Not funny

I normally scribble a few words early in the morning but have had no time recently (and this morning no inclination) but government silliness is reaching new heights and I thought I might try typing after dark – very risqué. I also normally try and be a bit light hearted in most of my musings but the topic that is occupying most news space at the moment is hardly the subject for levity. However that does not dissuade me from dishing out great dollops of my other stock in trade, scorn, when it is due.

That politicians have not the first idea what to do about child abuse is patently obvious to anyone with half a brain. Which is more than they have as they have not the first idea what to do about anything. But their latest master plan is stupid on an intergalactic scale. First they are asking these dumb arsed questions of those who front up to hospital just to those without a Y chromosome. This from the party of bloody fairness and equality in all things. Ms Bloggs fronts up at A & E having been in a car vs. power pole encounter and the Triage Nurse will be obliged (there is always a measure of compulsion in all these wallies do) to ask her if she has ever felt unduly criticised at home. This as her liver drips all over the floor. Who but the terminally daft (or a politician) could think this has even the remotest chance of achieving anything? Anything other amass than vast quantities of ‘data’ – which will doubtless be regarded as ‘valuable’. They will then employ armies of ‘Question Operatives’ (because the already pitifully inadequate number of nurses don’t have the time or inclination to do anything extra than they are already doing) to collate all this useless information. And to what purpose? To increase the number of referrals to the SAS of the bureaucratic firmament CYFS presumably. A more dysfunctional, inefficient, uselss bunch of do gooding pratts it would be hard to imagine. And, as usual, we pay for it.

A year down the track when the latest outrage has taken place – and be under no illusion there will be more - some Government apologist will stand up and we will have to put up with all the ‘Progress is being made’. ‘An inter-departmental working group will soon be presenting its finding in a flax basket and more funds will be made available to implement their recommendations’ And so it goes on.

It is, and will remain, a complete load of bollocks. Some one needs to have the balls to stop the hui and start the doey. Sod being nice to people and culturally sensitive. Start banging a few heads together – literally. Food vouchers instead of cash (Jim Beam ain’t food), sterilisation, impounding kids from those incapable of looking after them (a precursor to this would be telling some people that they are incapable of looking after kids on account of the fact that they spend their entire life drunk, stoned or both), take houses away from people who can’t or won’t look after them and so on. Nothing new, all very right wing and totally unacceptable to those who would try and solve the disaster with a group hug. But, you useless toads, your way is not working. One of my favourite definitions of insanity is continuing to do the same things and expecting different results. You are all insane.

Ask a seventy five year old woman attending hospital to get a boil on her bum lanced three questions and this is going to reduce the incidence of three year old kids in tumble driers. Give me a break.

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Fibre optics

have just exited the lift to enter my office and shared Otis's finest with two chaps from Fletcher's Construction. They are employed doing some internal rennovations on the Farm's HQ and were carrying a sheet of GIB. They were both wearing hard hats and wearing day-glo vests. Why? I am surprised they (and me ) were not required to wear safety harnesses as the lift was capable of going to the tenth floor. I felt so much safer getting out at the eighth.

I was actually thinking of bureacracy when I stumbled upon this example thereof. What are the essentials of life? Water? Yup. Working sanitation? Yup. Electricity? Won't go there. Broad band interent? How would we know as we can't get anything approaching it in the Peoples Republic of Aoteorao but I could not imagine a reasonable life with out the even lobotomised version that Ihug offers. Thank God, therefore, that I do not live in Blockhouse Bay. The denizens of this fine suburb not ten minutes from Auckland's CBD apparently have to make do with the cyberspace equivalent of men standing on volcanic cones waving semaphore flags. Telecom, God bless them, say they have to replace the copper wiring. We have to believe them. This will be done with a fibre optic number that will cost $2 million. We have to believe them. They cannot start this work until December because of 'consent issues. We definitely believe them. Why can consent to run a cable take over six months? I am not a cabling engineer but even I know you don't hang nice sexy fibre optic cables off power poles. You put them underground. Who are going to object? Moles? Earthworms? No, the bureacrats must have their unnecessary slice of the action.

They have their supporters in the highest of places as well. Nick Smith (a rather scruffy member of the opposition with a bit of a credibilty problem) had an antibureacrat bill shouted down in the Nut House yesterday. The main throwers of spanners were the sitting Politburo. Nick wanted all building consents that were not processed in twenty days to be issued free of charge. Shock horror you can't do that cry the men with the clipboards (or rather their paymasters) because the cost of the late consents will have to be met by the rate payers. There you have it in one. Totally the wrong answer. A deeply ingrained wrong paradigm. The real answer, of course, is that we will see to it that all consents are issued within twenty days and there will be no late consents to cost anybody anything. There is no hope.

Everybody's favorite dental nurse deigned to speak to the masses yesterday. All monies collected from road user charges and petrol tax will be diverted from the consolidated fund and be directed at 'transport issues'. Looks good (we'll ignore the tax on the fuel that goes in the Yamaha HPDI shall we). Loads of dosh for more roads to drive the supercharged V8 down. Yum yum. I think not. The devil is in the detail. She did not say that the money will go into roading, it will go into 'transport issues'. These changes come into effect in July next year. There is to be an election next year. There will be a curb on electoral spending for this election. The Labour government has increasing the use of public transport to achieve that well known crock, carbon nuetrality, as one of its main election planks. You could justify an expensive advertising campaign about this time next year promoting alternate forms of transport as 'transport issues' fundable from petrol tax.

Conspiracy theorist - Moi?

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Ex school teachers

I supposed we are obliged to give Benson Dope some airtime, but quite why we should bother with anything other than giving him the finger is beyond me.

I have no real objection to lousy school teachers as a group. I realised this about forty years ago when Hugh Glanville, who would teach me about the Wars of the Roses, insisted on calling me Tibble and beating me with a size twelve gym shoe. That he was a lousy teacher held my wrath for only a short time as I realised a wonderful truth - I could ignore him and my life would not change. As an aside he was the first person I was aware of that wore elastic sided boots (cool) and he drove an Austin Healey 3000 to school (way cool).

Having said that, why do we have to put up with Benson Dope? The whole affair is rotten to the core and exposes some worrying but not well hidden traits of the current administration. But to have B-D at the bottom of it somehow makes it worse. He is a duplicitous worm of the first magnitude. His utterences concernig all this are true to the form we first saw over the tennis ball/duct tape affair. The adjective snivelling could have been invented just for him. He tells porkies wholesale and I'm not sure he could lie straight in bed. He was interviewed on the box last night. 'Minister, are you an honest man?' 'I do my job to the best of my ability'. Well I suppose in an oblique sort of a way he has answered the question - 'No'. I see in the paper this morning he points out to us, the great unwashed, that he is not being economical with the truth because we, ignorant peasants that we are, do not understand the difference between being 'briefed' and being 'informed'. He was informed about the blatant political manipulation of an employment issue but was not briefed about it. So that makes it alright. Well no it doesn't. Your wriggling and misuse of the English language just paints you as an even more worthless a member of the human race than we already thought you were - if that were possible.

Beyond the total lack of value of the personnel of the whole sorry affair there are, of course, a couple of principals (or more likely lack thereof) that should be more worrying. The first is the fact that the Minister is prepared to take no responsibilty for the actions of his department. B-D thinks that just because he did not actually make the 'phone call and throws a few mots du weasel at us he is in the clear. Sad thing is that I reckon he really believes it. The equally (maybe more) worrying fact that all this rams home is the paranoea this administration feels when anyone without their warped political view of the world gets too close to their bastions of power.

Scary totalitarian stuff. They have to go.

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The Minister of Health is a vet

The Minister of Health is a vet. For me that just about sums up the totally random and screwed up way this country is run. The Minister of Finance has a degree in History. The Minister of State Services, Minister of Police, Minister of Transport and Minister for Food Safety is a dental nurse, and most of the rest have done nothing useful with their lives at all before going into Parliamnet and thence Government when they become even less functionless. The headmistress, to my knowledge, has never trained for anything or done a proper job for money, ever. She's led her entire life in a sheltered and theoretical thinking world, and thinking of a particularly unpleasant nature to my mind.

I've mentioned this before but why can't we have some people with a track record of expertise in their appointed roles runnig the country? An economist in the Ministry of Finance, a senior military man in the Defence Ministry (perhaps not such a good idea on reflection), a lawyer running Justice, and architect in the Ministry of Housing etc.

This constant gripe was brought to mind with the picture of the Minister of Health (the vet) 'checking out' how the new food regulations - opps, sorry, suggestions - were panning out in schools. This when they had been in situ for about ten minutes of course. He was encouraged to see that one school, substituting water for evil fizzy drinks, had saved the pupils from 400kg (the weight of a small elephant - our Minister's vetinary experience allows him to make such profound statements) of sugar. That morning? The seat of learning was 400kg lighter by lunchtime than it was last week?

Why do we have to put up with this condescending crap? 'I will use the elephant metaphor as it makes me look all cuddly and able to relate to how the peasants think. You can't grasp big numbers like 400 or do hard units like kilograms so I will count things in the small elephant unit that you poor people use all the time in your day to day life. I know you all pop into the Mad Butcher and buy 1/400th of a small elephant of mince on a regular basis. I know you are constantly saying 'I am 1/20th of a small elephant overweight and I must renew my Les Mills subscription'. I am sure you will be so pleased that this juvenile pachyderm has been removed from the school as I know you were getting really worried about him trampling on little Johnny in the crush to avoid the Coke machine. I am confident you will feel a warm glow in your heart that I am here this morning ensuring my draconian policies are having the desired effect even though they have only been in force for half an hour. And, oh is that a television crew over there?' Bollocks.

We touched upon the similarity between Auckland Council (and I can't quite remember which of the nine it was) and a drunken sailor last week. As if more were needed we have further grist to the mill this morning. Their ability to fritter away money that is nicked off us is staggering. The estimates for the upgrade of Mount Eden have gone from $6 million to $12 million plus with a possible ceiling of $28 million. We shall leave aside the rather mind warping underlying concept of updating an extinct volcano. What do you do? Restock the molten lava vaults? Stoke up the brimstone at the expense of the fire? The amounts of money involved, even at the lower end of the scale, are mindnumbing. $6million would keep me in Aston Martins till the end of my days. I could have a brand new DB9 every year. But $28 million? 28? How can you spend that sort of dosh on one bloody hill? There are a few looney tune ideas for transporting toursits to the top. All of these seem to involve Jetsons rubber tyred monorails controlled by untested computer systems. None of these seem to involve legs and sensible shoes. There are plans to upgrade the tearooms. Well there's $15 mill down the gurgler I suppose. But there's more. Once the gold plated pavillion of Earl Grey and Lamingtons is complete there has to be a budget for it to lose several million per annum. So the people who take our rates off us waste money to build a new teashop that they expect to lose money on a biblical scale. Well, of course I'll vote for people who want to do that.

There is a move afoot to streamline the mess that is Auckland's regional governance from the, I think, nine bodies into one. How can you argue against it?

It won't happen of course because the those who will have the final vote for that particular Xmas are the turkeys.

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Modern medicine

Much that bears looking at this morning but unfortunately most is same old same old. The Food Police swing into the schools this morning with sirens blaring and riot shields at the ready. The government is telling us what we will spend our money on - that is what is left of it after they've applied the tax vacuum cleaner to the wallet. Nothing new here. The minority government has been forced to climb down over the alternative medicine stuff because they don't have the numbers. This is not painted as a climb down, of course. The spin doctors fire up the afterburners and it is wrapped in some sort of excuse speak I didn't even bother to read. Nothing new here. Having not got their way, however, the Government is trying a different tack. Annette King is giving the hosptial pass (pun intended) to Hodgson with instructions that if democarcy won't fit the Bill the peasants will be forced to do as they are told by Ministerial decree. Why are we not surprised by this?

Colin James column was the piece that held my attention for longest this morning. He is normally a pretty dry sort of a stick and he interests me little but this morning I stuck with him. I usually try and avoid matters pertaining to health in these ramblings for reasons that will be obvious to some but Mr James makes some general points this morning that we would all do well to heed.

At last I have found someone who has realised something that struck me years ago. Medicine is not a precise science. Superficially that may sound bonkers but I'm afraid it is the ghastly truth. I was told too many moons ago to be comfortable to remember that medicine was a marriage between science and art. That appealed to me greatly then and was one of the many reasons I kept going. It has dismayed me to see that over the years science has been suing for divorce and has progressivley been given the house, the kids, the bach, the boat and the Volvo. Poor old art has been forced under Grafton Bridge. And it is just not fair as medicine is not and will never be a precise science.

The great myth about modern medicine (and it has come into being in my working lifetime) is that anything is curable. Diagnosis should be precise to the point of perfection and this should be available at no cost, with no mistakes yesterday. This myhth is reinforced with every new 'medical breakthrough' that bursts onto the six o'clock news between another bombing in Iraq and a cat stuck up a tree in Titirangi. Every new advance is a 'must have' item for a health service that struggles to do the tried and proven in an efficient way. Because a new technolgy exists somewhere, if anyone suffers because it wasn't availbale instantly here then the Health Service is stuffed.

This totally unrealistic expectation of the great unwashed as to what the scientific part of modern medicine can deliver has me so disillusioned with the profession that I have enjoyed for thirty years that I tear what little hair I have out in despair on a daily basis.

Oh yes, National is going to cure all this if they succeed at the next election. Yeah right.

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Platinum pavers

Busier than a one legged man in a bum kicking competition this morning so this is about seven hours later than I like but I could not let council profligate spending pass me by.

Auckland Council has just confirmed an overspending of $17.4 million on various works around the place. This is not they have spent $17.4 million on roading and street works and the like, they have overspent to this amount. 3 mil of this was on one project alone namely St Patrick's Square. I wasn't aware we even had one of these but the extra dosh here was requred to upgrade the paving to a higher standard thus reflecting the 'cultural, religious and historical significance' of the square. This well known centre of all that is good in Auckland is presumably going to be paved in ermine trimmed platinum pavers. What the hell is this all about? One. How can it be budgeted that paving for a single town square is measured in millions (plural) of dollars in the first place. Two. If you are quoted a price for a job, that is what you pay. You don't go over budget and you certainly don't go over by about 40% where that equates to over $3 million. Three. Why does the person who presided over this mess still have a job? Why do we accept that council or government officials stuffing up is so much par for the course that it is written in the job description? This latest abhorrance will just be an item on page 7 of the paper for one day and that will be it. The Budget blowout will be paid and the bloke who signs the cheque will suffer no penalty in pocket or career advancement and will just tee himself up for the next one. It is nuts.

Speaking of madness we haven't heard from Keith Locke for a while but he reminds us all this morning that he is still around and still as mad as a box of frogs. The New Zealand Trade Board or whatever they call themselves have managed to get a trade pavillion parked on the Champs Elysee for the duration of the Rugby World Cup. This is going to take the shape of a massive blow up rugby ball. Sounds pretty good. Can't miss it, rugby and New Zealand - good association of ideas, come in and get a free kiwi badge and the opportunity to bolster New Zealand's exports. This is what makes the world go round. Not for Luddite Keith though. He thinks trade is evil and has been since the days of muskets, blankets and mirrors. Loopy Keith reckons the pavillion is a mistake. He reckons it is unsightly and as the French are 'an artistic and cultured people' it would do our trade no good to upset their sensibilities with a large blow up rugby ball especially as this will be 'spoiling the vista' of the Eiffel Tower. Keith must have been snacking from Nandor's lunch box. What a load of crap. The Eiffel Tower was constructed in the 1890's for a World Fair (a trade exhibition) and was regarded by many of the artisitc and cultured people of France at the time as an eyesore.

Just get rid of him. He is a waste of space and has been ever since he nailed his political colours to the mast by being an advocate of the policies of Pol Pot. I have to pay for this nonsense. Grrrrr.

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Child labour

Ahmed Zauoieioaiei - a man with far too many vowels in his name - is a bad smell that won't go away. I have no desire or interest in dicussing the rights or wrongs of what he has, has not, is lleged to have, is alleged to have not or might have done. Starting out your trip by flushing your passport down the dunny of a 747 is not a ploy guaranteed to get you a favourable place in my mind but the facts of the case can't matter because we are never going to know them. Several things, however, do fascinate me and get up my nose a bit. Even a Mickey Mouse country like the Peoples Republic of Aoteoroa has to have a secret service and it has to be both of those things - secret and a service. The headmistress made the first and (I sincerely hope) last statement I agree with yesterday. All this stuff has to remain secret. Transparency has no place where national security is allegedly at stake - and we just have no choice but to believe the spooks that it is. That's the secret bit. Service? The service is to the country as a whole of course. The Zauoieiaoi crap is an extreme example of the nonsense that results when you pursue the rights of the individual to the nth degree at the expense of the rights of society as a whole. Apparently his legal bill, which you will recall you and are are paying for, has reached $3.5 mil and counting. What price individual 'rights and freedoms'? Well in my book this bloke long ago priced himself out of the value for money department. Especially when a great glob of that money is spent on child labour. I thought the Marxist ratbags who would run this country were against sending little boys up chimneys to sweep them. How then can they condone the employment of Deborah Manning? This twelve year old doge must surely be contravening all sorts of youth employment regulations. She must have gone to Law School straight from kindy. Well we won't have to see her on the news this evening as it is too windy. She would be blown up Queen Street if she went out today without nanny.

Inquiries. Why does every untoward event in society have to have about three inquiries set up to look into the facts? There can only be one set of facts surrounding anything, so why multiple inquiries? This bought to light by an 'Independant internal inquiry' (eh?) into the death of that poor chap in Christchurch recently. The family (complete with 'victim genre' photograph) are claiming whitewash as the findings don't fall into line with what they want. No worries; there are two more Inquiries to go - the Coroner and the Health and Disability Commisioner. The family can take their pick from one of those and fully support the one they like and condemn the other. If they dislike both they will presumably appeal to someone for a fourth and knowing this country's propensity to pursue 'fairness' to the ends of the earth (and my pocket) they'll get it. Any air crash you get two or three investigations likewise with mishaps concerning the Police or government agency. Quantity is no substitute for quality. In the case of deaths there should be a Coroner's Inquiry and that is it. The coroner's system has been around for ever because it works. We don't need (and definitely don't need to pay for) all these Johnny Come Lately Boards of Investigation that do nothing but muddy the waters in the pursuit of fairness and transparency.

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Political genoa trimmer

Political grandstanding appears to be the flavour of the week. There was another example by that damned woman on Monday which I didn't mention yesterday as it somewhat paradoxically diluted my ire over the VC business. On the same day she was shamelessly trying to muscle in on the bravery under fire she 'allowed' herself to be photographed on equally alien turf. There was extensive coverage of the country's most prominent childless married (sic) woman sitting on the floor in a Kindy reading stories to 'young New Zealanders'. What a syrupy, saccharine laden crock. I wend my way throught this morning's rag thinking my weekly dose of nausea has been taken like a man and I am home free. But no. Buried somewhere in the depths there is a picture of someone from Emirates Team New Zealand doing the wave from the boat as they go past the Kiwi supporters on the dock. Wait a minute that's not Dalton or Barker, its bloody Bovver Boy. There is Trevor damned Mallard kitted up like an up wind genoa trimmer in the skin tight racing tee shirt and official cap doing the royal wave. The 'I'm part of the Team' look is nauseating on a biblical scale. He (Mallard) has announced that he (Mallard) has decided that $10 mil will be available immediately to retain the core of ETNZ. Whilst I applaud his sentiment and I think it is a top move, the arrogance of the man to paint himself as the one who as a good Kiwi bloke makes the unilateral decision is a telling sanpshot of the attitude of this Government.

A better than average Editorial this morning which harps back to the West Auckland Labour Laove In at the weekend. Although the political grandstanding the current bunch of government ratbags have applied the afterburners to this week is bad, to be fair politicians of all flavours do it. It, rather disappointingly, is what politics seems to about these days. What really gets me about the current lot is their policy platform and even more the ideology behind it. The editor quite reasonably use the free kindy time to illustrate that Labour's welfare for all policies benefit them politically but the nation in practical terms hardly at all. Give welfare to all (to be fair) but the reality is that those who benefit most are those who don't need it.

Welfare as a concept has been irrevocably tainted by this bloody equality nonsense. We have reached a stage here where about 35% of the country are receiving some form of state handout or another. There are even families with a family income in excess of $100,000 who are entitled to something if they have a footy team of kids. Welfare should be means tested - and I'm sure that was the idea when most of the programs were invented back across the mists of time. Put totally laudable ideas in the hands of left leaning politicians and they employ zillions of bureaucrats to come up with the current versions of things like the RMA and DPB. I can only see it ending in tears.

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The VC

When I was a lad I got the Victor comic delivered every week to the typical white middle class home in the depths of London suburban sprawl in which I lived. I really wanted the Beano but Dad thought this was a bit low brow and I had to sneak surreptitious glances at Dick Cox's copy. Before you could get to read the latest exploits of Alf Tupper (the Tough of the Track) who won Olympic gold medals in the one mile every week fueled by a training diet of fish and chips you had to get past the front cover. Featured on the front of the Victor every week we had a war story and this was usually of a bloke who had won the VC. Don't forget that WW2 was only just over a decade completed and all this was still pretty topical. I used to be absolutely gobsmacked at what these blokes would do and initially could never understand why. However slowly a few ideas and ideals dawned on me. Ideas of courage, patriotism, selfessness - all that sort of very non trendy stuff. I had a fascination for these chaps and especially for the blokes who got their awards posthumously. This was especially so when I understood what posthumous meant. The thing that struck me most was the high regard I felt for these men (and the overwhelming majority were men) and the fact this regard was heightened in me and the rest of the country when they died doing what they did. The idea that, however indirectly, they were doing what they did for me was one of the very first public spirited thoughts I can remember having.

All these thoughts and emotions flooded back yesterday when all of a sudden Corporal Apiata flew into our consciousness from the East Cape. I am not a Kiwi by birth but hold a blue passport and all the feelings I last felt in South London in the late 1950's came flooding back. There are only 13 of these blokes alive in the whole world for Pete's sake. Willy is a shoe in for the front cover of the Victor anytime he likes.

I then started to feel sick. In the midst of all the proper military seriousness and the chronicalling of his deeds of unbelievable courage the screen was filled with bloody Helen Clark. I rarely swear at home and I quickly apologised to my wife for shouting 'F*** off' at the TV.

The hypocrisy of this woman has reached new depths. Here was the woman who sold the airforce, who buys car ferries, paints them grey and calls them warships reading out a VC citation. Here was the bloody peacenik from hell lauding the bravest man in the land. Here was the woman who heads up the government that runs OSH reading about acts carried out without regard to personal safety. She unashamedly sticks her odious unwanted presence into an arena where she has no place. She grabs a bloody photo opportunity on the back of an action I'm sure she personally finds deeply repugnant. She is lauding the actions of a member of a military unit she does not want and has spent the last few years trying to down play and even deny the existence of. I don't know where Cpl Apiata is going to go to get his medal proper but I sincerely hope he is flown to London to recieve it from the Queen and not be fobbed off by getting it from the GG here in NZ where Helen can grab another photo opportunity.

Any remaining grain of respect I had for our Prime Minister evaporated yesterday and I am closer to hating her than I am to hating anything on this planet.

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Lawlessness

The Herald is very hard going on a Monday morning. First we have the Green Pages crap and then their attempt at a 'Society Page' with pictures of half pissed people trying to look cool whilst sipping (read getting as much in as possible in the shortest possible time as it is free) Pink Lindauer at various 'have to be seen at' social functions around town. They shoot themselves in the foot here by taking the Instamatic to the Guns 'n' Roses concert - very classy. If I went to a G'n'R gig I'd be in the false beard and sunnies in case the Herald photographers exposed to the world that I had not popped down to the exhibition of Etruscan vases for the evening as outlined to SWMBO.

Most of the nonsense today is on page two, with its usual denizen, Rudman, providing a trivial coda later on in the rag.

There is a picture of the Headmistress and Hodgson taken at the Labour Party Love In in, I think, West Auckland somewhere. This photo really is crying out to be the subject of a caption competition. This is a website directed at a mature and discerning audience and I will, therefore, desist from throwing in my first couple of suggestions which would be better suited to an undergraduate Rag Mag. The function they were attending sounds ghastly. Loads of left leaning wallies telling each other how wonderful they are is right up there with sticking matchsticks under your fingernails as a fun way of spending a winter's Sunday arvo.

Next to this crap is a quarter page illustrating some very serious points about the antismacking nonsense in action. David Cunliffe wagged the Labour Love In so he could spend the afternoon beating his two year old in public. Remember this is how the odious haridan Bradford portrayed any physical child discipline when she was pushing for the legislaton a couple of weeks back. Cunliffe's explanation of what sounds like any standard parent/two year old interaction in a supermarket is bollocks as it has to be considering the seriousness of the situation he potentially finds himself in. 'I, after due consideration of the facts and circumstances, gently but firmly assisted my child in withdrawing his right upper extremity from an area where it might have come into contact with the face of another juvenile New Zealander. In conjunction with this action to protect both parties from potential danger I calmly explained their position to them vis a vie the Bill of Rights and their standing with respect to the United Nations Year of the Child' Or was it 'The snotty kid got the slap on the wrist he had been riding for all afternoon'? - I can't remember. Cunliffe now has to, I repeat has to, be investigated by the Police if anyone makes a formal complaint. They won't, of course and here in rides the major problem.

What this episode, and doubtless many more to come, illustrates is total disregard for the law that the current administration is promoting. If you pass a law, fail to have the infrastructure to police it, and therefore pursue said law to its proper provision only occasionaly, what do you end up with? A contempt for that law and its provisions. If you do it repeatedly with most of the daft laws you keep passing what do you end up with? Contempt for the law - the whole lot of it. Why do we have boy racers (for example) giving the fingers to the Feds? Because they know they can. I'm sure if you looked somewhere in the statute books insulting the Police is an offence. But it is never prosecuted and so people know they can get away with it. We have now got to the stage where burglary is regarded as a fact of life. Now you don't need to delve too deeply into arcane law to discover that nicking flat screen TVs from people's living rooms is against the law and I'm sure everyone knows this. The infrastructure to prosecute this is not there, the prosecution rate for this plummits and the law becomes trivialised. Smacking kids, nicking hifis, what is the next part of the law that becomes irrelevant to our society?

Passing stupid laws about things that don't matter and then not enforcing them has a much greater run off than ignorant gits like Bradford could ever imagine. And we let them run the country. Nuts.

The redevelopment ot the Tank Farm. Two things. Top idea but why the hell is it going to take twenty five years? Presumably it is slated for twenty three years of resource consent and two years construction. Second, if it is going to take so long how can they possibly give any cost projections? $344 mil now will likely be $17 squillion in 2032.

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