In addition to her other crimes against my sensibilities, the list of which is so long it would fill the fishing.net servers to overflowing, this apology of a public figure has the back bone of a mollusc. The front page of the Herald this morning carries her apology to all cancer sufferers for her calling Don Brash cancerous and corrosive. She doesn't want to cause offence to any suffers from uncontrolled mitosis. I assume tomorrow we will get the apology to all those whose cars have just failed their Warrant of Fitness on account of excess rust as she might have retraumatised these poor victims by making them relive the horrors of walking from the Inspection Station with the ticks in the wrong column. Pathetic. But this apologist way of doing things is typical of the way she leads her life and, through the policies she would foist upon us, wants us to lead ours. Look at all the treaty settlements. You get 4 trillion dollars, 5 squillion square miles of forest, a couple of lake beds, fishing rights to the Auckland Islands, the infra red part of the electromagnetic spectrum and.........an apology. No one must ever offend anyone. You certainly musn't do this by pointing out that they might in some way be inferior to you in any way. If you even suggest that two people are not totally equal in every way your reponse must be to go back into the room under the door and apologise. Pathetic. Listen up woman, if you think Don is a cancerous, corrosive wretch, say so and have the balls (sic) to stick to your guns. I think you are pathetic - and don't ask me what I really think, because I'll tell you and won't apologise afterwards.
Colin James writes a very interesting piece this morning which doesn't really fill its potential. It starts with the state the terrorists of the planet have got the rest of the law abiding world into. You know the sort of stuff, you can't take more than 85ml of your contact lens solution on to the plane, shoes off at the check-in desk. All this done by blowing up a few bits and pieces, but more importantly theatening to do it again. Nothing new here and the sort of mindset that terrorsits strive to achieve in their targets. The interesting part to my way of thinking is the idea that this fire is being fuelled by our obsession to be risk aversive. For example the chances of anything untoward happening on any given flight out of pretty much anywhere are low - even if you are flying from Baghdad. The chances of anything untoward happening if you are flying out of Auckland are very much lower than even this. Approching - but not reaching - zero. They can never be zero. Nothing that is not a but of machinery can be predicted to do anything in the future with a probability of 100%. But, and here is the interesting bit, we as a society are prepared to put an inversely proportional amount of effort into the infinitessimly small part of the equation. It is bonkers to my mind. You have to take a risk in everything you do. You must not be overtly stupid, but - and here comes the rub - we, in many things in life, have set the risk bar at totally the wrong level. This is where OSH has got it so wrong - rules for Africa for which compliance is demanded all the time for events that are almost certainly never going to happen.
Be safe and when in doubt, apologise. Yuck.
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