The annual pilgrimage to the Far North

Can't imagine why I am writing this as no one will want to read about three old buggers catching nothing whilst all and sundry are catching fish wholesale all around.

This was my tenth Houhora One Base having missed only last year since 1999. There were some things the same and some different. 'Smooth Torquer' from Kawhia (they caught a marlin this year - very good as it is a long time between drinks for them) was still our neighbour at the Houhora Heads campsite as were the retired couple from Whangarei with the quad and the small Stabi. The Servo was giving away chocolate fish instead of watermelons. The numbers were down bigtime. It still knows how to blow dogs off chains when it feels like it and it still lets you get few days fishing in. Kaitaia still does not rival Milan as a shopping destination and there is still crap cellphone reception in the Far North (although it is not as bad as East Cape - at least there is a bit).

No, I like going to Houhora in mid March - it is like a comfy pair of slippers. I am no longer fired up by the competition side of things (vide supra ad nauseam) but I like being up there for a few days. I like being abused by Paul Batten as I get on the boat and as I get off. It would not be the same coming ashore in the evening with a 0-0-0 and not being told you are useless. The truth is often hard to take. I like having a brief (mainly) yarn with people I haven't seen since last year. The place would not be the same without the three men in a boat from the Bay of Plenty. I was much amused to see they brought a fourth this year - to make up a fourball at golf I was told. Hard case blokes these who don't mind a cold beer on a hot day.

I am an old bugger and I find change hard to deal with and so despite the tourney being reduced to four days I was going to fish the Saturday anyway 'cos that's wot I do. It also looked as Saturday was going to be the best day weather wise by the length of the straight. Thus I arrived on Friday afternoon to find Boulder sorting out more rods than Tazee has in his shop. So I added eight more to help him along. Driver Paul wasn't arriving until Saturday arvo and so Bouldie and I decided to have a go at this silly string nonsense.

We had worked out the mechanics of running lures and hookless lures in our heads and we just had to see if it would work in practice. A calm day was essential for our first foray into this we thought. I think we were right. Before we culd get all this sorted we had to go and catch a bait. Dead bait we thought because it would be easier for starters. All we could manage was a blue maomao; not blue maomaos - just the one. Well its may not be a koheru but it's a fish isn't it? She'll be right.

Right. Port teaser. What's missing in this picture?



We are fishing with Boulder, don't forget, so our teaser reels are top class. Big F. off Avet loaded with 130lb braid on a bent Unibutt. No messing about here. Line up to a roller troller at the lower halyard anchor point and out to a hookless Cleopatra skirted 'Rocket'. Big splashy lure that will stay on the surface.

Next rod is a TLD 25 spooled 15kg with a hooked Enki to LR.



Then the Tiagra 16 loaded with 10kg and a rigged maomao - well it's all we've got, innit - all ready to be thrown at something.



Continuing anticlockwise we have Boulder's Stella 20000 loaded with a jig (this is getting weirder and weirder) also to be thrown at things.



Something I understand next, a Piper on a 15kg to a TLD 30 at SR



And finally Boulder, smoking, smiling (all normal) and guarding an Avet T Rex running a very big articulated hookless Roddy Kona head without a hook (not normal)

Well we started dragging this lot around off Cape Karikari and it was a bit like walking down Queen Street with your flies undone. I'm sure everyone was looking and giggling. The lures ran like lures. The teasers made a hell of a kerfuffle on the surface (Boulder reckoned the Kona head looked like the fountain on Marine Parade in Napier). I practiced throwing the maomao at the teasers and got OK at it. Whether I could do it when in headless chicken mode was yet to be seen.

Right we're ready. Fish comes into the gear, he lights up, looks pretty, we say 'Look there's a marlin', stroke our chins and decide to wind the teasers up to the outriggers , clear the lures, then throw something attached to a line at the marlin. Or do we throw things then wind? Or do we shout at each other? Or do we both throw things (me the increasingly unappetizing dead fish and Bouldie the purple jig) at the same marlin at the same time as we haven't worked out who does what when. Who drives and where does he go? I don't think either of us really know what needs doing let alone in what order and who does what. She'll be right. Oh no she won't. We haven't got a clue.

All this remains academic as we fail to find a fish. But still, baby steps. The mechanics of running teasers seemed to work. I think we need at least two more pairs of arms and legs. Work in progress.

This was Saturday and we failed to find a fish. Come Wednesday and we still hadn't found a fish. Everyone else had but not us. We Weaseled, we thought, we asked questions, we went where people who caught fish went, we went where we thought we should go and found the top catching boat there, we went to good places and saw birds working and felt pleased with ourselves, we went close (100m off Karikari close) and we went wide (1000m outside the Garden Patch wide), we fished green water, we fished the best cobalt blue, we fished warm water, we fished Frostie the Snowman water. Still no bloody fish. We rang our 'unclean' bell as boats all around us hooked up. Driver Paul drove, Boulder and I made suggestions, some polite and some not. Still no fish.

Not strictly true we did catch fish. There was the blue maomao, a 2kg albie, two coke bottle skippies (the free sample coke bottle size), the world's smallest kingfish and a mahimahi. We looked up the comp weight limit for mahimahi. 4kg. This (taken on shotgun - bloody shotgun- on the Unicorn that last accounted for a 96kg stripey) would have done well to go 400gms. And there were marlin being caught all around us.

Oh and we bought things, I bought a new battery for the Jeep ('cos I had to) and a new pair of Crocs (this was on the 40 knot day) and Boulder bought a battery for his car key so he now has remote central locking (come to think of it I think I paid for that) and a another new rod. Well Kieron Olsen was there, and he was in our caravan for a couple of hours and the rod was red, and had a bent butt and was spiral wrapped and it was windy and what was Boulder supposed to do, tell him to take it away?

And still we caught no marloons whilst all around us were hooking up. Batten is right, I'm useless.

Not the point of course. I had a great time in the best possible company and I don't care if I'm useless.

Tweet

Bring on the chainsaws

I have several hundred trees on my property. They are mine. I own them. I have paid for them. I owe nothing to anyone for them, not to a bank and especially not to a council or the government.

I own a chainsaw. It is also mine. It is also paid for.

If I wish to introduce the latter to the former it is my decision and no one else's. That apparently is not now the case. I say apparently as it has not altered my behaviour around chainsaws or trees one iota. If I want to cut a tree down on my property I will do so and anyone who thinks differently can obtain some sexual gratification as they leave the building.

It was, therefore, with some delight that I read yesterday that one of the Government's sorely needed amendment to the RMA is to de-deify the common or garden tree. The blanket protection that every weed tree now enjoys is to be removed. And not before bloody time either. Any person who has pohutakawa roots uprooting the floor of his house (as is happening to my ex next door neightbour) will now be able to reach for the Husqvarna and sort the problem out in a sea of noise and 2 stroke. He will no longer have to get the 'permission' of some plonker down at council - which will probably be declined if their track record on these matters is anything to go by. He will no longer have to 'consult' an arborist - paid for by me.

Commonsense has prevailed. But how is this being welcomed by the weird beards whose days of ruling the country are now mercifully at an end? They are of course mortified. The end of the world is nigh (next Thursday looking favorite) Armageddon is just around the corner. We are bring warned that Titirangi and Langholm (nests of stupid plonkers if ever there was) will be turned into lunar landscapes by the end of the month. Developers are this very moment shipping in plane loads of Agent Orange. Napalm is suddenly very popular at Fletcher Construction. Every schoolchild is to be issued with a chainsaw.

Idiots. The proposed entirely sensible placing of trees into their proper station in life does not mean you have to waste every tree you come across. It just means that the current totally stupid blanket rules on every damned tree in the land which places it above your first born child in terms of importance are deservedly consigned to the rubbish bin of history.

I am a great believer that nothing is wholly right or wholly wrong. The last Government did not do everything wrong - very nearly but not quite. The current mob are not going to do everything right but they haven't stuffed up too much yet.

Tweet

Sir Obald

Has a certain je ne sais qoi about it, does it not?

Only a few short months ago our lives were ruled by the colourless commies. We all had to be equal. We got medals for turning up. We were not allowed to be better than anybody at anything. They stopped short of Castro's idea of paying neurosurgeons the same as taxi drivers, but only just. It was not an impossible flight of fancy that all those wearing glasses would be shipped off to (aural) rehabilitation camps as they could be seen as intellectuals.

How does an honours system sit with all this? Not at all. How does a titular honours system fit in? Well, even more not at all. If you decide someone is worthy of singling out for praise you make it even worse by calling them 'Sir' something. What to do? Even they decided that getting rid of the honours system altogether was a step too far, at least in the first instance. It was decided that those who were to be reluctantly honoured should be given an honour that was meaningless and had a silly complicated title that no one could remember and meant nothing. Thus Colin Meads became not Sir Pinetree but a Most Distinguished Companion of the Order of New Zealand (I think) . He would still thump you if you disagreed with him but you would not get thumped by a bloke bestriding the battlements in a ermine trimmed cape.

What does this totally unrememberable appellation mean? Nothing. You can be a companion of something animate - like your best mate, a maiden aunt or a goat. You cannot be a companion to a virtual object. You cannot take the plane to Wellington as the companion of Newton's Second Law of Motion or Parkinson's disease. You can be the companion to Mrs Smith at number 27 who has Parkinson's disease, of course. Thus you could not be a Companion of an Order of Merit as it is not something that physically exists. This suited the Mao jacketed ones perfectly. Dish out something meaningless and people will not object when it is removed completely.

This, of course, is just bollocks. People should be rewarded for doing well. Good grief they even enjoy it. This starts from getting a gold star in Primary School and extends right through to Sir Mick Jagger who gets an award for still being alive.

I am delighted that the current Pragmatic Government has got rid of all this equality bollocks and we are to have titular honours again. It is even retrospective so those who the mealy mouthed witch denied their proper gong can get it back. Miserable bloody woman. How heartening it is to see all the changes she wrought in our lives without any mandate whatsoever being rolled back one by one.

Privy Council next, please.

Tweet

ACC is broken

Well of course it is. Take any enterprise and give it to a government monopoly and then make everyone use it and what do you expect. No competition and tenured workers is a sure fire recipe for disaster. The tales of waste and abuse in ACC are legion. If only ten percent of them are true we are being taken for a ride.

My wife tripped over in the garden , fell and broke her wrist a few years ago. Painful and a bloody nuisance. A policeman (or my then 16 year old daughter) could have made the diagnosis without recourse to Dr Roentgren's invention but we repaired to the hospital in the approved fashion. We required some analgesia, an Xray, a reduction and another Xray. In that order. What we got was an ACC form upfront well before the analgesia. It was (is) a culture. The ACC came before common humanity. I was puzzled at the time that this domestic incident even came within ACC's purview. But it did and no further progress through the 'system' was possible until I had filled in the form. The patient couldn't do this because she had broken her wrist, remember. What would have happened if I had not been able to play scribe I shudder to think. I got the impression if had filled in the demographics along the lines of F. Christmas, North Pole we would have been OK but not filling it was a non starter. Having declined all financial recompense (my wife was not working for money at the time) I thought the matter closed.

About six weeks later we received a 'phone call at 1900hrs asking if ACC could provide any home help as they were sure the high dusting had been neglected for a while. Common courtesy precluded me from telling them to get some sexual gratification as they left the building. What are we doing employing someone on time and a half or double time phoning to offer services that people almost certainly don't need for starters? A trivial story but with absolute veracity. There are billions of other stories for which I cannot vouch for detailing even greater profligate waste of my money.

Billions. I am not the first to point out that billion is the new million. Numbers associated with anything financial these days are followed by a quantity of noughts I didn't know it was possible to put after anything. ACC apparently has liabilities in the $200 billion dollar range (that's $200,000,000,000.00 I think) but has assets only half that. You don't have to be Adam Smith to know that is not going to fly. We are then told 'If this was a normal business it would be bankrupt'. No shit, Sherlock. And here in lies the problem. Why is it not a normal business? That is what insurance is, a business. It is not a business because it has morphed into welfare agency. There are businesses milking it as the cash cow it has become. The physiotherapy industry is whining this morning because it can see the farmer opening the gate prior to the herd leaving the milking shed.

Those who oversaw the transformation of ACC from an insurer to a welfare bottomless pit, the previous Labour government, are crying foul as they would . David Parker is bleating that ACC is the best system in the world and should not be tampered with. Here is a prime example of someone so blinded by ideology that he cannot see that the emperor is wearing no clothes. Wake up, David, ACC is a lemon. It is a business basket case. The Goof whines that he thinks that the figures are being made to look worse than they really are and we are being 'softened up' for the privatisation of the Corporation.

Well Phil, I am as soft as the softest comfy cushion. I need no more tenderising. Just bloody do it. Give me some choice. The choice for starters as to which parts of my life I chose to insure. Everyone has to pay ACC levies for damned everything. A worker in a florist pays levies in case she is savaged by a geranium or inhales potting compost. A construction worker insuring against being sconed by a hod of bricks is fair enough but an accountant paying for protection against a calculator? If said number cruncher wants to keep the abacus at bay then let him chose to pay for it. Get over it Goof your compulsion, totalitarian way of leading our lives for us is over. It ended on the second Saturday of last November.

ACC is broken. Of course it is. To put Humpty back together again we need to make a bloody great omelette.

Tweet

Who cares?

If we are to be believe what we are being told the world is ending. We are soon going to be on a planet that has the ambient air temperature of Mercury (where it gets very tropical), a planet that can't feed its people and has no money.

So what are the good people of Wanganui doing to put things to rights? They are arguing whether their town should be spelt with an 'h'. Apparently they had a referendum a few years back to settle this issue vital in the survival of the planet and decided to not waste further paint on the road signs and leave things as they were.

Not good enough for some mob who have again petitioned the council to get a decision in their favour so they can make a submission to the Geography Board (I think) so that an 'h' which has never been there can - be there. It is pointed out that in this part of the world if the 'h' was added the pronunciation of the place name would not change as the 'h' is silent and does not turn the 'w' into an 'f' as it does in Whangarei. Therefore changing the spelling will make no practical difference to the man in the street.

Yesterday the Council headed by the refreshingly tie deficient Mayor, Michael Laws, actually wasted time to discuss this and voted eight to five for no 'h'. Presumably the 'h' advocates will now appeal to the Human Rights Commission or the Pope for a further hearing so the Geography Wallahs can hear the case with as much pro 'h' bias as possible.

Please stop this nonsense. You can spell the name however you bloody well want to. Put in a silent 'ch' as in marmachlade if you want. Who cares? I'm sure the Post Office don't. A letter written to someone in Wanganui will get there if it is spelt as now or as Whanganui - or Wchanganui. One pro 'h' bloke on the News last night said it was important to get this sorted out - in his favour of course. It is not important. It is mind numbingly stupid and no one gives a big rats backside.

Meanwhile we will all get poorer as all the bank notes spontaneously combust with the earths temperature soaring past 200 degrees Centigrade because I have driven my V8 to work. Idiots.

Tweet

Too clever for my own good

It had always been Boulder's intention to liberate Enki Toa from its Coromandel hideaway and park it in Toots for a succession of day trips/couple of day trips after the Waihau Bay escapade was over. When we returned from the East Cape it all seemed just too good. Plan already there, Toots producing fish seemingly at will and a great big high moored over the country for the first half of this week. It was arranged that I would drive up to Toots on Tuesday afternoon and meet Boulder and Bender there. We would then go and catch a marlin or five over the next couple of days (shouldn't take too long) and wander back home.

If a thing seems too good to be true it usually is. Adam Scott tagged a couple in the Bay on Monday. He PM'd me as we were discussing other things with the intelligence that the Ninepin Trench and down to Brett had marlin jostling for pecking order at lures (or something along those lines). The fish had appeared to have moved north and, what is more, the water of Whangamumu was starting to look a bit iffy. I telephonically transfer this information to the two Bs who are already on the road at this point. Boulder 'phones Grunta who tells of only four fish out of Toots on Monday. Us of the insatiable lust for information acted instantly. The chalet at Toots is cancelled and we are off to Paihia. I arrive first, find boat friendly accommodation and we repair to the Swordy for tea. All fish caught today are between the Ninepin Trench and the Brett. God, we are so smart it hurts. We are in the right place and all those poor suckers who haven't got their finger on the pulse are stuck down in Toots from whence all the fish have fled.

It has long been a desire of Boulder to have an Enki only day. I have always thought this to be a jolly spiffing wheeze and so we pooled our resources and could only come up with thirteen Enkis between us.



Bender had left his four at home and I later found another two in my lure rolls that missed the preliminary search. So we could have chosen from nineteen. A starting five (damned shottie is plaguing me this season) was picked thus. SC 22 Enki 'Bermuda', LC 16 Enki 'Casper', SR Shell Enki 'Drysdale', LR SHell Enki 'Ascension' and shottie Mini Enki 'Mackerel' (and no, Boulder and Bushpig, you can't have it - even for money)



The other ten Enkis were packed along with a few spare skirts. Nothing else in the lure department was allowed on the boat. Needed the spare lures as we were going to be so busy that it would be quicker and easier to change lures between fish instead of re-rigging lures that had just been successful.

Right not much more to do now. Checked the SSTs on the early version Weasel and that just confirmed how bloody smart we were. I've never caught three marlin in a day and tomorrow it was going to be like shooting fish in a barrel. Up to the spot at 137m (not 136 or 138) that the Weasel told us was just the place where the bait would be. Pick up a fish at the Nine Pin Trench, off to Queens Buoy with another fish on the way across and then perhaps another off Red Head on the way home. Back by, what, fourish for tea and crumpets.

Stuck to the plan, caught nothing and listened to Wetspot and Sambosi (the mugs who stayed in Toots, remember) catch the pants off us. When Lance caught his fish we were already off the Brett and it would have been silly not to go and have a look . Us and another dozen boats. Saw a tailer as soon as we got to the area, but that was our lot. The bite was over.

Good day (ten hours on the water) despite the lack of fish. I really like that sort of fishing - thinking about it, forming a plan and then sticking to it. Adapt the plan to what is happening on the water. At all times during the day know where you are, what the water temp is, how far the next mark is away in both time and distance, make another plan, look out of the window, act on what you see, look at the electronics, make more mental calculations, try something based on that - love it. I would prefer a day like yesterday and all the planning that went into it with no fish than wandering around the ocean like a headless chook and tripping over a marlin by accident. I really would.

Weather slated to go tits up by Thursday arvo with Friday being impossible. Already by Wednesday lunchtime the wind portents in the clouds were not good. Should get a morning's fishing in at least. Brown joined us from Whangarei bright and early on a day that brought him an early morning expensive roadside chat with the boys in blue and us an unexpected burst of rain. The ban on all things non Enki had been lifted and I saw a lot of Technical Jerk equipment being loaded. Out past the Brett at 0830 and it was already obvious that even half a day of towing plastic was not going to be a comfortable pastime. So after a run through the Hole in the Rock to help the Tourist dollar we did a bit of the TJ along the coast. Brown got half a kingie and a 90cm complete model; Bendie got a kawahai and a rat. Wind doing as threatened and back at Waitangi just after noon. Bender opted not to get hammered in the Swordy Club and we drove home.

And, as they say around here, that is all.

Tweet

The RMA is stuffed

If you needed further evidence, and surely you don't, that the RMA is totally stuffed and ripe for the overhaul it is about to get then that evidence came to light yesterday.

Meridien Energy, which is owned by you and me, is paying $170,00 to DoC, which is owned by you and me, to shut up over a proposed wind farm in Central Otago. I stand up and say I am going to do something. I object to it. I transfer some money from my left hand trouser pocket to my right. I then stop objecting and go and do what I was going to do in the first place.

This country is nuts. We belly ache like mad (entirely reasonably) when the power goes off and then get all touchy feely and belly ache like mad when anything is put forward to rectify the situation. This is entirely unreasonable. Cake and eat it stuff. The instrument that has given mileage to this form of objection is the bloody Resource Management Act.

We can't dam any more rivers and we will use the RMA to to stop you doing it. Some damned endangered axolotl that no one outside of a research lab has ever seen might disappear (how can you disappear if you have never appeared in the first place). We can't have any more fossil fuel powered power stations because we can turn the RMA into a Moebius strip and use it to tell you the planet will fry in hell. Nuclear? We don't even need the RMA for that as it is in our DNA that nuclear will wreck our DNA and we'll all end up with six fingers covered in cancerous warts if we survive the inevitable holocaust when the plant blows up because we had it designed by vodka swilling nuclear scientists from 1970's Soviet Russia.

How about a nice cuddly wind farm? The RMA has a provision for visual pollution apparently and that is one of the bases for objection that is currently being used. DoC has presumably found some invertebrate that is unique to Central Otago that must be saved and Meridien is locked into appearing in Court until the end of time.

What are we left with to power our ever increasing population that does not live in caves and hunt bison with sharpened sticks? All I can think of is a perpetual motion machine as sold by that nice man who will turn all your lead into gold for you. And he'll probably run foul of the RMA as well. There is bound to be a clause in there specifically banning the Philosopher's Stone as it upsets the natural balance of the elements.

There is a way around all this and Meridien has found it. Dosh. You go round with a bag of gold (or lead) and dish it out in great (or in this case little - $170,00 hardly rates as beer money for the power generator) lumps to get people just to go away and not object to things. Hardly a novel concept the old bribe is it? The PM wants assurances that this largesse is not hush money. I wouldn't be holding your breath, John, because it is.

This, paradoxically, only reinforces the RMA. DoC, if they have half a brain (fat chance), will realise that have stumbled on a new revenue stream. Object to everything you can lay your eyes on and someone will pay you to go away.

In fact I can see this as a nice little earner for myself. Buy a bicycle, some socks to go with my sandals, some coke bottle bottom glasses and grow an inferior beard. I'm then ready to repair to the Public Library to find things to object to. The DB9 is getting ever closer.

Tweet

Waihau Bay

Bushie and Bender arrived at Obald Acres simultaneously in time for a planned departure for Whaihau Bay at 0515 on Waitangi Day. Boulder was to drive direct from Matarangi so no 'pick me up at Onehunga-it's on your way' required. Easy drive (especially if you weren't doing it) to Whakatane to provision in Countdown. Much lambasting from Bushie at the surfeit of apricots and lack of biscuits after Bendy and I arrived in the car park to awaken His Worship the Mayor from his slumbers in the Hilux cab.

Waihau Bay is a long way away, even if you start in Opotiki. It is a bloody long way if you start in Auckland (even bloody further if you start in Kaiwaka I suppose). Straight to the ramp to get the lie of the land. The ramp looked good (it was),



the pub looked good (it was)



and they appear to like big boats down these parts.



Eventually find our billet after a lack of confidence from the Pig who assured us he was not lost.



The excellent Haywards had been teed up by Tzer and we arrived to find Craig and his mates 'quiet' Tim and 'you really ought to get that thyrotoxicosis treated' Mike. Excellent house companions for a few days. Nothing left but to check out the interior of pub and contemplate that our only contact with the outside word was the Payphone outside the general store. Credit cards worked sometimes and especially if they hadn't maxed out or so someone told us. Nearest Payphone to this one is in Hick's Bay the sign on the phone booth informed us and that is twenty minutes drive away. Nearest reliable cellphone reception 100km down the road in Opotiki.

On the water first day at a respectable 0815. Now this is alright even for the crack of dawn merchants as all the rumours of put your lures in ten minutes from the ramp are absolutely true. Craig had given us the drop on tactics at Waihau and without these we would have been even more at sea (pun intended) than we were. Troll back back and forward between Orete Point and Cape Runaway first at 200m, then at 140m and then at 300m. If bored do zig zags. Now if this seems a little simplistic it is because it probably is. A look at the bathy's reveals a lot more subtlety than this and application of anything approaching Weasel grade subtlety was a little hampered by not knowing water temperature, having only a rough idea of boat speed and, most importantly, a negligible feel for the place.

Still we soldier on with 16 Black headed Vulcan in 'Skipjack ' at SC, a Lumo™ 16 Krakatoa at LC, SR a Shell Andromeda 'Bermuda' and an Ascension Shell Enki at LR. Oh yes, there was a bloody shotgun as well. Saurie Unicorn or a black/purple Zucker 5.5 depending on whether Boulder or Bushie won that particular round of the Shottie debate.





Note the Master's careful positioning that he misses nothing going on in the spread

Trolled for a few hours and it was suggested that we go and do something else. This is a quaint Waihau custom it would appear. The something else often is going ashore for a cup of tea and a lie down to return to the trolling a couple of hours later. You can do this if the ramp is ten minutes away. Our 'something else' was to be wiggly waggly, mechanical jigging, technical jerk - well there's a surprise. On our way to partake of this we witnessed Tzer trying to wreck his new boat in search of a snapper.



Right, into the wiggly waggly. I hooked and played with masterful prowess (well I don't think it was that bad - only called a pussy on the winding every minute) a kingy which I thought was a jolly strong little chap. He was going to come to the boat and then be given his freedom to grow into a big strong boy. I later find out that Bushie wanted him to meet a friend of his, a Mr Bradley. No idea what this was all about. However, all this became immaterial when my jolly strong little chap developed acute wimpness after a visit from a man in a brown suit.



I found it a little disturbing that my shortened kingfish was still moving his mouth when I bought him into the boat to recover Boulder's jig. Boulder said that if I had signed up for the rest of the fish it might have gone 18-20kg. I thought that sounded OK. Mr Large Stone then shortened two more kingfish and Bender shortened his rod. Another rather half hearted troll and back to Hayward's for Bender's chillie con carne. Call that chillie? Pffft. I had to add neat chillie from the jar to wake myself up.

We're getting the hang of this' ten minutes from the ramp stuff' by day two and saunter onto the ramp at 0915. The plan today was, well, I'm not really sure. Tzer calls in a short billed spearfish and we are at Lottin Point before you know what is happening. An hour to get there and four hours bashing into a short chop on a long rolling swell to get back. This area has serious currents. Going west back from Lottin and I thought we were never going to get past Runaway. We might have had a knock down on the shottie today (or was it yesterday). I'm not sure, Bushie is and I don't care. Get back to the delightful pub and hear that ten marlin were caught on this day and one released was estimated at 400kg. Serious animal.

Weather slated to go tits up for day three and it didn't disappoint. On the water early (0715 - hellfire) for a trip to the kingfish mark to see if we could beat the taxmen to work. No kingfish in sight. Ineffectual trolling for a couple of hours and the fishing part of the trip is over. The day remarkable for the amount of Bostik applied to the previous night's plan. Weather closes in and, although we never seemed to get that much wind (15 - 18 knots maybe) the sea gets very uncomfortable very quickly. This gives the impression of being a stretch of water with more to it than at first meets the eye.

Back to Haywards for a lounge about and I suggest we take Boulder's truck for a look over the hill at the back of the property. Serious bit of four wheel driving in search of a new, and as yet, uncaptured species leads to a spectacular view of the coast.





Boulder, I think quite sensibly, decides not to drive down the other side of the ridge to the coast - the Cape in the near distance is Cape Runaway.



Not much left now. Tzer's mates leave with their spearfish in chunks destined for a smoker



and the remaining five repair to the pub for a meal as all the Whakatane provisions had been ingested. As a culinary footnote Bender and I had a pork chop. Nothing remarkable in that you may say but this was a proper old fashioned pork chop with fat and crispy skin and a bone. Nothing like the reprocessed trampoline mat they sell in Auckland.

The promised rain has started now, we have a power cut and go to bed. Get up and there is still no power and still lots of rain - and the country at the East Cape really needs it. Drive home. All done.

Excellent four days and I couldn't give a rat's arse as to what has been going on in Toots. I am very glad that Bushie was persuaded to stick to the original plan and go to Waihau. The East Cape is a part of the world I had not been to before and I would not have missed this trip for anything. A bonus was meeting up with Tzer and his mates. Fishing.net throws up another gem of a bloke. I will definitely return. I think it will take a lot of trips to know how to fish this place properly - I felt very lost. The Weasel needs to come on a trip and be used for all his cunning. Various suggestions have been made to the Mayor as to how the Gay Munter/ Ultimate Mongrel can be made into an even meaner fighting machine and the response to some of these was even printable - but not to others.

Tweet

An unexpected hiatus

A couple of weeks back Tagit mentioned he was taking the boat 'up North' for a five day trip at the end of January and would I care to join him. 'No chance at short notice, but thanks for the offer'. Last Sunday my facial shingles was getting the better of me and I toodled into the hospital for some anti virals and the prescriber also gave me a sick note with the explicit instruction that I was NOT to go to work for ten days. On the blower to Tagit and the trip North was on.

Day 1

Mr Tagit arrives at Obald acres bright and early on Tuesday morning and transports self, one 50W, The Weasel, a lure or two, my rigging box and a few vestments to Westhaven. Spent the morning preparing the boat which for my part entailed making my fingers sore splicing new safety lanyards for the goldies. Mid afternoon sees the rest of the crew assembled - Tagit, Boulder, myself, a couple of Norms and Mark/Skippy/Oompah-Loompah. That'll do. Leave Westhaven at about 1700 for an easy steam to a bay on Great Barrier who's name I've forgotten.Prepare for the morrow with Tagit running through a few gamefishing basics for the neophytes and laying a few ground rules. Democracy is a wonderful thing on boats as well as in countries (well sort of - I'm quite keen on dictators) and it was decided that we would take (OK, kill) the first marlin and subsequent fish were to be treated properly.

Then we had the thorny problem of the strike roster. Five anglers (Dave was going to drive) and four rods. Then Boulder comes up with a genius idea - not. We would run a shotgun. Brilliant. Not only would we run a shotgun it would have a Unicorn on it. Even better. We will run a lure that doesn't catch marlin in a useless position on the boat. Top stuff. OK, Two anglers per side changing every half hour on the real rods and some poor muggins on shotgun all the time. Cunning plan time. I volunteer to take the damned shottie as it will catch nothing and I won't get landed with this marlin killing business. Off to the land of nod a contented soul.

Day 2

This is what running 46 foot gameboat is all about

And you spend a lot of time with an excellent view of the ocean with a bank of electronic gizmos twixt you and the view to help you with your mental gymnastics. You even get to use a laptop - can't go fishing without a computer.

What pelagic teleost would not want to swim around in here snacking on bits of plastic?

Still not feeling a hundie as I will find out later in the day. Off to the Barrier Knolls, Bank and the Achilles (sic) Canyon. SC BIg T African Queen re-skirted black and purple in some barn in Dairy Flat, LC 12 ProRange Enki in blue/pink/silver, SR Shell Enki in green and gold, LR Green/lumo Hydra and a bloody chromed Brass Unicorn in blue/silver over black/purple on the damned shotgun. Water warmish, a good colour but absolutely devoid of life. This to be the theme of the week. Water on the Barrier Knoll OK but a little bird (OK, Malcolm Pollard) tells me that the Bank is better. Head off over there and an easterly appears. And appears and appears. In a short time becomes very sloppy indeed even in a heavy 46 foot boat and we head back the Barrier in a nasty beam sea. Mal de mer hits Obald with a vengeance I have not known for many a year. All gone as soon as we are inside the Needles. Off to another anonymous bay where we fail to dredge any scollops and are witness to the most amazing phosphorescence I have ever seen.

Day 3

Wind all gone and off north. Spent some time in the Bream Knolls where we stopped to try and snare some hapuku. These fish do not take lures trolled on the surface. Boulder tells me it is mechanical jigging time. Now this is very odd. The rod is about three foot long, the guides are all on wonky (and you pay $900 for this piece of shocking workmanship) and the line on the reels is all different colours. Well you get this odd kit and wave it around a lot. I was told I was doing it well (well good enough not to get rubbished by Bushpig) but it caught me no fish. Boulder and Tagit got a small hapuku each and they were lined up for tea. After all this acrobatic nonsense some semblance of sanity prevailed and a Merlin in Koheru is put on LR, a 22 Krakatoa skirted black purple is put on SC and we are off to Toots via the Sugar Loaf in a much more seemly manner. Good colour water, good temp but no bait. We saw no bait for a day - well it was a day and a half now. And you spend a lot of time doing this, sitting down, watching, watching, watching and supping on the occasional ginger beer.

Coming in past the pinnacles and bang, we are on.

Out of the blue completely and its on the damned shotgun. Now this was not in the plan at all. Fight my first fish from a chair (not hard as long as Tagit goes easy on an old man in the backing down department). Pleasing amount of the aerial stuff, a bit stubborn just short of the double but no dramas. Boulder does a sterling job on the trace and then it is 'do as you had said you would' time. Lots of unpleasant stuff with baseball bats, ropes and gaffs sees me sitting next to a dead marlin. Not pleased at all but tried not to look too grumpy. In to Toots to have it weighed. If the bit earlier was not to my taste I found this bit hideous. Getting a weight was OK (ish) but having the chalk board filled and having it announced on the Tannoy I hated. I refused to have a picture taken. We motored back to our berth with all sorts of mixed feelings running through what I pass off as a brain. Small Norm did an excellent job of cutting the beast up - no waste at all. If it is dead at least it will all get eaten. I think Boulder took the bill.

Not a picture I'm proud of - but fishee is currently in a smoker in Kelston and at least she will get eaten. But putting her on crackers as an hors d'oeuvre is hardly subsistence fishing, is it?

Day 4

Out reasonably early after we drank the Toots diesel tanks dry a couple of hundred litres shy of what we wanted. Another day of good looking warmish water with no bait in it. How can such a large portion of the ocean contain no bait at all? Didn't even look like getting a strike. But still cruising past Cape Brett on a summer's Friday morning isn't all bad.

Motored into another bay whose name I can't remember this time in the Cavallis. Anchored up next to Te Arik Nui who caused no trouble. Customary roast dinner (thanks to Big Norm who cooked superbly all week) and off to beddy bye byes a little later than usual - might have even been tomorrow when we got to sleep.

Day 5

Back to Toots. Generally same as before - blue, warm water containing nothing. Got round the Brett by mid afternoon and things change dramatically. Big temperature breaks and at last some signs of life in the water. This is 250 metres off Whangamumu. Managed to get a tailer to have three rather disinterested looks at the Merlin on LR, but no cigar. The two hours in this bit of water was the only time in the whole trip I thought we were about to do something. Big Norm and the Ooompah-loompah spent the day pulling the lips off skippies.

Day 6

The good oil from Mozz via Boulder was that the action was to be had behind the Hen and Chicks. Yeah right. Passed through that and had a mechanical jig off Groper Island in the Mokes. Well Boulder, Big Norm and the Ooompah-loompah did; I had a cup of tea and watched. Bit wobbly here as was the first hour of the passage across to the mainland. Quietened down considerably before we snuck behind Kawau for a scollop dredge which produced only a handful of keepers and then it was game over and back to Z Pier.

Great few days - as always good company is the key. Thoughts? I like big-boat fishing. I like the height of eye, the shower, the big-boat motion, the tea, the height of eye, the room. I like. I will not run wind ons if I get on a big boat again - no point and I wasn't aware of what a bubble trail a swivel six foot from a lure puts out. The Weasel likes being on a big boat but would like a bit more input. I like going away for five days or so at a time. This is the first time I have been proper fishing for nearly two years and I didn't realise how much I missed it. I really enjoy gamefishing.

Tweet

Idle blogger

Well not really but I look and realise I have only posted four posts all year and we are into February. Well I'm not obliged to post things if I don't want to but I do like to keep things trundling along. Excuses? Dog ate my keyboard? World price of tin falling through the floor? None really except that this is a busy time of year for doing things like enjoying life.

My fascination with politics has waned a little as there isn't any really. The Goof is pathetic and time warped in 2007. The PM announced a whole load of things he thought were a jolly good idea to ease the pain of the recession. I understand about 1% of what he said because I am not an economics/money type bloke. Nor is the Goof. He should just shut up and let the elected government get on with things. He wants, basically, Labour's election manifesto put in place in this area. Tough. You lost. Just keep quiet and let the people who won get on with it. If they are wrong and it goes even further tits up than it appears to be at present, then so be it.

When I started this blogging business I put in the headlines (and it is still there) that it would have a bit of gamefishing in it. Well there hasn't been much as I haven't done much. Went out not at all last year due to the moving to Obald Acres but normal order has been restored and I spent five days on the briny last week. Off for another trip tomorrow and a couple more weeks planned in March.

There is a report of last weeks fun (and it was) in the next post.

Tweet

OK, where is it?

The Autocue.

That Bazza O'Bazza has the gift of the gab is undeniable. He would have me captivated announcing he was putting the cat out. Watched, listened to, got emailed, YouTubed his speech at the inauguration just an hour ago. Well, I had no choice did I? It was even on Radio Sport. Got into the vehicular transport to escape the oratory for an erudite discussion on jockstraps and there he was again bending the ear of every power pole I drove past. But how does he do it?

That it is pre-written is a given. Even the bloke who half the world thinks walks on water can't make that sort of stuff up on the hoof. He obviously has a short term memory problem as he couldn't even remember half a sentence of his oath without ballsing it up. So where is the autocue? He doesn't wear glasses so its not in the frames of those. Etched on a contact lens by some secret NASA engraving process? Projected onto the sides of his nose from a microprojector in his tie? A hologram emanating from that irritating stars and stripes brooch they all wear? Could be that as he had an extra one on his overcoat; they are normally a lounge suit appendage. One of his cute daughters (not sure if I can stand four years - or even eight - of SWMBO going gagga over those) holding up handwritten notes on the back of envelopes? He looks out into the distance when speaking so is it in sky writing? Dozens of F16s performing Gettysburgesque barrel rolls over Maryland? Got me beat.

Anyone remember what he actually said?

Tweet

Its raining

Now that I am dependent on the stuff that falls from the sky in order to clean my teeth a decent downpour is very welcome after over a fortnight without significant precipitation. I just wandered out to the barn water tank. This is the back up booster jobbo. A mere 9500 litres (a tiddler in the rural water tank scheme of things) that is connected to the main house tank (which is much more biggerer) via a sodding great subterranean pipe with a ball-cock at one end and one of Onga's finest at the other. Keeps the main tank topped up and therefore gets empty the quickest (funny that). Anyway you could hear the water cascading into its green innards with the force of Iguacu. Marvelous. That will postpone the arrival of the waterman's truck and the promise of a swap of 8000 litres for $110 for a wee while yet.

At this time of year our biggest water drain is the swimming pool. Well you can't survive the summer without one can you? Evaporation was learnt about in the fourth form and forty five years later I now realise that Mr King was right. Bit of a bugger but I don't think there is much I can do about it. I've investigated pool covers and those floating transparent liquid efforts look terrific. The fabric roll up ones, on the other hand, look hideous. Contact the floating liquid cover wallah and his first question was 'Do you want this for an infinity pool with a weir?' 'Yes' I truthfully reply. 'Well a liquid floating cover is not going to cut it as it will all flow over the edge and end up in the weir. Can I interest you in a roll up cover' ' No but thank you for telling me something I should have worked out for myself and making me look like a clueless plonker.'
So it is a life complete with wholesale evaporation for me. How can I maximise the amount of water I lose from the pool? Have a big pool. Check. Heat it so the water remains a significant amount above ambient air temperature for as large a part of the twenty four hour cycle as possible. Check. Have the water constantly moving and make sure that this is in a thin film over as large an area as possible (falling down the front wall of the weir). Check. No I reckon I have a swimming pool that has been especially designed just for the like of me who wants it to evaporate as fast as possible. However I do have a cunning plan involving the irrigation water tank up by the tractor shed. More physics; gravity is my friend.

The only downside of a morning of rain is that is happening on a Sunday. Monday would be good as I just go to work. But Sunday I can do nothing that I normally do on the Lord's day. Golf? I loathe, no hate, playing in the rain. People spend loads of dosh buying really flash wet weather rain gear. Goretex this, breathable that. What a waste of cash that could be put in the piggy bank to help the DB9 fund. I own no wet weather golf gear at all; I do make a concession to an umbrella. If it rains I don't play. If it starts to rain whilst I am playing and looks like it is going to last for more than a hole I stop and go home. Simple. So golf is out.

Fishing? The marlin are around. Well sort of. They are holding a big convention around the Aldermans and Mercuries and are currently to be found pretty much nowhere else. A couple of lost souls caught unawares staggering home from a late night down at the Squid and Pilchard have been picked up in other places but the traditional New Zealand marlin hotspots are yet to get going. They will. Even I am prepared to go fishing in the rain. After all the old piscatorial pursuit would look a bit sad without water would it not? But you do not go for a day's marlin fishing without a little preparation. Having a boat is a good start. Sold that fifteen months ago. Its replacement from the Chesapeake is still twinkle in the eye and is having a fight to the death with an Aston Martin. Failing owning a fighting machine, conning your way onto a mate's bateau works well. I have not done this with today's date specifically mentioned and so it is no fishing for me.

Property maintenance? Well last time I looked all my property is outdoors. High dusting is not in my job description. Weeding in the rain has less attractions than golfing in a downpour. I can think of no two stroke, four stroke or diesel powered agricultural machine I can usefully employ when it is pissing down. I have no holes to dig; and I wouldn't do that in the rain anyway. I've just wandered down to turn off the irrigation tank pump (transfers water from the creek to the big tank by the tractor shed) but even that was one handed as the other was taken up by the previously mentioned golf umbrella.

No I'm stuck. I'll have to do something indoors. Making the four lures bound for Frankfurt yesterday is now looking to be a hasty rush of blood. Should have saved that pleasure for this morning. I haven't packed then yet though. There's three minutes usefully employed. Go and buy 60m of garden hose from Mitre 10 Mega. I also squandered that time absorbing activity yesterday. What a foolish fellow I am being so profligate with all these indoor type things when the sun was shining. Dregs of the barrel stuff now. Read the paper. But it's raining and the paper is 370m up the drive and I refuse to get a vehicle out to go and get the paper. I could walk up there with the umbrella; or get wet. If I had a Goretex golfing rain suit I could put that on for the trek to the mailbox. But I don't so I can't. I could wear my fishing rain jacket. But that is in the barn and how do I get there? Umbrella again. Possible. Read yesterday's paper? Hell, this bad.

As soon as the tanks are full (fullish will do) it can stop bloody raining.

Tweet

Not funny

The only thing that has been streaming around what passes as a brain for the last couple of days is not funny and I don't want to write about it - so I won't.

Normal service will be resumed as and when I feel like it.

Tweet

New Year, same rubbish

It is an absolute disgrace that Keith Locke is still being paid a wage from my money. What warped system have we allowed that enables such a nutball to be a Member of Parliament. We should be taking released prisoners from Guantanamo Bay into New Zealand so that they can recover from the traumas of their imprisonment at the hands of the evil Satan in the warm caring society that is the People's Republic of Aoteoroa. What a load of bollocks. New Zealand needs time expired Guantanamo residents like it needs foot and mouth disease.

The only good things I can think of that come from the Member for Cambodia's latest outrage are 1) it matters not a jot. Since November 8th his rants have even less relevance than previously. There is no Dear Leader's ear to get into - I can just see JK getting Keith around for a cup of Earl Grey, a chocolate afghan and a bit of foreign policy advice. 2) It further expose the Greens for what they really are, watermelons. When she in the need of tooth whitening and botox departs the green veneer will have gone and the red core will be exposed for even the terminally stupid to see. It has always amazed me why so many people would waste a vote on the Greens. Even the 'I know they won't get in but they are the conscience of the nation and have the best interests of the planet at heart' crap won't wash when they come up to you collecting for renovations to the Gulags.

Tweet

Not much

I like this time of year. I was told when I first set foot in the Land of the Long White Cloud not to squander official leave during the last couple of weeks of December and first of January. Take it later in February when the weather is more settled and you have the Far North a bit more to yourself. So I am officially in the fields but don't have to do much. Turned the odd sod for a couple of hours on Monday, didn't bother fronting up yesterday. Repeat the above method for today and tomorrow and flag Friday. Who needs leave? As a bonus you get the roads to yourself - all good.

Not much going on in the world if you don't count the Middle East imploding yet again. I can raise very little enthusiasm for this. It has being going on for centuries and the only difference to my simple mind is the sophistication of the ordnance and the attire of the protaganists. Swap broadswords for smart missiles, chain mail for hoodies and that's your lot.

Anthropogenic global warming is getting a royal thrashing at the moment. This is when the northern hemisphere is having its severest winter for a very long time. Could this be the year when they start roasting oxen on the Thames at London Bridge again for the first time in centuries? The warmists would have us believe that the the current prolonged cold 'snap' is merely masking the effects of the underlying global warming. The would argue that black is white if it served their political/religous objective. However, one really gets the impression that even they realise that they are pushing it uphill. Twats. I almost, but not quite, got roused enough by Steve Mahary's (and there's a yesterday's man if ever I saw one) horror that a Parliamentary Committee will examine the scientific evidence surrounding climate change. This in the face of his (ex) government having told us that the scientific arguments are settled. Twat. But we have been there so many times that it doesn't merit further comment for reasons of tedium and repetition.

No, now is the time of year not to be diverted from the important things in life by such trivia. There is diesel to burn, ponds to be weeded (managed to fall in twice yesterday - definitely a thing to do in December as opposed to July), pool skimmer guards to be repaired, shelves to be constructed in the barn and, most importantly, lures to be made. The first two marlin of the season have been caught off the Mercuries. People have been ferreting around the back of the Poor Knights (with as yet no result) and it is getting close to time to hang the 'Gone Fishing' sign on the door.

See you next year.

Tweet

I thought we were over this

I suppose the source of the worst smells often resides just around the bend and to to weed it out you have to resort to the extra strong Harpic and the super long bendy brush but I thought all the carbon neutral crap was gone. This was released at 0400 this morning from the bowels of the earth in Wellygogs that is the centre for such rot.

The Government is moving to establish university courses in measuring the carbon footprint of primary products.
Agriculture Minister David Carter said the Government was seeking proposals from universities to establish a professorship and courses in “life-cycle science”. It would provide $1.5 million over five years.
Mr Carter said overseas consumers were increasingly demanding to know the environmental impact of their food.
“Our ‘clean green’ image is our most valuable marketing tool, and the work carried out under this initiative will underpin that image with science.”
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry is seeking proposals by February 13, with an announcement on the successful university in March. The professorship will be 95 per cent Government-funded in the first year, reducing to 25 per cent by the fifth year.
From year six, the initiative would need to be self-sufficient.

At first I thought it must have been a left over press release from the last mob. Someone was clearing out the vaults for Xmas and found it under the pile of tofu wrappers and hemp shirts. But no, David Carter is the Agriculture Minister for the good guys. This is just not bloody good enough. I didn't wreck the planet by driving the supercharged V8 to Dairy Flat school a few Saturdays back to place my tick in the correct boxes to get this sort of bollocks. I voted to stop this crap and not to continue it. I shall write to John Key this instant and get him to give Carter a right good slapping and a pull through with a mince pie.

Whilst searching for the latest background stuff on Carbon Neutrality (vomit, barff, chunder) I came across the disturbing, but not altogether surprising, fact that there is a carbon.org.nz website. It is truly awful. Featured in their home page is all sorts of carbon neutral garbage including a carbon neutral wedding. The bride's name was Melissa (I know a couple of them - they're OK) but the groom soldiers on through life with Olmec as his label. Sounds like a oil field supplies company - but him being a carbon neutral loony he almost certainly is no such thing. The nuptials were held at the family farm near the 'carbon plantation' which in my book would be a coal mine. So this bloke is marrying Melissa on a slag heap. Guests came from all over the show including the USA and El Salvador - bet they didn't come on the same plane. To 'offset' this travel guests were encouraged to plant a tree from a selection of saplings on offer. It makes me squirm just to think of such rubbish. Vol au vents filled with alfalfa , hairy armpits, recycled car tyre sandals, wind powered barby - enough all ready.

Tweet

A glimmer of hope

Slowly but surely the fog surrounding the anthropogenic global warming tosh appears to be lifting. The surest sign yet was Nick Smith (I think) declaring this morning that the days of 'carbon neutrality rhetoric' are over. No longer will New Zealand be striving to be 'world leader' in this garbage. Well thank god for that. No longer will we be a laughing stock as we struggle to attain an impossible goal. No more chasing moonbeams. It was a bit like aiming to be a chocolate teapot or a plate glass bicycle pump.

In recent days we have had the scrapping of the compulsory biofuels rubbish and the restoration of the choice on what light bulbs we buy. This last bit was reaffirmed in Parliament this afternoon by Blimp Brownlee using words like 'energy consumption' instead of the 'saving the planet' and 'leaving the earth for our children to inherit' garbage we have become used to from those sitting at the Speaker's right hand.

In the same statement as the abandonment of 'carbon neutrality' was the affirmation that we would be following the more pragmatic sort of energy saving line that that well known right winger (not) Kevin the Roach Look Alike espoused over the ditch yesterday. The Aussies are going for 5% decrease of something by a nebulous date at some point suitably way off in the distance. This in place of reducing all greenhouse gases by 99.7% come next Thursday which is what they were signed up to previously. We are 'committed' to similar such crap and are failing spectacularly at every turn - every milestone a losing post for us in the Carbon Stakes. On top of this the Orstralians have said they will only shift from this 5% bizzo to something more fruity if the rest of the world agree to something sensible to replace the Kyoto bollocks. Sensible would be stuff like not bankrupting your country just to reduce the concentration of a naturally occurring gas in the atmosphere for no reason at all; that sort of sensible. Assuming that the 'rest of the world' includes, China, India, Russia the States and other such trifling nations we are probably safe from the warmists for a while as they won't have bar of such ruinous crap.

Add to this we have Rodney Yellow Jacket saying that the science around climate change will be re-examined by the Parliamentary select Committee. Now, whether they do or not is another matter because the greener of the Committee's members won't like what they find. The world has been getting cooler for the last eight years, there is more Arctic ice than there has been for decades etc. etc. Usual stuff - facts getting in the way of a good story. But somehow I get the impression that there is an altogether more receptive audience around these days for such great dollops of pragmatism.

Speaking of Arctic Ice some warmists have been predicting that the North Pole will be ice free by 2012. Last year the amount of sea ice surrounding the pole increased as alluded to above and as of September this year there was only 2.5 million square kilometers left. Thats quite a bit of melting to get done in four years. Tell you what, it ain't going to happen.

Couldn't happen? Well no. Remember the good old days? The ninety fifties. You know; we all walked around in black and white, blokes wore trilbys to work, big cars were 25hp and did 14'6" to the gallon and no one cared because there was pots of money around and there was no such thing as man made global warming.

This picture was taken then. In March 1959 to be precise. And at the North Pole.



That big grey thing is a submarine and those six things standing on same are matelots, jolly jack tars. The stuff surrounding the submarine is the sea - all melted and floaty like. I think the white bits off the port bow are little bits of ice but look to be no more than you would float in a gin and tonic.

Anthropogenic global warming my arse.

Tweet

Buses

I have never been on a bus in New Zealand and am never likely to. Judging by my recent observations I am not alone.

Since my move to the country my journey to the fields has increased in distance and consequently, depending upon the time of day, there has been a variable increase in duration. I can get home against the flow of traffic using the motorway in under twenty minutes. If I chose to come to work at peak rush hour and eschew the 'shortcuts' of the byways through several new housing estates I can fester on the motorway for about three quarters of an hour. Sometimes it amuses me to do this. I mean what's the hurry? With modern fuel injection systems your plugs don't oil up. Sitting in a very comfortable air conditioned car with Hauraki on the Harman Kardon for a while isn't all bad. So over the last couple of days I have voluntarily sat in Auckland's traffic jam from the North Shore into town.

You crawl along at somewhere between five and twenty kilometres an hour and repeatedly wonder who would build a 'motorway' that has only two lanes. No, hang on it's three. Oops it's back to two again. You don't build motorways like this. They have four lanes - minimum. Six are good. Then you look left and there are the two more lanes you need. Empty. Very, very empty.

It's the sodding busway. Why did we let the pratts build this white elephant. In the six kilometres that I was stuck on the ersatz motorway this morning I saw three buses; two going south into town and one travelling in the opposite direction. First bus South had two passengers on it and the second nine. The bus leaving town contained the driver and no one else. So we have two lanes of tarmac stretching, what, ten kilometres that have carried eleven people in half an hour. And those eleven paying punters needed three paid drivers and spent the trip looking at a traffic jam that could be alleviated by allowing the cars to spill over onto their private piece of real eastate. East Ham.

What the nutters who put this nonsense together really wanted of course was a train. We love trains here - we'll even pay twice what they are worth to buy a trainset. The places where people get on and off the buses (or not as it would appear) are called 'Stations'. Sunnynook Station even has signs to 'Platform 1'. Choo bleeding choo. Pathetic. I bet you can buy a platform ticket and they have a speak your weight machine. A copy of the Evening Standard available at W H Smith.

This is bollocks. If you are going to do public transport do it properly. Throw the General Motors bailout cash at it and if you want a train network build a proper one. Don't build a road and then put a bus an hour on it carrying three people.

In the meantime get the bloody buses off the Northern Busway and transform the tarmac into the Northern Motorway Extension. One lane to be reserved for cars over four litres.

Tweet

And just as I was ready for bed....

......I come across this.

I had a quick glance at Whaleoil to make sure all was well in the land of right wing vitriol before retiring to my litter and I come across this lot. I am grateful to the toothed cetacean for the quotes.

Here are some extracts from the maiden speech of Dr Kennedy Graham, a new Green MP. Are you sitting down?

He starts off thus:

Mr Speaker, I greet you and my colleagues in the name of our common spirituality, humbled as we are in the sight of the divine, whatever we each perceive this to be.

Not a clue.

Then we get:

As our materialistic lifestyle expands, our ecological footprint grows ever larger. Humankind today, casting precaution to the wind, is recording an ecological overshoot beyond the planet’s carrying capacity, anthropogenically inducing climate change of unprecedented magnitude and alarming danger. We are drawing down on Earth’s natural resources, borrowing forward on the human heritage, irretrievably encroaching on our children’s right to inherit the Earth in a natural and sustainable state. It is the uniquely dubious fate of our generation to have broken the eternal promise of inter-generational justice.

Bloody hell. We know from his opening that he is as a mad as a box of frogs but there are some pearlers in here. 'The planet's carrying capacity' We live in a wheel-barrow? He's bought the anthropogenic climate change bollocks hook line and sinker - but he wouldn't get his nut cutlet at smokoe if he hadn't would he? 'Our children's right to inherit the Earth, blah, blah, blah'. Please spare me this meaningless crap. I put in the blah, blah, blah to save me having to type sustainableedingbility - oops I just have. And then he finishes this stanza with the tosh about the 'eternal promise of inter-generational justice'. I doubt even he knows what that is - I certainly don't.

Up to flying speed now. Want some more?

Sustainability is the supreme political value of the 21st century. It is not a concept of passing political expediency - a clip-on word for post-economic environmental damage. It is now the categorical imperative of personal behaviour. Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed, but henceforth subordinate to the twin principles of survival and sustainable living. The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.

A whole chunk about sustainableedingbility. For starters it is not 'the supreme political value of the 21st century'; it is a load of meaningless crap as I have been at pains to point out to anyone who will listen for ages. 'Post-economic environmental damage' That is about the fifth totally unintelligible thing he has said in the last thirty seconds. 'Individual freedoms are no longer unlicensed'. So here we go. A few minutes of bat shit mad ecobabble to get the punters softened up for the real agenda of the watermelons - you will do as you are told. 'The political rights we enjoy today are to be calibrated by the responsibility we carry for tomorrow.' I don't understand that either but judging by its juxtaposition to the previous bit I assume it means you will do as you are told.

That's one of the myriad of troubles with these jokers. The words coming out of their mouths are English but they speak Martian.

There is more but I can't be bothered - you get the idea. It all confirms that this Kennedy Graham is a) absolutely, five star, barking, bat shit mad and b)he is but one of many similar organisms that gather under the Green Party banner and c) if they are not liberally and repeatedly sprayed with Raid they have the potential to be bloody dangerous.

You and I are paying this monkey good money to live in Wellington and bother people in Parliament. We shouldn't even be wasting food on him.

Tweet

It has all changed

Well, it has hasn't it. Parliament got going yesterday and it's all different.

Well it is for some of them but the losers are trying to carry on as if nothing as happened. Goof even referred to the blokes on the other side of the debating chamber as 'the Opposition'. That's you, you dumb arse. You lost remember. That poisonous witch was given the flick by the great unwashed and that is why you are now 'Leader of the Opposition'. Now as you are so slow I will tell you what that means. You sit on the otherside of the room and bleat your usual pointless bleatings about how everything is so unfair whenever someone has a good idea. The person who has had that good idea a) ignores you or b) scores a point off you with a smartarse remark and then ignores you. You see the smartarse remark is an optional extra as the end result is the same - you are ignored. In days of yore (six weeks ago) the smartarse remarks were the whole point.

The acknowledged (not by me, I hasten to add) master of the smartarse remark was History Boy. He had the 'sharpest wit in the house'; bollocks. He was and is the nastiest, meanest, petty, mealy mouthed ratbag ever to be a history teaching reject. Horrible little smarmy wretch. He used his 'rapier wit and procedural nimble footedness' to trip up the new speaker yesterday. Cullen knows the procedural jiggery pokery backwards and he used his superior knowledge of such irrelevant twaddle to make Lockwood Smith look like a plonker. The Speaker granted someone a point of order but then let him sit down before he spoke which lost him his right to speak - or something. He of the mind of a steel trap was onto this in a flash. Cullen forced the Speaker to rule in his favour as he was right and then asked that original bloke be allowed to speak to make Lockwood Smith look like a complete dork. I didn't see it but you can just picture Cullen's ghastly, arrogant 'I'm better than you' look on his smug face as he gazes around his fawning colleagues looking for approbation. God it makes me sick just to think of it. It's like that annoying pratt at a party who laughs at his own weak joke and then looks around the room to make sure people are laughing with him. At him is more often than not the case.

This is how parliament used to be sunshine. All mouth and trousers. When you were not showing us all your rapier like wit, Cullen, what were you actually doing to earn your salary as a 'prudent' custodian of the Nation's finances? Let me see, now. Buying a nineteenth century technology trainset at over twice it's book value. Yes, you were doing that. Turning a Government surplus measured in billions into deficits measured in similar units in the space of months. Yes, you were doing that. Telling Treasury Officials to keep quiet about ACC being on the wrong side of heaven to the tune of two and half billy so you wouldn't have to put it in the PREFU. Yes, you were doing that. Coming out of the end of a sweet spot in the world's economic history with the country a financial basket case. Yes, you were doing that. What else did you do? Nothing. All you could do was come across as an arrogant, useless little prick. That is what it used to be like in your day. Which isn't today.

The new way is that the Government does things. A new Bill (as advertised very prominently during the election campaign) is passed giving small employers (no I don't mean garden gnomes) the ability to sack useless deadweights (like Cullen) in the first three months of any job. Seems fair to me. The old mob squeal like pigs. 'Oppression of the workers' is cried from the factory gates and the Labour benches (you see they are still bringing those stupid red despatch boxes with 'Labour' written on them to Parliament- so last year). 'This Bill removes all workers rights' wails Laila Harré. We don't care what you think, Commie. By the by if Laila Harré hasn't got the most irritating voice in New Zealand I don't want to meet the woman who has; fancy being married to that? 'Have you put the dustbin out?' 'Not without first putting you in it'.

STFU you losers. Men at Work. Things getting done.

We don't agree say the Maori Party. But this wasn't a nasty destructive we don't agree. They had talks with the government and agreed to disagree. Doesn't matter because ACT make up the numbers. The converse will apply at sometime in the future - tomorrow at the rate things are moving. This is how multi-party coalitions are supposed to work, surely.


The Westy Minister of Social Bizzos tells the Families Commission to can their $200,000 talkfest as being a useless waste of my money (which it is). The head honcho says this is not fair (sorry - last week's talk) as the 'Summit' (no such bloody thing - jumped up idea of their own importance) had been planned for a long time. That makes it right? The Goof says she should have consulted with Rajan Prasad before canning it. What the hell for? RP was yesterday's useless man and does not need to be consulted about anything.

The Nats said during the campaign that Herceptin would be funded for a year and now it is. I don't think this is an idea based on any medical evidence and is probably not a good idea but they said they would do it and they have. Presumably some people voted for them on the strength of their saying they were going to do it and so they have. Good old fashioned value showing through here - a man is as good as his word. Not much of that around in the last nine years.

We were promised more tax cuts and a new top rate of tax. They will be law within the week.

Also different is the Prime Minister. For starters he has a Y chromosome. We have swapped a sneering vicious duplicitous witch for an assured bloke who looks as if he knows what he is doing. He seems more sure footed by the minute. Now it may turn out that he hasn't got a bloody clue - but the current illusion, if that is what it is, is already a whole lot better than the ghastly reality of the past nine years.

Tweet