Detractors say Barrack Obama got nothing done in eight years. Well, within a few days of moving into the Oval office Trump has dumped the TPPA, signed off on building the border wall (I thought he was kidding) with Mexico and presided over the Dow Jones breaking through the 20,000 barrier.
The latter is due in no small part to pro-business rhetoric and is a far cry from November 8 when the Dow futures market dropped 800 points on news of his election.
Don’t get me wrong, I still think he’s barking mad, but maybe Trump is a sign of the new political order sweeping the world.
Are the days of the career politician over? Will the world from here on in be run by billionaire businessmen and former KGB agents? Interesting, when you consider our new prime minister definitely falls into the career politician camp.
And will the new, preferred form of communication for these new world leaders be social media, where you can shun the conventional press and put out “alternative facts” and “post-truths” at your convenience and for your own convenience?
The leader of free world, after all, uses Twitter as his medium of choice in his one-man crusade to make America great again.
On the subject of one-man crusades, last week on my radio show I launched my 2017 tilt at a windmill. In fairness, past crusades have had mixed results. While I failed to bring back rucking, I proudly and vicariously claimed some reflected glory when Fonterra, to its eternal credit, brought back milk in schools.
I also like to think I played a small part in the media publicity which aided a much-deserved knighthood for David Fagan. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
So what’s 2017’s on-air crusade? I reckon we should be like the Ockers in the West Island and make it a patriotic pastime to eat lamb on our national day. And if we can’t agree to do that because, let’s face it, we don’t agree on much on Waitangi Day, maybe we could all eat lamb on what I’d like to be our national day, April 25.
While Anzac Day becoming our national day is another crusade for another year, we really could do with some patriotism around the domestic consumption of lamb.
Think about the meat companies, the supermarkets and butcheries all discounting lamb for one day of the year. When farmers are being paid only $5/kg it shouldn’t be too hard to give patriotic punters a reason to partake of our finest meat. If we can’t sell the stuff for enough around the world, why not eat more of it at home?
Previous mention of Sir David Fagan reminds me the World Shearing and Woolhandling Championships is just around the corner in Invercargill on February 8-11. In the countdown the heat has certainly been turned up in some woolsheds around the country. So much so that three world records were set in the space of a week earlier in the month.
On January 10, the crowd packing a King Country woolshed had to wait till the last moments of a 480-minute-long day before seeing a world ewe-shearing record broken by just two sheep. Coel L’Huillier and Kelvin Walker, of Taumarunui, shore 1068 to beat the two-stand, eight-hours, strong-wool ewes record of 1066 set by the gun brothers Rowland and Doug Smith back in 2011.
The following day, two Welshmen became the first from their country to break a world shearing record in New Zealand. Delwyn Jones and Matthew Evans joined Gore-based Ryan Miller to break the three-stand, eight-hours record for strong-wool lambs. Shearing again in the King Country they shore 1825, adding 41 to the record previously set at 1784, which was shorn by local legends Digger Balmer, Roger Neil and Dean Ball 18 years earlier.
Then on January 17 at Waitara Station, northwest of Napier, Luke Mullins, Eru Weeds and James Mack shore 1611 strong-wool ewes in eight-hours, smashing the old three-stand record by 264.
Shearing might not be the world’s oldest profession but it is surely the most honorable in terms of work ethic. So here’s hoping John Kirkpatrick and Nathan Stratford can uphold our nation’s honour in Invercargill.
