Howling at it

Amalgam Girl has really lost the plot. She wanders around south Auckland to get first hand experience of where New Zealand's youth are wasting each other wholesale. For starters what bloody good is that going to do? Surely she has seen a social class five street before. I can't imagine it being any different to walk down than many others dotted around the countryside. I would assume there would be some unregistered un-WoFfed 1980's vintage Jap imports, a spot of graffiti, a bit of dog doo doos, a few stray kids, a couple of unpleasant looking dogs, some washing, piles of inorganic rubbish - all the usual props. I'll admit I'm guessing here but that is what they look like on the TV news. What Annette King hoped to achieve by actually going there I know not. I bet she didn't plan pissing the residents off quite as much as she did though. They are already not in the best of moods with a few of their nearest and dearest lying in boxes courtesy of some unintelligible (well to me anyway) violence. The last thing they need is a Government Minister wandering around.

She then compounds her blunder by opening her mouth. The current spate of homicidal violence is all the fault of the full moon and the hot summer. Even I am gobsmacked at the idiocy of such a statement. Was she combing the palms of her hands while talking such rot? I suppose the truth is so unpalatable that even such an utterance of a total dement is preferable.

The truth?

• The Justice Ministry says their youth offending team system is a shambles of confusion.
• The Reducing Youth Offending Programme, run with CYF and Corrections, collapsed after offending rates had not reduced after three years.
• Labour’s Ministers Group on the Youth Offending Strategy did not meet for three years.
• We are still waiting for the national truancy register they promised in 1999 and 2002.

But you can't stand up amongst Labour's core voters and say that can you?

Tweet

Transparency

The Witch had her go on the podium yesterday and the similarities between her effort and what we had heard the day before were quite marked. Not surprisingly the difference that leaped out of the page was the element of compulsion in all she said. 'You will stay at school until you are 18...'. The recurring theme of 'we know what is best for you and you will therefore do as you are told' is as recurring as it is bloody irritating. Garth George encapsulates the Time for a Change theme well in his column today cataloguing all the things I've been harping on about for years - over regulation, armies of bureaucrats, over taxation and so on and so on.

Witch had two 'key' words (pardon the pun) yesterday. Sustainability (which has already received at least some of the ridicule it deserves) and transparency. In the latter she was trying to labour (there I go again) the point that if you vote for her mob you get what you vote for. No hidden agendas, no surprises. We do as we say. How can the woman sleep at night? (perhaps she doesn't - stays up all night hatching controlling plans)

Please show me a Labour manifesto of the last ten years that contained scrapping the Privy Council, anti-smacking legislation or the Electoral Finance Act. And that is just for openers. All politicians are born liars and benders of veracity but this mob is beyond belief. They have been there too long and will say anything to ensure that they stay longer. Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to ensure that no such thing occurs.

Tweet

They're off and running

Righto, let's get stuck in. The Herald has finished its dreadful annual holiday snap competition and so the paper is no longer filled with pictures of cats eating ice cream, kids jumping off wharves and pohutukawa trees. Crikey the kids even go back to school next week.

And John Key started the political year with his teaser of a speech to an audience of adoring faithful. By all accounts he made a pretty good fist of it. I've been through it and it is remarkable for a few things. It contains some policy. Remember that? Stuff you say you are going to do - and with any luck then go ahead and actually do a few months later. It was not full of slagging Labour off and calling them a bunch of incompetent ratbags (which they are, of course). By so doing he has not laid himself open to counter slagging from the evil left (although this has not stopped them trying to have a go already) and he cannot be accused of empty rhetoric. His chosen topic is good populist stuff and the timing after the torrent of senseless youth violence of the last couple of days is spot on. I have the impression that there are a lot of these speeches lined up for use in the next few months and they just wheeled out the one that was the best fit for the current circumstances - clever. There is more obviously, finance, foreign policy, health etc. etc.

Amalgam Girl was interviewed by Larry Williams and she was dreadful. She's always dreadful but she passed even her usual low standards (this lady has reached rock bottom and is still digging). I was in the car when she was polluting the electromagnetic spectrum wearing her Justice Minister hat. My wife commented 'Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against dental nurses (our elder daughter is a dentist) but how can one become the Justice Minister? Surely she must have some legal training - or something' Very sharp is my wife. Anyway King was obviously getting rattled by Lazza's questioning and got audibly angry. She then came out with the pearler of the evening. 'Well all these kids were born before Labour came to power and it is therefore National's fault that they are all turning into homicidal maniacs'. She was blaming all the current youth justice problems on the scrotes' parents having their benefits cut a dozen or more years ago.

The truth, of course, is that we are reaping the benefit of left wing, feminist policies of the sixties that went out of favour in the real world decades years ago for one simple reason - they don't work. They have dismantled the nuclear family that has withstood the test of centuries and tried to replace mum (female) and dad (male) with nanny (androgynous) state.

How apt that on the same day as a few sensible policy ideas as to how the police and the other instruments of justice could be better used were being put forward that bloke in Christchurch was being charged with assault for clipping his son around the ear. This will never happen that harridan Bradford assured us. Why do we waste food on her? Oh and just remind me you stupid, stupid, woman how many kids have been murdered since your interfering, nonsensical, useless legislation became law. Surely the time is right to get this country back on track and throw these worthless wretches back in the ditch that is the only place in which they deserve to exist.

Tweet

Try as I may......

........I really am finding it very difficult to find anything to stir the mind into action. The centre of my life at the moment is the cardboard box and it is going to remain that way for a few weeks yet. I am sure I am not the first person to marvel at the amount of junk one accumulates over the years. Living in the same house for twelve years is not something I have done since schooldays (and that doesn't really count for the purposes of this) and I am astonished that I kept three metres of garden irrigation hose, umpteen pots of touch up paint for cars I no longer own, back copies of magazines I will never read, half a dozen doorstops, spare sprigs for golf shoes that hit the bin in 2001 and so on.

Back in the real world there is an utterly nauseous piece penned by History Boy in the paper this morning. He is his usual arrogant self whilst telling the proles (or the ones that his party's so called education system can get 'upskilled' enough to read, that is) that New Zealand is in such great shape economically that we will be immune from the financial woes of the rest of the world. Jumped up little git. I was just in the act of giving up on this party political broadcast by the Labour Party when Dear Leader's dulcet tones assaulted the airwaves. I of course turned to genuflect towards Mount Albert as is right and proper for a loyal cadre - yeah right. She was talking about Lady Hillary going to Windsor for the Queen's Memorial service for Sir Ed. The Tax payer is going to pic up the tab for the travel arrangements for the Hillary family. I've no problem with that. But the way she announced this was truly revealing. It was not, Cabinet has decided, or the Government has decided it was I have decided. Poisonous harridan.

There was a very readable article in the Herald yesterday, or maybe the day before, by the Japanese representative on the International Whaling Commission. I think in fact it was heavily sub edited as it read like no other piece of prose penned by a native Japanese speaker I have ever read, but no matter. He, quite rightly in my opinion, accused 'the west' of gross hypocrisy and cultural arrogance over their stance on Japanese whaling. This topic, like many emotive arguments, tends to be discussed without a recourse to examination of the facts (anthropogenic global warming, anyone?). I have never understood the anti whaling lobby. What is wrong with killing whales? If you are OK with killing cows, sheep, orange roughy or cockroaches then what is wrong with wasting a sperm whale. If you cannot for religious or spiritual reasons see it in you to buy a can of Raid then maybe I can see your point. But if you are happy to walk into The Mad Butcher for a kilo of world famous BarBQ sausages then what is your problem with a whale?

Why do people have this thing about wasting a whale or two? Is it because they are 'cuddly'? Eh? I don't fancy cuddling up to 90ft of blue whale - he rolls over in bed and you're toast. Cuddling up to an Orca - have you seen the teeth on one of those? Is it because they are 'intelligent'? They squeak. This makes them equipped to do long division does it? If you had a child whose only sign of being Bertrand Russell's natural successor was that he squeaked you would ask for your money back. Is it because they appear to live in families? This is of course a myth as the family was banned in New Zealand years ago. I assume all whales that come to our coast have to hide daddy whale when he comes back from a hard day's toil at the insurance brokers and get the lesbian basket weaving whaless from Kaikoura to fill in duties looking after all the little whalelets.

If I were a whale I would accept that any ship coming near me called Something Maru was bad news and piss of and hide hide behind a tree sharpish. That is just part of life as a whale. The world's oceans are a bloody big place and the odds are heavily stacked in the marine mammal's favour when it comes to not being found. They are intelligent, remember, so they can lay trails of breadcrumbs that lead to nasty jagged reefs for the horrid Japaneses ships to follow. Also If I were a whale I would tell all the Sea Shepherd type weird beards to get out of my ocean and stay on the land where they belong. I mean just think how much they are contributing to global warming by hooning around the Southern Ocean in their RIBs.

I've come over all esurient - a dolphin burger might hit the spot.

Tweet

Hiatus

Not much action on these pages for a few days and this for a couple of reasons. Obald Towers is, and will continue to be, somewhat preoccupied by a change of location of the baronial manor from the beach to the country. 12 years in our current house will come to an end in five weeks time when we all troop off to the country to sample the delights of tank water, the newspaper delivered to 250 metres from the front door (if I'm lucky) and not having to wash the house after every north easterly blow. I'm greatly looking forward to this.

The other reason for a spot of sloth on these pages is that this is the traditionally quiet time of year for those who waste my money in Wellington stuffing up the country. What have we had? John Key demonstrating that he should stick to making shedloads of money and keeping his mouth shut about things of which he knows nothing. His comments about crab pots, berley and sharks were so inept as to make him look a complete dork. Doesn't matter - no one will remember.

Jeanette Botox Person sullied our screens last night prattling on about her usual bollocks at what she arrogantly calls her 'State of the Planet' address. State of the Nation not good enough for this bunch of wallies - they know so much about everything that they can tell the whole planet what they must do to save themselves. Are you listening, Beijing, Washington, London - all you need to know is on Waiheke. Why is it that everything the Greens do looks so amateurish? Probably because it is. You really can't take them seriously - and that is even before they open their mouths and let you hear their fruitcake ideas. All their banners look as if they are hand painted even if they aren't. All their supporters look unkempt and dirty. They all still wear the clothes they or their mothers wore at Woodstock. They eat ghastly food because it is ecofriendly. I eat food because it tastes nice. What did Jimmy Buffet say? - A cheeseburger is paradise. Alright, Jeanette is in her element looking tawdry, surrounded by like lookers and talking into a Dick Smith Special microphone. And we get the same old , same old. However there is a refreshing air of desperation in her warblings. In amongst nailing her colours to the mast of a ship that is soon to sink with out trace (the HMNZS Anthropogenic Global Warming) there are hints that she will try and work with any party that might win this year's election. Even she has detected that Labour are goneburgers - or cheeseburgers.

Which brings us to bloody Helen. Sir Ed's death has come at just the right time for her. Her hideous administration is lurching from disaster to disaster as befits a disastrous outfit and her opportunity to get herself in the headlines on the back of a national hero must appear to her like mana from heaven. And is she milking it for all she can get out of it? From the hug with Lady H (fancy being hugged by Dear Leader - yucky poo) through to personally announcing the details of tomorrows state funeral. Do you think the Prime Minister would take the trouble to detail the road closures in Parnell herself if we were talking the funeral of Mrs Smith from number twenty seven? Her grandstanding over Sir Ed's demise is as nauseating as it is predictable.

When do the wastrels go back to the Beehive? I am getting the inklings of quite a bit of fun In the next few months. How about the salaries of Government spin doctors reaching $47 million last year when we, the great unwashed, have just been clobbered with the EFA? How about a left wing commercial blog operating from an IP address allocated to the Labour Party?

Fun and games just around the corner - both in Wellington and at the new Obald whare. Be patient

Tweet

Got a spare half hour?

If so I implore you to watch these four YouTube videos. If you can't spare half an hour I implore you to watch them anyway.

They are of a lecture given by Professor Bob Clark of James Cook University in Queensland and are the science behind why I and other thinking people are not sucked in by the great Global Warming Swindle. They are not hard to follow (watch the first, then the second and then... get the idea?) and they are essential viewing. Please, pretty please, do yourselves a favour and walk out into the light. You will never again have to think of Al Gore as a man to be trusted but be able to see the truth - an overweight failed politician feathering his own nest. You will be able to discern the difference between scientists testing hypotheses with data (and finding those hypotheses not standing up) and political crap.

Tweet

Slim pickings

As I alluded to at the end of last week there is much going on in this scribe's world at present which is leaving precious little time to waste at a keyboard penning this drivel. My personal business is in stark contrast to what is going in in the rest of the country.

A few marlin are being caught - and they are of a good size. The early summer run of yellow fin tuna seems to have peaked and there is not much else of note going on.

When the odious 'anti smacking' stuff was being bulldozed through parliament last year we were assured that parents were not going to be criminalised for bringing up their children as they saw fit. However in short order we are being treated to a regular precession of parents being visited by plod. The latest clipped his son round the ear 'ole a got a visit from the boys in blue after he was spotted by a couple sticky beaks (a school teacher and an off duty fed - typical). How many policemen turned up to give him an 'official warning'? Six. Half a dozen policemen are required to interfere in this chaps life. I suppose he should count himself lucky that he didn't get the Armed Offenders Squad. Almost the worst aspect of this incident is that it gives bloody Bradford a chance to pollute the media with her presence. I don't know what is the uglier, the outside of Sue Bradford or the inside. We had to suffer her dreadful corncrake wail of a voice arrogantly telling the world that this episode was evidence that her bill (remember she gave it away to Helen when told so to do) was working well. As far as she was concerned a clip around the ear was assault (who gives a toss what you think about anything, Bradford) and the police were only doing what the law required........... I'm not going to carry on - it makes me sick.

Sue Bradford is a Green MP. Not one Green Party member has ever won an electoral seat in Parliament. They are all there courtesy of the damned list. When was the last time a person was actually ejected from parliament because the voters gave them the flick and they didn't pop up again courtesy of the bloody list? The only people who can get rid of MPs are their fellow politicians. It is all wrong.

Where the hell is this review of MMP we were promised?

Tweet

Preserve us from this crap

Can you believe this patronising rubbish I found on Scoop ?

Youth Encouraged to Make the Most of Summer
Tuesday, 8 January 2008, 9:28 am
Press Release: New Zealand Government
Youth Encouraged to Make the Most of Summer

Youth Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta is today encouraging young people to make the most of summer.

“The holidays are great for spending time with families and relaxing before they return to work or studies for another year. It’s also a great time to soak up the fantastic opportunities and creativity our country has to offer,” says Nanaia Mahuta.

“There is the outdoors, visiting galleries, writing poetry, or simply getting in some summer reading - not to mention getting their short films in for the ID360 competition which is a wonderful way for the young people of Aotearoa/New Zealand to tell the world about themselves and what identity and diversity means to them.”

ENDS

'There is the outdoors'. OK, marlin don't live in the front room. 'Visiting galleries' - well my twenty year old daughter would actually do this but she hasn't enough in her piggy bank to pop over to the Louvre on a regular basis. There just is not the volume of quality galleries in New Zealand. I suppose the Mahuta regards trackside graffiti as 'peoples art' or some such tosh. There is certainly truckloads of that.

And then we have the little winner - 'writing poetry'. Now how many 'young people' do you know who on a Friday night say 'Shall we go down the boozer, do a few burnouts, crash a party or write some poetry?' I mean it just doesn't happen - well it doesn't on the planet I walk about on.

Who has heard of ID360? I'm waiting. I'm not going to write a poem today because I'll be turning down an opportunity as a young person of Aoteoroa/New Zealand to tell the world about myself and what identity and diversity means to me. I'll go and make a short film about that once I've found out what it is. Ms Mahuta, were you drunk when you composed this Governmental Press Release? I suppose at least that is normal behaviour for a 'young person of Aoteoroa/New Zealand'. And while you are at it, you waste of space, I live in New Zealand and not Aoteoroa/New Zealand

Bollocks, bollocks, bollocks and I pay for it. Enough - they have to be out on their collective ear. The Mahuta could then try and get a real job instead of sucking up my money in return for spewing out such errant nonsense.

With a name like hers, perhaps riding elephants might be her calling.

Tweet

Affairs of state.....

......are a pre-occupation at present. I don't have the mind to concentrate on the tittle tattle of the world at the moment.

I was right about Ponting - well at least a surprising numbers of Ozzies agree with me which I grant you does not equate to being right. The ICC has climbed down and conceded every point the Indians put to them. I'm not so sure they have got a bargain swapping Bucknor for that home grown fruit cake Bowden. I wonder whether they'll be asking for their money back after Perth.

The Electoral Finance Act is attracting the sort of attention it was always going to from people Labour must be hoping will just plain go away. People are setting up inflammatory and purposely illegal websites wholesale. They have only been at it for nine days but there is every indication that at least some of them have the stomach and the provisioning for the long haul. Don't count chickens before they are glass houses but surely opposition parties can't stuff it up from here. But then again who would have bet on Michael Clarke taking three wickets in five balls on Sunday evening?

Tweet

Is this cricket?

What of events at the SCG last night? A stunning victory or a sham of a sporting contest?

That it was gripping enough was undeniable but the acrimony that surrounded the match and more so its aftermath bring to mind that overused but apt phrase 'it is not cricket'.

That Dravid was not out is a plain as the nose on your face. His bat and the ball were in different postcodes. Crap umpiring was certainly evident (and the match was littered with dreadful decisions) but Gilchrist must have known that he was not out. Gilchrist used to have reputation of being a really honest sort of a joker - he was (is?) one of the last remaining test players who 'walked' - but that has gone. Is that Ponting's influence? I don't know. That the Australian skipper is an excellent batsmen and a good captain are undeniable but he does not strike me as a very nice bloke. After Dravid had gone the contest didn't really mean very much. Clarke's unlikely heroics with what turned out to be the last five balls of the match turned into just a meaningless sideshow for this old fashioned fan of the game.

No, I have reservations as to where the second Australia vs India Test match has left us.

I have Wisden from 1968 and 1969 arriving this morning and I can shut myself off in the 'good old days' and hope the nasty modern cricket world goes away.

Tweet

We need more

After reflecting on the worthless wretches who run this country a few moments with someone who really had a political brain is a refreshing tonic. Several more Churchill quotes from the hundreds available are a good antidote to Helen. These aimed particuarly at her odious view of the world.

Some see private enterprise as a predatory target to be shot, others as a cow to be milked, but few are those who see it as a sturdy horse pulling the wagon.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

We contend that for a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.

Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.

I wouldn't expect Keith Locke or damned Bradford to be able to even spell half the words in that lot.

Tweet

Churchill

There is little going on in the South West Pacific as is usual at this time of year. Papers are full of daft pictures of summer - kids running through sprinklers and jumping off wharves, ice cream, pohutukawas and the like. Great for filling up the family album but hardly fare for a supposedly major national newspaper. A read of the Herald at this time of year generally consists of a few minutes on the sports pages and a quick flick through the rest.

Doing that this morning there is some space given to a 'study' (preserve us from bloody ersatz non scientific damned studies) that shows that the average tourist has a carbon footprint that can only be erased by planting 4 squillion hectares of (presumably native) bush or everyone in China changing to those squiggly light bulb bizzos or..... who the hell cares. How can I continue typing this bollocks - vomit really is not good for the continuing functionality of keyboards.I wander on past the Golf Warehouse adverts and am about to repair to the fields when a syndicated piece about the merits (or not as it turns out) of democracy hoves into view. This fits in nicely with what I spent a small part of last evening reckoning with.

I made an effort to try and understand what this odious Electoral Finance Act means to your average Joe - i.e. me. The amount of bandwidth being taken up by this in the Blogosphere is vast. Most of the contributions are absolute tosh (as is to be expected) but the theme that runs through it all is that no one really understands it. Mike Moore prattled on about it at some length yesterday opining that such badly and hastily written legislation will provide endless sport for all sorts of people who will be looking for ways to push the envelope. This has already started, of course, with an early runner being a rather obviously titled website called Don't Vote Labour springing up. It is thought that this is probably illegal. There is then acres of opinion as to what will be done about it. Answer - well no one really knows. There is apparently a clause in the Act that gives powers of discretion (and it is not readily apparent to whom) as to whether breaches of the Act are prosecuted if they are 'insignificant'. Very dangerous stuff and very reminiscent of the codas to the Anti smacking nonsense. And hasn't that worked like a charm - not a kid killed for, let me see, a couple of days now.

So we have a law aimed at controlling what people can say breaches of which can be prosecuted or not at the whim of........ I'll let you fill in the blanks. This is scary stuff.

Let us cast our mind back as to which particular nut this sledgehammer was designed for. It is Labour's revenge for the Exclusive Brethren fiasco (which you may recall effectively lost the Nats the 2005 election). We must be protected from 'money buying elections'. Things must be fair. I have opined before as to how much I hate bloody fairness. Life ain't fair and nor should it be. There has to be a pecking order and if a bit of discrimination is required to get that, then so be it. So we have the assumption that everything must be fair - wrong. And then the assumption that the great unwashed is so daft as to not be able to see through bought propaganda - insulting but depressingly has ring of truth to it.

Which at last brings us to Winston Spencer. The syndicated piece on the opinion page (from The Independent as I recall) argues that western democracy is not all it is cracked up to be. He author kicks off with one of Winston's quotes 'It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried'. He then carries on to place an even better one 'The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter'. That is why we have the current administration, The Peoples Government of Aoteoroa. Thick people have a vote - what other excuse can they possibly have. It is argued that a government by selection as opposed to election has merit. With the bloody mess we have been led to by Clark and her lickspittles it is a difficult argument to rebut. Having decided that great swathes of the general populace are not to be trusted with a vote you do have a slight problem in chosing who is going to do the selecting. Easy peasy - I'll do it.

Mr Independent goes off track a bit by using China as his example as to what ca be done. It will come as no surprise to people who are not first time visitors to this blog that I have a much better role model - Singapore.

Tweet

Is this what I am supposed to do?

It is now January 1st and we are all under the auspices of the Electoral Finance Act.

From time time to time (alright, quite often) I comment on things pertaining to New Zealand Politics. Am I now supposed to stop doing this? Am I now limited to witty observations on the pictures of Yorkshire terriers peering out of shopping bags that are currently filling the newspapers? Am I allowed to comment on Brendan McCullum hitting eighty of twenty eight balls? I'm sure the nerds at the newly appointed media watchdog agency can find some political spin to put on that. McCullum deliberately set out to win the game and was therefore contravening the 'everybody is equal' policy of the Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa. Lauding his efforts is therefore in support of the National Party and Act. Go to Jail, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. No I can't live like that.

I have just wandered over to read Monsieur Whaleoil for my daily dose of right wing vitriol (and I feel better already). He obviously feels the same concerns as myself; probably much more so as he is a 'prominent right wing blogger'. He has just published this:

I assert that this website is a blog and published by me on a non-commercial basis, and any views expressed on it by me are my personal political views and under paragraph (g) of Section 5(2) of the Electoral Finance Act, is not an election advertisement.

I further assert that this website is a news media Internet site and that all posts on here are written by me, as the editor, solely for the purpose of informing, enlightening or entertaining readers, and hence also is not an election advertisement under paragraph (d) of Section 5(2) of the Electoral Finance Act.


Now doesn't that look all spiffy and official? I'm sure legally it is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike but it looks good and it'll do me.

I hereby say wot 'e said.

There you go. I'm all kosher again.

This Labour government is a bunch of venal left wing ratbags and you should all avoid voting for them as if your life depended on it - which it does.

All correspondence C/O The Slammer, Mount Eden.

Tweet