Christmas Present Wrapped in Red Tape
Certain things effect people in different ways, take Red Tape for example, it can easily be said that it’s ever
increasing presence is slowly choking common freedoms and folk moan and groan about it while others simply ignore it and
let it happen.
Somewhere in the middle is Paddy Sweeney, He has been caught up in Red Tape and he became inspired.
“I have been aware of red tape and never really found it wrapping around my ankles to any extent where it caused me
grief. Then we decided to open the West Coast Bar and Grill in Christchurch. It took exactly 12 months from when we
first looked at the site until we opened. The processes that are now accepted as common place are diabolical and there
is no doubt they contribute to the brain drain leaving the country for pastures that are far easier to graze in.”
“The complex drawn out process of getting a PIM, the resource consent and the building permit and then the licensing
process would drive a Rabbi to eat pork. You become astounded as you learn about how inefficient processes and people
can become and how no one gives a rats backside about expediting any process or if there dilly dallying is costing a
fortune. The bureaucracies may create a few jobs, however they kill far more.”
“Our company, Westcoast Brewing is becoming more and more focused on areas where bureaucracy does not choke progress to
death and we can get on with the task of creating jobs and making profits.”
“The other scary thing is folk are frightened to challenge the council for fear their application will be put on the
bottom of the pile. Apparently many councils have their mini power brokers that reign unabated.”
Sweeney realised there was not much you could do about a council machine where it seemed accountability is a word that
has been removed from the dictionary so he decided to write a fictitious book about it.
Well not a book about what happened; a book that would in a humourous way highlight the gross stupidity that kills
enthusiasm, innovation and enterprise and put a humourous spin on the process.
In his seventh book he has captured the frustration of red tape as how a bunch of West Coast blokes decide that they are
sick of drinking the beer from the big breweries that makes you crook and is a virtual guarantee of a shorter life and
often a painful death. So they buy a brewery off trade-me to make a naturally brewed beer that averts the issues they
were otherwise confronting in their local pub.
They pooled there dollars to provide the funding and so began a story. A story of many twists and turns.
They set it up in Jonesie old bale cowshed as he had just put in the new herring bone. One hilarious thing followed
another in their set up and that is where the Good Bastards Brewery found its home. From their the problems started.
These folk were common folk unaware that erosion of freedom was running rampant and had taken away many choices that
previously we could all take for granted.
The council soon were on their case and moved in with a mountain of red tape and a supreme commitment to see every last
piece of it implemented to the letter.
This may well be accepted by society in the main in the sheep like fashion that most people follow bureaucracy, not so
with this group. They met it full on and dealt with it in a manner that the bureaucratic officers had never experienced
before. The way pioneering West Coasters would have dealt with it in days gone by.
They were not having any of this ‘red tape crap’ and as they became more innovative in their quest to beat the situation
so did the bureaucrats become more devious and vindictive.
It was a recipe for disaster that must eventually reach a conclusion, but not before much went down and all making a
humourous read for the enthusiast.
The path travelled to avoid and beat red tape only Paddy Sweeney could dream up, while humour underpins the story it
puts in lights the ridiculousness and soul destroying nature of much red tape. While Sweeney does not think it will make
one iota of difference to the cancerous growth of red tape that ever increasingly permeates an otherwise near perfect
society he believes many folk will relate to the dilemma and the humour of the story.
The book even comes out wrapped in red Tape to
This being his seventh book and the others all continue to sell well, he believes they find great favour as presents for
blokes
ends