BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?

Subject: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: Helen
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 03:16 PM

ABC Online in Oz ran this story today. So which is more important music for the soul, or water for health?


Pipe theft not music to health officials' ears.
17/01/2005. ABC News Online

[This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200501/s1283513.htm]

Last Update: Monday, January 17, 2005. 7:14pm (AEDT)
Pipe theft not music to health officials' ears

By Pacific correspondent Sean Dorney

Health authorities in Solomon Islands say their efforts to supply clean drinking water to rural communities are being sabotaged by local musicians.

The authorities are concerned about how many PVC pipes meant to carry water are being cut up and used as pan pipes.

Pan pipe bands are very popular in the Solomons, especially to entertain tourists, but more and more local musicians are apparently abandoning their traditional bamboo pipes in favour of PVC.

This has upset the management of the Solomon Islands' Health Department's Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Program, which is calling for a halt to the thefts.

The Solomon Islands Broadcasting Corporation quotes program manager Bobby Patterson as saying it is illegal to cut and remove water supply pipes and turn them into musical instruments.

He is warning any community that allows its young people to do it will not get any further help.

Mr Patterson says any panpipe group performing in Honiara playing on PVC pipes will be questioned.


© 2005 Australian Broadcasting Corporation
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Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: GUEST,John O'Lennaine
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 05:26 PM

"...it is illegal to cut and remove water supply pipes and turn them into musical instruments." - I love that.
So it's OK to steal them for making bongs or weapons, just not musical instruments?

"...any panpipe group performing in Honiara playing on PVC pipes will be questioned."
Being a thief on a small island kinda defines "futility", doesn't it? I get an image of hundreds of PVC pipe enthusiasts who play bamboo pipes in public in the daytime, and meet in small groups in the bushes after dark, swearing oaths of allegiance and fidelity, then melting back into the shadows at the faraway sound of baying hounds...

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: pdq
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 05:27 PM

"any panpipe group performing in Honiara playing on PVC pipes will be questioned"

...yes, this problem must be contained...we cannot afford a pandemic...

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 05:37 PM

I think there have been similar problems in England with some heavy metal Morris Dancers and scaffolding poles.

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 17 Jan 05 - 08:23 PM

No brainer solution: Provide a convenient source for cheap (or even free) PVC pipe. It costs next to nothing. It's the repairs that are costly.

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 12:23 PM

McGrath, you do know there is at least one side that does use scaffold poles. Can't remeber which though.Hope I'm not teaching my grandmother to suck eggs here....
Besides, any Morris dancers are a problem, regardless of musical oreintaition, or choice of weapons

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: Helen
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 04:29 PM

One of the reasons I got a bit of a giggle out of the new item was that it shows how much power musicians have, for good or other. A PVC pipe here, a PVC pipe there and whole villages are affected. It's not as if they can say that "taking one little piece of pipe won't make much difference" because of the nature of water, which needs complete pipe system with no gaps. I wonder how the musicians feel when they want a drink of water at home. Do they see the connection (joke!) between their own actions and the consequences for themselves or others?

If the musicians weren't playing for tourists would they prefer bamboo pipes? Is it an economic necessity to use PVC because it is not a question of quality of sound but a question of making money to live on. Or is the musical quality better with PVC than bamboo?

Interesting ethical and analytical questions.

And Bee-dubya-ell, that's what I thought too. Why doesn't the government just give out free PVC pipes? But then again, are they imported from elsewhere and are they really expensive? But then you could work something out, surely. But the other thing is that there has been some serious violence happening in the Solomon Islands recently, so maybe life is very hard there and there may not be as much sense of community and governing for the communal good - in the way that we perceive it, and in fact in the way that we probably take it for granted.

Okay, I just did a Google and this is the first page I looked at. The picture is not at all pretty.

CIA World Factbook

"Ethnic violence, government malfeasance, and endemic crime have undermined stability and civil society. In June 2003, Prime Minister Sir Allen KEMAKEZA sought the assistance of Australia in reestablishing law and order; the following month, an Australian-led multinational force arrived to restore peace and disarm ethnic militias."

(Note: there was a white missionary family killed and the father was beheaded, I think. Recently an Australian police man, sent over from here, was killed.)

"Government type: parliamentary democracy tending toward anarchy"

"Legal system: English common law, which is widely disregarded"

"Economy - overview: The bulk of the population depends on agriculture, fishing, and forestry for at least part of their livelihood. Most manufactured goods and petroleum products must be imported. The islands are rich in undeveloped mineral resources such as lead, zinc, nickel, and gold. However, severe ethnic violence, the closing of key business enterprises, and an empty government treasury have led to serious economic disarray, indeed near collapse. Tanker deliveries of crucial fuel supplies (including those for electrical generation) have become sporadic due to the government's inability to pay and attacks against ships. Telecommunications are threatened by the nonpayment of bills and by the lack of technical and maintenance staff many of whom have left the country. The disintegration of law and order left the economy in tatters by mid-2003, and on 24 July 2003 more than 2000 Australian soldiers entered the Solomon Islands to restore order and to facilitate the restoration of basic services."

Makes you want to count your blessings, doesn't it?

Helen

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: robomatic
Date: 18 Jan 05 - 04:51 PM

I worked for years for an Alaska electric utility that was into a lot of rebuilding in the interior. In order to put up a new electric line you had to order your materials months in advance and barge them into the village in the summer. So naturally when the materials were all there they'd send the crew round to locate them and get the local work organized. I went all over Koyuk looking for me poles, found them being used as rollers while they moved the church to its new location. Since the poles were actually an engineered product, (bored, faced, creosoted), they weren't in the best of shape when it came time to use 'em, but them's the breaks.

(Then there's the time I was staking a line and the kids were pulling all the stakes out behind me and playing swords with 'em....)

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: NH Dave
Date: 19 Jan 05 - 02:11 AM

My math instructor in college had been a Marine surveyor on several of the Pacific Islands durring WWII, and used to relate the sake of running a survey line, involving lost of neatly made wooden stakes, and walking back along his line to discover an local grandmotherly looking lady removing each stake carefully to use as fuel. Having seen this, he eventually gave up on wooden stakes and started using metal pins instead.

    Dave

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: GUEST,Barrie Roberts
Date: 19 Jan 05 - 10:00 PM

Reading this thread made me envisage a notice saying something like:

"Removing portions of pipe, for musical or other purposes, is a serious offence.

Solomon Islands Water Authority'

If there really is such a notice, and if anyone out there has got a copy/picture of one, they could make an old man very happy by e-mailing it to me.

I would love to pin it over my desk as a constant reminder that. however hard the system tries to paint everyone and everything grey, the native lunacvy of real people bubbles out (through the missing bits of pipe I suppose!)

Another thought has struck --- Why don't the organisers of the Edinburgh Tattoo invite the Solomon Islands' Massed Water-Pipe Band?

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: The Fooles Troupe
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 12:00 AM

Please that photo if you get it!

I saw on the news a while ago that a large number of people were seriously burnt. They were catching petrol in pans out of a leaky pipe - it got dark and somebody struck a light....

I'm not making this up you know!

Subject: RE: BS: To PVC or not to PVC: music or water?
From: Davetnova
Date: 20 Jan 05 - 03:46 AM

Maybe they could make these for the edinburgh tatoo pvc pipes