Garth George: One more ingredient and the moth-blitz row is solved

I have no serious objection to the painted apple moth aerial spraying programme but I do wish the pilots would alter their flight plans. A Fokker F27 barrelling over the roof at zero feet, stimulating and exciting as that sound might be, is no way to start the day.

Especially at 5.55 in the morning, a full hour and a half earlier than my usual wakeup time. For one who relishes his kip as I do, it is a bit hard to take.

So my plea to the Friendship pilots is to give themselves a bit of variety and next time they do their thing start out in the east and work to the west, arriving at the borders of Oratia no earlier than 7.30am.

The sound of a Fokker Friendship, although rarely heard at such a low altitude, is part of the fabric of my life. It is one of those aircraft I recognise by engine noise without having to look up.

Such aircraft serviced Invercargill, first for the National Airways Corporation and later for Air New Zealand, for many years, and later Rotorua where I also lived for a time.

And my brother flew Friendships for NAC and Air NZ for much of his career, as co-pilot and captain, before moving on to the bigger jets.

Unfortunately I can't share with him the latest evolution of his beloved F27 for he died in June just a few days after his 60th birthday.

Thus the sound of the Friendship cruising over West Auckland serves to remind me of my only sibling, and to rekindle my anger at his passing, and the cancerous manner of it, long before he had completed his three score years and 10.

But I digress. There are a few things about this apple moth spray programme that puzzle me, not the least of which being why in the first place the damn thing was allowed to spread as much as it has.

But I guess this is just another example of inefficient and/or incompetent bureaucrats making a cock-up. And we can be sure that in this age of irresponsibility, those at the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry who allowed this moth pest to get out of hand will - like the top people at the Building Industry Authority - escape unscathed.

Another puzzle is how on earth the eradication programme can cost $90 million. That is a huge amount of money and I wonder how it can be justified.

Or is it simply a figure plucked out of the air by politicians and bureaucrats to indicate to us punters how important they are and how far they are prepared to go in our interests?

The bitching and moaning about the spray programme is only to be expected in this wimpish age, especially in a city that calls itself eco and which is inhabited by more than its fair share of tree-huggers, whale-savers, animal-rightsers, vegans, organicists, herbalists and such other strange folk.

There is no doubt that the spray has a deleterious effect on some people, but it seems to me that MAF has done everything it can to spare them any discomfort.

I suspect that most of the other moaners - and their letters have filled page after page of the local rags for years now - simply complain because complaining is what gives their otherwise circumscribed lives some meaning. And I reckon a lot of the children we read about have produced psychosomatically manifested adverse reactions simply to meet the overanxious expectations of parents.

On the other hand, those we read about who seemingly need to prove something by deliberately exposing themselves, and even their little children, to the aerial spray are obviously the same people who don't have the sense to get in out of the rain.

The upside of spray days for me is that I don't have to clamber out of bed and go for a walk. I would no more go walking around my suburb while the spray planes are in the air than I would in the teeming rain.

Rather, the moment I hear the whine of the Fokker's turboprops I get up and close the windows and don't open them again until the planes are at least half a kilometre away. Just common sense, really.

But the answer to all the whingeing was given to us in an article in this newspaper a few weeks ago which recorded the United States military's exploration of ways to use drugs such as Valium during riots or for crowd control to calm people without killing them.

The article said one of the hurdles to be overcome was development of a suitable delivery system. A visit to Waitakere City on a spray day would fix that.

It seems simple to me. Just mix some liquid Valium in with the insecticide and everything in the West Auckland garden will be lovely.

And, no, there is no truth in the rumour that Helen Clark - at Margaret Wilson's suggestion - has set aside $900 million to have the whole nation sprayed with Prozac on the morning of the next general election.

* garth_george@nzherald.co.nz

Herald feature: Environment