Taste

In case you hadn't noticed, Michael Jackson is no longer on the planet. This bothers me not at all. I'm sure his immediate family is much saddened by the event but that is their business and certainly none of mine. I thought his music was dreadful (especially those damned squeaks) and his dancing entertained me not at all. I thought he was a talented dancer (certainly a lot, no an awful lot, better than I could ever be) but it did nothing for me. As an aside I also find a vast majority of the MJ jokes doing the rounds on the blogs very amusing. In exceedingly poor taste for the most but, despite (because of) that, very amusing.

I expressed these views on the fishing website I waste far too much time on and from even there I got set upon by those who obviously thought that he was the best thing since lace up shoes. Their opinion and not one I agree with. Doesn't matter to me what they think of anything (including me) and it would be nice if they reciprocated. But no, they would have me fall in line with their view of the world come hell or high water. I find this very strange. Be evangelical, if you must, about about something that matters - Aston Martin, Earl Grey tea - but Michael Jackson? To my mind a talented nut ball who appealed to enough people world wide to sell 750,000,000 albums. That is quite a lot. This is a number that will almost certainly never be surpassed as the music buying habits of the world have changed forever with the advent of the iTunes Store (which I frequent on a weekly basis), other downloading emporiums and, probably more so, the online theft sites. So an awful lot of people thought he was great. Some thought he was a genius. But not me. So what?

He changed the face of popular music? Probably. By himself? Of course not. Most of the change was wrought by the expansion of his ideas by people in the industry who could see an awful lot of money in it. Moonwalking would have stayed behind closed doors if it hadn't been relentlessly pushed by record companies. And that's fine. That is how the world goes around. Has MJ changed the popular music industry for the better? An impossible question to answer as it is all a matter of taste. I think not. You may think otherwise. Justin Marshall changed the way of playing halfback for the All Blacks. For the better? Same, and I think not.

Amongst other things I have been accused of by my piscatorial virtual mates is a complete lack of taste. I was even accused of liking nothing except country music. There are some extraordinary concepts in those statements. I do not think taste is a thing you can lack. You may have what I think is bad taste or good taste but you can't have none. My taste is just that; mine. The arguments as to why it should or, more correctly, should not coincide with anyone else's are too banal to even bother with. So I won't. The concept of country music being only a gnat's whisker above nothing is amazing. It is insulting to anyone who actually does only like country music; but since when did a well placed insult go amiss? Just to demonstrate that I do have eclectic musical tastes it amused me to look at the items I have given a '5 Star' rating to in my iTunes library.

There are songs by the following artists who are arranged in alphabetical order:

Aimee Mann, Al Stewart, Alanis Morissette, Allman Brothers Band, The Animals, Arcade Fire, The Astronauts, The Belairs, Bic Runga, Billy Idol, Blondie, Blur, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Tyler, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Boz Scaggs, Bryan Ferry & Roxy Music, Carol King, The Cars, The Chantays, Cheap Trick, Chet Atkins, Chris de Burgh, Chris Rea, Coldplay, The Corrs, The Cranberries, Cream. Cyndie Lauper, David Bowie, David Grey, Derek and the Dominoes, Dick Dale, Dire Straits, Dixie Chicks, Don Henly, Don McLean, Doobie Brothers, The Doors, The Duo Tones, Dusty Springfield, The Eagles, Edwyn Collins, Electric Light Orchestra, Elton John, Elvis Costello, Enya, Eric Clapton, Fairport Convention, Fleetwood Mac, Genesis, Georgie Flame & The Blue Flames, Hayseed Dixie, Heart, The Honeycombs, Hot Club of Cowtown, Huey Lewis & The News, INXS, JJ Cale, Jack Johnson, Jackson Browne, Jason Mraz, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Armatrading, Joe Cocker, Johnny & The Hurricanes, Karine Polwart, Katy Melua, Keane, Kim Carnes, The Kinks, Kirsty MacColl, KT Tunstall, Led Zeppelin, Leon Russell, Linda Ronstadt, Liza MInelli, Lou Reed, Lynyrd Skynyrd, M People, Madness, The Mavericks, Meat Loaf, Men at Work, Metallica, The Moody Blues, Norah Jones,Paul Simon, Pet Shop Boys, Phil Collins, Pink Floyd, The Pogues, The Pointer Sisters, The Police, Polly Paulusma, The Pretenders, Queen, R.E.M, Rachel Fuller, Robbie Williams, Roberta Flack, The Rolling Stones, Roy Orbison, Sandi Thom, Scissor Sisters, Shania Twain, Sinead O'Connor, Sparks, Split Enz, Steppenwolf, Sting, Supertramp, Then Jericho, U2, Ultravox, Van Halen, Warren Zevon, The Who, Will Sargisson and ZZ Top.

You will see from this that I do like some Country Music but certainly not all and certainly not exclusively. Likewise most other genres. I double checked to to make sure there was no MJ there (wouldn't that be embarrassing?) and there isn't - even when I scan the complete iTunes 'Library'

Surely this is what personal taste is all about. I am very glad that my '5 star' list is so varied. My life would be so dull if I thought along the lines that it should be entirely populated by Kirsty MacColl. I am also glad it is my list and no one can take it from me and make me have theirs.

And I won't do that to you. Promise.

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Barn

When I killed 'Granny Herald' and moved to this Blog the idea was that I would expand my musings to more completely reflect what I was up to and not just use it as a vehicle to vent my spleen on the Labour Government, idiocy, climate change bollocks etc. etc.

During the summer I managed to chronicle my fishing (not very good, was it?) and since we mercifully booted the last government into touch I have switched away from politics a lot. NZ politics is going through a period where it bores me. We don't have much of it as we have moved to a more business model of running the country and the current mob have eschewed all the hideous ideology and social engineering that had me tearing my hair out for the last nine years. This suits my ideas of how things should be done. I have taken the opportunity to write about jeans and the weather but we need something new - and some pictures.

So perhaps the time is right to do what I intended to do a couple of years back and expand these scribblings to new places. I'll start off with a tour of my playpen.

When we moved to the country eighteen months ago I inherited the mother of all barns. It has storage space for Africa (I mean you could put a couple of small African countries in it). It also has a mezzanine floor. I planned it that I would break the vast space into five distinct areas - implement storage, general storage, general workshop, metal working area and game lure manufacturing and sales. Having done all that there is still space to restore a 30 foot boat should I decide to do that. Or maybe three or four old Jaguars. Or maybe.......

Right,oh. This is what I need to keep the property spick and span

Couldn't do without a quad and it's yard trailer which I forgot to take picture of.A 250cc two wheel drive Honda - plenty for what I require. Also in this picture there are, from left, a 50 litre spray unit powered from the quad, an Echo chainsaw with a 16" bar, a Stihl 2 stroke hedge trimmer, a Stihl electric power washer, a Stihl weed eater, a 6hp four stroke Honda powered 30" self propelled mower (bought second hand from South Head Golf Club) a Hansa chipper also with a 6hp Honda motor, an old 18"mower (which I don't use) and assorted hand tools. The Hansa is that green thing and can take branches as thick as your(well, my) forearm - marvelous fun. The majority of the mowing is not done by any of that lot but by a 2.4 meter three rotor Fieldmaster park mower towed behind a 42HP Shibaura tractor. However they live in a different shed and ca have a separate post all to themselves later.

We need an area to store a fishing rod or two.

Two Shimano Tiagra 80Ws, four 50Ws, a 16 and a TLD25 and then assorted other bits and pieces. This includes a couple of Abu 7000s which are date stamped 1978. A testament to Swedish engineering that they still function faultlessly.

Now on to the general workshop bit. Nothing special here but I like things to be neat and tidy.

Lets pop upstairs to the gamefishing lure department. This is the Legend Lures headquarters for the Southern Hemisphere. First we have the heads and a few of the bins of skirts. Stock of heads a little low at the moment and I trust this will be remedied in the next couple of weeks

At the other end of the mezzanine is the assembly/rigging area with all the bits and pieces needed for that. Stools are to ensure that customers are all nice and comfy whilst they decide how many more lures they need to purchase - all heart, me.

Back downstairs to the latest area. I have recently rekindled an interest in metal work and machining. This was extinguished in 1966 when I was told at school that in order to enter Medical School I had to take Latin. As I was fifteen I believed them and swapped the micrometer for Caesar's Gallic Wars Book 2. Idiots. I no more needed Latin to enter medical school than I needed a firm grasp of the history of music. Anyway after a brief hiatus I have taken up where I left off 43 years ago.

From right we have a 4X6 bandsaw (I'm too bloody old and lazy to be sawing 2" steel rod by hand), A Ryobi variable speed drill press with a 13mm MT2 chuck and then my pride and joy, a Myford ML7 lathe.

This is the same age as me; we were both made in 1951. It cost me the same as a brand new Chinese 'mini lathe' would have done. Compared to the product from Beeston, the Far Eastern efforts are toys. The Myford is a delight to behold and built like a proper machine tool should be. Good grief we built an Empire with stuff like this. The plastic bins on the wall are filled with all sorts of stuff that you need to assemble around you for this nonsense - measuring devices of all varieties, change gear wheels, spare chucks, tool bits, spare tool posts and on and on. There is also a rapidly increasing library of manuals, reference tables, conversion charts, spanner sizes, thread characteristics etc. I ain't going to learn this in five minutes and I've already lost 43 years.

What am I going to make with this? Dunno, but that's not really the point. Most people seem to make tools. This is very strange. I've started making some aluminium marlin lures but there are many basic and not so basic techniques that have to be mastered before you can make anything.

I cut a piece of rod to diameter and threaded it to fit a nut on Sunday - because golf was cancelled

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I'm cold

Shortest day yesterday and so the summer solstice is mercifully just around the corner; well not really but you have to look on the bright side, don't you? However my current concern is the winter branch of the Solstice family. It is bloody cold at the moment even in the North Island. And we are talking the proper North Island now and not silly places like Waiouru or Taihape which might as well be parked in Central Otago for the daft weather they go in for.

I live half an hour North of Auckland, the first wee step towards the 'winterless north', for a reason. I want, nay expect, an almost winterless existence. And I am currently being short changed. Off to the Trades Description wallah as soon as I finish in the fields. This current cold 'snap' has to be stopped. I mean golf was cancelled yesterday due to a frost delay. Our display of red hot pokers around the pond are a display of frost savaged sticks with nary a glimmer of redness to be seen anywhere. The bougainvillea outside the kitchen might survive but who can tell until about October. The avocado tree looks like it is going to go avocados up despite my religiously putting its frost cloth overcoat on at 1600 hours every afternoon. It is not good enough. Where's anthropogenic global warming when you need it? My arse. I'm just waiting for the band of tofu munching weird beards to explain this lot away as being due to my selection of motorised transport.

I sit in complete bewilderment at those who go into raptures over cold weather. 'Look at the glorious winter days we are getting' they purr. Idiots; it's bloody cold. At noon we get a 'glorious' winter's sunny day with the glass hitting 12 Celsius. That's not glorious its daft. At two in the afternoon the frost under the trees still hasn't got past the wet grass stage of evaporation. The sun sinks over the hill and the bloody ice crystals started getting up to flying speed about thirty seconds later. Glorious weather - crap. It is horrible.

But look at all the fun things you can do in the really cold weather. What for instance? Stay out of doors and die of hypothermia. More fun than a barrel of monkeys. Go for a bracing walk in the countryside. I live in the countryside and I even consider driving to the front gate to collect the paper at the moment. Chop wood for the fire. Well if there wasn't winter you wouldn't have to, would you? And Mr Novagas looks after me in that direction. Go ice skating. Presumably like on the Christmas cards with a striped scarf streaming out behind you as you glide effortlessly across a frozen pond - seconds before you fall through a thin bit to die. If you want to get to the other side of a pond walk round the edge as you would in summer. Go ice fishing. Now this is seriously stupid. Fishing is done aboard 43 foot game boats wearing shorts and tee shirts hunting down fish that can grow to half a ton not sitting on a camp stool dressed like the Michelin man hoping fish that are measured in beasts per pound can be coaxed through your hole in the ice. Oh, and you might die whilst doing this because sitting still for protracted periods in cold weather leads to you dying from hypothermia. I read it in a book. Go for a drive. More death - black ice and the such. That is if your car will start because it also hates the cold.

Skiing. Ah yes, skiing. The single most stupid way of spending time ever invented. You spend a shed load of cash to buy really expensive and awful looking clothes and other skiing paraphernalia. You then either fly somewhere at air fares double what they would be in February or kill yourself driving there 'cos the roads are death traps courtesy of ice - black or any other shade you care to mention. You arrive at your destination and get drunk. This appears to be mandatory. And you do this by drinking stuff you wouldn't clean the drains with; all awash with cloves (eh?) and the like. Wake up with a splitting head and repair to the piste (a different sort from last night). Pay more of the dwindling pile of cash to be dragged up to the top of a hill by piece of civil engineering imported from Switzerland that if it breaks will kill you. You then try to get to the bottom of the same hill on your skis/board/bum with out breaking any bones, getting wet, cold or sunburnt. It is not possible to reach your starting altitude without ticking at least three of the above boxes. Pay more money to get on the Swiss death trap one more time and repeat until it gets dark at about 1600 hours when you should be putting frost cloth on the avocados not messing about trying to kill yourself up a mountain. Then you go and get drunk again. Do this for as many days as your money lasts and go home to tell everyone what a wonderful time you had. Terrific.

I think I'll stay at home, indoors, spending my dosh on LPG and sticking matchsticks under my fingernails. Winter sucks big time and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.

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Jeans

The single most useful addition to the fashion panoply of fame in the history of the universe is the mighty pair of jeans. Supplanting doublets, frock coats, lederhosen (especially lederhosen), dinner jackets, woolly jumpers and even tee shirts the denim jean reigns supreme. In the seventies I thought a pair of Stubbies came close but how naff do they look 11% of the way through the twenty first century? Jeans are the business; they were decades ago and they still are now. I would wear a pair of jeans as my only form of trousering for everything if I could. Dress codes on golf courses and at work dictate that I can't. Well they are daft but the work bit can be fudged at the weekends. Restaurants that don't allow jeans don't get my custom - up themselves plonkers.

I bought my first pair of jeans in 1967, I think. I know I bought them from Lichtenfields in Kingston upon Thames (opposite Bentalls where Eric Clapton and I used to buy our records); a gentlemen's outfitters that has long since bitten the dust. I would like to think there was considerable parental opposition to such a radical purchase but I don't think I was given that rebellious satisfaction. In 1967 I bought a pair of Levis 501s; I have never bought anything else. When the Dave Clark Five were the popular music ensemble of the moment the only choice one had in the jeans department was Levis or Wranglers. Ford or Holden. Shimano or Penn. Levis for me.

It used to be the only choosing you had to do. Walk into a shop and say 'A pair of Levis, please', part with the cash and walk out with the dark blue vestments. Then it started getting a bit harder. Lee Cooper, Lee and other Johnny Come Latelys arrived. No problem. 'A pair of Levis, please', part with the cash......... Then it got really hard when Levis came out with different models. 504, 604, (the 604 was a trolley bus when The Dave Clark Five were in their pomp) 735 or something. These numbers represented different styles. There's baggy, tight (and I mean have them sewn onto your legs tight) even, I think, flared. A temporary hiccough in the jean buying habits but as soon as you grasped the fact that real jeans with straight legs and button flies were called Levis 501s you were right. So it became 'A pair of Levis 501s please', part with the cash........

Jeans are comfy; there is no other sort of trousering that is even worth considering for a long plane journey (except perhaps track suit bottoms but pullease). Jeans are hard wearing. I've never taken a pair of mine to Magdeburg and tried to pull them apart with teams of horses but they are, in my experience, indestructible until they finally fall apart. In fact this has never happened to me as I have never been patient enough to wait the fifteen years of daily use until this happens. Jeans look good. I change mine after three or four years when they start to look a bit tatty. Now here is the problem. My idea of tatty does not, apparently, coincide with Levi Strauss's idea of tatty.

Tatty for me is when they bottom hem starts fraying because you've been intermittently walking on it for a couple of years. Tatty is when they fade so much and selectively that the front of the thighs is a different colour and you can see the outline of your wallet in your left hand pocket even when your wallet is on the kitchen table. Tatty is when the tops of the pockets start fraying.

Now I knew that the youth of today (vide supra Lichtenfields circa 1967) thinks all these tattyness indices are desirable and you can now buy jeans that look like this from 'new'. You shell out one hundred and sixty slides for a pair of faded, fraying trousers. If you pay extra you can even buy them with holes in the knees. Well don't you try that sort of bollocks with me.

But they did. I went into 'Just Jeans' yesterday (golf was cancelled for precipitation reasons) a new pair of 501s to purchase. This was a grave error. They weren't playing the Dave Clark Five for openers. The bird selling the trou had more metallurgy on display than a well stocked engineering shop. No matter. 'A pair of Levis 501s please'. I was handed a pair of blotchily faded, frayed replicas. 'No, not these. Real, brand new ones'. 'These are what we sell these days' was the reposte. I could see her just managing to repress the 'Grandad' suffix. Well not to me you don't. I walk out in the highest of high dudgeons.

Sat down in the middle of the mall and looked around for a trouser counsellor. The habits of forty years, a central pillar of my existence shattered by a spotty, pierced slip of a girl. What was I to do? My wife suggested a pragmatic but difficult solution. Buy another brand. No, not possible. I can't go to the dark side. But I did.

New jeans are a pair of Rodd & Gunns. Made in China. Look OK; no look good, but I didn't say that. Sort of comfortable; well very comfortable, but I didn't say that. I am a shattered man, though.

I'm going to Europe in a couple of months. I think I'll drop into Magdeburg and hire a few horses for half an hour.

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Bag of feijoas - $2, thirty five points - $170

Of course roadside commerce is not a peculiarly New Zealand pastime but it is certainly well developed here. In the summer I will seldom pass the opportunity to pick up a bag of Kerikeri oranges for a few dollars to be placed in the honesty box. And that box is well named as I wouldn't dream of just nicking the fruit.

Last night I decided to branch out in my range of roadside purchases and eschew fruit and veg for some demerit points. I ended up buying more than I would had I been purchasing from a shop but isn't that always the way with impulse buys? This is the first time that seeing the red and blue strobe lights in the rear view mirror has resulted in a purchase, believe it or not. I have been snapped by a stationary speed camera just the once but this is my first purchase from a mobile purveyor of goods. Several years ago a salesman flagged me down but after a discussion on the merits of his van vs my car I decided not to buy; or more correctly he decided not to sell.

Last night a little different. I got a senior salesman (as befitting my station in life) with three stripes on his arm. Very impressive. 72 kph in a 50kph zone. This on a Sunday night when the only other car on the road apart from myself was the salesman's unmarked truck. We had the pleasantries about my car. 'What sort of fuel consumption do you get from this?' and I thought a purchase was unlikely. But when he asked for my drivers license and retired to his office with it a financial transaction in return for product was looking inevitable. He invited me to sit in the Jag whilst he completed the paperwork 'As you will be warmer'. What a considerate salesman. He returned from his office bearing the goods. A meek protestation that I didn't really want the jumbo pack of points was obviously going to be a waste of time so I tamely promised to settle the bill within the required twenty eight days.

'Could I please count to five?' 'I'll do pi to nine decimal places if you like' This, however, had nothing to do with my grasp of mathematics and everything to do with my consumption of the demon drink. We sailed through that and with a cheery (I am entirely serious) 'Enjoy the rest of your evening' the transaction was over.

I had read that most traffic policing in New Zealand has nothing to do with road safety and was just a revenue gathering exercise. I now know this to be true. My getting done for 22kph over the speed limit for a distance of probably fifty metres (and I'm not just saying this, that is the maximum distance it could have been from turning out of a side road to having to slow for a roundabout) contributed to road safety not a jot. I'm not going to argue that a 50kph limit is absurd for most roads; which it is - I'm not even sure my car is capable of being driven so slowly. Have you tried to drive anywhere not going above 50kph? It's virtually impossible. If I drove from Albany to Papakura on suburban streets at or below the legal speed limit I'd have grown a beard by the time I arrived. I'm not really going to whinge about getting a speeding ticket although I would prefer not to have bothered. I mean one per fourteen years is hardly a burden, is it? The thing that struck me, however, is that there is no pretence that this is anything but a business transaction. The customer service skills were all there. Not once did I get any spiel about road safety. The ticket is made out like a bill. There are boxes for 'Offence 1, Offence 2 and Offence 3' with a 'Total' box at the bottom. Just like 'Bread, Milk and Weetbix' as per Woolworths.

I wonder if I can get Airpoints when I pay.

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Is no one immune?

When I entered my chosen profession, far too many years ago now, I did so in full expectation that the number of complete plonkers I would meet on my side of the fence would be kept to a minimum. For nigh on forty years this expectation has been fulfilled. I've come across, in general, very few total tossers. A few irritating sods, the odd thicko (mercifully not many of these which is a good thing considering the line of work I'm in), an uncoordinated being who couldn't tie his shoe laces let alone remove an appendix in a timely and safe fashion or two (these can easily be shifted off into paediatric virology or something equally useless and harmless) but by and large the medical profession is populated by reasonably intelligent people who think in straight lines and are personable to boot.

I am therefore unsure whether I am grateful or not to Mr Rockhopper. Mr R is a blast from the past who used to read this nonsense in it's previous life as 'Granny Herald' on fishing.net.nz He sent me a link to a story from the Times of London that blows all the above out of the water.

Any article that starts off 'Doctors are neglecting their duty by staying silent on the issue of climate change and its implications for public health, a leading doctor warns.' gets my attention and a vomit bowl. There are doctors who are complete and utter imbecilic wankers after all. The illusions of youth shattered by twenty four words. It gets worse by the line. The tosser who is quoted is one Sir Muir Gray. How can you take anything seriously that is the opinion of someone named after an anchor winch? He's already right up there with Alamein Kopu and a bloke I knew called Remy who really was named after a bottle of cognac. This dement used to be 'Chief Knowledge Officer for the National Health Service'. What the bloody hell is a 'knowledge officer'? And why do you have to have two or more so there is a chief one? No wonder the NHS is in dire straits if they are spending money on 'knowledge officers'. Anyway, Sir Anchor Winch is the full monty when it comes to climate change bollocks.

Before we delve further into this crap we'll have a go at the first sentence shall we? This wally is telling me that I'm neglecting my duty. To whom, pray tell? If you are suggesting the object of my neglect is my patients I'll rearrange your face for you with a Louisville Slugger. Wait a minute he's not talking to me after all as I am not 'staying silent'. I am shouting from the rooftops 'Anthropogenic global warming is a load of lefty political bollocks'. Got that, Sir Capstan? It's crap. Read my lips. Rubbish, tosh. bullshit. Plain enough yet?

OK, we've got that out of the way. What other pearls of wisdom (sic) does the foredeck appendage have for us? He continues thus: “doctors are effectively silent on the health threat that will come to define our age”. We've done the first bit. The second bit is beyond belief. Having read it many times I still cannot believe that it comes from the mind of a bloke who has a fully registrable medical degree. Climate change is a 'health threat'? Long bows don't even get close to it. Multi antibiotic resistant bacteria sprayed all over immunocompromised people I'd grant the appellation 'health threat' but not a warm summer and a shortened ski season. Pink Floyd (or even Sir Donald Bradman) define an age but never in a million years will a load of political hijacking of bogus science do so.

We move on - hellfire this is a struggle. 'Sir Running Backstay's warning follows the findings of a climate change commission from University College London, published in The Lancet, which identified a raft of public health implications that will come with global warming including patterns of disease and mortality, food security, water and sanitation and extreme events.' If we've been through the total insanity of yet another commission once we've been through it a hundred times, but what the hell is it doing getting published in the Lancet? This weekly journal is not peer reviewed (obviously not by me) but has had the reputation of being a very high standard medical newspaper. Their article selection is done by a small number of 'wise men' and The Lancet is where things get published in short order because they bypass the lengthy (months/years) peer review process. Well, the wise men must have taken to meeting in the boozer. This crap has no place in a reputable medical journal.

The Times reports this inclusion into the Lancet 'a call to arms' and it comes on the eve of a Nobel Laureates Symposium to be held in London to which the newspaper is a 'media partner'; surprise, surprise. It has been well known for years the the main stream media has been worshipping at the Temple of Albert but now The Thunderer is trying to drag me in with them. I won't come, I tell you.

Can you imagine the levels of nausea the Nobel Laureates Symposium could generate? Twenty three senile winners of gongs for literature, mathematics, economics, physiology etc discussing things they know nothing about. All being reported in glowing and totally non critical terms by a fawning press as 'fact', 'consensus', 'learned opinion' and on and on for ever.

A sad day. I thought the medical profession was smart enough to steer clear of all this but it looks as though, as a group, we have fallen. But rest assured that in a far flung corner of the Empire I'll stay true to commonsense.

Sir Starboard Genoa Sheet, you are a disgrace to our profession.

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Support

The English language is a wondrous thing and I have long been fascinated by the uses some words get hijacked into. We are not talking nonsense new age made up words here; spokesperson for example. No, words that have morphed over time and not over centuries. In my lifetime, my adult lifetime even, 'gay' has been transformed. As an innocent youth in the fifties and sixties I often had gay times. This was going to the beach with Mum and Dad, eating ice creams and winning a goldfish at Verwood carnival. I now never use the word gay for anything - wouldn't dare.

The word that has fascinated me for ever, though, is 'support'.

SUPPORT

verb [trans]
1 bear all or part of the weight of; hold up : the dome was supported by a hundred white columns.
• produce enough food and water for; be capable of sustaining : the land had lost its capacity to support life.
• be capable of fulfilling (a role) adequately : tutors gain practical experience that helps them support their tutoring role.
• endure; tolerate : at work during the day I could support the grief.
2 give assistance to, esp. financially; enable to function or act : the government gives $2.5 billion a year to support the activities of the voluntary sector.
• provide with a home and the necessities of life : my main concern was to support my family.
• give comfort and emotional help to : I like to visit her to support her.
• approve of and encourage : the proposal was supported by many delegates.
• suggest the truth of; corroborate : the studies support our findings.
• be actively interested in and concerned for the success of (a particular sports team).
• [as adj. ] ( supporting) (of an actor or a role) important in a play or film but subordinate to the leading parts.
• (of a pop or rock group or performer) function as a secondary act to (another) at a concert.
3 Computing (of a computer or operating system) allow the use or operation of (a program, language, or device) : the new versions do not support the graphical user interface standard.
noun
1 a thing that bears the weight of something or keeps it upright : the best support for a camera is a tripod.
• the action or state of bearing the weight of something or someone or of being so supported : she clutched the sideboard for support.
2 material assistance : he urged that military support be sent to protect humanitarian convoys | [as adj. ] support staff.
• comfort and emotional help offered to someone in distress : she's been through a bad time and needs our support.
• approval and encouragement : the policies of reform enjoy widespread support.
• a secondary act at a pop or rock concert.
• technical help given to the user of a computer or other product.
PHRASES
in support of giving assistance to : air operations in support of the land forces. • showing approval of : the paper printed many letters in support of the government. • attempting to promote or obtain : a strike in support of an 8.5% pay raise.
DERIVATIVES
supportability |səˌpôrtəˈbilitē| |səˈpɔrdəˈbɪlədi| noun
supportable |səˈpɔrdəbəl| adjective
ORIGIN Middle English (originally in the sense [tolerate, put up with] ): from Old French supporter, from Latin supportare, from sub- ‘from below’ + portare ‘carry.’

All good dictionary stuff and all true. But it is no longer used like that. It has come to have its biggest use in the advertising industry. More of this in a while. First a brief history of Obald and support. The earliest use of it that struck me as a bit weird was when I first came across the athletic support. We are in noun territory here. Is the humble jock strap a secondary act at a rock or pop concert? Hardly. Does it act in a tripod like way to support the camera one keeps in ones nether regions? I think not. Emotional support in times of athletic distress? Do you wrap it around an ailing computer? Athletic support - a load of tosh. And even in these early days it is advertsing tosh. An Acme Athletic Support is much morre likely to get you to part with 3/6 of hard earned dosh than a mere jock strap, is it not?

The next use of support that got on my goat and still makes me squirm is the support person. If one of the victim class is about to go through a trauma in his life - paying the rent out of his own money for example, returning an overdue library book, this sort of thing - he is entitled to take a support person with him. What a load of crap. These people don't have friends, relatives or even mates - they have to have 'support people'. These are the same wallies who have caregivers instead of parents. Not much advertising here I'll grant you but this leads us onto Support's latest role in his lexicographical life.

We are urged at every turn to buy quackery products that support things that don't need support and are in most part totally unable to receive any. 'One simple pill of rat's foreskin and goat dropping extract is all you need to support your immune system' Eh? Now I know a bit about the human immune system. I'm not a clinical immunologist I'll grant you but I can guarantee I know an awful lot more than the tosser who tries to sell me snakeoil on the box before the weather. The immune system cannot be 'supported' by anything let alone the ground up bits of obscure shrubs no one has ever heard of. Pine bark? Jolly good to make a pine tree feel all warm and comfy but not much use if you are not a pine cone. I won't be using any bits of pine tree to support anything about my person thank you very much. Another thing I was never told needed any supporting during my time at medical school was 'joint health'. Apparently all you need to get this little number into spiffo form is to mince up a shark or two and make them into 'easy to swallow capsules'. What capsule that isn't the size of a loaf of bread isn't easy to swallow, pray tell? What a load of bollocks.

People who would have you support various unsupportable bits of your anatomy and physiology also tend to be very big on wellness. They talk down to you in smooth, no smarmy, voices and point out that their macerated lizard eyelid juice is clinically proven without giving any evidence of same. They respect things a lot and they make me vomit.

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This bridge nonsense

And that is what it is, nonsense. If you are to be really anal about the whole thing it is illegal nonsense. The Cyclonazis are nuts. They want to cycle over the bridge because it is there. Their claims that there is a great demand for such a practice is just crap.

A few years back there was a shuttle bus across the Auckland Harbour Bridge that, I think, had a trailer attached in which to place your velocipede for the trip over the briny. You cycled up to the bus place, paid a nominal charge, put your bike in the trailer, hopped on the nice comfy bus, got transported over the bridge, collected your steed from the trailer and pedaled off into the sunset. Luverly. Well luverly if that's what you are into. I personally think bicycles make good television for three weeks in July if they are all in France but otherwise are as much use as a chocolate wristwatch. Why the hell did man invent the internal combustion engine for Pete's sake. Anyway some enterprising sort ran this service for the nutters who wanted to take their pushbikes from Herne Bay to Birkenhead or whatever. This service no longer exists. Why, you may ask? Because there was no demand for it, that's why. All these people who want to commute to Auckland's CBD from the North Shore don't bloody well exist.

So these Cyclists want to cycle over the bridge for recreation only. 'We have rights' they bleat. Bollocks you do when you want to cycle up the motorway. For that's what the bridge is. It is a section of motorway; no more and no less. You don't get 'Right's Groups' hankering after pedaling from Greenlane to Penrose, do you? They have as much 'right' to cycle over the bridge as a bloke in a microlight has to fly from Auckland Airport without Air Traffic Control clearance and land in Victoria Park. You just don't do it.

OK, it's unnecessary, illegal, and it is also bloody dangerous. I don't much care about it being dangerous to cyclists but it is. It gets jolly windy up on the bridge. I have felt the buffeting in a couple of tons of aerodynamic Jaguar on occasion and I shudder to think what it would be like on a push bike. The last thing we need is having to avoid cyclists being blown all over the show in the already parlously narrow bridge lanes. If I don't care about it being dangerous to cyclists I do care about it being dangerous to me. I care even more about it being dangerous to my vastly overpowered supercharged motorized transport. I mean, what if they scratch the paint?

Unnecessary, illegal, dangerous - not looking too flash thus far, is it? How about we add in a touch of expensive; no make that bloody expensive. $42 mil to add a cycle lane. And who is going to pay for this? The lycra clad Sunday jauntists? The one weird beard commuting to his job in the Public Library in the City. No, it will be funded from the tax payer's dollar. No it bloody well won't.

This sort of crap has to be stopped. Vocal minority groups are given far too much leeway in the Land of the Long White Equal Rights. Next time a bunch of nutters demands to be allowed to hot air balloon over the city to save the whale they should be a) told to piss off and then b) be locked up for a while. How big a while? Who cares? Leave the world to real people who want to get on with life in a sensible twenty first century way. And for openers leave the motorways to motors - preferably bloody big ones.

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Not much

I had occasion to spend some time with both my daughters over the last couple of days. The elder actually reads this stuff (the younger has more sense and I don't think can be bothered) and she commented on the recent lack of content. What is behind this - lost interest? Too busy? No to both.

There is great danger of becoming a one trick pony. One can only bleat so much about the lunacy of the new religion of anthropogenic global warming even though they are still attracting congregation in droves. As opined before the opportunities to ridicule the ideas of a left wing administration disappear when you haven't got one. Their stupid, stupid ideas look even more so when they are little more than pained bleatings from outside the tent. How much ridicule can you poke at bureaucrats for their 'Jobsworth' view of the world before it becomes boring? You may argue that the answer to that one is 'an infinite amount' but that too becomes tedious. Bureaucrats are for the most part mindless automatons functioning under rules of the stupid. It is their masters who really deserve our opprobrium and ridicule. At the moment the role of being a curmudgeon is a bit dull and samey.

The Left's pathetic whining over the appointment of a successful woman to a position they disapprove of is just that - pathetic. The only women they approve of are ugly, dress in paper bags and strictly adhere to nonsense party dogma in the face of commonsense and logic. Any person without a Y chromosome who deviates from the formula is assumed to have '666' tattooed on every cell of their being until proven otherwise. Thus Mrs Rankin (or whatever Mrs she is this week) is the devil incarnate. Thus so is Melissa Lee. Reasonably easy on the eye, wears clothes not bought from an Op Shop and has sensible ideas. Like there are some (not all) people who call South Auckland home who do not earn a crust by running merchant banks but by robbing them. This apparently is insulting. To whom, pray tell? It's the truth. Just as it is true that there will be some people who live in St Heliers who are not beyond a spot of petty (or grand) larceny. She apparently 'offends' some people. Well, so bloody what. The wingeing in response to her refreshing ability to tell it like it is gets up my nose. So what? I expect no one to give a big rat's backside whether I am offended or not.

The idea that branding all the denizens of a geographical area with one behavioural brush is absurd. Rotorua. What of people who live there? Fine upstanding citizens? Patched members of gangs the lot of them? Neither true of course. But Rotorua would appear to be the recent home of a couple who are into fraud in a big way. They are probably holed up in Honduras as I type and will soon be in need of Warren Zevon's solution to all problems - lawyers, guns and money; although they would appear to already have a good supply of the latter courtesy of a typo at Westpac. How much wold you need to see erroneously appear in your bank account before you did a runner? However, this rather amusing episode does not make every citizen of Rotorua a fraudster. As an aside, in true Butch Cassidy mode, we all hope they get away with it, don't we? They won't of course as there is always some spoilsport in a white hat.

No, finding fresh ideas for this blog is a bit hard at the moment. It will pass, I'm sure.

And whilst we are talking of repetition, who would ever want to live in Wellington? The weather is dire even on a 'fine' day, the roads are awful, the building stock is old and decrepit........

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Pragmatism

I haven't seen fit to besmirch the blogosphere with my musings for a week or so. As I opined in the second week of November it has got a lot less easy to be a grumpy old sod since we gained a mainly sensible pragmatic government. Other things have been happening to keep me occupied over the last three weeks as well, but maybe more of that later.

But it is one and half billy's worth of pragmatism that has dragged me back to the keyboard this evening. If you drive from Auckland airport to go pretty much anywhere north of Mangere you speed along a jolly spiffy motorway for about ten minutes and are then spat out in to leafy Epsom. It's a joke and has been for ever. The 'motorway' (sic) just stops in the middle of nowhere. That particular nowhere is on the periphery of the Mount Albert constituency which, for those of short memories, was the recent fiefdom of she who used to have to be obeyed. The hideous witch had decreed that the only way the ersatz motorway was going to link up with anything remotely useful in the way of a road was through a deep tunnel. NIMBY to the max. No roads going through my back garden. Now I'm no civil engineer but deep road tunnels don't come free with a packet of Weetbix. Proper roads (how would we know; New Zealand has none, but no matter) are not cheap but sodding great tunnels are eye wateringly expensive.

Well in a previous time (i.e. last year) that mattered not at all. The party that spent money that wasn't their's like a drunken sailor couldn't have given rat's arse what a tunnel cost as long as it kept motor vehicles out of Helen's petunias. Mercifully along comes the pragmatic new Minister of Transport and says 'Sod a tunnel at $3 billion for a game of soldiers, you can have road for half that and like it.' About bloody time too. We can't afford a tunnel. And that's pretty much it. But not for those cretins time warped in the past. 'We will have to demolish 200 houses' Tough. 'And a school' Tough. 'And some valuable green space'. Bollocks - and tough. 'It is ripping the heart out of the community' Well, its not and tough. On the Six O'clock News they even had a year five kid (that would make him ten or so?) giving his reasons as to why an above ground road was a bad idea. I'm surprised he wasn't asked his opinion on the cause of cancer or the meaning of life; they would have been just as relevant. Oh by the way his Mum was a leader of the 'Tunnel or Nothing Campaign' What a surprise. Well she ain't going to get a tunnel so she had better sod off to where she can have nothing. People like her are a waste of food and certainly shouldn't be allowed to breed.

Mount Albert is a dump and a few kilometres of black top instead of some ancient and crappy housing stock is marked improvement for the area. I sincerely hope this refreshing wave of pragmatism continues and grows to tsunami proportions. We need more of this. Forget all this consultation bollocks. 'You live in some scungy housing in the way of a nice shiny new road. Well, here's market value for your hovel. Now bugger off and go and live somewhere else.' Love it. And what are the yesterday's men of the Labour Party saying on all this? They are going to fight tooth and nail to keep the Wicked Witch's damned burrow. They are prepared to spend one and a half billion of my money for nothing. They say that by ditching the tunnel National are kissing good by to the by election. And National quite rightly don't give a fat rat's backside. Labour are happy to buy a by election (or Buy Election as ACT so correctly puts it) and National are happy to save money and sacrifice a useless seat.

One of the bylines of this Blog is pragmatism and six months down the track I am happy that we are getting a nice dose of it. A couple of hundred civil servants got the 'Don't come Monday' letter today. My only beef with this is that it wasn't a couple of thousand. Chrisitine Rankin has been appointed to the Families Commission. I'm not sure that the Commission is needed at all (and nor is Mrs Rankin) but the appointment has royally pissed off Sue Bradford so it was a useful move just for that reason alone. SWMBO has been shipped off to the other side of the world. Short of the moon I can think of nowhere further away. History Boy has been given the flick in all sorts of creative ways. He can't be feeling all that comfy being employed by The Rich Prick. Good, the less comfy the better.

No, I'm happy enough that the country is in much safer hands than it has been for nearly a decade.

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Useless things we don't need

This could well turn out to be the first couple of items in a long running series. I am not referring to chocolate teapots or plate glass bicycle pumps here but things governmental and/or bureaucratic. Two standout candidates today.

The first is a Gender and Disaster Risk Reduction Conference. Now you may well be a little mystified as to what this seemingly random collection of perfectly sound words from the English Language represents. I was and I promise you I am not making it up. This talkfest is being held in China and is focussing on why womens get wasted more when a volcano erupts or a tsunami wafts down the high street. I can't be bothered trying to follow the spurious arguments put forward by the hairy legged ones as to why a couple of cubic kilometres of water are sexist when they drown females wholesale but all is well in the world when a hundred blokes get wasted down the boozer.

People who attend this sort of nonsense junket (sounds more like punishment to me) are obviously completely bonkers. They've had one before and came up with some communiques at the end - you've got to do that to be taken seriously, you see; although I would have thought this lot were pushing it up hill even if they decided that the sun would rise in the East tomorrow. Anyway, last time out they decided this: We should refrain from funding of extractive industries, such as mining, logging and oil and natural gas extractions that exacerbate climate change, poverty and gender inequality.

Got that? No more open cast mines or logging trucks as they cause gender inequality. I bet they also cause a loss of wellness and a lack of self esteem. If I see any wellness or self esteem walking down the street I'm going to set about them with a baseball bat. Bat shit mad bollocks.

Who is paying for this crap? I see the New Zealand representative is that bizarrely named woman Steve Chadwick. I think in the mercifully departed Labour Government she was Minister of Women's Affairs. So as she is an ex-minister I assume (and sincerely hope) that her seat up the front of the plane is not coming out of my taxes. Probably got some more womens paying for her; this sort of person never pays for themselves.

So there's three useless things we don't need right there; wellness, self esteem and sexist bushfires.

Here's a fourth. The Geography Board. These are the clowns who are the final arbiter of the mind numbingly stupid furore as to whether Wanganui should be spelled with an 'h' or not. Who gives a rat's arse? The latest knotty problem that has them stroking their bearded chins (and that's just the women) is the stunning realisation by someone who needs to get out more that the North Island and South Island of New Zealand have never had those appellations officially Gazetted. Now I know that comes a shock and will change the course of your life but I'm afraid there is no way to dress up this truly horrifying truth. It just has to be told like it is. The North Island is the North Island but not officially.

What to do? Bugger all of course as it doesn't matter. But that is not the correct answer as we have a Geography Board to keep in hors d'ouevres and $10 Chardonnay. The Board is made up of prominent academics (oxymoron) and leading Maori (quelle surprise) and they have decided that they will consult widely (talk to a lot of fat people) so as to be fair (right up there with wellness in my hate concept list) and then will probably end up calling the North Island 'The North Island' and the South Island 'The South Island'. People get paid money you can exchange for expensive overpowered motor cars to do this to me.

But they haven't finished. They will consult maori so as we can show our maturity as a society and have alternative indigenous names for our two main land masses. The Chairperson of the Geography Board told me this on the electric wireless. The Chairperson is a real bloke (not just a wummin with a blokes name like the Chadwick android) but in the daft world he inhabits cannot bring himself to call himself a Chairman. These moonbats really think that after they have had their consultations and delivered the new unpronounceable and easily forgettable new names to someone in a flax basket people will actually use them. Dream on.

What's next on their agenda? Will they find that the sea hasn't officially been called 'The Sea'? There's another eighteen months of consultation. That mountain might only be a hill. Shouldn't that cliff really be an escarpment and how dare that stream call itself a river?

I thought I and millions of others voted to get rid of all this crap on the first Saturday of November last year.

Rodney, refill the chainsaw and make sure you have lots of bar oil available because you have some very thick forests to fell - and I don't give a monkeys as to the amount of gender inequality you generate.

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The latest good thing

The early hallmark of our new government is that they have (mainly) good ideas and then just get on and do them. The old days of endless rounds of pointless 'consultation' appear to have been quite rightly consigned to the bin. Pragmatism if not in spades at least in hearts.

The latest good idea is taking a chainsaw to the way Auckland is run. The current seven or nine (too many anyway) councils are to be replaced by one and there will be a hatful of local boards with very limited powers. It is being dubbed Auckland Super City. This is nonsense, of course. The population of Auckland is a tad over a million which by global standards hardly makes it a Super Hamlet. London has a population of around ten million and Bonking Boris handles that very nicely, thank you very much.

One Lord Mayor (or whatever he is to be called) with the power to do things off his own bat is just the ticket. Need a new road? Have a look in the cocoa tin. There is enough folding varieties for a new road so I'll build it. Sod consulting anyone. Road goes through a stand of native trees? Tough; out with the Husqvarna. Road goes through Mount Albert? Well that was the idea in the first place. Road goes through some blokes business premises? Give him some dosh, tell him to move and then shut the fuck up. I love it.

Of course coteries of people who have spent their life sucking on the public tit under the old way of doing things are 'outraged'. There will not be enough consultation. Well that's the idea, dickhead. Things will get done and not just talked about. The jokers on the 'Boards', those with limited power, will soon found out what 'limited power' means. They can talk all they like and not get in the way of the real people actually doing things. There will no specific Maori seats. Well that's the idea, dickhead. By the by, there will be no specific Chinese, Somali or Croation seats either in this multi and not bicultural city. The Union for Council workers or somesuch says there is anxiety that jobs will be lost. Well that's the idea, dickhead. You should only have anxiety over things that are uncertain. That people who have useless and mainly duplicated jobs across the city are going to lose them is not uncertain at all. It is bloody definite. That is the idea, dickhead. There is no point trimming down a humongous and unnecessary bureaucracy and keeping all the jobs, is there.

I just hope they have the balls to do it properly.

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Barking

Although there are still marlin around my season has now finished. I really had better go back to work. I'll have a ferret around the garage and see if I can't find my golf clubs as the Obald Official Golf Season starts the weekend after next. I like to start in mid April so I can have a good excuse for turning down my invitation to play in the Masters. Daylight saving has stopped and it is now dark far too early. The solar heating can only get the pool to a 'bracing' 22º even after a full day of watery autumn sunshine. I've had to heat the spa back up again for the refreshment after an afternoon toiling with the chain saw. The last day of the last Test of the summer finished this arvo with New Zealand's star batsmen Cold Front coming in to see out the Indian attack until stumps for a well crafted 0 not out.

Yup, as far I'm concerned summer has finished. That means this blog will turn its back on fishing and get back into the real world.

Helen Clark has been given the bum's rush to New York to be something at the UN. I was going to write 'to be something jolly important at the UN' but nothing at that useless outfit is important so I can't. One is led to believe that this posting is what her whole life has been working towards. How bloody sad. Good riddance to bad, no very bad, rubbish. I never want to see or, more particularly, hear her ever again. John Key has done the country a great service by supporting her application and getting the worthless harridan out of the country.

Whilst he was on a roll Key neutered History Boy today. Made him Deputy Chairman of NZ Post. Now this is perfect in many ways. One; it gets him and his arrogant, swarmy and unctuous manner out of mainstream anything. We no longer have to put up with his Smart Aleck shenanigans in Parliament. We no longer have to put up with 'the sharpest wit in the house' - barrrrff. Two; this now means he has to walk around ringing a bell and shouting 'Unclean' when in the presence of his former Labour colleagues as he has effectively sold his soul for 30 postage stamps. He now works for 'the Rich Prick'. Beautiful. Three; JK has also made him Deputy Chairman of the SOE and not the full Monty. Really rubbing his hideous nose in it. No, the Prime Minister has done very well in disposing of the Wicked Witch and her odious Henchman - oops sorry, Henchperson.

But the story that really caught my attention when touching back down on the planet was the sheep dog stuff. Someone told me that Silver Fern Farms was considering getting rid of sheep dogs. Eh? Although I live in the country I do not pretend a farmer to be. I own a few agricultural implements that do their bit to keep my carbon footprint as big as possible but I don't pretend to be a farmer. But even I know that farmers have dogs. It goes with the bit of straw between the teeth, the blue coveralls and the Red Bands. I checked the date and April Fools Day was a week ago. What is going on?

It all appears to have Tesco at the bottom of it so I repaired to The Daily Telegraph website for the good oil. Tesco reckons that a shepherd's canine companion stresses the sheep. This can be alleviated if the dog is replaced by a stick. I don't really believe I am typing this bollocks even if it is coming from someone else's brain. Let's get this straight. These 'ere sheep are off on their last journey. There ain't no coming back from the abbatoir under your own steam. You, Mr Sheep, are going to come out of Affco as a lamb chop and not as next year's Merino sweater. If I was in one of those double decker lorries with the slots down the side and the bad smell and the sign on the front said 'Horotiu', some Huntaway barking at me would be the least of my worries. My stress levels would not fall one jot if a shepherd came up to me with a stick either. If my next appointment was with the chain and not the shearer little else would have any significance to me at all. As Oscar Wilde said 'The thought that you are to be hanged in the morning concentrates the mind wonderfully' Now, although I doubt many sheep are avid scholars of literature, I'm equally sure they soon get the idea that things in their ovine world are not all they could be when they are herded up the loading race in bulk numbers by whatever method Tesco sees fit and at that time they couldn't give a rat's arse how many dogs (or sticks) are in attendance.

Using dogs to round up sheep is hardly a Johnny come lately idea now is it? It's been going on for centuries - and a good many of them. No one in the last three hundred years or so has said 'Hell, this rack of lamb tastes awful. It's those bloody sheepdogs stressing the sheep again'. You don't get Egon Ronay giving an extra star for 'Dog free Lamb' do you? All means nothing to bloody Tesco though. They are demanding that dogs go by, wait for it, next week. They want sheep to be herded with the aforementioned sticks or flags. Flags. Flags of all nations? Red ones? Union Jacks in the UK and the Tricolor in France? Jolly big flags if the sheep won't pay attention like the shouting in Monty Python's Wuthering Heights in semaphore?

Even though I have laid my non farming credentials out for all to see, I will admit to a limited experience at moving sheep. I have not tried flags but my wife and I move between and forty and sixty (depending on the timing of the next bus to to Horotiu) around three or four paddocks every six weeks or so. We favour the 'stick, waving arms, saying 'Through the gate you daft bugger and not across the lawn', getting sweaty and swearing a lot' method. It has always struck me that it would be an awful lot easier for both the sheep and shepherd (be it amateur Michael Mouse variety or the real thing) if a dog were involved. I'm not about to get one 'cos I don't much care for dogs and ten minutes of chaos every six weeks or so is no big deal. If, however, I was organising lamb chops for Tesco by the cubic kilometre I would get dogs (multiple) and make sure they worked damned hard whilst I sat around somewhere with one of those funny whistles directing traffic. Bugger the sheep's stress levels, mine would plummet.

Even the hand wringers of the world think all this is nuts. The RSPCA 'had concerns about the anxiety suffered by sheep as they are circled and pursued by dogs' - well they would, wouldn't they, because they're daft - but even they don't want the dogs banned. Tesco reply to the thinking man's opinion that their ideas are looney by saying that they 'don't have a problem with sheepdogs'. Sounds to me like they have a huge problem with sheep dogs. But 'we need to make sure they move the sheep in a considerate manner'. Give me strength. If anyone can write down how you would do that I will happily supply the postage stamp and builder's pencil with which to do it.

If I still lived in the UK I would avoid all Tesco stores like the plague as they are obviously run by mad people and you would catch some nasty 'orrible contagious mental illness by merely crossing the threshold.

Barking.

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