` Got up this morning expressly to watch the 'innovation' programme on Q+A on TV1.


It was all very well as far as it went but somehow did not seem to address the real issues.

I live in Carterton a small rural services town in the Wairarapa. Once upon a time there were small industries in this town. A truck assembly plant, several sewing shops and a shoemaker.They fitted in very well with the aspirations of the time and were complimentary to the town. Over time they all disappeared due to globalisation and the entrepreneurial spirit was lost and taken over by the real estate industry who desired turnover most of all and who were not in the least concerned about people once they got here.

When the clothing factories were in full swing a training institue was set up that has just turned into a dumping ground for WINZ rejects.

Ho hum and so it goes.

Now the times have changed and the the big innovation is pandering to Ron Marks vision for a boot camp and importing criminals into the area so he Ron Mark can persuade them to turn over a new leaf. Pull the other one ronny.

Also the town has been lumbered with a $6,000,000 bill for an events centre that no one seems to know how to operate properly or what they are going to do with it once they have got it.

There is an opportunity here but the poobahs are not concerned in the least. In a short time if the National Party is re-elected then all the local bodies will be amalgamated, they will receive their redundancy and the central authority will be the eventual payer of the bills. So nothing has changed. The fundamental principle operating here is not listening to anyone except sycophants and oddballs or otherwise disposable people.

No one has any real vison. Its all narrow self serving grabbing of resources for the select few and to hell with anyone else.

Now here is an interesting example. The great mouth Paul Henry once lived in Carterton where he set up a radio station that was solely designed to annoy the big boys and eventually they paid him a million to go away. The Wairarapa is the only region where ratings are not kept among the competitors because it is too small for them to make any sense. So in this sense there is always a first mover advantage to be had for any radio start up.

But mention radio station and all the local mouths go Paul Henry and that is that. Paul Henry, Paul Henry, Paul Henry. All they see is an oik on teevee and they cant see how he got there!

Another example is Jazz at the Church. I have seen two concerts at Saint Marks that were video material. Now before any brightspark gets up and says the artists already has their own I say there is always room for one more especially if it is better than the preceeding ones and by the way stop trying to shut everything down because the concept is too big for you.

Further when I came to Carterton it was at the end of Georgina Beyers Mayoralty and the town had a really large quota of artists and performers and things were going on at the nifty little Phoenix Theatre that were first class entertainment , capable of develpment, and most importantly without importing any revenue swallowing risque (read SEX) plays from the purveyors of such material.

Then it all went poof and disappeared and some nameless idiots were drafted in to stymie anything at all and the gap was left for destroying anything that was useful and promoting the $6,000,000 building and that is exactly waht happened.

So now we are back at square one with an overgrown boyscout at the helm with simplistic ideas and the main chance has gone begging because he knows everything and wont listen to anyone with an alternative point of view.

He has been promoted beyond his capacity by his mates in the Defence Department because they dont want him hanging around in Wellington.

So the only innovation here is learning new ways of squashing initiative without seeming to.