB's tailored their housing expectations according to limited funds available. No en suites, no designer kitchens like today. Maybe a carport. Neighbours and friends had working bees to do fences, paths and gardens. Jobs were available but generally poorly paid. Savings? For most a dream. Some bosses were pigs. No employment acts then. Many staff were fired because the boss could. School Certificate marks were scaled so that 50% failed. This helped supply the trades with people. No one fails today, just varying degrees of success. There was no drug culture. Just a booze culture where Dad dived into the pub, downed as many jugs of beer (from a tightly controlled brewery duopoly) as he could before 6 o'clock when he was tipped out to drive home. With half the population of today they managed to kill around 800 a year on the roads.

Blithely unaware

Retail was an uncompetitive scam. Horrendous tax on pitiful pay. Successive Governments (a two party system mainly) protected their mates by an import licensing system designed to protect local industry (very noble intent) which effectively suppressed competition. Clothing, particularly children's clothing was outrageously priced. So Mums made the kids clothes. Vegetable gardens were common in backyards.

These backyards now mostly contain another house. Infill caused lots of infrastructural problems (roads, water, wastewater etc) as people got jammed on top of one another. Councils were inefficiently run by an old boy network and infrastructure got way behind. (Auckland an outstanding example). And even today growth goes nowhere near to paying for growth. BB males were caught up in Compulsory Military Training.

Later revised to a birthday ballot scheme. The only thing of note I ever won! Oh joy with the prospect (didn't eventuate) of conscription to Vietnam. Tim Shadbolt's Progressive Youth Movement was amongst the first protest movements for BB's against conscription. Tim can be a yoyo but he did good there. The best thing about today is not living in the aftermath of the Second World War and the 1930s depression. Those two events really took the stuffing out of the people - both mentally and physically. None of our family were killed thankfully. Nothing changes much with human nature, Except the Beatles era maybe? Perhaps Trump will be today's equivalent. Political correctness is destroying the fabric of society and the millennials seem blithely unaware of what is being done to them. It's great being a BB watching life unfold.         

- Bill Faulkner.