Several birds with one stone

Never look a gift horse in the mouth so when a video like this comes along one is obliged to use it.

Just watch the first two minutes - the rest is a waste of space

I

This has so many learning points. Julia Gillard has a hideous voice. She could knock on my door to tell me she was giving me a DB9 for being a nice bloke and I would shoo her away just to stop the pain in my ears. She is a politician and a perfectly calm lady calls her (quite correctly) a liar and it phases her not a jot. 'Yes I said that and now I'm doing something else - so what?' 'I said that during the election campaign, but that was just to get me elected and I would say that the sun rose in the West if I had to. It has no relevance to what I do now. Yes I'm taxing you on the back of a complete crock, why? Because I can and I know best.' And so it goes on. It is absolutely unbelievable except that it is how these clowns operate. And I was very impressed how the grey haired lady never once lost her cool.

Now for the subtle stuff. Notice how she can say carbon is a pollutant with a straight face. Only politicians can do that. And check out the goon standing behind her left shoulder. The absolutely bog standard yes man. I'm unsure how he stands up being he is an invertebrate. What a plonker; he should hand in his man badge forthwith.

So is this political bollocks purely something one can observe in a Brisbane shopping centre? Well of course not. In September 2009 Phil Goof said, and I quote, a capital gains tax 'doesn’t immediately appeal to us as a key priority for any incoming government'. Not two hours ago he announced Labour's tax package with as a central plank a capital gains tax. Quelle surprise.

I suppose that is not quite so bad as he has zero chance of having anything to do with an incoming government in the foreseeable future.

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Woman stares wildly at calamity

Best picture/caption combo for a while

Rebekah Brooks is right at the top of a list of people I would not want to be at the moment. Or ever, come to think of it.

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Decade's end

New Year's Eve and I sit down feeling obliged to pen some words of wisdom and/or wit to mark the passing of the noughties. Have to be in the fields today for any emergency hay cutting that is required ( routine paddock topping or RoundUp application canned until after the silly season) and as there is none in the offing I have the morning stretching in front of me in a sea of potential boredom waiting for something to happen at the same time hoping it doesn't.

A paragraph on the woes of the world? Can't be bothered. The only thing of recent note that struck a chord is that the wallies in the US Transport Safety Authority have made my mind up for me as to whether I go to New Orleans in May for my annual trip to Septic Land. Forget it. Their knee jerk closing the dunnie door after the explosive hasn't bolted reaction to Underpants Bomber has made my mind up for me. If you think I am going to go to the airport even earlier for the privilege of being body searched just to go to the States you have another think coming. Not allowed to leave your seat during the last hour of all flights to the States? Seas of urine in the aisles. No blankets on your knee? We won't go there. No access to your hand luggage? What they really want is for the whole world to travel to the USA (if they have to do this at all) naked with no carry on bags at all. No, I think I'll go to Belgium in June instead. There's a logical non sequitor if ever there was.

Helen Clark getting a New year's honour? No, I'm in a good mood and I don't want to dwell on that. Hearing the dreaded voice on the electric wireless just now almost had me choking on my toothpaste.

The Aussies thrashing the Pakis? As predictable as the sun rising in the East which is in stark contrast to England giving SA a six of the best, trousers down in Durban. And we have no international cricket here at all. A diet of domestic one day drivel to get us into the right frame of mind for .............Bangladesh. Spare me.

Marlin being caught in small numbers at the end of December? And not just in Mercury Bay. Also a few (a very few) decent sized yellowfin tuna appearing. Nothing to get excited about just yet as my first piscatorial trip is still probably five weeks away. Still it tells you summer really is here. But I knew that anyway as my big lawn inexorably turns itself from pristine manicured greenness to scruffy looking unwatered brownness, my water tanks equally inexorably empty and the arrival of the water truck gets ever closer.

Enough of this. I think we will end with some very amusing silliness. These are a bunch of adverts that didn't make it to press for a beer in the UK called Spitfire, the 'Bottle of Britain'. Not used because of likelihood to cause offence or some other such tosh. Perhaps it is relevant to the past decade after all - this is the sort of very clever amusing stuff we should be having more of and the touchy feely tossers that rule our lives these days can sod off.

And my favourite

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Useless things we don't need

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Barking

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barking.

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OK, where is it?

The Autocue.

That Bazza O'Bazza has the gift of the gab is undeniable. He would have me captivated announcing he was putting the cat out. Watched, listened to, got emailed, YouTubed his speech at the inauguration just an hour ago. Well, I had no choice did I? It was even on Radio Sport. Got into the vehicular transport to escape the oratory for an erudite discussion on jockstraps and there he was again bending the ear of every power pole I drove past. But how does he do it?

That it is pre-written is a given. Even the bloke who half the world thinks walks on water can't make that sort of stuff up on the hoof. He obviously has a short term memory problem as he couldn't even remember half a sentence of his oath without ballsing it up. So where is the autocue? He doesn't wear glasses so its not in the frames of those. Etched on a contact lens by some secret NASA engraving process? Projected onto the sides of his nose from a microprojector in his tie? A hologram emanating from that irritating stars and stripes brooch they all wear? Could be that as he had an extra one on his overcoat; they are normally a lounge suit appendage. One of his cute daughters (not sure if I can stand four years - or even eight - of SWMBO going gagga over those) holding up handwritten notes on the back of envelopes? He looks out into the distance when speaking so is it in sky writing? Dozens of F16s performing Gettysburgesque barrel rolls over Maryland? Got me beat.

Anyone remember what he actually said?

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Obama

Watched bits of Obama's victory speech to his adoring throng on the telly last night - how could you avoid it, it was everywhere. Give the man his due he is a very, very polished act in the oratory department. I haven't heard a speech giver like that for many a moon - good stuff. I'm not talking of the content here (more of this later) but the 'product' is superb. He's young (well younger than me so he's really young), handsome and generally well turned out. I like the fact he campaigns in shirt sleeves and without a tie. He has an attractive (if somewhat oddly shaped) wife and a couple of kids who don't pick their nose in public. He really looks the business. Yesterday we witnessed an extraordinary event - something that is being likened to a handful of world forming days in history.

A black man is elected President of the United States only forty years or so after the civil rights movement was at its peak. Momentous stuff indeed. I was only nine when JFK got the nod and remember it not at all but I can certainly answer the 'Where were you when you heard Kennedy had been shot' question (waiting for a bus to take me to swimming with the 22nd Wimbledon Scout Troop as you ask). What else would you put with that? Man landing on the moon? (watched it on Dad's black and white telly at home) What else? Dunno. Obama getting the votes yesterday? Time will tell.

But now what? What have the US citizens voted for. A vast majority have, I suspect, voted for all of the above - the package - and that's it. There are people of various colours who genuinely believe he was born in a manger. There is a scary video on YouTube of a young black woman who really seems to think that the government will now pay her mortgage and put gas in her car. A radio station in New York conducted interviews a few days ago asking people why they were voting for Obama. All said it was because of his policies and not because he was the sharp looking black dude. The reporter then asked which policy they particularly liked - leaving troops in Iraq, choosing Sarah Palin as running mate or any of the other McCain policies. To a one they all picked on one of the opposition's platforms as the real reason they were going to vote for the sharp .......

We shall see. The Obama machine and especially the charismatic main man has cracked himself up to be a hard act to live up to. I hope he performs. I'm not too sure I agree with all things he says he is going to perform but he's got the votes lets see what he can do. I also hope he doesn't get himself shot.

As an aside look at both the victory speech from Chicago and the loser's effort from Phoenix. All class. Compare and contrast the drivel we have to put up with in New Zealand. If and when the Wicked Witch gets the bum's rush on Saturday do we expect anything other than the spitting of bile and vitriol as she drags her sorry backside from Government House?

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The ETS - an Aussie view

John Clarke is a very funny man. He has done a whole swag of 'interviews' with Bryan Dawe taking the piss out of many things and top of his hit list is Australian politics. There are many when he was interviewed as John Howard. This, of course, no longer cuts it and he now has to be Kevin Rudd.

This is Kevin explaining the Emissions Trading Scheme. Not a bad effort for a subject that struggles to attain the heights of being a crock.

Clarke and Dawe talk about the carbon scheme

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Earth Hour

Two weeks since a post. Tsk, Tsk. Life has been a blur of new things. Carefully labeling the fuel cans in the barn so that the brush cutter doesn't get four stroke up its innards. Nor yet the quad get filled with 2 stroke. Then there's the mower.

I inherited a Shibaura SE4000 42hp tractor that had strapped to its PTO the scariest and most inappropriate mower I have ever seen. Hundreds of kilograms of offset flail mulching mower that would reduce a field of telegraph poles to matchsticks as soon as look at them was what I was supposed to mow the (admittedly very large) lawn with. Well I did once and had to go for counseling afterwards. This thing was all very fine and dandy for mowing under vines and mulching prunings when the property was an orchard but it was all wrong for turning aforementioned front lawn into the best short game practice facility this side of the Black Stump. Apart from being the wrong sort of mower it was too big for the tractor and it was offset - offset by about three bloody feet. Have you ever tried reversing an 'L' shaped vehicle through a shed door that is too narrow for the whole contraption but can accommodate each limb of the 'L' individually? It's enough to get me to take to the strong drink. Add to this the news that the damned thing needed a new set of blades and they would set me back the fat end of eleven hundred notes and it was a no brainer.

The WMD has gone. It was replaced yesterday with a brand spanking (red) Fieldmaster three rotor topping field mower. Now this is a whole lot better on all sorts of levels. Firstly you can reverse it back into its shed in a straight line. Second it actually mows the grass like what a mower should instead of gouging great parts of the countryside up and spitting them out as potting compost. We are not there quite though. The Shibaura has been orchardised - lowered, (I own a lowered vehicle) has smaller fatter tyres and a few other bits and pieces I don't understand. This means I have to get new restraining chain brackets attached to the rear of the PTO crankcase so I can have internal instead of external chains. External chains would just cut great holes in the tyres. The height of the two lower arms on the three point linkage isn't right as the mower raises on the hydraulics with a marked list to starboard and I suspect the top link is set (by me) at the wrong length as the skids don't 'float' over bumps like they should but dig in. Oh, and I need weight (and I mean heaps of it) attached to the front of the tractor as steering is light at the best of times and disappears completely when the mower is 'up'. Still Gatman's can sort all that on Monday. The lawn is mowed and it is all rather good fun.

What has distracted me long enough from all this agricultural and pastoral stuff to put finger to keyboard? I let the the mandatory fuel efficiency labels to be placed on cars pass me buy. If you want to buy the Jag and ask how fuel efficient it is you will be told 'Not at all, a dyed in the wool gas guzzler. And, you can't buy it now just because you even asked'. No the event that has stirred me from my blogging torpor is Earth Hour.

This bit of politically correct bollocks starts in sixteen minutes time. We are supposed to turn off all power for an hour to show we care about how we are destroying the climate with our profligate wasting of energy. There was a piece on the News about it just now. (I seem to have stopped reading the newspapers now that they don't arrive at Marmite soldier time - I might even cancel my subscription.) It is being pushed by the usual earnest worrying type that are always in the forefront of this sort of crap. What a load of nonsense - even they admit it will make no difference to overall global power consumption. The news reporter even had a spokesman (sorry spokesperson) from a hospital regretting they would be unable to join in as it might be dangerous. Spare me.

Well it may come as no surprise to you that I will not be turning of anything in eleven minutes time. On the contrary I will turn on every light in the house - and the barn. It is a warm(-ish) night so I will turn on every fan I can find. I think I can fire up seven televisions, six computers, three printers, a microwave, two ovens, three electric jugs, a toasted sandwich maker, two food mixers, a dishwasher, washing machine, clothes drier, four heated towel rails, four bathroom underfloor heating units, five mini stereo/ghettoblasters and that's just the house. Off to the barn and I'll have the bench grinder going (a few hooks to sharpen, you understand), the drop saw savaging some planking, a heat gun straightening some lure skirts and a couple of electric drills doing nothing in particular. Whilst I'm over there I'll fire up the quad and get the brushcutter ticking over in case I run across some emergency thistle clearing in half an hour's time. Then it'll be back to the garage to start both cars. A brick on the accelerator of the supercharged V8 should keep it at over fifty litres an hour with no problem. It's at times like this I regret selling the Landcruiser. I'll then spend the rest of the hour walking up and down the drive to ensure that the sensor lights on the drive don't time out and go off.

Sod off you stupid, stupid morons.

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Madness

When will it end? The madness that is. The paper is full of it this morning.

Starting with the most trivial, Granny tried to get pricelists from London hostelries to try and work out the mechanics of the largeish bar tab. This request was declined for Health and Safety reasosns. Eh?

We move onto stab proof vests. Plod reckoned he would save a bit of dosh by measuring the boys in blue up for these in house as opposed to letting the manufacturer do it. He stuffs up - I mean how hard is reading a tape measure? - and we are in the cart to the tune of $2.7mill. There are about 6500 policemen in New Zealand that means it cost $415 to run the tape measure over the gut of a fed. I want the contract.

The real madness winner this morning however comes from a more familiar source - bloody climate change. How to win friends and influence people - especially the Kiwi bloke. Outlaw the beer fridge and large flatscreen TVs. This is what Botox & Tooth Whitening Woman and the rest of the loonies have said will happen so that we can save the vast sum of $64million dollars. That piffling amount wouldn't keep Dougie in Krug for a week. For crying out loud stop this bloody nonsense. If these dements really think keeping 60 inch TVs out of the country is going to save anything let alone the planet then they are madder than even I thought they were.

There is a faint glimmer of hope on the horizon. A Judge in the UK has decreed that if schools are to show Al Gore's fantasy film it must be preceeded by a health warning from sensible people (like me) who now have the unfortunate apellation of 'climate deniers' This judgemnt cost the plaintiff $600,000 in legal fees. That is decades of plasma screens.

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Tony's motor

No time - Fridays are a bad day for that - but a couple of quickies.

Reports of the Nats backpeddling on the no cap on GP fees. For Pete's (not Hodgson) sake don't. Have the balls to stick with what is right. GP's are not employees of the state (much though The Dear Leader would like them and every other worker to be so) and must be the only people in business who are told by the government what they can charge for their services. All this would be fine if central subsidy was sufficient to make up their costs to real world levels but it isn't. Why do you think there is a shortage of GPs? It is a naff job from an earning a decent living point of view because the government made it that way.

I'm going to buy Pattie Boyd's autobigraphy - it looks to be a great read. Just need a long aeroplane journey to read it on. Perhaps I should go to North Carolina to look at boats.............

Tony Blair has just been delivered of his new tax payer funded car. As an ex Prime Minister he is entitled to one and he scores a seven series beemer. All the usual accesories you tick the box for in Jerry Clayton's showroom - armour plating, run flat tyres, independent oxygen supply in case of a gas attack etc., etc. Sounds like a pretty sharp price too - $250,000. Car is delivered direct from the BMW factory in Munchen and they open the truck in which it arrives in Blighty and out jump four asylum seekers. Unfortunately for our enterprising Zaoiuiuoi lookalikes the truck was being unloaded in a police yard and they got sent back from whence they came - as did the car as its security had been 'violated'.

All sorts of lessons to be learned in this little anecdote I think.

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Irrelevant in the world

Pop over to Sydney today and what would you see? The Harbour Bridge? Yep but from a distance. The Opera House? Yep but again from a distance - Antipodean version of the Berlin Wall has been installed by all accounts. The Manly Ferry? Sure to be around. But for another tourist attraction that will only be on view for a few days you will see a country making a complete dick of itself. Not many people will notice and less will care.

APEC hasn’t really got up to flying speed and New Zealand is already being shown to its seat at the back behind the column just next to the Gents. Our true place in the world order is being rammed down our throat. No one cares what we think. The world is wearing one of those hats with the corks dangling off the brim to keep the NZ flies at bay. In addition to all this irrelevance we are exposing our brand of politics to the ridicule it so richly deserves.

MMP New Zealand style is a mess and the world can see this if they can be bothered to look. We had the spectre of our ‘Foreign Minister’ rebutting questions about a trade deal with China because Goof is the bloke handling that. ‘But you’re the Foreign Minister’ ‘You must ask Phil Goof about foreign trade matters’ What an embarrassing joke.

But it gets worse. The pursuit of a fairyland ideology in the grown ups pragmatic real world is about to be exposed for the disaster that this sort of posturing always is. What two planks of policy does New Zealand hold up as making us iconically Kiwi? I suggest our nuclear free at all costs stance would be one and our clean green image the other.

The former has transformed itself into a religion of the looney left. All nuclear power plants are built with technology that hasn’t changed since the late 1940’s. Chernobyl is the role model for all things that have even a touch of fission in them. Any nuclear power plant is really a clandestine nuclear bomb factory. If you even say uranium you start to glow in the dark and sprout an extra hand out of the middle of your forehead.

The clean green bit has morphed from tourist pictures of Milford Sound into this carbon neutral bollocks that the Headmistress thinks is such a wonderful thing. She even dreams it might get her re-elected. We are going to be world leaders in carbon neutrality because all that comes from the UN (and in particular their IPPC) is regarded in the same regard as utterances from the Oracle of Delphi. The IPPC says carbon neutrality is a good thing. Anything this political trouble maker says is gospel because a) it is from the UN and Helen worships the UN (looking for a job there in the future some would say – they deserve each other) and b) the IPPC is an animal that suits SWMBO’s purpose. The IPPC says global warming is caused by carbon dioxide and so it must be true, There is no evidence for this but why let that get in the way of a good political wheeze.

So far so good but now here comes the tricky bit. You have to put the two together; no nuclear power and carbon neutrality. We are all going to need more energy in the future. I think even the member for Cambodia might grudgingly acknowledge this. The IPPC say that using fossil fuels for this is evil and so we must look at nuclear power. What? Nasty, ‘orrible, dangerous nuclear power? Yep – that. ‘Right you are’ say the pragmatic countries of the world – trifling nations like the USA, China, Russia and yes, even Australia. ‘Sounds good to us – this global warming is all bollocks but if it is an expedient way of flogging nice safe modern nuclear power plants to the great unwashed we’ll be in like robber’s dogs.’

But where do Helen, Goof and Winnie go from here? One of the gods in the temple (the IPPC) says go and buy yourself a nuclear power station and the other god in the temple (we will be nuclear free until hell freezes over) says buy a nuclear power plant and the sky will fall in. What to do?

Winnie’s ploy is easy, go to the pub. The other two are not going to take a blind bit of notice of what he says so he might as well make an early start on the frosty foamers. But what of Her Indoors and Goof? Laud the merits of wind power? Howls of derisive laughter from Beijin. Tidal power is really good? Moscow wets its pants. Geothermal works really well? Rotorua (a suburb of New York) is carried from the room on a stretcher.

I can just imagine Goof walking up to the delegation from China (representing over billion people you will recall) clutching a windmill and asking them if they wouldn’t mind stopping building a coal fired power station every ten days because we (and don’t include me in this we) don’t like it. A polite version of the reply would be ‘Go and indulge in sex and travel’. I suppose he could crawl back under the door and ask if they would like to buy some West Coast coal.

It looks as though the headmistress and Goof will try and get the communiqué on global warming watered down to not mention nuclear power at all or only put it in 6 point type. And the reaction of the rest of the real world to this will be? ‘Go away you silly, irrelevant country‘, ‘It’s way past your bedtime’ or ‘Your mother was a hamster and your father smelled of elderberries’ would be good guesses. The communiqué will be issued in the form the real countries want and Helen and Goof will be left to try and spin their way out of a diplomatic face full of omelette.

I’m a bit like a cracked record on this I know, but this government’s refusal to recognise that we do not live in an undergraduate political science assignment that has to be marked by Trotsky will be the ruin of us. Wake up you dozy buggers and get rid of this mob. They are incompetent and make us look silly when we go out into the big boy’s world.

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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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News of the Screws

Hell, this is a tedious brief to try and fill at the moment as there is absolutely nothing to write about. The custody row within a severely dysfunctional family being played out in the public gaze has no place in the newspapers and I refuse to even read about it - it's none of my, or your, business. I can't find the CYFS blogsite (not that I have looked that hard) and that leaves us with nothing. The Herald is still publishing pictures of people growing malanomas on the beach for goodness sake.

So, out of desperation, I followed Mr RH's link to the News of the World. I was born and lived the first twenty two years of my life in the UK and I should have known better. I should have been prepared for the afront to the senses that awaited me after that fateful click of the button. But no, I blithely went ahead and did it and the News of the Screws is even worse than I remember. It is dreadful in biblical proportions. I had to close the page after reading about fifteen words to save my monitor from irrevocable damage. Don't go there. Take it from RockHopper and myself: Matthew Ridge is a git - but I have known that for years.

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International silliness

The United Kingdom provides the only amusement this morning.

I have never watched 'Big Brother', am never likely to and don't really understand what it is about. It sounds awful. But that not withstanding, I would have to have been living in a news vacuum over the past week not to have some inkling of the furore that has been caused (and the nasty under currents revealed) in Britain by the Shilpa Shetty business. Apparently the originator of the racial slurs has been 'voted out of the house'. Again, I'm not sure what this is but it sounds the product of the sort of mentality that made ducking stools and the stocks jolly popular. Anyway the evictee goes under the name of Jade Goody and there is a precis of her life to date in the Herald this morning.

If we (I) think New Zealand is in trouble Ms Goody is ample evidence that we ain't seen nothing yet. She is twenty five years old, fat, ugly and, more importantly, spectacularly thick. She is the daughter of a one armed lesbian from Bermondsey and a Jamaican who died in prison of a heroin overdose (I'm not making this up) and was allowed (encouraged?) by her tripod mother to roll joints at the age of five. She lives in Ongar making her an Essex girl - it somehow wouldn't be right if she wasn't. Her grasp of general knowledge is illustrated by her asking whether Saddam Hussein was a boxer (BA could put her right on that one) and whether a ferret was a bird. She used to be a dental nurse - I'll tell my daughter to be extra vigilent. Somehow all this has been manipulated by someone (I don't get the impression she could have managed it by herself) into making her a 'celebrity' with an estimated income over the past five years of between ten and twenty million dollars. Were you paying attention? Between ten and twenty million. I am gobsmacked. A society has to be in a really bad way to provide the environment for such nonsense.

While we are on the subject of thick people there is a side bar on a climate change piece about Prince Charles. What would he have made of his life if he hadn't be born into a bottomless pit of money? Old Air Brakes has cancelled his annual skiing trip so as to cut down the amount of airtravel he indulges in and thus reduce his carbon foot print. This is the latest nonsense jargon being peddled by those who howl at the moon and is becoming, like a lot of their crap, an 'accepted' phrase. What a load of bollocks. Carbon footprint my arse. The piece next to it is a preview of the latest IPCC report due out in a couple of weeks. I gave up half way through this piece of same old, same old and turned the pages back to gaze in wonderment at Jade Goody.

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