I'm a leper - Al Gore says so

I have been changed.

It is against my will and I have done nothing to bring this about. I have morphed over the last few moths from a realist, to a sceptic and I am now a denier. This confirms my status as a pariah along with deniers of other things, most notoriously the Holocaust. The acceleration of this change of my station in Society is really quite scary but who gives a stuff. I am in good company. Augie Auer is a nice avuncular sort of a bloke with whom to walk around the streets whilst ringing my bell and shouting 'Unclean' at the top of my voice. He has the added advantage of living just a few Bays up the Coast so I could kick the supercharged V8 into gear and pop up for a cup of tea and an afghan very easily. Leighton Smith has a political view of the world that is right wing enough to make Atilla the Hun blush and so I'm sure we will get along famously.

No, I am quite comfortable with mates like those when I see the proper sensible people of the world are represented by Al Gore, Jeanette Fitzsimons and that fruitcake from Greenpeace who managed to get herself interviewed on the box repeatedly over this recent nonsense at the Huntly power station. She justified pulling the wool over Hirepool's eyes when hiring a Bobcat by saying that the threat of climate change is so important any porky is OK. This is a logical non sequitur the like of which only the truly deranged are capable. 'It's OK if I steal your car because Chelsea are not going to win the Premiership this year'. 'I can justify blowing up this railway station because there is an R in the month'. Al Gore is basking in the reflected golden glow of his Oscar. He can only do so because the light being reflected is paid for by the largest private power bill in the town in which he lives. His film (which I have not seen and will not be going to see) is by all accounts full of outright untruths. He is in it for the cash. Anyone who used to be in politics to the degree he has been had the 'good of the world and future generations' beaten out of them long ago.

Listen people, Al and is mates are selling you the biggest load of horse manure the world has ever seen. The Brooklyn Bridge is going to appear a bargain after you've bought all this crap. We are in the middle of the biggest con job the world has ever seen. It is huge on a biblical scale and most of the world (not just most of the Public Bar) are falling for it hook, line and carbon credit. Even the most superficial persual of the facts reveal it to be a load of crap but people won't even do that. No, ignore the facts and buy the 'one broom cleans the whole house'. That's what it reminds me of - those blokes who sell rubbish at the boat show - window demisters, cut everything knives and now man is destroying the planet.

It is all bull****. Augie, Leighton and I told you so and we won't charge you a cent.

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Scary women

Control, control, control. Here we go again I was mercifully away for the latter half of last week when Marxist control freak Bradford was in full flow over her odious anti smacking Bill. I heard a bit of here interview with Leighton Smith on his weekly reprise show at 0630 yesterday morning and she is the sort of being we should be very afraid of in this country. She insists on calling all trivial corporal correction child 'beating', refuses to accept that chldren are different from adults and really thinks that her bill will make the slightest bit of difference to those who do actually beat anything - kids, spouses, partners, pets etc. Poisonous, poisonous woman but, unfortunately, only one of a pack of like minded idiots. Take keith Locke for example - please take Keith Locke. I'll have a go at the hypocrisy of the people who will control even our thinking whilst wanting to legalise dope when I have more time.

Less far to the left but equalling deficient in intellectual horse power we have Annette King. Another dental nurse. I think Jade Goody has made a better career shift than our current Transport Misinster. She will pass laws that make Auckland's buses run on time. It's unbelievable isn't it? She wraps this errant nonsense in the current Governmental falvour of the month of 'carbon neutrality/sustainability/ eco friendly world leader' bollocks. Three quotes: 'Her mission has been given added urgency by the Government's new goal of making New Zealand a world leader in energy sustainability, and the fact that only 3 per cent of people caught buses to work on Census Day last March.' And 'Ms King said boosting public transport was a major part of the push towards sustainability, and her aim was to remove disincentives for people to travel on buses and ferries.' To be capped by 'But she said the new rules would enable transport authorities to obtain commercial information from operators for network planning, and to set minimum standards over all urban services to increase passenger confidence.'

To my mind the very last bit proves she is barking. If she really believes that her passing some soppy Bill will in crease the confidence of someone at a bus stop in Blockhouse Bay then she is more mentally deranged than even I had thought. She should have stuck to passing the amalgam or looked for a place in the Big Brother house.

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Cricket, Field, grog

Blame the Black Caps. Writing this drivel in the mornings takes time and the cricket has robbed me of that. I have stacks of things to do in the evenings. I sit down to watch 'just five overs' and that's the evening gone. Then all those things you were going to do last night have to be done this morning. And this has happened three timesin the last five days. But what a way to waste valuable time. The past five days cricket have been fabulous and last night's was the icing on an already very tasty cake. It wouldn't have been the same doing it to Sri Lanka would it? I'm off to Sydney this arvo for a couple of days and am I looking forward to taking a hundred bucks off my old mate Rob Johnson in person. Oh you were so confident when you said 'we can settle the bet when you are over here next week, make sure you bring your wallet' weren't you? We'll talk about it over dinner at the Rocks, I fancy, and I won't be paying. As an aside did you study Hussey's face over the last few overs when the dreadful truth was overcoming him? Fear. Abject terror was overtaking the poor sod. What a great day to be flying to Oz.

And what a great day to be leaving behind the denizens of the Beehive. They have only been back a week and they are, if anything, behaving worse than ever. How anyone can sit there with a straight face and use bloody Philip Field's vote as a proxy just days after calling his conduct 'immoral and unethical' is just beyond belief. It gets worse. This can be done as he is allowed indefinite leave of absence from Parliament if he is 'attending public business'. 'Attending public business' is left to be defined by the MP. In this case Field says this is being interviewed by the Police whilst they assess his suitablity for the laying of criminal charges. Can anyone tell me why this bloke is still an 'representaive of the people' that he is in a positin to have to make these calls? Can anyone tell me why he has been allowed not to resign? 'I have not been convicted of any criminal offence' just doesn't cut it. MPs should not just be non-criminals they should be people with above average morals and ethics and not those whose conduct is called 'immoral and unethical' by their (ex-) party leaders. That the majority of the population allow him to stay in Parliament is almost as worrying as the the fact that the majority of his own constituents ('his people' - give me strength) think he is a good bloke and has done nothing wrong. There really is no hope for this country if they can't work this one out for themselves.

Grog is good for you? How would you know? Ample evidence that if you let bureaucrats run a country you end up with a loony bin. The food labelling laws are crazy. You know if you buy a 'prime beefburger', Bar B Q for the use of, the packaging has to tell you that it comprises 23% goats eyelid, 32% newspaper, 15% artificial colouring 135T and 30% water so that you know its crap before your tastebuds confirm the fact. Well the same laws don't apply to anything containing alcohol. The most poisonous substance (and I am not being a wowser here, talking form a purely medical point of view) that can legally be sold for human consumption anywhere in the world is exempt. So your bottle of Pinot can contain all the aldehydes and esters in the world and you can rot your insides and be none the wiser. This is a much better way of filling your face. I'm giving up processed food and am going to live exclusively on food that contains grog. This will make life a whole lot more exciting - almost as exciting as watching the cricket.

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Angry of Milford

I am an angry man. In fact I am so bloody cross that I couldn't finish the paper this morning and I still have a Marmite soldier stuck in my craw.

I cruised past the meaningless front page and had a quick ogle at the QM2 graphics on A2. I like the propulsion system - a bit like four Volvo IPS drives on steroids. My ire began to rise when I got to A3. Headline was something like 'Road toll plan to go to second stage'. Vide supra what we mentioned yesterday, isn't it bloody typical. Instead of doing things we study them or form consultative bodies around them. We should call this the 'Mirror Government' as they are always looking into things. That we are studying something, therefore, came as no surprise. That this art form has now grown a second stage is a bit of a worry and I now would not be astonished if a third and fourthstage are just around the corner. The thing that got me grinding my teeth though was that Stage One had lasted a year and had cost $2.3 million. How? How the hell do you spend $2.3 million in just one year studying something that doesn't exist? How? Come on tell me. A Business Class round the world air ticket is about $10,000 so that is 230 trips. Is that how they did it. How much paper and how many pencils can you buy for $2.3 mil? I am astonished at how they can fritter away my Aston Martin money. Is the second stage going to be any cheaper? I don't think so. By the way, road tolls and central city congestion charges are a very good idea and they work. Start building the gantrys on Monday - you'll get quite few for $2.3 mil.

Shake head and wander on. Nothing much until we get to A9 and then I really got very irate indeed and am still so. I think we may have touched on this barmy idea that Auckland City Council have concerning billboards and signage before. In brief those who howl at the moon think by removing all billboards and reducing all shopsigns to the size of an A4 sheet of paper Auckland will be transformd nto the eigth architectural wonder of the world. They site Paris as an example of what can be done. Paris starts with a heritage stretching back five, six hundred years and is full of stone buildings of great architectural merit of similar vintage. Auckland has a history of just over a hndred years and is full of crap wooden building stock. Wood rots (I read it in a book) and wooden buildings are not going to be around in centuries to come whatever the size of the signs on them is. OK so the plan is Barking. But the looney left led by Trotsky Hucker, he who pulls Big Ears' strings, has decided that the Signage Police will come into existence. But first we have go through that uniquely Kiwi institution 'the consultation process that we have to have even though we have made up our minds what we are going to do and we are going to ignore'. To make this process quicker they have appointed a chair and committee to hear submissions on this that have already come out in public and said they are all for the signage Armageddon. This is unbelivable even by local standards. Bloody Hucker then wants us all to be assured that the committee 'are people of great integrity and can be relied on to make impartial decisions'. I am speechless - well almost.

Listen up, Sunbeam, you and you sort are a randomly rearranged collection of amino acids that I would not give the respect of treading on. You are an empty headed animal food trough wiper. Your mother was hamster and your father smelt of elderberries. I blow my nose at you and fart in your general direction. You and yours are beneath even the lowest form of contempt imaginable and you will not foist your odious form of thought and behaviour control on me or my family and then expect me to pay you to do so. You can all sod off, the lot of you. If I ever see any of you anywhere near my house I will get my battle group moored off Milford Beach to reduce you to the pile of dust you deserve to be. I like to lead a peaceable life and you have put me in the foulest mood I have been in for months and I don't like it.

I've no idea what is in the paper after A9 as I couldn't read it through the red mist. I'm off to kick the cat.

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Just like SIngapore - not

Big pictures of a nasty evil Ford Fairlane next an alternative, a Skoda (for God's sake), exemplifies the looney tunes path this country has been bent on for years. Unfortunately the supercharger has been turned on (or not as the eco-friendly case maybe) in the last forty eight hours and we are careering towards Basket Case Country status at flank speed. We are going to end up with Morris Dancing (the Greens really do this at their conferences) as our national sport as it is much safer than rugby, we will be forced to plant trees at the weekend instead of going gamefishing, Eric Clapton and Pink Floyd will be banned to be replaced with compulsory singing of Cumbaya outside the Collective Tofu Bar. All this would be amusing if some of the cold hard facts that this sort of thinking of the total nutcases running the place has brought upon this country were not examined. There is yet another report from someone international that puts New Zealand firmly on the bottom of all sorts of child welfare statistics. You cannot convince me that this is unrelated to all the crap we have to put up with from the liberal policies of succesive administrations. The principal cause, in my opinion of course, is the official acceptance, even encouragement, of the breakup of the traditional nuclear family. You know the sort of thing, a mother (female) married (not a 'civil union') to a father (male) with children (male and/or female) living in the same house (paid for or in the process of being so) all the time (not alternate weekends if there is an R in the month). It may not be 'the modern way' but it has stood the test of time for centuries.

I was taken out to dinner the other evening. I lived in Singapore for many years and the providers of the free groceries were Singaporean friends. We went to Portofino in the Viaduct Basin and very nice it was as well. Friend tried to book a table - no need, he was told, just front up. Thus, I expected it to be very quiet (it was a Tuesday night). But no it was throbbing. My Singapore friend's eyes lit up - 'Very smart, don't take bookingsand risk turning people away. Be confident of your turnover and be sure you can always fit people in'. This was the first reminder of a pragmatic way of thinking that this country has been trying to rid me of for over a decade. The New Zealand way (read Government way) would be to take bookings so that it was fair and no one lost out. Crap. We then had four hours of chat about old times but more about the future directions of two countries very similar in population but oh so different in attitude and, dare I say it, future prospects. The pragmatic versus the nutty idealist.

Similar populations? Not for long. Singapore has planned that its current 4 million people will be (I chose my words carefully) 6.5 million by, wait for it, 2030. This to be achieved by an agressive migratoin policy. A greater than fifty percent increase in twenty three years. Why? Because 4 mill is not enough to sustain a viable economic model. Where are all these extra people going to live in a country the size of Lake Taupo? High rise flats. They already have an island full of those you might quite reasonably say. Not high rise enough. They have started pulling down loads of the seventeen storey models (some only ten years old) to replace them with the forty storey numbers. No resource consent hearings, no relocating snails, just in with the wrecking balls and pile drivers. What about the people who get their dwelling roused? They get a bag of cash, temporary accommodation and told to shut the f**k up. I love it.

This is not perfect of course. There is agreat deal of discontent about what the government there is up to and the gap between the super rich (and there are plenty of those) and the poor is in fact increasing, but it is worth remembering that there are different ways of approaching a problem. This country cannot ignore the horrible fact that before we can afford to go all gaga over native trees we have to actually get the place runnning as a viable economic concern. Putting getting rid of Ford Fairlanes as a top priority is not doing this to an almost negligent degree. Now I am not saying that a system that works well for one country, and Singapore certainly'works', can or should be imported lock stock and compulsion to another totally different country, but it is tempting isn't it?

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Obald saves the world

Oh dear, Oh dear things have gone from bad to worse in the last twenty four hours and Parliament has only been back a day. We are entering a phase where the business of politicking is overtaking the business of running the country. These wastrels will sell their grannies to stay in power and bugger the consequences for the rest of us, the great unwashed, on whose behalf they are supposed to act.

With Philip Field's precipitous departure we find ourselves this morning where Labour is in office but not in power. That this is the case was reflected in the Headmistresses display of insanity yesterday arvo and the Botox and Tooth Whitening lady's glee this morning. Labour now needs the bloody Greens to keep going so God help us all. Jeanette Wrinkly Face says 'We have no intention of bringing the Government down'. Well of course she hasn't, all her Christmases have just come at once. She can get Helen to do pretty much what she wants for the next eighteen months. We already have indications of the insanity that awaits us with her saying we are going to spen $13 million on 'Environment Education'. $13 mill is a lot of money to waste in this way. I would waste it on a DB9 and a 50 foot Assegai and still have lots of change to waste in all sorts of other inventive ways. My method of spending the money would also do as much good for the country's welfare as hers.

The only bright spot is that the Headmistress seems hell bent in making the environment the central plank of her election campaign 2008. Good. That means we have eighteen months to expose it to be the scam it patently is and she will look stupid and won't get re-elected. Then I can claim the $13 mill as a reward for saving the country from being the world's laughing stock. I get an Aston Martin and a flash gameboat, Helen opens a tofu bar in Feilding and everything is tickety boo.

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World Cup & Field

Well they are all back in action this afternoon and we have to watch the odious business of politics again warts and all - come to think of it there is not much else apart from the warts.

Philip Field's name has been bubbling to the surface and it would appear that we will not be able to avoid it again very soon; let us not prejudge that. However the PM has already been putting in a pre-emptive strike distancing herself from him as much as possible in anticipation of the brown stuff hitting the ceiling fans in a big way. I can't find the quote but I recall the words 'unethical and totally reprehensible' being used in his direction. Quite right too. But wait a minute if he is so 'unethical and totally reprehensible' why is the Headmistress still so happy to have this reprobate on her payroll doing nothing. Oh yes, he is doing something, he is providing her with his nasty grubby little vote isn't he. This is hypocrisy on a biblical scale and gives us a reminder of what a totally abhorrant business politics with a New Zealand flavour is. I hate the lot of them.

Pond Scum is back with a hiss and a roar. Piss up and Brewery material when it comes to him and the World Cup arrangements. He heads a whole World Cup Ministry (not far short of the Ministry of Silly Walks on a scale of need) and still they can't work out what to do about hosting eighty minutes of footy. They've had almost two years and they are exactly where they started. I couldn't give a stuff where the game is or whether the seating is temporary or carved out of blocks of granite but just stop farting around and fire up the big yellow earthmovers. All this kowtowing to the residents of Reimer's Avenue and finding more fine print in the RMA to use as a procrastinating stick is making the country a laughing stock. 'We have a flash new stadium (well flashish because the RMA won't let it be real flash) but we have to turn the lights off at ten o'clock so could you please all go home now. Laughable. By the way I think the temporary seats that are now rumoured to be the go are very good idea as they will at least get more use at the Levin Field Days after the FInal has been played than they will if they stay in Sandringham.

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Bovver boy won't go away

Progress of the stupid. The confusing signs around the school that weren't confusing because they were erected in line with policy have, not 24 hours later, been removed to avoid confusion.

We haven't heard of Bovver Boy Mallard for a while but he crops up in all his odious 'I don't give a toss what anybody thinks because I am always right' guise in two related incidents today. The bills for his ludicrous waterfront diversionary smokescreen have to be payed. You and I are in for about $600,000. 'I am quite comfortable with that' says Pondscum. Well you may be, Sunshine, but there are an awful lot (myself included) who are not. Oh, I forgot you don't give a toss do you? Next cock up, please.

Here it is, right here. Mallard wants to tighten up laws surrounding the conduct of spectators at sporting events; streakers, Mexican Waves, that sort of thing. If the laws are not there to be tightened our Trev will write some so that they can. Well, you can sod off. Two things. The control of the thought police has gone far enough without this sort of crap. What harm does a streaker do to anyone? Second all these events are run by private enterprise, the Rugby Union, Cricket Board, Netball Association or whatever. If they want to tighten up their security they can employ (and pay for) more men in yellow fluoro jackets and not have the Police (paid for by you and me) do the totally unecessary dirty work. The excuse of 'Well Australia have much stricter legislation than us' is, as usual, totally irrelevant. Pondscum is in top form and is as nauseating as he always is.

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Stupid people

That this country is run by people that are stupid is as plain as a pikestaff - well it is to me anyway. We touched upon this current safety blitz to stop Armageddon at school crossings yesterday. The ads on the radio have been cranked up a notch - a child asking his dad (lucky bugger to have one in this crazy country) whether dying hurts had me regurgitating the Marmite soldiers all over A4 - and there is a piece in the Herald telling us that the new 40km zones will be bought into being with a high profile performance by Annette King later in the month. This wondrous news is a side bar to an article about a school's confusion as to what speed limits really do apply around its gates - 54kmh (not the carnage producing 55) or 40kmh. Apparently they have signs all over the show that give conflicting messages. Off to the council who say that the confusion is OK as all the signs are correctly positioned 'according to policy'. We then have a little insight into this policy which I foolishly tried to a)read and b) understand. a) was only marginally easier than b) which came in at impossible. It all has to do with whether 15% of traffic traversing a nominated piece of road do, or might, travel in excess of 50kmh over a period (undefined) as to whether that piece of tarmac gets a 50 or 40 billing. I think. The people who write this cobblers are stupid but not nearly so as the people who blindly try and enforce it or those who admit to thinking it is all a good idea.

Right that's stupid people at the council level. Now let's get serious and move down to Wellington. Phil Goff has put pen to paper this morning to enlighten us, the great unwashed, about carbon miles, carbon footprints and Tescos. Leaving aside that fact that he is talking a load of bollocks about the biggest scam ever foisted on the western world the piece is worth reading just to wonder at the dreadful sentence construction, poor development of a theme and repetition. Phil Goof is either stupid, poorly educated or both. I am inclined to think it is both. I have just looked him up on Google and thought I would go for the most biased rose spectacled view of him I could find and read his official parliamentary bio.

He has done nothing with his life except leave school to read politics at Auckland University, enter Parliament, lose his seat (this before the safety net of the MMP List), tread water for a couple of years (you guessed it, lecturing in politics) before re-entering Parliament where he has remained. Only stupid people would do this with their allotted three score years and ten. And Parliament is full of such useless people with no experience of the real world.

As an aside here is a list of Phil's Portfolios. His expertise in international affairs sees him hold the portfolios of Minister of Defence, Minister of Trade, Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control, and Associate Minister of Trade Negotiations. He continues as Minister of Pacific Island Affairs and is also an Associate Minister of Finance.

Let's go through this. His expertise in international affairs. Eh? Where does that come from? Two years lecturing politics at AUT in the early 1990s? Minister of Disarmament and Arms Control. Again, eh? If this portfolio is inward looking then he has done a brilliant job as New Zealand is completely disarmed but how does that sit with what he does after lunch as Defence Minister. If it is outward looking to the rest of the world then the rest of the world could easily deal with it with a quick 'Sod off, you insignificant pratt'. Minister of Trade, and Associate Minister of Trade Negotiations. Another eh? Why do we need both? If he is Associate Minister at the second mob's place I assume there is also a real Minister and likewise he has an Associate at the big house. East Ham. We see he is also an Associate Minister of Finance. Note the 'an' implying there is more than one. The full Barking. From what is proferred in his biography he is qualified to do none of these jobs let alone all six at the same time.

He is not alone in being stupid. The people who set up the structures that allow him to lead his useless existence are stupid and it could be argued that we are even more stupid for allowing it to continue. The governance of this country needs a good seeing to with a chainsaw.

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Control, control, control

Control, control, control. We are being bombarded left right and centre with 'authorities' who would control our every waking moment. Schools back today and we are getting another 'safety campaign' (we must be bloody safe) surrounding schools. The tolerance for speed past centres of knowledge has been reduced from 55kmh to 54 kmh. What difference is that going to make except to the public purse? We must be controlled as to how we drive and suffer yet more damned public service ads in all forms of the media. Just count how many adverts you are subjected to daily are about driving too fast, the dangers of climbing ladders, keeping out of the sun, how to behave in a fire and on and on and on.............. Leave me alone and let me decided for myself how far I go up a ladder before donning equipment suitable for scaling Everest.

Individual control is not enough. Business, evil, evil business, must be controlled. Trotsky Hucker wants (and will get) to control the signage all over Auckland 'so that we can be more like Sydney and Brisbane'. What is this clown on? He and his ilk would be much happier if we were all still trading in muskets and mirrors. Sod off all you interfering busibodies and leave me/us alone. If I have a business and I want to put an advertising hoarding on the side of my shop I will decide how big it is and not you, you interfering piece of pondscum.

You may detect that I am in a particularly vitriolic mood this morning. This has absolutely nothing to do with the weather - yeah right.

There is a comment piece by one of the jokers who actually had a part to play in writing the IPPC report on Climate Change released last week. But was it released last week? David Parker seems to think it was declaring the debate is over and all the global warming is our fault and therefore the Governments stupid embracing of all this Kyoto crap is totally justified. But hang on a minute. The writer of this morning's piece points out to the unwary (David Parker) that what was released was merely the abstract. The full report will not be available for several months whilst it is verified and checked. The report itself is written by over 700 scientists a lot of whom having differing views. The abstract is written by a few bureaucrats and politicians who have no differing views and an agenda to market. There is great danger in reading the abstract and jumping to conclusions on that when the real report is probably not going to be unanimous in its conclusions at all. Our correspondent, for instance, has grave misgivings over the veracity of a lot of the science in the report and reinforces the disquiet on basing everything on computer modelling. He points out that a mathematical model for the behaviour of fluid interfaces (e.g. winds, oceans and the like) does not exist and that an American University has offered a milllion US dollars for such a model. It would settle for proof that such a model could even exist. The money has not been claimed. The abstract presents only one side (guess which one) of conflicting evidence when it has to. There is a paper that says that the sun's sunspot activity has not changed since the seventeenth century but several that say it is behaving very differently from the 1600s. Guess which paper is quoted in the IPPC abstract released last week.

I'll say it again and will not tire of doing so. All these prophecies of doom and the blame laying on industrialisation as the root cause of it all is based on assuming very shonky sciencetto be true. It is almost certainly not but at least opposing views should be given a fair go. This is not happening. People are believeing what they want to hear and are blind to anything that does not fit in with their view of things. Even people who are wise enough not believe all this bollocks (like me) are called 'sceptics'. I would much rather be called a realist.

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Kumara & fairness

It never rains but it pours. After weeks of inactivity there is suddenly plenty to get the attention.

We as a nation are doomed to stay where we are, or even accelerate our slide backwards, if we cannot look to the future and have a pragmatic view of the past. This is is no way meant to sound like Maori (or Serb or Vietnamese or anything) bashing but we have to put all this Treaty stuff behind us and move on. That there were rights and wrongs, most of which occurred decades and even centuries ago, is undeniable. But what relevance does great globs of it have to life in a different world in the twenty first century. Caesar arrived in the UK completetly uninvited and generally unwanted nearly two thousand years ago. Is it my right that I spend my every waking hour petitioning Rome for compensation for wrongs heaped upon my ancestors? Wasting my time and money on endless 'Waitangi' issues is approaching that level of silliness when we read this morning there is a claim in for the rights to 'original species of kumara'. This is right up there with claims on the electromagnetic spectrum. This is stupid on a spectacualr scale. But it is given lip service by people being paid for by me. Instead of 'Sod off you are being a pratt' we spend years repecting things and constructing an apology to be delivered in a flax bag with a big fat cheque. We are living in a modern world that doesn't do this sort of thing for a very pragmatic reason - it has no relevance at all to getting on with a normal life for a vast majority of people. Let's wake up to the fact that the majority of people are just that, the majority, and their wishes should be paramount and not those of the vocal minority that seem to rule this place.

Which brings us on nicely to the Editorial. This raises the subject of democracy - brave man. The endless pandering to consultation, fairness and the inabiltiy (or unwillingnes more like) of elected bodies to make decisions is hamstringing us much as our unstoppable desire to look backwards. We should elect people on the basis of clearly stated policy intent and then, here's the rub, they just do it. And woe betide them if they don't. None of this 'We must respect (odious, overused word) the opinions of every tree frog we can lay our hands on'. None of this 'The three one armed lesbians in Levin are being descriminated against, therefore it won't happen despite the other four million wanting it' crap. If the decisions that are made along these lines arre spectacularly unpopular then the decision makers won't last long and they will be more careful as to how they word their manifestos won't they? Well, maybe not. Unfortunately this approach to running the country has as much chance of coming into being as I have of becoming Pope as it requires a degree of honesty and transparency in politicians that we are unlikely ever to see.

This again leads nicely into Garth George's piece. He predictably gives a very favourable (almost sycophantic) review of John Key's little effort in the South Island a couple of days back - well he would wouldn't he? The intersting point that he picked upon that I had missed was that Key says he wants to be measured by how he performs and not how long he stays in office. Let's see if he is singing the same tune in, say, five years time.

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