The good and the bad

THE BAD

It doesn’t get much worse than unhinged cooker Winston Peters and his disgusting rhetoric over the weekend, including drawing comparisons with policies from the last Government to Nazism.

I’ve been hugely unimpressed with Chris Hipkins’ relative silence since the new Government was formed, but he got his response 100 percent correct on this occasion:

“I ruled out working with Winston Peters before the election. Every day that goes by I feel more and more vindicated by that decision. Kiwis deserve better than a deputy prime minister who behaves like a drunk uncle at a wedding.”

Perhaps even worse than the Nazism comparisons – which are ridiculous to anyone who knows even a modicum of history – were the cheers that came after he announced he planned to make English an official language of Aotearoa and removing gender, sexuality, and relationship education in schools.

Peters said English being an official language – instead of the de facto language it is and spoken EVERYWHERE – would ‘boost commercial connections’.

Eh? What the fuck does that even mean? And how?

Peters is channelling his inner Donald Trump in an attempt to remain relevant. He’s becoming more and more inflammatory in his rhetoric and his appeal to the anti-vaccination crowd and his attempt to paint a Government he was part of as evil shows it.

He was quick enough to take the baubles of power when offered by Jacinda Ardern and the Labour Party but not to give them up. We’re supposed to believe he was so offended but chose to remain in a formal coalition agreement?

Bullshit. If he had any principles he should have resigned there and then. He didn’t because he simply wants to remain relevant. He’s not and, in a relatively short period of time, Aotearoa will see the back of Winston Peters as a politician for ever.

It can’t come quick enough.

THE GOOD

On Friday night I saw Scottish band Teenage Fanclub at The Powerstation. It was everything I had hoped and more.

It took me a few minutes to get over the fact that there were these old(er) men standing on the stage playing their music, because I remember them from the early 1990s. It’s just a reminder that I’m an old man now, no matter how much the brain tries to deny it!

I first got into Teenage Fanclub in the early 1990s, while studying at the University of Abertay in Dundee.

One of my friends, Hamish, had Bandwagonesque and I (vaguely) remember one drunken evening at his house in Newport-On-Tay listening to the album again and again.

There’s always a danger that seeing bands from your youth is a disappointment because they’re not who you remember. Both Teenage Fanclub and Sleeper (who I saw a couple of years back) destroyed that notion.

The key isn’t necessarily being able to hit the same high notes, or the songs sounding like the CD version, it’s that the band are enjoying themselves.

It was clear from the very first notes of the night that this was a band who just wanted to have fun and entertain the relatively small crowd who had turned up to see them.

Lead singer and guitarist Normal Blake’s droll Scottish humour appeared a few times and I walked out much more satisfied with their 105-minute set in a tiny venue that the 75-minute set which cost twice as much from Mr Bungle a few weeks prior.

It was an absolute triumph of a gig and I’m so glad I got to see them in only their second appearance in Aotearoa.

This year is shaping up to be a killer year for gigs here, with Tenacious D and Pearl Jam/Pixies tickets already bought and a load more I’m keen to see (including Iron Maiden, Sleater-Kinney, Skids, Beth Orton, James Taylor, Bjorn Again, and Angus & Julia Stone).

Thanks for the memories, Teenage Fanclub. And thanks for giving me a whole load of new ones!