The Job

In The Journey, I referred to a decision to remove me from Send's Primary School near Woking, Surrey, England (Circa 1959). My parents transferred me to Ripley Court Preparatory School on the other side of Woking. That decision was based on a concern that pupils at Send Primary would end-up as mere factory workers1. Ironically, my first full-time job (1974) was in a factory (Lane Thomson Ltd), albeit in the office.

The family reluctantly left England so we kids could have a university-based career in New Zealand or abroad2. Yet, I still got a job in a factory! But, for a couple of decades (about 21 years), it admittedly got better than that3. That's part of this history. Lane Thomson's plant (or "factory") was off the Anderson's Bay Road on land reclaimed from the Otago Harbour in Dunedin. We 'manufactured' soft-drinks. A couple of production lines mixed water with large amounts of sugar; plus essences, syrups (more sugar) and carbon dioxide; all in a bottle. My first job there was to pay all the company's bills. From the documents and payments procedure I archived business data. Later, they moved me into the Credit Control department where I managed the Sales Ledger and chased a few debts4.

At the time of the most recent redaction (February 2015), I was managing a waste disposal plant in downtown Wellington. Sewage water, not drinking water, was my concern by this time (from Aoril 2010 -). In other words, I was cleaning toilets5. This is therefore the (his-)story, in part, to explain the ups and downs of my (Joseph-like) working career. Hopefully, I manage herein to describe how or why that career gradually began to conflict with another Programme. The latter is one that I believe God was preparing for me (refer The Journey). A good Biblical model for comparison with my situation might be the career of Joseph. Although I certainly do not expect to become Prime Minister. Even in the most unjust and unfair circumstances, Joseph stoically made the best of whatever situation he was in. Whether as slave or prisoner, Joseph rose through the ranks of those base situations. Joseph suffered them in spite of; no doubt even at his nadir6; further attempts to discredit him. When in positions of favour; for example when he had to report (blow the whistle) on bad behaviour among his own brothers (Genesis 37:2) or as Prime Minister of Egypt7; Joseph also excelled in the performance of his duties. From an early age, I aspired to emulate Joseph but I have long since abandoned any ambition to be a PM8.

The first job I had was very brief but a pointer to the future. St Clair Primary school needed a couple of milk monitors to get to school early and distribute the crates of bottles in the Milk-for-Schools Programme in operation in those days (1963). Mum did not like me doing this job so I had to resign. I suppose I would be too tired to study, and do this job, but it seemed to me that we were not learning much anyway. Instead of putting me in Standard Four where I would be at least a year younger, even eighteen months younger, than the other kids, they put me in Standard Three with my 'age-group' peers9. It seemed unfair that I could not get some on-the-job training for a few months. After all I was, supposedly or education-wise, a year ahead of my class. As far as academic progress was concerned, I was just treading water for that year. Ironically, about 20 years later I ended up in the bottling industry and 50 years later became monitor10 of a downtown toilet block.

Between the aborted attempt to become the school milk monitor and clerk at Lane Thomson, Soft-drink manufacturer, I helped my Uncle Jack in his electrical business, worked at our J.K. Mooney wool and animal skin store, pumped petrol at Herbert's Service Station, a 24-hour Petrol Station (organised for me by cousin Chris, Uncle Jack's son), and helped a South Dunedin building company on a demolition site. I managed to fall over at the demolition site and a nail went into my wrist. The nail missed the veins. Only a small nodule of blood oozed out. I went to hospital for a tetanus injection and that was that. But I thought I had been very fortunate. In a university-holiday job organised by our students' association, I painted tiny metal rods on an automobile shelter using a toxic paint that had me gasping at times even though out in the fresh air. At JKM, my sneezing was exacerbated by the opossum fur. Anyway, none of these things killed me. I was seriously ill with a tortion follwing a squash racquets training session. That could have been deadly11 if not treated immediately, as it was with rapid hospitalisation that night as I began to vomit with the pain. As it happened, at most of my school and university holidays, I worked at JKM. But there was never going to be a permanent career there. And they paid me poorly but I survived and at least had a regular job to go to.

Pumping petrol at the service station was a place to observe the seedier sides12 of life. One Christmas day, I had to supervise a gang of motor-cyclists. As they drove away, there was some sort of altercation a hundred yards down the road. I went out to have a look. They warned me, with a collective voice, "Don't call the Cops". Only one of them had needed petrol. He paid me civilly enough. The rest of the gang hung around the forecourt, comparatively neutrally rather than menacingly, as we completed the transaction.

At a petrol station, one learns a little bit about the way cars work. I got caught up with a chap who was trying to keep "Lloyd Alexanders" on the road. This was a poor man's Volkswagen. I spent more time having work done on the car than actually using it. Japan came to the rescue and I decided to use a motor-cycle instead (Yamaha, 90cc). I drove, well rode I suppose, that for about 5 years. I commuted on it between Home (Bedford Street, St Clair), Work (Lane Thomson) and Varsity (North Dunedin). Cars cost me a lot of money over the years. The brand-new motor-cycle never needed servicing. It used drips of petrol compared with the mouthfuls my Hillman Avenger used between June 1979 and March 1992. I stopped driving altogether in 199213. I have not calculated this but I saved a pile of money after retiring from driving in 1992. I had an Avenger and a mini at the end of my motoring career. They died the year I first went to Israel (1992). The Government changed the driving regulations. I refused to comply. Refer to The Journal for the rest of that story.

As I discussed a bit in The Journey, apparently I was not so far ahead of my peers in the New Zealand Education System's subject called "Comprehension". However, I believe my comprehension skills14 were, and are, very good. In retrospect, I came to realise "Comprehension" was being used in New Zealand to acculturate or inculcate people into a particular society the "New Zealand Company15" wanted. That was New Zealand when I arrived here in 1962. As I argue in the associated endnote, the lease has now expired on NZ (UK-Tarshish) Inc. China and her earlier colonists16, "The Maori", now want to re-
assert control. As I describe in the associated endnote, neither China, NZ Inc nor the Maori will control the place. The Antichrist-666 will. Then comes the Messianic Kingdom. But that is getting too far off the subject. No, the trouble is that my comprehension skills were too good! Part of the reason for writing The Job is to prove the excellence of my "comprehension".

Lane-Thompson Ltd (1974-1978)

My payments job at Lane Thomson progressed well. I was processing figures rather than words which "Comprehension" sought to assess how well one could analyse. But the results from my exams at the School of Accounting at the University of Otago (OU) suggested I could not analyse figures either. One can see that I began to develop a healthy disregard for the evaluation systems of school, university, and 'Academy' in general. Anyway, I became quite an expert on the overall operation of the 'soft-drink' business. I can illustrate this by recounting that when new staff arrived, I usually got the task to give the new-comer an orientation tour of the plant. I had to be on regular speaking terms with everyone because I had to verify every transaction before Bob Bryant, the Secretary-Accountant, would sign a cheque. He was good to work with. I knew the questions he would ask. So I had to be on good terms with the rest of the staff on the factory floor and in the stores, out in the inwards goods yards, in the syrup room, with the sales staff and with the three executives [GM, Sales Manager and Secretary Accountant (Bob)]. At the Xmas functions, I would be the only person who would talk with the factory workers. The other office workers rarely interacted with the factory staff. Likewise, the sales team with office and factory workers. The Executives would be shy talking to most of the workers. Very much a class structure there.

I worked for Lane Thomson for about four years. During that period, I studied part-time at OU. Gradually, I drifted away from a career as an accountant. I began to dabble with Law and Management studies at OU. Finally, I settled back to complete a degree in Economics. The timing of my decision to specialise in Economics; after the initial 'dabbling' (one year in the High School Seventh Form and first year at OU); may have been fortuitous. In 1978, I completed my major in Economics. But the interesting thing here is that I was in the first intake to study for a paper on the relatively new subject "Economics of Innovation, Science and Technology"17. Professor Parker taught this course.

Federated Farmers (1979-86)

The fact that I had studied "Economics of Innovation, Science and Technology" at University may have been of interest to the farmers I was to begin working with in 1979. Unofficially, at least, I became the Federation's liaison with the science sector, though all staff had to be involved with science issues in their respective portfolios. The dairy farmers at Federated Farmers were the most interested in science issues. In dairy farming, one can daily or weekly measure progress from some new initiative be it a science-based innovation or a management decision. Later, when I applied for the position of "Economist" at the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology (MoRST), Mr Mike Doig said I had been the only applicant with this economic 'qualification'.

So, having completed my major in economics in 1978 and with 8/9th of a Degree, I moved from the soft-drink bottling industry, after a maternally-thwarted attempt at being school milk monitor, into the dairy industry. These happened to be the days when glass bottles for milk and 'soft-drinks' were being phased out everywhere. I opposed this trend on environmental grounds and became something of an advocate for re-cycling bottles. A milk bottle would re-cycle about 70 or 80 times, if I remember the statistics correctly. Soft-drink bottles were achieving return rates of only about 6. And that was with a deposit system on the latter whereby one could go around looking for soft-drink bottles and cash them in at a local store. We would circle the cricket ground at Plunkett Shield18 matches and try to raise a bit of cash from this system. It was hoped that would facilitate the recycling of glass. But we can see the result for ourselves. Plastic containers spawned everywhere. The oil industry was so wealthy that it could subsidise research into the mass production of plastic containers19. In my first year at university I wrote an essay on the economics of the environment. So I claim strong environmental credentials and can prove I had them long before the current crop of environmentalists.

Federated Farmers was quite an experience for a small town boy from the far south of New Zealand. As I wrote this (18 August, 2014), a storm had erupted in New Zealand politics, the previous week, over a book entitled Dirty Politics20. But away back in 1979, I was keen to be involved in the political process. I did a half-unit in "Political Science" because in former times economics and political science were part of a study known as "Political Economy". In the course led by one of New Zealand's rare and few non-left-
wing professors21, we learned about political lobby groups in New Zealand. Such things were common enough abroad but in this course we learned that Federated Farmers was probably the most powerful lobby in this country. We will get ahead of the history if we start discussing the dirt in politics now. However, as time passed I saw more and more stuff that was less than desirable in the realm of politics. No Christian could be involved in this long-term. I am trying to write The Job in the context of The Journey. As time passed, I saw that there was a much bigger game of politics going on in Egyptology and from there in many other branches of the Academy.

Thus, in a sense, this is an account of how I did get involved in a highly controversial political debate and how my career shunted me into this situation through a back-door so to speak. Just how controversial this Politic is will hopefully become evident to the reader as she or he goes through these three 'J' Documents (Journey, Job and Journal). Events and situations described will, again hopefully, build up a picture explaining what le to my involvement in this Higher Politic. But it is God, and His Guiding Hand, who is to be glorified, not me nor any other character involved in these pages.

With my more immediate university career behind me as at 1979 (in Economics and Political Science), it was perhaps unsurprising that I should apply for a job with the Federation's Dairy Section in January 1979 - and actually secure the position. On the other hand, I was actually quite surprised the Federation22 contacted me and asked if I would like to come up to Wellington, at their expense (even more surprising), for an interview. I arrived to meet with the Chief Executive, Mr Rob McLagan, the former Dairy Section Executive Officer, Mr Owen Symmans and the section's (recently elected) political chairman, Mr Gordon Gibson. I do not remember many details of the interview but when they talked salary with me, I think I won them over. They asked whether I would be happy with a salary that would be lower than peers in other sectors because the Federation, being a 'voluntary' organisation, had to live on subscription income23. My reply was that "I would undercut the lowest offer". I realised this job would be very interesting and the salary would be of comparatively little import compared to the contacts and situations I would get involved with. The salary had to be sufficient to pay bills and it did that comfortably enough unless one envisaged buying a house. I had sufficient savings (mainly in shares) to purchase any big-ticket item (e.g., a car) should the salary come up short or fail to generate savings. Perhaps guilty of stereotyping, I also thought a farmer would like to hear a comment like that.

The Federation, or at least its representatives at that interview, decided to employ me at the interview, from memory. It seemed to be an easy success in landing the job24. Soon I was into the swing of things. One day, Gordon rang me to book an appointment with the Minister of Agriculture (Right Hon., Duncan MacIntyre). This was an early experience of the influence the Federation seemed to have according to the paper I had read at my political science course. When they introduced me to the President of the Federation, Mr Allan Wright25, I realised I did not count for much. He never looked up at me from his desk as he gazed at documents on his desk. I got the feeling he was sceptical a townie would be of much use to the farming sector26.

The dairy industry's troubles were seriously bad in 1978-79 because the Europeans and Americans were subsidising milk producers with the effect of massively over-producing beyond the demand. The domestic European and American markets, perhaps because incomes were too low, were not consuming anything like the output. So these countries tried exporting their surpluses at low prices to clear stocks. That depressed international prices for milk products. Of course, at least 85% of New Zealand's milk was sold abroad. So these practices by the USA and EU (then EEC) were destroying the NZ dairy industry. Academics and others were calling for the industry to be retired. They wanted resources directed to other sectors such as kiwifruit which was then an exciting new breed ("variety") of fruit on the market. For a brief period around 1979, Kiwifruit fetched much greater returns per hectare27 of farmland. Other 'experts' wanted New Zealand to move away from reliance on agricultural products for export income. At time of writing the initial draft for The Job (2014), thirty-five years later, the dairy industry led the agricultural sector (including forestry and fisheries) as being far and away the biggest sector in the New Zealand economy28. When I started with the Federation, there were 1.79 million cows producing milk in New Zealand. By 2014 that had increased to about 4.5 million29. But the expansion of the milking herd was offset by a corresponding decline in sheep numbers from about 78 million (1978) to 29 million (2014). One sector has doubled in productive capacity while the other has halved in (potential) capacity30. There are some unreported, in one case theological, issues here that we will trace in that history in these pages.

I arrived at Federated Farmers with my studies in Economics Stage Three fresh in my mind. My colleagues tended to jettison any interest in their academic studies and concentrate on the realpolitik of the day. Anyway, at the OU Department of Economics, we had been studying the New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) for the Trade and International Payments Paper in Economics III. This 'Agreement' (NAFTA) was a register of products that could be traded between Australia and New Zealand. Mainly at Australia's request, many products remained off the register. Others could be traded but at often-high tariffs. I have no record of the date of the meeting but Rob McLagan told me to take Gordon to meet with Foreign Affairs officials to hear about plans for a new trade agreement31. NAFTA had been a waste of time and was probably only a transitional arrangement anyway. The intention for "CER" (refer footnote) was to let free trade be the default but with a series of temporary shelters for industries or sectors on both sides of the Tasman Sea that would be unduly damaged by immediate or imminent exposure to intense competition. That is where Gordon and I came in. The Ministry wanted us to get alongside32 Australian farmers and to get into some dialogue with them to smooth over potential political rows. Apparently an Australian farming leader33 had vowed not to let "one ounce of New Zealand butter enter Australia".

We met that farming leader and even invited him to a conference as guest speaker. For a while, he had been sidelined while there was an investigation into his mileage allowance claims to the Australian equivalent of New Zealand's Dairy Board. Rumour had it that he used to disconnect the speedometer cable on his vehicle and rig mileage allowances that way. Harry Broad, Editor of the Federation's newspaper (Straight Furrow), brought along an old speedometer casing he found on a farm. We packed it up in a small box with gift-wrap and a nice ribbon and formally presented it to him as a farewell gift in front of media near the end of the conference. The gesture showed that we got on well with this leader and those he represented.

However, behind all this was a policy framework that had deep roots in earlier history. One aspect of that history was presented to me by Clay Manners, the executive officer, or my equivalent at NZFF. He said the New Zealand and Australian governments had agreed to let New Zealand seek sole access to the UK dairy market after Britain went into the EEC. My reply at the time was to ask if he thought New Zealand had sent a frigate to assist the British Navy in the Falklands War (circa 1981). Clay backed down on that. But he raised an interesting point. In my experience of these sorts of negotiations, that Clay was alleging occurred, it probably would have been silly for both countries to seek continued access to British markets after the UK entered the European Club. The response of the Australasian farming industries had been to divide markets between them and try to work together to optimise returns. So in exchange for New Zealand specialising in Britain, the Australians tended to specialise in Asian and Mid-
East markets. The latter were expected to increase in opportunity by more than any expansion from British or European markets. So Australia might have been more favoured and of course, especially in faraway Perth, was much closer to the Middle East anyway34. The essential point is that neither country would compete in the other's markets. Of course, "CER" made that look ridiculous. Hence the problem, in the mid 1980's anyway.

I was lucky not to be embarrassed by this. Under the next chairman after Gordon retired, Mr Owen Jennings, we invited Prime Minister Robert Muldoon to open a conference (probably June 1983). There had been a bit of fun around this invitation. Initially we had invited a Mr Norman Geary who had been appointed Chairman of Air New Zealand to open the conference. At a fairly late stage he had to pull out because of a conflict in appointments. So we had to search for someone else. I rang Mr Len Bayliss who had been making quite a lot of noise with his strident criticisms of national economic policy. His comments had obliged the Bank of New Zealand (BNZ), his employer, to disengage him. We said it was Muldoon behind that. The Government owned the BNZ. When the bank's new building stood for a decade as a rusting hulk near the start of Willis Street, in downtown Wellington, we referred to it as the "Rusting Tower of Visa". The Boiler Makers' Union refused to finish their work, according to one view, and the bank found it could not afford to complete the building, according to another view. Half-way through the decade the rust became obvious. Len's sparring with Muldoon's policies, and Len's dis-employment, led us to rename it "The Len Bayliss Memorial Jungle Jim".

Anyway, back to the main point, unfortunately, Len said he had to charge us for opening the Conference. The Federation would not agree to that. Harry Broad and the Meat and Wool Section executive officer, Graeme Jenner, were commiserating with me. My conference was not that far away and still without a guest opening speaker of note. Graeme said, "What about asking the Prime Minister?" I rang Owen and he said write and ask. The Prime Minister accepted. Never discuss such things in front of a journalist. Harry said nothing about this in Straight Furrow. But he was friendly with journalists at The National Business Review. They wrote a gossip column entitled "Without a Word of a Lie". There I read, to my horror, on the eve of the conference, "Rumour has it Federated Farmers' Dairy Section was having trouble securing a guest speaker for its annual conference. Norman Geary was too busy. They could not afford Len Bayliss. So they asked the PM. If you pay peanuts you get .....".

Whether the PM saw this I never found out. He probably saw the funny side of it if he did. The Prime Minister's speech went off well and we got good press coverage of the conference just as the dairy industry was beginning to see better tines ahead. It certainly had no need to look back from 1983 onwards. As The Economist (of London) noted, the Dairy Board was beginning to operate a "cosy cartel" with American support and "massaging" prices quietly upwards. In a series of snippets I extracted from my "regular reading of The Economist", their editors had noted over a period of a couple of years how the Dairy Board and the New Zealand Government were quietly negotiating a more rational international dairy trading environment. The problems of 1978-9 were agreed to be ridiculous. There needed to be some reform. What was happening in agriculture, specifically the dairy sector, was poisoning; or glaringly reflected the poison in- ; trade in many other sectors too. And that was deleterious to world wealth, welfare and war-less-ness. So more sensible heads were beginning to find better ways of supervising international trade. Through the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) countries were trying to break the logjam in a rising wall of trade barriers which most people agreed had led to wars. "If goods and services cannot cross frontiers armies will". Mancur Olsen had written a book, The Rise and Decline of Nations. He traced how restrictions on economic interaction ("protectionism") in places such as the Spanish Netherlands in the 17th century or the Hanseatic League ultimately led to their decline as economic powers and loss of industries to competitors. Britain had benefited from others' protectionism but lost India when she tried to protect her economic influence there. With a new air of economic realism appearing to pierce the gloom, the future for New Zealand's dairy farmers was beginning to look quite bright.

But I digress, because my conversation with Clay Manners also nearly backfired on me when Mr Muldoon came to open our 1983 conference. Owen Jennings stood up and boldly congratulated the Prime Minister on sending a frigate to the South Indian Ocean to patrol waters there for the Royal Navy while Britain gathered her naval vessels to fight the Argies in the Falklands. Whether the New Zealand frigate really did anything material to assist Mrs Thatcher and her Government, I am nor qualified to assess. But I certainly hoped Clay Manners never heard what Owen said. For Owen's surprising congratulations effectively confirmed that political or even geopolitical issues would affect New Zealand's trading status. A year later, the National Government would be booted out of office. A Labour Government would govern and do what most people thought a National Government would - reform the economy. The David Lange led Labour Government also realigned New Zealand's geopolitics concerning nuclear weaponry. I would be working for the United States Embassy when that issue blew up.

At the time of writing most of this (from August 2014), the dairy industry has become so successful that it has almost turned into a victim of its own prowess35. In comparison with the 1930's, the dairy industry in 2014 is probably on a par in terms of its significance to the national economy. It was so strategic and significant in the 1930's that when the Government of the day wished to effectively nationalise the currency and bring in New Zealand's own reserve banking system, a special deal had to be negotiated with dairy farmers. That deal survived until the mid-1980's. Most New Zealanders, especially academics, misunderstood the impact of this deal. When the currency was about to be nationalised, earners of foreign exchange would be required to hand over the money from their receipts to the new "Reserve Bank" (RBNZ). The Bank would then give them the new national currency to spend in New Zealand as they required. The big question here was the rate at which these foreign receipts were exchanged for domestic or local money.

That is where the dairy industry's problem lay. In theory, the Reserve Bank, effectively on the Government's behalf, and in lieu of the market, could set the exchange rate at a point where for importers it was cheaper to get foreign exchange through the Bank than by having to earn it from exports or go on to foreign exchange markets and buy it from those who did export (i.e., "exporters"). On the other hand, for the dairy industry, it would get its earnings discounted (reduced), i.e., only get a portion (e.g., 80%) of its true earnings, and the premium (the "20%") thereby earned by the Bank effectively passed on to the importers as a subsidy to them and an effective tax on the exporter paying for that subsidy. As this system then developed, the Reserve Bank was later instructed to 'cream' some dairy receipts from abroad to place the discount or premium in an account for the dairy farmers. That was in the Reserve Bank's Dairy Industry Reserve Account. By 1980, this system was beginning to become ridiculous under inflation rates of 10% or more36. The 1984 Labour Government eventually disbanded the system.

We now have an independent Reserve Bank. But in those days the Reserve Bank was obliged to listen to what the Government of the day thought would be an equitable rate of exchange for importers and exporters. The point then affected mainly the value of the new domestic pound versus the value of the British Pound which was the most important world currency in the 1930's. Already, however, the US dollar was rising in importance and challenging the Pound. So how the British Government managed its Pound, the Americans their Dollar and the New Zealanders their 'Pound', later to become a Dollar, was rather critical to dairy farmers' livelihood. The dairy farmers ingeniously side-
stepped all those issues by negotiating with the Government. They arranged a 'borrowing facility', as we would say these days, for the dairy industry at the Reserve Bank. World interest rates at the time were about 1%. So that was the rate at which dairy farmers in New Zealand would be able to borrow funds to finance their daily and weekly farming operations. The jargon for this 'finance' is "Working Capital". If the Government set the exchange rate at a point where importers had to pay less than the real value of the foreign exchange they needed to pay their bills abroad, it meant exporters like dairy farmers were being short-changed or taxed. At times this effective taxation of farmers indeed was what happened.

So the dairy Industry negotiated with the Government what was at the time (the 1930's) a normal and reasonable quid pro quo (compensation) for the loss of direct control of the money they earned abroad. By 1984, New Zealand was experiencing rampant inflation. Farm costs (prices for the goods farmers purchased) were rising as much as 24 % a year. Interest rates for bank deposits were 11% or more.

So an interest rate for borrowed money at 1% seemed ridiculous in 1984. Although, the dairy farmers also earned just 1% interest on money they deposited with the Reserve Bank. In about 1983, dairy farmers had about $393 million in their Reserve Account at the Bank. But they owed about a billion on the operating account (Reserve Bank Dairy Industry Account), a net difference of about $600 million.

That is part of the background that brought in this new Labour Government of Mr Lange in a 'snap' election37 in June 1984. I was sure that dairy farmers did not need the economic structure not only they but the country was by then lumbered with. I looked at exchange rates and inflation rates in the United States and New Zealand to produce a simple model showing that between 1950 and 1980, when New Zealand's inflation rate moved consistently above the American 'CPI', the New Zealand Government invariably retained an overvalued rate of the New Zealand dollar against the American. There should have been some depreciation (or "devaluation" in popular parlance) of the New Zealand dollar because of New Zealand's invariably higher inflation rate38. I would offset what the farmers might have expected the Reserve Bank, then under Government control or at least 'influence', would pay them in New Zealand dollars if the exchange rates were fairly set off against each other, properly adjusting for the extra inflation New Zealand had each year. From year to year there may have been gains or respective losses for either party but over the 30 year survey these evened up. I concluded that between 1950 and 1980, dairy farmers had not been subsidised by this apparently generous interest rate subsidy. Everyone assumed dairy farmers were getting a massive subsidy through the Reserve Bank. Most international observers concluded likewise. No one ever, not in public at least, did any exercise to calculate the supposed subsidy. We believed it was not a subsidy but no one on our side had ever done the sums either.

I got sick of having to defend this argument without real ammunition so I tried out the exercise described above. The Federation's President at the time, Mr Rob Storey, was also frustrated by internal arguments between sheep, beef and dairy farmers as to who was getting more benefit.

While the mathematics of subsidisation complicated our discussions, "one thing was sure", I said to the dairy farmers. "Get rid of the system to show who really could perform". However, we had to eliminate both domestic and international protectionism. The 1984 Labour Government, followed by successive National and subsequent Labour Governments, acted on domestic protectionism and our trading partners began working on international protectionism. The proof would lie in the performance of sectors when the supports were removed. Dairy farming in New Zealand proved it could not have been subsidised. When those arrangements were dismantled, as they were quite quickly, it grew from strength to strength between 1984-2014. There would be thirty years of steady growth; production more than doubled in the period. Correspondingly, the sheep industry shrank (certainly in livestock numbers) by about 50% over the same period. More discussion on this, including a theological issue, in The Journal.

In an internal review of the organisation, each Federation executive officer was asked to state the primary objective of his or her job. I suggested making oneself redundant by achieving an end for the need to keep an eye on Government. With a number of objectives underway I was beginning to feel there was more to do but outside my present position. The low salary was lagging even further behind my friends' remuneration. They were buying houses and had better cars. That did not especially bother me but I was getting trapped and gettig a bit sick of having to live with flatmates in a Karori house. Graeme Jenner leapfrogged me for the Meat and Wool Section job and he kept the economic research job. I was still lumbered with the Education and Rural Services Committee. I got some fringe responsibilities for science liaison. Things were going very well with the main part of my job. The Dairy Board was much more respectful of us, especially after we exposed the Board's officials hiding $25 million39 of farmers' reserve funds at the RBNZ. I produced a booklet promoting the virtues of the New Zealand dairy industry. My former colleague Ruth Richardson had been elected to Parliament. I had been dropping up to her office at the Federation to supply her with articles from The Economist but she wrote back that she was now subscribing40. She congratulated me on being involved with the dairy industry. That was ironic because I once angered her with a press release extolling the virtues of the dairy industry and warning people not to get too many expectations about our rivals in some areas, the Kiwifruit industry. Unbeknown to me Ruth was doing a lot of legal work for fruit growers. Ruth hoped they might join the Federation. It did not look good for me to be publicly slagging one section of the fruit growers. That was in the early 1980s. Now, by the middle of the decade, the dairy industry was again on its feet and the kiwifruit sector was going off the boil and heading for similar troubles that plagued the dairy industry from time to time. The dairy industry operated on a scale that dwarfed the kiwifruit sector. In fact, the dairy sector would burn-off the sheep sector over the next two decades. But I needed a change of circumstances.

To obtain some statistics for my promotional booklet about the Dairy Industry, I went across to the United States Embassy to look at world production and trade statistics. I wanted to argue that we had to get foreign producers to remove subsidies from production in order to get world dairy stocks down and to get world food production in balance with real demand. Obviously this is not technically possible but the situation in 1979 when I started with Federated Farmers was in an especially invidious state. In 1986, the Agricultiural Attaché at the Embassy changed, as happens every three or four years. A new man, John Reddington had arrived and he wanted to expand the reporting duties of his office. John was Attachè for the USDA-FAS (United States Department of Agriculture-Foreign Agriculture Service). I was doing one of my rounds of Wellington offices and met the new Attaché with the retiring chap41 in the basement of the relatively new Ministry of Agriculture building. They were lost because they had come to the basement floor where the lift opened up to a blank white wall. One had to exit, take a left, walk down a corridor, take another left and another long walk down a corridor to exit on Lambton Quay. They had been looking for "The Terrace" exit but found the temporary Lambton Quay exit which had not been signposted for exit signs. I immediately cottoned-on to what had happened and rescued the somewhat embarrassed Attaché with whom I got on well with. Since I knew the new Attaché was due in Wellington, I also immediately realised who this new bloke was. As the doors of the lift opened and they walked out I responded by welcoming John before the Attaché even had time to introduce me. This combination of events and a couple of others, no doubt catapaulted me to the front of the queue of prospective assistants for John Reddington h who had new plans to expand the assistant's position in his office/

Back at my plush Federation office with its literally wall-to-wall carpet donated by the Wool Board, the booklet completed, I was looking for some new initiative to get on with over and above the humdrum of administration, and endless round of councils, conferences and executive meetings42, but I was somewhat boxed-in. Something happened wherein I was not consulted concerning something reported in the federation's newspaper. I forget the details now, for some reason. Perhaps the matter seemed very significant at the time but really ws quite minor. But just before that, I had rung John Reddington about some statistic I wanted. I had also noticed that John had advertised in a Tuesday copy of The Dominion Newspaper for an "Economist". I asked John what was happening to Bill Hadfield who had assisted Jim and John's predecessor. I also pointed out that "Tuesday" was not the best day to place such notices. However, John suggested I might like the job. Although keen to look for something else to do, nothing really looked to be on the horizon and despite grizzles about peripeheral hassles with my current job, there had to be a good reason for leaving the Federation. I was keen to keep my star hoisted with the burgeoning dairy industry about which I was becoming something of an expert. John's suggestion did make some sense. However, it was the incident with our newspaper editor that then spurred me to go straight back to my office, or perhaps mull over the matter for a couple of days, then pick up the phone and ask John more about the job he was offering.

But about a month previously, John Reddington had introduced a departmental official from Washington to our President, the Late (Sir) Peter Elworthy. Peter had called for me to come up atnd attend the meeting. Whereas the American official, who admittedly had a very wide brief to cover, continually resorted to one of his briefing documents to respond to questions Peter gave him. When the Americans asked for information about the dairy industry, I could rattle data off the top of my head. I had no idea a month later, annoyed about an incident in our office with our 'newspaper' (trade journal) editor, I would be asking for details about John's new job.

Bill Hadfield, whom I knew quite well after a few years of interaction with the Embassy's agriculture office, had been assisting the Americans on a part-time basis. But the Department of Agriculture, or John, seemed to be wanting more systematic and analytical reports filed to Washington. John's reaction to my second call about the economist position he had advertised was surprising but for the aforementioned incidents, fortuitous though they may have been. He asked up-front, "Do you want the job"? Now with an unequivocal intention to apply for this job, I was expecting to go through the normal process of mailing a CV, application form etc. But John was not interested in all that. He repeated, after my still semi-vague inquiry, "But do you want the job". I did not se any sense avoiding the issue and on this occasion simply responded, "Yes". "Well the job's yours", was John's reply. "Do you want to come around here and I'll sign you up". It really was that simple. It may have been that same day I went around to Fitzherbert Terrace to meet John in a by-now reasonably familiar office. I remember him saying he was only getting economists from IBM and commercial banks responding to the advertisement. But I was far and away a superior candidate. I suppose, or perhaps "hopefully", I have explained why John said that.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this process (1986) is why the British High Commission (1993) did not equally eagerly snap me up. Instead, I got that bizarre response about "Arabism" as the dubious excuse for objecting to my candidacy43. Quite an insight into two different diplomatic services.

The job at the American Embassy would be more of a technical nature and hopefully a rest from politics which would be the Attaché's preserve My main task was to produce "PS&D" tabkles and comment on a wide range of factors affecting the production, supply and demand for various agricultural, forestry and horticultural products. The Americans supplied a manual for the report composor to follow. "Cross Commodity Developments" was perhaps one of the more useful headings under which to compose some of the more interesting developments in New Zealand agriculture. The dairy industry was waging an advance on several fronts by 1986. Instead of retreating in the face of alternative land use of traditional dairying pastures by sheep farmers, fruit growers and forest owners as was the case in 1979-81, the cross commodity development was beginning to get into a full swing the other way in 1986. So much so that in about 1990, USDA asked us to speculate on the extent to which New Zealand's dairy industry could expand if world trade barriers to milk products were substantially scaled down.

So before taking on the position at the US Embassy, I now had the awful task to announce to the Dairy Section Council; and its Chairman by that time, the Late Mr Bruce Tolich; that my time with the Council had come to an end. It had been a very good relationship. If anything, I was too gung-ho about the dairy industry for the Council - almost like an evangelist. But after many sessions of: milking cows in cowsheds, political meetings therein (a favourite of Owen Jennings politics), Dairy Board committee meetings and meetings with dairy scientists who appreciated the dairy farmers' responsiveness to their research or science; only an ignoramus could fail to see what I did. The dairy industry was a white-liquid-goldmine for the national economy lying on the sunlit and (mainly) rain-irrigated pastures on the temperate zoned real estate of New Zealand sitting on the bulge that lies in the southern or lower half of the Earth's sphere.

It was not easy cutting ties with many friends I had made on Federated Farmers Dairy Council, and on its other councils too. Bruce was close to tears when I told him my news. He was very unhappy with the way the rest of the office had treated me. But that was part of the rather xenophobic attitude other farmers (sheep, beef and crops) tended to have towards dairy farmers. We actually had one council meeting where a general discussion, emanating from a remit, considered the social attitudes other farmers had toward dairy farmers. It became quite emotional at one point. In the Taranaki and the Waikato, so many farmers milked cows that social and administrative life had to accommodate the largest single sector. From the South Island, where dairy farming was beginning to grow significantly (or return, Southland), we received the most distressing accounts at that council. And I could believe it. When Rob McLagan invited me to call into Federated Farmers office in Dunedin for some briefing, Martin Finlay who knew my father and uncles quite well, was quick to ask why I wanted to work for the "Bolsheviks"44. I laughed and during my tenure at the Federation I often had chats with Martin when he came up to Wellington. As time progressed, even Martin began to see the value of dairy farming. Coming back to the main point here, I had missed out on all the promotions within the Federation's national office. I suppose there was some sense in that. Why change personnel where things were going so well. But this was a conflict between the individual's long-term welfare and the requirements of a position being so well met by a particular officer in the organisation. In a way, this is a typical case of an insoluble dilemma. Everyone is somehow caught up in it and differences of opinion or perspective lead to unease, disgruntlement, disappointment or even disharmony. That's what Adam got us into!

According to an explanation from Bruce Tolich, no less than the overall governing body of the Federation, the Dominion Executive instructed Rob McLagan to put a counter-
offer to keep me engaged with the Federation. Just as we were to enter the staff-room on a Monday morning to go over the forthcoming week's activities, a regular weekly staff meeting of executive officers, Straight Furrow journalists and one or two others, Rob put this counter-offer to me just as we were about to announce my resignation. I had already signed-up with John Reddington. He filled out the job application for me. John was so keen to engage me. Bureaucratic rules could go by the way-side as far as John was concerned. I just had to sign a contract. So it was far too late for Rob to leave announcing the counter-offer to literally seconds before the formal announcement of my resignation to my colleagues. It may be that Rob felt I would be better off at the Embassy. He may have done me a favour. Bruce did not see it that way. There is a background issue here regarding about six annual performance reviews I had been through up to that time. That will be a matter for discussion in The Journal.

The United States Embassy (1986-92)

I arrived at the US Embassy in the last days of the Reagan Administration. The Ambassador at the time, officially a personal representative of the President as a 'political appointee', was a US cattle farmer. John Reddington introduced me to him but I never saw him again. Within weeks the new Ambassador was on the way. Very soon, after Mr George Bush became President, the State Department sent a career diplomat, Paul Cleveland to be the next US Ambassador to New Zealand. Judging by my brief meeting with the previous Ambassador, I expected to see little of this new representative of the US President. Ambassadors usually had their own Deputy Chief of Mission. Mr Al La Porta arrived to take up this post for Ambassador Cleveland. Fairly quickly, both men seemed to become quite interested in my reports. At one point, Mr La Porta asked if I would like to help them "upstairs". But that was apparently out of the question as far as my new boss was concerned45. I still have a copy of a cable, signed "Well Done Don" by Ambassador Cleveland. The cable photo-copy I took, for the Snowdenites46 out there, was carefully redacted (edited, blacked-out) for any numerical codes that could be used by someone to intercept US Government traffic. The cable was sent to nominate me for an award. Subsequently and unfortunately, I was ineligible for the award because initially, I was just on contract. Only a year after starting did become a fully recognised Foreign Service National47 (FSN).

My basic job at the Embassy was to supply data and relevant comment on the production, supply and demand of various agricultural products48. For American producers, I had to keep an open eye for markets in New Zealand for US exporters. On that front, in tandem with the visits of the US Wheat Associates (Mr Tim Oviatt, refer below), we did in fact secure a steady market for American wheat. We achieved a similar break-through for US Table Grape growers. But the most interesting things to happen were in other fields I got involved in. These will be more interesting for the reader than turgid economic reports. Though a couple of incidents are particularly relevant.

One morning, one year, in late January I arrived at the office with Annie our secretary in a bit of a panic. Washington was on the phone querying my dairy production forecast. Someone over there had read an article in a New Zealand provincial newspaper that dairy farmers were drying-off their cows because of drought in the "Bay of Plemty". In September, about 4 months previously, I had forecast production to increase by 1%. The analyst in Washington asked why I had not sent in an "alert" to indicate there might be a revision to that forecast. I put forward two good reasons. After many years observation of the dairy industry, I knew that some parts of the country where they farm on peat land, conditions can dry very, very quickly. This forces the relatively small number of affected farmers to dry-off some cows very early in the season. Even if the effect on overall national production was significant, that particular, not uncommon, situation inevitably be much more than offset by the so-called "autumn boost". If one plots the typical New Zealand milk production profile for each season in a graph, the line will take the shape of the so-called Bell Curve with one important distinction. In March, especially if conditions are warm and there is good rainfall, production ceases to decline even as farmers begin to shut down for Winter and dry off less productive cows. That gives the 'Curve' something of an upward kick in March and April then a quick tail-off in May. I used to describe it as being like the profile of Mount Egmont in Taranaki, New Zealand's oil and milk Province! From the town of Stratford in Taranaki, on the south side of "The Mountain", the extinct Volcano forms a natural triangle, the peak coming to a natural apex at the top. From the Bell Block or northern side, Phantom's Peak is in full view. Together, the two peaks; or superior and inferior volcanos, the lower and higher; give the appearance of a Bell Curve but with a kink (the lower peak) out to one side. This forms a literal picture of the annual milk production curve on the economists' dismal graphs. And the weather around Mt Egmont-Taranaki is even more dismal much of the time49. As one travels around the mountain, "Phantom's Peak", like phases of a moon, planet or planetary satellite, moves into partial view, then full view, goes back to partial view and then disappears again once one returns to the south(-east) side. Anyway, I stuck to my forecast of 1.0%. The actual outcome was 0.9%.

Regarding the second example I intimate above, for my reports on the grain sector, I had to use data that was at best two years old. The Department of Statistics told me farmers took a notoriously long time filing statistical returns. We could get monthly national milk production figures two weeks after the end of the month and meat volumes sometimes within the week. So reporting on wheat, barley, oat or corn acreage, yields etc., was mere guesswork. But I had picked up on reports of poor consistency in wheat quality. Mr Tim Oviatt of US Wheat Associates worked out of an office in Singapore. He rang us one day to say he wanted to visit New Zealand having read our 'informative' reports. In fact he made a series of visits and he liked taking me on his travels. I had other 'thank you' correspondence from US exporters. One day, I noticed a tender for grain silos and flicked it on to a company (Scafco Corp.,) in the US. They wrote back saying it would be great if the US Foreign Service had more people like me working for them. Tim Oviatt's great ambition was to land some US wheat in "Australia's back yard". He believed New Zealand only got the dregs of Australian wheat ("ASW") to mix with Kiwi wheats each season there was a local shortfall as there usually was. We toured the grain companies and did manage to land a contract after a couple of years. One of the Kiwi millers in Tauranga had engaged a New Zealander who had worked in US and NZ mills. He knew how to process US Wheat, NZ wheat and it seemed, blend the two together. The weather patterns in the US are such that wheat quality can be remarkably consistent. New Zealand's variable climate, farms isolated in valleys with obscure micro-
climate and small scale of operation resulted in wildly varying grain quality especially for specialist grains like wheat50. This wheat-mill engineer was keen to import US wheat and demonstrate his craft. So we secured a contract. However, both Tim and the mill engineer were quite nervous when we met at a coffee bar in Tauranga. In the pleasantries, Papua New Guinea somehow came up in conversation. So I jumped in with a cannibal joke. We all burst into raucous laughter. The ice was broken. The art or science of economics is not quite so dismal after all.

So much for the economic aspect of my career at the Embassy. Suffice to end by noting the Ambassador described me as a "Top Flight Economic Analyst". Years later, the Foundation for Research, Science and Technology would admit in writing that I qualified as a "researcher" under their Regulations, and Legislation, for dispensing New Zealand public (government-funded) research funds.

The really interesting developments in my working life arose through other events in the Embassy precincts. I had grown up with American television be it Clint Eastwood as Rowdy in Rawhide, Phil Silvers, Dean Martin, or others. I had American relations. An uncle of my mother left New Zealand and emigrated to the States. At least four school friends emigrated to America. When I started at the Embassy, the head of the Marines Unit attended the church I attended. Most if not all the other Foreign Service Nationals were administrative staff. I was the only one doing anything approaching quasi-
diplomatic work51. The upshot of that was that I tended to mix with the Americans more than the locals. At Federated Farmers, I organised with both the American and British Agricultural Attachés to get the dairy section council invited to their respective premises for cocktails. Our section was the only one that did this regularly. I am not sure why. So I quickly dropped into the swim at the Embassy.

Ambassador Cleveland quickly cottoned on to the fact that I was English, had attended English schooling and probably detected a difference in my accent. I would be walking down the corridor and a voice would boom "Stewart, what are you up to?". It was a variation on the Prefect-Fag routine made famous in English novels. One incident, probably my favourite, led to an hilarious finale. The New Zealand Prime Minister, the Late David Lange, had been asked by Yoko Ono, John Lennon's widow, to open in Central Park, New York, a memorial to the Late John Lennon to be officially named "Strawberry Fields". I happened to know the opening line of the song, "Living is easy with your eyes closed misunderstanding all you see". We had a staff newsletter produced by the passport consul. He was a Quaker and neutrally-dated each edition e.g., Week 3 Month 5 etc. Occasionally, I supplied him with a one page light-hearted essay in the mould of 1066 And All That. That week I took up this opening line in John Lennon's famous song as a title for the article. At the time the Embassy was in a row with David Lange over who promised whom what about nuclear-powered or -armed, or both, vessels entering New Zealand's territorial limits. The Embassy felt the Prime Minister misled the United States or his own Cabinet over discussions held with US Secretary of State George Schultz52.

Anyway, I walked past the Ambassador's chauffeur, Joe, who was pacing animatedly by the exit foyer. Evidently, the Ambassador was on the way to an appointment somewhere. They already seemed to be a bit late as one can imagine what with one thing and another likely to delay an Ambassador. So I did not help Joe by calling out to the Ambassador as he went to enter the bathroom on our floor. "Mr Ambassador", I formally called out, "Do you want to hear a good line?". Ambassador Cleveland at this point paid one of the best compliments I have ever had. He was clearly under pressure to get into the car and get to the appointment. Simultaneously, Ambassador Cleveland also needed the bathroom. Joe, conscious of safety, traffic fines, US policy on such matters (always pay traffic fine), was impatiently waiting. The Ambassador paused and one could see him making, Eastwood-like, the calculation in his mind, "Do I have the time for this right now?". Probably not was the obvious answer. However, he went against wise advice and said "go ahead". Like some sort of herald fronting up to the King, I held up the print-out that I was on my way to delivering to the editor of Chancery Chatter. Slowly and deliberately, I read out the words of the title of my article. That very morning, Mr Lange and Yoko Ono, over there at Strawberry Fields, Central Park, Manhattan, New York, were all over the daily news. The Ambassador literally snatched, perhaps illustrating the collegiality between us, the print-out off me. He looked at it for a few seconds then said, "Quick, get me a copy of this".

I would have to say that I was a bit surprised by this. I knew the Ambassador liked the Beatles. A quick glance down Joe's direction suggested he would like to have my guts for his garters. Joe was a Londoner like me but perhaps he disdained the Liverpudlian upstarts. But I just took the print-out to the photocopier at the far end of the corridor and the Ambassador continued his way into the bathroom. Unfortunately, I was the first to use the photocopier that morning. It had not warmed up and that function could go on for a minute. So before it was ready to copy the Ambassador was now alongside me53. "Quick Don, I am in a hurry". Rather irrelevantly under the circumstances, I tried to explain the technicalities of the photocopier's warm-up procedure. Anyway, it came online slightly more quickly than I had expected and I could get the copy into the Ambassador's hands. That was all I heard from the Ambassador. Later, trying to sound out Joe's wrath, I found out that they were going to meet Mr Jim Bolger who by then had become Leader of the Opposition. I was not in Joe's bad books. Well, I could hardly have been. The Ambassador, evidently, was very, very pleased with all this.

That evening, my friends the Brewerton's, Trevor and Aileen with young daughters Leanne, Michele and Nikki, had invited me to dinner at their house on Messines Road Karori. It was six o'clock and the national news was about to come on TV. Unfortunately, I do not remember exactly what I had talked about there before dinner. I must have mentioned something about my article because the opening of Strawberry Fields was a big, major or even the leading news item that evening54. For Mr Lange, it must have been quite an honour to have Yoko One personally inviting him to officially open the memorial as a de facto leader in the anti-nuclear movement. It really was an honour under any circumstances. The year must have been 1990, as it was the tenth anniversary of the assassination of John Lennon. I do not think I said anything about my little game with the Ambassador. It would not have been a breach of security to have said something about that aspect concerning the Ambassador. I was thinking of my essay which I thought was rather well crafted and quite witty. This was the writer in me coming to the fore. If it was the first item on the news, the matte concerned a speech Mr Bolger had made in Parliament at Question Time (usually about 2:00 pm each working day in the House). The cameras focussed on Mr Bolger asking the House, the PM absent of course, was it "Aware that the song Strawberry Fields contained the lines, "Living is easy with your eyes closed ... etc....".

I was gob-smacked. I realised why the Ambassador liked my little article so much. Evidently Jim Bolger saw the point. But the look on Paul Cleveland's face as he was about to enter the downstairs bathroom. That's where the compliment came. He didn't have to say anything. However, unbeknown to me, the Ambassador was immediately realising he had some very useful ammunition for Mr Bolger which would go down well with the latter at no diplomatic cost at all. Mr Bolger, being of Irish stock probably would appreciate this little bit of fellow-Irish-stock Lennonism.

A similar type of back-handed compliment came from the security team at the Jewish Community Centre (JCC) about eleven years later. The Israeli Ambassador had come to the synagogue (Knesset) for one of the Jewish Festivals (Atonement-Yom Kippur from memory). I was working by then for the JCC. I also had a job securing the front entrance which I had started a few months before the full-time custodian's role55. At a crucial stage the Embassy's security team also wanted to join the service. So they said to me, "Don, your are the security for now". After that, I would boast that "Mossad delegated the security to me of all people". Another great compliment. One night I was baby-sitting for the Rabbi. His parents rang from New York. I had answered the phone and began to be concerned they would be worried at a strangely-accented voice on the other end of the line looking after their grand-children. But they said, "Oh hello Don, Yes we have heard all about you and we are looking forward to meeting you when we arrive in New Zealand". So it was nice to get such commendation. Anyway, we are getting away from the story.

My contacts and former colleagues at Federated Farmers were obviously an asset, through me, to the Embassy. This led to some interesting incidents. Ray Metcalfe was the president of the Waikato Dairy Section Council. After my induction in the Taranaki by Gordon Gibson, Barry Smith, Ian Dowdle (a sharemilker) and Don Harvey, it was Waikato's turn to host the new Dairy Section Executive Officer back in 1979. They sent me to an annual conference of the Waikato section. This was the biggest of the Dominion Council's regions much to the chagrin of the Taranaki who regarded their region as the birth-place of dairy farming in New Zealand. At the Waikato AGM, they asked me to be scrutineer for the elections. The standard procedure was to elect a President or Chairman, Senior-Vice and Junior-Vice Chairmen. Ray stood for Junior-
Vice Chairman. He was either still sharemilking then or had just bought his first farm. As scrutineer, I saw how popular the vote was. Ray won on the first ballot by a landslide. Anyway, we got on well and whenever I was in the Waikato, I would stay with Ray and Glenece and their three children. I usually stayed with members of the council on away visits, see what their farm was like, get to meet the family inthis family=farm-based industry, etc. I learned much about the dairy industry from all these contacts and on-farm visits.

Anyway, Ray's wife was an opera singer and after the farm had been broken in, they went to Europe where Glenece got training and Ray began working for Gallagher Electronics. This company had developed portable electric fencing to a fine art. They used this technology to strip-feed paddocks by doing away with costly fencing systems. They quite dramatically changed the face of dairy farming. Ray's expertise in dairy farming and stock management, perhaps par for the course among most New Zealand dairy farmers, was light years ahead of farmers abroad. After I joined the Embassy, Ray would ring me for figures on cow numbers etc in different countries. Our USDA database had this data. In September 1989, I was selected to go on a three-week tour of the United States as part of a briefing and training programme. This was a tremendous trip. I will probably say more about it in The Journal. Part of the tour involved a swing through the states of Pennsylvania, Illinois and Missouri then flying down to Florida and driving through that state. We travelled by bus. On the way to Springfield Illinois, the bus broke down on a corn farm. We were already running late because of schedule shortcomings. Then the driver failed to turn right at a smal town along the way. I had been following a rudimentary map and went up to the driver to suggest he had made the error. This incensed the USDA chap chaperoning through all this.

But when we got onto a catle farm in Florida, the Parton Estate, a farm with single-
humped Brahmin-cross cattle, the farmer showed us his new electric fencing system. With the group and our chaperone standing around, the farmer and I started talking about electric fencing in New Zealand. I said I knew a farmer working for a New Zealand electric-fence company. The farmer asked who that was. I mentioned Ray. "Yes, that's the fellow who sold me this system". Our Chaperone was rather flabbergasted by this example of just how apparently small our world is.

Sadly, Ray, barely in his fifties, passed away with cancer a few years ago. His life was very stressful though one did not notice this much as he always seemed fairly calm. Another farmer I knew who died at a relatively young age was Rick Vallance. He was a sheep and beef farmer from the Wairarapa. Their members being close to Wellington often became known as the "Wellington Branch". Rick was a supporter of free market economics and opposed attempts to put the meat sector under the control of the meat Producers' Board. That did happen briefly but the 1984 Labour Government did not approve and moved to scrap the Producer Board schemes. One morning at the Embassy, I got a call from Rick to say he was flying to the USA the next day but to his horror found his passport had expired. The problem was obvious. He had a visa to enter the USA in his passport. Not much later that became unnecessary but for now it was. Could I help? I went to see Rob the Consular Chief. He seemed very easy over the matter. After all, I was a regular contributor to his Chancery Chatter. Rick turned up. The Consular Section expeditiously organised a US Visa for Risk's New Zealand passport. Rick hung around the Embassy for a couple of hours. He met one or two staff there and had a jolly good time it seemed. The problem solved, Rick was on his way to the States.

New Zealand's urban communities are not as friendly toward the United States as their rural counterparts. Most of the Embassy's staff got themselves invited to stay on farms and meet the rural communities. I believe the episode above with Rick was symptomatic of that relationship. In the debate between New Zealand and the USA over nuclear-
armed or -powered ship visits, the rural community's relationship with the United States over exports meant the former was far less keen to aggravate the debate. But New Zealand was taking serious steps towards less regulation of trade, and steering farm production being based on comparative advantage, not subsidy56. I once put a proposition, I think to John Reddington before I went to work for the Embassy, that we should be buying cars from Detroit and selling meat and dairy products to the Americans. "Really?" was his reply. I was just putting the rationale for the economic reforms being undertaken in New Zealand post-1984. The diplomats admired the way the New Zealand Rural Community was taking hits on these reforms as much as other sectors like the domestic automobile industry. Australia is only just starting to go down this path 30 years later. The Americans admired the reforms on the economic front and their diplomats saw that the United States would have to make some tough decisions before long. So the nuclear argument tended to be ring-fenced. The United States Government moved to isolate New Zealand from many defence arrangements but supported New Zealand in international economic forums. I believe their actions were quite honourable there.

Mr Royce Elliot was an up-and-coming official at the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries when I arrived in Wellington in 1979. Royce had a background in the dairy division so I got to know him better than other officials at the MAF. One day at the Embassy, Royce rang me to explain that he was the Liaison Person for the US-based Harkness Foundation in New Zealand. Apparently the benefactor's wife was still alive and she was visiting New Zealand. Royce wanted my advice on whom he should contact at the Embassy to coordinate Mrs Harkness's programme here. I knew nothing about this Programme. My former Chairman at Federated Farmers, Owen Jennings, who later became President of Federated Farmers, was invited to take up a Fulbright Scholarship while Owen was Junior- or Senior-Vice Chairman. But Royce seemed to have got involved with the Harkness. I rang Virginia, Ambassador Cleveland's personal secretary, and she got me to send Royce upstairs and that was the sum total of my role there.

But Royce told me about a young graduate they had sent to the United States. Her name was Kathy Garden. Royce said she had been the most outstanding Harkness Fellow they had. I did not know Kathy from a bar of soap. I wondered, could she be as smart as Ruth Richardson, my former colleague at Federated Farmers who became Finance Minister after the Fall of the 1984-90 Labour Government? Anyway, later I got the chance to work with Kathy when I joined the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology.

So those are anecdotes of encounters with people and contacts during my time at the United States Embassy. But I now want to narrate a trio of events there which really impact on some deep philosophical issues that are now part of the programme I am embarking on to Harmonise Science, History and Archaeology with the Bible.

The second in this trio, I briefly mentioned in The Journey (page 14) in a discussion of Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers. So firstly, one day we were invited to wander down to the wharf one afternoon about 1990 to have a look over the SS Malcolm Baldridge. Mr Baldridge had been killed in some incident and the Department of Commerce had named this vessel after him. The vessel was laden with massive gas retorts and large thermometers attached to massive buoys. The purpose of this vessel was to lay these things all over the Southern Ocean. Over a ten or twenty year period, the scientists were to measure the exchange of gases between ocean and atmosphere. At a congressional hearing, so we were told, it had emerged that measurements of the earth's temperature were mostly from land-based instruments. In particular, the massive southern ocean (of the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian quadrants) was being completely ignored for its role or impact in global gas exchanges and how those might affect world climate - if at all!

At the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology, this tour of the SS Malcolm Baldridge would come into its own. But for the meantime it certainly became clear that major Governments such as the United States will not be dragooned into enslaving economic policy within a vague theory about why the world, or globe, is warming up. I understood this American programme would involve two ten-year surveys. Presumably they completed this research around 2010. Meanwhile, the New Zealand Government went into an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) without the requisite research. More on that later.

The second57 event in this trio was the lecture I attended entitled "Meteorites from Mars and Moon". I had been working late to get some annual reports finished in time for their deadlines. About 8 pm one evening, one of the diplomats dropped into my offfice and urged me to take a break and come and listen to the lecture. One needs to perhaps step back a bit here and think about the circumstances. I received this job working at the Embassy. Thinking about it retrospectively, the Agricultural Attaché had actively head-
hunted me. On this apparently normal evening, I was struggling to meet deadlines. A meeting on a highly controversial debate in 'science', scheduled for an unusual time in the Embassy auditorium; where I had heard Walter Cronkite58 speak on one occasion; this lecture just happened to take place - and I was there. The diplomat, Steve59 from memory, probably had little reason to invite me. Vern Dickey, the Economics Counsellor, also attended the meeting.

A group of geologists and perhaps cosmologists from Pennsylvania State University had been rock-collecting on a plateau near the South Pole. "These rocks", they said, "were meteorites60". So far so good. What turned out to be upsetting for some (of the New Zealanders present) is that the American researchers said the meteorites had come to Earth from "the Moon and Mars". For the uninitiated, a meteor landing on Earth should originate in outer space or perhaps from the "Ort Cloud61". But severe tension emerged between the New Zealand scientists present and the Pennsylvania University team. The problem with the model presented was that there is no known mechanism for meteors or any rock to depart or in some way escape their terrestrial domicile on either the Moon or on Mars. Apart from Dr Velikovsky's survey of possibilities, there neither is nor was any known mechanism that could deliver the required "escape velocity". As the New Zealanders suggested, surely something had to hit either the Moon or Mars so hard that the shock caused rocks to 'escape' the admittedly weak gravitational fields of the Moon or Mars. As we see from photos sent by Martian landers, the Mars landscape is littered with rocky debris. The Moon seems less strewn with rocks. But that may simply be a matter of circumstance concerning the landing places for martian robots or human-
controlled vehicles (if humans ever did get there) on the Moon. But the Americans stuck to their guns and Kiwi tempers flared (or flamed as we said in those early days of email).

Anyway, the diplomats moved to dispel the heat and hurriedly closed the meeting down62. The technical point about the necessary escape velocity was quite relevant. I approached the American scientists after the Kiwis had gone. The Americans, in response to my question, told me that similarities in chemical analysis of rocks: from the Moon, brought back by Apollo astronauts; and from Martian rocks and dust analysed by machinery on Martian-lander robots; showed that meteors lying on the surface of the ice in Antarctica had the same common origin as the lunar and Martian examples. They were saying that common origin was the Moon and/or Mars. Of course, what was found on the lunar, Martian and Antarctic surfaces, may have had some other common originator that left these samples on the surfaces of three different Planets (Earth and Mars) or Bodies (Moon) in the Inner Solar System.

Immanmuel Velikovsky in Worlds in Collision and in Earth in Upheaval, provided a suggestion for that "other" common source. He suggested the Planet Venus was the main direct if not also indirect source. When it entered the Inner Solar System in circa 1500 BC, it deposited rocks, strewn through its enormous tail of debris, onto the three different surfaces. In 1997, Nature Magazine reported that a European satellite had detected a long tail of ions streaming from Venus toward the earth. This evidence was noted as something of a surprise. But not for people who had read Velikovsky's material. We are not saying here that Velikovsky is necessarily absolutely correct or even necessarily even partially correct. But surely there should be some serious consideration given to his work. We have done that for the ancient Egyptian history and chronology, and come up trumps (the winning suit in the card game '500'). Anyway, in mid 2014, I had a brief opportunity to ask the head of NASA, at a talk delivered in Wellington, "what are you doing about Velikovsky's work?". He replied, "yes we are looking at his theories". Anyone who has read publications about the discoveries of moons around the large planets, and closely studied the text rather than just looked at the admittedly attention-
grabbing photos, cannot possibly overlook the Velikovskian tenor in the text63.

The third in this trio of events leading to my determination to develop a harmonisation of 'science64' with the Bible, concerned a meeting of the East West Center convened, for some obscure reason, in Wellington65. Mark Platt, the Economics Counsellor before Vern Dickey, invited me to tag along with him to this meeting. Organisers had invited the Embassy to attend. At the beginning, the chairman of the meeting, Professor Gary Hawke, asked delegates to suggest topics for discussion. One delegate, a New Zealander from memory, or at least going by his accent, asked if they could discuss the tension between oligopoly economics and R&D. Professor Hawke very curtly ruled the matter outside the purposes of the meeting. That surprised me because one would have thought that was exactly the sort of subject such think-tanks would want to tackle. Especially as the matter seemed to be ignored everywhere else. I had certainly been interested in the problem since 1977-78 when I was studying Stage II and III Economics and the Economics of Innovation, Science and Technology at University.

To put it simply, te problem is that conventional theoretical economics envisages a successful economy as being a place where many players participate in markets producing a variety of products meeting various peculiar or even unique needs at competitive prices. This process is the best way to allocate scarce resources in a fair, non-wasteful and efficient66 manner. The problem is that profits are likely to be meagre in this situation, sometimes described as the "Perfect Competition Model". But small profits, that just barely provide enough finance to replace machinery to keep the 'going concern' ongoing, are not enough to also finance research, new products or better products. Nor are such profits large enough to finance what I refer to now as the New or Last Babel Project67 (or what the Prophet prophesied). Of course this is the elephant in the room; The Babel Project. The Illuminati, Adepts, Masons, Mystics and many others have a secret agenda for the world economy. In one (Foreign) Government policy document I used for research at MoRST for the papers I wrote on "Policy Measures to Encourage Innovation68" I read, "The top two priorities for the International Economy and Science are to map the heavens and the floor of the oceans". At that time, circa 1994-5, or about five yeras later, I heard Dr. Arnold Fruchtenbaum preach on "How to Destroy the Jews". Arnold used Jeremiah 31:37 to describe what would need to be achieved for God to tear up His Unconditional Covenants with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob69. I saw the parallel between that Government's claim and God's challenge in Jeremaih. I still do see the parallel and it may well have been at that moment when Professor Hawke overruled discussion of the matter that I resigned from the Economics Profession. Professor Hawke wore his hair to his shoulders. The only person I worked with who did likewise, Frank Edwards at MoRST, told me he was a former Rosicrucian70. I leave the reader to draw his or her own conclusion.

This incident at the meeting of the East-West Centre was quite extraordinary. Why did Mark invite me to go with him? That was a little bit unusual in itself. As I said, the question was also rather unusual. But it was certainly a very good question that needed an answer as it still does. In retrospect, I wondered many times if I was meant to observe this situation. If no one else wants to answer the question then I might as well. As I have done many times since. The answer is that we are really in a trap. Adam set it when he ate from the Tree of Good and Evil Knowledge71. It was not as though Adam was not going to learn things thrpugh his life. The point was to see if he would wait on God to learn and let God be his teacher which is presumably what otherwise would have happened. Adam could have carried on learning under God's tutelage as he did before he ate of the forbidden tree. Instead, Adam was tempted to accelerate or advance the learning process and take it upon himself to absorb, consume or 'eat' knowledge. That was the choice Adam effectively made, not only for himself but for the rest of us descended from him.

Now we find ourselves in a bind where we have to invest profits earned from restrictions to free trade. To a considerabe extent, we have to bow to the terms and tenets of oligopolistic or even monopolistic economics. If organisations need more money to finance technological development they seek it through government subsidies or through profits. But organisations may need Government help in setting commercial and competition rules to enable them to engender 'above average'72 profits. So Governments and big organisations get caught up in a complex administration of the economy to facilitate the growth of knowledge. This knowledge base, we are promised, will lead to longevity or space travel and even eternal existence73. But God has offered us a promise in His Eternal Kingdom if we acknowledge that we were that Adam who grasped of the Tree of Knowledge and that Jesus came to pay the penalty for that mistake. There are counter-reactions74 to this ever continuing economic growth cycle and drive for more knowledge. But they usually ignore the offer God made. The environmental side effects are often criticised but few realise that mitigating those effects kills the drive toward greater knowledge. It is a treadmill. The only way off or out is via God's kingdom. This brief digression reveals why Professor Hawke did not want to get into that particular discussion that day75. Whether the chap who posed the question had thought through the implications, I cannot say. But I for one certainly did begin to more seriously examine the question from that day.

At university, I tried my hand at several disciplines76 before returning to study economics. Once I had made that decision, I breezed through University. Then I breezed into my job at Federated Farmers though I had little expectation I would enter such an exciting and interesting environment for a recent graduate77. After a period (about 7-8 years) in quite high echelons in the world of economics, this curt, but even so polite, suppression of debate or discussion by Professor Hawke at the East-West Centre Seminar was a turning point. It would not be long before I would be heading for Israel to examine the validity of Dr Velikovsky's claims regarding world history. There too, I would receive confirmation that serious questions are being buried under the carpet as the world plunges into what looks like Oblivion by AD 2015.

One of my tasks at the US Embassy was to draw up a report explaining how much the dairy industry in New Zealand could expand, over the next decade, if restrictions on international trade of dairy products were lifted. The USDA commissioned this report. In my discussions about the parameters of this report with the Attaché at the time, Mr John Hopkins, I suggested there could be a doubling (or 100% increase) in the dairy industry's capacity (1990-2000). That would be based on increased cow numbers, more land entering dairy production and better per cow production (productivity). Also, on existing farms there was spare capacity. John felt my initial target was a little too optimistic so we trimmed it to a 50% increase in a decade. As it turned out, New Zealand managed a 50% increase in two consecutive decades (1990's and 2000's).

New Zealand had one particular difficulty in the international trade situation. Despite the "General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs" (The GATT) aiming to avert war by allowing free exchange of goods and services around the world rather than erecting barriers to trade, little had really changed since the 1930's. Many of the same negative tactics that pervaded world trade in the 1930's remained in force in the 1980's. Many countries held high tariffs78 against imports from other countries. There were many 'quotas' affecting international trade. New Zealand was also using import licences79, similar to quotas in effect, to protect domestic producers or to nurture 'infant industries' towards growth and maturity.

However, import licensing in New Zealand became so ridiculous that NZ 'automobile manufacturers' were importing car-kits to re-assemble in factories here. To make these kits, a foreign manufacturer actually produced the finished product then dis-assembled it for re-assembly elsewhere. The justification for this was to train workers and develop manufacturing capability. Economists were concerned that "comparative advantage" could not confer benefits through lower priced products for low-income consumers under this regime and actually imposed unnecessarily high costs on the community80. Many historians believed that restrictions to trade had helped inflame passions prior to World War II. Some historians traced this problem to even earlier wars in history. In the wake of the nuclear stand-off between New Zealand and the USA, and to some extent a stand-
off with the UK and Australia as well, there was the argument that if New Zealand could not sell its very efficiently produced agricultural products it could not help pay its way in the world's security system. The line at the Embassy was that Roger Douglas was Superman but David Lange was a rogue. Outside the Embassy, people argued that the stand on the nuclear issue would keep the Labour Left quiet while the Labour Right outflanked the National Party on Right Wing Economics.

But who really was pulling the strings in New Zealand's economic Reforms in the mid 1980's, ironically from the year that named Orwell's 1984, is becoming less of a mystery as a better understanding of world history emerges from a proper analysis of the Bible. That discussion is continued in The Journal.

By 1991-2, I was getting a bit bored and tired of the endless cycle of reports and deadlines. I usually got the top commendation for each annual report but that standard slipped a bit by 1991. Not by much but by enough to realise I was getting a bit blasé with the process. We had entered a period where reforms were beginning to show their worth, or otherwise, and reporting became a bit more ho-hum. After the heady reforms of the 1984-90 era of the Labour Government, the country needed a "cup of tea". Also, I had to do reports on stone-fruit and pears when there was very little to say, for which statistics were virtually non-existent, and there was little value in the information for Washington. New Zealand, though perhaps it may have desired to be, was not Spain when it came to stone-fruit. New Zealand was so far away from markets that stone-fruit exports were virtually out of the question. New Zealand's milk, wool (which I did not report on apart from its importance as a "Cross-Commodity Development"), meat and timber ("lumber") production and exports did have an impact on world trade. It was very difficult getting any enthusiasm for the Fruit Report and I wanted a release from it. But there was no joy there. However, my successor did get relief from the Fruit Report.

The new Attaché after "E.B" was John Hopkins81. But I realised Mr Hopkins really wanted his own man at that job as had John Reddington before him82. Although John Hopkins may have also realised that I was getting a bit sick of the job and wanted, or needed, some sort of change. Not that he could offer much from within the Foreign Agriculture Service of the USDA. But before I continue with that issue, I should note the US Information Service which ran the Embassy's Library and external programmes approached me about going to Auckland to work in their office in the Consulate there with a view to managing the USIS programmes in Auckland. As a career option, this was obviously attractive. I was not so sure I wanted to live in Auckland. In the final analysis, episodes such as that at the East-West Centre were beginning to leave a disenchanting taste in one's philosophy.

Another matter that also used to grate a bit was the increasing reliance on computerised systems. The manufacturers of that product were always trying to sell a new system. "Built-in obsolescence" came in with a vengeance. Just as one was beginning to master a programme such as Lotue 1-2-3 out came another, supposedly better product. So one had to re-learn and re-learn. I always felt this was inefficient and conflicted with the demands of one's primary role. Just as one became proficient with a system the systems managers would announce a new programme or computer was on the way. In retrospect we can see what has happened here as well. The move to computing was an inevitable consequence of Adam's fateful decision in the Garden of Eden. Babylon's Game Plan has been to bring Man back to that touch-tronic computer in the Garden called the "Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil"

Sabbatical

Thus an interesting stage in my 'professional' career came to a close. By now (1992) I'd had about seven years struggle with University combined with a full-time job for about three or four of them; seven quite action-packed and at times stressful years at Federated Farmers; and then nearly seven years at another quite intensive job. Now aged thirty-nine, I'd had three sevens of years without a break. A sabbatical was long overdues.

The primary purpose behind the Sabbatical was to spend some time in Israel to investigate the chronology problems in archaeology posited by Immanuel Velikovsky. I wanted a rest from work and study in favour of being able to do my own research. I had about three months in Israel from March to May. I was in England in June and went back to Israel through July-September. On the way to Israel from New Zealand, I spent a week with fellow Economist Dr Warren Young while he did some lectures at Geelong University near Melbourne.

I managed to coincide all this with the Final of the World Cup in Limited Fifty-Over Cricket. England, my team, had made it to the Final against Pakistan who played so badly at the start of the tournament that everyone was surprised they even made it to the semi-finals. England seemed to be cruising to victory until Imran Khan came to the crease to join rookie Inzaman Al Haq who was about as agile around the field as the aging Graham Gooch the England Captain. The two batsmen had to stem the regular fall of wickets then quietly build up the run rate. As they began to accoplish the latter, Khan pulled the ball out to Mid Wicket where Goochie ran in to take the catch. But the ball seemed to hang in the air and not come quite as far as Mr Gooch who belatedly realised the ball was not quite reaching his position on the field at the huge flood-lit Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG). So with a bit of urgency Mr Gooch tried to speed up but to no avail and the ball hit the ground just in front of him. A more sprightly cricketer, as we see these days, would have dived the last couple of feet but that would have caused a hernia in Mr Gooch. That was England's last chance and the game rapidly slipped away into the Pakistanis' hands. This was bad luck for England who had a bit of good luck on the way to the Final and not an auspicious start to my sabbatical. Though there were far more important things at stake than a cricket tournament. By the time of this edit, New Zealand and Australia are once again preparing to host a similar tournament (February-March 2015)83. However, I am no longer especially nor particularly interested in such cricket-fests.

The Sabbatical to Israel, all in all, was a success especially with my ruse in Dr Cohen's office using Mr James' book Centuries of Darkness and then to find Dr Velikovsky's book, Ages in Chaos, arriving at the bbokshop in Baltimore the very same day I was there. All that is narrated in some depth in The Journey.

Well rested at the age of forty, the same age Moses was when he left the royal courts of Pharaoh's Egypt for the deserts of Arabia, Midian or the Sinai, I was perhaps uniquely ready for the last stage in my 'professional career'. That was to be inside the inner sanctum of government science and academic policy formulation within the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology (MoRST).

At the close of 1992, back in Wellington, I prepared applications for (from memory) about six positions. I obtained interviews with four organisations, including MoRST. That was a good exercise in targeting the sorts of job I would be in the running for. MoRSt turned me down initially but a couple of weeks after the interview Dr george Stuart rang to see if I as interested in a project to survey innovation policy instruments. The job involvd a one-off project for about three months or so. However, I ran into a communication black box. I did not quite understand what George was getting at. Eventually, we settled on a plan.

I split the innovation process into the various stages that were comonly discussed in this branch of economics. In our model, the innovation process began with Basic or "Fundamental" Research and included stages such as R&D, Technology Transfer (T/T), Diffusion, Skills and Training; Collaboration, Networking and Cooperation ("CNC"); Management and Marketing issues and Intellectual Property Rights (patents and copyright.) That became the horizontal axis for a table of policy measures or "instruments", as far as I could understand the MoRST (or Dr Stuart's) jargon . The vertical axis became a list of instrument types involving grants and fiscal (taxation) assistance, organisational measures, or assisting with education, information or legislation etc.

The survey targeted OECD economies. So I went about collecting as many as I could find in government publications collected from embassies and elsewhere. I analysed them then fit them into the appropriate categories according to the two criteria mentioned. I produced a detailed ninety-nine page report of the research84. The data revealed that twelve OECD nations85 including the European Union (EC in those days) with Germany, UK, Ireland and Denmark included as separate countries, put 65% of their efforts into the first three stages of the Innovation Process (Fundamental 16%, R&D 33%, T/T 16%) but devoted relatively few instruments to other stages of the innovation process except CNC 16%. Obviously there were overlaps between technology transfer and networking. So we put a caveat on these figures.

In terms of type of policy instrument, 49% were grants or quite simply money or subsidies given to help finance the "innovation process" as we liked to say. If one included "fiscal" instruments (e.g., tax deductibility on research) of 11% of the policy instruments, although how much that translated into dollars of tax avoided we could not even begin to assess, then one could say 60% of Government support to the innovation process went to support research, development and technology transfer. To view this from the perspective of research in New Zealand which was overwhelmingly in the Agriculture sector; even in the former Department of Scientific and 'Industrial' Research; a similar criticism could be levelled. That is to say, significantly more assistance was given to research and roducing more 'knowledge' than to assistance helping the economy efficiently adopt, use and adapt that research. In New Zealand agriculture, we were accused of doing plenty to produce more output but not doing nearly enough to find ways of getting higher value from it or in finding new or different markets or uses.

One could ask questions about what was being done to help people or organisations become more innovative and adaptable. But the exercise seemed limited in its usefulness. The data needed caveats. Nearly a fifth (18%) of the policy instruments involved setting up organisations, often to receive some of the grants made available, but it was impossible to say anything useful about the impact those measures had in comparison with grants. So when Dr Margriet Thieron, who was on the Ministry's staff then, approached me out of the blue one day wanting to talk about my report which really looked like going straight to the library shelves, things started to move. That weekend (circa April/May 1994) Margriet was being despatched to be New Zealand's representative on the APEC86 Industrial Science and Technology Working Group. Apparently, at I suspect rather short notice, Margriet was required to find something to take with her as a contribution to the Working Group's programme.

What surprised me about all this was that there seemed to have been no formal meeting to discuss what Margriet should be doing at this meeting. If I remember her words exactly, she said to me "I heard you have been doing an interesting report ....". From memory I only spoke with her for less than five minutes. Apparently no one else in the Ministry had anything for her. Presumably, I spoke to George or Mike Doig to let them know Margriet was taking a copy of the report to APEC. No one seemed concerned one way or another. At times, I even wondered if the only reason why I was at the Ministry is that after rejection slips from each of the six organisations (including MoRST in the first instance) I had carefully targeted for future employment, I had to apply for unemployment benefit because I had simply almost run out of money and I needed some sort of wage preferably from work aligned with what in these pages we are describing as the 'professional career' I had not yet thought about filling supermarket shelves or cleaning jobs. So was this exercise just a make-work scheme on the Ministry finding out I was unemployed, perhaps because the Social Welfare Deartment had made inquiries there to check I was bona fide?

Howevef, I did establish later that the project had been earlier considered but left unstarted because no one wanted to do it. It was obvious I was interested in the economics of science, technology and innovation. Mike Doig, the Policy Manager and effective Second in Command there, told me that I had been the only applicant for the Economist's position to see the significance of the area by doing a course of study in it at Otago University87. So the Ministry would be cutting off its nose to spite its face if it had some work for me to do. At least get me in for a short-term contract if it could not justify a full-time position assuming none of the applicants met a minimum set of criteria which I did not for 'full-time' employment. Why leave the project unstarted? By May 1994, the Government had committed the bureaucracy to assisting APEC. Margriet Trhieron was despatched to fulfill that commitment but with no goodies in her hand to take to the meetings. Governments should surely work more efficiently than this, one would think!

Margriet returned with good news. APEC's S&T group wanted New Zealand to host its next meeting and repeat the study we did for the OECD selection on the APEC members. I was instructed to communicate with member states via the secretariat in Singapore. They bombarded me with all sorts of official documents from the member states and I had a field day compared with the relative paucity of data I had from the OECD countries. I'd had to collect most of those myself. Now I was embarrassed with riches. The Americans sent a virtual tea-chest of material. Mexico even attempted to do the classification itself. The other countries left me to do that presumably on the basis that they wanted consistency of approach. That was quite an honour really. I was left to do everything while other staff got on with their duties. However, my access to the computer system was via a low grade machine which could not handle the volume of data quickly enough. So one of the secretaries, Shirani Visvanathan88 completed typing up the final report.

At the APEC meeting held in Wellington in mid 1995, Mike Doig presented my papers. I attended as a staff person-observer. The delegate from Thailand suggested my wok be used as the basis for a "work programme" for the APEC Group. Though what that meant exactly, I am nnot sure. It certainly showed that what had started as a possibly make-work/throw-away project was getting serious consideration at an international regional conference. Later, Lisa in the International Division fired off an email to me from the Canadian delegate to the conference. He seemed quite active in the meeting's deliberations. I think he smoothed over a mini-row with China about some matter probably with respect to a protocol violoation concerning Taiwan's participation (Officially "Chinese Taipei"). In his email, he recommended my work be presented at the OECD.

However, the Ministry seemed disinterested in these suggestions from the Canadian and Thai delegates. Initially there was confusion whether the Canadian was referring to me or George Stuart (my middle name is also George). After clarification, when I spoke to Mike Doig about the suggestion from the Canadian delegate, Mike said he would arrange for me to be registered as a delegate or whatever, get on the agenda etc., but only if I paid my own way over to Geneva or wherever the paper would be presented. If I was really keen, I think I would have gone ahead especially if I had some spare cash. But I did not really have the money and was loathe to extend a housing mortgage I was on the verge of repaying. So I decided to stay working for the Ministry on a contract basis. I also now had a reasonable springboard to push for selection as a tenured or permanent staff member if a suitable position arose.

By August 1995, some sixteen months had passed since securing one short-term contract with the Ministry. By then, I had completed a couple of hundred-page reports89 on international innovation policies. The Ministry now had a substantial database of innovation schemes and details thereof for potential use in New Zealand. I had manoeuvred myself into a trouble-shooting role doing odd jobs no one else seemed very enthusiastic about. I shared office space with the Systems Manager who was a lesbian with whom the other staff seemed uncomfortable. Her deputy declared to me one Friday evening after we went out for a cup of coffee that he was bisexual90. Anyway, my office was a makeshift area up in the 'Information Services' section's open-plan office area. We shared all this with a very attractive heterosexual librarian of no 'religious' persuasion or any other feature about her that might be considered not quite PC or at least unusual. I spent my time at the Ministry sharing this area with these folk aoart from the last year when I was in an office designated for the Office of the Chief Scientist.

The manager of the unit where my office-space was located was Frank Edwards whom I referred elsewhere to as a former Rosicrucian. Frank came from Canada and was involved in the decision to hire me with Mike Doig and George Stuart. From memory, my interview for the role of economist was with Mike and Frank. It was George who later rang me at home to suggest I come in and begin the innovation survey. The remainder of our floor91, was dedicated to the clerical staff and accounts administrators. The main body of the 'science professionals' worked downstairs. The Elite occupied the lower floor and the lower-educated or 'odd-ball' but better educated were on the upper floor.

Before going on to discuss some other work I did for the Ministry, after this relatively successful work on innovation policy instruments, I made two further serious attempts at gaining permanent employment at the Ministry. The academics in the universities have a useful term for this - "Tenure". I had nearly repaid the house mortgage at age 41 and would have paid it off by then if I had stayed at the US Embassy. Presumably, I could still look forward to marrying and having a family. I had substantially changed my vocational direction. I was getting into a relatively new and exciting branch of economics wherein I could now possibly say I was gaining some international recognition and expertise. More time with the Ministry would be very useful, or even entrench me, in this career direction. Perhaps my work in the areas opened up by Veikovsky would one day, and at long last, be seen as a useful asset and a piece of far-reaching foresight on my part. It was now just a matter of sticking with the mundane and routine for a while until my time would come! But as we can see, unusual currents were swirling about me.

While I was doing all this work for which the Ministry was getting, as Mike Doig once confided, "Brownie Points", and as I was doing some other quite useful jobs as I will narrate after this section, I made thes two further pitches for regular and salaried full-time work at the Ministry. Of course, by the 1990''s, the labour market was already being seen as a dynamic market where people should not expect tenured or full-time jobs to be the rule. People as full-time 'employees' going off for the day to 'Work" would be more of an exception. Organisations might keep a core of full-timers but most of us would shift from position to position (in regard to actual tasks), project to project or place to place (in respect to organisations, cities etc). While other fellow 'cobtractors' told me they were doing well financially, I seemed, if anything, to be slipping below even the average wage. So I was keen to kick for touch after two or three years of employment deep-uncertainty92.

The following two nefarious situations presaged an emerging problem for me.

One dat in circa 1995-693, an employment broker94 with one of the employment agencies I had registered with, rang me at home. From memory, I must have been on downtime with the Ministry. That happened from time to time between 1993-98 but some of that downtime would be used t attend meetings at the Ministry in order to be kept briefed on developments that I might work on. Mike Doig and Don McGregor, to whom I am grateful, were my two main sponsors for this. However, if it looked like there was no work for me in the near future, I would very reluctantly consider re-registering with Social Welfare to go on the dole. Whether that was the situation when the phone rang that day, I fail to remember. The male voice at the other end of the line said he had noted my details on the agency's database and that in his opinion, which cheered me up I might add, I would be an ideal candidate for a position as Economist at MoRST. I pointed out that I had already been turned down for the position and that I was doing contract work for the Ministry but that I was unaware the Minisrty had re-advertised the job. The Ministry must have re-advertised as I will explain although I did not see the notice. I pointed out that I was unlikely to succeed and that it would be fair to point that out because he could perhaps, for his own benefit, make better use of his time on another case. Furthermore, advised, the Ministry was interested in finding someone who could develop a system of evaluating science. I certainly did not have that expertise and I doubted anyone else did either. Only this bunch of relatively obscure bureaucrats in Wellington seemed to think such a person existed. They eventually, at considerable cost and very little ir any at all return, contracted Tom from USA whom I have alredy referred to in The Journey.

Nevertheless, the chap decided he wanted to put my name forward. I never heard from him again95. I did get a call, however, from a woman in the administration section of the Ministry. She was nominally the Ministry's Personnel Officer. Her point was that "if all things came out equal" between my application and that of another person who "had not applied through an employment agency, the other candidate would succeed". The reasoning, she none too subtly noted, was that the Ministry could avoid a fee for the Agency's service. But when one set that alongside the enormous effort behind the attempt to recruit USA-Tom who lasted less than a year in the job of "Economist", the Personnel Officer's comment was ridiculously out of line and irrelevant. She was not involved in the recruitment of Tom either as far as I could tell. Mke, George and Frank did not use her services in recruiting me either, again as far as I can tell. I told a friend I had about this and he wanted to go to court over the matter but I knew that was impossible without any documentation.

One might say I did not learn from the above in the following example. There was a resignation of a more junior staff member who was "servicing committees"96. But such jobs could be a springboard to servicing Cabinet and its Committees! So her job was up for grabs. Without even eaiting for any public advertisement I lodged my application for the job. I was now in a position of some strength. With the "relative success" of my work at the Ministry, this time I would at least be able to appeal the job if I was passed over in favour of someone else. Now there would be documentation that could be located under subpoena for a legal investigation. But I just assumed I would get the job. To my surprise, as I was walking past his office door, Mike Doig suddenly raised the issue with me. "Did I really want that job?" he asked. He said it was mine for the taking but that I deserved better. I knew Mike quite well by now, liked, respected and admired him but to me he seemed agitated on this occasion. Perhaps he had been ordered to get me to pull out for reasons I was unaware of. The fact that he left the Ministry a month later circumstantially suggested he was put under some strange pressure.

This was all a bit irregular. The only potential problem I could foresee here for Mike or other personnel was that some people did not like working with me. As subsequent events have proved that does indeed seem to be the problem but why has so much unusual or extraordinary, and as I say "irregular" behaviour taken place in my particular direction?97 In this committee job, one would have to work closely with Kathy Garden. With Royce Elliot's comments about Kathy and having worked with her for a couple of years by this point, I could not see there would be any problem. But nor could I fathom see why Mike would be so agitated by my application for this job. Instead, Mike persuaded me to continue doing various tasks for himself and Don McGregor (Chief Scientist). Throwing none other than the "Chief Scientist" into that mix with the Head of the Policy for Science unit as my supervisors was indeed a very attractive proposal. All due respect to Kathy98, working alongside Mike and Don seemed to make more long-term sense. Both men had been open and honest with me and I had no reason to suspect any double-crossing here; certainly not from Mike nor Don. Though Mike was certainly putting me on the spot here. What had happened that day. Had someone put pressure on Mike? The fact that he left a month later, to everyone's surprise, certainly as far as I was aware anyway, suspiciously suggests Mike was faced with something rotten.

Of course one really needs to look beyond the immediate players in the event of such goings on99. Later, when Mike became head of VicLink, a Victoria University unit set up to market the university's research, he gave me some work and at one point declared to some visitors that if one wanted something done around Wellington, then ask Don. It was a lovely comment. So Mike appeared to be quite genuine. Even later, I ran into Mike in town and he asked if I was "ready to come back to work". That was a strange comment which I shall delve more into in The Journal. As noted, Mike left a month later but Don certainly kept to the agreement. But Don would only be at the Ministry for a year before retiring. At which point, with a new Chief Executive, new Policy Manager and new Chief Scientist in Dr Helen Anderson; who was far from sympathetic to Christianity as I had learned from listening to her; I was up a creek without a paddle. It was now 1998 and I was aged Forty-Five. That wa a dangerous age to be left 'high and dry' in the labour market on the eve of a new Millennium which, as we note elsewhere, now seems to belong to Satan.

Thus, much as I admired and liked Kathy, I plumped to work with Mike and Don and their respective teams. Kathy was in Mike's team anyway so surely everyone was getting the best of all worlds under this arrangement. That meant I was doing projects for both sides of the Science Ministry and the only person with the exception of the Chief Executive who was doing that. I may have explained this elsewhere, but the bureaucrats who established "MoRST" recognised the problems encountered in earlier science policy in New Zealand. The former model with the DSIR, Ministry of Agriculture handling agricultural science with various allied research institutions such as WRONZ, MIRINZ and DRI, had shown limitations100. Modern governments have needed science for policy construction but they also have had a major role in encouraging or producing science. Thus governments needed someone to manage and develop a policy for science, in this case New Zealand's. But a government also needs to have someone like Sir Winston Chirchill's "Chief Scientist"101 to advise the Government on the scientific implications in any policy.

Monitoring Policy Advice to Governments

To illustrate this last point, Don McGregor asked me to do a job for him. The need or request for this supposedly emanated from the Minister Hon Simon Upton. The concern was that Government Departments were not sending certain Cabinet Papers to the Ministry for peer review before going to Cabinet. There was a document known as The Cabinet Office Manual. It stipulated proper procedure for the administration or Civil Service to follow. For example, it also stipulated that any papers requiring finance would have to be viewed by The Treasury before tabling at Cabinet. Any matters relating to staff would have tp be reviewed by the State Services Commission. But were the Departments of State, as the Americans might say, following the guidelines or rules in regard to scientific matters? So Don delegated the task my way. Alastair produced a list or random numbers which I had to use to select 100 numbered papers from the Minister's office . For a few days, I sat in one of the Beehive offices and extracted the papers per the random numbers and lookde for any scientific matters discussed in the papers. If there was some such discussion, I had to ensure there was a tick on the box marked 'sent to MoRST102.

However, when I came across a paper that clearly had scientific matters arising in it and the paper had not been sent to MoRST for review, I had to go and interview the responsible officials to find out why. This turned out to be more than interesting. I received some very interesting insights into what happened in governments. The exercise was revealing especially when we consider what will happen in Messiah's World Government - and before that in 'Antimessiah's!

I should explain that the Ministry had only been in existence three or four years when I joined (circa April 1993). In this exercise for Don and the Minister, I could only go back five or so years at most. In one example of a paper presented to Cabinet by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a very important department that would not want to be seen defying the "Cabinet Manual", the official responsible had complied as best he could. But he had sent the paper to be reviewed by a body called the "Association of Scientists103". It was still in existence when I was working on this. The Association had played an interim role in policy issues but when the Foreign Affairs official had sent it off for peer review, "MoRST" had actually, presumably with insufficient fanfare, already come into existence. But this presumably well-informed official was unaware of that late new development. He was of the understanding that the Ministry was not yet in place. This was of no moment of course and purely a simple misunderstanding.

The sad by-line to this story is that the official's wife was afflicted with crippling motor neuron disease. My Friend Uri Lev die of this in Israel and a cousin contracted it. A friend in Karori likewise came down with this condition and a woman in our folk dance group had to look after her father until the disease killed him. This Ministry of Foreign Affairs official was stressed at the time with nursing duties to his wife and he apologised for not assigning the cabinet Paper to the proper place for review. This chap was quite apologetic and cooperative with the process. His action did ensure a desirable outcome for the Government because the necessary review would have occurred.

This contrasted sharply with my encounter at the Department of Conservation (DoC). But my interview with the chief of its policy unit was a lot of fun even so. The background or back story here is that at about this time DoC Staff had built a viewing platform in one of the conservation estates they managed. Being typical gung-ho Kiwis they did not need any advice collecting a bit of timber, a few nails and hammers and constructing the platform. However, they apparently did not follow some basic engineering rules. There appeared to be no notice restricting or limiting the number of people who could safely walk onto this platform. Nor did they screw it together with bolts. They just hammered it together with nails. These nails just gave way when too many people gathered on the platform. After the inquiry pointed this out, I realised for the first time the significance of bolts or screws rather than nails in certain situations. But I would never dream of taking it upon myself to construct things that might endanger life, especially if I did not really know what I was doing. We never heard about what exactly the students who boarded this platform actually did to exacerbate the situation, if anything at all, but the thing suddenly gave way and quite a few were killed as it collapsed. Some may even have died on the scene from the severity of their injuries. Others were injured for life. Under the intense glare of the media and widespread public revulsion, DoC was being "audited" to see why its procedures could have led to such a tragedy. Our "Chief Scientist" despatched me to speak to DoC about our little matter of peer review of science in Cabinet Policy Papers. We were more interested in the nuts and boils of science and DNA104! But DoC was obviously greatly preoccupied with the "Cave Creek Tragedy" and ensuing Inquiry. I was close to finishing my report but had not yet been able to get the necessary interview that Don McGregor wanted me to conduct to clarify exactly DoC had not passed three papers past MoRST for peer review. Obviously, DoC was delaying on our issue but I had to give them the hurry-up.

Therefore, Don suggested I ask the Deputy Director of DoC to secure the necessary interview. He was a Mr Edmonds (a family name on my Mother's side). Later, Mr Edmonds passed a gracious comment my way after I presented a report on Sustainable Land Management submissions. (Refer below). "Oh, you are ringing me about your 'audit'", I remember him saying on the phone. I tried to deflect away from the use of the term 'audit' though I suppose that was what we were doing with this exercise. Mr Edmonds arranged for me to meet DoC's chief policy analyst. So I was head to head with Mike Doig's equivalent. This man was a very jovial Pom 105(Englishman) as it turned out. No sooner had I sat down than he was off on a soliloquoy about Sir Solly Zuckerman, Britain's Chief Scientist after F.A. Lindemann. He told me in no ucertain terms that Zeckerman was a cheat who marked down his students' papers if they did not agree with his research into apes. He was not going to speak to MoRst about deep sea fish stocks which only DoC knew anything about. It was DoC's job to tell the Government how to run deep sea fisheries not the New Zealand Chief Scientist's. Furthermore, he advised me, it was not necessarily an advisable thing to be too honest with consultation. For example, he told me, "Did you know many towns around New Zealand's coasts will fall into the sea one day"?

Even in the midst of a clear case of consultation failure, DoC was going to defy the Cabinet Office Manual and ignore MoRST. The Ministry's existence and standing only had authority within 'a Cabinet Minute' we used to say. DoC was a long established department. It should not have to suddenly consult with some newcomers on the block before submitting a paper to Cabinet. I completed the report. About a year later, MoRST did a similar exercise but someone else did the survey. This was an interesting insight in the way governments operate from a wall-fly's perspective. Another example of this took place when I had a chat with a senior US official in my Attaché's office regarding trhe operation of America's foreign policy but I will discuss that in The Journal.

Sustainable Land Management, Environment, Global Warming.

In discussing my interview with DoCI referred to a compliment sent my way for the work I was doing106. The 1990's saw the beginning of a series of regulatory systems for the control of (mainly human) impacts on the environment. In one contract with MoRST, I got involved with Sustainable Mand Management issues. For the Office of the Chief Scientist, Don's deputy, Dr Gerald Rys, contracted me to analyse submissions on what New Zealad needed to do to farm or forest the land and fish the waters (salt and fresh) in a sustainable manner. To do this, I simply typed most of the content of the submissions into a database system called Inmagic. Using the command options of the computerised database I quickly collated the submissions to see how many commented on various matters so that we could weight their relative importance - as the submitters saw them. The program enabled me to make sure most points of view could be stated and how many expressed certain points of view or the contrary opinion. Ince tis was the obly project I was responsible for, I could get on with it withouty distraction.

Gerald asked me to present the report I derw up to a meeting of senior policy analysts and even occasional deputy directors. One official at the meeting expressed amazement I managed to get the report produced so quickly and within a couple of weeks of the closing of submissions. At the end of the meeting, as a last comment, I drew attention to the test stated in Malachi's prophecy exhorting Israel to Mr Edmonds was one of those present and he thanked me for the wee bit about Malachi, thigh whether anyone else was appreciative of that remains doubtlful. Edit to 9/2/15

Other matters

My apparent lack of comprehension skills at school did not affect me in later life. It raises questions about the usefulness or validity of the comprehension exer ises we did at school. My reading of legislation in things like the Dairy Board Act was not impeded. No amount of comprehension qould necessarily enable to understand that Act anyway without some dairy industry and Dairy Board background. The Board tended to use the Act when it suited anyway. If there was a bugbear in the Act it could be amended very quickly in Parliament because the dairy industry was so influential in the new Zealand economy.

Parallel to this, I had to compete in umiversity with people who could pass accounting exams in their sleep because they had been drilled in the basic pra tices ina thing called "commercoial Practice" at King;s High School. It dawned me only in writing these documents that I entered those cmprehension exercises in a milieu where from kindergarten in New Zealand my fellow pupils, apart from the ratrher less briught ones, had been acculturated into answering the questions. I had to study the piece of text we had to comprehend, work out from my particular background what was going on in that particular text then answer thje questions provided. Obviously it would take me more time. That was interpreted as me being slower than the majority of the kids. Hence the education system tended to downgrade me. I was not a genius. But I was not quite as slow as they thought frm their measuring stick.

But in the background I was being trained to read and understand the Bible. Corporate and seculafr New zealand wanted people trained rather more agnosticly. One cannot know about God and His Bible so let's not even bother trying. Ripley Court Preparatory School taught almost the opposite. So I came freezing cold into this agbostic education system. As my understanding of History refined over the years I realised the student of it could have little option to consider or reconsider, as the case may be, the Bible's messages. That explained the system's hostility to my study of history from such a tender age.

Re meat Industry association: However, of some material significance and validity, it needs to be said that one quite significant task in the job was to negotiate work conditions and pay rates for Muslim meat slaughterers. I will go into this in more detail in The Job but suffice to say here that my

Footnote 61 from The Journey: there were good positions available for me in early 1993. At least one (British High Commission) I was uniquely qualified for and the other two (NZMIA and now MoRST) I was very well qualified for and certainly in the running. As it turned out, I did succeed in a fashion at MoRST but the remuneration was poor since I was often without tasks or with significant down-time or effectively un-chargeable hours. I attended many meetings to retain some sort of brief on projects I might be involved in but others on the full-time staff were doing that too. But they were getting $30-50 per hour salary. I got work at MoRST but at very low pay rates which barely enabled me to pay basic bills which no longer included automobile expenses.

However, the newspaper's front page could be causing me some long-term trouble especially if that material has been picked up for any file on me. I have had some suspicion in that regard but this is not the place to digress on that. It will come up in The Job. When I got to England and a search was conducted for me on a security qualification, the message came back "no way". So something has happened but it is not clear what exactly.

By 2009, the book was completed. Later, with Shimshon Marom's help in Melbourne, I finally published it on The Cloud. There had been a string of trials on the job scene. They obstructed progress with the mission. But there were some interesting things that went on that are relevant. I will narrate them in The Job. The time spent locating work, and often getting barely enough to pay the transport there and back, gobbled up enormous stretches of time. I had to write out applications, fill in forms often trying to answer questions I could not get answers for such as marks for exams at High School, and get that stuff printed and delivered.

From Fn 25 below: Rob, a former school teacher, had moved to the Chief Executive role (at John Pryde's expense)

talk about my relationship between he, me and Jack McFaull, KHS etc.

From Fn 33: We will discuss some other events regarding the decline of the sheep industry and loss of that land to farming later to put this thing into a rarely discussed perspective

WINZ workers shot September 2014 - Celestine Prophecy - Lunch time at Morst

NZMIA Interviews firstly with the Director and the woman there who obviously disliked me and with the mason ex Royal Navy (connection with Uncle Norman?).

There was absolutely no place now in MoRST for a man who would some 15 years later realise that a touch-tronic computer was the 'apple' Adam and Eve ate in the Garden of Eden. Helen would have been horrified to know that a person of such persuasions, even if yet future, were a member of her staff. My attempt at continuing with policy analysis spluttered on a wee bit longer with some odds and ends stuff that no one else wanted to tackle. I will tackle those tasks in The Job

The VicLink job with Mike and Malcolm Menzies. Mike's comment after I arranged to get the delegates fed at a Halal restaurant.

Guildford-based company (Modal Data) Fn 122 in Journey about the joke re Osama Bin Laden and working for two different traffic data companies. Also reminded me of coincidence of worshipping at Brook St Chapel and working for Brook Street Employment Agency.

From above " Meanwhile, the New Zealand Government went into an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) without the requisite research. More of that later."

Don suggested I get the Deputy Director of DoC to secure the necessary interview. He was a Mr Edmonds (a family name on my Mother's side). Later he passed a gracious comment my way after I presented a lecturew on Sustainable Land Management. (Refer below).

Endnotes