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David Harcourt
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Posted: 29 Dec 2006 10:41 pm |
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The English actor Tony Robinson - playing Baldrick in the Blackadders is his principal claim to fame - has been fronting a Channel Four (UK) TV series entitled The Worst Jobs in History. My own list would include:
* a concentration camp guard
* a Roman soldier who had to help build the ramp to the heights of Masada
* virtually anyone who had to attend to the personal needs of Caligula
* virtually anyone who has to attend to the personal needs of Helen Clark
* one of those people who had to go round with a cart during plagues crying "Bring out your dead!"
and so on.
Robinson's list is a bit more interesting, but much along the same lines, really:
* The Groomer of the Stool, who attended to intimate aspects of the toilette of King Henry VIII.
* The Saltpetre Man, who collected human excrement in the early 17th century so that the nitrate content could be converted into gunpowder.
* The Hermit in 18th Century England who, as a kind of living folly, had to come out of the cave he lived in at the bottom of the garden on a large estate and stand holding a skull in his hand while bemused visitors to the garden strolled past.
* Puke collector, illuminator, egg collector, leech collector, spit boy, toad eater, plague burier (that was one of mine, as you see), topman, stone picker, chimney sweep...the list goes on.
I was reminded in reading about Robinson's TV series that about 25 years ago two friends and I were appointed to very similar, obscenely overpaid, jobs in three different cities in another country which shall be nameless. In preparation for this not so arduous task we were sent on a joint tour of 65-70 New Zealand companies, in order that we might acquire a better appreciation of the field we were about to enter.
After two days spent in Hell we compared notes over a glass of wine and agreed that, in addition to acquiring any directly useful information which we could, we would closely consider each company we visited from the following narrow standpoint:
Would we wish to work in such a place, doing such things?
At the end of the month, the three of us unanimously agreed that nothing short of compulsion at the end of a firearm would have persuaded us to take any of the jobs which we saw being undertaken, under what were often appalling conditions, and for derisorily low pay. Most of the jobs which people had to do were mindlessly boring, more or less demeaning, and lacking any other point than that they generated a meagre income.
I suppose this is still true, and as someone who does pretty much what he wants for the best boss he has ever had or ever will have, I deeply pity the hundreds of thousands of people in New Zealand who are stuck in shit jobs and will spend the greater part of their lives there. It's a tragedy.
It also occurred to me while thinking about Robinson's programme that there is one job I know of which has everything which virtually all other jobs do not. This job is ... wait for it ... Mayor of Wellington, New Zealand, Southern Hemisphere, the World, the Universe etc.
I will tell you more about this astounding revelation shortly.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 30 Dec 2006 12:58 am |
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OK, so why do I say that Mayor of Wellington is the best job in the world?
First of all, consider the question of the popularity of mayors per se.
With few exceptions, mayors are not popular people.
For every Dick Whittington or Rudy Giuliani there are a hundred Dick Hubbards, Ken Livingstones or Michael Lawses, it seems. Town Hates Its Mayor is a dog bites man story. Like this one, for example:
The Gold Coast Mayor says he is not worried about a survey that ranks him as Queensland's least popular mayor. The state-wide poll, which included 450 Gold Coast residents, found 17 per cent would vote for councillor Ron Clarke to retain the mayoralty at the next election.
Cr Clarke has indicated he will not be a candidate in the next mayoral race and he says he is not perturbed by the latest opinion polls. "I remember the Bulletin had a survey just before the election and they had me about 18 per cent, they got me about the same, so nothing's changed," he said. "Polls are polls. They go up and down depending on what you had for breakfast. We've achieved a heck of a lot in the last couple of years and we still have a couple of years with things happening. I have enjoyed every minute of it, not every minute, most of it."
The survey results were released just hours after the Premier described Gold Coast councils as basket cases. Mayor Clarke says he is confident Peter Beattie was referring to past administrations and not his own.
I love stories like that (which dates from March 2006).
But Wellington mayors seem to lead charmed lives. Aucklanders (for example) may - with considerable justification - hate Hubbard and his egregious predecessor, John Banks; but Wellingtonians love their mayors.
We have had 34 mayors in our short history of 137 years. The ones I can remember are:
* Sir Frank Kitts (1956-74) ... a Keith Holyoake-like old buffer who admirably filled the needs of the time (stuff the shirt, oil the wheels and roll him down the road)
* Sir Michael Fowler (1974-83) ... the Court Jester who became King, and whose name will live forever - or, at least, until The Earthquake - in the Michael Fowler Centre. (Go to the Internet and look for "Michael Fowler" and all you get is 100,000 references to a building. In 50 years' time will children be taught that the two leading citizens of Wellington in the 20th Century were Messrs Beehive and Fowler, whose names are commemorated in the buildings which bear their names? I think we should be told.)
* Ian Lawrence (1983-86) ... zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
* James Belich (1986-92) ... a lesser Kitts; a Brahms to Kitts's Beethoven, if you will. Or even if you won't.
* Fran Wilde (1992-95) ... of sainted memory; she of the Homosexual Law Reform Bill. Now if we've ever had a mayor who really merited a building, park or bridge, it was she.
* Mark Blumsky (1995-2001) ... a very nice man, who one hopes will distinguish himself as an MP (which he now is).
* Kerry Prendergast (2001-the present) ... pretty much zzzzzzzzzz so far, but the jury is still in another place.
The Michael Fowler Centre:Attached Image (viewed 181 times):
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 30 Dec 2006 01:52 am |
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Which leads me to the 64-dollar question, which is:
Why do Wellingtonians love their mayors, thereby making the mayoralty of this tiny burg by the sea the best job in the whole world?
I think it has a lot to do with the fact that Wellingtonians love Wellington.
It need hardly be said that Aucklanders and Christchurchovians hate their respective cities (with good reason), and this loathing inevitably rubs off on the unfortunates who strive for public office in these benighted places only to find upon obtaining their goal they they have simply provided a discontented populace with a focus for their generalised ontological doubt.
A lot of it also has to do with luck. Guiliani, for example, has to have been lucky to have had 9/11 to shore up his popularity. Isn't he the fellow who told his wife he was having an affair and wanted a divorce when she was in hospital awaiting an operation for cancer? I think he is.
Some Wellington mayors have been very lucky. Michael Fowler, the most popular of them all, was mayor when the motorway was being driven through the heart of the city, including the lovely (and historic: Edward Gibbon Wakefield and other worthies are buried there) Bolton Street Cemetery.
"How did you manage to get away with that?" I asked him recently.
"I never had any say in it," he answered.
Apparently the Motorway was one of those Ministry of Works & Development obscenities perpetrated during the pre-Resource Management Act era of Colossal MOWD Obscenties (roughly, 1955 to 1975). Ordinary citizens like Fowler - to say nothing of you or me - never got a look in. The motorway had to happen. Wellington needed it. And to Hell with anything in the way.
So that's it: the best job in the world is being mayor of a city which has a tradition of loving its mayors; even naming buildings after them.
And gardens - Charles Norwood (1925-27).
And parks - William Appleton (1944-50) and Robert Macalister (1950-56).
And streets - Charles Borlase (1874), William Hutchison (1876-77 and 1879-81), Joseph Dransfield (1870-73 and 1878-79), John Duthie (1879) etc etc.
The Beehive, Wellington, named after a Mr Beehive, whose story has been lost in the mists of time (I should however report the fact that there is an urban legend abroad in Wellington to the effect that when someone proposed this wonderful design someone else said "Oh, behave" in a South Island accent, and the name has stuck):Attached Image (viewed 172 times):
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 30 Dec 2006 02:34 am |
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Two Michael Fowler anecdotes which may help to show that, while all Wellington mayors may be loved, some of them actually merit this affection:
* 'Twas the day before Christmas, and all through the street, Nothing was stirring, not even the feet/Of the traffic wardens, plodding their beat [contd p.94). And yet on this day in 2006 Sir Michael Fowler, who's 76 if he's a day, might have been seen pushing a supermarket trolley full of poinsettias [see photograph below] along Molesworth Street. He left these lovely Christmas treats in the stores of his friends, who (I am deliighted to report) included me and the lovely Selina. Would anyone else do this?
* A year or so ago SMF bought a small dinnerset from me. Afterwards, he went off to the New World Supermarket across the road, carrying the set in two plastic shopping bags. As he entered the supermarket he asked a man outside whether he would mind the bags for him while he shopped inside. The man was delighted to accept the suggestion but when Michael emerged he found - to his amazement and horror - that the person to whom he had entrusted the dinnerset had disappeared. The ensuing conversation went like this:
SMF: I've searched everywhere, but the fellow has completely vanished. My dinnerset has gone with him.
DH: How was he dressed?
SMF: Oh, the usual. No, I tell a lie. He was pretty casually dressed, actually. [Muses for a moment.] I suppose you would have to say he was dressed in rags.
DH: Let me guess. He was bearded. His hair was long and very unkempt. And he was very dirty.
SMF: Got it exactly! A perfect description. You know him?
DH: Hahahahahahahahahahaha.
SMF: Why are you laughing? Come on now. What's so funny? Where's my dinnerset?
DH: Michael, you obviously left it in the care of a tramp!
Customers elsewhere in the shop gathered around. As they heard the story they began to laugh. Soon, everyone was laughing until the tears ran.
And the person who laughed loudest and longest?
The ex-Mayor of Wellington, of course.
Would anyone else do this?
Happy New Year everyone!
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 30 Dec 2006 08:50 pm |
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"stuck in shit jobs"…the worst job I have ever encountered, yet a job fulfilled by a most enthusiastic and bubbly woman, was that of Bowel Nurse. Commonly referred to as the Poo Lady – manual bowel excretion for those who suffered from some sort of paralysis/non function of the bowel. The tools of the trade were a hand and a glove. I couldn’t. I simply couldn’t.
As a student, I was thrilled at the offer of a holiday job through a neighbouring acquaintance who worked at Repco’s, filling in for someone who was on leave. Someone who had worked in the same job for 10 years. I lasted three days. I couldn’t cope with the boredom. My job was to stick the “Press” sticker on seatbelts, hour after hour, day in and day out.
Talking of Mayors, the Lord Mayor of Melbourne is worth a mention. An interesting figure and one who reflects the multiculturalism of Melbourne. I saw him on Sky TV the other day and was intrigued, so searched google to see what I could learn. (Annoyingly our broadband is down at the moment and likely to be until Wed 3rd Jan, so I’m not going googling again today on slow 14.4kbps dial-up but Wiki had a fascinating page on him and he has a “fan” website worth checking out if you’re interested.) He was born in China, speaks strongly accented English, seemed very passionate and came across as having buckets of charm, a very charismatic character – a combination which triggered my intrigue and sent me googling.
He’s reached cult status in Melbourne, and was elected World Mayor – 2006 I think it was. Fans wear T-shirts “John So, My Bro”, a single “John So is my Bro” was released by some group and all proceeds of the CD sales go to (?) the John So Foundation or something similar, used to help those in need in the city. I was impressed reading to see how he uses his popularity, status and passion for life to help others and how active he is in community affairs. He is now into his second consecutive term in Office. Fascinating guy. I think it was Wiki that made some reference to him being dubbed the new Bert Newton – I hadn’t made the connection myself, but, yes, perhaps there is similarity.
We had an invite to see the New Year in with friends, but remembered a day later we had promised to baby sit the three grandchildren while their mum and dad go celebrate. They'll be dropped off here around 5ish - apparently the baby is teething..so it could be a fun night.
Happy New Year!
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 30 Dec 2006 09:35 pm |
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If the media are to be believed, it has been said that Georgina Beyer is considering standing for Mayor of Wellington.
I wonder how Wellingtonians would treat such an illustrious Mayor?
From one who was on the Carterton Council with her - "She slept through most meetings, but the minute the media turned up, she was awake and 'shone'....."
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 31 Dec 2006 02:13 am |
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That could be an exact description of a certain leading Maori activist, when he was a member of a Government agency for a year.
He slept through every meeting.
Mind you, he was always stoned.
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 3 Jan 2007 10:14 am |
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David Harcourt wrote: And yet on this day in 2006 Sir Michael Fowler, who's 76 if he's a day, might have been seen pushing a supermarket trolley full of poinsettias [see photograph below] along Molesworth Street. He left these lovely Christmas treats in the stores of his friends, who (I am deliighted to report) included me and the lovely Selina.
I had forgotten until I was reading the poinsettia link on TUW tonight...(my memory often needs jogging...)
Have you seen poinsettias growing outdoors in North Queensland? I couldn't believe my eyes when I first saw them. I didn't realise they grew so tall!. They were everywhere, white, lemon, yellow, red....I have a photo somewhere of a private home with a row of them along a fence but can't find it right now. I had to stop driving and get out of the car so I could get up up close enough to double check they actually were poinsettia.
The photo below was one I saw July 2006 in Charters Towers (135k inland from Townsville). It was at least 7 feet tall, growing very happily in a garden in the centre of a roundabout. I couldn't believe the size of the flowers!. But it was poinsettia. Absolutely beautiful. As is much of the flora in North/Tropical Queensland.Attached Image (viewed 152 times):
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 3 Jan 2007 10:18 am |
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| (btw....in case anyone is interested... for a clearer and closer view of the photo above, right click on the photo to save to your computer and you should be able to zoom in...) Last edited on 3 Jan 2007 10:21 am by jaybee2003
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rupert-bear
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Posted: 4 Jan 2007 11:32 pm |
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Surely one of the worst jobs in the world must be trying to sell Tom Scott books...
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 5 Jan 2007 01:42 am |
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Hahahahahahahahaha.
Actually, having a job which means that you have to own Tom Scott books, for however brief a period, is pretty awful.
I'm effectively giving them away, as firelighters, so I feel that I am making a positive contribution in three (count them: three) ways:
* when I "sell" them, they're gone from my shop
* when customers burn them, they're gone from the planet
* and they help start fires, thereby keeping people warm
If you can think of a more constructive use for Tom Scott books, please tell me.
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 5 Jan 2007 08:40 am |
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I wonder if these people would appreciate having a job as bad as trying to sell Tom Scott books....
Photos taken in Warsaw, Poland. We saw them early every morning, and again early evening on our return to our hotel...I suspect they were there all day.Attached Image (viewed 138 times):
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 5 Jan 2007 08:42 am |
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jaybee2003
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Posted: 5 Jan 2007 08:46 am |
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| (I thought I had lost this photo CD, but I found it tonight! All 481 of them. But don't worry - I won't post them all here!) Attached Image (viewed 131 times):
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Current time is 01:31 pm |
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