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Worzel's World - On peanuts and monkeys

We’ve all heard the phrase ‘If you pay peanuts you get monkeys’. It is usually used to justify very high salary packages for very low people.

However, this trite modern maxim suggests an as-yet untried option that could prove invaluable. Now that the world at large and politics especially is bedevilled by disingenuous charlatans it may be time to take recourse to this obvious and so far overlooked alternative. 

We should start paying peanuts and getting monkeys. 

Employing animals is not a new initiative. After all, there are plenty of snakes in the real estate game. Financial consultants and investment brokers are as often as not wolves in sheep’s clothing. Social butterflies find their niche in entertainment and every year working dogs are involved in sheep dog trials. I am unsure how many are found guilty. 

When comparing the costs  of retaining politicians and bureaucrats to mismanage things   against a few sacks of peanuts and a bunch or two of bananas for a monkey to mismanage things, I think you’ll agree that monkeys start to look like a very attractive option. 

But it is not only the salary package is it? Can a monkey be a highly motivated, self-starter with a passion for personal wealth accumulation, unearned status and the vision to recklessly waste other peoples’ money?

Well, no, of course not. Monkeys don’t do that sort of thing. 

Would a monkey forget electoral donations or ascribe an act of illegal surveillance to brain fade? Yes, I suppose a monkey might do that so there would be no change there.

A monkey will rob you every bit as quickly as a consultant, a counsellor or CEO but they will at least refrain from telling you how marvellous, competent and hard working they are whilst doing so. And in the end, what they steal is only peanuts. There would certainly be plenty of monkey business but this too is not new. 

There would undoubtedly have been great advantages in appointing monkeys rather than commissioners to manage the district. A district with negative $85 million in the bank can ill-afford the $1400 per day for the chairman and $900 per day which is the decreed remuneration for these appointed dictators. Where is this money going to come from? Will they borrow a bit more?

With monkeys in charge the conversation might go something like this:

“Hello Scrounger, Slicktongue and Grasp Ltd. How can we fleece you?”

“Hi there. I’d like to arrange a loan on behalf of Kaipara district.”

“May I ask what your current position is please?”

“My current position is hanging upside down by my toes out a window eating a banana.”

“How much exactly did you want to impoverish the district to the tune of?” 

“We’ll need at least another truck load of coconuts, a bushel of fresh bananas and I think fifty kg's of peanuts should see us right.”

“How do you expect to pay us back?”

“Well, we’ve given a grant to a banana and coconut plantation in Mangawhai and have unrealistic expectations of future growth there.”

“Great, sounds like something right along our lines. You are Mister…?”

“I’m not Mister anything. The name’s Bubbles and I’m a monkey.”

“Oh, I’m very sorry. Our corporate policy precludes loans to animals. You see these days animals have more rights than humans and it is consequently more difficult to rip them off. The mistake is mine, I thought Kaipara District Council was full of buffoons not baboons.”

“No you’re quite mistaken – there’s no chumps, only chimps.” 

“I still may be able to help you though. If you want to drop in tomorrow I can introduce you to a theatrical agent friend of mine. I’m sure he’d pay a tidy sum to acquire the services of a talking monkey.”

“Righto, I’ll swing by.”

Ministers, along with state funded agencies, have been repeatedly found guilty of breaking the very laws that they draft, legislate and enforce on others. Yet there are never any charges, no prosecutions, no remedy. They have proved beyond reasonable doubt that they are liars and hypocrites.

So it’s time we stopped all this nonsense of paying human charlatans to govern us. The time has come to start paying peanuts and getting monkeys. We may find in time that monkeys become as indispensable to bureaucracy as cattle dogs to farming and trained pigs to truffle hunting. And what’s more they have more character, are more entertaining, more worthy of respect and definitely easier to like.

Feedback to 

prof_worzel@hotmail.com

 
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