More Green nonsense

Here we go again. Imagery making an impact on the front page for the second day running. This morning it is a woman weraing the 'victim' visage that we mentioned a few days back This one is a ripper - the photographer has got it just right, a classic of the genre. Poor woman has been bumped off a waiting list somewhere courtesy of the latest health sector strike (and there's another mob waiting in the wings when the lab techs have done their dash) 'suffering' form cancer I think; the reporter would be negligent if he couldn't find a cancer sufferer for his story. Without going in to the rights and wrongs of the claims, it just goes to reinforce what a powerful instrument a well placed image is.

It's Thursday and therefore a dose of good old fashioned values from Garth George. He, not surprisingly, spends his entire column getting quite excited about the future of National and, he hopes, the future government under a Key/English stewardship. He espouses their high regard of the value of the nuclear family, that neither has been a school teacher (oh, how true), the merit of working for just reward and that both appear to be intelligent. The latter point by implication, if not spelt out, in contrast to their protagonists of different political persuasion.

This last point is amply illustrated earlier in the paper in the reporting of Key's speech yesterday where he touched upon climate change. This is reported by the Herald as an 'about turn'. No such thing. Jeanette 'where's my Botox' Fitzsimmons hails this as the Nats realising that her stance was correct all along. Stupid woman. If she and all the rest had actually read what had been said they would have seen that it was accepted that the planet is currently warming (which it is) and 'that if this can be shown to be influenced by man's activities' we should do something about it. Only the severely unintelligent would construe that to read as 'John Key now accepts we were right all along.' These are the same intellectual titans who are encouraging us not to visit our relatives for Xmas as this is a threat to the planet on the back of all the carbon emissions produced getting to Aunty's in the Landcruiser. And you voted for these wallies?

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Poor newspapers

Newspapers or Spinpapers? The front page of the Herald would reinforce my view that our organ of information is the latter. Which side do you think Granny wants us to support in this Fiji business? There are large pictures of the two main protagonists on the front page. On the left we have Admiral/Air Commodore/Field Marshal Bananarama looking like he's just returned from snacking on babies and on the right we have the avuncular PM (whose name escapes me) looking like he's fresh from reading bedtime stories to babies. Not terribly interested in the story so I didin't read it but the visual impact was very striking. That in itself is a bit scary - conveying an idea just in two pictures. The political cartoon is a very old instrument of influencing the prole's thinking - dating back centuries.

Not much else took my fancy this morning - I must be getting old; I've only the attention span to look at the pictures. Speaking of which, an image of Eva the Bulgarian caught my eye (as it would) and I rather foolishly read the article that accompanied it. It is written about an analysis of 'new laddism' penned by a psychologist. I had thought that this sort of writing had faded out with big hair and disco. It uses as its examples of despicable attitude 'The Game of Two Halves' and 'The Sports Cafe'. Ellis (in particular), Ridge and Salizzo are put up as examples of everything sexist and unpleasant. Female dancers are referred to as 'Dancer 2' whereas male members of the band are referred to by name. Shots of Eva the Bulgarian, when she was out 'reporting', were framed to emphasise her lips, breasts or buttocks and so it goes on.

I don't watch 'Game of Two halves' because I find the playing the goat gets in the way of the sporting quiz. I used to really enjoy the BBC's 'A Question of Sport' where there was a lot of good sports questions and minimal (but not zero) distraction. I thought they got the balance right. I used to watch 'The Sport's Cafe' a bit but it really was bit repetitive and I turned it off about half way through most episodes. No balance. But that's the key - if you don't like it, for whatever reason, turn it off. Don't go and apply to someone for a research grant (which at the end of the paper trail will probably come out of my pocket) so you can write a thesis on ideas that went out with the Ark which you later turn into your fifteen minutes of fame in the national press. Pathetic.

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Stadium - gone

Stadium, schmadium. Quote the Pond Scum, just over two weeks ago: 'If Auckland can't make up its mind, you get Jade'. Well I wonder if they'll be going down to the Riccarton Mitre 10 to buy all the plastic chairs they can lay their hands on by lunchtime. It looks odds on we'll end up where we started before Mallard stuck is beak into all this with an upgrade of Eden Park. So what has been achieved by this fortnight of nonsense? Remember Philip Field and pledge cards? No? Might that not be the idea? What we have got out of it all, though, is a demonstraton of the total bureaucratic quagmire in which Auckland is stuck. The place is a basket case. Nothing of any magnitude or importance will ever get done in the City of Sails whilst the current apology of a system of governance manned by incompetent oafs is in situ. The City Council's vote on Thursday night is a glaringly obvious example of what most of us learnt in school (pre NCEA school, proper school, that is). If you don't answer the question you don't get the marks. Were the Council asked to vote on a Stadium just a tad to the left of where the proposal was? The calibre of the councillors has been shown up to be absolutely woeful.

Key and English. The 'Dream Team'? Well my dreams are generally filled with images of much more pleasant and/or salacious things than two middle aged men, thank you very much, but you get the drift. All seems to have been negotiated in a suitably seemly manner and we await to see if they can deliver a platform of policies that we might consider . Wouldn't it be good if we could place our tick based on policy rather than personality? At least we have in the new leader of the opposition someone who is not prone to histrionics, appears to be able to think in straight lines, has a track record of having done something with his life, has a reasonable haircut and doesn't dress in hemp. We shall see, but I am reasonably otpimistic.

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Make your mind up

I don't normally regard the pages of the Herald as a source of family pride but the top corner of A6 today supplies just that. The article quoted from the New Zealand Dental Journal about the impact of 'Makeover' shows on cosmetic dentistry in New Zealand was written by my daughter - although her Head of Department gets the quotes; I'll write and complain.

Obviously all else in the rag pales into insignificance but the Claytons decison by the Auckland City Council wastes plenty of trees. All very predictable and , as Moocha said 'and so it begins..........'. Maybe ' 'ere we go, 'ere we go', 'ere we go' wold be more like it. The lawer representing the five residents who failed to get their injunction yesterday (who apparently live in St Johns, nowhere near either the waterfront or Eden Park) threatens 'you ain't seen the last of us yet'. We have the ARC (why the Hell do we have to 'have' the ARC at all) having their go this morning and then all this blancmange of nondecisons get sent to another mob in Wellington where Pond Scum will tell them what to do. For probably the only time in my life I find myself agreeing in the tiniest way with Mallard's attitude. Make a decision and do it. Sod all this fairness, just do it. Do anything, right or wrong, but do something and stop talking about it. The track record of the wallies making the decisoin is spectacularly unimpressive and we know they are going to get it wrong so please get it wrong now and we can all concentrate on something more interesting and relevant to day to day life.

Isn't it ironic the very quality that was seen as Don Brash's appeal three years ago when he rolled Bill English is now seen as the reason he had to go. When he strode out of the Development Bank the fact that he was not a politician in the accepted sense was all good. Now his inability or refusal to transform himself into a devious, scheming, dishonest denizen of the back alleys of Wellington means he cannot continue. There was an interview with a hideously smug Cullen on the box last night who opined that Don was never cut out for Parliament right from the word go - the arrogant little p*ick. The view now is that Key (and he will be the new National leader, make no mistake) will suffer the same fate. If that means he will continue to espouse sensible policy, tell the truth and present himself as you would expect a leader to do then I hope he does suffer the same fate . If it means the measure of his success is how close he can ape the behaviour of the likes of Pond Scum then this country really has no hope.

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Nausea

I feel sick. Wading past the damned Stadium nonsense which is going in the predicted direction (vide supra) I soldiered on past Cancer for the Ordinary Man 101 to read Garth George as an antidote to all the crap that is surrounding us at present. Get to the comments page and there is a picture, a picture no less, of Ms Sue Bradford. I don't know what she does to the top of her head to get her hair looking quite so awful but I suspect it is the same as she does to the inside to get that looking so horrible. What a vision of abject misery. She has perfected that 'victim' look that is so popular amongst those who are interviewed by the media when they have just been bumped off the waiting list for hip replacement for the fourteenth time. This X-rated image is surrounded by an article from someone from a child protection agency of some description. She (I think it was a she) tries to surround this nonsense with some sort of evidence upon which MPs can make their decsions. Fat chance. There wouldn't be more than a handful that would understand the concepts surrounding making evidence based decisions. This is all besides the point of course as the debate shouldn't be happening at all. Those damned people who would seek to run our lives along their odious agendas should just go away. They won't, of course, so we have to get rid of them. You know the drill.

Eyes top and get onto the real purpose of going to A11. Garth is in usual, sensible, right wing, christian conservative mode. He doesn't care where the stadium is, just build it. Check. He abhors the intrusion of the state into what remains of New Zealand family life. Check. He is confused as to the rights and wrongs, as opposed to the legalities, of the Don Brash email affair. Check.

Phone tapping is illegal. Intercepting and stealing snail mail is illegal. Emails are different? Private conversations, oral or written, should be just that - private. There is a Public Information Act. Don Brash is politically naive. Hagar the Horrible is a randomly rearranged collection of amino acids that lives under a stone and should stay there. The government is hell bent on staying where it is and, therefore, keeping a lame duck opposition leader in situ is in its best interests, so why are they baying for Brash's blood?

All too hard for a simple artisan.

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More Stadium

I wasn't going to, but I can resist no longer. The waterfront stadium debacle is just that for many reasons. That it is a massive smoke screen for Thai tilers, pledge cards and the like is a gimme. That the whole thing is being done with indecent haste on the back of the first point is also glaringly obvious. You don't set about spending the fat end of a billion dollars like this. You don't ask people to spend that sort of money with no plans or no finalised budget. No plans means no plans at all. No architectural drawings, just artists' impressions full of those artist impression trees and artist impresson people strolling in the sunshine. No engineering plans on how to actually do it. No plans about where the dislocated part of the port is going to go. No planning on how to run the damned thing or how much that is going to cost. If I ran my life like that I'd be living in the city mission. The indecent haste also means that if the thing goes ahead it won't because so many legal loopholes are being left through which you could drive a fleet of Kenworths. Rudman points this out this morning in a column that is so boring it is not true. But he's right. What ever decision they come up with on Friday, because the 'proper consultation process' so loved by this country where every thing has to be so damned fair has not been followed there will be people serving writs all over the show. And then proper process will be followed and the whole thing will get bogged down in the familiar bureaucratic swamp. We can't do things 'properly' here. You can't half consult any more than you can be half pregnant. There is no right answer, there is no wrong answer. Time for the jackboots and stop pretending anything else. Just make a bloody decision - and I don't care which one -, be fair to nobody, bowl buildings, evict old ladies and I'll support it.

The Don Brash emails. I'm not sure about this and would prefer to think a little more about where the rights and wrongs of this are. I am struggling manfully to try and forget that Hagar the Horrible lives under a stone as I try and clear my thoughts.

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Utopia

I only mention the smacking nonsense because nothing much else grabbed the attention. The merits of moderate corporal punishment is way beyond my brief but that is hardly the point. It is, however, timely to point out that this is yet another totally unpoliceable piece of social engineering. How on earth do they think this law can be enforced? It is not possible. Another example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater? Definitley. If they think this is going to stop incidents like the Kahui twins they are as barking as the jokers who thought micro chipping dogs was going to stop the Mongrel Mob keeping pitbulls.

I don't know why the state doesn't stop messing around and look after all the country's children itself beacause that is what it wants. Teenage children can be put uon the pill by the (state) schools without their parents even having to be told. Thie kids have been given all the rights in the world (by the state) and the parents (if there are any) are effecively neutered. One in three kids in this country don't have the full set of parents by convential reckoning so the objective is reachable. Tell you what, you have a child and then put it in a State Farm. The bloody state can then feed it, educate it and he/she won't have to be bothered with the confusion of having to learn 'Mum' and Dad'. 'Dear Leader' will do for the lot. No need to get your leg over - test tubes are the go. We can then turn out Trotsky look alikes ad infinitum without letting natural selection get in the way. Utopia.

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Obfuscation on steroids

What is the ARC? There is a totally unintelligble piece this morning about the proposed (I think it was proposed in 1753) second road access to the Whangaparoa Penninsula, the one that involves a bridge across the Weiti at Stillwater. It reads a bit like Abbott and Costello's 'Who's on first'. I don't think the confusion is the reporter's fault; it must be like trying to knit fog reporting on this stuff. The Rodney Council doesn't appear to be able to get across to the ARC what place in the pecking order the road should have when the ARC sends it's shopping list to central government for bags of gold - I think. Or was it that the ARC is confused about what the Rodney Council wants to do with its applicatoin bearing in mind the weighting it has to give the proposed revival of the dormant eastern ring road once the Auckland Council has negotiaited a stay in the progress of the second Harbour crossing with Waitakere bearing in mind that Papakura wants to earmark some of that money for a new drive through tofu market? I'll try and leave any comment on the waterfront nonsense until a decision is made (and I wouldn't bet against a Friday announcement of a full and final consultation with all stakeholders to report to the Minister at some future date) but aren't we coming across to anyone who could be bothered to look this far south as a nation that couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery?

I read LIncoln Tan not because he says anythinig that shattering on a regular basis but because he is Singaporean and I find it nostalgic to read the occasional quaintly Singaporean turn of phrase that still peppers his writings. I lived in Singapore for many years and won't hear a bad word said about the place. He starts his column today reporting a truly horrific racist letter he received after having the temerity to comment on the English language after the TXT SPK nonsense of a few days back. Scary, scary stuff that one would hope could not be written in these times. He writes in the main though about colonialism and British colonialism in particular. That his father regarded the Brits as colonial masters is, perhaps, natural but that he still has some of those thoughts lurking deep below the surface of his concious mind suprised me having lived and worked in S'pore for thirteen years. He obviously doesn't hold the views of his father (and he doesn't tell us if he is still alive) but the place such views had in his formative years I find fascinating.

Save the best until last- the back page. This from Sideswipe, and I paraphrase a clipping they found in a Queensland newspaper.

'I hope the Queensland Government will suspend daylight saving this year in view of the disasterous effect the extra sunshine will have on the current drought situation'

That won't be bettered for many a day.

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New Docmeister

Down in Blenheim for the day but an hour in the pencil hasn't erased the horrors of the news from DoC that leapt out at me from the pre airport Herald.

Be afraid, be very afraid. DoC have got a new head honcho and he looks scary. His aim during his tenure is to add to the 'soft and cuddly stuff people love us for' - I'm serious, he really says that - with doing his bit to stem the tide of global warming (I paraphrased that last bit). He sees the first obstacle as convincing the people who don't think the science is robust. Well if he cares to spend an hour or so at Obald Towers I'll soon lick him into shape and sell him a lure or three.. Remeber this bloke is head of an organisation that is supposed to have no input into policy at all.

Better go - using someones elses laptop on a trade stand.

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Pot pouri

I attacked the Herald with renewed vigour this morning having only had the chance for a cursory glance yesterday. How disappointing. Same old, same old. There is only so much one can write about the global warming scam even if the Messiah was in town yesterday; hasn't he put on weight? You have either been hoodwinked by the nutters by now or you have come to your senses and can sift the wheat of truth from the chaff of scaremongering. As an example of the latter there is a syndicated report from a conference in Kenya where some clown predicts that 'up to 72% of the world's bird species will be extinct' by next week/month/year/eon unless we sell the Landcruiser and buy bicycles. Now, let's be a little realistic here. Can anyone who is not permanently chemically altered really believe such rot? 72% (not 70 or 75, nice round numbers, but 72.) Nearly three out of every four dicky birds on the planet being nailed to their perch. Where on earth (pun intended) did he get such a patently absurd figure from. Think of a number treble it, have another Jim Beam and announce it to the eager word as a scientific study.

I think final comment on the waterfront mess should really wait untill the end of next week when a decision has been made. This really is a game of 27 halves with the score changing almost by the hour. Pond Scum is not having an easy time of it and I see Trotsky Hucker is not going into poodle mode as Big Ears would like. There is a lot more to come here before the final whistle and I'm not sure if Helen (and make no mistake, it's her say that will count in this) is getting speed wobbles over whether she wants to garner the footy vote with the risk that the whole thing will go tits up in a construction sense or not. There is an opinion on the opinion page (funny that) which is very poorly written but comes to the very sound conclusion that spending all this dosh in the expectatoin that there will be a toursit windfall as pay out is not exactly based on fact from other similar events overseas. If you pay a public relations firm to write a report for you it will pretty much say whatever you want it to say.

As evidence that even this looney bin has a way to go in the global idiocy stakes was a report I heard on the Harman Kardon whilst driving to the fields. There are 198 prisoners in the UK who are going to get $8,000 each for having their human rights abused. How so? These crims are drug addicts and when banged up were not given their drugs and were forced into rehabilitation programmes without their consent. This infliction of cold turkey amounted to torture; the fact that their substances of choice are illegal drugs notwithstanding. The UK government was going to fight this but found that the legal costs (they would have to pay for the lawyers on both sides of the case as the prisoners got legal aid) were going to be prohibitive and they settled. Now come on New Zealand, raise your game. We can do that.

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A country run by idiots

A week is a long time in politics and it would appear that four days is not much shorter. The afternoon before Pond Scum had his press conference Cullen told us all that Eden Park was dead. Yesterday we are told that Eden Park plans should continue as that was the 'safest option'. This sudden turn around is brought about by the possible rise in steel and concrete prices occaioned by China's rapid industrialisation. China apparently started this last Thursday. Does he really think we are as stupid as he is? This drivel is from the bloke who is currently New Zealand's acting Prime Minister. The place is being run by idiots. He stands up there and lets all this crap dribble out of his gob with a straight face and an earnestness that I suppose he thinks will make us think we believe him. The elected (or not in a lot of cases) leaders of this country are thick, they couldn't organise a booze up in a brewery, couldn't get laid in a knocking shop, they couldn't think their way out of a paper bag. They stuff something up using our money and then walk away from the train smash as if nothing had happened and with no personal comeback. They then wander around looking for something else to roger and the cycle repeats.

My mate Chris Carter was on the TV News last night kitted out in his DoC suit releasing tuatara on what used to be called Little Barrier. Eh? It has been decided that Little Barrier should now be know (re-known?) by its Maori name which I have forgotten. He was surrounded by people crying and being generally emotionally distraught over the wonder of the place being returned to its pre nasty white man invasion state. You can only guess as to the magnitude of the waves of nausea that this sort of bollocks induces in me. If Carter is getting my money as salary for being a Minister of the Crown he should be doing something useful with his time (like locking Cullen and Pond Scum in hermetically sealed boxes) instead of this sort of touchy feely crap that has no importance at all in a country that is falling apart at the social seams. By the way, what has happened to his reversal of decision over the marina business as directed by the High Court? I thought he was given a fortnight to comply and the decision must have been handed down a couple of months back.

The more observant of you will have noticed that these scribblings are not based on this morning's Herald. I apologise. I had to leave for the fields at a very uncivilised hour this morning and had to rush the Marmite soldiers and forego my usual perusal of the newsprint. Normal service resumed tomrrow, I hope.

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Stadium stuff

As now would appear to be an excellent time to be giving anything French a right royal thrashing, I would say that the 'rogue' Auckland City councillors who are going into bat for Carlaw Park are flogging un cheval mort.

I don't really care where the Final of the 2011 Rugby World Cup is played as long is it not the Telstra Dome in Sydney. I think that the waterfront is a staggering waste of money for a stadium that will have an effective half life of a couple of months as a 60,000 seat affair. A longer useful life as a 20,000 seat effort, maybe. Even London (pop. approx 10 million) has seen fit to make the bulk of the stadium they are building for the 2012 Olympics in temporary seating. My reel beef over the whole debacle, and that is certainly what it is turning into, is the sheer bloody arrogance of this government is exhibiting - yet again- in the way it treats the great unwashed. It has decided what it wants and bugger the rest of you that is what it is going to get. RMA? Don't need it. Consultation? Yeah right. Due process? No time.

As I have opined before I think the RMA is fine in theory but a complete crock in practice. Bovver Boy also thinks that, apparently. All I can do about my opinion is whine and whinge about it in forums such as this. What does Pond Scum do? He repeals it lock, stock and barrell when it gets in the way of what he wants. This is why the protagonists of Carlaw Park have no show. The Politburo has made its mind up and that's that. They have Big Ears jumping around like an uncoordinated simian idiot doing all their publicity for them and have given 'Auckand' two weeks to do as it is told. Now what does that mean? Does 'Auckland' mean you and me, the proles? Yeah, right. It means Big Ears has a fortnight to get his bunch of performing dogs to jump through the correct hoops. If you are one of those dogs and are sitting in the middle of Carlaw park singing Cumbaya then I would earnestly suggest you get back into the real world. We are going to get a waterfont stadium whether we like it or not. The Ports of Auckland have no say, you have no say, I have no say. The Rugby Union has no say but, unless the whole thing goes completely tits up and we lose the bid, at least they are probably in a win/win situation and at very little financial cost to themselves.

Mallard as the larynx of the Kremlin, sorry Beehive, has spoken.

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Nothing much

Very little new this morning. Further discussion of the stadium nonsense would best wait until the Bovver Boy has had his say this afternoon. Having said that, whatever the nuts and bolts of his decision, the whole thing has been handled appallingly. Bloody Cullen telling us that a waterfront stadium will (my italics) be regarded as a National Stadium whereas a revamp of Eden Park will be regarded as a merely an Auckland Stadium - arrogant little plick.

There is a rebuttal of sorts of the article posted by FT yesterday. This is from a Professor in the Faculty of Eductation of Auckland University. I had better be careful here as that august body supplies me with the folding varieties to keep me in 80 Wides. Alison Jones spends an inordinate amount of newsprint in trying to tell us why Dr Rata's views should hold little weight. I'm afraid her (Jones) attitude is all to prevalent throughout the University and I have to bite huge holes in my tongue whenever I am treading the hallowed boards. Leave me on the Shore and let me plough my furrows in peace.

So slim are the pickings this morning that I am resorting to Sideswipe for material. There is a bloke in Sunderland, UK who is recovering in hospital having tried to launch a skyrocket from his backside. Hardly bears thinking about, does it? Darwin award to the North East of England.

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Nasty, nasty stuff

FT, can you imagine any of the contemptible wretches who would run our lives having the attention span to read through your clip let alone understand it and its implications?

It is most unlike me to have a second bite at the cherry on any given day but there have been a couple of events over the last twenty four hours that have me spitting tacks.

I had not realised that this texting rumour was a) true and b) was coming from the NZQA and was referrable to that dog's breakfast the NCEA. I am almost speechless. This is the ultimate dumbing down of an education sytem that is already a basket case. Texting language was devised for a specific purpose; that of fitting as much information on a small sized electronic screen as possible and this in a social interaction setting. By its very nature the words (sic) are ambiguous and therefore open to any interpretation the sender or receiver wants. That is why we have a language; so we can communicatre unambiguously with each other. It has absolutely no place whatsoever in the real world. It has no place in the world of business, commerce, international relations - anything. Except maybe arranging to meet your mates down the boozer.

Which leads nicely onto the vote last night to leave the drinking age at 18. In practical terms this affects me not at all as I am fifty five and don't drink. But it is another example, if one were needed, that the government and governance of this country is totally out of control. We have no upper house and the government can do whatever it likes. It is not shy in exercising this power, is it? The Bill was advertised as a conscience vote but Government Minister Burton coming out several hours before the vote saying that there would be a review on drinking purchases by young people if the Bill was defeated effectively made the vote meaningless and turned it into a party vote. A proper majority of the people (between 70% and 80% from memory) wanted the drinking age raised. The government, for whatever reason, did not and they got their way - again.

Put the two events (TXT SPK and grog at any age) together and you keep the population stupid and drunk - heard of that before, comrade?

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. This government has absolute power.

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Theodore Dalrymple sees off the Black Dog

I have never been clinically depressed but on mornings like this I can see the point of being so. Surely the weather can't remain time-warped in mid July all year? Bloody greenhouse gases - yeah right. My initial gloom on arising from my litter is compounded by, one by one, turning the pages of the Herald. Same old, same old. Where can I find the enthusiasm to pen a few words about all this - again. Delays on a decision on the stadium. Yawn. Something about the Mount Albert cycle tracks. Eye the Panadol lustfully. A whole page actually titled 'Climate Change' and containing three articles of the usual guff. I start reading this out of a sense of duty more than anything (you know what lies it is going to peddle before starting) but give up and think of running a hot bath and reaching for the Gillette. O me miserum; and I still have to repair to the fields.

Turn another page with a heavy heart to get to the Comments Page and joy of joys. The dark clouds lift in an instant upon gazing down on an article by Theodore Dalrymple. Sell the kids and buy this morning's Herald. TD is a nom de plume used by a retired english psychiatrist who writes on all sorts of moral, ethical and social issues. He writes in proper English comprising well constructed and grammatically correct sentences. HIs prose is the sort that one rarely sees these days and gives immense pleasure just in the way the words trip into the conciousness. This on a day where I read that TXT SPK is now an acceptable form of answering some exam questions somewhere in Aoteoroa; please tell me it is not true. The fact that Theodore has some enormously sensible reflections on a recent stay in NZ concerning our so called justice sytem is almost, but not quite, secondary to the impact of the way in which it is said. His conclusion that the infamous retrospective legislatoin last week is the first step on a very steep and slippery slope for our country is not a surprise. Unfortunately those at whom such thoughts would be best directed would probably not even bother to read it or would fail to understand it if they did.

What is in the paper after A10? Who cares.

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No science in the Stadium

You can pick it like a nose, can't you. Front page of the The Royal New Zealand Herald this morning and we have the long awaited and much anticipated arrival of the Treaty into the stadium debacle. Oink, oink; slops on offer down at the wharf. This thing goes from bad to worse. All this debate should have been held (if it needed to be held at all) two years ago before we tendered for the tournament and not now when the clock is ticking ever louder. It no longer has anything to do with footy and everything to do with politics and business. I agree with those who say that a waterfront stadium in Auckland would be very nice. So would my owning a 54 foot Assegai. Do we need a waterfront stadium? - no. Do I need a 54 foot Assegai? - reluctantly, I have to also say no. What the hell are we going to do with a 60,000 seat stadium after the World Cup? You can shoot a cannon through Eden Park during most Super 14 games without fear of hitting anyone as it is. Ask the people in Sydney how much use the stadium built for the 2000 Olympics now gets. This is all to do with political points scoring and blackmail. Helen wants to look good (and she must be doing it through gritted teeth knowing her affection for the fifteen man game) in the eyes of the punter and will give Auckland a waterfront stadium as opposed to her returning to type, ignoring the sporting bloke and making him pay for the upgrade to Eden Park.

Talking of Helen being a manipulative duplicitous ratbag we come onto all this newly found emphasis for saving the planet. The editorial (the bit that is not nicked from somewhere else) eloquently explains out what I have been trying to point out in a rather more cumbersome way for days. This new found direction is no accident. What it does bring to the fore, however, are some of the more subtle possible ramifications for left wing politics in this country. If Labour swipes the climate crap off the Greens what do they, the Greens, have left? Nix. Even they couldn't imagine running a country on a platform of legalising dope and not smacking kids. The Greens therefore have to start attacking their mates in an act of self preservation, hence the outburst over Ford Fairlanes.

The good thinig about all this is that nailing your colours to the climate change mast is doomed to failure in the medium to long term as it is all based on lies. Remember what your Mum told you? Tell a porky and you have to tell a bigger one to cover it up. The labyrinth of lies that is growing around 'Bugatti Veyrons are wrecking the planet' is getting murkier by the day. We have already 'forgotten' the fact that the world was hotter in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries than it is now. As we have the fact that the sun is hotter than it has been for thousands of years (not a change since 1992 like most of the doomsayers pin their hope on). We ignore the fact that the world being a little warmer at the moment predates the rise in 'greenhouse' gases and not the other way round. Think about that for a minute; the 'cause and effect' plank of the earnest ones is gone right there. We sweep under the table that all these predictions of doom and gloom are made on computer modelling which to date has not predicted anything that has subsequently been born out by measurable fact. We forget that the famous (infamous) Mann Hockey stick is a lie and a deliberate one at that. We ignore the fact that the program that produced the hockey stick will spit out the same shaped graph whatever data you feed it. This climate change crap is the biggest international scam the world has seen for over a century.

OK, Helen, if you want to base your political future on that crock, bring it on.

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Green nonsense - situation normal

Time, time, time - there is never enough. I still had a couple of things I wanted to read when a I heard the tractor running and had to dash to the fields. There is a bit about North Sea cod and Brain Gould on globalisation that might be of interest but my superficial scanning between mouthfuls of Marmite confirms that eco crap is the flavour of the moment.

There is a spat going in (in, I think, Mt Albert and wouldn't that be appropriate?) about the construction of a cycle way that means the losing of a shedful of roadside carparking spots. This totally un-newsworthy rubbish takes up nearly a quarter page of newsprint (I could have been reading about North Sea cod). There is some joker from the Coalition for Cycling or the Cyclists Liberation Army or some such saying that this is 'a very important issue' (it is not) and is fulfilling 'an urgent need to link up Auckland's cycle ways' (it is not). It means that latent cyclists who are victims of the fear of using their velocipede on Auckland's gas guzzler, climate vicious car laden streets can now come out of the two wheeled closet and hold their heads up high. I made that last bit up, but I might as well not have done as that is the sort of rot that comes out of these idiots' mouths. Give them a decent V8 and tell them to shut up.

The Greens are now having a swipe at the fleet of government Ford Fairlanes. These have to go and Ministers should car pool - like that is going to happen. They have calculated that the fleet of official limos emits 200 (2,000, 20,000, 2,000,000 - who knows or cares?) tonnes of greenhouse gases (what a meaningless statement in itself) per annum and this is a situation up with which we cannot put. Apparently the Fords use 14.6 litres of fuel per 100km. I flicked on the fuel computer in my own conveyance whilst driving down Lincoln Road and 14.6 would appear to me to be very frugal. Thes are that same pratts who held a rally at the weekend marking the one year anniversary of Rod Donald's death. They held a cycle rally. You know the form - loads of cycle helmets from the seventies (we must be safe), paisly socks, cycle trailers with scrawny malnourished tofu chewing kids in tow and a lot of those beards you grew briefly when you were 17 and vowed never to go near again. Yuck, Yuck, Yuck.

Which leads us nicely to A10 where Colin James latches on to what I was saying last week; the Headmistress has latched on to all this eco babble as the talisman that will lead her to her Holy Grail - a fourth term in office God forbid. Just rember a) she stole the dosh b) Philip Field is still out there, c) she is the social engineer from hell, d) I don't like her, e) I like her ideas even less and there must be an f), g), h)...............

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Off road, rorts and fireworks

Bit late this morning; bloody work.

An off road trail type race has just been refused permission to go ahead in the Waitakere ranges for reasons of 'social displacement'. What the f***ing hell is that? Bureaucratic obfuscation in the form of uninteligible language is what that is. Those who would rule our lives regard it as the AK47 of their armamentarium - a universal get you out if trouble device that has lethal fire power both at close quarters and at long range that can be used at any time. This race is for about 450 idiots who want to run from Whatipu to Muriwai Beach through the bush (God knows why, there are perectly good tar sealed roads that can easily deliver the same result) using mainly already designated tramping tracks. The land is owned by DoC (what a surprise), and the Waitakere and Rodney Councils. You would have thought there was enough bureaucratic input there for 45km of bush track, but no. These worthies think the race is OK. But along trots the Auckland Regional Council (Parks Divison) and says there has not been enough public consultation (the trenching tool to the AK47) and the event will cause 'social displacement'. Head of the Park Nazis is none other than Sandra Coney. Just when you think you have finally managed to slip the 1080 into the meusli supplies of these pratts they get recycled; year after year after year and pop up in the most unlikely places their interfering busybody agendas to push.

While we are on councils I see the Auckland mob's business class junket around the world has reported back on the way forward for Auckland. We have got for our $85,000 fourteen pages of nonsense. Fourteen pages is about five thousand words which is considerably shorter than most of the assignments my younger daughter has to produce for first her year undergraduate papers. Presumably 'Ratepayer Rort 101' doesn't require such academic rigor. At $6,000 a page we get such gems as building a model of the CBD so the ratepayer can get a better idea of the plans for the future. There is also an idea that pedestrians should get priority over those who drive their Hummer to the theatre for tickets. Are we surprised that Bruce Trotsky Hucker feels the report is a 'valuable contribution', or some such meaningless guff, to Auckland's future. You know how to get rid of them.

Garth George has been looking inside my mind, the cheeky bugger. He also has had a gutsful of being told what to do by nanny state. He also cannot stand the global warming nonsense, but this for slightly different reasons to mine; he bases his belief that it is all a load of nonsense on a deeply held religous faith and good on him for that. He also cannot stand the idea that 'they' will decide what is on offer in vending machines and that 'we', god forbid, cannot be allowed to make our own choice of which slot into which we place the coin. He also is appaled that Telly Tubby Marion Hobbs sees fit to ban the sale of fireworks (except to approved groups with a council permit, of course) because a few scrotes tie bangers to kittens. Ban things enjoyed by the majority instead of putting the people who can't be trusted with them in the slammer - that's the way. We'll control everything you do in life - and we've got thinking on our hit list - if its the last thing we do. Get rid of them and leave me alone. Off to the Red Shed for some sparklers and it's my business what I do with them; I have a few ideas.

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Al Gore?

As observed a couple of days back, global warming has become flavour of the moment and the damned paper is full of it at the moment - it'll pass. There is an editorial which says nothing new but reiniforfes my impression that Helen's timimg in making her speech in Rotovegas to just predate the release of the Stern Report is no coincidence. The editor agress that all this as a diversionary tactic to pull your mind away from all the crap that is flying round governmental corridors at present. Also pointed out is yet another (as if it were needed) example of how all this talk is long on rhetoric and short on fact. Helen wants to make New Zealand 'carbon neutral'. Sounds terrific (maybe) but means very little and is consequently unachievable because a)what is to be achieved hasn't been defined and b) there are no details on how this mythical state might be reached. Which leads nicely into a syndicated piece from the Independent out of London. Al Gore. How wierd is this? Failed presidential candidate, dons the jodhpurs, makes a movie (and no, I haven't seen it and won't be wasting my money so to do) and morphs into the global warming Pied Piper. He is quoted in the Independent's piece as saying 'we know all we need to know to be in a position to change what is going on' or some such. Anyone who nails their colours to the mast of a plonker who can stand up in polite society and let that trickle out of his gob is barking. The one thing that is certain about all this global warming is that there is no certainty. All the projections af doom and gloom are made on notoriously unreliable mathematical modelling, the most infamous of which (the Mann Hockey Stick) has been shown to be just plain wrong, and presented maliciously to a politically motivated audience who were just dying to believe it. There are no facts now that can be projected to be 'facts' for the future - full stop. There are facts in history, like the fact that the climate has been fluctuating for eons, that there have been mini ice ages and periods of relative warmth in the past and that these last for centuries. THis is very different from the 'we are warmer than we were in 1997 and it is all the fault of the Toyota Landcruiser' bollocks. I suppose I have to accept that in the short term Helen is in the poo and will waste more of my cash to use this eco nonsense to try and claw her way out.

A sneaky little piece on the comments page about proposed (well they are not really proposed, they are going to happen) changes to the ACC. Bear in mind that htis is penned by a representative of the employers side of things but, that not withstanding, it is not a good look. You can currently claim compensation for lots of work related ilnesses. Work in a sulphuric acid manufacturing plant (if there is such a thing) and spill the product on your hand and the resulting burn is work related. Not even I, in one of my more cynical moods, would argue with that. Other illnesses and the burden of proof is on the claimant that the illness is work related. This is all going to change. A group of illnesses has been identified where cause and effect is assumed right up front. This includes things like asthma, deafness and lung, throat and paranasal sinus cancer. It is estimated that in one fell swoop the ACC burden to the employers will increase by 200%. This is crazy and based on pseudo science (vide supra) of the worst kind. Example. You work in a panel beaters shop and spend your spare time at heavy metal rock concerts. After 20 years you start to lose your hearing. Panel beating is the cause and ACC pays up. Nuts. Suppose you work in a library - same. Suppose your deafness is caused by something else and not exposure to excess noise - there is more than one cause of deafness you know. More controlling legislaton aimed to reward the bloody 'victim'. The whole tenet of the legislation is flawed - the idea of cause and effect. There are very few illnesses that are 'caused' by just one thing. The law ignores the often very complex science (and real science, not politicians pseudo science 101 version) of epidemiology completely and especially ignores the very real existence of sporadic cases of anything. Still Nanny state must be seen to be looking after its poor charges who are totally incapable of looking after themselves, musn't it?

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