I was wondering

I was just wondering.

The executive and judicial arm of government are meant to be completely separate.

The Phillip Field affair is doing Labour enormous damage in the polls.

We were told that there was nothing for the Police to investigate just after the Ingram whitewash.

The headmistress decides two days ago that enough is enough and suggests Monsieur Field falls on his sword to make all this go away.

Mr Field decides not to resign and the opposition starts getting into overdrive.

Suddenly there is a Police investigation and Mr Field is sent on leave - during which time the Government can still use his vote.

This police investigation will take 'several months' during which time the matter effectively goes away as all queries can be answered with 'It is now subject of police investigation and we must wait (months, remember) for the result of that.'

The headmistress wanted this to go away and effectively it has.

The executive and judicial arm of government are meant to be completely separate.

I was just wondering, that's all.

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Field, Aids, Zone cheats & cheap gym membership

That the government is struggling in the opinion polls to a degree not seen since Orewa 2004 obviously puts a spring my step this morning. But one swallow a summer does not make and the election is not this Saturday. We must provision for the long haul.

I am somewhat wrong footed by yesterday's turn of events in the Phillip Field business. Not what I expected at all. But every cloud has a silver lining and this appears to me to have two. The first is that it prolongs things and gives the opposition many more opportunities to throw rotten fruit at the current administration. Any set of circumstances that do this is all good. The second silver lining is that Helen has not got her way - in the short term at least. The damned woman is not omnipotent after all, there is the smallest chink in her aura of invincibility. We haven't seen anything along these lines for many a moon. Isn't it ironic that the one thing she cannot control absolutely is so close to her machinery of power? Life really is a funny business.

Auckland Grammar. Two pieces on this this morning over and above the bland reporting of the proceedings of yesterday. Both an Editorial and an opinion piece allude to the real problem here. It is not the ' Zone Cheat parents' that are at fault but the fact that we have zoning at all. The education ministry's marxist ideas that everything must be fair and all children no matter how educationally challenged must have the opportunity to go to the school nearest their home is a crock. Who would argue against an institute of sport where excellent athletes push each other to new heights of excellence (there I said it - excellence) by competing (two swear words in one sentence) against each other? Does the Aussie Institute of Sport set up to rectify the disaster of the Los Angeles Olympics admit a few blind, one legged, childhood abused, ADHD Mongolian cricketers just to keep things fair? I don't think so. I have said before that I am all for discrimination and schools should have the right to choose the best pupils if they wish. Parents should have the right to chose the school they want to have their kids educated in and not be told by the government where they should send their offspring according to racial, cultural and social mixes worked out in some thought police headquarters. Zoning has bought about inequality in a way the central planners never wanted, of course, by pushing up property prices in desirable schools' zones so that only the well heeled are now given a choice - the choice to buy a house in the zone of a school they wish their child to attend. Central planning and social engineering don't work, history tells us this time and time again. LIfe ain't fair. Get used to it and if you don't like it - tough.

Labour will move away from race based policies we are told. Half price gym membership in the western Bay of Plenty for Maori men is needs based and not race based we are told because Maori men have the highest rates of heart disease. Bollocks. The highest rate of degenerative atherosclerotic heart disease per capita in this country is found in the Indian population. I'll leave the rest of the argument for you to complete at home.

Zimbabweans with AIDS. This is beyond belief. Hodgson sits there and tries to convince us that this policy is protecting New Zealanders. Even for a politician this is off the planet. AIDS is a bad thing (I read it in a book) and living in Zimbabwe would appear to be not quite as flash as living in this gwate place. But thems the breaks. We have an immgration policy that includes health checks. You can be declined if you are morbidly obese on the grounds that you will put unreasonable burdens on the health service (read health budget) of your new country of residence (i.e. this gwate place), so why the hell should Zimbabweans with AIDS be treated any differently?

Bob the Builder. Disappointing that only 30 people turned up to his 'Good Kiwi Jokers' meeting last night. Watch this bloke. His style is apalling but the fundamental ideas behid what he is saying will ring a cord with a lot more people than the current government incumbents will find comfrotable. They dismiss him as a harmless buffoon at their peril.

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Unimogs & burqas

If the principles underlying the Field affair weren't so fundamentally important I would long ago have lost interest in this. John Armstrong (Granny's Political Editor) sets out eight - eight for God's sake - alternative scenarios as to where this will go next. All appear to me have a lot more to do with how the bloody government can preserve itself and none of them have anything much to do with the beleaguered wretch doing the honourable thing. Tapu Misa in her weekly comment piece asks us not to tar all Pacific Islanders with Mike Moore's brush. This, you will recall, is of a tribal support of an apparent rogue whatever he does. I normally have a bit of tme for Miss Misa's views but she has me shaking my head this morning as she sallies forth in full apologist mode. 'Some of us think he is a bad hat, honest'. 'But we all really dislike the National Party so much that anything is better than that'. Pathetic. This whole affair is so bloody tawdry and, to me, such a sorry reflection as to where our society has reached in its development (sic).

The poor coroner. The Unimog fell down the cliff and he can find no one to blame. Could this, perhaps, be the first sighting of a thought to be extinct species, the accident? Abonimable snowman seen on Mt. Cook, moa sighted in Takapuna - whatever next?

Auckland Grammar vs Min Ed looks to have a bit of spice in it. I could imagine John Morris and the lefties at the Ministry arguing as to whether the sun rose in the east so a stouch over interpretation of rules is never going to be resoslved amicably. Throw in a bit of excellence, privilege, elitism, fairness and it all comes to the boil nicely. Predicted result - a high scoring draw with lots of yellow cards and season threatening injuries.

Editorial on Clarkson and the burqa which makes some fair points mainly in support of commonsense but never really strikes the killer blow. Disappointing - which sums up the rag in general this morning.

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Field - Phoenix like

I don't know whether to be dancing on the rooftops or casting myself off the rooftops over the latest turn in the Man from Mangere tale. I am delighted to have been so wrong in my judgement that he was home free. I am beside myself with despair as to the way in which the final death throws have come about. It looks likely now that he will be on his bike. Only right and proper, of course. But why has he reached this point? Because he is an honourable man? I leave that to your judgement. Beacuse the entire country was of the opinion that he must go? No. He will probably have to go because one woman has decided that he has to - and that woman wasn't my wife. The power that the headmistress has is truly terrifying and very wrong. She has decided enough is enough almost a month after the rest of the country came to the same conclusion and with one incredibly well worded statement the useless baying of the majority is shown up to be just that - useless. Clive James has a bit to say about this and I don't agree with most of what he says. He is of the opinion that the wretch should resign now and escape with some tatters of dignity intact. Sod that. The chance to go down that road was offered to him and he turned it down. There is every indication as I type (and it may have changed by the time you read this) that TFP wants to hang tough. Good. Let his humiliation be a painful and protracted one - he deserves every miserable minute of what I hope is coming to him. Next to Colin James' piece is a side bar laying out the subtle but relentless change in opinion of the headmistress to all this. This side bar is a great service to the nation as it, in the course of about five statements, shows the shift from 'Stand by your Man' to 'Outta here' in tiny increments. All this wearing the teflon suit. It's a bit like watching your hair grow - no difference from day to day but after six weeks you need a haircut. She walks away from this one with her personal standing in most people's estimation untarnished. Wake up, please. Pretty please, wake up. You are watching a pass mistress of self preservation at the peak of her powers - it is very ugly indeed.

As I alluded to some weeks back, the conduct of the South Auckland MP is bad enough but the grubby, grubby machinations that have, and continue, to surround it are a thousand times worse. God I hate it all and I just wish I had an answer. History tells us that this horror regime will go away given time but I am getting older and am daily wondering how long I have to wait.

Bob the Builder. What a breath of 'speak first and put the brain into gear later' fresh air. Of course the majority of New Zealand agree with all he says but they live in a land where they have been brainwashed into thinking that they cannot verbalise it. He is expressing an opinion - that is all. The British Judge (? Lord Denning) famously summed it up in "I abhor what you are saying but defend to the hilt your right to say it'. This no longer applies here - and most of the population don't even abhor what Bob is saying. We live in a society where the minority now rules the majority and it so bad that we are no longer able to criticise anything.

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Baches and Steppenwolf

Rather unexpectedly new life has been breathed into the Taito Philip Field business with a new 'witness' revealing (or not as it turned out) new 'evidence' on TV last night behind the cloak of an actress - how silly does this way of revealing things look? If played properly all this should end up with the gent from Mangere getting his come uppance but the portents are not good. If recent history is anything to go by National will drop the ball and the government will dot down under the bar at the other end for a fourteen pointer. O me miserum.

The Mayor of Rodney is telling DoC to indulge in sex and travel over the seven mini baches on the coast between Omaha and Leigh (remember these came to minor prominence a month or so back). Never one to laud the praises of any one in council under normal circumsatnces but on this occasion I'm inclined to shout from the bache tops 'Go the Mayor. You little beauty' DoC or OSH, who is the most odious of them all? Dunno, but OSH is making a strong run on the inside with my hearing an as yet to be substantiated rumour whilst spoiling a good walk at the weekend. It is rumoured that every branch on every tree that is six feet and under from ground level at the North Shore Golf Club (and I would assume every other golf club in the land) has to be removed as it represents a hazard to players. That this is patently absurd and also patenetly impractical (imagine what a seven foot tree is going to end up looking like) unfortunately does nothing to bring the veracity of this rumour into doubt. We are barking letting these wallies get away with this - if it is true. We are barking letting them get away with most of the other stuff they get away with even if it is not.

Back to the Herald. A very informative piece on the inside of the back cover giving some background to NZ's Bill of Rights which is old enough to have sex today. I always thought that Cullen was a bumbling oaf. I was very wrong. His insights into the dark art of left wing politics are very well honed indeed. I didn't realise that our Bill of Rights is really a Claytons one and that it's progenitor, Sir Geoffrey Palmer, saw it somewhat lobotomised at inception. The arguments as to why we a have a watered down version and what might happen if we had the full strength version are fascinating and at the root of this is something I keep banging on about, namely the total separation of the executive and judicial arms of government. This is all further complicated by the fact that we have a single chamber Parliament. Cullen says we need no further beefing up of the Bill as the great unwashed would prefer to let the final arbiter be the elected representatives and not an appointed judiciary. Well he would say that, wouldn't he? It all depends of course of the calibre of the elected representatives (not forgetting we have no upper house as a safeguard) and who gets appointed onto a Supreme Court. People have called NZ's Parliament a legislators paradise as they can effectively do what ever they like. I have seen no evidence in the last few years to refute this. Also quoted is what you may want to avoid, the system as run by the US where the Supreme Court is so politicised it's not funny. Apparently Canada has it just right - I'll go and have a snoop. And all along I thought the only good thing to come out of Canada was Steppenwolf.

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More odds & sods

t's all a bit dull at the moment. There's quite a bit going on but it's all same old, same old. Taito Philip Field has got away scott free as predicted. The election spending thing grinds on and is really making no progress - and by no progress I mean the incumbent Government is looking no closer to falling than it was a week ago. I reckon that they'll weasel their way out of this one as usual. What is it with the opposition? I mean they are being fed enough ammunition and they still can't strike the winning blow. They really need to raise their game.

Rudman caught my eye again. This really is starting to worry me. He points out, quite reasonably (see the cause for worry?), that by asking for another 'inquiry' over the rates business the government is really just putting it all in the too hard basket - as it did on two previous occasions in their current tenure. How many times do we have to see an inquiry as a solution for a problem and how many times do we have to be surprised that this provides no solution at all. Well, how the hell could it?

The man in the silly red glasses has a warble today - Friday must be his day. He appears to pick really quite good things to write about and I just wish he wouldn't do it in a way that is presaged by his glasses. He takes the establishment to task over its social engineering/political correctness/bureacratic stupidity (and that is the easiest trick in the world) over this no prayers in primary schools stuff. When I first saw this a couple of days back I just rolled my eyes to the ceiling and reached for another Marmite soldier. Silly red glasses well encapsulates the point that what the PC wallahs are doing is not banning prayers in class but banning prayers they don't like. The bit about it being alright to pray to the River God, the Sky God, the Mountain God but not the God God is very well put in amongst all the silliness. Government sponsored social engineering is jolly bad stuff in any guise and if you need any more persuasion that the bunch of clowns who are increasingly intruding into our daily lives have to go, here is a bit more grist to the mill. Sooner or later one of these small occurences will be the wheat stem that brings on an acute orthopaedic disaster for the camel.

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Odds & sods

The Herald must be desparate - they have printed a syndicated Editorial! Never have I seen such a thing. It is from the Independant and has much relevance to New Zealand society as the state of stormwater drainage in Buenos Aires. The main editorial is about Darryl Hair but one could argue that the issues raised here are of some relevance to us. This is bought into sharper focus as the first letter printed just to the right of the editorials expands on my views on the recent funeral in the Waikato. The author sees the events of the past ten days or so as an example of the media brainwashing us, the great unwashed, with all sorts of culturally correct nonsense. Drawing a bit of a long bow perhaps but it in principal coincides with my view of things. But just to prove that life would be dull indeed if we were all the same the next letter thinks the media coverage of events was all jolly good and conveyed a great sense of national unity.

Not much else new struck my eye really. Rates - ho hum. A school asking for permission to strap pupils - that'll fly, not. Boobs on Bikes cf the Maori Queen as an opinion piece? This, not surprisingly doesn't work.

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Dead Queen, MPs behaving badly

Something going on in Taupiri yesterday that has filled most of the paper today - won't go there except to say that the late Maori Queeen is the latest in a long line of people who have been more newsworthy dead than alive.

The main editorial today amplifies my observations on Mike Moore's comment piece yesterday. The Editor quite rightly points out that the parliamentarians over and above behaving badly are now lashing out at those who would have the temerity to criticise them. This includes members of the judiciary - remember how the two arms of governing a proper society are supposed to be totally separate. Peter Dunne gets the major tongue lashing for his wailing that the criticisms of election spending should come from a truthful report as opposed to a watered down parliamentary number. Pack of monkeys, the lot of them.

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Mike Moore talking sense

Busier than a one armed paper hanger, busier than a one legged man in a bum kicking competition etc. etc over the last couple of working days but I did manage a few minutes with Auckland's only newspaper this morning.

I was not in New Zealand when you voted for the rather odd brand of MMP under which we now labour (pun intended). It has always struck me that it does not function in the way it was meant to, but I can never quite put my finger on what is wrong. I was also not in the country when Mike Moore was in his pomp but some of his utterances from his office at the WTO over the years have made me think he might not be a bad sort. He writes a short but exceedingly well worded piece this morning on the comments page. It is worth $1.50 (does the paper really cost that much?) to buy the rag just to read it. (The comments page is not free on the web otherwise I would 'cut and paste' it for general perusal). He uses both the Philip Field and Donna Huata cases to argue very strongly that, although NZ likes to think of itself as a first world nation, it is increasingly running itself by third world tribal standards when it comes to affairs of public reponsibility. Oh, he is so right. The lauding of the two named personages by 'their people' when they had palpably behaved apallingly (one went to the slammer for God's sake) is not the way civilised countries should behave. If we are to be judged in the way we would like the rest of the world to judge us both these miscreants should have resigned at the meerest sniff of impropriety - and when they did not we should have insisted that is what they do. Not just bellyache about it but set in motion the mechanism where they had no bloody optioin. We don't have that mechanism or even midset to want it. Very, very bad. He lays some of the blame for this at the door of our particular flavour of MMP but I think this system only exacerbates and facilitates a deeper underlying societal malaise. The way out? Dunno, but changing this lot of parliamentary ratbags for another lot of parliamentary ratbags can't be a bad start - even if this is not really attacking the root of the problem. The longer the incumbents remain in situ the longer they think they are bullet proof and are in place on tenure. Tenure is a very bad thing for work ethic.

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Obfuscation on steroids

Whangamata Marina hits the High Court in Wellygogs today. Get the popcorn.

In a poll that has no statistical significance at all, about 60% of the great unwashed feel that Taito Philip Paddock should resign - doesn't matter any more as he's home free.

There is a picture of the Headmistress today (always a black mark for any publication) and she is waving one of the infamous pledge cards. The image is surrounded by weasel words (hers), explanations of the spin (the Herald) and what really happened (pseudo facts). Sooner or later (pretty please, sooner) she's going to come a gutser and her astonishing arrogance over this and other similar matters is going to bite her on the bum. The whole country knows that her mob should pay the money back despite her claiming that some Parliamentary body told her she was in the clear. They don't have the money and so we get into max smokescreen mode. On an individual basis I wonder how I would get on using the same tactics with the IRD if, after taking the advice of my accountant, I was found to owe the men in suits money. No show.

Slim pickings thus far and so it's off to the comments page which often comes to the rescue on slow days. There is an article by Bruce Hucker (I don't like him one little bit) but I proceed looking for a bit of harmless sport. It turns out to be a bit written in response to an article by Owen McShane (I like him) which I haven't read. Bearing this in mind I think its probably better to bale out and find the original to read first but I was never known for my strong mind so I soldier on. Now I read a lot of complicated stuff in relation to my daily activities toiling in the fields and regard myself at being pretty adept at seeing the wood for the trees. The prose presented by the deputy mayor is virtually unreadable. The words look like English but it all reads like Martian. You struggle through a sentence and realise he has said nothing. He is arguing for (or is it against) higher density housing in Auckland and he speaks in the sort of bueaucratic twaddle that his stock in trade. If the comments part of the paper was available on line I would cut and paste a papragraph or two and see if you can do any better. I reckon he probably talks like this as well and his tactic is now plain. He writes to you or talks at you about something. You give up because he is unintelligible and say 'Whatever' and he goes off and does what he was going to do anyway because you have agreed with him. He can then stand up, claim to have followed 'due democratic process' and we have wasted squillions more rates dollar on something we don't want or need. This is the left wing joker who insists on flying up the front of the plane on your money - in case you've forgotten. Top stuff.

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Field dying

The Taito Philip Field affair is in its death throws. There is a short piece about National trying to refer it to the New Zealand Association of Fruiterers and Greengrocers or some such but it is effectively a goneburger. The damned woman wins again and we just gird out loins for her next foray into constitutional abhorrance.

There are two likely runners for the next episode. The first is Comrade Carter's tussle with the High Court concerning the Whangamata Marina. Rockhopper's inside oil on the availability of court papers was right on the money. I await with baited breath as to the subterfuge that awaits us later this month.

The second player appears out of left field with the announcement that we are to have a Government sponsored 'Sentencing Council' which will give 'guidelines' to judges as to which crim gets three days in the slammer and which gets four. I was just choking on the Marmite when the National spokesman on Justice chimes in with 'Oh no you don't'. One of the basic tenets of a democracy as we know it is the total independance of the judiciary from the executive. The headmistress seems intent on ignoring this for her own purposes. The erosion of this principal is perhaps the most serious of her multitude of sins against this country. I don't know what is worse, her doing it for fiscal reasons (paying BA's wages ain't cheap) or doing it at all. Listen up you bloody woman 'Keep your all pervading snout of the judiciary. Do you hear me?'

As an aside to this there are quoted in this piece opinions from three different Ministries that have an in on this - the Ministries of Police, Justice and Corrections. Why in hell do we need three separate bureaucracies to do such patently overlapping tasks? Labour reported last week (with some pride, for God's sake) that the Civil Service had increased in magnitude by a considerable amount since their accession to 'Power'. We need less of these walllies not more.

There is some stuff about a tree in Grey Lynn. I can't be bothered.

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For Sale

There is obviously only one story in the news this morning and it would be irresponsible of me to prattle on about global warming, immoral politicians, OSH or any other of my betes noir.

There is a bloke on Trade Me selling an apostrophe. Starting bid $10 and it comes with a complete set of instructions as to use (English version only). I am seriously impressed.

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Nausea at breakfast

Metaclopramide is a great drug. I use it on an almost daily basis whilst toiling in the fields and I wish I had nicked some from the woolshed to take home last night. This would have put me in better shape to get through page two of Granny Herald this morning. Metaclopramide is an anti emetic and one needs to be mainlining the stuff to peruse the fare on offer inside the front cover. 'Think of your ageing granny next time you drive to the corner dairy. Your selfish actions could be killing her' Eeeoooorrgggh. 'Car emissions are killing 250 Aucklanders and 400 people nationwide per annum' Bollocks but Eeeoooorrgggh again. 'Even petrol cars and not just evil diesel cars are the purvreyors of genocide in our leafy suburbs' Eeeooooorrgggh - more diced carrots on the tiling. I read the paper eating my breakfast and I will have to apply for counseling to get over the trauma I suffered this morning. Stop this crap. Oh, and another $500,000 of my money is going to finance a billboard campaign that will do absolutely nothing to change this perceived problem. As an aside just think of what proportion of the total advertising in all forms of media you are subjected to that is Nanny State sponsored (i.e. you and I are paying for it) safety, we must look after you bollocks. Time for a scream.

There is a short bit by a bloke argueing, rather weakly it must be said, for New Zealnd getting some nuclear power plants. I'd be in that straight away.

Garth George. I'm begining to like this bloke. Before getting side tracked onto his ideas around abortion (and I don't want to go there) he outlines his dismay that some of his long held beliefs about New Zealand society are one by one being eroded. He hits upon two of the things that have me most fired up. He used to think the NZ politicians were just about as non-corrupt as any of their ilk could be on a global scale. Gone. He used to think that the Police force was independant of the excutive. Gone. With reference to the latter Rockhopper's post above is a timely reminder that we are about to see some more fiddling from the Beehive in the courts when my good mate Carter pulls on the Teflon whistle for his appointment at the High Court with reference to the Whitianga abhorrence.

You know what to do, folks

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Moon Unit and friends

Nothing. But then again..............

There is a supplementary Letters section to allow the proles to vent their collective spleen over the 'taxpayers money for political campaign' nonsense - and quite right too. I read a couple of the epistles (or edited extracts from, more like) and there was not a one supporting the way the Headmistress is predictably heading. She appears to want to make any law change surrounding this matter retrospective for God's sake. She will have the house lemmings of all political flavours queueing up to vote for that without any worry. Words like 'arrogance', 'unacceptable' and 'dictator' figured quite prominently in the letters I read. All jolly good, but useless now. It's what you do one Saturday in a couple of years time that counts. As I noted before. Parliament is in recess for a couple of weeks at the moment. Why? They don't sit for more than a couple of weeks before they troop off for a cup of tea and a lie down. No point asking them why this happens as it is just the original patsy question asking for the response about committee work, valuable time in the constituency, supervising the business of their departments etc. etc. Don't expect the truth - going to directors' meetings, having a lie in and going down the boozer. When they eventually return to apply their noses to the trough, oops I mean grindstone, we are sure to have several contentious issues that have to be rushed through under 'urgency'.

A syndicated piece (from Newsweek?) documenting the mainstreaming of environmentalism in big business. Is Tesco (the UK's largest supermarket chain) getting all touchy feely and concerned about the planet? Are they bollocks. They are making a huge financial killing out of doing all sorts of sensible things like burning food waste for energy instead of throwing it away - or more correctly paying someone to take it away. Dress all this up in a dolphin suit, run a special on tofu and you are laughing all the way to your local branch of NatWest.

I now know where all Hollywood 'stars' who wish to have a bisexual union for the purpose of procreation should be forced to live. Malaysia. They have just banned certain names as being registerable handles for babies. You cannot stroll down to the Kuala Lumpur Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages and fill out the forms for little Stalin Hitler Wong. 007 Chan ain't going to make it into the big leather bound tome either. If we forced the Frank Zappas of the world to move to Trengganu we would be spared the following:

Moon Unit - Frank Zappa
Apple - Chris Martin/Gwyneth Paltrow
Misty Kyd - Sharleen Spiteri (who's she?)
Geronimo - Alex James
Heavenly Hirani Tiger Lily - Michael Hutchence/Paula Yates
Dandelion - Keith Richards
Dweezil - Frank Zappa
Elijah Bob Patricius Guggi Q - Bono

Zowie Bowie - David Bowie
Rufus Tiger - Roger Taylor

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Discrimination is good

Not sure if this was in the Herald this morning but it was on the News in the car as I drove from one field to the next.

Discrimination. I reckon discrimination is a good thing but, like a lot of things I think are good, my view is at odds with them wot seek to run my life for me. You are not allowed in this gwate country to discriminate against anybody on the grounds of anything - age, race, gender etc. But now it transpires that it is alright to discriminate against people who smoke. This government hates smoking almost as much as it hates, business, commonsense and excellence and therefore apparently smoking is beyond the pale on the discrimination front. The hypocrisy of it is mind numbing.

So I can advertise for a non-smoker for a job I might have going but I can't advertise for a man (as opposed to the other sort) or a Hindu or a person under fifty. Let's have a level playing field here. I want lots more discrimination - if I want to emply a twenty year old, non smoking Miss World look alike I should be able to say so.

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Kyoto, Red Ken and Government theft

Politics with a samll 'P' and Kyoto are the only things that have raised even a flicker of interest this morning.

There is a piece on the comments page syndicated from the Independent about the trade of carbon credits. It kicks off with 'Red Ken' Livingstone, now London's mayor, (how the hell did that happen whilst I was out of the country) trading carbon credits with Los Angeles. It then goes on to try and explain the business that has grown up around the trade in this snake oil of the twenty first century. To be frank the details were lost on me so serpentine were the nuances of perception as to what people were doing that I gave up trying to completely get my head around it. With China, most of the US and Australia, among others, very sensibly ignoring Kyoto the whole thing is just an exercise in futility. But there are a lot of people, principally in Europe, making a lot of money trading this vapour ware (pardon the pun) as if it were beef, butter or bauxite. Just wish I'd thought of it first - like I wish I'd thought of velcro, catseyes or bottling drinking water.

Colin James writes a piece on 'where to next' for Uncle Helen in the face of the ongoing maelstrom of trouble that seems to follow her like a bad smell. This a few pages on from an article about the money and the pledge cards. The latter first. This story is set out on the same page as a piece about a woman who has to repay about $3000 of benifit to WINZ after they (WINZ) had made an error. She now works in some capacity advising other beneficiaries on managing their money and tells us that the WINZ track record for wiping debt is not a long one. The Headmistress, not two columns to the left (how apt) is crying foul saying that if it is found that they have to pay back the election card pledge money its all not fair as 'they' are changing the rules after the final whistle. No prizes for guessing which sum of money gets repayed, the $3000 or the $448000. Meanwhile back on A10 Mr James reinforces my assertion that the damned woman with the facial assymetry is very good at what she does. He lays out in black and white why the Philip Field business has been handled as it has (this for those who are terminally stupid), points out that the current two week recess in Parliament has come at just the 'right' time for the incumbents and gives some clues as to what rabbits the tenth floor might soon pull from their hats to ensure that Labour cariies on for a fourth term. This includes things like Cullen promising 30% rate of business tax (which won't be anything of the sort once you read the fine print, I'll be bound), and various rebranding of more of their odious view of the world. Believe them and vote for them and our headlong slide backwards down the developing country league table is assured.

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Rates on Fields

A few moments to reflect on what stared up at me over the Marmite soldiers this morning (on a very nice multi grain loaf from the Sansom farmer's market as it happens) before hoeing into the day. All bad I'm afraid.

Politicians are never my flavour of the month - ghastly profession, no, job - but the Philip Field matter has me shaking my head. Like it or not (and I certanly don't) this duplicitous toad is going to get away with this despite National's best attempts to keep the pot boiling. Quite what the Headmistress said to old Botox Face to bring her into line a day or so back I know not but it certainly worked. Hell, the damned woman is good at all this. We now just await the next transgression to be similarly papered over. If this was not bad enough we have this morning a picture of Ron Mark (who normally appears less odious than the rest of them) grinning in a simian fashion from his seat in Parliament whilst giving the finger to another of our elected (or not as the MMP case maybe) representatives. And we let these people run our lives? And make no mistake we are increasingly letting them stick their obnoxous little snouts into our everyday to-ings and fro-ings.

Rates are going up in case we haven't noticed. My latest rate bill is so horrible I had to get my wife to deal with it whilst I had a cup of tea and a lie down. Granny decides we need a rates sob story to ram home the bleedin' obvious. We hear the story of some joker on Waiheke who bought his baronial hall some years ago for $40,000 and finds it is now rated on a value of $1.7mil. Lucky man I would say. Oh no. We have allowed our society to be so constructed that his 'only option' to deal with this burden on his finances is to go on the sickness benefit so he can meet his obligatons to the council. He used to be 'on the benefit' but managed to get off and hold down a $14,000 per annum post doing something with computers. With his rates increase he can no longer afford to live and he goes back on a sickness benefit for stress reasons exacerbated by the rates bill. So, if I read this correctly, I now pay for him to do less so he doesn't cross some income threshold and this money then goes into a different bureaucratic cocoa tin. This is nuts. Of course he can afford to live - he sells his house with a profit of $1,660,00 and lives on that. Why the hell should I have to support him because he wants to stay in a house he can no longer afford? The world changes and we must move on.

Garth George brings the only sensible spin to affairs with his entirely reasonable piece on the proposed new national curriculum. He quite rightly points out that the so so called 'values' being laid down are no such thing but are more attitudes and aptitudes. He also highlights the golden opportunities these proposals give for warped ideas to be peddled by those with vested interests. He even sights the global warming bollocks as a case in point so his thoughts would appeal, wouldn't they?

There was also something about bees that showed up politicians in a very poor light but I can't quite remember what it was. Making decisions based on certainty when that was not possible was, I think, the issue. No matter, it happens all the time and so should no longer rank as news.

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Reading, 'riting, 'rithmatic

Bloody work - no time to waste on our esteemed organ of the press for a few days.

Social engineering rears its exceedingly ugly head again this morning with the proposals for a new national curriculum. The requirement to learn another language over English and, the culturally correct but internationally useless, Te Reo Maori makes the front page. This is entirely laudable but the main cartoon later in the rag puts it in perspective emphasizing the need to get English taught properly first. The worrying bit of the new curriculum is, however, hiding furhter in the paper. Eight 'core values' are to be taught and there is already the whiff of compulsion in the reporting of this. These values are government decided and will, therefore, be flavoured by their odious view of the world. I can't remember even half of them (and why would I?) but environmental stuff is in there somewhere (probably along with 'respect' for something or other and all the other usual bollocks.) Am I glad my children have both left school? I sent my children to school to learn reading, 'riting and 'rithmatic. Their values in life will be set by myself and my wife in the setting of a nuclear family just as mine were by my parents before me. I expect any education system to reinforce those values and not teach stuff decided by a bunch of government appointed academics whose ideas, in the main, I wouldn't wipe my backside with. I'm very, very glad this is a road I won't be travelling. I do hope to have grand children though............

See those Greenpeace wallies chained up the mast of that Chinese rust bucket in Nelson at the weekend? A harmless pimple on the backside of the world. Just leave them there until Mum calls them home for tea but of course it all has to be officially dealt with. Plod was interviewed and, with a straight face, told the nation that one of the main problems in getting them down was the plethora of OSH issues. In the end the kettle boiled or it started raining or something but, really, we are paying for the quasi-governmental bodies to indulge in this sort of nonsense.

Unfortunately the Taito Philip Field business appears to be deflatinig as I predicted and Uncle Helen hoped it would. The dents in the shiny persona of the headmistress have been to the panel beaters and its business as normal. It has to stop. Soon the great unwashed must realise that the emperor has no clothes - please.

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